Tales from the Outside: Aurendal

Aurendal is an old world. The things this planet have seen over the millenia are numerous, and a lot of them we won't go into today. What makes Aurendal different from the host of other planets in the vast universe it hails from is... that the planet itself is alive. Much like you and me, it breathes, thinks and feels. But it cannot communicate, nor defend itself. But Aurendal found a solution. Making it's own will come to life, in form of various elemental spirits. Each fundamental way of thinking divided itself between the elements themselves, creating 4 vastly different breeds of Elementals. The Ocean Espers embodied the values of intellect. The Dryads, elementals of the life-giving earth itself embodied the values of compassion and nature. The Efreet were the envoys of fire, personafying Aurendals anger and frustration upon it's inhabitants for their reckless greed. And finally, the Djinni, watchers of the winds act as envoys of Aurendal's own voice, and currently remain the only way one can commune with the planet.

Now that you know about the elementals themselves and their mother, Aurendal, we can move on, and talk about the Crusades of Auror. Aurendal would eventually give birth to life of flesh and bone. She created the very first humans, not realizing the mistake she made by giving them a free will. With time, the humans learned of their creator, and started to worship her rightfully as a deity. Over time, however, this faith in her would begin to dwindle and eventually transform into something much more perverse of a religion. Instead of Aurendal, a new ”god” was made. Going by the name of Auror, believers of this faith thought that the land itself had been taken from them by the elementals, and that mankind was on the brink of extinction. Faith is a powerful and influential thing. What had once started as a genuine movement of worship dedicated to the planet had now been corrupted by greed and a lust for power greater than Aurendal could've ever predicted.

Auror was like a saint. A man who had challenged the tyranny of the Efreet in the past. A man who showed his kin that they no longer needed to feel oppressed by the forces of nature... by the demons. He was a man people began to follow. The Holy war waged in Aurors name would continue on for centuries, if not even longer. No one even remembers how it all started.

The Church of Auror is divided into three groups. The Bishops, the Priesthood and the Seat of Seven. The Seat holds the most power within the church. Most of this power comes from contacts, wealth and general influence, They steer the actions of the other two subsections. Unlike the others, members of the Seat are never shown in public. Their names remain a secret, as to prevent any wrongdoers to cause any real damage to the Church. The Priesthood is pretty much what you'd expect. They spread the faith onward, holding sermons, preaching about Auror's deeds and generally acts as the common man's connection to the church. Without the priesthood, the whole religion falls apart. That leaves us with the final subsection, which is the Bishop Circle. They are basically the crusaders of the church, carrying out it's will, punishing heretics, slaying demons and generally carrying the war against the planet as a whole. This is how things have been for a long time.

Until relatively recently, that is. Someone in the Seat of Seven figured out a way to make use of the Planet's own will in their crusade. By using some very dark magics, they could bind a demon to a human vessel, thus harnessing the vast powers of the planet itself. Unbeknownst to them, they were creating some form of splicer, in a much more sinister way than the method used on Junction. The end result is also somewhat different. Instead of turning into some kind of hybrid, these are melded perfectly together, as no surgery is really required. This is both a good thing and a bad thing performance-wise. The positives is that the splicing is much easier to hide, and that the user gets physically stronger even before the latent Splicer powers have awakened properly. The downsides are there only for Auror's cause. Since they're perfectly merged, the Spirit's own will also remains intact, and influences the Splicer in a great number of ways. Not just in terms of battle potency, but also in the way they think and eventually act. Some are more succeptible to this influence than others, and it becomes more apparent the more the host's own opinions clash with the demon's.

Lloyd Storm is one of these Splicers. A few years before his transferral to Junction, Lloyd was a very simple man with simple needs. He went under a different name at the time before he was kidnapped by the Church, and assimilated into it's ranks as a Bishop. Trained in the ways of Martial arts, and spliced together with a demon by the name of Arnice, the duo did some great work for the Church. At the time, Lloyd himself was unaware of the fact that he was a host to a demon. It didn't take very long for Arnice to make herself known, however. She slowly started influencing his actions, and while they never actually communicated in the same way they will be doing on Junction, Lloyd eventually gained a pretty good understanding of what Arnice was and why she was there. The two slowly began the process of uncovering the lost memories of Lloyd's past... and it was during this search for truth that he was dragged away into the meltingpot of the multiverse...