Development Plan Update
Narrative Work
I have worked on my narrative skills and have developed a chapter of a story that I could base a game off. Although the tone of the story is quite dark, it's purpose is to point out social issues and to relate to people of our society, especially teenagers. The story is set in the universe of Rooster Teeth's RWBY series, although most characters and the plot is of my own creation. The basis of the story is about four teenagers who have to survive in a world corrupted by the forces of darkness and with their unique abilities, they attempt to save the world. The narrative could make a very good basis for an RPG, possibly more aimed at a JRPG styled game as of the fantasy elements with characters that are detailed enough to seem real.
Here is the chapter of the story that I have written:
Surely this wasn't happening. Annabelle had gone
missing, but this time I felt that this was out of her will. We were all
panicking, Damon and Rennae were frantically searching the southern eastern
side of the city, whilst I kept myself to the centre and coastal side in search
for our missing teammate. I felt awful, my stomach churned in guilt and my head
dazed in shame. It was my fault. Hastily mounting onto my motorcycle, I swiftly
headed on to my information contact, Junior Xiong. I didn’t know the man too
well personally, but then again, I didn’t really want to, given that he was the
head of Vale’s underground mafia. But he was an asset to the VPD, and sometimes
to me in certain scenarios, I admit. To this day, I still hold a grudge on the VPD
for that deal. I never agreed to Junior’s protection, but a corrupt police
force doesn’t care about the ‘good cops’ I guess.
Speeding past red junctions and heavy Saturday traffic for
what felt like hours, I eventually reached the Junior’s club. Dismounting from
my motorcycle, I sprinted to the doors. The bouncers on my left and right gave
me discerning looks as I entered the club.
Trying to calm down for a moment, I stood still in the
reception. I checked my vitals on my watch and my heart rate started to
increase exponentially and when they normalised again after a few minutes, I
proceeded through the velvet room into the belly of the beast. He knew I was
coming. Not because of security footage, but because he knew only one person to
open both doors to the club simultaneously. He was already staring at me, his
menacing look and demonic glare attempted to pierce right through me, only to
be rejected by my determination. I wasn’t going to let his intimidation get to
me this time. Or so I thought.
I requested in an aggressive manner, indirect to him at that
moment, that he gave me any information on Annabelle’s whereabouts along with a
picture of her, but he stood silent, looking down as if he were mourning
something, or mocking. A sudden jolt of discomfort ran down my spine. He simply
chuckled and denied my request as if I were ordering a drink without ID. I felt
something else now, not shame or guilt, but fear. Being a police veteran at the
age of 16, you begin to know when something is wrong. He, like a perfect parry
in a verbal game of fencing, began to make demands on me with pure aggression
and his iron stare, he didn’t just know where she was, but why and how long
for. My fists began to clench and my muscles tensed. Retaining his glare of
steel, he demanded that I headed to the abandoned shipping warehouse in the
industrial coast of Vale, or Annabelle, “wouldn’t see the light of day again,”
as he said, and I knew he didn’t mean Mistral.
Part of me wanted to hurt him, bad, but I knew the
consequences. It wouldn’t be just the mafia that would want to kill me, but the
VPD too. Besides, I knew Junior well enough to know that he wasn’t the
ringleader in all of this, just another cog in the syndicate machine. My vital
signs reappeared in my cybernetic eye, my heart rate increasing the more I
stayed. But I knew what I had to do. Stammering my hand on the bar, I ran out
of the club like the wind to find Annabelle. Blaring on the lights of blue and
red again, I contacted Damon and Rennae via my cerebral communication systems.
I told them where she was, and not to follow me.
The warehouse wasn’t far now. I could taste the potent smell
of fish and cement around the concrete beach. I hastily drove through the
compact alleyways hoping for a way to the warehouse. After a few hour-long
minutes, I found myself at the cast-iron doors of the warehouse. I ended the
blaring gleam of my lights to then dismount yet again. I stood, taking every
breath as if they were Annabelle’s. I looked wearily at the entrance with my weak
eyes. With hesitation, I entered. The warehouse was lit black, the only light
in the building was protruding from the door that I opened. I heard a voice,
one that was familiar enough to recognise but old enough to not be able to
identify, and then the warehouse lit up upon a section of the catwalks,
revealing a figure only reminiscent of my old life.
I thought he was dead, or so I thought at least. I never
thought I would see him again, but now I never wish I did. His name was Jasone
Nightshade, and he looked after me once my family died, apart from my father.
Although I never would’ve thought that he would be involved in something as
sinister as this. He treated the entire ordeal as some sort of game show of
sadism. I demanded with what remaining willpower I had to ask of Annabelle’s
whereabouts, and he simply chuckled and proceeded to reveal her under a second
light upon the catwalks of the warehouse, except with a 6’3” man with a fully
automatic rifle forcing against the back of her skull. I was going to run to
her, but the hesitation, and the vivid thought of her executioner, stopped me
dead in my tracks. He seemed to have another surprise for me in store. Cackling
in a merciless tone he revealed, under a third light, a tall figure kneeling
and wearing a black hood. His figure looked familiar but I couldn’t recognise
the man under the hood. As that thought crossed my slowly deteriorating mind,
Jasone suddenly ripped it from his head like any dignity he had left, but I
noticed quite quickly in the light what, or who that figure was. A figure that
I was reunited with after seven years of mourning and absence. My father.
The man I only knew for what seemed like hours was at risk
of losing his life once again. After we reunited only weeks before, it was
cruel to have me forced to see my father beaten, battered to the point where he
could not stand to look at me. I did not envy him, nor did he envy me. The
situation was getting out of hand as I began to panic. Panic. That was all that
I could feel besides the regular heartbeats of fear. I couldn’t think straight,
not even my training could’ve prepared me for this. Jasone spoke again with the
voice of a cackling demon and explained what he wanted. None of us seemed to
know what he was talking about and all assumed that he was insane, until my
father stammered as he began to look at me for what seemed like the last time.
He told me not to give him my power. At first I assumed he meant my semblance,
but that couldn’t have been the case as semblances can’t be extracted from a
being as they are the embodiment of one’s soul. However as soon as that though
glossed over me, I knew what he was talking about.
Somehow the pieces seemed to fit, even though all of them
weren’t there. When I was young, I was told that I was special, that I was
different to other children. It was all to do with this mark that I have
scarred onto my back, one resembling a phoenix. I was told that I couldn’t let
anyone get to it, or abuse it for their own purpose. It made sense now, why
Nightshade adopted me, then disappeared and why I was in this situation. I
still did not know what this ‘Mark of the Phoenix’ did or what ‘powers’ it
granted me. However I knew that the results would be catastrophic if I let its
power fall into the hands of Jasone.
After a few minutes passed, Jasone was getting impatient and
started to make threats and his tone completely changed. From what started as a
heartlessly cheerful man stood a serious, stone-cold killer, even though no
lives had yet been taken. He ‘helped’ me sort out the situation as he gave me a
choice, give myself up and both Annabelle and my father would survive, to which
I had no guarantee, or sacrifice one of the hostages by my own hand and walk
away freely with the other, to which he would’ve relied on my own guilt to get
to me. None seemed like the right choice, but I had to do something or else who
knew what would happen? My father, after his second silence, spoke out once
again, and slowly raised his beaten head. He requested that he would be the one
to be sacrificed, so that me and Annabelle would be safe. He continued his
attempt to persuade me as he pointed out that he had lived his life, and that
we had our whole lives ahead of us. Annabelle counter-argued saying that she
didn’t want me to lose my father again and that she would willingly accept
death after the harsh life that she lived. I didn’t have a choice. Or so I
thought.
There was no way that I could resolve this situation without
any casualties. My mind was finally broken and I fell to my knees, although… I
smiled. Staring with a sense of happiness to Jasone for the first time in my
life. Tears of happiness streamed down my face, relaxed, calm, as if
realisation hit me like a stray bullet. I knew what I had to do. He couldn’t
take what wasn’t alive. Swifter than the wind, I had reached for my mother’s
revolver which was holstered at my thigh, and proceeded to hold its angelic
mouth against the bottom of my head. Tears of happiness frolicked further down
my cheeks. Jasone thought I was insane. Although I knew that what I was doing
was the only resolution. I glanced to Annabelle shortly afterward and gently
whispered loud enough for her to hear “I’m sorry…”
I pulled the trigger.
There was only white after that. White ground. White sky.
White horizon. I felt like I was desecrating the perfect harmony with my black
and yellow robes. But Identified with the harmony anyway. My eyes were closed,
but the white remained. I was unconscious for a while to awake in this realm.
Waking only to a voice that I had heard only once before, seven years ago.
I opened my eyes to be greeted with the white, but also more
black and yellow as a figure stood, staring at me from a distance. The same
figure who awoke me. I put myself to my feet and faced the figure. But it was
then that I realised. He was wearing my exact clothing, but the face was
different, and his build. But all of this seemed familiar. Waking up in the
white to be greeted by the same figure. I asked for his identity, but he just
snickered, and made it seem like I had forgotten who he was, to which I did. He
wasn’t mocking me, nor was he being aggressive, just playful in a way. He
introduced himself after my request. His name, Brasier Del’or. But it couldn’t
be. He was dead, over a thousand years ago. But there he stood in all of his
glory. He began to explain what was happening and welcomed me to limbo, a plane
of existence between life and death. He also explained in excruciating detail
what this ‘Mark of the Phoenix’ did. He explained that long ago, when the
faunas began to emerge, there were those few with characteristics of a phoenix,
and that those few people could be resurrected from the dead until their fated
day of true demise. But when the war between humans and the Grimm began, these
faunas sacrificed their power of the phoenix into a mark that one may bear so
that the power wouldn’t be lost and peace could be brought upon Remnant.
However, rules were set for this mark, as Brasier recited the ancient
transcript “Only he who bears the blood
of the elders, who shall bond with thine ancestor, and he who bears the sacred robes shall bear the true mark of the Phoenix, and it will be he who is fated to cleanse the darkness once and for all”
Brasier explained what the mark could do; he was brief but
mentioned self-resurrection and how the mark is split into three pieces, my birthmark, my robes as well as the soul of the last Phoenix, but he also mentioned that I would need to bond with his soul in order to reach ‘my final form’. He didn’t pester, but
requested that I go on a pilgrimage to my ancestral tomb, the final resting
place of all of the mark-bearers and “complete my training” as he said. But as
those final words escaped his mouth, he faded away, along with this real, false
land.
I opened my eyes once again with a tired expression, my
heartbeat that once resembled fear, was replaced by a regular beeping noise,
looking up I saw lights that you would normally see in an office building, but
I didn’t think that was the case. I began to scan around the room, my entire
body feeling sore as I had been burned in live fire. I could faintly hear
muttering outside the room in which I was laid, which I found to be a hospital
room given by the various medicines and computers that I saw. Two figures
entered the room, one being a nurse that was caring for me, the other was
shorter, with darker hair. Annabelle. She looked concerned, pestering the nurse
for the details on my health. However, both looked shocked when they saw me,
conscious, aware, and alive. I expected the nurse to feel somewhat smug and
happier than the mood she was in when she entered, but what I didn’t expect was
the nurse dropping her tray with needles full of variously coloured fluids,
and Annabelle diving onto the hospital bed with her arms wrapped around me.
I was hastily given a recap on what had happened from
Annabelle once the nurse left us two alone. She said that I started to glow
once I pulled the trigger, that I began to float above the ground and that
flames engulfed me, Jasone and the two thugs by his side that were holding
Annabelle’s and my father’s life at gunpoint, disintegrated, but it left me
completely unharmed. My father! I prompted Annabelle with questions about my
him, where he was, if he was okay and the like. She calmly told me that he was
in another wing of the hospital for treatment of more minor injuries than
death. It had been the first time in forever that I had seen Annabelle so
happy. Her face seemed to be glowing, and that smile on her face was what
reassured me the most, because it told me one thing, that everything was going
to be okay.
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