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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Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Aug 17, 2020 21:23:24 GMT -6
With his back pressed against the wall a hand coming for him made him flinch. He fought against the reflex but it was hard to shake. Ignis was the first person since they dragged him through Gorgon's gates to reach for him without the intent to make him bleed. And he looked from the hand on his arm to the face telling him they needed to find a way out and he could've told Iggy about all the times he tried and ended up beaten and locked in the dark, and he could've told Iggy about all the people he saw die trying, and he could've told Iggy about all the old timers who'd been inside since before either of them were born. They were all convenient reasons for giving up, but the one that weighed heaviest on his shoulders didn't exist anymore. Now he knew he wasn't alone. If Iggy was here in this world with no Lucis and no Niflheim that meant Noct and Prompto were out there, somewhere.
So Gladio said nothing about it. He nodded his head and spoke quietly but with steel in his voice like he'd never lost hope at all.
"I know."
He clapped a hand on Ignis's shoulder and steered him towards the bunks as he shuffled past. The top bunk held nothing but a bare mattress, the bottom bunk a single flat pillow and a stiff blanket with the texture of sandpaper. They hadn't given Ignis a blanket on his way in, of course. That was a luxury you had to fight for. Gladio climbed up on the top bunk, the metal groaning quietly under his weight, and he stretched out and locked his fingers together behind his head. He watched Ignis with one eye.
"It'll be lights out soon," he said. "It gets colder than the Glacian's tits at night, but get as much shuteye as you can. We're gonna need it."
There was no use trying to sugarcoat anything. Tomorrow would be worse and the day after that worse still. The hungry dogs of Gorgon howled for fresh meat and the bulls demanded blood. But there were two of them now, and no matter how much worse it got, it was enough to keep going.
Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Aug 2, 2020 17:14:46 GMT -6
In the muted light of the cell Gladio watched Ignis with a focused level stare like he was comparing the man in front of him to the memory in his head. Last he saw him they were waiting on Noct to come to. Clinging to a vain hope that Iggy's sight would heal with a bit of time. But it had been a damn sight longer than a bit of time by now and Gladio should've known that was a stupid thing to hope for. If there was a silver lining in all that shit, at least Iggy didn't see what this place had turned Gladio into.
But he'd figure it out, soon enough.
The news about Noct - or lack thereof - hung heavily in the air. Gladio stood there in silence, letting the reality of it settle in. Distantly, another prisoner screamed, voice echoing off the stone like an agonized chorus. Gladio made a low meaningless noise in the back of his throat.
For a long while he didn't know if any of them were even alive. They weren't inside and that was the only hope he could cling to until it got too hard to hope at all. Trying to pick that up again was like trying to use a limb gone numb.
"With Prompto, probably," Gladio muttered. He didn't sound certain but it was something to say. By Gladio's reckoning Noct had been on his own for a long damn while and he didn't want to imagine what shape he was in because he didn't want to gamble on being right. "Noct's tougher than he looks," Gladio said, trying to convince himself as much as Ignis, "Wherever he is, he's fine."
It felt like a dereliction of duty to admit it, but the two of them had more pressing issues to deal with anyway. Protecting Noct had practically been burned into his DNA, but what good was he as a Shield if he was locked up? What good were either of them if they ended up dead and rotting behind Gorgon's icy stone walls before they could even find Noct? He'd watched the men through the window bars heaving bodies into a pit. Even in death there was no escape.
Gladio examined his knuckles, scabbed and scarred. The middle finger on his right hand bent at an unnatural angle. Broken and healed and broken again. When he spoke up the restrained rage was gone from his voice and replaced with something quiet and urgent and honest, something that sounded so foreign after he'd spent so long in this place that it felt like he was listening to someone else speak.
"Listen, Iggy. This place... It messes with your head. Whatever you heard about it, you didn't hear enough. The guards, the other prisoners, all they do is break people. It's a game to them. It's all a goddamn game."
He went quiet for a moment, scratching at his overgrown beard, a remote look in his eyes.
"You have to promise you'll listen to whatever I tell you. I can keep us both alive, but you've gotta follow my lead. Understand? Don't do anything stupid." He paused a beat. "Aside from getting thrown in here."
Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Jul 7, 2020 21:08:59 GMT -6
His first night behind Gorgon's walls he yelled his throat raw and ran his shoulder into the cell door until he couldn't feel his arm anymore. They sent guards into his cell to subdue him and when they fell more followed and Gladio swung for the fences and broke both hands on their skulls and they cracked five of his ribs with batons and boots. They threw him in the hole and in the dark and the cold he sat channeling his last bit of focus to summoning a sword that wouldn't materialize.
Nobody cared that he was the King's Shield. Nobody knew who the King was. There was no Lucis here, no Niflheim, nothing. As though the life he lived up until then was some hallucination. The other prisoners spoke of Sonora and it held as little meaning to Gladio as Gladio's world held to them. No one among them knew the names Noctis, Ignis, or Prompto. Small comfort. Wherever they were, at least they weren't inside...
Until Ignis was, stood before him in the dank prison cell in ratty prison clothes, disheveled and battered and telling Gladio that he willingly damned himself to this place. In an instant Gladio saw Ignis's future unfold in blood and broken bones and worse things yet. Everything in him tensed up.
"You got yourself locked up in here. On purpose." His voice was low and the anger bubbled up in it and struggled against his restraint. The fingers gripping Ignis' shoulder curled until he had a fistful of shirt. He could've shook some sense into him but when his arm started to tremble he let go and turned away and paced the pitiful length of the cell with his fingers laced together over the crown of his head.
Like Altissia wasn't enough. Ignis had to go falling on another sword, all because Gladio couldn't figure out how to break out of this place. All because Gladio gave up trying. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Gladio was the guy who took the hits for everybody else, not the other way around.
"You... Dammit, Iggy," he growled through his teeth, "This is the stupidest thing you've ever done. You shouldn't have come here!"
He paced another lap and then he stopped and made a tired sound and leaned against the back wall below the small barred square of the window and crossed his arms over his chest. The anger burned hot and then it burned out.
Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Jun 15, 2020 22:52:54 GMT -6
The guard's name was Zarubin and Gladio wanted to punch his teeth down his throat.
He recognized him by the slime that dripped from every syllable and by the taunting inflection on 'Big Guy'. By the rattle in his laugh. By the acrid stink of him and his cheap unfiltered cigarettes and the grain alcohol on his breath. Gladio could see Zarubin's leering grin without even looking at him. That glint in his eye like a stupid man who thought himself clever. A million and a half years ago Gladio might've gotten up to take a swing on principle but he'd been given enough time to rethink his positions in the dark and the cold of a half-flooded windowless pit they lovingly called The Hole. When it got cold his bones still ached down to the marrow. It was always cold.
He threw an arm across his face and refused to acknowledge either Zarubin or his new cellmate. He lied there and felt the impact of a body vibrate through the unyielding frame of the bunks and he listened to the metal squeal of the door and the heavy echoing sound of its closing and he listened to the shuffling of the man getting his footing again and Gladio stared into the darkness of the crook of his arm and waited for it to start. The tentative questions like probing strikes in the early rounds.
He thought he knew how it went. He'd lived this day over and over again. Life in Gorgon was an interminable misery loop and you either died or became part of it and for as long as he'd been locked up Gladio tried to balance on that knife edge. To fight against the hungry maw of the prison without becoming another tooth in it. Going to bat for a succession of cellmates only to come away from it with a baton to the jaw and a collection of broken ribs and concussions, still to watch them get fed to the ring when the warden wanted to chum the waters before a big fight. The cameras loved blood and behind Gorgon's walls blood was currency. Gladio knew how this went and he didn't want to know anyone new anymore.
But that voice... That voice was not new at all. It was a voice from a very long way away and what felt like an eternity ago. Another life that straddled the border of memory and fiction. Full of people and places whose names meant nothing to anyone in this place but him. He pulled his arm away from his eyes and propped himself up on his elbows and froze there. Watching like the figure in his cell might be some figment of sleep deprivation and concussions that would disappear if he blinked.
"Iggy." His voice was low and had the rasp of disuse.
Gladio sat up so quickly he nearly cracked his head against the underside of the top bunk. He swung his legs out and scrambled to his feet and stared. He hadn't felt anything but a low simmering rage for so long that he didn't know what to do with himself. He clapped a heavy hand on Ignis' shoulder as though he needed that final validation of his presence and he stared into sightless eyes and he started to laugh, half mad with relief. A kind of electricity coursed through him and later he would come to realize that was what it felt like when hope returned.
"God damn, Iggy, it really is you. What--" The relief of Ignis' presence here ran into the reality of it. He was here... but he was here. In this forsaken pit. With these animals. The laughter disappeared as soon as it began. "--What the hell are you doing here?"
Post by Gladiolus Amicitia on Jun 10, 2020 19:34:27 GMT -6
The air in the room was heavy and damp and smelled like stale sweat and blood and too many unwashed bodies. On either side of him he thought he could feel the breath of the men behind the bars. Filthy hands reached out between the iron and got clubbed back with a swing of the guard's baton, casual and routine. They escorted Gladio in chains and a thunder of profanity and shaking bars and bloodthirsty howling followed his walk. They hungered for violence in a way Gladio had since grown numb to. This place made animals of men.
He stopped before the ring apron and the guards unlocked the manacles from his wrists and ankles and heaped the chains on the cold stone floor next to a filthy mop and bucket. Gladio looked up. Past two rows of barred cells overlooking the squalid ring. Up to the best seats in the house where stone faced fat men in neatly pressed uniforms drank liquor poured by women who didn't want to be there and looked down on the ring with their beady little eyes. Soft little tyrants. Gladio imagined snapping their necks. He grinned like a cornered wolf.
The ring canvas was a filthy brownish color spotted with black patches of old blood and dull crimson smears from some poor bastard's broken nose or broken jaw or broken skull a few days prior, haphazardly slopped over with dirty mop water. The ropes were thick twisted natural fibers that chafed and burned and bore the same discoloration of the canvas. Gladio stepped up onto the ring apron and then swung a leg over and stepped over the ropes into the ring. He rolled his wrists. He made fists with his toes and twisted his bare feet into the canvas. It got slick with sweat and blood if the fighting went on too long.
He'd make it quick. It wasn't his first fight. It wouldn't be his last.
After they hauled his opponent into the ring and the cameras settled into position and the announcer made his announcements the bell rang and Gladio didn't remember much beyond it. He got tagged over his right eye. He knew it from the swelling, later. It must have made him angry because when the bell rang again they dragged the limp body of his opponent out of the ring under the bottom rope and Gladio had a hard time making out the shape of his face. His hand wraps were soaked through with blood.
This place made animals of men.
After they brought him back to his cell he spent a long while washing up in the dingy little sink and never felt clean. The lights went out. He crawled into his bunk and pulled a handmade icepick from under the thin fetid mattress and carved the day into the wall and went to sleep. The top bunk was empty. His cellmate used to be the poor bastard they couldn't clean off the ring canvas.
He woke up sore. He ate. He fought. He bled. He carved the day into the wall. He slept. He woke up. He ate. He fought. He bled. He carved the day into the wall. He woke up. He fought. He bled. He ate. He fought. He fought. He fought. He carved the day into the wall--
He was laying on his bunk with his hands behind his head staring up at the bottom of the empty bunk above him. Staring through it. He used to imagine it was something else. The roof of a tent or rickety bunks in an old trailer. He used to pretend the constant icy draft was a cool sea breeze and the constant screaming bouncing off the old stone walls was the racket of sea birds. He didn't pretend that anymore. When he heard a double set of approaching footsteps, one set of hard soles clicking off the floor and one set of shuffling soft soles, and when he heard the jangle of keys and chains, and when he heard the taunting in the hall about a new fish, he didn't so much as bother to raise his head.
