max "FUK U I'M A DRAGON" kiesler (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
burnination) wrote2017-08-01 06:26 pm
burnination) wrote2017-08-01 06:26 pm
conciseiissshhhh setting + history
The world of B&M (Boys & Monsters) is mostly identical to ours, save for the addition of the magic world, generally kept secret from the greater, "normal" populace. There is an information page and history of the world at large the goes into finer details of how the magic schools work, how the technicalities of magic as a whole fits together, where it comes from, and where the monsters that are created by an excess of magic in the planes reside and why, but the thing to take away is that magic builds up every piece of this world's reality, whether people are in tune or aware of it or not. Magic theory and source is heavily drawn from a Judeo-Christian religious field, having things like Heavenly and Demonic planes, with actual interference from angels, demons and legit Satan (or concept of Satan, at least) with the lives of the magic boys. Magic is a force more like nature, not sentient, but simply a core fact of existence, as much as gravity or electricity is. It can be used to create or destroy, to heal or to harm, and can either build a person up, or completely disintegrate them, and morph them into something unrecognizable. Monsters are born from magic as much as benevolent spirits, and both can touch the lives of humans, and can taint them. The lives of normal humans and magic humans/creatures are lead very separately, save for the few rim walkers, like hunters that target magical entities, and others that get a whiff of the magic really going on beneath everything.
At this canon point, it's 2025, and Max graduated from BCR in 2016, so it's a bit into the future, but not by much. Not enough that a lot of things changed, aside from fancier phones and probably the legalization of pot in the US. Who knows. The main thing that ought to be covered here, that isn't posted in the info pages linked above as of yet, is the structure of the universe, and the big threat to the stability of it, along with the various groups located in each section of it. It's a sort of large-caked thing, looking a lot like archaic ideas of the earth, with Heaven and Hell in the Outer Rings (where magic exists in great potency) and the physical world sandwiched in between (Inner Ring). The barriers between, while firm, are not indestructible. Due to the misuse of magic practiced by humans throughout time, since the first discovery of magic in this world ages ago, a natural magical phenomenon has developed and built over the centuries called The Crawl, which is "a creeping phenomenon of magic bleed from the outer ring ("other") of the known world into the inner ring ("present")". It's basically a thing that eats away at those barriers and will eventually let all of the rings flow together, which, for this world, translates to 'apocalypse', as the human populated Earth will become a battleground for forces and legions from either side (various motivations between various groups, too much to say on that than can be fit in here right now), while trying to hold onto their own territory.
At this point in his life, Max has only just become aware of this reality, the encroaching apocalypse, by accident, as it's largely a big secret in the magic (and especially non-magic) communities. It's yet to hit, but him and his friends know it's coming soon, and are in the process of preparing for it. As for personal history, there's a not that concise page that has all the details, but we're going to paraphrase.
Maxwell Kiesler was born March 27th, 1996 to a single mother, Katja, in a small farming village outside of Hamburg, Germany. His childhood up until 8 was mostly uneventful farm boy life, until his magic started to develop around 8 or 9, and the neighbors just didn't take well to a little boy dancing in fires and claiming to talk to demons. Pressured by the other villagers, and an unfortunate witch-burning that happened to Max's father, his mother sent him off with a group of people claiming to represent a school to train boys like him to control their powers. Sadly, Katja was lied to, and she never saw her son again. The Reed family was more of a cult than anything else, boasting middling power with the Demonic plane, and seeking to advance it further through several means, the most detrimental being, advancing the Crawl. They sought to collect young children who'd developed impressive levels of Demonic power at very early stages in their life from all across the globe and brought them to the Reed Compound, to train in the basics of magic, and teach the simple processes of possession and vesseling that some users of the Demonic plane specialize in, or develop their "Line" in. After which, the children were forced to begin vesseling powerful demonic spirits at far too young an age than is healthy, as just the act of vesseling tends to be very hard on the body and mind of even advanced teenagers. Not all boys made it, and in fact, many either died or became completely, irrevocably possessed, twisted into corrupted monsters controlled by the demonic spirit that had taken them. Tortures and horrors that would haunt these children well into their adult years went on until Max was around 14, at which point, a demon that'd been lurching around him helped him light up the compound like a bonfire, along with all the Reed family inside. However, this left Max with permanent damage to the magical nature of his being, a demonic taint to it that left him a bit too wide open for possession.
From there, he'd been taken to the Barret-Crowley Reformatory, an actual school for magic children to learn control and hone their talents. After four or five years of troubled adolescence and a gift of a social circle to help Max work through the most debilitating symptoms of his trauma, with a little side trip down possessed to freaking death lane, Max graduated a talented witch utilizing the Demonic plane. From there, he sort of went on a little bit of a revenge road trip, ended up in a Ukrainian prison for a few years, got out and decided he wanted to be Indiana Jones, but magic. On one of this tomb raiding trips, he found an old spirit lady who punched him into the spectral plane, and taught him a thing or two about controlling his literal demons. Max continues his Tomb Raidering (legitimately tells people his job is being Lara Croft), eventually meets a lovely girl in Cairo, gets married, and immediately after, his best friend, Marco Lorin, goes missing. On a year month long panic binge, Max traveled all over the globe trying to find Marco, what had happened to him or where he'd been taken. This, unfortunately, was not great on his marriage, and he ended up divorced 10 months after being married. Turns out, Marco went to Hell. Oops. And exactly a year later, he was spat right back out.
Paranoid as hell (haha) over how easily one of them can just be swept away, Max spends the next next two or three years bouncing between friends' houses over the Euroasiafrica super continent, trying to find ways to travel between the planes to retrieve one of them should they go missing. He doesn't, really, but through the help of a friend, Max reconstructs a forge hammer used by an ancient Nordic runic forgemaster responsible for the creation of many of the powerful magical relics Max had spent about a decade uncovering, retrieving or hiding better than they were previously hidden. So that's handy, but not really what they were needing. Another thing that's cool, but not really what he'd been looking for - Max finds a kid. Your typical occult baby sacrifice, you know how it goes. After taking the baby to another friend, they search for any family, find most of them murdered or having scorned the not exactly star child mother, he and his friend (Dani) take on raising the child themselves, seeing as she'd likely been affected by the ritual going on, and could grow up with some unpleasant powers to deal with. They name her Brigid, and spoilers, Max is a crappy parent, but at least he's fun.
At around the age 28, Marco freaking dies. Like a champ. Hit by a truck. Much like the last time Marco disappeared, Max loses his shit, now convinced he must have been taken into Hell again. As a last resort, he asks the friend who'd helped him before with the forge - James - to help him try to get into Hell. James' is a Mechanic plane witch, who has a set of keys - one takes him to places he's been before, one to places he hasn't. The second has not been used for a long ass time, before one time it took him to Hell. As James has been practically his brother since the Reed Compound, he didn't want to use this option, but desperate times, etc. They go. They don't find Marco, but they do witness The Crawl (something he'd seen hints of in all his tomb raidering thus far but hasn't been able to completely put together), eating away at the barrier. When they return, only barely escaping with their lives, Max lets the others know about what they saw, and the next several years are spent preparing, and bracing for the end times.
At this canon point, it's 2025, and Max graduated from BCR in 2016, so it's a bit into the future, but not by much. Not enough that a lot of things changed, aside from fancier phones and probably the legalization of pot in the US. Who knows. The main thing that ought to be covered here, that isn't posted in the info pages linked above as of yet, is the structure of the universe, and the big threat to the stability of it, along with the various groups located in each section of it. It's a sort of large-caked thing, looking a lot like archaic ideas of the earth, with Heaven and Hell in the Outer Rings (where magic exists in great potency) and the physical world sandwiched in between (Inner Ring). The barriers between, while firm, are not indestructible. Due to the misuse of magic practiced by humans throughout time, since the first discovery of magic in this world ages ago, a natural magical phenomenon has developed and built over the centuries called The Crawl, which is "a creeping phenomenon of magic bleed from the outer ring ("other") of the known world into the inner ring ("present")". It's basically a thing that eats away at those barriers and will eventually let all of the rings flow together, which, for this world, translates to 'apocalypse', as the human populated Earth will become a battleground for forces and legions from either side (various motivations between various groups, too much to say on that than can be fit in here right now), while trying to hold onto their own territory.
At this point in his life, Max has only just become aware of this reality, the encroaching apocalypse, by accident, as it's largely a big secret in the magic (and especially non-magic) communities. It's yet to hit, but him and his friends know it's coming soon, and are in the process of preparing for it. As for personal history, there's a not that concise page that has all the details, but we're going to paraphrase.
Maxwell Kiesler was born March 27th, 1996 to a single mother, Katja, in a small farming village outside of Hamburg, Germany. His childhood up until 8 was mostly uneventful farm boy life, until his magic started to develop around 8 or 9, and the neighbors just didn't take well to a little boy dancing in fires and claiming to talk to demons. Pressured by the other villagers, and an unfortunate witch-burning that happened to Max's father, his mother sent him off with a group of people claiming to represent a school to train boys like him to control their powers. Sadly, Katja was lied to, and she never saw her son again. The Reed family was more of a cult than anything else, boasting middling power with the Demonic plane, and seeking to advance it further through several means, the most detrimental being, advancing the Crawl. They sought to collect young children who'd developed impressive levels of Demonic power at very early stages in their life from all across the globe and brought them to the Reed Compound, to train in the basics of magic, and teach the simple processes of possession and vesseling that some users of the Demonic plane specialize in, or develop their "Line" in. After which, the children were forced to begin vesseling powerful demonic spirits at far too young an age than is healthy, as just the act of vesseling tends to be very hard on the body and mind of even advanced teenagers. Not all boys made it, and in fact, many either died or became completely, irrevocably possessed, twisted into corrupted monsters controlled by the demonic spirit that had taken them. Tortures and horrors that would haunt these children well into their adult years went on until Max was around 14, at which point, a demon that'd been lurching around him helped him light up the compound like a bonfire, along with all the Reed family inside. However, this left Max with permanent damage to the magical nature of his being, a demonic taint to it that left him a bit too wide open for possession.
From there, he'd been taken to the Barret-Crowley Reformatory, an actual school for magic children to learn control and hone their talents. After four or five years of troubled adolescence and a gift of a social circle to help Max work through the most debilitating symptoms of his trauma, with a little side trip down possessed to freaking death lane, Max graduated a talented witch utilizing the Demonic plane. From there, he sort of went on a little bit of a revenge road trip, ended up in a Ukrainian prison for a few years, got out and decided he wanted to be Indiana Jones, but magic. On one of this tomb raiding trips, he found an old spirit lady who punched him into the spectral plane, and taught him a thing or two about controlling his literal demons. Max continues his Tomb Raidering (legitimately tells people his job is being Lara Croft), eventually meets a lovely girl in Cairo, gets married, and immediately after, his best friend, Marco Lorin, goes missing. On a year month long panic binge, Max traveled all over the globe trying to find Marco, what had happened to him or where he'd been taken. This, unfortunately, was not great on his marriage, and he ended up divorced 10 months after being married. Turns out, Marco went to Hell. Oops. And exactly a year later, he was spat right back out.
Paranoid as hell (haha) over how easily one of them can just be swept away, Max spends the next next two or three years bouncing between friends' houses over the Euroasiafrica super continent, trying to find ways to travel between the planes to retrieve one of them should they go missing. He doesn't, really, but through the help of a friend, Max reconstructs a forge hammer used by an ancient Nordic runic forgemaster responsible for the creation of many of the powerful magical relics Max had spent about a decade uncovering, retrieving or hiding better than they were previously hidden. So that's handy, but not really what they were needing. Another thing that's cool, but not really what he'd been looking for - Max finds a kid. Your typical occult baby sacrifice, you know how it goes. After taking the baby to another friend, they search for any family, find most of them murdered or having scorned the not exactly star child mother, he and his friend (Dani) take on raising the child themselves, seeing as she'd likely been affected by the ritual going on, and could grow up with some unpleasant powers to deal with. They name her Brigid, and spoilers, Max is a crappy parent, but at least he's fun.
At around the age 28, Marco freaking dies. Like a champ. Hit by a truck. Much like the last time Marco disappeared, Max loses his shit, now convinced he must have been taken into Hell again. As a last resort, he asks the friend who'd helped him before with the forge - James - to help him try to get into Hell. James' is a Mechanic plane witch, who has a set of keys - one takes him to places he's been before, one to places he hasn't. The second has not been used for a long ass time, before one time it took him to Hell. As James has been practically his brother since the Reed Compound, he didn't want to use this option, but desperate times, etc. They go. They don't find Marco, but they do witness The Crawl (something he'd seen hints of in all his tomb raidering thus far but hasn't been able to completely put together), eating away at the barrier. When they return, only barely escaping with their lives, Max lets the others know about what they saw, and the next several years are spent preparing, and bracing for the end times.