Hello and welcome back to another chapter of Dark Changes, where Chaos reigns and we'll bash the parts of RWBY that don't make any natural sense(factoring in the normal suspension of disbelief needed for a sci-fi/fantasy show). Though if I'm being honest I can't tell if any of you guys like what I'm doing(leave reviews pls), but until then I'll stick with the story I have in mind!
Chapter 4: Half the Battle…
Taeun Akdhir, known as The Penitent to those who worshipped the same gods as he did, woke up in his small crumbling apartment in one of the more rundown areas of Vale. The first thing he noticed was that all of his bones ached with a familiar dull pain, the second was a thought that was racing through his head.
I killed a fellow champion of Nurgle.
This thought would eat at him on and off throughout the day, he just knew it, but for now other matters held precedence.
Getting out of his bed Taeun stumbled over to his bathroom, as always he took a few moments to look in the mirror to see if there were any new "gifts" from his chosen god. The mirror would show his eyes were yellow and bloodshot from past bouts of malaria and various flus, his skin hollowed to the point where you could count his teeth if you looked closely enough; no blistering poxes, open sores oozing with pus, or even something as simple as a big ass fucking pimple on his forehead! It seemed that The Grandfather was still punishing Taeun for his most grievous sin: rejecting the first blessing he had been given due to ignorance.
With a sigh he finished off his morning routine of brushing his teeth, showering(it might seem paradoxical for him to do this, but Taeun knew any diseases he had on his skin would be collected at the plant), and getting dressed in his battle armor/work clothes, with the only change being that instead of his gas mask he wore a simple hospital mask. Finally he made his way over to a small shrine he had built in the corner of his room and prayed to Papa Nurgle for the blessing of glorious infection and for protection from the machinations of the other gods as he went about his day and then made his way towards the door that connected his small pocket of decay to the rest of the world. Today was rather important in the grand scheme of things, for today he met with the sorcerer to prepare for The Black Crusade.
A Crusade… he'd only heard legends of such gatherings of followers of Chaos from the shamans and veteran cultists, and they painted quite a picture.
An army of the faithful united by the ferocity and charisma of a cruel tyrant, blessed by the gods and on the final steps to eternal glory as a Prince amongst the immortal. Under his banner marched a numberless horde of warriors, barbarians, monsters, and even daemons! They did not bow to one god, but to the entirety of the Eight Star! Champions from all corners of the world would compete in contests against each other, hoping to gather enough followers to lead their own warbands when the time came that their leader either ascended to daemonhood, or fell to spawndom. No town was safe from their pillaging, no fortress strong enough to keep them out, they would fight until either the warrior who launched the crusade succeeded/failed and left the mortal plane, or until the horde was torn apart by the differing beliefs of it's warriors, or ,very rarely, the Grimm overwhelmed them(the Gods tend to focus on the negative emotions after all).
It sounded too good to be true…. And unfortunately it probably was just that. For all their preaching of understanding and tolerance, the Four Kingdoms and their outlying villages on the so called frontier generally followed one simple guideline: The Grimm are attracted to negative emotions, so keep your population happy! This rule generally tended only to count to humans until relatively recently, but many faunus were still unhappy(as evidenced by The White Fang), but that didn't mean the governments didn't do everything in their power to try and keep the population in good spirits. People were encouraged to spend time "out on the town", drinking, dancing, and just having a good time; the homeless were either given shelter or sent out to form new townships, no matter how unlikely it was that those new towns would last longer than a few years people still kept on going out(better to have a roof on your head than no roof at all), that all went out the door when it came to mental illness. If someone was deemed "mentally ill" it was quickly swept under the rug for most diseases(autism for example), or they were given enough pills to make a daemonette jealous, with the truly unhelpable cases being sent off to an Asylum.
'Ahh the Asylums,' Taeun thought, 'The best kept open-secret in Remnant.' While on paper the Asylums took care of the people in their care(and Taeun had heard from cultists who had been in one of them) that after a while the Asylums were forced by law to "relocate" their wards into the middle of a Grimm infested forest. This served to keep the largest herds away from the cities, and get rid of a drain on taxpayers money: a political win/win!
The other problem standing in the way of Azraq's promise was the fact that the number of cultists was relatively low, maybe three hundred to a thousand in Vale proper, and they all tended to be at each other's throats(even those who worshipped the same god), enough to overthrow a small city but not enough to engulf the world into eternal war. This was not factoring in age, health, or sanity, for those mattered not to the gods so long as one was willing to fight, nor did it factor the losses each cult tended to suffer at the hands of criminals, the enforcers, or the occasional Huntsmen trainee from Beacon going out and delivering vigilante style justice(it says something about the incompetence of a city's police force when this kind of shit is the norm). All in all it was looking like the sorcerer's words were just that, words, but he had given his word he would support this foolhardy plan, and his word was his oath.
He soon came across the local diner that he and Azraq had agreed to meet up at last night, the Tzeentchian bastard wanted to meet at the library but Taeun had made it clear that since he(Azraq) needed Taeun's men, he got to choose the meeting place. He had arrived half an hour early so that he could order a burger and milkshake.
As soon as his order arrived the blue haired bastard walked through the door and sat down next to him "I see you've made yourself comfortable my friend."
Taeun glared at him "We are not friends."
"No, we are not," Azraq admitted "Now then, let us get down to business. I need information about every major cult in the Vale area: Name, numbers, and what aspect they worshipped."
This caused the Nurglite to snort "Is that all?" when he saw that the only thing changing about Azraq's face was his eye color he let out a sigh before taking a long sip of his chocolate milkshake(a classic, just the way Nurgle likes it). When he was done he took a moment to collect his thoughts ``Alright since you're asking me we'll start with the local Maggotkin community, my group(the poorly named Scions of Rust at the moment) currently has around seventy seven members and control the area surrounding the water treatment plant for about three or four blocks depending on the last turf war. We worship Nurgle as The Bloated Collector, combing the water for valuable diseases and relics that he gifts to his most faithful… The only other group are the pretentious "Cult of Ruinous Reincarnation" that operates out of a funeral parlor, as the name suggests they think that they'll be reborn in the Garden if they're pious enough.``
"So I take it they all have Nurgle's Rot?"
"Who's giving who information here? But yes they do and they're so pretentious about it! Now if it's alright with you I'm going to skip the Tzeentchians for obvious reasons(a nod) okay now we'll move onto the Hedonite faction in Vale "The Cult of Pleasure Made Flesh", they're led by a guy calling himself "The Sublime Edge", a man so arrogant he claims to be The Lost God/Goddess reborn."
Azraq let out a groan "Oh Gods damn it not a Pretender."
"I know, they're the worst," Taeun admitted "Rustigan once told me there were originally two different factions of Hedonites in Vale, the douche Pretenders and a Seeker group named "The Bleeding Note"."
"Sounds interesting, whatever happened to them?" the sorcerer asked as curiosity filled his psychedelic eyes. "Wait, don't tell me… They were defeated by the other faction and were therefore subsumed into the Pretender host."
"Indeed, they duked it out about two and a half decades earlier. Their war was so wild that the nascent Team STRQ(Stark) of Beacon tried to put a stop to it." when he didn't get any response from that name drop he did a quick "I'll fill you in later" gesture "(Un)fortunately the war was already over by the time the authorities actually gave a shit, the two leading Champions had agreed to a duel: loser would forfeit their life as well as their followers, needless to say we know who won."
"What happened to the Seeker Champion?"
"I've heard three different rumours, each one of them sounds good enough to be true. The first one is that The Sublime Edge simply killed her and gave her body to the Corpse Grinders, the second one is that she was bound and dropped into a sensory deprivation tank, unable to experience anything ever again for the rest of her unnaturally extended life, and the third rumour going about is that The Edge broke her spiritually and made her into one of his harem girls. Anything is possible with those sick fucks."
"Anyways the guy has around a hundred and twenty two sycophants at his beck and call throughout five different nightclubs, and is said to reside in an off the books location where anything goes."
"And finally we have the blood crazed fools known as The Lodge of The Serrated Truth. These guys are the oldest faction in Vale, going back to The Great War, and they certainly have the numbers to back that claim with around 320 members working at the local slaughterhouse."
"Slaughterhouse?" Azraq asked, his eyes turning a pale red "Then when you mentioned Corpse Grinders, you were referring to this Lodge?"
Tauen nodded gravely "Servants of "The Lord of Skin and Sinew", who they claim is Khorne in an aspect that rules over cannibalism, the Lodge apparently came into existence during one of the worst food shortages of the War. No supplies were reaching the city because the convoys were being picked off by the Grimm horde and so the people starved….. Until a local butcher realized there was a large supply of meat being brought in everyday, he just had to wait until they died. The stories also go into detail about which part of the body make up the choicest cuts and how faunus's tended to taste like their animal part, but needless to say they're a crazy bunch of killers who we're really going to have a hard time convincing to help us, what with you being a "you know what"."
"So now this project is a "we" situation." Azraq mused, looking so smug that Taeun would reach over and punch him if they weren't in a public place, but even then he was barely holding back. "Don't worry, they'll come to our side, if not for the bloodshed then it'll be because of the fact that the Duardin will be upgrading our weaponry."
"That's a good poi-wait what do you mean Duardin?!"
"The Duardin, you know, formerly mountain dwelling people around five foot four inches in height, have the greatest beards of all time, highly clannish, long lived, forced out of said mountain homes and had to roam the earth in work-gangs? There's one such gang over at the railyard maintaining the trains and acting as "Bulls" keeping out the local homeless population and vandals? Which is fitting if one considers who they wors-"
"I know about the Rail Wardens!" Taeun whispered "and how they worship that daemon, what I don't know is how you know of them!"
"...I could go into a highly detailed account of the dark pacts I've signed and the favors I've expended in order to get this information, but to make a long story short I had my (formerly)mortal puppet pull some strings and used one of The Black Queen's pawn's pawn to spy on every possible gang location in the area, in addition to spells and artefacts that were hidden decades in advance, and because my very religion is one of backstabbing I had you triple check my sources."
Taeun let out an angry sigh "This. This right here is why your kind of people are so hated in our culture: You don't trust anyone! It makes sense in the endgame but right now we both don't have enough divine favor to earn a tentacle to replace our dicks, much less daemonhood."
"One) to be fair we don't even trust ourselves, two) speak for yourself you filthy pervert, and three) stop bitching about things you cannot change, now if my calculations are correct we have about five hundred and ninety one people currently in the embrace in the dark gods: 107 Maggotkin, 122 Hedonites, 10 Disciples(including myself), 320 Corpse Grinders, and 32 Azgorhi(AN: that's what we'll be calling anyone who worships Hashut)."
"That's enough to conquer a small town, but not the Hunter Capital of the entire world."
"I know, that's why I've also gone through the trouble of locating three potential…. let's say "Recruitment Centers" that we need to take before the Crusade can truly kick off, and if all that fails I have plans to ally ourselves with the White Fang."
Tauen dropped his food onto his plate "Careful with that name drop, despite Vale's lax attitude towards cops actually doing their jobs, admitting to wanting to ally with a terrorist organization in the wrong place near the wrong people will end you in a cell with a big man named Tyrone.''
The sorcerer shook his head in disgust"I swear you should've been a hedonite the way you think!" before becoming serious once again "Don't worry, if everything goes mostly according to plan, then we should be just fine."
"Mostly?"
"Well, one has to factor in The Will of The Gods"
And at that statement both teens knocked on the wooden table four times, paid their bills, and left with plans on meeting once again at a later date.
Later that night….
Taeun walked the streets of Downtown Vale, marvelling at the lights and the hypocrisy. It used to be no one wanted to come to Downtown areas in cities because that's where all the criminals and Faunus lived, now it was all start up businesses, "unique" clothes stores, and microbreweries as far as the eye could see. This was the creed of Nurgle made manifest, decay leading into new life and back again in a never ending cycle as whole districts prospered and fell to the evercrawling march of time. It was times like this that made his decision to turn from the False Brothers look like the right choice, for now he was enlightened to the true powers of the world. Since he had some time before his next grueling shift he decided to duck into a nearby store to see if they had any new virology books/magazines in stock.
A few minutes later(AN: I know this is the second skip of the chapter, but I'm not rewriting the entirety of episode 1).
That gods damned sorcerer had put a curse on him.
That was the only reason he could think of as a reason for him to be caught in such a string of bad luck, no one was this unlucky in real life. He had been minding his own damn business inside the store, browsing at the local medical magazines while this girl in a red cloak was looking at the weapons section when a bunch of goons and Roman "motherfucking" Torchwick came out of nowhere and decided to rob the place. So what if when one of the goons came over to him and Red he decided to throw the first punch, it wasn't like he pulled out a SCYTHE-SNIPER RIFLE COMBO or anything! But no~ the huntress who arrived on scene(once again before the cops) saw fit to put both of them under arrest and sent them to the local police station!
"I swear to the Grandfather I'm gonna murder him if this was his fault…." he muttered as the girl placed her head on the table in what was clearly shame.
"Hey," he said to get the girl's attention, prompting fear filled silver eyes to look into his pissed off yellow "Relax, odds are you're not in any serious trouble, maybe a slap on the wrist and a lecture at most."
"... you really think so?" Gods this girl was young!
"You're studying to be a huntress right?" He got a nod "Then they'll let you go, they need everyone they can get to fight the good fight against the Grimm; as for myself I'm probably spending a night or two in a cell."
"Wait, aren't you a huntsman in training as well?" the girl asked "I mean the way you flat out decked that one guy made it seem like you're from this year's graduating Signal class at least."
Taeun let out a raspy chuckle at that guess "Gods no, truth be told I was just browsing at the magazines before heading to my shift at the sewage treatment plant….. I see that look you're giving me but somebody has to do it. No, I learned how to fight like that from the good old school of the street."
There were a few moments of silence before either of them spoke again "I don't believe I've introduced myself, I'm Taeun. What's your name?"
"I'm Ruby, Ruby Rose." the now named Ruby introduced herself "Nice to be…er…. Arrested with you." she said as she extended her hand, to which Taeun eagerly shook in return.
"Well Ruby, don't look now but I think things are about to get a whole less pleasant." Taeun said as the huntress who arrested them came into the room, followed by a man in a green suit with silver hair.
Ozpin "The Great and Terrible", headmaster of Beacon.
He was really going to kill Azraq the next time they met.
And with that chapter 4 is now complete, don't worry Taeun Isn't going to Beacon, I just needed a way to get the forces of Chaos on Ozpin's radar early into the story besides "detecting magic". Now we have the various factions that need to be brought together for the Crusade to take off mapped out, let's see how negotiations turn out next time!
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