Episode 1

A view of all black.

Voices could be faintly heard: shouting in the background. A boy mumbled, nearby.

"Why is the screen bla- Oh…"

A click, a jiggle, and the protective cap was taken off of the camera lens. The view was of a rather dark and sinister looking place that looked vaguely like a cathedral. People could be seen moving in the background, many of them wearing colours and outfits that clashed with the environment. Most of the screen, however, was taken up by a black and red pants leg- one that swiftly retreated from the camera until the leg's owner could be seen. A silver haired boy, wearing a black and red suit and a black tiara looked at the camera, head tilted. Although his expression couldn't be seen, as his face was covered with a blue visor that had an unsettling red light, something in his posture conveyed a sense of dissatisfaction.

"Are you ready yet?" a girl asked impatiently, off-screen.

"I… think so?" The boy clicked his tongue in annoyance. "I dunno. I don't like the way it looks. Why did we pick this place again?"

"Cause… you wanted everyone to pose in the back, so we could all fit?" answered another voice; a boy, this time.

"Yeah… I just wish Tyrant's Arena was less ugly…" The silver-haired boy was too pre-occupied to notice the girl that appeared on-screen, running up to beside him. She was one of those whose outfit- a beige coloured swimsuit- clashed with the environment. She held a spear in her hand, and as she came up next to the boy, promptly stabbed him with it.

"Poke."

The boy flinched at the hit. "Damnit, Aura," he growled at her, as she continued on her way, disappearing on the other side of the screen. "Stop doing that." Then he seemed to jump in place, as he noticed something else happening on that side.

"Fu-" he said, as another girl with a spear- virtually identical- appeared from the direction he was looking, spinning her spear and her body with it. He went to grab his cannon, but couldn't stop her in time, and they both went off-screen on the other side, propelled by her momentum. "KAT!"

"Oh, are we fighting now?" came another boy's voice, also off-screen. A small group of people- included among them the girl in the swimsuit, a few red-haired swordsmen, and silver-haired girl with a large jewel in her forehead- momentarily crossed the screen, chasing after the other two. "Hold on, I'll save you!" said another person, laughter bubbling in his voice.

The sounds of fighting started up, loud enough that it drowned out any protests the silver-haired boy could have made. There were shouts, and smacks, and various projectiles flew on screen before disappearing. It was all loud enough and distracting enough that nobody noticed that a brown-skinned, black-haired man wearing a snazzy white suit was walking calmly towards them.

He paused at the edge of the screen, and drew his sword before continuing onwards. The sounds of fighting paused for an instant, and somebody quick had enough time to blurt out "Oh shi-" before the man said, quite calmly: "Touch."

The earth shook, and the camera along with it. There was an ominous rumbling sound, along with several wet sounds, and then an even more ominous silence when the ground finally stopped moving. A boy started laughing, uncontrollably, from somewhere off-screen. After a moment, the silver-haired boy came back into the view of the camera, looking a little worse for the wear.

"Ahem," he coughed, adjusting his visor so it sat straight. "Seeing as most of our cast is busy respawning right now, I guess I'll just have to do for today. Welcome to Windstorm Tales, sort of a cross between a journal and a reveal-all, where we tell our dumb, wacky stories that all started from an Elsword guild chat. I'm Nilthreud, usually called Nil, and I'll be your host and narrator for the duration."

He coughed again, looking a little lost, as the laughter continued. Then he walked forwards and turned the camera off.


How we all me- Nil's random nostalgia

A long, long time ago, in a- no wait, if I do this, I might get sued.

There was once this boy. He was the princeliest of princes, with stunning blue eyes and blond hair. He, along with his dad, were the Guardians of Hamel, charged to-

[You don't need to go through the backstory, you know.]

[Nobody pays attention to it anyways.]

Shut up, guys.

Although I will admit that Elsword's lore is… not as good as it could be…

Okay, different tack.

About eight or so months ago, I finally caved in to all those Youtube ads and decided to try this weird anime MMORPG that I kept getting spammed about. I went and made my character, a Chung, cause, well, he freaking swings a cannon as big as his body. What could go wrong?

Well, lots, but let's not get into that today.

Anyhow, start the game, boom, backstory, city, cool. Get dropped into a random garden place with this sketch-ass dude crouched in front of me, and glowing buttons telling me zx, whatever that means. So I press those buttons, then suddenly: cutscene, with dude with a sword as big as his body. And he's bigger than me, so like, REAL big sword.

[Snickers.]

… Anyways, sketch-ass dude runs forward and disappears, leaving me to whale on the bandit left behind. So I smack him around a little bit, then notice my skill bar and decide to use a skill. Suddenly: my character goes freakin' bonkers, slamming his cannon into the ground repeatedly, and it freakin' destroys the bandit, and I go like "dang this is the best skill ever."

Yeah, yeah, I know it sucks now- I do learn.

So like, I just continue on even though I wanted to continue trying my attacks, cause the flashing arrow is kind of getting annoy-

[Dude, hurry the **** up. Or you'll take forever to get to us.]

:/

Good point.

SoanywaysIcontinueon,fightalltherandommobs,beatupdudewithsword(actuallyprettyweak)andwechasehimtoanothervillage,beathimupagain,beatupthemasterofthecastle(plottwist)heruns,wechasehim- HURRKk

(Deep breath.)

Toanothervillage,runthosedungeons,joinaguild,guildmasterhelpsmerundragonnesttentimescuzi'mdumbandwantedredrockcannon,continueon,dudewechasinggetsblownup,beatuprobots,beatupbiggerrobot,beatupbiggestrobot,getbanksharinggettofeita-

Oops. Did I pass when we met?

[Uh…. I dunno.]

Jeez, okay. To be honest, I'm not 100% clear on when we formally started talking to each other. I think it was a few weeks after I started playing, so mid-November. I'm pretty sure that one of us said something random, someone else responded, and we managed to get actual conversations going! Rin being there probably helped the conversation go along too (more on him/her/it later).

[It was about anime!]

[And ice cream! Mango ice cream!]

Right, what they said.

So there we were, all roughly the same level- wait, I should specify who "we" are.

It started with four of us (cuz like, party limits), although other people joined us eventually, later on. But anyways, we started out with: Dreamystars, the only girl of that little group, cheerleader, Night Watcher; TrueAutumn, noob Infinity sword extraordinaire, though he's gotten sliiightly better; Irradiate, a.k.a. Light cuz apparently spelling Irradiate is too hard, Blademaster and I think our only Raven- [There's salty!][And Zilo!][Neko!] OKAY I GET IT- main at the time. And yours truly, Tactical Trooper, tank extraordinaire [Such bullsheet.]- at least after I got my gear.

Dreamy's also my wife, but that came later. Tbh, our family dynamics are pretty screwed-up, and there's a LOT of us. I won't cover the other people, but I'll give you the details on us so you can figure out who's who in the next segment; I am Dreamy's hubby, True is Dreamy's (disapproving) papa, and Light is Dreamy's Onii-chan, not to be confused with her Aniki-chan, not be confused with her brother or her- I'll just leave it like this.

Anyhow, we were all roughly the same level, all about level 40. So naturally, the first thing we do is run Henir.

We… were not very smart people.

We actually got pretty far, to be fair, although Dreamy was a little lower level and so assigned herself the all-important role of: cheerleader. We managed to get to the end of Feita, somehow, although we nearly wiped at Altera Core. All in all, it was actually pretty fun, so every little while we kept running, trying to see how far we could go. Despite the setbacks, we eventually cleared the whole thing, roundabouts level 50-ish.

[You kept on dis-connecting from the dungeon!]

Ahem. 'Scuse me. [[Yeah well you afk'd for all of Hamel that one time!]]

[That was ONE time! You-]

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

(The recording cuts out here.)


Seventh Ritual- Trial of Flying swords (four months ago)

The blond-haired boy stood on top of Wally's castle rooftop, shivering. His teal-coloured clothing that failed to cover most of his legs and his shoulders wasn't enough to prevent him from feeling the wind. In front of him, about a dozen feet away, stood a black-haired swordsman in a stylish red coat, a blade held in each hand. How did it come to this? the boy wondered, reluctantly reaching for his cannon.

"You know the rules?" called the boy swordsman. The cannoneer nodded. The other boy continued to stare at him, so he sighed and said, "If I can beat you in a pvp match, I get to marry Dreamy."

"Uh-huh. I must determine if you are worthy of marrying my daughter," he said, smiling ominously.

This is gonna suck.

From below, somewhere in the castle, a girl shouted "Go papa, go!"

The blond-haired boy blanched, and before the swordsman could respond, he called: "DREAMY!"

"Love you too, Nilth!" Without skipping a beat, she continued, "Go, papa, kill him!"

The blond-haired boy rolled his eyes.

"Why don't you come and watch your hubby get murdered?" called the swordsman.

"Sorry! I'm in a dungeon right now. You can tell me what happens, right, Onii-chan?"

Both boys looked up to a nearby ledge, on top of which a brown-skinned man crouched. He gave them a thumbs-up. "Yep."

The blond-haired boy grunted. "Ready?"

The black-haired boy nodded. "Let's go."

And as the timer hit 0, they rushed straight at each other, weapons darting out to clash at the last moment.

They both hit each other at the same time, and both flinched. After they recovered, the cannoneer backed off, looking to create a little distance- but the swordsman would not oblige. He dashed forwards, looking to create an opening, but the cannoneer took a steady step forward, slamming his cannon onto the ground and using them to intercept the blades. Noticing the cannoneer's dangerous stance, the swordsman paused for a moment, before throwing out another blade- but this one hit nothing but thin air.

The cannoneer had already jumped into the air, propelling himself with a blast of his cannon. With a toss of his arm, he tossed out a grenade that managed to tag the swordsman on the shoulder. As the swordsman flinched, he charged forward, barely managing to hit the swordsman before he recovered. He then began his combo, his mind falling into a familiar, workman-like state. Hit, hit, hit, reload, hit hit hit grenades and siege mode, followed by four blasts. Rinse and repeat.

(Ahem. Okay, to be fair, the combo does loop, boring- and nooby- as it is. I've gotten a little better over the months. Miniscule, really.)

Eventually, the swordsman fell to the ground due to some sort of evil magic. The cannoneer backed off warily, but was still caught off-guard as the swordsman raised his hand to the sky, summoning a series of swords to rain down on him.

Well, cr- He was dragged across the roof by the blades, unable to react due to the pain. He knew that the swordsman had followed after the attack, ready to slice him even now, but he couldn't recover quickly enough. A series of blows hammered down onto his armor, heavy and unrelenting, until all he could see was red on black.

Then, suddenly, his vision cleared, and his mind along with it. He was suddenly behind the swordsman, who was just now turning around to face him. Damnit, I died already, huh? He shrugged unconsciously, before charging forwards to meet the swordsman.


A few minutes later, the brown-skinned man called time, and the two combatants separated, both panting. The blond-haired boy just let himself fall backwards to sprawl on the roof, his armor making a loud whoomf as it hit the surface. The swordsman stayed standing, but was hunched over, both hands on his knees.

"Ah, damnit," said the blond-haired boy. He could barely hear himself speak over the ringing in his ears. 1:3. "Gee gee," he sighed out the formal words.

The swordsman grinned. "Gee gee," he replied, sticking a hand to the blond-haired boy, who stared at it, then took it. He hauled himself up, nearly overbalancing the swordsman due to the weight of his armor.

He wanted to frown at his loss, but found that he couldn't. It truly had been a fun match, even though the result was disappointing and he'd been completely outmatched. In the end, he let himself smile back, just a little.

The swordsman looked down at the castle, then shouted, "Okay Dreamy, he has my approval! You can marry him now!"

The blond-haired boy blinked, then grabbed the swordsman's arm. "Wait, what? I thought that I had to beat you to marry her."

The swordsman also blinked. "What? No, silly. The condition was a kill in pvp, and you killed me once. Almost twice, actually. You pass."

"Really?" The blond-haired boy could hardly believe what he was hearing. "Are you sure?" He looked up at the brown-skinned man, who seemed to be chuckling.

"Yeaaaaah," called the girl's faint voice. "Papa's right; that was what he said."

The blond-haired boy blinked several times, before a huge, goofy grin started spreading across his face. He started laughing, stupidly, as he left the rooftop running.


And there's the story of the first time I ever had to deal with a girl's "dad." May any future endeavours be so fortunate. *bows*

I do still go 1:3 against True, though. Hush, I'm not a PvP person.


And well, that's it for this segment! Hope you guys enjoyed it. Hopefully next time, I can convince some other members of our group to contribute for more perspectives and funtimes. Before I go, though, I'll leave you with a little persons list for reference.

Who's Who?

Nilthreud- Only the best TT ever! Well, okay, he doesn't have the best gear of all the TT's… he's not the best TT at pvp… he doesn't have perfect sockets like some TT's… but damnit none of those make a TT the best, okay? He's the best because he's not the best, so there. Hmph.

TrueAutumn- Nub extraordinaire. Slightly less nub, recently, due to his practicing in pvp and acquisition of good gear and a costume set. Strangely enough, he only has about 20% crit with the Caligo set- doesn't he have a passive that gives him 100% crit, conditionally? Also prone to exploding technology.

Irradiate- Blademaster and ascendant pawstoucher of the group. Has some pretty crazy offensive stats… so why is he E rank? Troll through and through, likes teasing everyone, and is probably the strongest PvE guy in our group- except maybe somina. More on that wife, and the other wife he has, in the future.

Dreamystars- Or maybe I should call her Auraburn? Former Night Watcher, now Yama Raja, her hobbies are eating mango ice cream and pinching my cheeks. She needs to stop doing that second one, really. Claims she's a spider and backs it up with her eight-eyed emoticons

That's everyone for now, I'll go through more people as I introduce them later on.