When Jonah awoke his right arm felt stiff. It was common enough at this point for the bizarrely flexible prosthetic limb to feel stiff that it didn’t particularly alarm him, but it was an annoying way for him to wake up. He has only had the prosthetic limb for a few weeks, and overall he’s happy that he sacrificed his arm for it but it’s still more than a bit frustrating to wake up and have to deal with its attitude, since the limb itself is the one deciding to get stiff rather than the metal that made up the limb sometimes needing a polishing or to be lubricated somehow.

Despite his arms stiffness he continued to lay in the bed for a few moments before truly awakening and getting out of bed. It was early in the morning, that awkward time when his mobile mansion would be still and his servants would be for the most part sleeping since the sun was just over the horizon (which kept the majority of his undead servants at bay and was thus when they slept given that they lacked resistance to the sun and would be rendered lethargic at best when it beat down upon them or exterminated at worst if its deadly rays touched their skin unshielded by the moon’s mercy) but not yet high enough for its lights to make it through the blinds that each room had on its windows (and thus awakening his servants soon were immune to the sun’s rays.).

Jonah’s room was stunningly bare given its impressive size which gave Jonah the air of a minimalist but the few pieces of furniture he owned were masterfully crafted. He had a few mannequins on which he kept various outfits, most of which covered Jonah’s muscular body completely whether it was in metal, fur, or cloth. He had a lavish bed, truly befitting his status as the master of the living mansion. He also had an ornate desk where a single regal chair was placed to mark to anyone new that this was the desk of the mansion’s master. The final piece of furniture that hinted at the wealth and resources of the mansion and its master was a metal table placed at the heart of the room which was surrounded by chairs crafted out of volcanic rock. The table and the desk served different roles, because the table was for when Jonah called a meeting of crafters or of warriors to give them their tasks, and the desk was for more intimate meetings when Jonah needed to speak directly to a single individual or when he wanted to organize whatever paperwork he needed to organize or examine whatever contracts he and his servants had acquired.

Jonah reflected on his accomplishments as he began to move and warm up his still drowsy body, practicing basic martial arts with both his biological left arm and his artificial right arm. Jonah was the master of the living mansion,something which surprised many visitors given its diversity of occupants most of whom were medium to high level monsters and inhumans. He was also the “lord” who ruled over the very tiny territory that was the living mansion (and thus often conflicted with other, more conventional lords whose territories weren’t mobile). Unlike many other lords he wasn’t originally a noble but rather had been elected (against his will) to rule over the living mansion and its inhabitants by both the mansion and its inhabitants. Jonah himself just wanted independence and the power to maintain that independence. He had spent a few years building the living mansion to its current size by recruiting various types of followers and convincing them that he was a leader worth following and someone who had the sort of “power” they needed to accomplish their goals. The sort of “power” Jonah needed for each of his followers to deem him worth following varied from follower to follower and in each case it had been something distinct. One of the first followers Jonah had acquired was a strange demon priest who had agreed to follow Jonah after witnessing him protect and then heal a man who had been attacked by ravenous plant monsters. A few of his followers were goblins who decided to follow him after he won a fighting tournament in a kingdom not far from Albatross and asked them to accompany him on a worldwide journey. When they voted for him to be the master of the living mansion they explained quite simply that it made sense for him to be the master of the mansion given that he was the one they all looked up to even in a group composed of wildly different species.

When he was finished stretching and warming up his body he quietly activated one of his skills, an ability named “Introspection” to examine his statistics.

[Jonah McFadden]

[Class(s): Monster Tamer/Party Master]

[Level: 75]

[HP: 750/750]

[Danger Level: S]

[Intelligence: 6,000]

[Physical Skill/Strength: 1000]

[Skills: Introspection, Skill Synthesizer, Skill Giver, Skill Copier, Forcible Transferrer, Party Creator, Party Destroyer, Empath, Monster Taming (Level 9), Gifter Of Sentience, Contract Formation, Contract Destruction, Slaver, Destroyer of Bonds, Borrower Of Skills, Skill Enhancer, Analyzer, Manor Manipulator, Manor Dominator, Building Editor, Magical Architect]

[Species: Human]

Jonah was a unique being in that he possessed two active classes, both of which made him a gifted tactic-type being whose primary role in battle is giving orders to more capable combatants as well as providing critical support in the middle of battle. He favored being behind his allies and analyzing the scenarios he found himself in before moving from behind to turn the tables and sow chaos among his enemies. He could turn enemies on each other with his malicious “Destroyer of Bonds” skill, or even free slaves of his enemies mid-battle by forcibly attacking enemy slave-owners and striking them with “Contract Destruction” to liberate their slaves and enable them to either turn on their former owners or flee and make the battle easier for his side. Jonah had also never made use of his “Slaver” ability because he thought it’d be hypocritical of him to deprive someone else of their freedom given how highly he valued and treasured his own independence. His role in battle is to lead his servants and provide critical guidance that keeps his own side safe and speedily takes down his foes, and he prided himself on that.

After Jonah examined his own statistics and contemplated his battle tactics he wandered down to the bottom floor of the living mansion. The bottom floor of the living mansion was composed of various common areas designed to inspire residents to mix and mingle and also inspire a sense of cooperation among groups of residents including a collection of sprawling dining rooms designed for the mansion’s inhabitants (a few dozen beings and individuals) to be able to easily eat in the same proximity, often buffet style (which annoyed Jonah because the mansion wasn’t yet at such a high level that it could spawn entities capable of cooking the food itself and thus Jonah was typically one of the lead chefs, assisted by a small number of individuals who had talent cooking), although it depended on the day and how the mansion felt and at times the capricious mansion preferred a less crowded eating experience. Today unfortunately the mansion appears to feel like it is worth messing with Jonah given that it had decided to make breakfast buffet style instead of a more conventional method of serving and eating breakfast which meant Jonah knew that he needed to start cooking as soon as he got to the massive and modern kitchen located beyond the many sprawling rooms which the mansion had created for its denizens.

Jonah spent over an hour cooking by himself for the various residents of the manor before the first of his servants appeared, a young cowgirl with bright blonde hair and a habit of walking around with her eyes closed opting instead to rely on her sense of hearing to navigate the world around her. Jonah immediately ordered her to go back outside to the specific facility she lived in (like some of the other beings who were considered akin to livestock she lived in a large barn, which was something that she wanted to do not something that she was ordered to do) and thoroughly search it for any ingredients they could use in today’s breakfast. The cowgirl immediately obeyed her master, running off to not only fulfill his command but also to recruit another of her companions who (unlike Jonah) genuinely enjoyed cooking to assist him in his early morning preparations. The cowgirl moved quickly and with purpose because she was one of the few who realized that despite being the master of the mansion Jonah was not someone who pushed tasks off to others but rather took an active hand in everything from gathering materials to hunting monsters to creating remarkable items and delicious recipes by hand. Jonah wasn’t a master of any particular skillset but instead worked very hard to be a talented jack of all trades who stood out from behind with his flexibility and his understanding of the capabilities of those who followed him.

By the time most of the daylight servants were beginning to gather in the buffet style dining rooms and consuming their breakfasts Jonah had been cooking for 4 hours, aided by the cowgirl, her friend a male centaur (and one of the few who saw Jonah as a chivalrous lord and believed in Jonah’s might as a soldier on his own and not as a mere tactician), and an orc woman who was one of the few servants who didn’t live indoors at all but rather lived in a stable until she “proved herself” (which was something she herself wanted to do, not something anyone expected of her).

When he realized that enough food had been prepared for the rest of the inhabitants Jonah served himself and quietly sat down at one of the tables the mansion had generated for the buffet style breakfast. He was careful to sit by himself at a table where no one else was sitting, but he knew better than to believe that his table would remain otherwise uninhabited for long. Before he had finished eating even a quarter of his own food he found himself surrounded by the mansion’s inhabitants. Some of them were newer faces such as the centaur who had cooked alongside him, and others had journeyed with him for a few months now such as the demon priest who decided to serve Jonah after seeing him protect and treat an old man. Jonah didn’t particularly mind being surrounded by servants but he wasn’t a big fan of it happening while he ate, since he found them distracting. That of course didn’t stop his rather forceful followers from accompanying him, with or without his permission. Jonah quietly grinned while finishing off an omelet he had made specifically for himself and listening to the centaur describe the ways of his tribe to a fascinated goblin who was interested in harvesting centaur sweat to use as an experimental ingredient in his potion-making trials.

[Cornelius Thorne]

[Class: Knight]

[Level: 35]

[Danger Level: C]

[Intelligence: 200]

[Physical Skill/Strength: 1,000]

[Skills: Natural Armor, Quadrupedal Charge, Knight’s Determination, Fusion Of Armor And Skin, Weapon As Extension Of Body, Knight’s Thrust, Lord And Knight Connection (Unused), Devoted Servant]

[Species: Centaur]

#Isekai #Fantasy #Leader #WorldTraveller

A/N: A light-hearted and friendly introduction to our protagonist the mysterious but skilled Jonah McFadden, a human with a plethora of potent skills and a magical prosthetic limb who explores the world while acquiring followers and empowering a living mansion. Other chapters will be considerably darker than this one is but I wanted to lightly introduce our protagonist instead of introducing him in a battle. Jonah isn't just a fighter, he's a true leader who supports his followers in a variety of capacities. This is as I mentioned in its introductory chapter a light-novel that I've been working on for quite some time so feedback is appreciated as is sharing with your friends and readers if you enjoyed it!

Adding this to the beginning to make it clear: I am an author over at Royalroadl.com and I will be posting this story there from now on. Royalroadl.com is a site far better suited to long stories than Prose is and I hope that others interested in publishing their own long and original works like me begin to make the move over to Royalroadl.com although I will be posting short stand-alone things over here and will continue posting stories over here, just my main ones (this and The Forgotten Kingdom & The Summoner's Plea) will primarily be posted on Royal Road. Check out my profile on RoyalRoadL and see how TFKTSP is going! https://royalroadl.com/user/profile/71639

The Adventurer’s Guild in Albatross is a small building due to the small size of the settlement it’s located in. It’s a simple structure because no one expects much of Albatross due to its isolated location and relative lack of natural resources. In fact the primary reason why there’s a Adventurer’s Guild building in there in the first place is due to its relative closeness to areas and ecosystems filled with monsters and demihumans. Despite the incompetent adventurers who live in Albatross, Albatross could theoretically turn into a wealthy location if skilled adventurers appeared who could reliably capture and make use of the monsters and demihumans who lived relatively closeby, but instead the Adventurer’s Guild had the misfortune of being staffed by a competent administration but unskilled and lousy adventurers.

Rafael was one of the Adventurer’s Guild competent staff members. He served as a friendly and amicable face for adventurers who needed information on quests and he also gave out rewards for special items and for quest completion, whenever a rare individual was found who wasn’t halfway awful at being an adventurer. Today would begin a long series of shocks that turn Rafael’s experiences behind his desk from one that he wasn’t particularly fond of into an often surprising and never boring experience he’d quickly learn to love and it all begins with a single young adventurer, perhaps 19 or 20 walking through the door into the Guild. Or at least he assumed she was an adventurer due to her metallic armor, but the way she walked suggested another career maybe as a performer of some kind. She entered the Guild and briskly walked to Rafael’s desk, before swinging her backpack onto the desk. “Hello sir, do you happen to know the price for freshly captured slimes?” She asked eagerly and with a curious glint in her eyes which to Rafael either signaled greed or curiosity, or a dangerous mixture of the two that he had only ever seen in his birthplace, the city of Talon where adventurers of all skill levels had a similar glint. “Umm… first let me check the prices.” He responded after being shocked that she had suggested that she had such a difficult to acquire item both due to the item itself and due to his estimation of how old she probably was.

The beautiful young girl was wearing ornately crafted armor which suggested that she was either a high-ranking soldier or adventurer or had a talented blacksmith as an ally. It was copper, much like the color of her hair, but clearly skillfully crafted and also easy to move in given the speed the girl demonstrated earlier when she was walking to Rafael’s desk. Rafael quickly searched for the information she asked for and when he found it immediately read aloud. “It’s a silver coin for each slime and at most we’re taking 5 at a time, for ordinary blue slimes.” He told the girl, who nodded and responded “Excellent, master will be quite pleased!” She said and before he could ask her what she meant she grabbed two thick glass bottles from within her backpack and placed them on the desk. “These are five ordinary blue slimes, my master already verified that there’s nothing particularly special about them but he told me to anticipate that you’d double-check.” And as soon as she finished she looked at Rafael with a look that clearly told him she didn’t want to be there and for him to hurry up. Rafael signed internally and activated one of the skills he got by virtue of his class, “Receptionist” and used his “Appraisers Eye”. Luckily each of the blue slimes possessed exactly the same characteristics.

[Unnamed Blue Slime]

[Class: Cannon Fodder]

[Level: 1]

[HP: 10/10]

[Danger Level: F]

[Intelligence: 10]

[Physical Skill: 5]

[Skills: Fluid Body, Elasticity, Flexibility, Blood Sucking Kiss, Slash Resistance]

[Value: Due to their basic nature these slimes are worth roughly 1 silver coin each. If they possessed special skills or above average stats this number would be considerably higher but they lack those so their value is normal for their species and stats.]

A few minutes later the young girl would be on her way home. She had been happy to hear that Rafael confirmed what her master told her and did so honestly since she had a passive skill to detect lies. She knew he’d be honest but was excited to be right, just in case it made her master generous. She took her coins and left, but as she was leaving silently activated a skill of her own, since she predicted that Rafael would try to use his visual skill on her. Her mysterious skill, a gift from her master, prevented visual skills from revealing her information, aside from her class which was “Merchant” which she didn’t care about revealing. She had no doubt that Rafael (whose name she doesn’t know or care to know) would come to know more about her in time, especially since her master wasn’t particularly fond of humans despite him being a human himself. He favored sending her out as his representative and voice, particularly when it came to purchasing or selling goods. Not only did she have a much friendlier personality than he did, she also possessed passive skills which improved her abilities as a merchant due to her species and her class.

Paola was overjoyed to have gotten home when she arrived a few minutes after leaving the Adventurer’s Guild. Her home, the facility owned by her master, was a masterpiece of magical architecture and also her favorite place in the world. It was a massive, and strange living facility which generally took on the appearance of a small mansion coupled with extensive crafting areas such as a technologically advanced forge for the dwarves and for the cyclops, a nice little farm area for the servants who prefer farms over housing options more suitable for humans and demihumans, and even some areas suitable for the creation of and testing of potions which was why her master had acquired a small family of goblins who specialized in such a task. Her own housing was a single relatively undecorated room, where she had simple calculators, safes, and documents related to the transfer of wealth since she was a merchant and obsessed with anything and everything related to the wealth of her master and herself.

Paola was actually one of the newest people to join her master, because he wanted to gain servants who were skilled crafters before he became an adventurer or a store-owner or any possible major career. He wanted skilled individuals of any species who possessed remarkable talents when it came to creating things, be it works of art, or armor and weapons. He had searched far and wide using his living and mobile facility for the most talented creators he could find and he worked hard to convince them to join him. In Paola’s case it had been easy for her to surrender to him, because he knew that the key to her heart was giving her methods by which she could easily and safely acquire wealth. He had already acquired some of the finest blacksmiths she had ever seen, as well as having developed an eye for wealth himself and an impressive business sense for a human. His primary problems were that he had never acquired the “Merchant” class himself and that he didn’t have a particularly warm personality, being rather direct and lacking the gentle manners suitable for the best merchants so when he came across her he directly proved to her that he was a talented individual who had steadily acquired many talented servants and wanted her to join him. She eagerly said yes and embraced Jonah as her master. In exchange she became a trusted servant and one tasked with representing Jonah and the rest of her fellow servants as their spokesperson. She also made all of the business calculations and worked tirelessly to ensure that each day brought new wealth and prosperity to their family.

Her master was named Jonah and he was a mysterious human with a variety of unusual abilities. He was one of the very few skilled monster tamers, but unlike every other tamer she had ever seen his powers were also capable of affecting sentient demihumans and even undead beings. He and one of his servants, a skilled and youthful doberman beastman named Brent had gone out and captured the slimes that Paola had sold while the two were exploring this new territory. Slimes were the most basic of monsters but Brent despite his innate talent was inexperienced, so Jonah had wanted to test Brent’s skills in the field and was pleased that capturing monsters, something incredibly more difficult than simply slaying them, wasn’t difficult for the young servant. Since their opponents had been unintelligent slimes it was easy for Brent to round them up, while Jonah used his magical power to dominate their minds and make them easily controllable for others, including those who lacked the ability to tame monsters.

Paola’s adventures with Jonah and the rest of her new unorthodox family were just beginning. As were Rafael’s experiences with Paola, and eventually Jonah and other humans, demihumans, monsters, and demons.

[Paola Lizbeth]

[Class: Merchant]

[Level: 25]

[HP: 250/250]

[Danger Level: C]

[Intelligence: 500]

[Physical Skill: 50]

[Skills: Protection From Detection*, Merchant’s Tongue, Greedy Seller, Miserly Buyer, Immunity To Debuffs, Illusion Magic (Level 6), Gravity Magic (Level 2)]

[Species: Greed Demon]

*Not Paola’s own skill but rather gifted to her by Jonah to protect her species identification and protect her from experiencing needless speciesism.

A "Other-World" type book/story I've been working on for a while now. Anticipate regular uploads and of course let me know what you think. It'll also be up on Deviant Art if you want to support me there. I'm always looking for feedback and for your thoughts so share them with me if you feel like you have some valuable insights.

https://henrytheknight.deviantart.com

There is a forgotten history which deserves to be known to people in the United States. This is a forgotten history of not only Latin America, but also of Latin Americans in the United States.

Some examples of how the history of Latin America has been forgotten is the general lack of knowledge estadounidenses (including Hispanic and Latin American ones) have of the history of Central America. If you want to see examples of this yourself just ask your friends about the Federal Republic of Central America. The Federal Republic of Central America was what came after not only the end of the Spanish colonization of Central America but also the two year period during which the Central American areas which are now the independent nations of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, were part of the Mexican Empire. The Federal Republic of Central America was a governing body which attempted to unite and consolidate the power of the former provinces of Spain in Central America (excluding what is now known as Belize, and Panama, with Belize being part of the British Empire for many years all the way until 1981 and Panama being part of Colombia until 1903) and to help them not only grow but possess the power to combat invasive foreign influence and to counter any attempts to strip them of their sovereignty. This attempt to be united would last about 17 years, from 1823 until about 1839. It’s a period in Central American history that’s worth knowing about.

To see how Latin Americans in the United States have been stripped of their history why don’t you ask yourself who the first Hispanic politicians in this country were? It’s a tough question to answer off the top of your head, and this is also something we could ask of many other ethnic groups as well. But for Hispanics it goes likes this: Joseph Marion Hernandez of Florida (the Florida Territory at the time) was the first Hispanic American to serve in congress BUT he didn’t serve a full term. Romualdo Pacheco of California in 1877 was the first Hispanic American to serve a complete term in the House Of Representatives. Joseph was a member of the Whig Party and Romualdo was a member of the Republican Party. The first Hispanic Senator was Octaviano Larrazolo who was a Republican (although he was originally a Democrat and got turned off by the party’s frustration of what they viewed as his race-baiting politics) from New Mexico who got to finish an unexpired term of Senator Andrieus Jones (who had died in office) but was followed by fellow Republican Bronson M. Cutting (who would win an election against Dennis Chavez in 1934, and then perish in a plane crash only to see his term fulfilled by Dennis Chavez, who would then proceed to win an election on his own merit and become the very first popularly elected Hispanic Senator, and first Hispanic Democrat Senator). Octaviano Larrazolo would perish just six years before Dennis Chavez would get to fulfill the term of Larrazolo’s successor and eventually win a full term of his own, which would make Chavez the very first conventionally elected Hispanic Senator.

Dennis Chavez is an important figure whose work in civil rights occurred before the work of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Irene Morgan, Lillie Mae Bradford, and other critical leaders of the Civil Rights Movement in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. So why is his work, including the fact that he introduced the first Fair Employment Practices Bill (two decades before the 1964 Civil Rights Act, mind you) so unknown? It’s difficult to say why but it’s immensely frustrating for me as a historian and as a political commentator whose focus is the role of Hispanics and Latin Americans in this nation and beyond. It’s easy to fall into the idea that since we aren’t taught about Hispanic and Latin American politicians in our history classes they must be unimportant but that’s not true. Brave men and women like Chavez played critical roles in conversations regarding civil rights and progressive politics during a time that those conversations were even more heated than they are now but for reasons I do not understand their contributions to this nation have been forgotten including by Hispanics and Latin Americans here ourselves.

It’s vital to us as a group that is growing in size and influence that we move to reclaim these histories. We need to aggressively seek out opportunities to educate our friends and families about these histories. We have our influence in this country because of the work of legends who’ve been forgotten. We have our influence because of men and women of extraordinary character whose names we’ve forgotten and that shouldn’t just bother people it should move them to action because here’s the thing: we can learn about these figures from the past. Currently our knowledge might be limited but we can learn more information easily. It’s not just a matter of pushing ourselves to not only acknowledge our lack of information but also to want to not suffer from this lack of information.

As a historian interested in increasing the public knowledge of my areas of expertise my mission is more complex than merely gaining all of the information I need and want. It’s a matter of pushing people to want to know more and to want to share the knowledge they’ve gained with others. The role I have, especially as someone who doesn’t work in academia is different than that of many other historians. I want to not only gain information but I want to make the information I gain public MORE than I want to gain information. I am not only a historian but I am also a historical communicator who helps untangle the complexities of existing knowledge and make it accessible for a public that (at least in my experience) isn’t always appreciative of the complexities of political history and the difficulties of making that information understandable.

I want to urge anyone who reads this to become more interested in both the history of Latin America and the history of Latin Americans in the United States. These histories often intersect but they are also both distinct histories and understanding and accumulating knowledge in one won’t guarantee an understanding or an accumulation of knowledge pertaining to the other.

In reading this I am setting the stage for my own continued exploration of these topics and I hope that gets you excited. I also hope that reading this post made you want to know more about the events, individuals, and locations I mentioned. If it did, I’d love it if you shared this post and potentially get others just as excited as you got because of it. Let’s work together to have more serious and nuanced discussions related to the histories of Latin America and how Latin Americans and Hispanics have influenced this country over the course of our existence here.

#History #Latino #Latina #Politics #LatinAmerica

"I'll keep this short just in case anyone gets it and already sees them. You can't trust them. They look like angels but that's their disguise. They are hostile. They'll get close to your ship, board it, and then impale everyone. Their feathers are like razor sharp throwing knives. Their words lull you to sleep but they'll wake you up once you've been impaled so they can watch your agony. Even now one of them is watching me. Don't trust the angels." The transmission continues but the next sound is the brutal crunch of bones shattering and an agonized scream.

From the moment the first settlers of Jamestown decided they'd move from what would become the UK to what would eventually become the United States of America, being an American has been synonymous with being a risk taker. At so many points in our nation's history being an American in the best and boldest sense of the word has meant being a risk-taker. So how can we deny that DREAMers are Americans? 

When DREAMers were presented with an opportunity to lead a better life they took it accepting and embracing the huge risks that came with it. Nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants who had spent many years in this country boldly made a choice to stop living in the shadows and in order to do so they took a huge risk. They gave up valuable information about themselves and in exchange they received chances to improve their quality of life and it all began with a risky decision. How is that not American? How is it that we continue to deny what is so plainly true about DREAMers? Each DREAMer is an American. They have gone to our schools, served in our military, and worked our jobs. They made a choice and they decided to chose us. Now it's time that we make a choice and choose them. Being an American often means rejecting the status quo for the sake of moving up and few people have embodied that choice more than DREAMers have.

In less than an hour our President is going to go and make an announcement. I hope that he'll make the right choice. I hope he'll choose to take a risk and potentially upset some of the lesser members of his base and instead actually decide to truly unite Americans, independent of their citizenship and/or their immigration status. If President Trump wants to be the sort of American who improves our country and chooses to become the leader we deserve needs he will start by bravely rejecting the xenophobia of some of his base and by showcasing that this is a nation of opportunity where we value talent and where we value those who are determined to make a better life for themselves even if it means taking bold risks. 

DREAMers are Americans in the best way possible. And we as a nation need to show them and the world that "American" is an earned title and that actions can make someone deserving of that. By defending DACA we do just that. By defending the DREAMers who boldly chose us we do that. By allowing those who work in our stores, by allowing those that attend our schools, and by celebrating those who defend our nation we do that. 

As a defender of DACA I am boldly standing by my fellow Americans. As a defender of DACA I am protecting those who took risks I never had to. As a defender of DACA I am standing in support of individual self-determination and accepting that Americans are not all the same and that some Americans lack citizenship and lack documented and legal immigrant status but that they are no lesser American than I am. I am unapologetically standing with some of the finest members of my nation and some of the bravest people I've ever known when I defend DACA including soldiers and individuals who dream of becoming soldiers for our great nation but would be denied that chance by a draft-dodger who now thinks he can decide who is fit to serve and who isn't. And I will never stop defending DACA because it and the DREAMers it benefits are remarkable individuals who've earned the right to consider themselves Americans. 

Sometimes inhabitants of the small and strange city of New Dallas would begin to see things that the silent guardians dubbed "particularities". These things weren't remarkably out of place but they were noticeable. They would catch the eye of the average person and they'd look at them for a second before something else caught their eye and they looked away. Eventually the people who noticed the particularities for just a moment or two would forget about them. Generally it happened in a flash, perhaps whenever someone who was too close took a quick selfie with the flash on or when someone left a store who had been there for hours when the sun's glare hit them just right, by the time the flash disappeared it had stolen with it the memory of the particularity. That was how these things would generally remain undetected but sometimes the person looking at them didn't look away. Instead they'd be drawn to the things they saw, hypnotized and drawn closer to whatever particular thing caught their eye in the first place. That would begin the process. 

The process was a particularly nasty safeguard that the silent guardians of New Dallas would execute without exception. It was a brutal process which involved the clever magic of the guardians who had gone and enchanted the particularities they were aware of so that they'd trap onlookers with powerful hypnotics which prevented them from leaving the vicinity of whatever particularity they had been unfortunate enough to look at and stupid enough to keep staring at beyond the allotted four full seconds. That was the margin of error before the magic took hold and trapped its victims. Whenever the magic was activated the guardians would feel their collective energy diminish and would rush to the scene to engage the second step in the process. 

To the rare individuals who had been able to witness the process but didn't have knowledge of the silent guardians, a secret organization that sought to protect New Dallas from all manner of supernatural threats and malicious extraterrestrial beings the process looked horrible. To them it involved a street or alley almost immediately being deserted aside from the person or people to whom the process would take place, and the dangerous looking guardians. When it occurred a single guardian would appear and with a cruel sort of ruthless efficiency, that many in New Dallas exclusively associated with contract killers, would use a bizarre looking knife and relentlessly stab the person who was undergoing the process. What the rare individuals who saw the process but didn't know of the guardians didn't know was that the process would save the lives of the victims of the particularities. It did however have the permanent side-effect of stripping its survivors of their sanity. It also left them permanently vulnerable to the particularities and to other supernatural entities which were masters at hiding in plain sight. That being said to fall victim to a particularity was far worse than losing one's sanity. Every victim of a particularity posed a threat to far more than the mind of a single individual. 

Particularities were brutal and bloodthirsty beings who lacked physical forms. They instead hid in plain sight posing as what looked like strange coincidences. A common disguise which was popular for particularities was to take the shape of a car that was parked immediately behind a car and replicate its exact make, model, year, color, and even license plate. In their collective experience that was one of the most reliable ways to trick humans into exploring and eventually getting trapped by them. When a particularity trapped a victim it would drive the victim insane for hours inside of what appeared to be a localized pocket dimension it spawned once a victim drew close enough and release them once it knew it had achieved its goal of mentally weakening its captured prey. It'd brutally strip them of their sanity and any sense of morality they might have once had. Afterwards it'd begin to whisper into the mind of its victim and tell them vile things. Those vile whispers would get worse and worse until the unhinged victim turned violent and rampaged until eventually someone or a group of people brought its rampage to a violent end. There were those who had survived such rampages and helped stop the victims of particularities who were unnerved by how the rampaging harbingers of death would be grateful to those who shot them and inflicted harm on them and how sincere their final words would be which were invariably some variation of "thank you" even as the berserkers were coughing blood or otherwise bleeding profusely. 

Particularities were alien beings who delighted in death and destruction. They particularly love appearing on our Earth where they have no power to directly cause death and destruction but instead play our own species against each other to do so. They dance in our despair and delight in our destruction. 

The particularities might look like coincidences but that was just a disguise. It was a disguise they used to get into the heads of those who'd explore coincidences. It is an alien and inexplicable awareness of particularities which leads many writers to describe coincidences as nonexistent. It's out of unconscious and unquestionable fear that we write away coincidences and attempt to rationalize them. But only the silent guardians have learned how to begin to fight particularities and even keep potential victims of them alive and only in the past year. That being said in the grand scheme of things particularities are only a nuisance compared to the greater dangers out there. They can only rely on the violent, base urges of individuals they've driven insane. There are far bigger threats out there than particularities who don't need to drive someone insane and can instead manifest themselves independently and powerfully without relying on the subjective of those tortured beyond their individual breaking points. 

There are mighty alien beings with inscrutable agendas who empower far more than madmen and who don't have the same needs as the particularities to exert their influence on others. Instead these beings empower a selected few from within poor and elevate them to unimaginable heights. They bring them up and give them nonsensical demands that must be obeyed or else they inflict impossible harm on entire cities, leveling neighborhoods and crippling entire counties just because a rags to riches woman didn't skin her 4th cat on the second Saturday of July. Or worse they instead demand the impossible from someone of good conscious, appearing in forms made up of nightmares and cloaked in sanguine robes, terrorizing a single individual and demanding that that person burn a town to the ground and if they can't or don't they're threatened with the death of every single person they've ever known or worse. These alien beings are the real reasons why the silent guardians quietly and humbly protect the inhabitants of New Dallas. Their impossible whims and wills bring about change and devastation on scales far grander than the particularities could ever do even in their own sadistic imaginations. But in New Dallas the terrors of alien beings have only just begun, and are not limited to the individual evils of the particularities and the enigmatic and vast alien beings who play with the poor and the noble hearted to bring about massive change. 

In time the fickle tales of New Dallas will begin to assemble, as will its silent guardians who consistently protect the city and those who call it home from threats far too powerful to be human. Only you can decide if you want to know the tales of New Dallas and if you are brave enough to learn more about what goes on in the technology advanced ruins of a once American city.

A/N: That last bit was a way for me to say that I like what I wrote here but I am eager to hear your thoughts. It's my way of signalling that this might be the start of something new but I want to hear your opinions before I try to make writing in this universe a common thing. It's my attempt at science-fiction and horror and it's out of my comfort zone but I wanted to see if those who read my works like it. If so I'll definitely make writing stories set in New Dallas a priority of mine when it comes to fictional writing. But I need to know what you think. 

Ramora is a planet that has vague similarities with Earth. It has life. It has humans. Those humans have technology not massively unlike the humanity of Earth but limited to technology available just centuries ago to the mankind of Earth's "15th century" in their modern calendar. It also has massive differences: this world is governed by laws of magic, it has kingdoms and governments led by inhuman magical beings, what occurs to the dead is known and death isn't the end for beings born in and raised in Ramora. In Ramora the living who've perished often become spirits whose strength is tied to the memories the living have about them, with special exceptions belonging to those who've been summoned by spirit magic users and those who inhabit rare spaces where the dead are capable of becoming self-sufficient. Thus a kingdom with solid records will often incorporate the dead into daily life, and the dead are often influential beings whose influence continues to be felt for decades or even centuries after they perish. 

[Jonathan Marshall] [Species: Human] [Gender: Male] [Equipment: Basic Body Armor, Light Sword, Transforming Shoes] [Class: Spirit Magic User] [Titles: Spirit Last's Hope, Savior Of The Forgotten, Spirit Magic User] [Affiliation: The Forgotten Kingdom] [Abilities: Spirit Magic (Class: S, Rank: 1), Infusion Of Authority (Class: B, Rank: 1), True Sight (Class: C, Rank: 1) Superior Automatic Translation (Class: S+, Rank:1)] 

These brackets were the very first thing Jonathan Marshall saw upon opening his eyes for the first time in the world of Ramora. Upon figuring out how to shuffle through these brackets he saw what surrounded him instead of what was just in his mind: a stone room lit by a few dimly burning torches. Inside of this room was a small bed, on which he must have been laying at one point although he now stood up having mysteriously been woken up and starting to move prior to his consciousness returning unbeknownst to him. This room also contained a large wooden door which Jonathan figured would move him in a direction which would lead to more information if he was brave enough to open it. He thought about his situation, aware that he must be lacking a tremendous amount of information which severely impeded his ability to make informed decisions but he understood that it wasn't likely that sitting in this room or even standing in it for an extended period of time would give him the information he needed to make informed decisions and understand his situation. So he made a decision which he hoped he wouldn't regret: he began to walk towards the door. 

The door was bulky but it was also surprisingly light once Jonathan reached it and he very easily moved it out of the way. To say that this shocked the (dead) individuals patiently waiting for the door to open would be an understatement. The Golden King, Jonathan Marshall's summoner, had been waiting for the door to open but didn't think it'd happen immediately. "So the new king opens the door immediately. Impressive." Said the Golden King, the king of the ghosts stuck in The Forgotten Kingdom. "Welcome Jonathan. Allow me to welcome you to your new home and to your new kingdom, should you choose to accept it." Said the Golden King, an intimidating and ghostly figure who just made a rather outrageous offer.

A/N: Welcome to Ramora, Jonathan. Jonathan Marshall is a human politician from Earth who has been summoned to a new world, by a ghost king intent on remaking his once grand kingdom from when he was alive in the distant past. How will our decisive protagonist respond? You'll have to wait to see! 

The ruins of the ancient kingdom looked surprisingly well maintained especially since no living person or breathing civilization had settled in this area in tens of thousands of years. It had a history that extended millennia beyond any history texts that had been written by any present day scholars. In an age forgotten to even the most diligent historians of the world of Ramora an ancient deity had cursed the kingdom to suffer from an unspeakable curse: it’d be forgotten by men and monsters alike, only remembered by the undead and by the spirits of nature who’d come to inhabit it and even then only the spirits and undead themselves in the area once considered part of the ancient kingdom would be forgotten.

The reactions from the undead and from the spirits of nature could not be more different: the undead despised this curse as it trapped them there, due to a mystical law in the world of Ramora about the nature of the undead: an undead being from outside of the kingdom moved into the area by accident or by force would be stuck in the area due to it losing the majority of its powers which stem from memories that those who loved them and those who hated them had of them. Undead in the area would lose too much power to maintain themselves if they weren’t being fed it by the rulers of the Forgotten Kingdom who due to their ancient age had developed a way to feed themselves the energy needed to maintain their existences as undead. Spirits of nature on the other hand drew mystical might and energy from nature itself and thus could come to the Forgotten Kingdom freely and even cherished the place as an area free of humanity where they could live in peace. In time the Forgotten Kingdom became a place of legend. Explorers independent of their species would hear whispers of a land of the dead where spirits and ghosts gathered in great numbers and soon whispers turned into legends of a strange region of the furthest continent where a culture of the dead was beginning to appear. This rumor was spread deliberately by the final and most beloved king of the Forgotten Kingdom. The ancient Golden King tricked both the living and the dead to come to the Forgotten Kingdom. When the dead arrived and realized that they’d been tricked they were approached with a way out: to be absorbed by the Golden King who in life had been a powerful sorcerer and knew the unspeakably powerful magic needed to break the laws of the world that kept an undead being tethered to the world that logically should have belonged to the living which would immediately send the energy that remained in them into the king himself. In this way the ancient Golden King had powers that gradually went from being a reasonably powerful sorcerer in life to powers that had reached the levels of the gods themselves in death.

The Golden King had long since defeated the deity responsible for the curse but in doing so he had depleted the majority of his energy and it took generations to buildup enough magical fuel to finally defeat the curse. On the eve of the 7th era of Ramora’s history the Golden King cast a single powerful incantation with two reality bending effects: He shattered the curse which kept the living from remembering the ancient kingdom and destroyed the meta-physical fears which pushed the living away from the land that was once the ancient kingdom, and he summoned a powerful figure who he hopes will lead the people who come to this newly inhabitable land into a new age of glory and influence.

In the midst of the spell’s activation time had frozen around the Golden King who was surprised by this sudden development. He found himself staring at something vaguely resembling a character creation screen which would be familiar to fans of Role-Playing Games back on Earth. In truth this “screen” was merely the spell urging the Golden King to select criteria from which the summoning aspect of the powerful incantation would be able to best bring forth a candidate from the variety of other worlds it was shuffling through. The Golden King was tasked with selecting characteristics through which the spell he was casting could pick the single greatest candidate for fulfilling the wishes of the King and those who had stayed behind to watch the day the unspeakable curse had been broken. The Golden King selected the following characteristics for his ideal summon: “Someone with great ambition, which is of course a necessary trait for country-building” “Someone with the knowledge necessary to build a stable nation” “Someone with the power to strengthen and harness the might of both the living and the dead” “Someone who possesses legendary management capability who’ll care about getting results more than arbitrary characteristics such as gender, species, social status or even whether or not his allies are among the living or the dead” “Someone who can create a cohesive and multicultural society where any talented figures can come and contribute”. Even for the spell going across multiple worlds it was difficult to find such a figure. Difficult. But not impossible. Which is how the Forgotten Kingdom and the Summoner’s Plea brought Jonathan Marshal to the world of Ramora. 

Magical beings always frightened Elise. She had been frightened of them when she thought they were nothing more than creative but horrific inventions of imaginative and primitive peoples. When they explosively reemerged into the world of man, rebelling against an ancient and unjust magical spell placed on them by a small group of gods and men who believed their age was over and the age of man was the next age for the planet to experience they frightened her even more than they did when they were confined to her imagination and the pages of inventive fiction written by authors from all over the world. They frightened all of mankind when they emerged from their mysterious prison and filled the sky and seas with their gigantic and monstrous forms. They then proceeded to wage war on mankind, uniting the governments of the world as dragons raided major cities and the gods of the seas sunk entire navies and took the lives of millions by sinking entire coast lines beneath the waves and entire island nations vanished below hundreds of tsunamis. 

The world Elise had been born in was violently and permanently changed by the reemergence of ancient gods and mythic monsters. Cities vanished and countries were permanently altered, if they survived at all. 2010 was the most eventful year in human history, and people born in 2009 and 2010 had an infancy fundamentally different than young children and young adults who had been born just a decade or two earlier, as they went to school with young demons, angels, and all manner of magical and supernatural beings. Elise was born in 1999 and graduated from high school in 2017. She had heard the rule over 1,000 times during the course of her experience in high school. Despite this Elise had never knowingly encountered a magical being herself. 

The rule was simple: do not attempt to force a magical being to do anything for you. Magical beings punished those who violated this rule harshly. Typically they killed humans foolish enough to violate this rule, but they had worse things they could do to foolish people who decided this rule wasn't worth following. They could easily strip men and women of their freewill and enslave them. Many humans felt they enjoyed this and would do it eagerly if given the chance, which motivated them to repeat it more insistently to their children and their friends.

Elise's automatic reaction to a repetition of the rule was something she hated about herself. Hearing the rule made her begin to feel as if a magical being was near, watching those who whispered the rule. She got so frightened at that thought that she'd begin to breath more frantically, and her vision would blur. Both her therapist and she herself had originally thought that she'd grow accustomed to the repetition of the rule, but she never had. Although over time she began to be able to control her unconscious reaction, at least a little bit so it wasn't as dramatic and as visible. 

"Come on dude. We all know the rule." Complained someone nearby, a boy who looked to be about her age. Assuming that the complainer had agreed to attend the University of North Carolina at Greensboro would be a fair assumption given that he also wore the same lanyard that she did which made his status as a future freshman apparent to anyone who worked at the University and the students of the University roaming campus during the summer, who had likely once been attendants of SOAR, the University's student orientation program during the summer. He was complaining to one of the student leaders, a member of their orientation staff who was dressed in the University's colors to showcase student pride and presumably student leadership. 

The student orientation staff member shrugged his shoulders and responded by saying; "Look I know that you're familiar with the rule but not everyone might be. It's important that you know it because this city has an active community of magical beings and their allies and to them that rule is no joke. If you ignore it you could be forfeiting your life, or worse. At this University we repeat the rule to our students, both prospective and current, because we care about keeping you alive and making sure that the rights of magical beings are respected. If you violate the rule and your life is ended or your freewill is taken from you that's on you. We aren't liable. But if you want to get cheeky I'm glad you're doing it here with me, a human and a friend, and not a magical being who could be decidedly less friendly than me."

Elise wasn't happy with the conversation so she decided not to focus on it and instead to take in the environment. The student orientation staff member had insisted they do this part of the orientation process outside, a decision that while popular in their group had apparently not been popular with other staff members as they were all alone. They were walking outside of what had been called "the quad", a collection of residence halls where they were going to spend the night once the day was over. Elise enjoyed the feeling of the sun on her skin. She smiled as she gradually calmed down and followed the staff member assigned to her and a small group of other attendees of the orientation. She felt her reaction to the repetition of the rule gradually fade away and took time before focusing on the conversation the staff member was having with the group as he informed them to the dining options on campus and led them towards a large building he had called the Moran Commons.

In downtown Greensboro a young man was walking with the sort of speed that hinted that he had nothing on his mind but his immediate arrival at some location of importance to himself. He was dressed in a simple but effective suit, and had a sharp tie on. His eyes were hidden by sunglasses but if they hadn't been no one would have been fooled by his disguise as a human being. Underneath his sunglasses his eyes were the darkly seductive eyes of a demon, the sort of eyes that people had once believed belonged to the creatures tormenting people in Hell, not as part of an intoxicatingly beautiful face of a supermodel or as the final intimidating details which complete the face of a strict drill-instructor. If he wanted to, the young man could destroy part of his suit by unfurling his wings, currently painfully trapped within his suit, since he had only recently gotten this suit from a local Men's Warehouse. rather than having it custom ordered for his specific body-type. But when he got paid he'd go and place an order on another custom suit made to accommodate his unique physical features.

One of the first historians of the modern era, classified as the age of super-heroes wrote down this brief account of the first battle between super-humans in a textbook on modern history. It's been criticized as having a strange relationship with tenses but the historian has a habit of mixing past and present tense and children tend to enjoy this account because it piques their interest in things like superhuman physiology and the history of super-humans. 

Kevin knew something was wrong the instant he registered the pain of being stabbed. Later on he would attribute his mental discomfort to his awareness that he should have been in more pain than he was, but he still fell to his knees and had to catch his breath. He supposed having someone stick a knife in his shoulder would do that to him. His calmness in that situation still makes him feel bizarre even to this day.  

Pamela turned the instant she heard the all too familiar sound of a knife piercing flesh and instinctively took a step back to distance herself and Kevin's attacker: Miranda. It was unfortunate for Miranda that of the three of them Pamela was the first to become aware of her superpowers having known about her power for years at this point and even having consciously trained herself. Miranda knew something was off the moment Pamela stretched her hand and took aim at Miranda. Moments later Miranda was violently blown back by an invisible wall of force that extended outward from Pamela's palm in the shape of a massive fist and moved at what appeared to be the speed of sound until it savagely slammed into the woman who had stabbed Kevin. For Miranda it was the first time she met someone else who had control over their superpowers, and for Kevin it was the first time he had ever seen someone consciously use their superpower. What the three of them didn't know at the time was that it was the first time people with superpowers had battled each other. 

At this point in the sudden battle Kevin was still injured, but now with Miranda having been blown away from him Pamela was able to safely approach him. Neither Pamela nor Miranda were aware of Kevin's superpower. Kevin himself wasn't familiar with it but that didn't stop it from manifesting violently in this life and death situation.  

Of all of the superpowers in the three super-humans gathered in that dark alley Kevin's first and primary power was the most potentially violent. He has the power to visualize his thoughts and bring them to life. A special fusion of illusion conjuration and life-creation that hasn't manifested in any other known super-humans. And his first creation inspired by his emotions at the time and the image of a knife in his mind was a massive monster that began to materialize in front of him, after Miranda was blown away by Pamela. The monster seemed to absorb the darkness of the alleyway they were in and took more than a few seconds to begin to solidify, something which scientists who examined Kevin would attribute to the distractions that come with being stabbed and in pain and being caught in a life or death battle. But the massive creature still in the process of coming to life vaguely resembled a Rhinoceros Beetle the size of a horse and the width of a mini-cooper. "To think of all of the people who could have tried to kill me..." He quietly said as he stood up for the first time and looked at Miranda who was standing still, another knife in her hand and was constantly shifting her gaze from Pamela to Kevin, and every few seconds to the creation of Kevin which grew larger and louder with every glance. 

After this battle Miranda's superpower would turn her into a potent assassin. Her first and primary superpower is the ability to create weapons using her imagination and fire them using her focus as the ammunition. It seems that during the first battle wherein Miranda strives to kill Pamela and Kevin she hadn't yet mastered this ability to the degree she would have during her later battles and even her first successful assassinations where she creates guns and even what appeared to be enchanted weapons straight out of video-games and fantasy novels. Her power is different from Kevin's because Kevin has a hard time with complex inorganic objects, and Miranda can easily conjure even military-grade arms but has never successfully created living objects. 

At this point Miranda had already resolved herself to kill Kevin and Pamela and had been practicing but the unforeseen complications had been beyond her ability to predict even in her wildest scenarios. She hadn't anticipated Kevin or Pamela having their own superpowers and hadn't ever considered Pamela getting in such a powerful blow or for Kevin's power to turn this 2 on 1 battle into a 3 on 1. Pamela's apparent telekinesis made it impossible for Miranda to approach either of them, and Miranda's instincts told her flinging her weapon would result in it being deflected and used against her, possibly even precisely instead of just being deflected. Miranda immediately knew that if she were to succeed in this attempted double homicide she'd have to flee for now and come at this in a different way. It was unfortunate for her that the moment she made up her mind to flee was the moment Kevin's creation was fully animated and charged at her. 

Since no one expected Miranda to try and kill Kevin no one expected that Miranda had also begun learning parkour. She easily escaped the charging beetle, even with the assistance of Pamela's telekinesis propelling it along by jumping onto a wall and using her power to create shoes which sped her escape and aided her in jumping away from the world's first superheroes. 

The first ever known battle between superheroes and a super-villain took place November 23rd 2017 in a small alleyway in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. It involved the politician named Pamela Cortes who is also the super-heroine nicknamed "The Fist" in English, and her ally the private security chief named Kevin Morazan who is the super-hero nicknamed "The Shadow" in English thanks to the events that went down in his first battle. The super-villainess better known as "The Gunslinger" was their attempted killer whose reasons for trying to kill two people she had once been close too is still unknown by historians of the modern era of super-heroes and super-villains. None of the people involved in the battle really like the idea of having "super-hero" or "super-villain" names because none of them picked their own names and all three of them were open and public about their powers, not wearing costumes or doing anything like superheroes in comic-books from the 20th and early 21st century. 

Pamela is a very public figure whose fame existed before she openly revealed her powers thanks to her work as a civil rights activist but Kevin is a private individual who makes a living working in Tegucigalpa and aiding Pamela from the shadows, confronting her enemies before they can publicly strike and inflict unexpected injuries on people unrelated to Pamela or Kevin. Miranda is an assassin who frequently travels through Honduras confronting Kevin and Pamela at any and every opportunity, inevitably failing in her attempts on their lives but usually inflicting at least one casualty, oftentimes on another super-human who was acting as a support for Kevin and Pamela. She has innumerable contacts in the underworld and is classified as an enemy of numerous governments, as well as having the distinction of being one of the most wanted people in the world whose enemies are not just "democratic" nations but even corrupt ones like North Korea and Saudi Arabia. Odds are one day a confrontation will happen where Miranda is seen as and marked as an enemy of mankind and is actively and openly pursued by the collective governments of the world instead of this strange moment where she is marked as a target but isn't actively pursued thanks to the dangers that come with hunting her down. Or she'll push Pamela or Kevin too far and draw their wrath upon her. But that day hasn't happened yet. 

A/N: Not enough superheroes and superhero stories take place in or are from Latin-America. I want to challenge that. So I'm creating original superheroes and superhero stories taking place in Latin-America. Like it? Let me know!