Welcome to Adventu, your final fantasy rp haven. adventu focuses on both canon and original characters from different worlds and timelines that have all been pulled to the world of zephon: a familiar final fantasy-styled land where all adventurers will fight, explore, and make new personal connections.
at adventu, we believe that colorful story and plots far outweigh the need for a battle system. rp should be about the writing, the fun, and the creativity. you will see that the only system on our site is the encouragement to create amazing adventures with other members. welcome to adventu... how will you arrive?
year 5, quarter 3
Welcome one and all to our beautiful new skin! This marks the visual era of Adventu 4.0, our 4th and by far best design we've had. 3.0 suited our needs for a very long time, but as things are evolving around the site (and all for the better thanks to all of you), it was time for a new, sleek change. The Resource Site celebrity Pharaoh Leep was the amazing mastermind behind this with minor collaborations from your resident moogle. It's one-of-a-kind and suited specifically for Adventu. Click the image for a super easy new skin guide for a visual tour!
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With their combined efforts, the lifeboats are freed, the sailors are gathered, and their pitiful crew drift into the sea, the storm parting before them at the crystal’s behest. Behind them, the remains of their once mighty ship churns deeper into the waves -- lost forever more. There were doubtlessly still a few injured or unlucky men trapped in the ship’s wake, but with Sabin’s efforts, most of the remaining survivors were spared. Pulled by the dragon, they set off into the unknown.
Outside their sphere, the storm rages on, powerful and gray. Though the fiend has been overtaken, the water crystal has not yet been calmed. As the crystal’s power dwindles and their uneasy protection closes in around them, it seems their lives are in the other expedition’s hands. The rain and the wind start to penetrate their short-lived shield. The water toss beneath them again. The sky is clouded to gray. In these lifeboats, they won’t last long when faced with the storm’s true wrath.
And then, just as quickly as the storm had begun, it ends.
The skies clear. The waves calm to a low pulse. The winds die and the sun’s rays pierce the mist of drizzling rain. The protective blue-green light of the crystal fades to nothing as the shield’s spell ends, but there’s no need for it any longer. The expedition to the water shrine has succeeded. The seas will know peace once more.
It takes another hour for the coastline to come into view. As the dragon pulls them to shore, they are welcomed by a great many windswept and survivors, still soaked to the bone. The city is a wreck of floods and debris. At news of the heroes’ return, the dazed survivors gather by the docks, faces white with shock. A frantic woman pushes through the crowds, calling a name that seems vaguely familiar. She speaks with a sailor and then lets out a great wail of grief, sinking to her knees.
This peace has come with a cost, a cost that can never be repaid.
Despite the damages, the kingdom is ecstatic at the disaster’s end. Within the hour, the heroes are found by royal emmissaries and offered an audience with the king. In time, they will be offered a great many riches in payment for the city’s salvation. They will have great renown among those who serve the king, and the debt the city owes them can be leveraged in favors. Though the townspeople will still be unlikely to know their faces, their names will be whispered among taverns and towns’ squares for weeks to come.
The three will become a hot commodity for mercenary work within the kingdom. The Dragonblades will have a great boost of reputation courtesy of its hefty contribution towards the Kraken’s fall. The three heroes will be presented with medals of honor -- one even looped around the dragon’s neck like an amulet. Vordun’s presence in the city will now be protected by law even as the townspeople continue to fear him. It’s a big city afterall, and it still hasn’t quite recovered from the last disaster. Dragons are a bit of a sore spot.
The quest has been completed, disaster has been averted, and the heroes have returned victorious. The Kraken’s Wrath, it seems, has finally been put to rest.
The double stairs lead back into the first floor entrance hall. This grand room is a marvel of marble floors and ornate greco-roman statues. Four chandeliers hang from the ceiling, flickering with their dim and insubstantial light. The room’s centerpiece is a massive statue of a griffon set atop a great stone pedestal. It faces the heavy oaken doors leading to the lawn. They are currently locked.
A team of three were meant to start with this room, moving towards the Eastern Wing through the Waiting Room. That team has already left, but the entrance hall is far from empty. A man stands with his back to the stairs, squinting at the griffon statue as though examining it. He’s dressed in blue and silver armor lined with dragon’s scales. Though he was in the ballroom with the suspicious man and the woman in a suit, he’s currently alone.
The piano doesn’t strike again. However, there are many other rooms connected here, and for some unknowable reason, you have a vague idea of the manor’s layout.
Adjacent Locations
The Parlor Room: You know that a team was already sent in this direction, and they might still be inside. Did the piano come from this direction? While you certainly could enter this room, there will be too much to take in at once. Talk to Fin.
Kitchen: The kitchen still smells of the ghost of a meal. Dirty plates pile in the sink. Used glasses show the residue of wine. The room is hot with the heat of the ovens. A door near the back leads to the pantry.
East and West Courtyards: The storm rages within these courtyards. It is a muddy mess heavy with rainwater. In the center of each, a fountain overflows with the swell. Atop the eastern fountain sits a stone dragon. Atop the western, there is a coiled serpent. In the back of the eastern courtyard, a hulking figure is barely visible.
The Breakfast Room: Though not the grand dining room, the breakfast room is quite cozy and grand in its own right. Ten chairs encircle a long table -- not currently set for guests. Weak candlelight sets the room in shadow. Though there are no plates or silverware, bottles of wine are gathered at the center of the room next to an array of crystal glasses. One bottle is open.
The Waiting Room: You know that the eastern wing team went this way. This room is cold and lifeless with only a vase of flowers to decorate it. Three couches face each other awkwardly. The storm rages against the windows, rattling the glass and obscuring the view with fog. Two bookshelves line one wall. The far door leads to the cloak room.
On closer inspection, the smashed bookcase is smeared with strange purple blood. Despite its coloration, the copper scent is unmistakable -- at least for someone as experienced in these things as a Turk. The splinters have caught a few patches of scaly skin. The blow towards the bookshelf came from the direction of the door, thrusting something into it that must have been at least three hundred pounds.
Cissnei has been here before.
It’s a sudden feeling and a not particularly specific one. A momentary sense of deja vu. She came through this way, and she hadn’t been alone.
The broken window has been shattered by force. Along the edges are two bullet holes.
As it happens, bare feet are not particularly well-suited for blindly crawling over wood splinters and broken glass. There’s quite a lot of it. An alarming amount even, and in the pitch black darkness of the basement, it can’t easily be avoided.
They slice into his bare skin, leaving him wounded and bleeding.
Cissnei’s lantern gives about a four foot radius of light into the basement storage room. Even a quick glance shows it’s in absolute ruin. The shelves here have been pulverized. Plates and potions and glasses and jars have all been smashed to bits on the floor. The room is sticky with wine and jam. Various tea leaves have been scattered over pots and pans and kettles. The meat smell is strong here, and it’s not hard to see why.
Slumped against the opposite wall is a figure that at first looks human, but is definitely not. The light casts it in a ghastly shadow. Despite its humanoid form, it’s nearly six and a half feet tall, bulky and solidly built with scaled skin like a snake’s. Its vacant eyes are slit down the pupils. Its fanged mouth hangs ajar. Its chest is stained with purple blood which seems to almost glow in the dim lantern light. It’s littered with bullet wounds and the several piercing stabs of something with an irregular edge.
Edea looks at Quistis earnestly. ”The fiend of water,” she says. ”It’s corrupted this place. It used to be so peaceful here, you know. It was a place of power and healing. It’s said that only the crystal would only accept the pure of heart.”
She stops and looks at Quistis. She’s quiet for a long time, and then stands. ”I’m speaking of Cid, of course.” She pushes her chair back and stands. ”Don’t you think it was heartless? Training children as soldiers? Sending my own to kill me? I was a Sorceress, of course, but still.”
Another flicker. Streaks of tribal make-up. Piercing yellow eyes. Then it’s gone, and Edea drifts towards the window, gazing out it to eye the coming storm. The sky bursts with rain that falls in a grey-black veil. The ceiling drips with it, and a stray drop strikes Quistis’ forehead.
”What if you had succeeded that night? In Deling? How would they have felt? Zell? Selphie? Irvine?” Her hands clench, exposing claw-like fingers. ”You’d forgotten me.”
Anna breaks into a warm smile. ”Oh father.” She laughs and gazes at him lovingly. ”Of course you’ll come. I know you don’t like him much, but…” Her eyes trail down to the flowers, gathered in bunches. She presses a few more together, wrapping them in white ribbon. ”It means everything.”
The blinding desert sun fades outside from an onset overcast. There comes the pattering of a light rain. The smell of it drifts through the windows, mingling with the sweet scent of flowers.
”He’s nervous,” she says fondly. ”He keeps saying that you’ll come after him and we’ll have to run away. You can be scary when you want to be, you know.” She ties a neat bow around the stems and sets the bundle aside. ”But he’s sweet. And he plays such wonderful music. I love him.”
She stops. Her hands are frozen on the flower petals. ”Do you think I’m making a mistake?”
The sky is a dark, raging black. Clouds swarm in a kind of thick vortex -- winds raging just as hard as the maelstrom outside the temple’s walls. Rain strikes her hard and fast, soaking into her jumpsuit and weighing down her hair. From the tempest, the great thunderbringer descends. Ramuh gazes down from the sky, and in that moment, his wizened eyes seem to smile. He raises his staff and lightning cracks across the stormy sky.
The visions flash together. Lightning. Eidolons. Alexandria. A great, gazing eye. And then Garnet awakens.
She finds herself in a cramped circular room about six feet in diameter. The walls are made of weathered stone, rising up into darkness. There are no exits. Only a rectangular gap outlining the suggestion of a door, similar to that in the temple’s entrance hall.
The room is rapidly filling with water.
From above, a waterfall has opened, and the water from it is rising, soaking Garnet from her boots to her waist. Another sphere protrudes from the wall, inset with a crystal. It’s like all the others she’s pressed before -- the one that started the boats and the one that gave her entrance to the shrine.
This one, when pressed, opens that sealed section of the wall. The water rushes out, tumbling down slick stone stairs and into a grate at the bottom. Following them leads back to the shrine. The crystal shimmers impassively, setting the scene in its blue-green light. Where three shadows had once protected it, now there stand only two. One is a sleek woman’s figure with a strangely shaped headdress. The other is a woman in a dress with hair reaching down to her waist.
The larger one, the shadow of Brahne, has faded.
The crystal is still inaccessible -- guarded by the two remaining specters. Two new doors are open along the perimeter of the room, their stairs leading up into darkness.
The heat and smell are overpowering. Three jets of fire sear into the fiend’s defenseless mouth, and it makes a bellowing, alien roar though it is too wrapped in the ship’s hull to disengage. Not quickly enough, at least. The heat burns it from the inside, smelling of smoke, burnt flesh, and something fishy cooking over a fire. It’s gaping maw is blackened. The internal skin bubbles with the heat. Its grip loosens and it sinks into the water, but the water is scalding, and the salt only aggravates the wounds. It gives another alien scream before it loses its grip entirely and drifts below the waves.
The shadow drifts away, deeper, injured, likely to die. If the burns don’t kill it then the rest of the sea life will. These waters are not friendly even to the darkest of them all.
The deck gives another shudder, sloping up higher as it sinks into the crashing waves. It has been torn in half, only the rear still visible, as the ship’s remainder edges ever closer into the same scalding water that saw the Kraken meet its end. Wood debris floats about uselessly, most of it dragged under by the ship’s deadly momentum. Someone yells for the lifeboats. They’re strapped to the ship’s side, hanging useless and vertical by ropes on the upper deck. If they aren’t loosed, they will be dragged under with the ship.
The adventurers and they’re crew will be drowned or stranded until the crystal loses power and the storm overtakes them. They have mere seconds to think of something.
Queen Brahne says nothing as Garnet speaks. She sits at her throne with her fan, watching over the kingdom. She doesn’t seem pleased though she doesn’t seem displeased either. She is neutral. She is listening.
”It looks like rain.” Clouds have gathered over the city. Despite the previous skies, they’ve arrived as though by command. The double doors shut, leaving Garnet where she stands. ”And you know there’s no exits. You have to know that, don’t you dear?”
The queen rises, taking steps towards the railing. She gives it a horrid look, and fire lights her eyes. ”This was supposed to be for your birthday,” she huffs. ”Your perfect birthday. And then it was ruined.” Thunder like cannonfire bursts from a distant sky. It comes with smoke. The smell of gunpowder. ”We were supposed to have your eidolons! He said we would. On your sixteenth birthday!”
Another round of thunder. Clouds have gathered thick in the sky. Raindrops fall in a misty haze. ”How could I care about a fake daughter who kept her eidolons for herself?”
”My help.” Matron nods as though she understands. ”Yes. I suppose you do.” She looks up to the ceiling as though considering it. ”I don’t think there’s any way out of here. Maybe if we could shift time…”
There’s a flash, hazy, indistinct, of color across her face. Streaks of dark makeup. And then it’s gone.
”But that’s silly. This is before then, isn’t it?” The waves pound against the coast. They’ve grown louder now and more turbulent. The wind is striking.
”The water crystal is corrupted. I believe it’s the power of the fiend. You must be here for a reason. Did it give you any hints as to why?”
Clouds drift lazily over the sky -- setting it in an overcast gray. Edea shakes her head. ”I missed you when you were gone. When I was somewhere else.” She looked at Quistis, her eyes tinged with sadness. ”It’s terrible what he did to you, don’t you think?”
Anna blinks in surprise as Tellah embraces her. Then she lets out a little laugh and hugs him back. ”It’s good to see you too,” she says, smiling as she pulls away. ”You look pale. Did something happen?”
Concern lights her eyes, but it isn’t so strong as to mask their happy gleam. She looks radiant and young, and for a moment she simply smiles at him before she starts with a short, ”Oh!” and moves back to the table. ”I was arranging flowers,” she says. ”Perhaps you could help me?” She gestures to the bundles. Loose flowers all off to one side, another in a vase, and bundles of them placed in a pile and wrapped up in ribbon.
”They’re for the wedding,” she says, beaming at him. ”You’ll be there, won’t you? I'll have to show you my dress.”
The body of Jules de Lune is unresponsive. It is, after all, a corpse. There is nothing more that he can give, however, the force of his fall has done something strange to the piano keys. One is stuck and thrust into a downwards position. While forced down like this, a wire glints in the space behind it, reflecting the dim firelight. Inside the piano, one of the devices has been struck by the hammer. A light glows red from this struck device. The other three remain unstruck and unlit.
There is a strange sense of magic in the air. A dark magic. It lingers like a miasma. Something isn’t right.
Rowan Castillo is a dark man. He’s dressed almost entirely in leather -- both for style and protection, and he sprawled on the too-yellow couch, one arm casually hanging over the back. In his free hand, he holds a pipe. It smolders idly, filling the room with a thick and bitter taste.
He doesn’t look up as Rufus enters. Instead, he keeps his eyes on the window and the courtyard beyond it. The courtyard’s statue rises as a shadow beyond the half-foggy glass. A great stone serpent is curled above the fountain’s dry pools.
Castillo takes a long drag of his pipe. ”Not my job,” he says, ”To keep the bastard alive.”
He lets the words hang there before he groans and leans his head back on the edge of the couch. ”It’ll be a trip getting paid,” he admits.
Another silence. His head lulls in a kind of drug-induced stupor. ”But I did my job just fine.”
Adjacent Locations:
Bathroom: You find an open-spaced, tiled bathroom with a basin sink and a claw-footed bathtub. The sink is still slightly wet.
Dining Room: A grand dining room table stretches out from end to end over a rug woven with diamond patterns. Sixteen chairs are pushed in along both edges. Two couches sit along the windows alcove and there are cabinets full of china along the eastern and western walls. Though the room is spotless, several china sets are missing. The table has very recently been cleaned. It still shines with cleaner and polish.
Game Room: Eight sets of armor stand vigil over the game room. They appear to have once been used in the Provo army, but they haven’t been used in some time. On one end is a fireplace, still hot with embers. Balls are scattered on the billiards table. The cards are placed around the game table in four hands. The remaining card deck has been scattered across the floor.
Yellow Lounge: The yellow lounge lives up to its name. Everywhere, there is a blinding yellow. The walls, the rug, the daisy flowers. Seated at one of the couches is Rowan Castillo, the mercenary hired to guard the manor.
Matron smiles. As Quistis speaks, she seems not the least bit shocked. In fact, she has an expression that can only be called expectant. ”I’m still myself.” She looked up to watch the sky. ”You have somewhere to be, don’t you? But you should stop to rest, I think. The boys should be here somewhere.”
She looks at Quistis. ”It’s been so long, after all.” With that, she starts towards the weathered stone staircase. This place has been here for some time, and will remain for far longer. Though it is no ruin, it stands on the precipice of fate.
She brings Quistis to a small, stone room which makes up the front of the orphanage. She offers her a chair by the window overlooking the endless sea. It pulses upon the shoreline temperate, timeless waves.
”Tell me, where have you been? Have you done well?”
As Tellah ascends, the sound of the harp grows louder. There is nothing on this staircase but darkness, and it seems to spiral upwards for longer than the spire is tall. Time is strange here, and Tellah feels a shudder as he passes through something cold like water. Light appears at the end. Light and the smell of a dry, desert wind.
The harp is distant, but ever-present, and it seems an almost wistful tune as the room takes shape. It’s unassuming -- no larger or more extravagant than it needs to be. Magical components line the shelves. In the corner, an assortment of staves. Somehow, impossibly, Tellah has found himself in his own desert home.
And as his eyes adjust to the merciless glare, he finds that he is not alone. A woman stands at the table, arranging a bouquet of flowers in pink, yellow, and violet. She wears a yellow dress set off the shoulder. Her brown hair falls in a veil behind her shoulders, tied up in a matching yellow ribbon. She looked up in surprise which quickly settles into a smile.
”Father.”
The staircase leads to abject darkness. It seems almost a passage to another world, and as Garnet ascends, the strange, timeless haze seems almost familiar. It is in its own way not so different from Memoria. Though there is nothing to see, it has that same sense of primordial magic in the air. Her footsteps echo strangely through that space which is not really space at all. In time, the darkness lifts, and she finds herself in familiar marble halls.
The staircase behind her is no longer a tunnel of cold stone. Instead, it is shrouded in red carpeting, spiraling down to a hall which will lead to the castle’s entrance.
Garnet til Alexandros XVII is home.
She finds herself in the hall leading to the throne room. There is movement outside, and the fading lights of dusk. From the throne’s balcony terrace, the whole of Alexandria is visible. The city pans out to the fading horizon. This was the place where, not so long ago, Garnet had seen a play. The first had ended in a kidnapping. The second had ended in a reunion.
The throne is not empty. As Garnet rounds the corner, she finds a woman who is perhaps the most familiar of all. The queen, looking not as she had at the time of her death, but sometime before when she had been first and foremost a mother. She looks up in surprise at first then she smiles with a kind of mild relief.
”My Garnet,” she says. ”I’ve had the guards searching all over for you.”
The ninja’s long distance geyser attack causes the tentacle to flinch, dropping the sailor from a great height. Despite this where he moans, holding his fractured leg. The others are repelled by Vordun’s fire, throwing themselves away from the heat. Despite the fire’s intensity, it does not catch the soaked wood. Finally, there is Sabin’s Phantom Rush. His fists smash into the tentacle’s rubbery flesh so hard that it too recoils.
One tentacle burst by a tornado. One stabbed with a fork. So many others left reeling. The Kraken will clearly not be able to attack from below, striking blindly. No, it must take a more head’s on approach.
The tentacles retreat back into the safety of the water. For a moment, everything is still. Even the sailors come to a kind of instinctual hush. Several seconds pass, and one whispers, ”Is it over?”
The ship gives a terrible shudder. The wood groans as tentacles shoot out of the water, grabbing the stern of the ship in their grasp. There is a groan of wood as the ship is tilted. The deck, already slippery, becomes a kind of macabre slide, tilting and tilting ever higher until the back of the ship lifts, dripping, from the waves. Out of the water, teeth surface. Teeth, pulsing and scraping around a gaping, circular maw. The Kraken’s mouth is open and ready.
One sailor loses his balance and falls, screaming, into the Kraken’s maw. A panic rises. Shouts, curses, prayers as the sailors try to anchor themselves with increasing difficulty. The slope is too steep. All handholds are slick with rainwater.
There is little time. Three more sailors go tumbling down towards the Kraken’s maw. And it intends to take every single passenger with them.
The shattered wood of the upper floor balcony provides excellent kindling for the third level fire spell as it bursts in a semi-explosion of flames. The heat is immense, and it quickly spreads from the wooden splinters to the balcony railing. Black smoke rises into the rafters and the domed ceiling, obscuring the dragon mosaic. The door doesn’t fit quite into place, but rather, leans where it had once stood. The view of the fire is at least obscured.
The three gathered at the second floor landing hear the slam of dissonant piano keys and a girlish shout. Clearly all is going well.
Meanwhile, Keimush finds the closet crowded with coats and scarves, cloaks and hangers. The room is lit only dimly by the distant window and the pattering of rain. An entire wall is overtaken in long, white coats like those used by scientists.
Within the pockets of these coats are pens, hair pins, and notepads. These notes are mostly filled with illegible scribbling, but one appears to be a list of passwords. Among them, a note reads, ’Tiger’s eyes behind piano strings. Blue library.’
Adjacent Rooms:
West Wing Hallway: The west wing hallway leads to the multitude of guest rooms where you would have stayed. Windows along the inner quadrant show an aerial view of the western courtyard. You remember that the servants had claimed to bring whatever possessions you’d travelled with up to these rooms.
East Wing Hallway: The east wing hallway leads to the quarters of permanent guests. Its current resident is the scholar Susan Stein. Windows along the inner quadrant show an aerial view of the eastern courtyard.
First Floor Entrance Hall: This grand room is a marvel of marble floors and ornate greco-roman statues. Four chandeliers hang from the ceiling, flickering with their dim and insubstantial light. The room’s centerpiece is a massive statue of a griffon set atop a great stone pedestal. It faces the heavy oaken doors leading to the lawn. They are currently locked.
