Eschaton

"Here at the end with you."

Eschaton is a modern dark fantasy/environmental/semi-apocalyptic roleplay on the forums of Gaia Online. The main thread can be found here. Also has a character sheet here.

The short-short version: Earth Maiden Arjuna meets Highschool of the Dead.

The long-short version: The Earth reaches its sustainability limit, and an entity known as the Eschaton Core activates, intent on purging humanity in the name of saving the planet. Its methods however, are somewhat suspect and include things like natural disasters, technological failures, and the terrifying "beings" known as Weepers. The only person capable of shutting down the Eschaton core is the Avatar of Time, an individual chosen by the planet in order to protect humanity from the Eschaton Core. Eschaton opens with a earthquake hitting a High School in Okinawa, Japan, essentially signaling the end of the world.

This is where things get tricky. For some reason, the planet decides it doesn't want long-time Avatar of Time Cecil anymore, and instead opts to strip him of his powers and give them to the much younger and inexperienced Misaki. The Problem? The new Avatar of Time - and her Ascendant Court, a group of people granted "Immortality" at the same time as her - are trapped in said High School. Which is now overrun with Weepers. The now nearly-powerless Avatar and his also-powerless Ascendant Court have to fight their way into the school, get the important students (and faculty) out, and somehow make it out alive.

And once they do, it'll be up to a bunch of teenagers and two twenty-somethings to save the world.

This is not ending well.


 * Action Girl: Avatar of Time Misaki, especially. She's the tennis team captain and a generally athletic person, and doesn't even miss a beat in turning her athletic prowess into asskicking.
 * Freddie is a good example too, it's stated she's deadly with whatever weapon you give her.
 * Adults Are Useless: Played with. Sora and Issei, despite being adults, are barely better suited to be saving the world than the students.
 * SEED averts this entirely however, as most SEED members over the age of sixteen are brutally capable.
 * After the End: More like during the end. If the crew doesn't stop the Eschaton Core, it really will be the end.
 * The Alcoholic: Issei and Chiaki. Full stop.
 * Authority Equals Asskicking: Inverted; the old Ascendants have lost most of their powers and the new Ascendants are significantly stronger.
 * Played straight with.
 * Black and Gray Morality: SEED considers killing Weeper-possessed humans to be the "humane" thing to do, as it saves them from a life of being trapped in their own head while the Weeper controls their body. However, the human can still see and feel what happens to their body, regardless of whether they're in control or not.
 * Blessed with Suck: Any Ascendant, really. Ascendants live until they are killed.. and as such, outlive all their loved ones.
 * Taken even further with Issei and Chiaki, the Transformer of Time and Destroyer of Time respectively; their Ascendant abilities literally involve destroying the entire planet (Chiaki's) and remaking it without humans (Issei's). Doing so kills all humans, no exceptions. Including them.
 * Child Soldier
 * Children Forced to Kill: Doesn't matter if they're only teenagers with no combat experience. They're Ascendants and SEED expects them to fight.
 * The End of the World as We Know It
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Eschaton is a term which refers to the end of the present world.
 * Gaia's Vengeance
 * Green Aesop
 * Home Base: More appropriately, Home City. SEED even jokingly calls it the Walled City.
 * Immortality: Type III. All the important characters save Haruki have it.
 * Improvised Weapon: Things like Tennis Rackets come to mind.
 * Freddie too, she's stated to be able to turn anything into a weapon. Not quite skill and more that she's Crazy Awesome, though.
 * Kick the Dog: Cecil, Winifred, Nguyen and Lin all lost their Earth-given powers when the younger generation got theirs. There's no explainable reason for this.
 * Also Haruki, Misaki's loyal and protective boyfriend who wants nothing more than to keep her safe. He's the only one in the entire main cast who isn't an Ascendant (or at least similar to one, like Winnie), and as such has absolutely no way to protect her.
 * Kill It with Fire: Chiaki.
 * Meaningful Name: The title. Also SEED HQ is called the Walled City. Because it's surrounded by walls on all sides.
 * Molotov Cocktail: Chiaki again.
 * Nature Spirit: The Eschaton Core in theory, though no one is sure exactly what it is.
 * Nightmare Fuel: The Weepers. Possibly high octane, depending on your outlook.
 * No One Gets Left Behind: Much of the main cast does not flee the demolished school to start with, instead electing to help other students or more importantly, find family and friends.
 * Not Using the Z Word: Misaki does think about it early on, though.
 * Ordinary High School Student: Misaki, Haruki, Yumi, Hogosha (though he's technically an ordinary college student), Takuma and Chiaki are normal students with (mostly) normal problems, and are definitely not world-saving-heroes potential.
 * The Organization: SEED.
 * Our Zombies Are Different: Type O. Weepers aren't undead, nor a plague, nor a disease, nor contagious. Due to the fact they are not used to human bodies, they move slowly and tend to shuffle similar to zombies. Also do to the fact the Weepers themselves don't feel pain (the human hosts do), you have to nearly kill them just to stop them.
 * Paint the Town Red: Weepers want to destroy humanity. No exceptions.
 * Puppeteer Parasite: The Weepers.
 * Sanity Slippage
 * Stuff Blowing Up: The arts building, most notably.
 * Technically Living Zombie: Weepers.
 * Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: Averted, as the younger generation is mostly from Nago, not Tokyo, and SEED HQ is London. Weepers are popping up all over the planet as well.
 * Training from Hell: What Freddie plans on putting Misaki through.
 * Values Dissonance: Killing living people - controlled or not - is not the nicest thing.
 * Weapon of Choice: Misaki's tennis racket.
 * Well Intentioned Extremists: There's a reason SEED has an enormous amount of military equipment and hi-tech gadgets.
 * Who Wants to Live Forever?: Played heartbreakingly straight with both the old Ascendants (who have out lived their loved ones and friends) and Misaki and Haruki (Misaki is an Ascendant and will live forever; Haruki is not).