Line #76 Roleplay/ReIncarnationQuest


1	''[X] Who are you and why am I in your body?'' [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ivtkgdd.png]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Bring it oooooooonnnnn]]
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5	A ForumQuest started on December 31st, 2016 by Sufficient Velocity user AnonymousRabbit, [[https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/a-re-incarnation-quest.35001/ Re:Incarnation Quest]] puts the players into the mind of Marcus, a 21 year old {{Vanilla Protagonist}} (though he doesn't stay that way for long) thrust out of our world by a speeding car and into another world where he finds himself occupying the body of an elven girl who had just sacrificed herself in an attempt to awaken the ancient god of her forest to defend it.
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7	The first problem is that the spirit of that very same elven girl is hovering a few feet away and is royally pissed at him for inadvertently possessing her body and possibly screwing up the ritual she just performed (she was supposed to die for it, and by taking her place, he brought her body back to health).
8	The second problem is that Marcus is now stuck here, and the Elf--whose name is soon discovered to be Sahatri--is stuck with him.
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10	From these beginnings unfolds a wild tale of champions, secrets, conspiracies, wars, and dance battling. Marcus reincarnates (per the quest name) each time he dies into a new body at the moment of his demise, taking on their form while their spirit is added to those following him around. The spirits lend aid in battle, both with magical powers of their own and powerful 'Synchronization' spells when their will and Marcus' will are aligned, allowing them to collectively unleash devastating abilities. Marcus is implied not to be the only reincarnating being in the world, though, and for all the successes the thread has accomplished, the story is still nowhere near finished.
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12	[[foldercontrol]]
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15	!! This Work is quite Extensive and Contains Multiple Arcs. To avoid Confusion, Examples have been sorted by which Incarnation they appear in.
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17	[[folder:Examples Spanning Multiple Incarnations]]
18	* BackFromTheDead: While the Main Character Marcus is the most obvious one initially, other characters are known to Recur across incarnations such as Kifa.
19	* BackToBackBadasses: Marcus and Sahatri when using Sahatri's 'Unbreakable Vows' Synchronization
20	* BlessedWithSuck: Re:Incarnation means that you technically can't die outside of certain circumstances but each reincarnation pushes some poor girl out of her body to make room for Marcus. [[spoiler:Worse still, as Mathilda demonstrates near the end of Elia's arc, reincarnating too many times and acquiring too-large a following of spirits can cause them to collectively start losing power and eventually be forced to merge into a barely-sane HiveMind]]
21	* TheCorruption: The blight, [[spoiler: poor Forte]]
22	* CosmicRetcon: Marcus' Plot Lives effectively work as these, allowing her to rewind a death or other negative event into an alternate timeline in an attempt to prevent it from recurring. Doing so is not without cost however.
23	* ClothesMakeTheSuperman: Downplayed, nearly all armor sets acquired by Marcus convey skills of some sort, some of them lean into EmbarrassingButEmpoweringOutfit territory. Downplayed even further as of the Iza arc wherein Marcus has stuck with a single outfit (and eventually it's upgraded version) from the very start.
24	* DeadpanSnarker: Just about everyone, but particularly notable are Marcus, Sahatri, and Jack.
25	* DownerEnding: Bad Ends are a thing and AnonymousRabbit rarely pulls his punches when pointing out how much the players failed and fucked up.
26	* [[spoiler:EarnYourBadEnding: Picking the true path - while it may not be guaranteed to result in this - is certainly making this possible...]]
27	* FantasyKitchenSink: And getting all the more so by the update.
28	* FlashStep: Marcus' 'Burst' ability while synchronized with Sahatri allows her to teleport like this, disappearing and reappearing in flurries of leaves.
29	* GenderBender: Marcus continuously reincarnates into women so far, despite apparently having been male before all this started.
30	* LittleBitBeastly: The Erheni.
31	* MedievalStasis: Zig-Zagged, while guns exist in the setting, magic and various powers seem to have kept warfare from evolving entirely past swords and spears but as the players have seen, the timeskips between reincarnations do result in changing technologies and advancement.
32	* MeaningfulEcho: "I know, somehow... deep inside... That you're someone who's destined to do many great things... [[spoiler:Kifa in several of her first meetings with Marcus]]
33	* MoodWhiplash: Given Rabbit's penchant for TeasingCreator, not to mention the personalities of the spirits, the story can go from 'Lighthearted Training Montage' to '[[spoiler:Marcus getting beaten down and a thread favorite character being kidnapped]]' in a matter of posts.
34	** In-Universe example [[spoiler:when the players chose to override the Good Ending they had earned for the Elia arc in favor of carrying on down Mathilda's path...]]
35	** Meta-Examples can also result from the nature of the combat system, where a round of unmitigated successes can be followed up by a round of absolute disasters in the very next post if the dice decide to be fickle.
36	* NamedWeapons: Between the various referential weapons available in the shops and the weapons earned by the playerbase through omakes Marcus has acquired nearly a dozen named weapons of various power levels over the course of the quest, though they also have a habit of getting lost and don't persist from one reincarnation to the next.
37	* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Can occur thanks to player votes thanks to WrongGenreSavvy, PoorCommunicationKills, and the good old fashioned IdiotBall
38	* NightmareFuel: Use of plot and combat lives are an in-universe example as [[spoiler:Marcus is rewound from the point of failure/death and suffers sanity damage from the process.]]
39	* PowerLimiter: Anti-Magic brands, and fields can nullify Marcus' connection to her spirit, severing her ability to use her spells, though her skills still seem to work just fine.
40	* [[ScrewYourself Selfcest]]: Any relationship between Marcus and her spirits technically qualifies as this. They are all different facets of the same soul after all. [[spoiler:Mathilda's flirting with Marcus is actually closer to this than the spirits relationships with her since she is actually a future alternate version of Marcus rather than a reflection.]]
41	* SchizoTech: Initially mostly confined to the East, though it has become more widespread as the quest has gone on.
42	* RuleOfCool: Many of the fights practically run on this stuff [[strike:including]] ''especially'' the Synchronization abilities.
43	* TeasingCreator
44	* TheChosenOne: Marcus is not outright ''chosen'' in any given arc but thus far circumstances have regularly conspired to make her a crucial figure in each arc, whether it's as a symbol, a warrior, or just as a very specific SpannerInTheWorks
45	* SchmuckBait: Occasionally a point of some contention as to whether certain voting options actually constitute this, but everyone can agree that one does not ask [[spoiler:the mysterious shopkeeper]] about themself.
46	* [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Titles to Run Away From Really Fast]]: Most bosses (and even some mooks!) have a frightening title attached to their names.
47	** 'The Frozen Gungnir' [[spoiler: Arc One Kifa]]
48	** Sleeping Demon King of Seven Heavens
49	** King of the Beasts, Soldier of the Slayer of Lords
50	** ''Vessel to Pain and Agony, a Disease of the Soul'' [[spoiler:Aile]]
51	** '''''Destroyer of Hopes and Dreams''''' [[spoiler:MUSHROOM MAN]]
52	** Can't forget Marcus Elia-Incarnation title of 'Bloodstained Princess'
53	* WalkingSpoiler: Certain characters crucial to each arc cannot really be discussed in any depth without spoiling a whole bunch of stuff.
54	* WeaponsKitchenSink: To date Marcus has wielded a massive variety of swords, 'Pummeling Heat Gauntlets', at least one spear, a pistol, a fantasy grenade launcher, and a stun baton, to say nothing of the Transforming Axe-Cannon...
55	[[/folder]]
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57	[[folder:Sahatri Incarnation (Arc 1)]]
58	* AlasPoorVillain: [[spoiler:Kifa]]'s death.
59	* BewareTheNiceOnes: Kifa, when she gets to fighting she gets ''scary''.
60	* TheMole: [[spoiler:Kifa]]
61	* TheChosenOne: Possibly the only case of this happening literally in the quest as Marcus and Sahatri are chosen by Yggdrassil and granted additional power to stop The East's attack on the Elves.
62	[[/folder]]
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65	[[folder:Elia Incarnation (Arcs 2-5)]]
66	* AffablyEvil: Mathilda and [[spoiler:the East in general]], seem to rest somewhere between this and [[spoiler:ForcedIntoEvil given the West's involvement in the plot.]]
67	* AmbiguouslyEvil: Alho, the eastern soldier girl who got sorta press-ganged into the party, is rather firm about wanting to fight for her homeland but didn't seem to want to hurt Marcus...
68	* BackToBackBadasses: Marcus and Mathilda in the prison break sequence
69	* BreatherEpisode: After a series of wild twists and turns in arc 5, the a mini-arc is a break from the action and uncertainty to partake in a series of Dance Battles.
70	** [[spoiler:NiceJobBreakingItHero: And then the players fucked it up.]]
71	* CameBackWrong: Legion [[spoiler:the amalgamation of all the spirits accumulated by Mathilda after over 100 reincarnations and TrueFinalBoss of the arc.]]
72	* CombatSadoMasochist: ''Lorraine''
73	* EvilTwin: Aile is this crossed with SplitPersonality to Elia. [[SplitPersonalityMerge She gets better.]]
74	* GunFu: ''Mathilda'' is the most prominent example. Marcus gets a bit of it after swiping a pistol in [[spoiler:the eastern prison escape sequence]]
75	* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:The conclusion of the incarnation is a sequence of these from Mathilda shortly followed by Elia and finally Marcus herself dying to stop the Fiends from devouring the world.]]
76	* LightIsNotGood: [[spoiler: Lilianne and Legion]] both have angelic valkyrie style transformations they use in combat.
77	* LoveAtFirstPunch: Lorraine to Marcus, to the point of being a wee bit Yandere
78	* MundaneMadeAwesome: Marcus Princess Training and The Dance Battle Arc.
79	* NightmareFuel: Everything about the blight is pretty horrifying.
80	* OffTheRails: According to [[https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/a-re-incarnation-quest.35001/page-333#post-8277046 Word of God]] [[spoiler:Marcus surrendering herself rather than allowing Lorraine to be killed or kidnapped by the Assassin Knight]] is an example of this.
81	** Additionally, [[spoiler:the 'Good Ending' earned at the end of Arc 4 was this since in earning it Marcus deviated too far from the path of what was meant to be.]]
82	* OhCrap: [[spoiler:Opponent is now SYNCHRONIZED]]
83	* PollutedWasteland: Most descriptions of the East suggest that it's a mix between this and DryDryDesert, making the lives of it's citizens harsh and unpleasant, hence their ambitions to conquer.
84	* RescueRomance: Subverted to much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the thread's part when it came to [[spoiler:Vania on account of a VillainousRescue.]]
85	* {{Squick}}: The Goblin Cave clearing quest.
86	* TheChosenOne: Due to Mathilda's [[spoiler:status as a future alternate version of the Main Character]] and Marcus' own status as Princess of the North, Marcus cannot help but become a central figure to the struggles between the kingdoms that dominate this incarnation.
87	* WalkingSpoiler: Mathilda, her name alone is fine but everything else about her is a spoiler of some kind.
88	* WhamLine: [[spoiler:"LONG LIVE THE EMPRESS! GLORY TO THE EAST! EMPRESS MATHILDA!"]]
89	** [[spoiler:Enemy Skills- [[InterfaceScrew T̗͈̪̜h̙̰͉o̰u̫ͅ ̛̗̠̮̭̰S̤̱̱h͕̫̼͉̺ͅa̦̺̳͝lt͍̱ No̬͕͚t̷͙̩̥̺̮ ͕S̢ee̪̱̟͖̣̜͔̗̕T̩h̰̮̺̠̩ͅͅo͉͈̟͇̘̪ͅu̡̺ ̳̖̜̼S̸͚h̰̳̝̻͓͇̀ͅa̪̩͕l͕̱̗͔͙͖͚t̡̖̯̦͓͎ ̘No͓͖ͅt̰̲͉ ̷̫͈͔H̱̫̱̤̫e͉a̤r̬͍̫͎̠̖͇]]]]
90	** "Unwavering Vows" [[spoiler:when spoken by ''Mathilda'' of all people, overlaps with SomethingOnlyTheyWouldSay as it proved that -as some had theorized- Mathilda is a future reincarnation of Marcus.]]
91	* WorthyOpponent: Most of the Eastern Knights consider Marcus this.
92	** King Hassan to Mathilda during their showdown.
93	* {{Yandere}}: Lorraine to Marcus [[spoiler:while under Ifrit/Belial's Influence]]
94	** [[spoiler:''Legion'' takes the cake on this trope as she attempts to literally burn the entire world, just to stop the suffering and keep herself and Mathilda in the ashes for ever and ever and ever...]]
95	[[/folder]]
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98	[[folder:Iza Incarnation (Arcs 6-?)]]
99	* AfterTheEnd: [[spoiler:This Incarnation takes place with the world having ended no less than three times in the intervening 14000 years according to Eva.]]
100	* CameBackWrong: [[spoiler:Mixed with BrainwashedAndCrazy as Elia and Sahatri have come back as 'Calamities' as part of a gambit to resurrect the ancient lords who ruled the world in the time before time.]]
101	* GunFu: Closer to 'Cannon-Fu' with the Switch Cannon weapon.
102	* LightIsNotGood: The Calamity of Oaths [[spoiler:To be expected since she's using Elia's powerset]]
103	* NightmareFuel: The Calamities have this in spades when you think about them for more than a few seconds, especially for Marcus.
104	** In-Universe Marcus [[spoiler:transformation into a Star-Eater Demon]] has caused this for herself.
105	* SchizoTech: All over the setting in this incarnation, which mixes all sorts of time periods and inventions.
106	* SchmuckBait: Happens a ''lot'' in this incarnation.
107	* TheChosenOne: While Marcus hasn't specifically been chosen ''by'' any particular person, the fact that she still has connections to [[spoiler:Sahatri and Elia]] make her quite possibly the only person in the world capable of stopping the Calamities. [[spoiler:Without triggering the Return of the Lords that is.]]
108	* WalkingSpoiler: The Calamities, they can't even be discussed as distinct beings without revealing things!
109	* WhamLine: "Marcus! She Knows!"
110	* WoundedGazelleGambit: Apparently a common and frequently succesful tactic of[[spoiler: The Calamity of Oaths.]]
111	** [[spoiler:Vania]] has also attempted this against hundreds of [[spoiler:Alternate Marcuses]], though it didn't work when she ran into the real thing.
112	* {{Yandere}}: It's difficult to tell if [[spoiler:Marina]] is a true example of this or merely psychotic.

Context Roleplay / ReIncarnationQuest