The Riftlings Many of the Dead Seas
Pemperate Region
Turn 11
Ruler: The Youngest, Fourth Chosen of the Mother of the New Era
Diplomacy: 4
Military: 3
Economy: 2
Faith: 7
Intrigue: 4
Spoiler: An Abortive Offer; A Level Threat
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Treachery.
The word, whispered by billions of microscopic voices, permeates the waters of the Riftling territories like the whispering of the tidal winds. To expect any less from aliens would be foolishness; polar itself stands ever at its own throat, though they have leashed it. But these Abyssal Stewards, sworn enemies of one of the more fundamental expressions of the Communion*, nonetheless have risen to heights of treachery unseen since the ravages of the Reavers and the passing of the Pattern.
In a half-thought effort to dispel the Stewards' hold on the local powers, the Riftlings offer a boon to those who might find an alternate route to the depths, but before even a year passes, they call off the effort, summoning instead the local powers to the Gravetenders' lands.
The Anointed Prophet gather all who are willing to hear as near to the Dead Cities' Smoking Garden as they are permitted to get.
"We, the Anointed Prophet of the Eternal Communion, bring a dire warning from the Old Fathers, by the Youngest, in the name of the Great Mother. The Pax Arctica exists to protect all of the arctic powers from the assaults of that which is alien to us, and the Stewards are by no means an exception. That they take offense to the rise of the demon Mammos is baseless and myopic, but who among the isolate races is spared that weakness? It is no great surprise. That they seek not only to violate the sovereignty of the Eternal Spring, but to entice others into the crime is treachery of the highest degree! Hear this: we, the Riftlings many, protectors of the Pax Arctica and ascended clerical governors of the Eternal Communion, will tolerate no actions that violate sovereign states. Should the Stewards strike at any trade post of the Spring without national permissions, they will be found in violation of the Pax, and our ire, a holy fury which has exterminated every threat before the Stewards, will be leveled against them.
We recognize that their foul enticement is not easily forgotten. How comfortable we have become with a knife at our gills and a hook at our mouths. We are made into idiot anemones, reacting as our cruel masters force us to dance, and all for the promise of technologies which can never exceed the powers of faith. We hereby pledge to eliminate the need for their pitiful powers and we will stand with you as we work to eradicate their overreaching retributions. If the Stewards do not call off their war against the arctic powers within three years, we will create an access to the depths ourselves, as the Mother already has for our people. If you cannot respect our sovereignty, Stewards, we will drive you from our waters and see your cast ashore, where a fate awaits you that is merciful in the face of the treacheries with which you stain yourselves."
*It was still fundamentally unclear how Mammos expressed the Communion, but if the Eternal Spring had seen depths foreign to the Riftlings in a land foreign to them, hey. They'll take them at their word.
Spoiler: Hey guys, I thought of something funny
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More like the Abysmal Stewards, amirite?
Spoiler: A Separatum Corporate Holdings Board Meeting
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The Spiritual Leader to the Unguided Isolates gathers the highest ranking representatives of the governing powers in the SCH.
"We, the Spiritual Leader to the unguided Isolates, bring warning from the Old Fathers, by the Youngest, in the name of the great Mother. The Stewards have declared their intention to make a mockery of this cooperative corporation. They come even now to level the economy of the region, and to make off with the spoils for their own alien purposes. This is not just retaliation against the Eternal Spring for protected religious self-expression, but it is an attack on the shared sovereigns of this land. The peace of the Gravetenders is shattered, the dominion of the Pepsin is refuted, the rule of the Nathi is spited and the administration of Deep Blue is called insufficient. We will not allow this insult to stand, and we exhort you to exercise your own powers in rejecting alien intervention in this shared space. Lest we all be next."
Faith5: Create Artifact
Spoiler: The Bare Trap
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The Reavers were the first offense, but this treacherous Mare will be the last unanswered. Through the might of the Mother, the Willing Sacrifice of the Riftlings Many give their lives as they drink deep of a special poison. No eternal life will this cluster know, but neither shall the death of the isolate take them. They instead lie flat, indistinguishable from the sterile sand about them, imbued with enormous power but past all bounds of natural life. Barely sensate, unmoving and eternally patient, the Bare Trap lies as a false sandpit, devoid of life. Should an interloper cross over it, a Reaver or one the Mare's ilk, it will snap shut over it and hold on with the strength of the Mother Herself.
Faith: Seek Aid on Press Claim TN 12 (Roll:16) SUCCESS
Spoiler: Yes, this is a miracle, but it doesn't matter because only the mechanics do. Fight me.
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The Recruitment Officer for Isolate Expendables know how to make an appearance. Already enormous by cluster standards, already LOUD, they put on a show. With the blessing of the Mother, they gather the Isolate Expendables at the edge of the Seas Not Yet Dead, place the impressive treachery of the Mare on the largest of the bunch, and begin a parade through the self-governing region. The Pax Arctica is upon the land; let that which is broken be made whole.
As the column move through the waters, a boisterous parade announcing the glorious annexation of the region to come, something curious trails after them. Cracks begin to form along the seabed. Here and there, this is what they remain, but as each Holy Site is neared, the ground splits like the grinning maw of the Mother herself and again as in ages past, Her Breath begins to bubble up in toxic clouds of life-sustaining poison. So long have the peoples of the land known Riftling de facto rule and so long have they cleaved to the Communion as a sotiriological comfort that they rejoice in this.
Oddly, when the Recruitment Officer return to the border to descend into the Dead Seas, they find the Mare absent and a third legion arrived. They give a mental shrug--such are the mysterious blessings of the Mother.
Diplomacy: (Faith|Censer) Press Claim 66 TN 12 (Roll:12) SUCCESS
Spoiler: A Speech
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The Ambassador to Occupying Isolates appear in a cancrine form, no longer a mere aping of the natives but a near-perfect approximation, a cloudform of a classically perfect version of the species. So long have this cluster made their home in the Seas-Not-Yet-Dead that they have adopted the clacking mannerisms and clicking speech patterns of their charges. The gather now at the center of the newly formed Rifts and speak the words they have so longed to speak:
"We, the Ambassador to Occupying Isolates, bring a proclamation from the Old Fathers, by the Youngest, in the name of the Great Mother. Rejoice! These life-blighted seas have again been claimed by the loving Breath of the Mother. By this, let it be made known that these seas are now fully and eternally under the rule of the Riftlings. Since the depredations of the Pattern and the flight of the apostates, these lands have grown sparsely populated; may it evermore be the case! Peace eternal comes to these waters, and with eternity comes life, and life is Communion!"
Faith: Great Project: Firewall in Remote Point (187)
Spoiler: Conversion of the Inanimate
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The Architect of the Riftlings Many are a young cluster, purpose-formed for the sacred duties of upholding the Pax Arctica. They were built in iterations, each subcluster of the whole trained in observation of the works of various civilizations, now a combined knowledge in the full Architect. The cluster are given to forming spires and portals, buttresses and crenelations, but the sum of the knowledge is rejection. To build of stone, of shell, these are arts proper to isolates. That the Architect appreciate the work of such creatures is no matter. Their task is something greater, and something perhaps harder.
To teach spare Pepsin tentacles, barely possessed of life to join into the Architect's own Lesser Communion that they might be instructed is a difficult task. Even with Riftling larvae invading the tissues of this unusual material (and dying in the thousands from the neurotoxins within), it takes months of labor to find a method of successfully inducting the tentacles into a wider consciousness--and months more to teach it to the remaining materials.
Firewall 1/5
Faith: Great Project: Firewall in Remote Point (187)
Spoiler: And Now We Frankenstein!
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Teaching tentacles to work in concert, to exist in concert was a challenge. Binding them to herring donated for the Firewall is frankly child's play.
...Keeping the Herring alive through the process is another matter. It isn't until, in a parody of Mary Shelley's work, that the Architect discover the answer. Working near the surface that the stormy skies above might provide dramatic backdrop to assured success, the Architect are briefly dazed by a lightning strike. More importantly, however, they see that the tentacles and herring nearby are in a similar state. Rousing what polyps they can, the swarm swiftly bind the two by the methods they'd previous discovered and wait.
Somehow, someway, according to this fluff write-up written by someone who never took even high school biology, it works. And over the next year and a half, the Architect create an entire school of betentacled herring, familiar enough with the Communion to act according to their own dictates, dictates appropriate to the piscine ruler of the land.
Firewall 2/5
Spoiler: The Firewall
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Herring. Tentacular and deadly. An endless wall of herring, trained to tell friend from foe. These will stand eternal as the border of the Pax Arctica with outside threats. Only by the secrets of the Communion they share with Deep Blue will they permit transit through their forests of undulating, Pepsin tentacles.
The Architect look upon their work and see that it is glorious.
Faith: Great Project: Eternal Reunion in Danabae (69)
Spoiler: Necromancy is something of a theme this round, huh?
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The Doflein are a noble race, so far as isolates go. They recognize at some level their brokenness, and seek to ameliorate their isolation through physical modification. While so many isolates worship their own wretched forms as immutable truth rather than cursed prison, the Doflein free themselves from those very deterministic bounds. In doing so, the tragic geniuses have become masters of the flesh, molding it as easily as others mold sand.
But yet there is something yet for them to be taught. The Architect of the Riftlings Many, rich in the knowledge learned from the de- and reanimation of tentacle and fish, come from ready to add their knowledge to the Doflein's great project. Far in the north of Danabae, a shallow depression outlines what will in but a few years become an enormous pit. For such brute work, the Riftlings are little help. But the slow trickle of flesh into the place, well. Here they can do something.
The Architect spread themselves far across the area, infesting each offering and seeking life. Where it is found, they are slowly taught the Communion. Where it is not, they bring the poisons of the Mother. Just as in the Bare Trap before, here the blessing of the Mother is a prison keeping death as far as life now is. The work is but beginning.
Eternal Reunion 1/5
Spoiler: Be There Here Dragons?
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The Ambassador to Neutral Isolates of the Riftlings Many snake through the herring-rich waters north of the Dead Seas, trending ever westwards. In the six years since the announcement of the Pax Arctica, not a word has been heard from the Residuum, not a single scale seen outside their waters. Has disaster befallen them? Do they retreat even now from a world that grows safer with each passing day of Riftling influence? Do they reject the Pax and its protections and obligations? The Ambassador would know, and will seek the answers. Without response, perhaps the Pax will be unable to cover such an unknown.
Non-actions:
Allow ESP to copy Censer if they desire
Accept Luxuries/Trade Posts in the form of Dragon Scales and/or Soothing Oil and/or coral dyes and/or gravelglass from ESP
-Explicitly don't accept any trade good not noted
Resist literally any assault I can
Provide the treacherous Mare with an Isolate Expendable to ride, grudgingly
Next Round Stats:
Diplomacy: 4
Military: 3
Economy: 2
Faith: 10
Intrigue: 4
Re: Empire 7: Into the Depths IC Thread
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