Re: Incarnation

Black, then with a jolt a rush of color as a man looks side to side. Heart racing, in a panic. He looks at a fleshy veiny translucent membrane but can't see much through it clearly. “Where am I? What's going on? Last thing I remember…” He thought back to what he could remember from a time before he had awoken in this strange and alien situation.

He remembered walking through a city, not the largest but definitely intimidating to those from outside it. Tall buildings of metal and glass reached hundreds of feet into the sky. He remembered riding in a vehicle, going to a factory where he worked. Ten hours a day, four days a week, with three day weekends. The work was rough, but the pay was well worth it.

Once done he would go home. He spent most of his free time playing games and watching anime. He was the textbook stereotype of what many called a weeb. Except instead of being a fat slob that lived in his mother's basement, he rented a small apartment. In it he filled the space with memorabilia and collectables. Figurines, body pillows, a library worth of DVDs, posters, manga. It was a weeb paradise, made possible by his high paying hard labor day job.

Life was good, the man wanted for nothing. Sure he wasn't rich but he was far from poor. In fact, if not for his habit, he probably could have even bought a house at the obscene prices that were a problem for others. Although as far as material possession went, there was one thing he wanted. A girlfriend.

He was somewhat of a socially awkward neet, and even if he could get over that and find a woman with similar interests, no one wanted to have to compete over someone's affection with a fictional character. That problem went both ways. Sure, in time and with effort he might have found someone that he clicked with but he was okay with the idea of living alone for most of his life.

Life has different plans however. As what little he could remember continued he eventually reached the last memory of his time before waking up here. He was working at the factory, just another day, when suddenly the machine stopped working and he heard a strange creaking sound followed by the machine shaking violently. “Oh fu-” was all he managed to say before the thing literally exploded in his face sending him flying.

As he lay there on the floor, bleeding out from the swiss cheese holes the shrapnel had made in his body he reached out to a coworker and groaned out. “If I don't make it, delete my hard drive.” Then flopped to the floor and thought to himself: “if there is a god, please have mercy on my soul and let me reincarnate as a tentacle monster.” Then everything went black.

The man reached out and broke out from the membrane landing on his hand and knees coughing up fluid. His vision was still blurry but he saw that something was attached to his abdomen and yanked it out. A great pain surged through his body causing him to cry out in pain. A strange garbled noise escaped his mouth. His body felt too weak to stand and he started crawling his way forward as he cleaned off his eyes. His vision cleared and he could see the floor clearly.

The floor looked and felt like purple flesh. It squished and slapped as he moved. Then he felt arms grab him and help him up. He got the feeling these people were just trying to help him. They laid him onto a bed of sorts where he heard electric sounds and felt a tingling sensation throughout his body. Then he was handed a set of purple robes and a sash to match. His vision now clear and it suddenly easier to move around he was able to get a good look at the pair of people that helped him.

He tries not to freak out but is definitely shocked by the appearance of the two people who helped him. They were both wearing purple robes like the ones he was just given. Strange vein-like patterns with strange symbols that he found despite him having never seen them before he could read and understand. Their sashes were white with a green stripe down the middle. Somehow he knew this meant they were the closest thing to doctors in this strange place. Their heads looked like someone had taken a squid and plopped it on someone's shoulders, a mass of short tentacles dropping from where the mouth should be. They had big black eyes like those seen on depictions of gray aliens but they had purple dots forming a circle similar to an iris on a human.

Though their bodies were human-like, their skin was purple and they possessed webbed and clawed hands. Once they were done helping him, the two alien creatures simply walked off to perform other tasks. Now cleaned off and able to walk, the man started exploring the corridors of this strange fleshy alien area. As he walks he sees these strange fleshy pods that almost look like boils or polyps inside the corridor. When he takes a closer look he notices inside one is another tentacle faced alien.

When his mind starts to form questions about things he finds it seems he already knows the answers somehow. These aliens are known by other people as illithids, they don't reproduce normally but rather grow new members into full adults using these pods. Once born the muscles are stimulated so they can walk within the first day of being born. They are telepathic and are preprogrammed with basic knowledge. When born they are normally connected to a central intelligence that runs their society as a hive mind. This Master Brain leads one of many pods of illithid.

These pods can be as small as a single nautilus or as big as a fleet. The nautilus functions like a spaceship as the illithid go from place to place. Apparently, they send out scouting parties like the one he's on to find places that have intelligent life like humans. Once they find a candidate world they kidnap a few natives and introduce them to illithid tadpoles. These tadpoles once inside a chosen target act like a parasite that converts the target into an illithid.

You see normally when a lifeform reproduces naturally there are occasionally errors in the code or DNA of the new life. If these mutations aid survival or help attract mates it propagates and if the mutation is detrimental it dies out. This is the natural and slow process of evolution. However, the reproductive process of the illithid is perfect, no errors. This means that they have become evolutionarily stagnant. Not liking the idea of depending on random errors resulting in beneficial changes, they instead opted to convert quote unquote lesser life forms and take anything advantageous and spread it across all illithid maintaining a unified form.

This means any adaptation that results in a change in physical appearance, that change is either made the new standard or removed from the hive. The entity is either abandoned or straight up euthanized. Meaning if an illithid is born with a skin color besides purple and that skin color isn't an advantage, they will late stage abort it without a second thought. Because they are all one mind, it's hardly considered murder since unless the new illithid is not connected to the Master Brain, everything it was remains a part of the hive.

The man continued to sift through the preprogrammed knowledge given to this new body he possesses and also learns that in the process of parasitically hijacking the evolution of other beings, they often go as far as to colonize and convert the entire planet effectively commiting genocide on all the sentient life on it. Since illithids view humans and similar beings as lesser than them they don't really see an issue with doing this.

The man quickly realizes that if the illithid realize he's not connected to the hive mind they'll likely kill him on the spot. He starts going out of his way to avoid any he sees walking the halls as he tries to find a way out of the nautilus and into a safe area free of these squid faced freaks. Even knowing physically he was one of them.

Eventually when given no other option but to walk passed an illithid he notices it doesn't pay any attention to him. Since they are telepathic, shouldn't they be able to detect he's not a part of the hive despite his looks? He then hears a voice in his head, communicating from somewhere unseen. “Well this is new. I've never seen this happen before.” After looking around and seeing no one he chose to try and respond telepathically. “Who's there? What do you want?”

The voice laughs a bit in the man's mind. “What do I want? I want to see where this goes. So I'll make a deal with you. I'll prevent them from detecting you and give you access to extra magic, and in exchange you'll give me information. Whatever I ask for, whenever I ask for it. Just information, I'm not going to tell you what you can and can't do to get it.”

The man thought about it for a bit. “Sure, why not. So what do I call you?” The voice responded “Just call me Ernie. And to answer a question from earlier, though you could take it with a grain of salt, I'll just say even the illithid once worshiped gods. Some still do.” The man thought this odd. Everything he knew about illithids suggested they go out of their way to be uniform and have unity.

The entity then continued after a pause. “And what do I call you?” The man thought about it. He couldn't remember what his old name was all that clearly. He had only a vague recollection. He did remember names of other people, some fictional. “Davy Jones. Just Davy is fine.”

Ernie let out a humming sound in Davy's mind. “Alright Davy.” Then after a pause started talking again. “I almost forgot to mention. I can block the illithid from mentally detecting you're not part of the hive but I can't prevent them from visually noticing you are different.” Davy blinked a few times. “What?” He then looked at his arms.

His arms looked the same as those of any other illithid. Clawed and webbed, purple in color. But then he noticed small blue splotches on his skin that reminded him a bit of vitiligo, a skin condition that causes a person to get white blotches on their skin. The voice then stated in his mind. “Your iris is blue rather than purple as well and those spots will only grow. In time your skin will be a shade of blue throughout.”

Davy knew his best chance of survival was to get out of here, and he also knew that if he left this nautilus as is then the people on the world they were at would be in danger. He decided then and there to destroy this nautilus and escape to the world below. The only question now was how to do that. He needed some way to sabotage the nautilus and get out alive afterwards.

He found among his programmed knowledge various details of how the nautilus functions. It didn't take long to come up with a way to self destruct the ship and make it out. There was an organ, one that functioned like a power core and felicitated travel across worlds and realms. He could override the alarms and set the core to overload. Then hop in an escape pod of sorts after rigging them all to eject at the same time leaving none for the illithid.

Thanks to his new patron, Davy was able to freely travel the shop and thanks to the programming he knew exactly where to go. The process wasn't exactly difficult but he at least had to wait for an opportunity to act without being spotted as he performed the sabotage. Everything went smoothly. Maybe a bit too smoothly. Once the pods were set up he climbed inside and launched. As he was shot at the planet below he felt the pod shaking from the explosion. Then there was a hard stop as his pod met solid ground.

Davy opened the pod and climbed out to find himself in the middle of a vast grassy area with only a few trees. He gave a quick look to the sky. “Glad that's over with.” and moved on. In the distance was a stone building of some sort with a tower. With nowhere else to go Davy made his way to the building. Once there he noticed there were people active around it. Davy pulled up his hood and hoped it would be enough. As he got closer he realized the people he saw weren't humans but goblins.

The goblins weren't as ugly as he expected, nor were they exactly the human standard of attractive. Rather than sharp pointed noses and jagged pointy ears, they had softer features to an extent. The noses came in a bit of a variety, and although they had pointed ears only some were jagged from damage rather than genetics. Davy also saw that the goblins weren't dressed in garbage leather and hide armor as he had often seen depicted in his old life. Instead they were wearing dark green armor made from what was likely some kind of large insect and held weapons likely salvaged from the same creature.

The leader was obvious to spot, wearing a skull adorned with feathers. He had a sickle and shield and was giving orders to the other goblins. Davy cautiously approached the goblins that were going through things left behind in the outpost to get a better look at what they were doing. He saw the leader pull a ring out of a chest being searched and put it on, a ripple covered his body and suddenly he looked human. He grumbled and tossed it behind him. Davy quickly snatched it up and put it on.

This sudden movement resulted in him making noise alerting the goblins to his presence. The goblins all raise weapons made from giant insect parts at Davy who puts his hands up. “I don't want to fight, I just want the ring.” He points to the ring on his finger. The lead goblin narrows his eyes at Davy. “If uman no mean harm, then uman can leave Rek alone.” Davy backs away slowly and starts making his leave. “Cool. Cool. Reasonable goblins.” Davy sees a path leading away from the building in two directions and picks one kinda at random.

After several hours of walking eventually Davy reaches a city. He looks on in awe at the massive wall and the fact it reminds him of pictures he had seen of Italy in his old life. “Wow, now that's a city.” The voice that had been silent for a while finally pitched in again. “Let's see here… City of Flowers in the Country of Ran. One of the biggest cities in the central country of the Empire of Ran that spans across most of the countries in this continent. Run by humans, with little to no separation of church and state. The empire has xenophobic tendencies and all but enforces a central religion.”

Davy lets out a sigh. “So it's the Holy Roman Empire by a different name and this is Florence Italy. Got it.” Ernie hummed. “Sure, if you say so.” Then went silent again. Davy walked through the city when he saw a group of people in shiny armor all following what seemed to be a teenager. This was a bit confusing but he figured he would be able to walk right past them.

Unfortunately the leader looked at him and engaged in conversation. “Well hello there stranger. Those are unusual looking robes, even for a mage. May I ask what your name is?” Davy, seeing no reason no to, responds with his name. “I'm Davy Jones, I'm new around here.” The teenager made a face, then looked Davy up and down and focused on the ring. “I have reason to suspect that's a ring of illusion. By the authority given to me by the Empire of Ran and the Church of Longinus, I hereby order you to remove it.”

Davy’s eyes widened as he immediately realized the situation he was in. He could comply, revealing his true face and likely get attacked. Or he could refuse, and likely get attacked. Davy held out his hand with the ring on it and moved it around. “This old thing? It's an heirloom from my grandmother. Hardly magical.” Unfortunately the lead paladin wasn't buying it. “Remove it now, or I'll remove it for you.”

This quickly resulted in a scuffle with the paladin trying to forcefully remove the ring with Davy doing his best to keep it on. Thankfully some people intervened. A person in armor, another paladin or a knight, as well as a demoness in a nun's habit, stepped in and convinced the unpleasant teen to hand off dealing with Davy to them. Once in the custody of the new people they took him to the guild hall to help him get registered.

As they walked, Davy couldn't help but be distracted. Because of her more goat-like legs and her tail, the dress part of the nun habit had to be modified to accommodate her. This meant slits that resulted in her showing significantly more leg then a nun would normally. “God she's got some nice legs on her. So long as you can overlook the backwards knees and cloven hooves. In fact she's overall fairly attractive. God what I'd do with those horns.” Once in the building he fills out the paperwork but puts “Sorcerer” as his combat type.

Once that's done he sits with the two that helped him. “I can't thank you enough for helping me out back there.” The knight smiled a bit awkwardly and waved dismissively. “It's no big deal. It's my mission to aid any child of God. All who know the light are my brothers. And since you are at least open to receiving his light you can be saved.”

Davy chuckled nervously and the demoness finally asked “So how exactly did that confrontation start anyway?” Davy sighed before responding. “Everything started out fine. He commented on my robes being odd even for a mage and asked my name. When I told him it was Davy Jones he insisted I remove my ring under suspicion of it creating an illusion.”

Sir Ken titled his head to the side. “I don't get why that would make him suspicious, Jones may not be a family name I've encountered before but that's not exactly a red flag.” Ariagoria then explained “In my previous life, Davy Jones was a fictional character from a folktale among sailors. In one somewhat recent depiction he has a squid-like face.” Sir Ken nodded. “I see, so he assumed that Davy here was a reborn with an odd sense of humor but since he didn't know for a fact it was a ring of illusion he couldn't see through it.”

Davy’s eyes widened at the knowledge that knowing that there is an illusion in play can allow them to see through it. This meant that these two definitely saw his true face. “Does my appearance not bother you?” Ariagoria laughed a bit “I've got red skin, horns, a tail, and goat legs. I'm not going to freak out over an unusual appearance.” Ken added “I was put off at first, but after talking with you a bit I felt confident you had no malicious intent.”

Davy let out a sigh of relief “At least some people around here are reasonable. Here I was starting to think that the only reasonable people I would meet today would be goblins.” Ken raises his eyebrow at that but doesn't pry and Ariagoria just laughs a bit. Davy gives another round of thank yous before Sir Ken rejoins his party and goes to do his own thing. Ariagoria on the other hand suggests forming a team with her for a quest. Davy accepted the offer and the two looked for a quest they could take on together.