A long time ago, our world was born. But when rocks collided and combined and Earth was born, there was already one sentient being inhabiting the space where it formed. It was a being of great power and who many would think a god. Its power was not ultimate, but it was strong enough to see the humans who would one day inhabit the world, and it knew that if it remained they may not evolve. As such, it gathered its power and it unleashed it, creating a pocket dimension attached to Earth, within which it started to execute its plans. It created land and shaped it into a great plateau charged with its power, and from itself it created many beings, each given one aspect of its power and trusted to use it to protect the planet and ensure the evolution, then survival of humanity. Although the being created what it desired to create, its power was drained and as such it travelled to the middle of its world and raised a great crystal pillar out of the ground, surrounding itself in it. It begun to gather its power, a task that would take billions of years and left the planet to those it had created, who awoke in their own crystal pillars just as it fell dormant. Although the beings, who quickly came to call themselves icons, at first watched over the Earth and managed it as they had been created to, conflict started between them. Four, the icons of fire, water, earth and air, rose to the positions of leaders among the beings and for some time kept peace, but eventually they became too hungry for power. Soon, each of the four convinced other icons to join their side and a four-way war occurred, with Earth being heavily damaged in the process, the dinosaurs becoming extinct as a consequence, and peace only occurring once major damage was done by a weapon created by the icons of void and sound, leaving the icons of blood, ice and metal seemingly dead and causing the icon of spirit to create an impenetrable barrier to seal herself inside her pillar. The remaining icons realised that peace was necessary and managed to salvage some life on Earth to give their mission a chance of success, but decided afterwards to exile the icon of Void to the empty space at the edge of their dimension and to close the portal between their world and Earth, leaving them the ability only to observe. When the icons of void and sound unleashed their destructive attack, they caused an unnoticed crack in the side of the great pillar. While the original being, the creator, was not disturbed, a fragment of its power escaped before the crack repaired itself. This creation energy formed into a new being, taking the template of the icons that were created a long time before it but drawing in the energy of the land to fuel itself. In taking in the energy, the new icon witnessed the war that had occurred, and it took in their hate and made it its own. The icon of hate saw through to Earth, but it was not yet powerful enough to move through as the other icons could. So it waited and when the link was closed, it managed to use the residual creation power left in it to create a small hole which it could use to enter the world, starting to build a plan to destroy what the others worked to protect. Slowly, the icon of hate gathered its power. Only when human society was already advanced did it find enough power to go through the hole it had created. The year was 2013 and within a week it started to wreak havoc. At first, it pretended to be normal threats, but slowly the people started to get suspicious. Just as humanity realised that there was something more to their present misfortune, as did the icons. But as hard as they tried to move through the small portal the icon of hate had created to pursue it, they could not. It was then that the icon of void returned to them, with an idea to save the Earth. The icon suggested that they each chose a human and imbued them with their power, each icon making a herald to protect the Earth and pursue the dark icon in their place. The divine icons took the advice of the exile and picked humans to represent them in their fight and as the icon of hate revealed itself, a small group of humans were given the power to defeat it.
So we join the Heralds, our heroes, in stopping the devilish Icon of Hate.
This Roleplay Contains Examples Of:
- Beauty Equals Goodness: The Herald of Heroism, Marina Beckman, went from being a cute brunnette to a queenly blonde when she was chosen by her Icon (she wasn't given a say in the matter), so it's safe to say the Icon of Heroism is a fan of this.
- While not Icon-induced, Vesper falls under the category, but this hasn't been made overt—mostly because of her tendency to hide everything but her Icon-granted blue eyes and her very low opinion about nearly every facet of herself, which includes her appearance.
- As does Terry, who appears to be essentially a handsome, muscular blond paragon of good. He even gets to glow and have natural Bishie Sparkle.
- Cool Sword: Rapidly becoming a default weapon.
- Elemental Powers: Numerous ones, including less conventional ones.
- Attack Reflector: Mansart's Icon power
- Casting a Shadow: Vesper's powers.
- Make Them Rot: Emily's power, or at least one aspect of it.
- Psychic Powers: David Garcia can both read minds and move things with his mind.
- Shock and Awe: James Astin
- Light 'em Up: Terry's power set. Fittingly, The Destroyer is the exact opposite, using black energy of some sort. Marina also fits, to a lesser degree.
- Time Master: James Witt
- Split Personality: There are two versions of this trope. Terry, the more classical one, has The Destroyer, who may well be something worse than a mere alternate personality, and which is basically everything he is not. Then there's James, who simply has some voices in his head who tell him to do things.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Terry is one of the more combat oriented Heralds, but consequently has the most mental problems.
