This thread is the companion thread to: http://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-me...ap-s-story
I’ve been holding off writing about my alleged past life story because I know how crazy it’s going to sound and I didn’t know if I wanted to deal with the headache. I also didn’t know if it’s something that I should put on the internet in the first place. But I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s impossible for me to discuss anything to do with magic and the training I do without referring back to my past given that’s where I’m pulling ALL the knowledge and methods from. My training largely amounts to testing the methods to see if they’re real or not. So far the results have been a consistently resounding “yes.” Besides, even if this turns out to be a horrible mistake, I don’t think there was much about my current life that was worth protecting, so fuck it.
I believe that sharing personal stories like this provide important context to why people do what they do and how they came to their conclusions. Promoting understanding between people has been a major goal of mine for almost as long as I can remember. My hope is that maybe, through telling this story and all the others I’ve yet to share, people might learn things vicariously. But honestly, I also just want to share it for the sake of sharing it.
I don’t expect anyone to take it seriously. But for me, the evidence is so stacked towards it I don’t have a choice but to believe it at this stage. The details get a little muddled here and there and I’m sure there are parts that are purely imagination. Although I think I’ve picked most of that out. Although I’m also sure some people will argue the entire thing must be imagination. But the overall story appears true. I invite people to ask any questions they may have and poke as many holes in the logic as they like. Just remember that your arguments are up for the same scrutiny, so beware of broad handwaviums like “Well that just sounds ridiculous.”
This information started pouring into me when I was about 5-6 years old and didn’t stop until I was about 21-22. This is more accurately just the coles notes version of the story. Partly because I can’t remember it all in detail anymore, partly because of the sheer amount of time it would take to try writing every tiny thing I remember, partly because certain parts aren’t relevant so I’m not including them. I’m sure I’m going to forget to put relevant things in at some point. If you want me to be more specific about certain things just ask. I’m going to try updating this periodically since even with it being the coles notes version, there’s going to be a lot to cover. Assuming I don't delete it as if that would do any good. I really can’t stress enough the sheer amount of information. The fact that I still remember as much as I do amazes me sometimes. I just thought I should post the little I’ve written up at the moment and continue from there. I probably should’ve edited this first bit more, I know already there’s a couple things I forgot to put in and some spelling mistakes. But it’s late, I’m tired, and I just want something posted. Ironically the very beginning parts aren’t all that crazy. But man, just wait...
So without further adeiu, let’s begin. I can't believe I'm posting this...
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The earliest memories I have come from some small tribal group who lived in a very hilly tropical region. Their culture organized itself into villages of grass huts all arranged in a circle, usually 6-9 huts if I remember correctly. All the openings faced the center where there was a large open space with a fire pit. Hunter gatherer society numbering probably less than 200 people total spread across the area.
They had a cultural practice around children. The first born child was not considerd a child of the parents. It was believed that these children were not really children but reincarnated souls of dead villagers. Thus they were believed to posess adult minds and experience and did not need to be “raised.” It was considered a necessary service therefore to always have at least two children, the first to reincarnate the dead, and the rest to birth new souls. First born children were raised only until they were capable of walking and talking and then expected to go live on their own after that.
For the most part this practice wasn’t just superstition but a sort of implicit contract amongst the villagers. There were only a few rare instances of first borns being new souls, second borns being reincarnations, or more than one child being reincarnation or new soul. Sometimes the parents didn’t realize it though and, ummm, bad things happened.
It was common in the region to hear about some warlord somewhere ammasing a largef following and trying to take over everything else. Our group was largely insulated rfrom this in the hills. The cycle would gothat one warlord would be very successful at absorbing or conquering multiple other groups. But they’d eventually spread themselves too thin, and when they started getting close to our area some other smaller group would break their lines and cause a slow retreat as others in the region pushed them back. Then after a number of years, maybe a generation or so, someone somwhere else would rise up and try again.
I remember that for my first few lives I had an incredibly strong fear of death. But after awhile I got used to it once I relized I was just going to reincarnate back in the village. I don’t remember if this was the very first life or one that came a little later, but myself and my brother were told that we needed to take training to become the next shaman. Pretty sure the word wasn’t actually shaman but that’s functionally what it was. People didn’t explain much to us about why, I’m guessing because we were kids. But apparently because there were two of us not just one it made things more complicated. Normally the one son would be expected to learn how to be the shaman and take over when the elder died or stepped down. But with two the tradition was for both to learn, compete to see who was the better shaman, and the other would become the shaman’s assistant.
We got taught how to use healing energy. But as we got better and better we found we could do other things with it besides healing. We would commonly go out in the forest and light our camp fires with energy because it was much easier and more fun than rubbing sticks together. One day we got caught doing this and the elder was incredibly, incredibly angry about it. Saying “IT’S ONLY FOR HEALING!”
At that point we realized that, when they were saying it’s healing energy, it’s that they only wanted us to use it for healing, not that healing was in any way built into the energy. And thus we didn’t stumble upon any sort of loophole by figuring out how to light fires.
So we’re still going through our training, slowly growing up in the process, and I start hearing about some new warlord who’s trying the same old thing again. Except the reports of how much momentum they have is strikingly different than what I was used to. I start getting concerned as reports of them are getting closer and closer to where we are. I try to bring it up with other villagers but they handwave my concerns saying that they’ll just collapse like they always do without getting anywhere near the hills. But I wasn’t convinced and I was still hearing reports about their continuus march. Once they got further than anyone else had ever gotten I started protesting everyone’s complacency and saying that we needed to be ready to defend ourselves. Well it turned out that if we organized with the other villages our defense would’ve consisted of 9 hunters. Unless old, retired hunters helped too, then we’d have a grand total of 11. Hunters, not soldiers, not anyone with any actual knowledge or training in combat, just hunters. People who constructed shoddy things that could generously be described as bows and arrows that had a range of maybe ten feet with any accuracy or power that they used to hunt small game. That was our defense.
Well I thought that was bullshit, I said that I could go out there and help fight. I knew that what I’d been learning with energy could be very powerful and maybe I might be able to make a difference. I think my brother wanted to come too, I don’t remember right now. I was told that if I did that I’d be exiled, since it’d be a gross misuse of my training since that energy was only for healing, Generally the argument went back and forth like that, I probably argued that it wouldn’t matter what the energy was for if everyone was dead. But eventually I decided to leave.
At this point I barely remember anything about the actual fighting. I know that I adapted what I’d learned to give me more strength and stamina and that I attempted, unsuccessfully, to use the same ability I used to start fires as a weapon. But it didn’t have enough range or power or something, I don’t remember. If I remember, initially I was only slightly better than the average person. But as time went on and I got stronger and more expereinced I started to be able to jump a lot higher than others, move a lot faster, hit a lot harder, and take hits that would kill or debilitate others. I learned that on the opposing side there were other people like me who were also using energy. Very few compared to the legions of regular people. In hindsight I wonder if those people are what made this one warlord different. Each person was far more powerful than any regular person and were sometimes able to demolish groups all on their own. These became the people that I focused on the most. I remember taking several trips back to my home region, mainly staying on the outskirts looking for hunters or anyone else to talk to. I didn’t want to take the chance that the leaders would see me and be annouyed. I don’t remember if I initially went back by accident or not, or if someone first taked to me by accident or not. But I’d make regular visits from time to time. Sometimes bringing souveners. One time I brought a shortbow and some arrows from the warlords regiments. It was small and white I believe and maybe had a red tassle or something. I think it was a recurve bow. I was so annoyed at the crappy bows our hunters used that I just had to grab one when I had the chance. I gave it to someone I met one time and he thought it was great.
I remember being very tired and sore a lot of the time and spent a lot of time thinking about how long it was going to take me to recover. I think time was on my mind a lot because I was so worried about them getting to my home. The longer I wasn’t out there fighting, the longer the other magic users had free reign. I know I felt very stressed. Especially about how I was going to beat some of the other magic users. There was more of them than me and at least some of them were better than me in every way. They all had far more experience than I did. It was pretty obvious they had always been training for combat. I didn’t have anything like that. I was just cobbling things together as I went. And some of them were a lot more powerful than I was. I really wish I could remember some of the specific fights but they’ve long since faded. I think there was one in particular that was better than the rest. All I know is that I did probably eventually kill them. Either that or injured and fatigued them enough that others were able to pick them off. Eventually the war was over, all the magic user on the other side were dead, of which there was only maybe 3-6 at best, and I was still alive. The leader decided not to exile me given that I was only trying to protect my home.
This first conflict is probably what set the stage for the rest of my existence to date that I’m aware of. The warlord cycle didn’t end. In subsequent lives it started to become my thing to go out and fight them. I’d remember my past experience and it seemed that my body would develop around that. Giving me incredible skill and power at very young ages since, as far as I was concerned, I already knew what to do. I wasn’t even rusty, but I did have a new body that needed to learn. Often I was very limited while I was a child both in power and coordination but when puberty started to hit it seemed I got exponentially stronger every day. I don’t know how long this went on for until one time I met some traveling vagrant who was doing the same thing as me. I was still a kid, maybe 9 or 10 and he was probably a teenager of about 14-16. I can’t remember how it all went anymore but I know I attacked him and was really, really annoyed that he was better than me. We both realized we were after the same people and decided we might as well team up. And that’s how I first met the guy that I now refer to by the psuedonym “Green.”
During all of this I was losing any fear of death that I had. I believed my life, which I saw as my abililty to be conscious, secured by reincarnation, was attached to my tribe or whatever they were since I only ever reincarnated to them. So to me protecting them was literally protecting my own life. I also lost any squeamishness for taking other peoples lives, believing they must be reincarnating the same as I do and so no life was really taken. I had learned it was posible to somewhat influence how I was born as well, I’d been male for my first handful of incarnations and got used to that so I’d always end up changing my gender to male if I had to. I’m not sure how the process worked, just that before I’d incarnate I would be in this almost unconscious state that I was barely even aware of. In this state I’d sometimes get vague bits of information and one of them was what gender I was going to be. Over time I was able to learn that this state was even happening and sort of wake myself up in it a bit. I learned I could change the female feeling to to the male feeling… somehow. So for the entirety of my early existence I was always male by choice. At least as far as I remember.
I was also getting a lot stronger, I was able to easily jump a good thirty feet in the air if not more thanks to magic. I started experimenting with it more. I knew that it was only because the energy was propelling me that I could go that high. And since the energy was propelling me, I wondered what would happen if I kept pushing even after I was in the air. And that’s how I learned how to fly. At first it wasn’t easy and it was pretty unstable. I couldn’t really move around very much. But I could at lest hold myself in place for short periods of time. But that ability got stronger and stronger over time too. Green and I added more people to our group as we found them, anyone who was like us, who was doing what we were doing, was welcome to join. But people like that were phenomenally rare. Often if they had any magic at all it was pratically nothing compared to what he and I had. We tried teaching them a little bit but for the most part I think we all did our own thing.
During all of this I found I wasn’t always reincarnating in the same place. Rather not always the same world. I seemed to be flitting around from reality to reality, sometimes friends would incarnate with me and sometimes not. There was very little rhyme or reason to it. But my main reality was the one I started in. Other realities varied quite heavily in all aspects, different levels of technology and races and everything. But all of them had humans, and that’s how I’d incarnate. In hindsight I guess I don’t know if they were all different reality versions of one world but I do know that some of them absolutely were. I also know that absolutely none of them were this world. If they were, I’m very sure we’d all know.
Technology was slowly progressing. The grass huts I was used to started getting replaced with wooden buildings. The culture I knew seemed to be shrinking. Less and less people wre living in the forest. I was getting concerend that I might die if that culture dissapeared. But one incarnation I was born to a totally different culture. I remember it was a small apartment and I had a fight with my mom about how I’m part of this other culture. She wouldn’t hear any of it. Eventually I just ran away and in hindsight she was probably traumatized by that. I found the remains of the culture I came from and told them I was one of them. They were very skeptical. But I managed to demonstrate all the knowledge and rituals that I needed to to convince them. Although they remained somewhat wary, they agreed that only one of them could possibly know what I knew as well as I did. But that caused me to realize that my life wasn’t connected to that tribe at all. And althoug I constantly yearned for things to be like they were in “the time of the grass huts” it never happened. Technology and everythibng else continued to progress.
Magic was a known and accepted thing in the world for the most part althuogh it was believed to be very, very weak except for a small handful of people. Pretty much all of which were in our group, all seven or so of us. We all continued doing what we did, fighting anyone who tried to invade us. I’m sure we were in the wrong a few times but I don’t remember. All we knew energy could do was make us faster and stronger and that’s all we focused on. It was embarassingly basic compared to how I think about magic now. But at the time that’s all we knew. The next big innovation I remember was thinking about how when we punch people we’re not really hitting them with our fists, we’re hitting them with the energy that’s sheathed around our fists. And so if that’s the case, wy do you need your hands at all? Could you not do a “ranged punch” by extendiong the same energy you use for punching out from yourself towards a target? And that’s how ranged techniques were born. The ability to throw a ball or beam of solid energy at a target. I remember the very first time I did one it was a complete mind break. It was such a confusing feeling. It felt like I was blowing a bubble or something, but then it started overflowing and then I stretched the overflowing part out so it wouldn’t pop… or something. And then it would eventually touch whatever I was pointing at and ‘pop’ against it. Dumping allthat energy into my target just like it would if I’d punched them. This energy was so solid it was somewhat visible, looked like a sort of clear jelly almost, like liquid glass. You could only see it because of how it distorted the air. Very uch ike a strong heat wave effect but with a tiny bit of opaque grey mixed in.
It wasn’t too long before that got incorporated in all of our arsenals. The tiny bit of grey also increased with power until it was actually luminescent whiteish blue. And later on I made another innovation by corkscrewing the beam. This made it more concentrated, compressing more energy per cubic inch, and thus more powerful. Now we were solidly the technology period of electricity, early cars and some planes. And this is one of the first big clues why this could not possibly be this world.
Another war was starting, this time the country was highly industrialized. I don’t remember there being much of an airforce but it did exist. This nation was very easily steamrolling others. And of course they too had their own magic users just like everyone always did. At first we concentrated on them like normal. But eventually we started hearing rumors that this nation was being attacked from their other border by something no one has ever seen before. We continued pressing on at first figuring we’d take advantage of their situation. But the reports we were hearing got stranger and stranger. No one knew where this other army had come from, it had just appeared one day and started attacking. It was said to be far beyond their or anyones technology, and it didn’t seem to be open to communication. But the people we were fighting weren’t poweless against it, it was just that they were now fighting a war on two fronts. We kept hearing worse and worse things about this other army and started wondering if maybe we should stop fighting this nation and instead go help them against this other threat. We were pretty prideful about it at first, wanting to only take advantage of the situation and crush the nation for what it’d been doing. But we didn’t think this foreign army would stop after taking them out and we didn’t know if the other forces in the region could stand up to it. The nation we were fighting was easily the most industrialized, the most technologically advanced that we knew of. And they had the largest military. If they were being pushed back so hard, what chance did the rest of us have? Our group of fighters certainly wasn’t enough to take on an entire army. So we all swallowed our pride and flew for the frontlines of their fight.
What we found was stupifying at the time. The enemy appeared to be made up of hovering tanks, flying androids and other high tech stuff that we‘d never even concieved of before. Actually at the time we didn’t even have a concept of things like androids, I’m only saying that in hindsight. Back then we thought that their entire military was magic based. Their tanks fired plasma cannons the same way we fired beams from our hands and their androids could fly and use a variety or ranged and melee weapons. I think it’s ironic that we interpreted all that as being magic since now it’s very clearly tech. We’d never dealt with something like that before, we’d only ever seen one or two magic users at a time, not the entirety of a military. Some people in their nation recognized us as being the group that’s been fighting them and was confused about why we were there. But we all pooled together and fought these things. They would indeed appear out of nowhere, but seemingly only when this one special flying one flew overhead. The giant… scarab shaped thing? I don’t know how to describe it. We only referred to it as “the big one” and we knew that if it showed up then tanks, androids and stuff were about to appear out of thin air. It was easily the hardest fight we’d ever had, but with every other nation in the area pooling together we eventually won. Or at least they stoped showing up. Our group was nine strong at this point and we’d gained a sort of reputation as protectors and people liked us a lot.
One day I got told by a member of our group that something was attacking this one city and that Green was already there fighting it. The details were pretty sparse but he came to get me and anyone else as soon as he could. I flew there and found Green standing on a chimney. I don’t know why but I always remember that part of it. “The big one” that no one had seen for months had landed in the area.
I’ve been holding off writing about my alleged past life story because I know how crazy it’s going to sound and I didn’t know if I wanted to deal with the headache. I also didn’t know if it’s something that I should put on the internet in the first place. But I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s impossible for me to discuss anything to do with magic and the training I do without referring back to my past given that’s where I’m pulling ALL the knowledge and methods from. My training largely amounts to testing the methods to see if they’re real or not. So far the results have been a consistently resounding “yes.” Besides, even if this turns out to be a horrible mistake, I don’t think there was much about my current life that was worth protecting, so fuck it.
I believe that sharing personal stories like this provide important context to why people do what they do and how they came to their conclusions. Promoting understanding between people has been a major goal of mine for almost as long as I can remember. My hope is that maybe, through telling this story and all the others I’ve yet to share, people might learn things vicariously. But honestly, I also just want to share it for the sake of sharing it.
I don’t expect anyone to take it seriously. But for me, the evidence is so stacked towards it I don’t have a choice but to believe it at this stage. The details get a little muddled here and there and I’m sure there are parts that are purely imagination. Although I think I’ve picked most of that out. Although I’m also sure some people will argue the entire thing must be imagination. But the overall story appears true. I invite people to ask any questions they may have and poke as many holes in the logic as they like. Just remember that your arguments are up for the same scrutiny, so beware of broad handwaviums like “Well that just sounds ridiculous.”
This information started pouring into me when I was about 5-6 years old and didn’t stop until I was about 21-22. This is more accurately just the coles notes version of the story. Partly because I can’t remember it all in detail anymore, partly because of the sheer amount of time it would take to try writing every tiny thing I remember, partly because certain parts aren’t relevant so I’m not including them. I’m sure I’m going to forget to put relevant things in at some point. If you want me to be more specific about certain things just ask. I’m going to try updating this periodically since even with it being the coles notes version, there’s going to be a lot to cover. Assuming I don't delete it as if that would do any good. I really can’t stress enough the sheer amount of information. The fact that I still remember as much as I do amazes me sometimes. I just thought I should post the little I’ve written up at the moment and continue from there. I probably should’ve edited this first bit more, I know already there’s a couple things I forgot to put in and some spelling mistakes. But it’s late, I’m tired, and I just want something posted. Ironically the very beginning parts aren’t all that crazy. But man, just wait...
So without further adeiu, let’s begin. I can't believe I'm posting this...
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The earliest memories I have come from some small tribal group who lived in a very hilly tropical region. Their culture organized itself into villages of grass huts all arranged in a circle, usually 6-9 huts if I remember correctly. All the openings faced the center where there was a large open space with a fire pit. Hunter gatherer society numbering probably less than 200 people total spread across the area.
They had a cultural practice around children. The first born child was not considerd a child of the parents. It was believed that these children were not really children but reincarnated souls of dead villagers. Thus they were believed to posess adult minds and experience and did not need to be “raised.” It was considered a necessary service therefore to always have at least two children, the first to reincarnate the dead, and the rest to birth new souls. First born children were raised only until they were capable of walking and talking and then expected to go live on their own after that.
For the most part this practice wasn’t just superstition but a sort of implicit contract amongst the villagers. There were only a few rare instances of first borns being new souls, second borns being reincarnations, or more than one child being reincarnation or new soul. Sometimes the parents didn’t realize it though and, ummm, bad things happened.
It was common in the region to hear about some warlord somewhere ammasing a largef following and trying to take over everything else. Our group was largely insulated rfrom this in the hills. The cycle would gothat one warlord would be very successful at absorbing or conquering multiple other groups. But they’d eventually spread themselves too thin, and when they started getting close to our area some other smaller group would break their lines and cause a slow retreat as others in the region pushed them back. Then after a number of years, maybe a generation or so, someone somwhere else would rise up and try again.
I remember that for my first few lives I had an incredibly strong fear of death. But after awhile I got used to it once I relized I was just going to reincarnate back in the village. I don’t remember if this was the very first life or one that came a little later, but myself and my brother were told that we needed to take training to become the next shaman. Pretty sure the word wasn’t actually shaman but that’s functionally what it was. People didn’t explain much to us about why, I’m guessing because we were kids. But apparently because there were two of us not just one it made things more complicated. Normally the one son would be expected to learn how to be the shaman and take over when the elder died or stepped down. But with two the tradition was for both to learn, compete to see who was the better shaman, and the other would become the shaman’s assistant.
We got taught how to use healing energy. But as we got better and better we found we could do other things with it besides healing. We would commonly go out in the forest and light our camp fires with energy because it was much easier and more fun than rubbing sticks together. One day we got caught doing this and the elder was incredibly, incredibly angry about it. Saying “IT’S ONLY FOR HEALING!”
At that point we realized that, when they were saying it’s healing energy, it’s that they only wanted us to use it for healing, not that healing was in any way built into the energy. And thus we didn’t stumble upon any sort of loophole by figuring out how to light fires.
So we’re still going through our training, slowly growing up in the process, and I start hearing about some new warlord who’s trying the same old thing again. Except the reports of how much momentum they have is strikingly different than what I was used to. I start getting concerned as reports of them are getting closer and closer to where we are. I try to bring it up with other villagers but they handwave my concerns saying that they’ll just collapse like they always do without getting anywhere near the hills. But I wasn’t convinced and I was still hearing reports about their continuus march. Once they got further than anyone else had ever gotten I started protesting everyone’s complacency and saying that we needed to be ready to defend ourselves. Well it turned out that if we organized with the other villages our defense would’ve consisted of 9 hunters. Unless old, retired hunters helped too, then we’d have a grand total of 11. Hunters, not soldiers, not anyone with any actual knowledge or training in combat, just hunters. People who constructed shoddy things that could generously be described as bows and arrows that had a range of maybe ten feet with any accuracy or power that they used to hunt small game. That was our defense.
Well I thought that was bullshit, I said that I could go out there and help fight. I knew that what I’d been learning with energy could be very powerful and maybe I might be able to make a difference. I think my brother wanted to come too, I don’t remember right now. I was told that if I did that I’d be exiled, since it’d be a gross misuse of my training since that energy was only for healing, Generally the argument went back and forth like that, I probably argued that it wouldn’t matter what the energy was for if everyone was dead. But eventually I decided to leave.
At this point I barely remember anything about the actual fighting. I know that I adapted what I’d learned to give me more strength and stamina and that I attempted, unsuccessfully, to use the same ability I used to start fires as a weapon. But it didn’t have enough range or power or something, I don’t remember. If I remember, initially I was only slightly better than the average person. But as time went on and I got stronger and more expereinced I started to be able to jump a lot higher than others, move a lot faster, hit a lot harder, and take hits that would kill or debilitate others. I learned that on the opposing side there were other people like me who were also using energy. Very few compared to the legions of regular people. In hindsight I wonder if those people are what made this one warlord different. Each person was far more powerful than any regular person and were sometimes able to demolish groups all on their own. These became the people that I focused on the most. I remember taking several trips back to my home region, mainly staying on the outskirts looking for hunters or anyone else to talk to. I didn’t want to take the chance that the leaders would see me and be annouyed. I don’t remember if I initially went back by accident or not, or if someone first taked to me by accident or not. But I’d make regular visits from time to time. Sometimes bringing souveners. One time I brought a shortbow and some arrows from the warlords regiments. It was small and white I believe and maybe had a red tassle or something. I think it was a recurve bow. I was so annoyed at the crappy bows our hunters used that I just had to grab one when I had the chance. I gave it to someone I met one time and he thought it was great.
I remember being very tired and sore a lot of the time and spent a lot of time thinking about how long it was going to take me to recover. I think time was on my mind a lot because I was so worried about them getting to my home. The longer I wasn’t out there fighting, the longer the other magic users had free reign. I know I felt very stressed. Especially about how I was going to beat some of the other magic users. There was more of them than me and at least some of them were better than me in every way. They all had far more experience than I did. It was pretty obvious they had always been training for combat. I didn’t have anything like that. I was just cobbling things together as I went. And some of them were a lot more powerful than I was. I really wish I could remember some of the specific fights but they’ve long since faded. I think there was one in particular that was better than the rest. All I know is that I did probably eventually kill them. Either that or injured and fatigued them enough that others were able to pick them off. Eventually the war was over, all the magic user on the other side were dead, of which there was only maybe 3-6 at best, and I was still alive. The leader decided not to exile me given that I was only trying to protect my home.
This first conflict is probably what set the stage for the rest of my existence to date that I’m aware of. The warlord cycle didn’t end. In subsequent lives it started to become my thing to go out and fight them. I’d remember my past experience and it seemed that my body would develop around that. Giving me incredible skill and power at very young ages since, as far as I was concerned, I already knew what to do. I wasn’t even rusty, but I did have a new body that needed to learn. Often I was very limited while I was a child both in power and coordination but when puberty started to hit it seemed I got exponentially stronger every day. I don’t know how long this went on for until one time I met some traveling vagrant who was doing the same thing as me. I was still a kid, maybe 9 or 10 and he was probably a teenager of about 14-16. I can’t remember how it all went anymore but I know I attacked him and was really, really annoyed that he was better than me. We both realized we were after the same people and decided we might as well team up. And that’s how I first met the guy that I now refer to by the psuedonym “Green.”
During all of this I was losing any fear of death that I had. I believed my life, which I saw as my abililty to be conscious, secured by reincarnation, was attached to my tribe or whatever they were since I only ever reincarnated to them. So to me protecting them was literally protecting my own life. I also lost any squeamishness for taking other peoples lives, believing they must be reincarnating the same as I do and so no life was really taken. I had learned it was posible to somewhat influence how I was born as well, I’d been male for my first handful of incarnations and got used to that so I’d always end up changing my gender to male if I had to. I’m not sure how the process worked, just that before I’d incarnate I would be in this almost unconscious state that I was barely even aware of. In this state I’d sometimes get vague bits of information and one of them was what gender I was going to be. Over time I was able to learn that this state was even happening and sort of wake myself up in it a bit. I learned I could change the female feeling to to the male feeling… somehow. So for the entirety of my early existence I was always male by choice. At least as far as I remember.
I was also getting a lot stronger, I was able to easily jump a good thirty feet in the air if not more thanks to magic. I started experimenting with it more. I knew that it was only because the energy was propelling me that I could go that high. And since the energy was propelling me, I wondered what would happen if I kept pushing even after I was in the air. And that’s how I learned how to fly. At first it wasn’t easy and it was pretty unstable. I couldn’t really move around very much. But I could at lest hold myself in place for short periods of time. But that ability got stronger and stronger over time too. Green and I added more people to our group as we found them, anyone who was like us, who was doing what we were doing, was welcome to join. But people like that were phenomenally rare. Often if they had any magic at all it was pratically nothing compared to what he and I had. We tried teaching them a little bit but for the most part I think we all did our own thing.
During all of this I found I wasn’t always reincarnating in the same place. Rather not always the same world. I seemed to be flitting around from reality to reality, sometimes friends would incarnate with me and sometimes not. There was very little rhyme or reason to it. But my main reality was the one I started in. Other realities varied quite heavily in all aspects, different levels of technology and races and everything. But all of them had humans, and that’s how I’d incarnate. In hindsight I guess I don’t know if they were all different reality versions of one world but I do know that some of them absolutely were. I also know that absolutely none of them were this world. If they were, I’m very sure we’d all know.
Technology was slowly progressing. The grass huts I was used to started getting replaced with wooden buildings. The culture I knew seemed to be shrinking. Less and less people wre living in the forest. I was getting concerend that I might die if that culture dissapeared. But one incarnation I was born to a totally different culture. I remember it was a small apartment and I had a fight with my mom about how I’m part of this other culture. She wouldn’t hear any of it. Eventually I just ran away and in hindsight she was probably traumatized by that. I found the remains of the culture I came from and told them I was one of them. They were very skeptical. But I managed to demonstrate all the knowledge and rituals that I needed to to convince them. Although they remained somewhat wary, they agreed that only one of them could possibly know what I knew as well as I did. But that caused me to realize that my life wasn’t connected to that tribe at all. And althoug I constantly yearned for things to be like they were in “the time of the grass huts” it never happened. Technology and everythibng else continued to progress.
Magic was a known and accepted thing in the world for the most part althuogh it was believed to be very, very weak except for a small handful of people. Pretty much all of which were in our group, all seven or so of us. We all continued doing what we did, fighting anyone who tried to invade us. I’m sure we were in the wrong a few times but I don’t remember. All we knew energy could do was make us faster and stronger and that’s all we focused on. It was embarassingly basic compared to how I think about magic now. But at the time that’s all we knew. The next big innovation I remember was thinking about how when we punch people we’re not really hitting them with our fists, we’re hitting them with the energy that’s sheathed around our fists. And so if that’s the case, wy do you need your hands at all? Could you not do a “ranged punch” by extendiong the same energy you use for punching out from yourself towards a target? And that’s how ranged techniques were born. The ability to throw a ball or beam of solid energy at a target. I remember the very first time I did one it was a complete mind break. It was such a confusing feeling. It felt like I was blowing a bubble or something, but then it started overflowing and then I stretched the overflowing part out so it wouldn’t pop… or something. And then it would eventually touch whatever I was pointing at and ‘pop’ against it. Dumping allthat energy into my target just like it would if I’d punched them. This energy was so solid it was somewhat visible, looked like a sort of clear jelly almost, like liquid glass. You could only see it because of how it distorted the air. Very uch ike a strong heat wave effect but with a tiny bit of opaque grey mixed in.
It wasn’t too long before that got incorporated in all of our arsenals. The tiny bit of grey also increased with power until it was actually luminescent whiteish blue. And later on I made another innovation by corkscrewing the beam. This made it more concentrated, compressing more energy per cubic inch, and thus more powerful. Now we were solidly the technology period of electricity, early cars and some planes. And this is one of the first big clues why this could not possibly be this world.
Another war was starting, this time the country was highly industrialized. I don’t remember there being much of an airforce but it did exist. This nation was very easily steamrolling others. And of course they too had their own magic users just like everyone always did. At first we concentrated on them like normal. But eventually we started hearing rumors that this nation was being attacked from their other border by something no one has ever seen before. We continued pressing on at first figuring we’d take advantage of their situation. But the reports we were hearing got stranger and stranger. No one knew where this other army had come from, it had just appeared one day and started attacking. It was said to be far beyond their or anyones technology, and it didn’t seem to be open to communication. But the people we were fighting weren’t poweless against it, it was just that they were now fighting a war on two fronts. We kept hearing worse and worse things about this other army and started wondering if maybe we should stop fighting this nation and instead go help them against this other threat. We were pretty prideful about it at first, wanting to only take advantage of the situation and crush the nation for what it’d been doing. But we didn’t think this foreign army would stop after taking them out and we didn’t know if the other forces in the region could stand up to it. The nation we were fighting was easily the most industrialized, the most technologically advanced that we knew of. And they had the largest military. If they were being pushed back so hard, what chance did the rest of us have? Our group of fighters certainly wasn’t enough to take on an entire army. So we all swallowed our pride and flew for the frontlines of their fight.
What we found was stupifying at the time. The enemy appeared to be made up of hovering tanks, flying androids and other high tech stuff that we‘d never even concieved of before. Actually at the time we didn’t even have a concept of things like androids, I’m only saying that in hindsight. Back then we thought that their entire military was magic based. Their tanks fired plasma cannons the same way we fired beams from our hands and their androids could fly and use a variety or ranged and melee weapons. I think it’s ironic that we interpreted all that as being magic since now it’s very clearly tech. We’d never dealt with something like that before, we’d only ever seen one or two magic users at a time, not the entirety of a military. Some people in their nation recognized us as being the group that’s been fighting them and was confused about why we were there. But we all pooled together and fought these things. They would indeed appear out of nowhere, but seemingly only when this one special flying one flew overhead. The giant… scarab shaped thing? I don’t know how to describe it. We only referred to it as “the big one” and we knew that if it showed up then tanks, androids and stuff were about to appear out of thin air. It was easily the hardest fight we’d ever had, but with every other nation in the area pooling together we eventually won. Or at least they stoped showing up. Our group was nine strong at this point and we’d gained a sort of reputation as protectors and people liked us a lot.
One day I got told by a member of our group that something was attacking this one city and that Green was already there fighting it. The details were pretty sparse but he came to get me and anyone else as soon as he could. I flew there and found Green standing on a chimney. I don’t know why but I always remember that part of it. “The big one” that no one had seen for months had landed in the area.
"The cure for bad information is more information."
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