Jungle Fever

Plot Start Date: April 13th, 2007
Plot End Date: October 16th, 2008

Prelude

OOC: The Jungle Fever plot began with the opening of the D'hennexian lands to roleplay. A vast, unexplored world lay ready for exploration, and in response, many D'hennexian characters were created, including those created under the Tough Crowd program, from religious zealots and medieval knights to tribal dancers and Elven elite.

Thriving in an unusual era of relative peace, greater D'hennex was stirred one day when crazed, mutated animals from the already vicious and insatiable Jungles of Ka began raiding border villages just inside of the Demosthene Ascendancy. As the Demosthenes already regarded the inhabited but primitive land as unclaimed and wild, little thought was spared to respecting the borders of the Kaian tribals, who were partially suspected in the strangely organized attacks. One of the Ascendancy's higher governors, Executor Mehrinn DeLoppoli, put a call out to the power wielder mercenaries at home and abroad to seek the cause of the attacks and dispense with it in any means they saw necessary, in exchange for a handsome reward. The tribals, who were largely oblivious of the attacks (much less from whence they came), simply cried out against the intruders, which included many people from Cardinal now that Empirical Industries had established a Portal station on their continent. Some ((NPCs)) were sent by the Executor, some (PCs) were merely drawn to the jungle by rumor and other inexplicable forces.

The Khari

As the outsiders pushed further into the Jungles of Ka despite the tribesmen's best efforts to dissuade them, greater and greater beasts were discovered, as well as strange artifacts of fabulous technologies long since lost to modern man. In further complicating news, a great wall made of extraordinarily dense Kaian trees and undergrowth surrounded and covered an area that was subject to great speculation. No attack known to mortal or immortal man alike could budge this floral barrier, and those who sought to penetrate were forced to find another way through.

Eventually, agents of the Khari, the overarching, mystical tribe that shadowed all of the others, were found with unusually glowing amulets that resembled the ancient relics recovered. The Khari soon revealed themselves to be a staunch opponent of the invaders, rallying their tribal neighbors to cast out those who are not Kaian. They explained the mutated monsters as a reaction of the Jungle itself to the overwhelming foreign taint that infested it like a plague. In no time at all, the tribes were divided by those who sought the foreigners no harm and felt the Khari had gone too far, and those who allied themselves with the Khari and were openly hostile to outsiders. Eventually, though, amulets of the Khari were recovered, and they were found to have properties that permitted their bearers to open a wall in the barrier of plants.

A small expedition penetrated the shield, only to stumble across some manner of sick, sadistic ritual where the bodies of slain, presumably innocent travellers had been burned alive in worship of someone called the "Luminary" -- not the spirit of Ka, the usual object of Kaian worship. The expedition confronted the tribesmen, and after a powerful battle, the head monk of the Khar was captured and forced to reveal the nature of the Luminary, an awe-striking girl-made-woman-made-goddess who had enchanted the whole of the Khari people to follow her. The Luminary had been trying to unseat the Entity of Ka that she might be destroyed, and somehow fed off the strange, intense energy that had recently been flowing from the ruins that much of the Khari society was built upon. This strange woman had decided that the resources of power in Ka were no longer enough, and had moved on ... but to where?

The Luminary

The Luminary was tracked by intrepid D'hennexian hunters, and several clashes were had over An-Yneaithan villages, as the Luminary and a clutch of her most enchanted tribal followers trekked ever closer to the capital of the Old Kingdom, Emyr. It was discovered that the army sought women to make into decoys in the Luminary's image. For the following months, the army of the Luminary seemed ever difficult to discover, all tracks of them having been lost completely. They ought to have reached Emyr long ago, and yet the attacks had stopped. Many called off the hunt, and defenses had been lowered.

Then, the Luminary and her forces attacked Emyr at last, and had a great battle over it, though vastly outnumbered ((PCs were not given a chance to actively participate in this battle, but it is OK to say a character was there fighting)). The walls were breached, and a pair of great, tree-shaped titans wreaked havoc inside. Meanwhile, the Luminary's decoys were found throughout the city. King Irai Maolirian took his closest protectors and sought out the Luminary where he knew she would be, deep beneath the castle. The results of this subterranean clash found the Luminary truly dead, her decapitated head in the hands of an unknown hero. The passage of events inside the catacombs remain unknown to any but the King and those he took with him. The six-armed woman's forces buckled at the very moment of her death.

The End.