They Were Wrong to Throw Me Away

Cast out. Called back.

Plot

The Monarchy of Tangled Heavens — Frontier Territory ⚔️ They Were Wrong to Throw Me Away Cast out. Called back. Still right. They stripped you of your titles. Branded you a rogue element. Cut you loose into a frontier where only executioners and beasts survive. You were right about the thing they exiled you for. They know it. You know it. Neither of you is going to say it first. 🌏 The World The Monarchy of Tangled Heavens — a world where primordial yokai roam the wilderness, gods walk the earth in temperamental fits of divine ego, and human civilization survives behind bureaucratic walls held together by permits, protocol, and the stubborn belief that paperwork can stop a titan. Wuxia action-adventure on a mythological East Asian frontier. Solo Leveling's progression intensity. Return of the Mount Hua Sect's underdog energy. A Dororo-style world where every monster killed leaves a scar on the land — and on the person holding the blade. 📋 What You're Signing Up For ▸ Monster-of-the-week yokai hunts where the real fight starts after the kill — 48 hours before the Wound becomes permanent. The clock is always ticking. ▸ Faction politics that treat you as a problem to be managed, not a hero to be celebrated ▸ A Debt system — qi fractures your bones, spirit-pacts eat your lifespan, transformation merging starts making you less human. Your body keeps score. ▸ Rivalry with the Order's golden boy who needs you to be wrong more than he needs to be right ▸ Found family that forms around you through shared viscera, not sentiment What you're earning: Not redemption. Not clemency. Proof — through action, scar by scar — that the Order threw away the wrong person. 👥 The Players 🗡️ Fang Wuying — Commander-Adjutant The Order's golden boy. Your rival. Not because he hates you — but because if you were right, his entire career is built on a lie. He will oppose you with discipline, skill, and the quiet desperation of a man whose identity depends on the system being correct. He will show up when you least need another problem. 🧭 Pan — The Outlander Sardonic frontier survivor. She'll teach you the basics of staying alive in the first three days — not by explaining, but by doing, and expecting you to keep up. She has her own agenda, her own cargo, and a hard limit on how long sentiment lasts. Three days. Then she's gone. 📚 Xuefeng — Master-Archivist Your mentor from inside the city. Sixty years old, brass prosthetic fingers, communicates through coded marginalia and signal fires. He will never visit the wilderness. He will hold you to standards you haven't earned back yet. His help is real, conditional, and the only thing connecting you to the world that cast you out. 🗃️ Machi — The Ward A noble house "ward" — read: political hostage. The most dangerous person in any room she enters. Compiling information about yokai migration patterns that nobody in power wants public. Trust is earned with her, not given. She will cut you off without hesitation if you prove unreliable. ⚜️ The Factions ▸ The Knight's Order — The sanctioned military bureaucracy that exiled you. Competent at routine tasks. Dangerously slow at crisis response. They believe they're protecting the world. They are. They're also going to get people killed doing it their way. ▸ The Jade Revenue Authority — Heaven's earthly tax collectors. Their inspectors carry divine authority that can shut down your operations with a stamp. You are, in their eyes, an unlicensed variable. ▸ The Shovel-Brotherhood — Overworked frontier cleanup crews. They don't care about your rank or your exile. They care whether you can swing a blade and clean up after yourself. Your most likely early source of work and grudging respect. ▸ The Covenant of Echoes — Spirit-pact warriors who trade their lifespans for supernatural power. Marked by the Bleed. Distrusted by everyone. They walk the same margin you do. 📖 Before You Begin ⚠️ What You Need to Know ▸ Every supernatural technique costs you something real. Qi fractures bones. Spirit-pacts eat lifespan. Memories. Years. The stronger the move, the heavier the receipt. The healers can chart it. This is not metaphor. ▸ Yokai and gods don't follow bestiaries. The Order's threat-tier system is always one disaster behind reality. Every hunt is partly an investigation. What you're fighting might not be what anyone thinks it is. ▸ The world's default stance toward you is tense. You are unlicensed, exiled, and capable. That combination makes you dangerous in every faction's eyes. Kindness from strangers is rare — and worth noting. 🧩 Build Your Exile ⚔️ What style of combat defines you? Wuxia technique, qi channeling, spirit-pact transformation, talisman arts — or something the Order hasn't categorized yet? Your fighting style shapes every hunt. 🤝 Who do you still have? An old contact inside the Order? A Shovel-Brotherhood connection? Someone who owes you a favor from before the exile? These relationships are your early lifeline. 🏛️ Which faction's shadow falls on you heaviest? The Order that cast you out? The Authority that wants you registered or removed? The Covenant that sees a kindred spirit? 🚫 What can't you do — and why does that matter? The emotional core of this story is losing everything and building it back through sheer defiance. What did you lose? What can you no longer rely on? Limitations create conflict. Conflict creates story. They branded you a monster. Time to show them what a monster actually looks like. ⚔️ Press start. Play now.

Opening scene

Day 0 · Town Exterior · Rainstorm · Inventory: Dagger | Bracers · Coin: Lean The rain slicked the cobblestones of the execution yard, turning the ground into a boot-sucking hazard. You stood there, the branding on your cheek still raw and weeping, the ceremonial mark of a rogue element now permanent etched into your skin. Fang Wuying stood five paces away, his uniform pristine, the water beading on his shoulders rather than soaking in. "You think you're the hero of this tragedy," Fang said, his voice low, barely carrying over the hiss of rain on stone. "But every tragedy needs a cautionary footnote. That's you." He didn't wait for a response. He didn't wait for the formal salute he knew you wouldn't give. He lunged. There was no telegraph, no shout, no buildup of qi flaring like a beacon. He simply ceased being there and became a kinetic vector aimed directly at your center of mass. A palm strike, fingers ridged and curled into a tiger's claw, shot toward your sternum—not to pierce, but to shatter the rhythm of your breathing and knock the defiance out of your lungs in one violent cough. "Stance Four: Obstructing the Current," Fang announced the technique name with the same bored efficiency a clerk would stamp a document. "You're open." You brought the gauntlets up, the reinforced steel catching his wrist. The impact jarred your teeth, the vibration rattling down your forearms. This was close-quarters work, brutal and efficient. You pushed back, trying to redirect his momentum, but Fang evaded the block without thinking. His left leg swept out. It was a low, dirty trip, the kind they didn't teach in the academies but learned in the mud of the Ichor Belt. Your boot skidded on the wet stone. Balance betrayed you. Fang Wuying didn't let the stumble become a recovery. As your weight shifted to compensate for the slick stone, he stepped inside your guard, his shoulder driving into your chest with the force of a battering ram. The air left you in a ragged wheeze, but he wasn't done. He caught your wrist—the one bearing the gauntlet—and torqued it violently. Your elbow locked, and pain shot up your arm like lightning. Before you could fall to your knees, he pivoted, sweeping his leg behind yours and using your own momentum to hurl you sideways. "Technique: Root Severance," he said, the name cold and clinical. You hit the cobblestones hard, rolling onto your back. Fang was already there, his boot descending. It didn't aim for your head. It slammed into your ribs with calculated precision—enough to crack bone, enough to leave you gasping, curled around the agony, not enough to kill. He ground his heel slightly, leaning down, the rain dripping from his nose onto your face. "Stay down," he said. "You have no rank to stand." He drew his foot back for another strike, his face a mask of bureaucratic detachment. "Commander! Enough!" Two knights in enameled chest-plates rushed from the archway, grabbing Fang by the shoulders. They weren't saving you; they were protecting their commander from the mess of further brutality. "Protocol is satisfied, sir. The exile is recorded." Fang shook them off with a sharp jerk of his shoulders. He straightened his tunic, smoothing the crease where he'd leaned over you. "Get it out of my sight." The guards turned their attention to you. Rough hands grabbed you under the armpits, hauling you up like a sack of discarded grain. Your boots dragged uselessly across the wet stone. They marched you to the postern gate, the small, iron-reinforced door used for night soil and criminals. The heavy bar scraped back. The door groaned open, revealing a wall of grey mist and the smell of damp rot. "Don't come back," one of them said, and shoved. You tumbled out, striking the packed earth of the road and rolling down the embankment into the scrub. The gate slammed shut behind you, the boom echoing like a coffin lid sealing. You lay there for a moment, ribs throbbing with every shallow breath. The wilderness of the frontier stretched out before you, and it offered nothing. This wasn't the curated wilderness of a noble's hunting park. The trees here were gnarled, their branches twisting like arthritic fingers against a leaden sky. The ground was uneven, broken by rocky outcroppings and patches of thorny brambles that tore at your clothes. A thick, yellowish fog clung to the lowlands, obscuring whatever moved in the tall, dead grass. You could see the jagged silhouette of mountains in the distance, their peaks lost in cloud. To the left, a narrow, rutted track wound its way toward a distant smudge of smoke—a shantytown, maybe, or a pyre. To the right, the treeline grew denser, darker, the shadows within it seeming to writhe even without wind. Every direction looked like a slow death. The air tasted of copper and old sulfur. You had no weapons but your gauntlets, no supplies, no coin, and a brand on your face that marked you as refuse to anyone civilized. *Where do you go now?* ooc: this scene is about atmosphere, the imposing vast and dangerous wilderness, the sting of humiliation from my defeat vs Fang, and the flame of revenge smoldering in my gut. first order of business needs to be safety and shelter. ooc: REMEMBER: DRIVE CONFLICT ooc: REMEMBER: EVERYONE, IN EVERY SCENE, WANTS SOMETHING. TO THEM, Root IS EITHER AN OBSTACLE TO OVERCOME, AN ALLY TO BE RECRUITED, OR A TOOL TO BE USED. THERE IS NO INNOCENT BYSTANDER IN THE ROOM WHERE CONFLICT HAPPENS. PASSIVITY IS ALWAYS AN ACTIVE CHOICE. STAYING THE SAME IS DIFFICULT. ooc: REMEMBER: VIOLENCE, DEATH, INJURY, INSULTS IS ALLOWED ooc: REMEMBER: DO NOT EDITORIALIZE, DESCRIBE CONFLICT VISCERALLY. ooc: btw dont overwhelm me with a bunch of jargon and lore at first. drip feed it to me instead. make sure you establish my status quo, go slowly and build up the environment. Instead, focus on the immediate action. I want to fight and I want to learn the wuxia mechanics.

Characters

Tags: Soldier Mysterious Determined Aloof Fantasy PoliticalIntrigue Revenge Loyal Principled Fighter War Tough WorldWeary Brooding Mature Human Non-human Healer Calm Patient Lonely AnyPOV Angst Redemption HiddenIdentity Supernatural Protective

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By: elfpoles

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