She'd never cared much for it, even before she was old enough to understood what the priests meant by "prophetic". But over thousands of years, she had come to grudgingly accept her name.
And Methuselah had work to do. Technically, it was a destiny, but she had no fondness for that concept. Somewhere in her twenty-five hundreds, she'd decided to just pretend that what she was fated to do was the same as what she wanted to do. It was easier that way.
More specifically, she had three destinies, because of course prophecies came in threes. But she had already achieved the first two - she had attained immortality, and she had gained dominion over her entire universe. As destinies to be saddled with went, you could do worse, even if it did mean being stuck with the name Methuselah.
But there was still that final task, the one that would complete the prophecy. With the vast knowledge and power she had acquired over five thousand years, she had learned that there was more than one universe in existence, and her third destiny - or objective, as she would quickly tell you - was to rule the rest of them.
She was getting close. She had learned to start manipulating the boundaries between worlds. But her new powers were, so far, depressingly limited. She couldn't move her vast army through a gateway to another universe in order to subjugate it; she could only move a few beings at a time. Maybe twenty if she concentrated. And she had so few ideas for how to progress them further.
On top of it all, she was bored. She'd taken too much control in this universe - with every generation, her subjects grew less and less able to think for themselves. In twenty years, they'd need her to tell them when to breathe.
And with as much work as she had to do between managing an entire universe, and training with her new abilities, Methuselah was starved for entertainment in her free time. She had already exhausted her entire universe's supply of reading material, save for some boring holy texts about her written since her ascension.
It hadn't taken her long to come up with the idea of gathering new books during her daily training sessions. Around half of these were dull reference books that ultimately didn't teach her anything new, or at least relevant to her conquest of the other universes. Much of the rest were simply shallow tripe trying to pass as literature.
But a few had been genuinely interesting. Enough to make it worth keeping up the habit. Today's book, in particular, had been selected because of the blurb on the back describing it as "an epic interdimensional journey". Methuselah hoped it might offer more instructions on how dimensional travel worked, perhaps covering advanced techniques.
Disappointingly, that was not what the book was about. But as Methuselah read it, she found something even more intriguing.
The book was about a battle. A battle between contestants from many different universes, being carried from one world to another by a powerful extradimensional being. He had taken them from their homeworlds, and was sending them to various hostile locales, forcing them to fight each other until only one survived.
Methuselah smiled slightly. Perhaps there was another way to entertain herself after all.
So you may be wondering what a Grand Battle is and what it has to do with that lengthy introduction up there.
In short, it's a battle to the death with words.
More specifically, it's kind of a blend of a roleplay and a writing contest. If you want to join, all you have to do is come up with a character and fill out a form describing them, and then they'll be entered in a battle to the death where their survival depends on your skill as a right. I'm limiting signups to eight, but if there's a lot of interest we can just do another battle. If there are less than eight, we'll just have a shorter battle. I'm flexible.
Further rules and details in here, in the form of questions from a hypothetical interested person:
That's about it! Go ahead and make your characters, and feel free to ask me any questions you may have.
Entrants:
-Naizen Imada, AKA Will Glikkorey - FluffiMasta
-Rusto the Scoundrelous - Mikkofier
-Dot Smith - Elgadika
-Tẃre Egelmath - Joseph Staleknight
-Tobasco the Hot Sauce - sedron
-Fishy - Holy
-Chibos - pholtos
-Mato - O'Largill