hevenly | Ryslig History

CONTENT WARNINGS

Angela's time in Ryslig involves warnings for kidnapping, body horror, violence, murder, vivisection, decapitation, cannibalism, misandry, drug and alcohol use, cults, child abuse, human experimentation, teeth and tooth extraction.

FEBRUARY 2020

Angela awakens in a building that appears to have been a hospital, but that has been taken over by masses of flesh. She has to navigate her way through the hospital interior, now looking like the innards of a gargantuan creature's body, stripped of her superhuman abilities and her weapons.
Upon finding her way out of the hospital, she meets some of the monsters living there and learns where she is: the Ryslig Peninsula. She learns about the Fog God who has brought people here and turned them all into cannibalistic monsters. A helpful volunteer gives her a laptop by which to communicate with the other captives.
Angela learns to use the RSDOS network, learning more about the different types of monsters, and expressing righteous anger at the news of human poachers targeting monsters.
Angela learns of the other gods of Ryslig, the dead Day and Night gods, and the relatively new Fourth God, a child who was turned into a god by his scientist father, who specializes in technology. She learns of the two rival factions/cults that have been formed among the monsters surrounding the Fog God and the Fourth God.
Given the name of a weaponsmith, Tsukikage, Angela meets with him and agrees to work security for his theater in exchange for him forging her a sword. He tells her that he is part of a third faction which opposes both gods, and Angela gives him her support right away.
Still effectively human, Angela teams up with another newcomer, Bethan, and the pair successfully stop a mugging, but Bethan is injured in the process. Angela and Bethan learn that they have much in common, and talk about how they will survive in this strange realm.
Infiltrating a fancy gala the human poachers are throwing, Angela socializes but fails to notice the hidden auction where they are kidnapping, drugging, and stealing parts of monsters then auctioning them off. This is when she first meets Javert and debates principles and morality with him. She would go on to work under Javert at his prison.

MARCH 2020

Having been in Ryslig for one month, when the fog rolls in at the beginning of March, Angela goes through her first changes. She is becoming a minotaur. Horns grow from her skull, her legs grow fur, and her feet reshape themselves into hooves. The changes are painful, and afterwards, Angela develops her hunting instincts, and begins hunting after men who have wronged women— philanderers, rapists, abusers. She has not yet started feeling the hunger for human flesh that comes with being a monster, so she does not eat her kills, instead bringing the dead bodies to other monsters so that they will not go to waste.
Another, much older god of Ryslig reawakens after a centuries-long slumber: the tree god Y'doethe. Y'doethe marks fifteen monsters and selects them to be sacrificed to her, whether they want to or not. The sacrifices vanish in the night, seemingly consumed by Y'doethe. Angered by this, Angela teams up with her new friend Majima to fight and destroy the tree that houses this god's power.

APRIL 2020

In a plot led by the Fog followers Aunamee (lich) and Amanda (faerie), a number of monsters are drugged into a hallucination dream-state, whereupon they find themselves in the basement of a small New England home, with no memory of Ryslig or how their bodies became monstrous, and a bound and gagged human in front of them. A voice announces the rules of this simulation: They have seven days to kill another monster. If they succeed, they'll be sent home. If they fail, they die. But first, they must kill the human in front of them. Angela does this, but takes no pleasure from it.
Angela meets up with Bethan in an abandoned high school, who is having PTSD flashbacks of a time when she was kidnapped and experimented on by scientists looking to create a super soldier. Rather than kill each other to be free of this simulation, they decide to team up and search for a way out.
Angela does not kill another monster within the seven day window and suffers her first death. However, since she "died" inside a hallucination, it does not count as a real death.
Angela moves into the 38-8 Apartments in Bavan, which are being offered rent free to monsters. But, because Angela does not do anything for free, she agrees to work security for the apartment complex in exchange for room and board.

MAY 2020

Angela learns through speaking to Marco on RSDOS that monsters who have been killed are returned to life during the next fog. She also learns from him that higher level Fourth God followers can be resurrected more quickly.
An explosion occurs in a shop in Bavan which releases a chemical agent across the city that changes people from one kind of monster into another kind of monster. Angela's change is immediate, and as always, painful. Her legs lose their fur and her hooves turn back into feet, but her horns and tail stay as they are. In addition, she grows a pair of large golden wings, and extra sets of eyes on her face. She is now a nephilim. The cause of the explosion/gas is revealed to be the human poachers, experimenting with ways to turn themselves into monsters.

JUNE 2020

Angela goes online and declares that she will use her new wings to fly as high as she can. If she cannot escape, then at least she will see what lies beyond the stormy mountains that surround the landed half of the peninsula. Many try to dissuade her from this attempt, but two monsters, Kain and Fran, agree to accompany her. The trip confirms what everyone else has told her: that beyond the mountains lies nothing but a wasteland. The rest of this world has been completely annihilated.
Angela uses her wings to fly to Brasa, the volcanic island where new arrivals have been brought in with this month's Fog. She greets some of them and explains where they have found themselves. One man she meets, Jiang Wanyin, refuses to believe her when she tells him there is no way back to his home world, and that the Fog God who is responsible for capturing him will also turn him into a monster in one month's time. However he is the leader of a sect of warriors known as cultivators, and she sees that his skills, if he is a potent enough fighter, can be used to help the growing anti-God faction she has joined, along with Bethan.
Angela once again goes through a painful transformation from nephilim, back into minotaur. This time, she also develops a minotaur's heightened senses, increased temper, and (finally) the cannibalistic hunger for human flesh that plagues all monsters.
On Brasa, many characters become unwitting caretakers to small lizardlike creatures they call skinks. The skinks come in many different colors, and as they grow, they show disturbing developments. Angela's skink, which she ended up naming Laussa, after her infant sister, grew human teeth like scales all over its body. Angela pried them all out in an extremely bloody endeavor and offered them to strangers on the internet.
The origin of the skinks was soon discovered, as a mother kaiju erupted from the Brasa volcano and started rampaging across Bavan in an attempt to retrieve her babies. During all this chaos, some of the now juvenile skinks latch onto the heads of Bavanites and send them into an enduced slumber where they can feast on their dreams. Peoples' dreamworlds are places from their memory, and monsters can pass from their own dreamworld into someone else's.
In another monster's dreamworld, Angela finds herself in an underground lab and sees a terrified girl of only six or seven years of age, cowering under a bed. Desperate to save this child, Angela kicks the door down and grabs the girl in her arms, swearing an oath that she will protect her and get her out of this place. She fights her way past faceless orderlies, and finally kicks the door at the end of the hall open, when the hulking form of a doctor appears and wrenches the girl from Angela's grip. It is then that Angela learns that this is Bethan's dreams, her memories of the place where she was experimented on as a child. The doctor overpowers Angela, and there is nothing she can do but run to save her own life. She tells Bethan she is sorry, that she will find her, and fix this, before she flees.

JULY 2020

Angela undergoes her final transformations into her full bovine fog form.
Jiang Wanyin contacts Angela privately to admit that he believes now everything she had told him when he arrived. He swears to join her cause against the gods.
The culmination of the poachers' experients are unleashed upon Bavan: a new gas turning native humans into monsters, or else killing them and mutating their flesh into warped abominations trying to hunt and kill any other organism in sight. The "true" monsters must face off against these self-made monsters in battle to put an end to the poacher threat once and for all.　Angela slays a mutated human, but due to the nature of the poacher's gas, he does not die, even after Angela decapitates him.

AUGUST 2020

Monsters in Bavan fall into another shared dreamstate again, this time being transported to the Sea of Stars, where monsters are said to go when they lose the 'spark' that allows them to remain in Ryslig. Angela finds herself riding the back of an enormous bird, sailing through a field of stars teeming with awful creatures. When the bird reaches its destination, the dream begins to dissolve. Unlike the other monsters, however, Angela manages to stay behind a little longer. She finds herself on the sandy beach of a small island in the middle of the sea, home to a fountain pool of still, clear water. Within the pool of water, she has a vision of her beloved, Sera, off living her own adventures in their home universe, saving refugees alongside the Ravagers. It becomes clear to Angela that Sera has moved on, and that their deep, loving relationship which has spanned centuries and crossed multiple realms, may be over.
After witnessing this vision, and waking from the dreamstate, Angela goes to visit her friend Majima, to talk through her emotions having seen Sera moving on. She doubts whether Sera will still want her back now that she is a monster.
Angela and Javert debate morality again, this time over the network. By this point Javert has fallen deep into the Fog God's cult, so he and Angela cannot see eye to eye. Javert asks her where his soul would go, if they are freed from Ryslig, as he has died in his home world. She says she would make a room for him in the Hel that she rules. He advises that he would rather remain in Ryslig for all eternity, and live out his afterlife there.

SEPTEMBER 2020

With the coming of the fog, there are new arrivals and new transformations. Angela meets Clint Barton, an Avenger who knows her brothers Thor and Loki, and comforts a young girl named Gosalyn, who is also turning into a minotaur, through her painful new changes. Jiang Wanyin, her close friend and brother-in-arms against the Fog, attempts to chop off his now-transformed arm, and Angela steps in to intervene, trying to convince him that he can still have worth as a monster made of porcelain.
A human organization known as Mirage team up with a monster named Varian to release an experimental serum they hope will be a cure for monsters, but instead turns out to have unexpected effects, acting as a truth serum for some monsters and compelling others to act in a way opposite to their usual mood or demeanor. Due to this, Angela forgoes her usual adherence to her code of "Nothing is for Nothing" and goes around doing favors for various monsters, asking nothing in return. When the effects wear off, however, she makes a post to the network advising that she will be coming to collect her debts. As part of this, she borrows a barn cat from Majima, named Sigourney Whiskers.
Following the truth serum/mood swap effect, Javert hunts down Varian, the monster responsible, and murders him without trial or due process, claiming it as the vengeance of the Fog God. This creates a schism among the monster community, between those who take the position that Javert was right in his actions, and those who are appalled and enraged by the act.
Following the reveal of Javert as a priest of the Fog God, Angela resigns from her position working under him at his prison. She reaffirms her loyalty to Bethan and the fight against both gods of Ryslig. They begin to set up plans for a place for anti-god resistance fighters to meet in secret.

OCTOBER 2020

A group of monsters steal a part of the Fog God's magic from the Fourth God's possession, but it becomes too powerful for them to contain. An unintended side effect occurs, causing electronics to malfunction, which results in Angela "misfiring" messages to people other than the monsters she had intended to contact.
The Fourth God, in retaliation for the theft, forces all monsters into an alternate dimension known as Felfri, where the Fog God does not exist, and they are returned to their original forms. Felfri appears to be a technological (cyberpunk) utopia, but there is an artificial intelligence chip installed in all former-monsters' necks which will deliver a painful electric shock should they step out of line or speak ill of their hosts in any way. The AI prohibits all violence throughout Felfri, save for that which takes place inside a building known as The Cube, which is used as a sort of fighting arena for former-monsters to take out their aggression.
In Felfri, Angela goes shopping for a new outfit, and confronts Bethan in a bar where she is drinking away her sorrows. The pair discuss their distrust of this new world and their dislike of being watched and controlled at all times. Bethan, being somewhat intoxicated, opens up about her past in the labs as a child. Angela, in return, opens up about her relationship with Sera. The two then decide to visit The Cube and beat the shit out of each other for fun.

NOVEMBER 2020

The monsters are all returned from Felfri to Ryslig by the start of November, and with the coming of the fog at the beginning of the month, new offworlders arrive. The new arrivals are welcomed by the insectlike parasites who live in the town of Kulen, and need to be rescued from their... odd definition of hospitality, by the more seasoned monsters. It is there that Angela meets a girl named Riley, and gives one of the parasites a few cents in exchange for freeing Riley from the cage they have imprisoned her in. She then informs Riley that she is now in Angela's debt, and will have to repay Angela for freeing her.
Javert partners with the Fog to instill in unwitting monsters a compulsion to indulge in one of the Seven Cardinal Sins. Angela falls prey to the sin of Pride, and posts to the network extolling herself as a goddess worthy of more devotion than either the Fog or the Fourth, and demanding that monsters worship her instead. She also participates in a thirst trap meme, and posts salacious pictures of herself to the network.

DECEMBER 2020

To make amends for having declared herself a goddess the month prior, Angela takes full ownership of Sigourney Whiskers from Majima, and she promises Jiang Wanyin that she will protect his sister who is newly arrived in Ryslig.
When Riley posts to the network saying that she has gotten lost in the wilderness east of Bavan while trying to find a way beyond the mountains, Angela comes to her rescue. She tells her of her own attempt to fly beyond the mountains and find a way out of Ryslig.
Angela enlists in the Secret Santa gift exchange organized by a monster calling himself "Kris Kringle," and helps a young girl named Mabel knit Christmas sweaters, in return for a home cooked meal and some stickers.
Angela receives gifts for Christmas/Nattensfest, including a sweater from Mabel, a jar of leaves from the Kulen parasites, a golden dagger from her Secret Santa, the flute Sera had made for her from the witch Mana, and a handmade dragon sculpture from Bethan.
At the Nattensfest festival in Bavan, Angela watches a play detailing the history of Ryslig, specifically of the deaths of the Day and Night Gods and the rise of the Fog God, and uses the flute Mana gave her to use her hypnotic music abilities for the first time.

JANUARY 2021

At the beginning of the month, Angela has nightmares that feel like visions, in which she sees herself reuniting with Sera on Ego, only for Sera to break up with her. (Angela has now canon updated.)
(Begrudgingly) accepting her current status as a single woman, Angela agrees to pose in a pinup calendar for charity.
Angela attends the opening of a new resort in the mountains north of Bavan. The event is ruined when a malevolent parasite attempts to assimilate all in attendance and causes assimilated monsters to fight other monsters in an attempt to infect them. Angela teams up with Gosalyn to fight against it, but later ends up being assimilated by an infected monster, and killed by being set ablaze with burning hairspray. This is her first "real" death in Ryslig.
After returning to life with the next fog, Angela attends the pinup calendar photoshoot.
As her final act in Ryslig, Angela pools her resources with Bethan to ask Mana for a protected location where the anti-god fighters can meet to plot their resistance. The building is hidden from the sight of the Fourth and the Fog, as well as their followers, a building on the outskirts of Bavan that doesn't appear on any maps and is magically hidden from sight. One can only find the location if someone who already knows where it is shows it to them.