Lords of Creation

**Athedia** · 2023-09-25, 03:11 AM (ISO 8601)

Generations and Tales

Esran’s tribe had found itself back at the vernal ponds again. Always time for a celebration. No young had hatched yet, it was still to early for that and the season was to late for spawning. He tied small bundles of reeds as he listened to the tribe who was departing told strange tales. Creatures coated in mud? Strange Lolats spying? There was no need to spy, secrets were a form of deception and that would break apart the tribe. They were no Temptations.

But telling false stories would also be deception, and in that way he knew the other Lolat spoke truth. He would stay until the next group arrived and protect these eggs from the Mud Strangers. He had participated in the last spawn and though Lolats had no parents, he felt protective of the generation. He knew of elders who felt the same toward his brothers and sisters.

He placed the bundle of reeds, tied to look like a small crude Lolat in the growing pile next to the pond and watched. No Mud Strangers would harm these eggs.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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No AP actions, 5+4=9 AP

**AlexanderML** · 2023-09-27, 02:42 AM (ISO 8601)

Kish-Eru

Amid the growing chaos of the city there was Maiden that tended to her garden. She hummed in peace for she knew that she was Adored, whose presence would make any mortal forget to breathe and who’s endangerment could lead to hearts forgetting to beat.

Yet even Adored as the Maiden was she knew the suffering that occurred around her would only increase. Her brow furrowed at the thought, and those who loved her sought to ease her worries.

Hiding in glamor, using lies to misdirect the strong against the stronger, and having certain individuals 'disappear’ did the maiden cult begin to make their unseen mark upon the city.

Spoiler: OOC

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AP 15/16

-2 Create Advance Concept - Espionage: The craft of spying and acting unseen is honed in the city of Kish-Eru as they gather information, manipulate opponents, and pursue objectives to try and shape the city to Adored’s wishes while remaining unseen.

Other branches of the maiden cult may similarly use these advanced techniques, they do not share them with outsiders.

-1 Create Sub-Concept - Hideouts: These come in a variety of shapes and forms, but the essence of a hideout is a place where one may retreat to to escape from others. The maiden cult often utilizes these to the point of becoming experts at the craft.

Not exclusive to the maiden cult, many communities with flower worshipers also hold those skilled at creating safe places for those in need of a place to rest or gather.

-1 Create Organization - Followers of the Adored Maiden: A faction within the maiden cult that revolves around the city of Kish-Eru and the Adored Flower Maiden within. Their desire is to make peace within the city through unseen means, just to ease the heart of their maiden.

Beyond that they believe in prosperity and growth as the means to a better tomorrow, with weeds needing to be extracted from a community delicately instead of brutally.

The Adored Maiden gifts her some of the love from Lilia to her followers, thus some of the organization’s followers are beloved skeletons.

Darkness (Espionage) 10/10

11/16 AP

**Athedia** · 2023-09-27, 02:47 AM (ISO 8601)

Return and Raise

Glikmora relaxed as she set foot on her own soft land again. The reeds filtered the saltwater off her skin and the soils teemed with life. Much more life. She continued on through her land until she reached the large swamps and rested her head against the trees. Spores spread from her palms into the tree itself reading the mycorrhiza network deep in the trees roots. And the network spoke of movement, movement that was deep below.

Glikmora searched, trying to find the source of the movement but the network did not reach that deep. She poured more spores into the tree pushing the network further and further until she could no longer. Opening her eyes she saw the tree itself had been consumed, hollowed out. Moving to the next one, the same had happened. The entire network, dead and hollow. Death was the correct course of life, but to much to soon and the land would fail.

She stopped pursuing the movement, she had gambled and she had lost to much of her own work.

—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The familiar stranger appeared a month after the young had left their vernal ponds. Many of the youngest hid from her, a tall strange creature who towered above them. The eldest and biggest of the Lolats barely reached her hip.

But she offered them boons, gifts of whatever they asked for. And she told stories of the lands across the salt.

”There were great mountains without rain, they continued forever in two directions.”

They had heard tell of this but now, it was real.

”A dangerous cult of hunger and flame …”

They had heard tell of this but now, it was real.

”A people who changed to suit the land around them.”

They had heard tell of this but now, it was real.

And she listened to their stories.

Many were mundane, adjustments to hunting, the occassional disappearance as someone reached the Temptations or the appearance of the large Aurochs. But she discovered more of her siblings had wandered here and spoken with her favored children. And they had tales of strange creatures that disappeared into the ground or rocks that came to life to kill them. The Lolats spoke of their desires to see the Chain, to view the world from more than stories. But they were not ready. She had seen how farmers had tilled the lands, how merchants had traveled. But those were on firm lands, dry ones. Her children were small and the land they lived on sodden. Her children would need to change.

First she spoke to the largest of the young ones, the ones hatched first in the vernal ponds from the warmest sections. She spoke to them of the Giants on the hands and how they would be giants among their people. Towering over the other Lolats, she told them stories of great beasts put to work, of farmers and of warriors. Their people were small, it was their job to be the strength. These were the Dona.

Next she spoke to the smallest of the young ones, those born last in the vernal ponds from the coldest sections. She told them stories of the impossible heights of the world, of the dangers of the ocean and of the need for those who could be unseen and yet see dangers. They were to be their peoples eyes and ears and keep them moving. She taught them how to stick to the rough trees to climb and how to use the tougher webbing to slow their falls and glide to safety. These were the Ota.

Then one of the elder Lolats spoke to her. An injured Lolat, one arm missing, yet cared for all the same. She was the one who had spoken of the living rocks. “Smiling One, you speak of the need to return to the land. But this land is slow to consume us. You tell us of teaching the Large Ones to puppet their dead as they rot as they must toil to survive. But we wish to follow your teachings and be given our rest. Yet if the land fails to consume us, are we not forever under threat of being mere tools?”

And Glikmora thought. She had given the humans on the Chain the gift of Necromancy as a boon, something to let them survive so her children could one day meet them. She had cursed the cultists into their slow tortuous death as a warning of what subverting the natural order would do. Her children needed no extra labor and they needed no warnings. Glikmora thought back to the destruction she left behind her in the copse of trees and her smile grew.

“Two days travel toward the setting sun and you will find a grove of dead and hollow trees. In each tree, lay a corpse. Do not linger for the trees do not know the living from the dead. These will complete the process. Do not bother them for they still live.”

And so it was, the trees she had left dead now came back to life, hungry and empty. Waiting for something to consume.

She stayed with her children watching as generations of Ota Lolat, Dona Lolat and regular Lolats were born. She watched as the Lolats traveled on sledges hooked to the Aurochs and also as their grew. But still there was a problem.
The Chain was so far from her children and she knew their diets. They ate live insects and small fishes and snakes that were slow enough to be caught. Such supplies would be impossible to take across the great ocean.

So she taught them to build, to raise the insects and feed them until they were more nutritious. How to surround their sledges with a special woven cloth derived from the cocoons of some of the insects themselves. How this cloth allowed air to circulate and how its light weight added no strain. How to keep the insects well fed with plants and rotted meat. How to select which ones were to be consumed and which they would keep to grow more.

She taught them to wash the roots of plants and keep them in special sledges designed to use the regular sloshing from the movement to circulate the water gathered from the regions the water came from. Some of these would feed the insects, others were for growing the reeds and plants to give the Lolats the fibers needed.

One day she thought, these practices might let them create the vernal ponds they needed. Would let them survive the long journey. These were her children and no harm would come to them.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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5+4=9 AP

Create Subrace (1 AP) Dona Lotats: Much larger than standard Lolats, Glikmora separated them to tame beasts and act as the muscle for Lolats before they find the rest of the world. [Amphibians (Bipeds) 5/10]

Teach Mundane Concept (1 AP) Beast Taming: Glikmora took the concepts she had seen during her travels and taught them to the Lolats. She taught them to focus on animals that could haul, not ones that were good for food production. [Amphibians (Bipeds) 6/10]

Create Subrace (1 AP) Ota Lolats: These Lolats are smaller than average, with toe and finger pads that when damp are able to strongly stick to surfaces. The webbing between their digits is thicker and less prone to damage than other Lolats and there is some webbing between their limbs as well. They are able to use this when falling or in a strong wind to glide. [Amphibians (Bipeds) 7/10]

Create Monster (1 AP) Corpse Trees: Trees accidentally destroyed by Glikmora, they are hollow on the inside. If a corpse is placed inside them they close up and decompose the corpse completely. The speed of decomposition depends on the size of the corpse, however it is a sped up process. Once the process has finished the tree reopens. Living creatures can still be consumed by the trees. [Magic (Necromancy) 5/10]

Create Mundane Concept (1 AP) Burial Rites: Lolats must ensure their dead are properly set to rest in a way that they can decompose and return to the world. The surface of Adanat is more prone to preservation of corpses and as it is rather damp the fires needed to sustain a cremation are not possible. Glikmora has taught them how to bury their dead inside of the Corpse Trees, thus ensuring prompt decomposition. [Magic (Necromancy) 6/10]

Create Mundane Concept (1 AP) Insect Farms: Instead of hunting all their food and depending on the regions to have ample supplies of healthy insects, these are large rooms on the backs of the sledges pulled by the aurochs. Inside are supplies of plants, rotted meat or the other things insects feed on. When harvesting not all the insects were taken so that new generations could form. [Amphibians (Bipeds) 8/10]

Teach Advanced Concept (1 AP) Sericulture: Glikmora took what she had seen from the Onna and found an insect who spun a silky cocoon on Adanat. She taught the Lolats how to make a cloth out of it to use as a lightweight alternative to woven reeds with the bonus of fewer gaps (thus allowing less insect escapage). As a bonus the creatures who produced the silk were considered a delicacy.

Create Advanced Concept (2 AP) Hydroponics: To help encourage insect growth, plants from each region are brought along, fed by a water bath. Some debate exists over the best sources for this water but it is agreed that the best time to harvest it is shortly before the fall of the Pure Rain as the pure water leads to weak and dying plants. Hydroponics on sledges pulled by the Aurochs assists in feeding both the Lolats and insects as well as providing fibers for clothes, toys and tools. [Amphibians (Bipeds) 10/10]

Tally:
Water (Wetlands) 2/10
Weather (Rain) 2/10
Amphibians (Bipeds) 10/10
Medicine (Toxins) 2/10
Truth (Deals) 2/10
Magic (Necromancy) 6/10

Domain acquired: Amphibians (Bipeds)

9-9= 0 AP

**Demidos** · 2023-09-28, 01:45 PM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Sagmi, Inspecting The Sun and Primal Forges

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What Dwells Above, Sagmi: The Sun

Even for a God, the Sun burns bright and hot, and the Forge so powered by this cosmic furnace is no different. Within the Forge is the presence of something else, equal to a God but not among their number.

Cease.

The great engine whirred forth into life and from the Sun, that alien presence arose as if the vast ball of fire itself cracked like an egg, the presence pressing out like yolk. No other God had visited it, let alone tried to penetrate one of its few creations. It was startling, to say the least. Light and fury flashed and the voice rang out once more.

"Tread not within the Forge, for its power is not for the Divine to command. Terrestrial one, what have you come to accomplish."

Sagmi steps back, surprised by the seeming sentience of the Forge. She tilts her head, examining the engine with interest. A presence on par with that being that once swam past her cage in the Abyss? How strange that it should choose to live here, contained within this odd contraption. The device itself is odd as well, for she can sense the traces of divine influence upon it though it claims independence from the Divine.

"How rude! How interesting. I mistook you for a fascinating tool to push forth stories, but it seems you are more than just that. Tell me, what is this place? Is there more beings up here like you, as odd and rude as you are?"

As she speaks she inspects some of the creatures being formed and sent to the First World, walking in the Void and across the Forge, lost in curiosity and ignoring the injunction spoken by the Forge.

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Spoiler: Kish-Eru, The First City Reacts to Lilia's Favored Children

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Kish-Eru

Amid the growing chaos of the city there was Maiden that tended to her garden. She hummed in peace for she knew that she was Beloved, whose presence would make any mortal forget to breathe and who’s endangerment could lead to hearts forgetting to beat.

Yet even Beloved as the Maiden was she knew the suffering that occurred around her would only increase. Her brow furrowed at the thought, and those who loved her sought to ease her worries.

Hiding in glamor, using lies to misdirect the strong against the stronger, and having certain individuals 'disappear’ did the maiden cult begin to make their unseen mark upon the city.

The First City stands on the precipice of war, but as rumors of unrest spread, so do rumors of a new faction, a peace-loving faction. People speak of the favor of a new Goddess, Lilia, who offers respite from the constant politics of the city. Some few even claim to have visited a garden, flowering and beautiful, although none have been able to provide verification of those claims. The planting of flowers has gone through something of a renaissance, with lilies and water flowers being planted all across the city, and gardening societies gaining traction. Some city dwellers are actively scouring the area searching for this alleged new faction at the behest of She Who Leads, but how much She knows is kept strictly secret. Questions such as "Have you seen the Garden?" have become common in the city, though who are agents of greater powers and who are the curious and desperate is difficult to distinguish.

Also rapidly rising are the reports of disappearances, seemingly targetted at the city's most dissident voices. Some say that the city has instituted a secret police, though some of those disappeared include warlike officials from the city itself. Oddly enough, many of the reports of those last seen report them with colleagues, old flames, or other people with whom they share some common roots. One widely circulated report among the city's powerful mentions the oddly sad look in the eyes of those disappeared and those with them, and comments about the sad state of the city.

Binds with Fire is now on the run from She Who Leads, and has been increasingly desperate in his attempts to regain his position. His position is further weakened by the mysterious disappearances of multiple of his most aggressive commanders as well as one of his Inksworn. The weeping Kami of the Forest enslaved by Binds with Fire has begun to wear itself thin, daylight showing through its fading form, and those who are best informed know that Binds with Fire has been taking trips out of the city, seeking a new Kami to bind, a more overtly destructive one that he can hold over the heads of the city council as a threat of war.

**Mechalich** · 2023-09-28, 06:37 PM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: new arrivals to Eresalay

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Floating towards the coast, the final turnout was rather meager compared to what the group started the adventure with. The Lady, her gel like body having fully taken on the black of the ink, came to explore this unknown land and contact its people. The Healer, a young human man who was not the most successful of his craft, joined to find new herbs and salts, something to push him past the mark of a unremarkable apprentice and towards a well regarded expert instead. Several simple Adventurers, now also decent enough sailors, who came to find adventure... With each slightly different interpretations of what they could find and what rewards may await. A handful of of people knowing their trades. Carpentry, Stone-Cutting, Cooking, the usual. Somehow, even one of the Storytellers, a singer of some kind, survived the journey.

And as they stranded at the coast, a camp was quickly errected. Most simple, but enough to defend from goblins at least, as the smoke of the campfires started to rise over the horizon. The following days, scouts would travel the coast for any drifting wood or barrels, hoping to find some more of their rations or stamp out any slime before they get inland. And of course, a eye would be kept out for the locals. If the stories where to be believed they should be recogniseable enough as people. It is not like the People of the Chain where strangers to strange traits afterall.

Rising on the Coast

Moving carefully and slowly, Kasumi hauled her body out of the ocean and onto the sandbar filling the middle of the bay. She kept to her belly as she moved, trusting the tight silks wrapped about her skin to protect her flesh from sharp rocks and shell fragments clustered within the shifting sand. As she moved the surrounding seals, densely clustered near the shoreline, panicked at the unfamiliar presence. Swiftly, they rolled away and slipped into the sea with loud barking cries. Kasumi grimaced at that action, worried it might draw attention, but there was no avoiding it. The seals of the coast had long ago learned to fear the Kishi Onna, and they were easily panicked creatures.

That skittish nature should conceal her, she knew. If one reacted every time the rotund animals responded with alarm, it would consume an observer’s entire day. Eagles, whales, wolf spiders, and even their own kind could set the seals to flight. Some levels of vigilance were impossible.

Nevertheless, she did all she could to compress her profile. With her body low, stomach slithering across the sand, she knew it was unlikely that anyone would see her as more than a stringy patch of seaweed, scraggly red strands washed up by the waves. It had worked before. She had been considered a skilled hunter of shorebirds before the need arose to choose blight as her primary target. Steadily, patiently, always remaining within the cloak of the morning mist, she crept forward to the low crest of the sandbar and the clear view of the shoreline it offered.

The smoke, she noted silently, continued to rise in steady column from the same source point as before.

Her sisters had watched that smoky pillar for some time. It was no Onna settlement, not even the house of a rare hermit sister gone to live in harmony with the Kami. The sisters made little smoke, preferring enclosed earth ovens for those times they needed fires. Even should they need open surface flames, it would not be left for long. Goblins possessed sufficient twisted mentality to seek out smoke from far away.

That recollection brought a thin smile to her face. Many, so very many, had been eliminated once the Order uncovered that lure. It had little use now, with most slain.

Despite the restoration of a modicum of safety, the sisterhood avoided blazes unless absolutely necessary. Fire had become a common feature of the land, thanks to the arrival of the Flame Tigers. They dared not add to it lest burning outpace growth. They had even, at the quiet urging of the Kami, taken to combating some of the small lightning-sparked blazes to maintain proper equilibrium.

This smoke, it might have come from a Flame Tiger, but the giant cats never slept in one place for so long. Their existence angered most Kami, and if they failed to remain mobile the earth would swallow them up to squelch the irritation of such unruly guests.

Not Sea Folk either. Kasumi knew their kind well enough, for such strange beings. She had traded with them for many years, until their strange retreat into the depths and the commensurate shift toward general hostility that followed. They sometimes set fires upon the shore or watched lightning-set combustion in fascination when it chanced to burn through the carcass of a beached whale, but they never left the sea for too long. Nor, if they had chosen to frolic upon the shore here, would they have left the sandbar unattended. None had accosted Kasumi during the lengthy and circuitous swim necessary to reach this point unseen from shore, a period sufficient to confirm their absence.

Goblins remained a possibility, one reason why she had undertaken the effort in the first place, but it was unlikely. The region ought to be cleansed, she had stained her blade red doing just that, and there had been no signs of new emergence. Blighters also generally avoided camping near to the sea. Their kind was incapable of building and relied upon tunneling into the earth like moles for shelter. This close to the ocean, tunnels would flood.

Poor swimmers, and easily slaughtered by Kishi Onna and Sea Folk alike in the water, Goblins feared the ocean with good reason. To find them here would be a truly unexpected occurrence.

A single glance at the shoreline camp, located above the tideline in a sheltered cove, was enough for Kasumi to determine it was not made by goblins. Blighters did not construct defensive palisades, nor did they build domes draped in hides for shelter or carve a trench to allow the tide to sweep away their refuse. The camp was both too well-organized and simply too tall. Its works matched a stature similar to that of the Onna rather than the diminutive forms of the green mob.

This was something else, but Kasumi knew not what it might be.

There were rafts tied to stone boulders on the shore, and something else, a shaped and hollowed log with a frame attached above floating in the surf. Its nature and purpose were opaque to the Kishi Onna. Further up from the tideline figures moved about tending to the fires. Most seemed to either be roasting small animals, shaping stone, or working with skins. Common enough activities, though Kasumi knew few Mori Onna inclined to the consumption of pigeon, rat, and squirrel unless desperate.

Her vision could not reveal much detail at this distance, and instead conveyed the need to approach closer. One of the strangers walked along the shoreline, examining driftwood and other debris washed up there, but paid little attention to the waves. Unwise that, potentially, given the possibility of Sea Folk, but alternatively the ocean could be deceptive and treacherous. The Song was there, always, humming away in the nether reaches of the mind. Kasumi’s connection to the Kami, the bright swirling trill and pounding surf thrum of the coastal spirits, easily drowned it out, especially here, in the lands of her bond parents, but perhaps others were not so well protected. Her forest sisters complained of the Song, sometimes, if too long removed from beneath the boughs of their trees.

Slipping back into the surf with an easy roll, Kasumi swam through the thick kelp forests coating the shallow coast. She kept mostly submerged, only rising to take a single deep breath once every few minutes. Steady strokes powered her across the bay toward the shore. At the inner edge of kelp growth, no more than one hundred meters from shore, she surfaced just enough to bring her skull above water. Nothing more than her mouth emerged above the waves, and the long strands of weed growing from her scalp concealed her among the nearby algae. Just another reddish patch among thousands.

Blinking away salt spray, she stared onto the shore. People moved about along the thin soil below the cliffs, or clustered by the fires. She counted eleven. Assuming some resting in their crude shelters and others out gathering in the nearby woods, she guessed the total at roughly twenty. Not a substantial number. Nor a threat, should it come to that.

It seemed unlikely. These beings were very strange, unknown to her eyes, but their desperation was clear.

They were similar in size to the Onna, and of roughly corresponding shape, especially the few she could recognize as female. Most were slightly different, shifted in the hips and shoulders, and Kasumi supposed they were likely males. That was, after all, how most creatures were divided, those not blessed to share the land as parents. She could not be sure, as these strangers were sufficiently civilized to conceal their genitalia. They used crude assemblies of animal skins to do so. Nowhere in the camp was there barkcloth, linen, silk, or any other fabric. Something else, a thin, oddly fuzzy covering, coated much of their bodies, though much buried under dirt and grime. It vaguely resembled pale fur but possessed solidity only atop their skulls. Elsewhere it was patchy and thin, resembling the skin of foxes with severe mange. She hoped they were not stricken with illness. Pinkish tints to the skin, where not coated in grime, suggested a youthful nature, as if they were mewling babes whose hair had not grown yet, but the bodies were those of adults.

Could these be Humans? The Sea Folk spoke of such beings, sometimes, claimed the Song had remade them from such a weak and flawed beginning. Wise sisters with much lore of the world suspected a similar origin of the Onna, for no other creature shared the touch of the Kami as they did.

No such beings lived in Eresalay. Kasumi knew this for certain. The Bloodsilk Order kept watch and relayed messages among the far-flung bands of exterminators. Despite this, she did not foreclose her mind to the possibility of new arrivals. There were lands beyond Eresalay. Strange things washed up on shore after great storms or were vomited forth by leviathans who found them unpalatable. Bizarre creatures even fell from the sky, rarely, when one of the great cloud dwellers chanced to enter its death throes above land.

Her eyes scanned the rafts and the strange spar-expanded log. Had these strangers somehow crossed the ocean?

The Sea Folk spoke of other lands, far away, beyond the reach of even the strongest swimmer, but if a log could float in the surf for months, so too a raft.

She shuddered at the thought. The vast blue expanse of the deep ocean was a real beyond the touch of the Kami. If they existed in those regions, they were either fluid and untouchable or consigned to the abyssal depths alongside the lightless cities of the Sea Folk. Such places, and she had once swum out as far as her strength would dare, made her feel unwell, as if the life drained from her skin. Her heart was tied to the shore, and she had no desire to be disconnected from it.

But if Humans existed in the absence of such a bond, perhaps they were able to travel further.

Stone implements, wooden scraps, animal skins, the people of the camp seemed poor, wretched even, to Kasumi’s eyes, and vulnerable. She wore treated silk, carried finely carved obsidian blades, and lodged with her sisters in a raised and jointed cabin with fine sleeping mats when not on patrol. These new arrivals possessed very little and appeared weak from hunger as well. They did carry some few tools of strange form and color, almost like pyrite, that she did not recognize. Something about them made her eyes twitch as she looked at them, shuddered against the spiritual essence at her core.

Moments later, several others returned to the camp through a crude swinging gate in the palisade and Kasumi’s concerns redoubled. Four beings, three of them those she now assumed were Humans, one greatly otherwise. She, for this being appeared to possess at least a facsimile of female features, occupied a roughly Onna-shaped body, but was at the same time utterly alien. Black as pitch in shading, she also moved much like gooey sap. Watching her steps offered no sense of muscle action, instead it seemed the body flowed from point to point through expanding and contracting as a slug might. Somehow, despite this strange form, she seemed to be capable of speech. There was, at least, a gap in the face where a mouth might be, and it appeared that the others understood this strange being, deferred to her even. Kasumi regretted that she could hear no words over the constant lapping of the waves.

Staring carefully, the Kishi Onna watched the feet of the strange ink-colored being. Her feet pooled and ripped atop the rocky contours of the cove, the body conforming slightly against the substrate below. This gave lie to the humanoid guise.

A slime? Kasumi had seen locomotion and bodies like this before. Slimes could cross the sea on logs, floating leaves, or even clinging to the teeth of leviathans. Sometimes they reached the beaches, resembling stranded jellyfish. They did not survive long. Their flesh might be toxic to Onna tongues, but it did not dissuade hungry crabs and sand fleas who tore them apart and slurped up their gooey mass readily. That was good. Beings foreign to Eresalay had no place to live upon its shores.

Could a slime, somehow, become a person? It seemed almost unimaginable. Kami could twist and shift life, if they focused intently, but only slightly. Such a feat was beyond their mightiest. Perhaps the ashen tempters? They were powerful indeed, as the Onna had learned to their detriment when young and arrogant sisters had dared to listen to their luring speech. Perhaps other, still stronger, beings existed. The Spider Behind the Moon, surely, had such potency, though she seemed little inclined to such blatant actions. Something, surely, had sent aurochs and wolf spiders to the forests, and unleashed goblins and flame tigers.

The power of such beings was incalculable. Even something as bizarre and seemingly ridiculous as imparting personhood upon a slime – the very idea sounded like a poor jest within her thoughts – had to be conceded as a possibility. This admission only unlocked other, dangerous, questions. This being existed in the camp, and it seemed in command of the others, the Humans. It could not be ignored. The sisters must formulate a response.

Kill them? She wore the bloodsilk, it arose quickly as a possibility in her mind. It would not, she believed, be difficult. Though these people were taller than goblins, they appeared weak and injured and lacked armor of their own. If she gathered her sisters to strike it could be done quickly and easily, end the matter before it had begun.

It had the benefit of simplicity.

Despite that, she found little else to recommend the approach. So far as eyes could see, these people had done nothing beyond cross the ocean. To reward that with death felt disproportionate, excessive. They were not goblins. Their existence did not demand finality.

Sending them away appealed, simply banish the problem from their shores, but Kasumi swiftly recognized it as impossible. Simple rafts had not carried these people across the seas. They would have starved and froze. Whatever empowered the journey, it seemed they no longer possessed it. Ordering them onto those rickety platforms and pushing them out into the surf, even if the command was obeyed, represented merely a slow death sentence.

Trade? Possible, but the desolate camp appeared to possess nothing of worth. Certainly, it did not compare to the strange and curious bounty of the depths the Sea Folk could offer. She did not even know if they could communicate. Some measure of the Sea Folk language was known to her, as much as could be pronounced by one with lips, but none of the murmurs carrying out over the waves represented familiar sounds.

They could not be left alone. It would not work. Villages, Kishi Onna and Mori Onna alike, existed nearby. These strangers would eventually stumble across their fields, driven to wander by hunger if nothing else. Worse, they might draw out goblins. No matter how many the Order slew and how many hives they burned, the blight could never be completely eradicated. It seemed to spring from the air itself. The creatures numbered few now, but they persisted. Should they find these people, they might spawn upon them.

None, no matter how strange, deserved that fate.

No obvious solution presented itself. Options churned through her mind as she turned about and swam away, headed to the nearest village south along the coast. Weighty responsibility descended upon her. Her sisters would defer to her judgment as she was first in the field. The choice lay in her hands, terrible with potency.

Contact was inevitable, but the method escaped her sight. A thousand possibilities turned through her thoughts, each slightly different.

In the end, as arms and legs grew weary and Kasumi hauled herself out onto shore near the village, she concluded there were only two real choices. A single emissary could be sent as a volunteer and seek the friendship of these strangers, or they could approach in strength behind a Bloodsilk vanguard. Good and bad attached to each.

Tired, she claimed a half-submerged boulder and briefly lapsed into sleep beneath the setting sun. Dreams, she hoped, might offer insight. No silk woman, spinning webs, or giant spiders appeared therein. Only the land, the endless forests, mighty rivers, and towering mountains of Eresalay flashed through her thoughts. Land whose essence vibrated through her bones.

Enough to decide. The Onna were the daughters of the Kami. The land itself was part of them. That claim would, must, be asserted.

They did so. Kishi Onna and Mori Onna from many villages across the western coast took up arms. Nearly two hundred sisters, led by ten of the Bloodsilk Order, marched down upon the palisade, stepped out of the morning mist with obsidian naginatas in hand, and demanded the new arrivals identify themselves.

**AlexanderML** · 2023-09-28, 06:42 PM (ISO 8601)

A Crimson Bloom:

Across the Empire there were a growing number of men and women adorning themselves with flowers. At first a simple tradition among the young, those who delved too deep into the woods; it was nevertheless tolerated for the simple fact that those adorned with flowers were blessed with enough strength to be overlooked.

As the young became the new generation of warriors, those adorning themselves in flowers began to show more strange oddities. They knew one another often enough to appear strange, took meaning from one another’s outfits, and began to carry scars along their palms from their bleeding for the ground. Yet their hardiness and dexterity was again great enough for this to be overlooked… or if not, then the one to condemn them would likely disappear.

Things only began to radically shift when the Maiden of Glamor began to walk the empire. Loved by the goddess, she gathered others who were touched by the goddess’s love to her side, and gifted them with the promises of the goddess and a flower from Her bouquet to show her love to them.

Gathering the most fanatical warriors to her side the Maiden of Glamor thus founded the Crimson Bloom Champions to aid those who held the goddess’s love within their homeland and to give proper bloody tribute for the harvest.

The Maiden of Glamor promised blood was necessary for tribute to the earth, and that the goddess’s love would sprout for those who poured blood upon the ground. Warriors would spill the blood of their enemies, yet anyone could give of themselves to the earth to feed the earth. The earth, thus fed, would produce red flowers and servants for those the earth loved.

Spoiler: OOC

Show

AP 15/16

AP 11/16

(Artifact Charge) Bless - Crimson Blooms: These small red flowers are created when blood is spilled on the ground as an offering to Lilia, or through careful gardening using existing flowers in a process that involves a corpse.

Each Crimson Bloom has three petals. When a petal is consumed the target is supernaturally healed as an inner heat rises up from inside, replacing blood, removing fatigue, and speeding up the healing process. While not a replacement for proper medical treatment, it nevertheless is a great boon to warriors on the battlefield or those suffering through emergencies. This does give a minute amount of Lilia's Love to the recipient.

-2 Counteract (Goblin Breeding Pools): Those lands where either Lilia’s Love has sunk in or where the goddess’s cult plies their work the very mana that flows through the area will begin to be tainted by Lilia’s Love. When goblins would be produced under such circumstances they are created with flowers on their bodies, typically looking out of place and strange.

Such goblins are trainable, listening to those who are corrupted by Lilia’s Love; though they cannot perform tasks that a typical d&d mindless skeleton couldn’t. Emotion (Envy) 9/10

-5 AP Create Greater Utility Artifact (Create Organization) - Lilia’s Promise: The genius loci of those afflicted with Lilia’s Love, Lilia’s Promise has become mindless through the growing diversity and numbers of the cult; held together by Lilia’s Love to the point where it has transcended into a unifying expression of the goddess’s love.

While unable to act on its own, Lilia and her flower maidens can call to and utilize Lilia’s Promise to call to Lilia’s love in people, giving them purpose and leadership. 5/10 Community (Cult)

(Artifact Charge) Create Organization - The Crimson Bloom Champions: A warrior cult dedicated to Lilia within the Empire, the champions give out brutal punishment to those who defy the goddess’s love and work to ‘cleanse’ any goblin outbreaks through mass bloodshed and the planting of crimson blooms so that Lilia’s Love may grace the land.

4/16 AP

**Razade** · 2023-09-29, 02:14 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Demidos

Sagmi steps back, surprised by the seeming sentience of the Forge. She tilts her head, examining the engine with interest. A presence on par with that being that once swam past her cage in the Abyss? How strange that it should choose to live here, contained within this odd contraption. The device itself is odd as well, for she can sense the traces of divine influence upon it though it claims independence from the Divine.

"How rude! How interesting. I mistook you for a fascinating tool to push forth stories, but it seems you are more than just that. Tell me, what is this place? Is there more beings up here like you, as odd and rude as you are?"

As she speaks she inspects some of the creatures being formed and sent to the First World, walking in the Void and across the Forge, lost in curiosity and ignoring the injunction spoken by the Forge.

The Shattered Star, Sagmi: The Void

"There is but one here. Your eyes cast to a trinket. Gaze upward for you speak not to a mere tool but the Sun. There are no beings like this one at all. It stands alone, its function to light the creations of the Divine."

The Shattered Star gleamed within the vast and tumultuous flame that heated the First World and the Void.

"This trinket is the Forge, where first life was made. Where life, should that below cease, can create again. To keep the cycle. Life, death, and life again. Endless under the light of the Sun, never to fear the acts of capricious destruction, never to fear the acts of uncaring protection. Merely a function for that is the duty we hold for the Divine. Do not tread or tamper, to do so risks this function. This is not a place for the Divine, no place so lowly can maintain itself in the face of The Creator's Children."

**DasIrrlicht** · 2023-09-29, 07:43 AM (ISO 8601)

People off-the-Chain, first contact

Originally Posted by Mechalich

Enough to decide. The Onna were the daughters of the Kami. The land itself was part of them. That claim would, must, be asserted.

They did so. Kishi Onna and Mori Onna from many villages across the western coast took up arms. Nearly two hundred sisters, led by ten of the Bloodsilk Order, marched down upon the palisade, stepped out of the morning mist with obsidian naginatas in hand, and demanded the new arrivals identify themselves.

It was not going to bad since the landing. Or at least, not considerable worse then expected. The goblin threat seems to be exceptionally rare in this land, in fact they can not even be sure it exists in this land at all. The Palisades have seen little to no action since they landed, and even the little moat/trench/trash-chute has been mostly accosted by some rats (a pest they are unsure they brought or just happens to exist everywhere already... At least its some extra smoked meat the Galotians under the group have little issue with. The delicious pigeons where much more to the human tastes in comparison, as well as the fish they occasionally caught whenever trying to get some rest.).

The huts were just quickly erected things, mainly using hide to cover against whatever weather comes from above, and the campfire has gone and turned into a proper fire pit that could be kept burning day & night, to heat more when something is being prepared and let cool of to a mere ember when nothing hangs above it... Yeah, they have to admit, it is a bit pathetic, even compared to the lumber camps over on the chain. But given what they all lost with the ships, it works.

Last evening had gone exceptionally well. The scouts managed to guide a small group of Aurochs back to the encampment, their strength would be of much help to collect some better materials from further away, and create some proper housing soon enough. And should stretching the leftover rations fail, they are hulking beasts of meat afterall. Trough slaughtering them would be a waste at this point. Yet... There was a feeling of being watched. Especially for the humans it was clear, something more intelligent had their eye fall on them...

And the next morning, the feeling would be more then just confirmed. One of the Galotians, exceptional small in stature and of the more typical cyan-ish tint, spotted the reflections of the volcanic glass weapons out of the mist before they could spot the first person wielding them. However, that was enough to ring a small bell (One of the ships bells, to be exact, that has been swept ashore before and was quickly mounted for the outlooks). It was just a few shakes, enough to wake up the rest of the camp but no ongoing ringing. Its not certain that this was a attack, it may just be caution. The proximity of this continent to Yalasere may left them scarred from a previous encounter?

Regardless, as the force approach, a number of people take up defensive positions atop the palisade. Some adventurers with bows and crossbows, as well as the occasional Pike. Of course, the little metal working the weapons have is on the cruder side unlike the empires perfection of the craft, but Iron is resilient. Even the crude ones are still hard and sharp. At least two have gone out of their way to don some currently-ill-fitting breastplates and helmets as they take positions atop the gate. Most of the working folk in turn keeps themself in the safety of the huts, except one or two humans that stick with the Aurochs in case they get scared and attempt to storm away.

The gate opens, slightly, to let out a few people without revealing to much behind the walls. The black-stained Gel-Person, at the front, lacking most facial features beyond the occasionally forming hole used to pronounce things, apparently unarmed. Flanked by a somewhat armored human and a near water-coloured Galotian who seems to have some plates slid beneath what other species would consider the skin, both carrying swords of different make, the human with a shield and the Galotian (so concentrated on their upper body at the time that the legs have flown into something of a amorphous blob, something that is not to uncommon for their kind) apparently intend on dual-wielding theirs if it comes to a fight... A fight that would obviously not end in the groups favor if it was to break out.

The demands of the Onna where voiced, the language was... Hard to understand for the people of the chain. But there was some common root, certainly. The Humans and Onna may have some past in common neither of them really knows. The human whispers something into the Ladys... Not ear, they do not seem to have any, but the side of the head. And one can hear, slightly, an awnser by the lady, before she opens to talk to the armed visitors come together of the coast.

She speaks slowly, with purpose to allow the Onna to think about the words a bit, and reach their conclusion about similar terms in their language.
They are from a group calling itself 'People of the Chain', referring to some mountain formation to the west, and have crossed the ocean in larger 'ships', until some Sea-Folk took offense to that. They have come because they heard stories of this continent existing, some strangers carried the word and it since then has been retold until it was left as a myth. Curiosity drove them, and they wanted to see the sights, the dangers, and specifically: The People of this to them foreign Continent.
There is also a small voicing of interest on what the visitors wear. Cloth even slightly comparable is rare where they come from, usually just left to the clothes of people of higher standing, or purposes as the sails of a 'Ship' or Mill. Leathers are the primary way the humans tend to cloth themself at home. And they excuse themself for their disheveled appearance. The travel has not been kind to them.

On a unvoiced but obvious note, the Galotians of the group do not seem to bother much with actual clothing, possibly because prolonged contact with most organic materials starts to damage it. But it is not uncommon for them to instead have their bodies formed in a way that it resembles some outfits more so then skin. The Ink-Black Lady for example seems like they wear a coat of the same material, yet any even surface level examination reveals that the coat is literally a part of her.

Spoiler: Naury no AP Spending

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1 AP Left

Progress:
[Ooze (Gelatons) 7/10]

**Athedia** · 2023-09-29, 08:14 AM (ISO 8601)

Approaching Danger

Glikmora explored her land, investigating the changes that had happened during her wanderings. She saw the strange rock creatures, narrowly avoiding a boulder thrown at her own head. She saw creatures following her children covered in mud and reeds. Fewer now the Lolats had moved to the sledges but still present. But what concerned her the most were the small green creatures she found washing onto Adanats shores. These creatures had none of the markers of the creations she had seen during her travels. The sledges were not enough, other peoples were coming to Adanat. The ocean was their path. The Lolat's would need another.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Tally:
Water (Wetlands) 2/10
Weather (Rain) 2/10
Amphibians (Bipeds) 10/10
Medicine (Toxins) 2/10
Truth (Deals) 2/10
Magic (Necromancy) 6/10

No AP remaining

**Omoikane13** · 2023-09-29, 01:33 PM (ISO 8601)

Worldly Gifts Given

Kish-Eru was tumultuous. Stoked. Lilia’s influence had been a much-needed peaceful injection, but through shadowed streets and clumps of reeds, a pair of green eyes watched on with dissatisfaction. Hroad wanted these sorts of places to be protected, cultivated, grown. Embodying a narrative hadn’t butted up against this, and neither had any of Lilia’s touches of love and plants, but the rest of Sagmi’s annoying nudges would persist and snowball if left alone.

Independent power would be key to topple the locus of Kish-Eru. Previously, Hroad had believed it wisest to tie the power of mortals to what bound them - the land they lived on and the communities they built on it. Further divine meddling had made the naivety of this evident. Well, naivety, and also Hroad’s own growth. They had been rather adherent to the ideas of the law in the early days of the First World, but had since cultivated a more circumspect, practical view.

As others had, Hroad had been planning to weave a copy of the world, some little getaway from the interference. But that idea could be reworked, reshaped, like a winding plant being grown against a bamboo cane.

====

The initial plan had been the divine equivalent of a small garden, a fertile and flourishing world where plants and animals could thrive, avoiding the ravages of some of the more choice creations on the First World.

Instead, Hroad would grant that getaway to all who could think. If sapient, it would become able to contain its own little plot of land, its own inner world that would make it almost an inverse Kami. This world would be both representation of the being’s existence and something that they could shape. It would be somewhere they could go, retreating into their own world

Most often, this inner world would resemble the environment a being was most used to and most familiar with; Lolat inner worlds were often wetlands, while Lilia’s worshippers tended towards meadows and fields of flowers. Some, the worst of the Empire of the Sun, had blasted deserts inside them.

Whatever it looked like, this world would be a place away from prying eyes, mortal or immortal. It would be a lifeline, a garden, a place to hide, a place to luxuriate. It would be a place for things to grow, be it the owner or the contents.

Hroad hoped that those living in Kish-Eru would be able to have an escape. That they would be able to escape their addled ruler, their dangerous city, that they would be able to escape Lilia’s cult if they wished. That they would be able to grow and cultivate plants, in a way that some would have lost when their local Kami was subjugated. That they would be fortified against the meddling of others.

====

In addition, a fresh resource. Many mortal beings seemed to live in either very wet or very dry areas. This provided some unique challenges to their ways of life. Cultivary had been made for the very purpose of helping in this realm, and Hroad had received a spark or two of inspiration.

The first, something to act in place of terrestrial animals that could be farmed. This was nonviable in wet locales like Kish-Eru, and made it difficult to obtain certain foods and materials. Hroad intended to create a substitute. A lotus, the size of the average mortal domicile, and with petals that were huge and leathery. A strong, flexible, fast-growing material, something that could be the foundation for industry, building, for progressing civilization. And accessible to many through the magic of Cultivary as well, helping prevent any messy economies developing.

The second, something that would hopefully balance out the many harsh deserts that had cropped up. Cacti were marvelous plants, fleshy cylinders that held impressive amounts of moisture, and it was this ability that Hroad wished to amplify. Increased size would obviously be a benefit, but it would also help to give them an extra method of storing water. It would practically vanish if stored in or under the ground, and so there was one place left - the sky. The newly enhanced cactus would be able to create massive clouds of water, and also reverse the process, absorbing those clouds back into itself. Hroad could only hope that it would do some good for the desert dwellers and climate.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Create Mythical Concept: Inner Worlds [4 AP]: Every sapient being (as a rule of thumb, anything made with Create Race or that would be in that bucket) now has an inner world.

This world grows over time. This growth is typically, though not always, tied to self-conception. The stronger an identity, the larger that aspect of the world.
An inner world represents the creature who owns it. A Lolat would have an inner world of wetlands as a foundation, for example.
Inner world representations vary depending on outer changes. Outer changes can also be prompted by changes in the inner world. An inner world with more plants and animal life could translate into a more nurturing personality.
A being can physically transport itself to its own inner world whenever it wishes. It can return to the physical world within a small radius of where it left. This radius varies with the size of the inner world.
Items can be brought in and out of an inner world, but this is a notable effort. It is also a further effort for every "conceptual unit" away from the main identity of the inner world that the item is. A nurturing person who grows plants in their inner world would find less difficulty moving them back and forth, but would struggle storing something like a chunk of iron.

I am still unsure of some of the details of this concept, but will aim to rectify any discrepancies or disagreements before they become impactful.

Create Monster: Boverine Lotuses [1 AP]: Able to be made with Cultivary, Boverine Lotuses are nearly the size of the average house. Their petals are leathery and pliable, and are able to function as a leather substitute, though still resemble crisp white lotus petals. Their leaves are thick and nutritious, and also serve as a reliable food source.

Create Monster: Cactonimbus [1 AP]: Able to be made with Cultivary, Cactonimbuses are massive cacti. Roughly the dimensions of a sequoia, they are able to store water in the form of massive clouds that gather at their peaks, and are also able to then retrieve that water into themselves.

Domain Gained: Plants (Farming)

Remaining AP: 8

**DasIrrlicht** · 2023-10-05, 02:40 PM (ISO 8601)

Naury, slippery steps
A thing Naury has noticed in recent times was worrying to them. Every time they came to see what the mortals of the first world did in person, it seems to be harder to stay with them. Like something was deliberately pushing them away, forcing them back towards the plane they created so long ago. Naury has spend some time studying the effect, but it seemed not possible to strengthen or weaken it, until it clicked. The changes and influence they had over this first world must have been noticed by... Some force. A force stronger then the divine. Possibly, the will of the first world itself? It was there already as far as Naury can remember back afterall. And the fact that it could do this was... Worrying.

Yet Naury has always hidden their face behind something, a mask, a shadow, anything. It should not be impossible to hide it from the first world either. Yet, the divine is hard to suppress. No matter what they did, it seems the first world would know, so they instead turned to the Plane of Echos to find a solution. A simple representative would not do, there was no fun in not coming in person. Entering a mortals dream was fleeting, and technically, they would not even need to leave here for that. It was unsatisfying. Yet, the concepts may can be combined to something functional.

The Echo-Servants spend most of their time observing and learning about the lives of the People of the First world, be it by watching souls and echos, or even conversations with the remembered... Given, the ones stuck with the Echo-Version of Yalasere have to deal with often partly consumed souls, a not exceptionally envious task of puzzling together their displays from a bunch of half-information. But regardless, Naury took one of the Echo-Servants and started a small experiment. The things they have done on the first world did not suffer from the same rejection as the divine did, so how far can one push it? How much of 'Naury' will that fundamental plane of existence tolerate?

The Person appeared out of apparently nowhere, at the gates of a city, carrying an arrangement of things. Herbs, bottled fluids, salts, even rare true ice flowers that should not even exist on this area of the chain. Seemingly a Gelaton of some kind, they unusually for their kind where wearing heavy robes, and had a mask slipped over their face as they headed over to the local healer, where they took residence in their little workshop.

The tables, covered with tools and devices, many strange to even the people working here. It was a going to be some simple demonstrations, as they put on a incense to deal with the ensuring smells of the process. "We have left so many things for you to use. Yes, even their siblings have done so. Yet it seems few have come to grasp the potential they left you with." The voice echoed a bit, like it was not spoken as much by one person, and only few people heard them talk as the devices started to do their work, and boil away on some fluids and mixtures.

"This is just a demonstration of course, We expect you to come up with your own experiments soon enough." The 'Gelaton' added more ingridients to the mix, minerals from deep caves of the mountains and some more heat as they burned certain salts, as evening slowly has fallen over the still busy plaza. Now, the windows of the healers little workshop stood out, as many of the fluids kept a certain glow to them any of the ingredients simply did not possess. Working on, and occasionally giving the owner of the place some orders they would not think about disobeying, nearly the whole night would pass...

And as a result, some potions where created, many different kinds, all going beyond what the healers herbal and blood mixtures archived or could claim to archive before. From simplest mending of wounds at speeds the eye can barley watch happen, and sources of light seperated of sun and flame alike, to creations that would change your skin to be more resistant to force or even temporary grant you boons like you would normally have to make a pact with a temptation with... Speaking with Animals, Flight, changing a metal into another, or Charming someone who by all means should hate you. Of course, most of the more advanced ones would soon be forgotten again, waiting to be rediscovered, as the owner of the shop had little time to take notes as the cloaked stranger did their work. But there was enough memory and examples left to learn from. It will only be a matter of time.

Many Echo-Servants had gathered around while Naury did their experiment with re-entering the first world in a body it is more comfortable with, and a number of them even noticed that Naury seemed to act different as they spend the night away. Like whatever they have witnessed was not quite their creator, but a mixture of some kind, a bit of Naury and a bit of something else. Something else turns out to be one of their own, appearing back in the Plan of Echos as the experiments concluded, and slightly confused of the whole experience, as their memory seems to have massive gabs where the details should be.

Yes, the one used as a Vessel could not fully comprehend what had happened, yet they infulenced the Envoy non-the-less, as fragments of their personality seemed to have been intertwined with Nauries control for as long as they existed as the Envoy. For the god, it was not a full success. But it worked. Interacting with the people of the first world, more or less directly, was not of the table when the day would come and the plane refused to grant them entry.

Spoiler: Naury AP Spending

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1 AP LEFT
4 AP ROUNDSTART

3 AP - Create Avatar [Ooze (Gelatons) 10/10]

Envoy from the Echos
The Echo-Servants help Naury out in the plane of Echos, naturally. However, as Naury feels the First World rejecting their presence on it more and more, the Echo-Servants need to fill in a new role. Given a small, conscious upkeep of Nauries energy any given Echo-Servant can be transported to the first world, and theoretically, other planes to act as Naury themself. Their mind is suppressed during the whole ordeal, yet still influences how the Envoy acts as Nauries concentration suffers from 'being in two places at once'. As a result, no Envoy is 'pure' Naury, and no Envoy is exactly like another. Being a envoy is a service, and they are returned to the Plane of Echos once they fulfilled their tasks. Currently, only one Envoy from the Echos can exist at a time.
The Envoy can take nearly as many forms as Naury, but will on contact always reveal its Ooze nature. While they hide their faces just as much as their creator and shared mind does, it is not unusual for it to be imperfect and reveal some fraction of a face behind the cover.

2 AP - Create Advanced Concept (Shared with Lilia, the Flower Maiden) [??? (???) 2/10]

True Alchemy
It was time to give the people some new ways to utilise the many, many ingredients and tools left to them by gods all around. Alchemy is a Art just as much as a Science, and a dangerous one at that. Blood still can play a role just like in the early concoctions, but the complexity has ramped up tenfold. With the right ingredients, and right circumstances, anything can react with anything. Differing parts of herbs, salts pure, heated, or even burned to ashes, essences of creatures directly distilled out of their very blood or specific organs, ores of Orichalcum and shards of True Ice created in processes itself. Oceans Water and times spend settling in the cold dark of the ground, and fragments of plants raised by Loci or left for open in the indirect light of the moon for multiple nights...
Yes, the Processes of Alchemy are as different as they can be. the one thing they do have in common is that, if performed correctly, the results will be the same every time. No matter what abilities the Alchemist or even user posses otherwise.
However, the early history of alchemy was badly documented, and more then once, knowledge has been lost in fires just as fast as it was gained. For it to truly take permanent hold will tak time. Some of the most common and best documented recepies are creations of healing potions able to fix broken limbs and torn flesh, antidotes that suppress many more common toxins (Like that of bats). Other exceedingly common ones are acids and liquid that enflames itself for hours on end without spreading onto anything else, and the plenty of lab-explosions that are yet not useful for they tend to remove their own records on how it was archived.
At the current time, the Concept of True Alchemy is limited to the People of the chain and members of Lilias cult.

________
0 AP Left
1 MUA Charge

Progress:
[Ooze (Gelatons) 10/10]
[??? (???) 2/10] Will be decided by the next post of mine to what I attribute that.

**Demidos** · 2023-10-05, 10:52 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Razade

The Shattered Star, Sagmi: The Void

"There is but one here. Your eyes cast to a trinket. Gaze upward for you speak not to a mere tool but the Sun. There are no beings like this one at all. It stands alone, its function to light the creations of the Divine."

The Shattered Star gleamed within the vast and tumultuous flame that heated the First World and the Void.

"This trinket is the Forge, where first life was made. Where life, should that below cease, can create again. To keep the cycle. Life, death, and life again. Endless under the light of the Sun, never to fear the acts of capricious destruction, never to fear the acts of uncaring protection. Merely a function for that is the duty we hold for the Divine. Do not tread or tamper, to do so risks this function. This is not a place for the Divine, no place so lowly can maintain itself in the face of The Creator's Children."

“Ahh, there you are.” A nonplussed Sagmi turns her eyes to the Sun. “You are the first of the oldest I’ve met, but you seems to hold yourself apart from the divine. How curious. I do like your trinket very much — it ensures life will never grow stale, and new stories will always be emerging. But do you not wish to come and walk among the people and watch their great acts of heroism and treachery? Surely it grows lonely up here. Come to the earth, walk in my city - watching from afar is no substitute for living the adventure yourself!”

Originally Posted by Omoikane13

Worldly Gifts Given

The initial plan had been the divine equivalent of a small garden, a fertile and flourishing world where plants and animals could thrive, avoiding the ravages of some of the more choice creations on the First World.

Instead, Hroad would grant that getaway to all who could think. If sapient, it would become able to contain its own little plot of land, its own inner world that would make it almost an inverse Kami. This world would be both representation of the beingÂ’s existence and something that they could shape. It would be somewhere they could go, retreating into their own world

Hroad hoped that those living in Kish-Eru would be able to have an escape. That they would be able to escape their addled ruler, their dangerous city, that they would be able to escape Lilia’s cult if they wished. That they would be able to grow and cultivate plants, in a way that some would have lost when their local Kami was subjugated. That they would be fortified against the meddling of others.

====

In addition, a fresh resource. Many mortal beings seemed to live in either very wet or very dry areas. This provided some unique challenges to their ways of life. Cultivary had been made for the very purpose of helping in this realm, and Hroad had received a spark or two of inspiration.

The first, something to act in place of terrestrial animals that could be farmed. This was nonviable in wet locales like Kish-Eru, and made it difficult to obtain certain foods and materials. Hroad intended to create a substitute. A lotus, the size of the average mortal domicile, and with petals that were huge and leathery. A strong, flexible, fast-growing material, something that could be the foundation for industry, building, for progressing civilization. And accessible to many through the magic of Cultivary as well, helping prevent any messy economies developing

Spoiler: AP Actions

Show

Create Mythical Concept: Inner Worlds [4 AP]: Every sapient being (as a rule of thumb, anything made with Create Race or that would be in that bucket) now has an inner world.

This world grows over time. This growth is typically, though not always, tied to self-conception. The stronger an identity, the larger that aspect of the world.
An inner world represents the creature who owns it. A Lolat would have an inner world of wetlands as a foundation, for example.
Inner world representations vary depending on outer changes. Outer changes can also be prompted by changes in the inner world. An inner world with more plants and animal life could translate into a more nurturing personality.
A being can physically transport itself to its own inner world whenever it wishes. It can return to the physical world within a small radius of where it left. This radius varies with the size of the inner world.
Items can be brought in and out of an inner world, but this is a notable effort. It is also a further effort for every "conceptual unit" away from the main identity of the inner world that the item is. A nurturing person who grows plants in their inner world would find less difficulty moving them back and forth, but would struggle storing something like a chunk of iron.

I am still unsure of some of the details of this concept, but will aim to rectify any discrepancies or disagreements before they become impactful.

Create Monster: Boverine Lotuses [1 AP]: Able to be made with Cultivary, Boverine Lotuses are nearly the size of the average house. Their petals are leathery and pliable, and are able to function as a leather substitute, though still resemble crisp white lotus petals. Their leaves are thick and nutritious, and also serve as a reliable food source.

Create Monster: Cactonimbus [1 AP]: Able to be made with Cultivary, Cactonimbuses are massive cacti. Roughly the dimensions of a sequoia, they are able to store water in the form of massive clouds that gather at their peaks, and are also able to then retrieve that water into themselves.

Domain Gained: Plants (Farming)

Remaining AP: 8

Kish-Eru, Absorbing Hroad’s and Lilia’s influence

Boverine Lotuses. It seemed such a simple concept, but in the water soaked grasslands of Kish Eru they were something that could not be replaced or overstated. The ability to simply grow nutritious food, armor and clothing ushered in a new Era of prosperity in the city, where even the poor who could afford nothing could have a Lotus roof over their heads, and food to spare. They were a stabilizing force, but stabilizing forces only ever support the status quo. Without additional backup Binds With Fire was rapidly brought under control and imprisoned in the newly built underwater prisons, from which escape was extremely difficult, and his faction brought to heel by the will of She who Leads. Accepting that the Inksworn represent a new fact of life, the city issued an official verdict that She Who Leads will form a new council with the city, the Council of Five, consisting of herself, one representative from the new and growing flower faction, the city’s genius loci to represent the Kami, and the most powerful hero and villain factions in the city. She Who Leads still chooses to hide her face, speaking through intermediaries that are almost surreally prepared with answers to any questions they are asked. The Inksworn are still relatively new, and only a very few, perhaps those who have the distant connections to have heard a story about a Inksworn who jousted against giants, have the presence of mind to wonder if She Who Leads is using her natural abilities or leaning very, very heavily into her power, and if the second, what it might mean to have a city led by an Inksworn lost to their own Title…

The Council of Five begins to send out scouts in shallow drafted boats to explore the grasslands as well as the jungles. Some brave souls set out towards the ocean edge — from the waters come life and trade, and it would be foolish to miss out. After all, it is important for any growing city to know of their surroundings, and their neighbors.

**Mechalich** · 2023-10-06, 12:32 AM (ISO 8601)

Treaty Port
Kasumi found she did not like these strange people from across the sea. They were bizarre, crude, and smelled of death. This was unfair, probably, but no amount of self-awareness served to banish the impulse. The strange pitch-shaded slime-woman, who resembled mold compressed into the form of a person, seemed to talk past her, speaking as if comprising a treatise as opposed to making conversation. There was something fundamentally odd, or perhaps damaged, about her, as if she saw a different world than everyone else.

The claim that they had crossed the sea, somehow, in great vessels, rafts propelled by wind, was difficult to accept, but upon further consideration not that unreasonable. They must have come from somewhere, and there was evidence of salt damage and barnacle growth upon what remained. Perhaps it was possible, though why anyone would want to cross the sea remained unclear. Surely not to attack. If the Sea Folk could harm them so, what chance could they have in giving battle?

Trade? They seemed interested in the clothing of the sisters. That made sense, to wear dead animals was something only the desperate did. But what could these visitors offer? Certainly not their simplistic woodworks. The strange materials that they carried as weapons? It must be that.

The strange pitch-shaded woman allowed, after some confusing discourse, to allow Otsu, the best obsidian grinder among those gathered, to examine a knife made of this strange material. It was lustrous, as the inside of a muscle shell might be, but also smooth and sharp, not fragmentary in the manner of stone or wood. “Do you know what it is?” she asked Otsu, quietly, during a pause when the others went to eat.

“I think it is a metal,” the carver had studied natural history in her youth and knew the bones of the earth well. “I have seen copper and silver before. This is like those, but much harder. It has been changed somehow, using fire.” The Mori Onna’s face took on a terribly grim cast. “Many trees died for this thing. I can feel it.”

Carefully, Kasumi ran her fingers across the surface. She lacked the acute tree sense of her forest-dwelling sisters, but she was of the Kami, nonetheless. The burning feeling that tingled across her skin, the legacy of brutal fires to feed the making of this thing, was strong enough that even she could not ignore it. “Dangerous,” she whispered.

“Yes,” Otsu nodded. Her hand fell to the obsidian knife at her waist. “I recall the story of the first glass. This thing, it is not meant for us.”

This was broadly agreed after speaking to others, but it left Kasumi with another problem. The strangers would surely try to make more, if allowed to stay, but if they cut trees to form these metal tools the Kami would grow angry, and it would bring about battle. It is like a disease, she realized after a time. They must be isolated, quarantined.

The island of Talewako, in the west, was chosen. Devastated by a tsunami five years earlier, the Kami there were weak and the space desolate. Few Onna lived there. A painful sacrifice, but a small one. They would give it to the foreigners, all foreigners. If they wished to trade, they could use that place. In time, presumably, they would find something they possessed that the sisters desired. If they landed elsewhere, they would be removed. Should they resist, they would die.

Kasumi told the pitch-shaded woman that they could stay in the cove long enough to build the ships needed to make their way to the island. Her sisters would simply swim there. It seemed fair.

Structures Below Surface
Sayuri had always loved the water, far more than most of her sisters. They said she had swamp in her bones, and it was true, for her mother had taken as her bond-parent a lonely Kami of the marshes after stumbling upon a grand display mating dragonflies, flashing endless color beneath the sun. As a child she played in streams, lakes, and fens, fascinated by the realm beneath the surface where few of the Mori Onna ventured. As a teenager she made the key discovery that dragonfly nymphs could live multiple years by overwintering in the mud at the bottom of ponds and thereby endure the cold. From this first step she would spend her life upon the scholar’s path.

She spent long years studying the creatures and processes of water, and how life lived beneath surface, along the muddy banks, and even amid vegetation. Everything she observed these creatures do, she sought to imitate, making countless models of tiny creatures and their creations from mud, rock, and vegetative matter.

Caddisflies, more than any other creature, captured her fascination. They were remarkable craftsmen, constructing houses by layering and bonding together stone, shredded vegetation, shells, and even individual grains of sand. All such processes Sayuri sought to duplicate.

She learned to layer stone and mortar, constructing designs of impressive compressive strength no wooden creation could match with watertight seals. Layering leaves and wood pulp on frames beneath flowing water she produced sheets of thin, bonded material suitable for coverings, padding, and as a recipient of dyes and writings. Through interaction with her sisters and their knowledge of resins, she even unlocked the secret of bonding together sand such that it made solid composite material of incredible strength and durability that could even be set underwater. She also learned, from watching the potter wasps gather clay upon the shore, the process of making amorphous materials, and that when immolated in an earth oven they would harden and solidify into permanent waterproof containers.

All this she spread among her sisters and transformed the life of the Onna once again.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Create Mundane Concept (1AP): Ceramics – crafting and vitrification of pottery from clay. [Water (Rivers) 5/10]

Create Mundane Concept (1AP): Masonry – the use of stone, brick, and mortar to build durable and expansive structures. [Water (Rivers) 6/10]

Create Advanced Concept (2AP): Paper – sheets of varying size, strength, and thickness for writing, decoration, insulation, and padding. [Water (Rivers) 8/10]

Create Advanced Concept (2AP): Concrete – use of cement and chemical mixtures to produce composite material of great strength. [Water (Rivers) 10/10]

Domain Acquired: Water (Rivers)
Domains Possessed: Animal (Spiders), Animal (Transformation), Community (Sisterhood), Plant (Vines), Water (Rivers) - with 5 domains, Ecie ascends to Lesser God
Starting AP: 2 Rollover Gain: 4 Spent: 6 Remaining: 0

**DasIrrlicht** · 2023-10-06, 10:43 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Mechalich

Treaty Port
The island of Talewako, in the west, was chosen. Devastated by a tsunami five years earlier, the Kami there were weak and the space desolate. Few Onna lived there. A painful sacrifice, but a small one. They would give it to the foreigners, all foreigners. If they wished to trade, they could use that place. In time, presumably, they would find something they possessed that the sisters desired. If they landed elsewhere, they would be removed. Should they resist, they would die.

People Off-the-Chain,soon to be a organisation proper, AP is a limited resource
It was not the result they hoped for, and many of the adventurers of the group have been left grumbling... Yet there was very little they could do against this relocation. Bound by contracts and the ladies desire to have this all be a peaceful contact, as well as some common sense being they would have been hopelessly outnumbered by a whole continent, even the last person of the group had to bow their head to the decision.

It did not take long to re-settle to the island. Having to cross barley any ocean, and being in a area that is not settled by the sea-folk to any note able degree, they could get away with much simpler construction for the boats to set over. Of course, this does come with its own oppertunities. Delaying the travel a bit via several small tactics, be it 'extended negotiations' with the locals for sourcing the right kinds of wood without disturbing the Kami (A concept the People of the Chain are surprisingly familiar with, but the Kami of this land are so closely knitted with their people that extra care is needed) or scraping some extra knowledge under the guise of being unfamiliar with the local animals.

Yet, before overstaying their admittedly cold welcome, they successfully relocated both their camp, and all of their people, to the island the locals call 'Talewako' something that quickly got bastardised to 'Port Tale' as they started to settle properly. And more important, permanently, on the island. The devastation it has had many years ago may even be to their advantage as it turned out, as they could take much of the material they needed from 'dead' sources. Broken and dry trees, shattered rock, ecetra.

The small, forming town was aiming to prepare for something bigger. Their buildings are inspired by the ones of the Onna they managed to witness in the preperations to leave the continents mainland, if given some distinctive flourishes that distracts from the comparable crude working. Sparing themself the heavy stone walls they are used to they instead concentrated on making the foundations sturdy and use thick walls of layers of the crude papers framed by a odd, not quite natural bamboo. In fact, that bamboo has turned to their main material for many of the things as they found it growing in lines along the outer areas of the towns.

The Wall Bamboo was a symptom of something else of course. The Group has long enough been seperated from their original homes that they adopted their shared new home. And with that, a Genuine Loci naturally formed. With the exception of one person in the group they where seemingly blind to the 'new arrival' in their midst as anything but someone who was always there, and being that they without a doubt pull their weight, even the Lady had no issues with them being there. It was in fact a great boon, for a Loci is much more versed in dealing with the local, weakened Kami. In order to not taint the view of the Onna on them to much, and because it is simply seen as a good, sustainable practice, the local forests have been only slightly opened up for timber, as much more had to be replanted and slowly raised with Cultivary to replace and strengthen again.

Another plant that had started to grow was the 'Boverine Lotuses'. Yet they did not do exactly what they where intended to do, as instead of replacing the leathers used they merely substituted with their own kinds, creating more interesting patterns and combining the unusually simelar materials as needed. The fact that they grew in the ponds stretching the grass fields where Cow and Auroch alike grassed made it a odd sight.

The Kishi Onna would be the first to notice a change a few weeks after 'Port Tale' was settled. It was odd before that they build more houses in the walled settlement then they had people, and put of as storage space and the hiding place of their workshops by the watchful eyes of the Bloodsilk Order. Yet something arrived, a large boat, or if one was to ask the People, a small ship. With exceptionally many sails and a rather high railing, almost like a fence to prevent anything aboard from falling over it, it arrived with great speed near the wooden extensions the people of the chain had laied into the water.

Not long after starting to settle on the island, the People off-the-Chain had put in a Gamble. One boat, one person (a Galotian, for their resistance to the oceans song was more trusted because of their deadly relationship with water), minimal resources. They had set out at night, orienting on the moon as their boat has pushed itself over the ocean. Technically, it was considered to small for such a task, yet the cold waters always had benefited a travel to the west over one towards the wast, as the human ancestors of the party could attest. And the gamble paid of.

Port Tale has a ship, made to be fast at the cost of a more limited storage space and a rougher journey, tied to its piers. It soon left again, but it left the place with new tools of better quality, more people of specialised crafts. Even someone who described themself as a 'Alchemist', some form of up and coming craft. And the ship is soon to return again, for the way is known, and the will is plenty. It is only a question of time till it pays of for the noble merchant owning it.

Spoiler: Naury AP Spending

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0 AP LEFT

0 AP - Create Mundane Concept [MUA Charge]

Navigation
Watch the sun and you know the time. Watch the Moon and you know the direction. Watch the stars and you will be lead astray by their shifting nature. Watch the winds and you won't be moved off-course, watch the wave and you will avoid the harpoons. Watch the hands and you know your distance, watch the coast and you have found your safety.
Traveling the world is no easy task, as everywhere is different and has lurking dangers. But it can not compare to the ocean as it is hostile to any life not of its own and seems the same everywhere to the untrained eye. Yet simple tools, experience and a good sense of timing can lead you over it no harder then any other travel. As long as you can outrun the sea-folk and avoid your own turning to them that is.

________
0 AP Left

Progress:
[Society (Discovery) 2/10]

**Zelphas** · 2023-10-06, 02:03 PM (ISO 8601)

Beneath New Ground

*Minimal Guidance* takes control of her Deep Delver as the beast panics. Forward 7 was a good Delver--strong, calm, tireless, needing only a light touch to follow direction and change course--but having been born, reared, and bonded in the cramped circle of the Escape all its life, the creature simply didn't know how to respond when it swam its way through a rocky wall and discovered open air. *Minimal Guidance* felt an answering pang of sympathy for her bond's distress, and rushed to fill the gap before it could harm itself.

Underneath the short, velvety fur of Forward 7, thin glowing threads, looking like pale veins, flexed and coiled, arresting the Delver's frantic flailing and turning their fall into a simple slide down the slope of the cavern. *Minimal Guidance* injected calm into Forward 7's mind and took over its senses in the same moment, leaving the Deep Delver floating in a comforting void of sensation while she used its superior hearing and smell to gain her bearings. They were in an irregular cave, dep beneath the earth; one of many that had been found in the escape, but this felt... different. The air was drier. Perhaps... perhaps, they had finally, truly escaped.

Keeping full control over her Delver (despite her name, which galled her), *Minimal Guidance* directed her bond's efforts upward, seeking the surface, any surface. She swam through stone and dirt and around metal, ignoring the pangs of hunger Forward 7's body was sending her until her mount grew weak, seeking what she believed might be far above them--a surface. One without Eaters. Trying to skirt a fairly large seam of tougher material, *Minimal Guidance* doubled back--and her tunnel broke into the ocean.

She sealed the hole, saving the Escape from drowning, but Forward 7 was too battered by the pressure, engulfed by the water, and weakened from little food. She felt its body begin to resist her commands, the muscles stiffening, the senses growing fuzzy and indistinct. Regretfully, she pulled herself away from her bond, feeling the last of Forward 7's life disappear with the severing.

It would be a painful crawl back without a bond, but Ratum ensured that there were Delvers waiting near the front lines for just this misfortune. *Minimal Guidance* hoped that Forward 8 would be able to hold its breath better; it would be delicate work to find the surface, if she was even in the right place.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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0 AP + 4 AP = 4 AP

Teach Concept (1 AP) - Beast Taming: Through food enticements and selective breeding, the Yloch have tamed the Deep Delvers, breeding for large, docile, strong animals that can tunnel well and respond well to direction. The feeding of Orichalcum to these beasts has been deemed proper under Ratum, and Orichalcum is now considered almost exclusively Delver-food by Yloch. [Life (Worms) 9/10]

Alter Land (1 AP) - Yl's Escape: A massive, branching tunnel, beginning deep under Adanat and spreading in nearly every direction in search of new land. So far, there have been several false starts, but the effort is still ongoing under the auspices of Ratum. [Life (Worms) 10/10]: Domain Get! Lesser Deity Status Achieved!

Create Subrace (1 AP) - Yloch Controllers: Certain Yloch have been tremendously altered via Lifeshaping to resemble a circulatory system without a body, with several thin tendrils able to wrap around limbs and spread over an entire body. These Yloch have had their natural psionic powers enhanced, as well as introducing a suite of different poisons and potions that they can inject from their tendrils, allowing them to successfully and almost entirely control a host being. So far, Yloch Controllers can only bond with Deep Delvers; they gain nutrients from the Delver's body, and can extricate themselves from their bond in the event of the Delver's death. [Nature (Parasites) 1/10)]

4 AP - 3 AP = 1 AP Remaining

**MutantDragon** · 2023-10-06, 10:09 PM (ISO 8601)

Dwellings of the Dreadful

The Empire was flourishing. The Empire was always flourishing. New factions would rise and others would be destroyed, the weak would be exterminated, but always the Empire would grow stronger, larger, better. This was no different. One new faction called themselves "Crimson Bloom Champions." They adorned themselves in flowers and tamed the savage goblins. It mattered not, so long as they were strong. But their mastery of the goblins and eye towards beauty provided new opportunities. The cities of the Empire started to change. Slowly, the hastily constructed huts and disorganized halls were replaced. They were chosen by the sun, after all, so their edifices in its honor should reflect its majesty. Old shrines gave way to elaborate pyramid-temples where great feasts on the weak or heretical would occur and offerings would be given to the sun. From these great and astounding marvels of engineering, brought forth by the labor of lowly goblins and their masters, the rest of the sun-cities would mutate. Grand buildings were constructed with hitherto unseen architectural techniques that would astound any who saw them. And all along the streets, and all up the pyramids' steps, and all around each dwelling, red flowers were fertilized with the blood that flowed more freely than rainwater.

---

Amidst these wonders of architecture and engineering, the Empire's metal workers made new breakthroughs, learning new techniques in the forging and mixing of various metals. Each night, they would be thrust brutally into visions of fire, metal, and the pounding of hammers. They would be thrown into the chaos of battles and slaughters, witnessing new and terrible weapons lay the weak low with terrifying ease. They would see traditional bronze weapons outnumbered by a dizzying array of a new metal: steel. And then they woke each dawn with new insights, new scraps of knowledge with which they tried to produce the blades they saw in their dreams. And each day, they would fail before night led them into new dreams of fire, blood and steel. On this went for a number of months, until one metal worker made a breakthrough with the still-new metal known as iron. Iron was easier and cheaper to produce than bronze, so the smith decided it would be a reasonable basis for creating steel. And so the smith, placing his faith in the cleansing powers of the holy flame, set the iron over a charcoal fire. For several days, he tried to get the right combinations of iron and flame, of time and effort, to produce the metal he desired. But, one day, his charcoal fire, enhanced by magic to create a truly astounding heat, turned that iron into something new: steel. Soon, the entire Empire would learn of this one smith's methods and steel weapons and armor would be seen anywhere the warrior-cultists were found.

---

Slintoch knew he would soon need to leave this plane. His power was growing to be far too much for the First World to allow. So he would make a new world for himself, strange as that was for The Destroyer. A place where he could live and observe the world. With a snarl, he appeared in the void and, sparing only a glance towards the sun he sensed a new divinity in, he ripped open space and flooding the tear with the flames of his fury. More and more, he piled his rage, his hate, his bile, violently smashing through the boundaries of time and space and replace the nothing between nothings with fire. When at last he stopped, creation quaked from the aftershocks of his outburst. Satisfied, he ventured into his new realm, content to let the universe seal itself behind him; the tear had served its purpose and he needed it no more. He looked around and found his new lair was a perpetual furnace, burning with the fires he poured within. But still, it was not without life: great dragons, spawned by his hate, roared and battled within this realm. Indeed, everywhere the god looked he saw bloody combat between titanic beasts, his wrath ensuring more and more would forever populate this realm of fire. And the Destroyer silently urged them on to ever greater acts of violence.

Spoiler: OOC

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Rollover! (2x)
0AP + 8AP = 8AP

Create Advanced Concept (Architecture) [Shared with Naury] 1AP: The Empire of the Sun, influenced in part by the Crimson Bloom Champions, have constructed great architectural marvels, notably their great pyramid-temples. While beautiful and impressive, they are often referred to as "Crimson Cities," being so called for the blood that often covers the buildings, buildings that somehow look all the more beautiful and marvelous when dripping with red. [War (Slaughter) 8/10]

Create Advanced Concept (Steel Making) 2AP: Inspired by small amounts of divine interference, the Empire of the Sun has learned the process of manufacturing steel, which can then be fashioned into tools far more potent than those made from any other metal the Empire currently knows. [War (Slaughter) 10/10] New Domain Unlocked!

Weave Plane (Domum Inferni Dracones) 3AP: Domum Inferni Dracones, almost always referred to as just Inferni, is a plane comprised entirely of fire. Any who can survive the flames find themselves filled with an all-consuming rage and urge to kill everything they see. And what they see is dragons. Lots of dragons. The plane reverberates with roars and shrieks from millions of dragons tearing each other limb from limb every second of every day. Should any bridges form between Inferni and the First World, the devastation the battle-maddened dragons would bring is inconceivable... [Life (Dragons) 10/10] New Domain Unlocked!

Five Domains Unlocked!

8AP - 6AP = 2AP

**Razade** · 2023-10-06, 11:14 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Demidos

“Ahh, there you are.” A nonplussed Sagmi turns her eyes to the Sun. “You are the first of the oldest I’ve met, but you seems to hold yourself apart from the divine. How curious. I do like your trinket very much — it ensures life will never grow stale, and new stories will always be emerging. But do you not wish to come and walk among the people and watch their great acts of heroism and treachery? Surely it grows lonely up here. Come to the earth, walk in my city - watching from afar is no substitute for living the adventure yourself!"

The Shattered Star, Sagmi: The Void

"The Sun has always been. The Sun is no more divine than the rivers or lakes, of the forests that breath or the stones that slumber. But what is Divinity to the Sun? The Sun shines for creation, and creation begets Gods to create life. A cycle, a union. Your task is to walk, to explore. This one's task is not that. The Sun could no sooner walk the First World than the First World could dwell within the Void. See now, for even if we reach to touch it, calamity is wrought."

From the sun great bands of flame reached out, solar flares of a vast magnitude that licked the First World. Like a storm, the arcane power wrought itself across the world. Auroras splayed out across the night sky across the globe and the grounds quaked as the arcane energies of the action surged. The quakes created vast rifts, tunnels and rivers to crawl out like a spiderweb across the land and beneath it, pooling arcane energy like water. From these quakes, iron and earth flung itself into the heavens only to rain back down as if forged from some mighty hand. Towers as sharp as swords fell to embed in the earth across the continents and for three days and three nights glass and molten nails heaved themselves from the clouds. On the fourth day, the sun returned. Shining bright.

"See now. We are barred, we could no sooner step anywhere but the Void than you could dwell within the Forge."

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Roll Over: 4AP

Alter Land (1AP) - Ley Lines: Powerful currents literally carved into the planet by the Shattered Star's touching of the First World directly. These Ley Lines channel natural arcane power in vast canals and rivers across the entire surface of the planet. [Earth (Megaliths) 10/10AP)]

Alter Land (1AP) - Arcane Storms: Born from the flames of the Sun, arcane energies and the damage to the magnetic energies of the First World draw out vast reserves of iron and metals, creating intricate towers of immense size to fall from the sky with nail and glass rain. [Earth (Megaliths) 10/10AP)]

4AP - 1 AP - 1AP = 2AP

The Shattered Star Ascends

**AlexanderML** · 2023-10-07, 01:46 AM (ISO 8601)

Kish-Eru

As the conflict around the city of Kish-Eru began to draw to its end and the number of disappearances began to decrease, the flowery roots which had arrived continued to grow from within till the land itself could no longer keep it a secret.

There began to be a subtle shift in the atmosphere. The lotuses would move along unseen paths, new ones would spring up overnight, and they never wilted. Slowly the watery grasslands around the city were covered in numerous species of watery flowers, many of which existed nowhere else. Yet it was simply unusual, out of season growth. Until She came to the city.

With the moonless night as her shroud She danced across the lotuses who hummed with joy. She gave her flesh to the open hands of the flowers, who gave her their heads to adorn herself with. Finally she gave a single strand of her hair to each flower circle of the city, who’s vines and petals fought for the honor of replacing them.

She was beautiful and She was horrifying. Yet few witnessed her coming directly, and among those who had nearly all of them were those who only saw the beauty She held. For their eyes were covered in love.

When morning came to Kish-Eru it was changed. Gone was the flooded grassland, replaced with endless flowers that grew like giant mangroves, which held beneath them numerous other giant flowers that floated atop the water or grew out of the city’s gardens. New animals slithered, climbed, flew across the strange landscape.

While there were many among the city who were stunned at the site, some were inspired at the divine landscape and took the time to re-explore their home and the life that surrounded it. Discovering new materials and plants which they took back to the city and began to test with child-like enthusiasm.

The full results of the tests were not made public, the rumors saying that the Garden kept its greatest secrets to itself, but men and women began to appear with wares for all sorts of ills or wishes the public had. Even a skeleton appeared, Chymes, who openly gave friendly banter and prices for his goods.

Those who might have harmed Chymes soon learned that he had many friends. Both among those hiding in the shadows under the cover of glamor and the kami of the land to whom he had helped to preserve their freedom. Chymes’s own works would leave a mark in the city, from those who learned from him would gain the knowledge he had earned and become the first witches of Kish-Eru.

Spoiler: OOC

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8/16 AP

Spoiler: -3 Create Minor Artifact (Alter Land) - Flesh and Blood of Lilia

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Her visage will always return.

When gifted to the land Lilia’s flesh and blood can attach to lingering parts of her Love that exist in an area and fully corrupt the mana and let it bloom. This artifact is typically on Lilia’s skeletal frame, but she sometimes gifts it to special followers for a time. Those that use the artifact can appear as Lilia, with the Lilia Love in mortals clouding any negative feelings they have towards the user; in addition the Flesh and Blood makes it hard to remember the user (though the divine cannot be fooled by the imitation). 8/10 Community (Cult)

Spoiler: (Artifact charge) (Alter Land) - The Floodplain Lotus Forest of Kish-Eru

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Even a simple clearing can be beautiful at Kish-Eru.

The first flower forest, the floodplain forest of Kish-Eru is dominated by the tall Lotus Trees that dot the city; their tall stems made of a wood that is unusually flexible with multiple large flower buds at their top which can be as large as a small house (though most are far smaller). Beneath them there are numerous other flower-based plants, fungi, and even animals that are uniquely found here; the giant butterfly (about the size of a small cat with violet skull shaped patterns on their wings) and glow blooms (large flowers that make mundane bioluminescence to attract the butterflies) being prominent examples.

Yet the new wildlife was clearly something that was made with the intention of working with the city to some extent. The main waterways were not blocked, the new plants and animals have material that are easy to harvest from, and existing farmland was mostly, depending on how pretty the owners were left intact.

Spoiler: -2 Raise Hero - Chymes the Friendly Skeleton

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He’ll get his hands on a book someday.

Originally a member of a foreign maiden cult, Chymes has little in the way of flashy extraordinary power. While unusual he appears to be a simple skeleton who just happens to have friends everywhere he goes and seems to find himself in places he has no logical way of arriving at.

Chymes loves to learn from the many peoples of the world, his immortality an excuse for him taking his time to be just about everywhere learning a little of everything.

Of course Chymes is a follower of the maiden cult, working outside the normal structure of the organization he nevertheless often happens to be in an area in need of his friendly fleshless face. Community (Cult) 10/10

Spoiler: -2 Create Mythical Concept (Shared with Naury) - True Alchemy

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To understand the world and know your place in it.

The supernatural science that if performed correctly, the results will be the same every time. No matter what abilities the Alchemist or even the user possess. Lilia’s Love when infused in an alchemical object/concoction results in more stable creations, something that only the witches of Kish-Eru understand at the moment.

With the discovery of so many new and strange resources appearing at their doorsteps, the people of Kish-Eru test and discover the beginnings of the art of true alchemy. Though the greater secrets are kept to those who are among Chymes’s and Adored’s approved witches, the lesser ones take hold as household recipes. Community (Witches) 2/10

Spoiler: (Artifact Charge) (Create Organization) - The Witches of the Old Bloom

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“Hello! Are you looking to buy or do you need help with something?

The first members of this organization were the students of Chymes. His mark can be felt in their friendly attitudes and the skills he passed down to them.

Witches of the Old Bloom find true alchemy to be their main scientific calling, with the arcane magic of cultivary being a common way for them to express their spiritual sides through unique flower gardens; though it is often also used as a way to get higher quality materials.

Nearly every member of the group lives by selling their creations and services. Though the cost in time and material often makes this a less than financially secure means to live; it is a respectable way to live by those who follow flower worship.

Witches of the Old Bloom are forbidden to harm others unless it is in self defense. They are to do nothing that would harm or insult the kami. And should act as intermediaries between normal mortals and the divine or otherworldly entities of the world.

Despite their origins witches of the Old Bloom are not inherently maiden cultists, though they are friendly with one another and the two can overlap in a single individual.

1/16 AP left

The Coast of the Estheric Islands

As years have gone by and the young become the old my eyes have worn down to the point where everything was gray and cloudy. I had used them too much, they’ve simply worn away. But tonight my eyes saw something that brought the color back.

I saw Her there again. At that spot along the coast.

My smile hurt, my eyes could not see past the waves in front of my eyes, and my inner palace trembled. Yet I knew it was Her and I was so… so happy. I ran as fast as my legs could take me and let my tears run unabated.

She looked at me and asked what we had done here, in our blessed land. I… could not say we had done much. Our purpose still left up to fate. In the end all I told Her was that I waited for Her.

Oh, I saw Her smile; behind the shroud that was the night I saw Her smile. When she turned to face the ocean again I stared at Her in silence till a thought crossed my mind.

This would be my last chance.

To draw my weary eyes away was harder than ripping them out, but as one of my companions saw Her and came to speak with her I left them behind to return to my garden, the one where I kept the only things that could convey my feelings. With three of the cold blooms in my hands I returned shaking like a normal boy. This… this is a blessing, and a curse. For I hid the flowers as I approached with my mind unable to consider what comes next.

She looked towards me, she said… she said she was happy I came back. My companion’s palaces surely let them know what I was planning, if not they’re eyes staring holes into my back.

But I was not a coward, I showed the flowers I had for Her; my love and reason. “These are yours.” I said to Her.

I could see Her eyes behind the shroud, they were wide and brighter than the stars that dotted the night that shrouded her. “M-mine? But… what about…” she trailed off looking conflicted, while I felt like I stood at the edge of a cliff. I took a step forward.

“In my heart every flower that blooms is yours.”

“Even these?”

“Yes. I love you, Lilia.”

As an indescribable look appeared on Her face, She shed tears as She accepted my flowers with a nod. I saw Her begin to fade before my eyes, yet what pierced me more was what entered my inner palace, the feeling I had longed to know was there for so long.

And with that, my heart broke, and there was nothing.

…

…

…

“I love you”

Spoiler: OOC

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1/16 AP
-1 Curse - Name Upon A Flower: The idea that Lilia is the one who created the True Ice Flowers becomes common knowledge to mortals that know of them and the meaning behind them. Even in places that would otherwise not know anything about Lilia, the idea that she is their originator takes root. 10/10 Emotion (Envy)

(Artifact Charge) (Bless) - False Ice Flowers: These more common replicas of true ice flowers are found on the estheric islands and other cold regions of the world. They appear as true ice flowers to those that search for them, but grow upon normal ice and snow. False ice flowers thrive in such environments and can easily perish at room temperatures. Those that consume a false ice flower’s petals are chilled, both helping against fevers and hot summer days.

0/16 AP left

Lilia fades away to the plane of echoes as she ascends.

**Zelphas** · 2023-10-07, 06:42 PM (ISO 8601)

The Wind and Change

Deep within Desire Heart, Telas felt content. Things were going well, plans were in motion; as long as they continued to subtly pull the strings and watch from the shadows, they could... they could... they...

...

A crack, tiny and hair-thin, appeared on the forehead of Telas, who suddenly resembled nothing so much as a blank, grey stalactite, unremarkable within the lifeless environments of Desire Heart. There is the softest sound, a simply rush of quiet wind, which grows from the crack, the air moving around the lifeless stone. The wind blows, and becomes quiet, simple, joyful laughter. Salet laughs with the joy of freedom, of movement, of life and thought and existence, exulting in the mere fact that it was. It spiraled around the stalagmite and up into the fog-shrouded air of Desire Heart, simply luxuriating in each moment of being.

Salet glances back at the stone it so recently left, and its laughter trails off for a moment. This being would not last, it knew that, knew that as surely as it knew beauty and joy. Telas did not know of Salet, but Salet knew Telas; it remembered, being before it was, though only in a vague, dreamlike sort of way. They were not two, but one, with two forms, two faces, two beings. Or, at least two beings; Salet was fuzzy on that particular number. Still, Salet knew that it would stop, and Telas would wake, at some point in the dance of time. And perhaps they would reverse again, and again.

But that was in the future; for now, there was too much to enjoy, too much to see and experience, simply too much to do. Desire Heart was not the place for Salet; let Telas have their illusions and Temptations and plots. With a gust and a laugh, Salet turns to the First World, washing over it in a warm, chuckling breeze. A place to start presented itself at once: a place where anger ruled and violence conquered, where danger and blood was a matter of life. Salet considered for only a moment, then decided. It was time for a change.

Atop a Crimson City

The rebellion had gone as it always did, in the Empire. How could he have ever imagined differently?

He watched his friends, his comrades, hauled up to the top of the pyramid one by one. He had laughed with them, planned with them, seen them cry and grit their teeth and look towards an impossible future. Now, he watched their blood fall down the pyramid's steps, turning his face as much as he could from what was done to their bodies and even, he knew, to part of their souls. The guards, the revelers, they laughed and screamed and set upon one another only to return to the feast, knowing only hatred and violence, feeling only rage and hunger. His friends, his fellow rebels... they had known more. He had felt more. Even know, when rage should be filling every pore of his being, he found his rage tempered by grief, by sorrow, by... pity. What a stupid thing, to pity those who were going to eat you.

If only... he thought as another of his friends was pulled forward. If only, they could see past this, even for a moment.

Are you willing to give them that gift?

He jumped, earning more mocking laughter and a few smacks from the guards. The voice had whispered to him like the wind, like the warm wind that even now pushed from behind him, bracing him as if he leaned against a sun-warmed stone wall. Something kept him from dismissing the voice as a mere figment of his imagination. His mind flashed to the stories of creatures of dust and heat, who offered you riches at the price of ruin, but those creatures came in beautiful guises, and this wind had nothing of desolation within it. His confusion was shattered by the scream of his friend, at the top of the pyramid, his resolve forged in the blood as it splashed past him and down to the hungry dirt. He nodded once, a tiny gesture. Even when Salet told him what that gift would mean to him, he nodded again. The wind promised that it would not leave him.

--

The guards nearly stumbled when their next meal stepped forward of his own accord, before they could begin dragging him. Just another one, his proud ideals broken by the realities of the Empire, they reasoned. This sacrifice was going as it always did. Neither noticed the warmth of the wind, and they assumed the laughter came from the feasting crowd.

The executioner-priest did not notice the wind, either, and hardly noticed the gentle smile on the man's face as he laid down on the ritual altar. He had seen all sorts of expressions, from commendable rage to disgusting weakness. It was going as it always did, in the Empire. He only noted that the meal was strong, young, and healthy; good eating. His arms did not hesitate, his hands did not shake as he delivered the blow to prepare the meat. He took his share and tossed the rest to the crowd, just as he had always done.

The crowd partook, as they always did, in the Empire. And then... they wept. And this was the first time.

But not the last.

Changed by the Wind

When Salet discovered what it had inadvertently done in its rush across the First World, it laughed with joy at the unexpected gift.

Whether birds had been caught up in the wind and taken in Salet's spirit, or whether the wind itself had broken off and formed bird-like shapes, Salet itself did not know. The resulting creatures were small, the size of a human's hand, with black bodies covered in feathers that looked white when upon the creature, but were actually nearly transparent when taken alone, reflecting sunlight in a rainbow sheen. Alone, they were just birds, no smarter or stronger or more magical than any other avian; but from the very moment they were made, Starbirds were never alone. They gathered together quickly, drawn by the joy of connecting to one another and growing in knowledge and strength, until the entire, vast flock soared and sung in the center of the Triangular Chain, looking like a vast cloud covered in rainbows to those living on the rocky mountains.

And then... the flock separated, breaking into smaller groups and scattering throughout the world. They had joyed in each other, but they were not alone in this world. They were more powerful, all together, but each flock was still a power to rival dragons as they split apart. They might be able to help. And so, that is what they tried to do.

A Moment at Play

Salet is no Telas, to sit and scheme and set plans in motion. What is life without moments of spontaneous silliness, simple joy? And so, Salet collected the feathers blown into the winds and wove a great cloak, which it cast into the night sky, becoming a net of closely-packed, multicolored stars among the ravenous Star Mantas roaming throughout the Void. The attempts to consume the Cloak only shook and moved it, causing it to shed feathers which fell to the earth while Salet watched and laughed.

The first of these feathers to land produced a strange crop indeed. They were small bundles of dusty feathers, like a fallen feather duster without a handle, their claws and beaks hidden under their plumage. Land, bound, these creatures skittered through the lands they found themselves in, dislodging soft feathers that provoked allergic reactions in nearly everything that could smell them. Salet loved the little creatures, and so left them entirely alone; why complicate their absurd lives with any sort of purpose or order?

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Here comes a big one.

1 AP + 5 AP = 6 AP

Funeral Rites: Telas has died! ... for the moment. 5 AP for each of their domains gives me 31 AP total. Spending 15 AP to buy the Chaos (Change), Wind (Warmth), and Emotion (Hope) Domains, therefore creating:

Salet, the Laughing Breeze
Player Name: Zelphas
Domains (Portfolios): Chaos (Change), Wind (Warmth), Emotion (Hope)
Alignment: Neutral Good
Symbol: Two curved lines, representing either a small gust of wind or an open-mouthed smile.
Appearance: Salet is a whispering, laughing voice on a warm, gentle breeze. It takes no other form.
Personality: Salet finds joy in the world it is in, and works to give others that joy as well. It unequivocally champions mortal interest over those of immortals, gods, and divinities, and tries to make mortals happy without compromising their existence or denying them the right to choose. It is prone to do things simply out of enjoyment, without greater plans, though it does take care to at least try and think about the ramifications of these joys before it does them.

...who has 16 AP. With that:

Bless/Curse (2 AP) - Counter "Diet of Destruction" with "Consuming an Empathic Soul": If a person is sacrificed and consumed by the Empire of the Sun who is willing to die to change the Empire, there is a strong chance that their soul will alter the souls of those eating them, essentially forcing them to feel genuine empathy and compassion for other souled creatures all at once. Reactions to this occurrence are obviously varied, but are generally not conducive to further cannibalism. [War (Mercy) 2/10]

Create Legends (5 AP) - Starbirds: Starbirds are small white birds with black beaks and claws. No more intelligent or powerful than an average bird alone, Starbirds become more powerful, intelligent, and magical the more Starbirds are in proximity, soon outstripping the powers of most mortals and standing on equal footing with Temptations and Dragons. [Life (Birds) 5/10]

Create Legendary Society (4 AP) - Constellation of Help: The Starbirds have willingly split themselves into smaller flocks in order to spread around the world and help where they can. They are still very powerful, and they try to keep their help unobtrusive and simple when possible. Their main goal is to ensure that living creatures have the choice to be kind, compassionate, merciful, and happy, and so work more to "balance the scales" than anything else. [War (Mercy) 6/10]

Create Greater Utility Artifact (5 AP) - The Cloak of Many Feathers: The Cloak of many feathers is an enormous cloak within the Void, which looks like a patch of multicolored stars from the First World; when Star Mantas attack this cloak, they shake loose feathers that fall into the First World and create feathered creatures. The Cloak of Many Feathers gives a Discount on the Create Monster action. [Life (Birds) 10/10; Domain get!]

Create Monster (1 AP) - Featherbags: These creatures resemble piles of dusty feathers, which seem to be shedding constantly. They eat berries and other fruits, and defend against predators by hiding under several layers of feathers, which easily detach and fly everywhere, releasing a dust that causes most things with a nose to sneeze. When the dust is washed off, the feathers are wonderfully soft, making good bed and pillow stuffing. [Free Use from the Cloak of Many Feathers]

16 AP - 16 AP = 0 AP Remaining

**DasIrrlicht** · 2023-10-09, 05:51 AM (ISO 8601)

Naury, dream-diving
The Echo-Servants came to Naury with some interesting news. The Echos and Dead Souls of the cultists of Yalasere have been acting a bit different then usual, in a positive way. Moments of regret and pride in ones final moments, have come more often up, and the souls of some of this special cases tend to be more intact then the ones of their peers. Even Souls of the Remembered started to pop up despite being still mangled to some degree from their consumption.

But while moving to check on it, a different situation caught their attention. The Echos of the Birds where acting unusual as well. Or at least, that of a specific kind that they can not remember to have ever seen before. Delaying their own travel the deity choose to investigate this as well. However their choosen form to walk the first world was not exactly fit to commune with the flocks, so a different solution had to be lend out. Thankfully, one of their siblings seems to have tought of something one could lend out for that already.

Even Starbirds need rest, and as there is safety in a flock, they often rest bunched together. As a result, their dreams are much grander then the ones of mere birds, and in one of this dreams, a person appeared. Wearing a coat, not like a feather coat but not unlike either, the stranger with the bird-mask watched the swarms dreams, as they watched them inside as well. It took a bit to decide on a way to ask, and carefully formulate the request, but in the end it was much easier then the stranger expected. Yes, a simple ask was all it took: They extend a helping wing to the people who are stretched to thin to have each others backs anymore, so that they may know what each other needs or knows. The Stranger tried to offer something in compensation, yet the Starbirds insisted to do it out of their desire to be helpful alone. Naury will have to keep them in mind. Maybe, they can find a way to aid them sometime later.

In the same night, the Stranger came to visit people all over the chain, and even as far away as the settlement on Eresalay, to free up some of their taller buildings and have instead a keeper move in. This keepers would take care of the needs of the flocks that would soon arrive and handle the 'customer service' of the whole plan. The only fee to send something was to cover the needs of the people and birds working in the towers. In a strange way, communication was a charity. No taint of greed should stain the peoples ability to know.

Slimes do not have noses, they could not sneeze. However, they were also on the somewhat slow side compared to most predators. A exceptionally small slime is following a rather agile featherbag. The Featherbag shakes of a bunch of dust and feathers, the slime stops to eat the feathers that have fallen off, the bird-creature attempts to flee... The cycle continues soon after.

Given, it is usually the Featherbags that 'win' such confrontations, as few of them are naive enough to keep attempting to hide when a slime approaches. Yet one could argure the slime wins as well, as sustenance is provided, one way or another. It is the subject of a children rhyme on the chain, about tenacity and the benefits of even partial success.

Spoiler: Naury AP Spending

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0 AP LEFT
5 AP ROUNDSTART

2 AP - Create Advanced Concept [Society (Discovery) 4/10]

Courier Birds?
On request of Naury, the Starbird flocks agreed to help keeping the people of the chain in touch with each other. And so, small, not especially powerful flocks settle in towers around the chain (and Port Tale) to take up the mantle of the mail. With the help of local keepers that act as intermediaries between the Starbirds and the people sending letters or small packages of all kind, distance becomes pretty much of no matter in communication.
There are attempts being made in taming wild birds, primarily corvids, for such services as well to fill in where a tower for a whole flock would not make sense, and while successful, it can not compare to the Starbirds service. Of course, with few exceptions, most people using the services are not aware how the keepers work with more then simple birds.
Currently, this concept is hold by the People of the Chain and the Constellation of Help exclusivley, but I am sure the Constallation is open to share their Services with plenty of other Societies if asked nicely.

________
3 AP Left
1 MUA Charge

Progress:
[Society (Discovery) 4/10]

**Mechalich** · 2023-10-09, 08:04 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Shattered Star

Spoiler

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Alter Land (1AP) - Arcane Storms: Born from the flames of the Sun, arcane energies and the damage to the magnetic energies of the First World draw out vast reserves of iron and metals, creating intricate towers of immense size to fall from the sky with nail and glass rain. [Earth (Megaliths) 10/10AP)]

World Turning
The earth tore apart, and metals rose to the sky, returned as a precipitation of blades and shards of glass. This barrage ripped apart the forest, shredded leaves, cleaved vines, poisoned lakes, and left the soil a barren waste in its path. Kami caught beneath these storms sickened and twisted, lost themselves to the throes of generations-long agony.

Even the sky was not unharmed, for the stormfronts of whirling iron and glass filings, propelled with hurricane strength, cleaved through even might sky creatures. Great birds, whales, and even dragons were shredded by that hail of endless wind-carried arrows. Their bodies crashed to the earth and left craters behind, pock marks to mark the impact of this new disease of the sky.

The Onna wailed and mourned as their people died in great number, caught outside by terrible storms they had done nothing to summon. It was connected to magic somehow, that strange force that pulsed from on high, and they had ever shied away from that power, knowing its instability and danger. Yet now they suffered because of it, alongside the whole of the world, for not even the worst volcanic blast dealt wounds to the land as these arcane storms.

Surrender to the sky the sisterhood would not. They, being a people of the land, would summon it's strength in response. Nor were they weaponless. Villages and towns were changed. Log cabins, no longer secure, were recycled and made into paper and furnishings. New buildings were made instead of concrete, domes hard as any stone and proof against heat, cold, and metal, with covered passages molded between. They took this artistry and gave it to the strange westerners from their distant mountains, and even to Sea Folk – for with difficulty the material could be set even underneath the waves – in the hopes that they too would find protection from the storms.

Placing soils atop their new domes, they constructed farms upon their roofs, and between buildings, and used silken screens to offer a modicum of first warning protection that the most critical plants might be raced inside when a storm came. New methods were sought in planting, to concentrate their crops as land was lost, and to find some way to foster new growth upon devastated landscapes in the hopes of restoring their Kami to strength and sanity. Early successes led to new and better crops, plant grafting, and specialized interlaced growth patterns in a vertical system.

New materials were likewise required. Glass, fallen from the sky, was repurposed. Heated, liquefied, and blended with other materials, it unlocked countless malleable crystalline products, joined and annealed to new purpose. These could be used for protection against heat and cold in growing environments, kickstarting a cycle of advanced production.

Dark days and dark dreams hardened the sisterhood. The Bloodsilk Order learned that Flame Tigers sourced from the same origin as the horrible storms and the goblins, and they added they disruptive beasts to their target list. Militia training came to be mandatory among all Onna, with glass blades and arrowheads kept at the ready in every home even in those places where obsidian was rare. If the new age was one of violence and cruelty, then they would face it accordingly, and fight for the land.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Create Advanced Concept (2AP): Horticulture – The Onna have begun to research advanced plant manipulation techniques including selective breeding, grafting, growth media, structural manipulation, and other methods in the quest to produce more durable, efficient, and productive crops and resources. [Protection (Cleansing) 4/10]

Create Advanced Concept (2AP): Glassware – The Onna have utilized the sudden abundance of glass to master glassmaking in a wide variety of forms, producing containers, windows, tableware, medical tools, and even weapons from this remarkable material. [Protection (Cleansing) 6/10]

Create Advanced Sub-Concept (1AP): Greenhouse – Using a combination of glass, silk, and wooden frames, the Onna have devised the first greenhouses, which they build atop their domed dwellings and use to produce food year round, allowing high-density settlements. [Protection (Cleansing) 7/10]

Starting AP: 0 Rollover Gain: 5 Spent: 5 Remaining: 0

**Omoikane13** · 2023-10-10, 09:51 AM (ISO 8601)

Planning Ahead

Telas dead, Kish-Eru, well, surviving. The Onna, those children of Hroad's early creations, were slowly becoming more and more developed. Everything was progressing, shifting, and morphing. Much of Hroad's work had been trying to help bind these communities, to reinforce them, to inure them against outside, divine meddling. Hroad liked to think they had managed well, that the kami, loci, and plants had all found good use.

But it was short-sighted to not plan ahead. There was nothing stopping the bubbling-up of new figureheads of chaos, those like Sagmi, and it would be foolish to not have tools to utilise against them in the future. Something that would aid in the back-and-forth.

A simple, thick swaying reed. One of many crossbreeds and developments, tall as the average person, plucked from the wetlands. Carefully, delicately, Hroad shaped the soil-end into a sharp point, engraved with curlicues and spirals, but left the opposite end wispy, a nod to the tool's heritage. All that remained was an act of will, and Hroad had an instrument with which to rewrite some of the worst meddling. To write rules into the aether, and to carve out some actual limits to the potentially boundless or uncontrolled.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Create Greater Utility Artifact [5 AP]: The Fiat Quill (Bless/Curse Artifact): A common reed, carved and etched into something that can write, and write powerfully. Usually kept with Hroad, the Fiat Quill can produce practically endless amounts of mundane ink for its own purposes, and is designed to be of use for the typical divine back-and-forth.

Domains: Water (Ink) +5/10

Remaining AP: 11

**Athedia** · 2023-10-11, 03:10 PM (ISO 8601)

Glikmora burned.

She knew many of her siblings were leaving the world and stepping back to guide but she still had work to do. Her children were not yet safe, the burning sky showed that to her. An impure rain of metal and glass carving destruction across her wetlands. She could handle that, bringing the scattered Lolats back together, reshaping their ponds, rebuilding their tribes.

But she couldn’t handle the fire of arcane magic that coursed through the waterways of her land, up through her very being. As it flooded the rivers and wetlands that wove through Adanat she fled, each new tributary and floodplain burning as much as the first.

She found herself stumbling onto dry land. Familiar land from just after the world was made. Her brother. Telas, he would know what to do. She stumbled across the wasteland, torn between the pain of the desolation and the fire in her blood searching for her brother. Until one day she stumbled upon Desire Heart.

She had heard whispers of this place, one where nothing was constant and your senses lied. Her skin prickled, her veins burned and her mind screamed. This wretched place. This treatorous place. Exactly where one such as Telas would live. And so she pushed onward toward what lay at the center of Desire Heart.

”Brother!” Glikmora had reached a place that did not change. A cave, but not one of shelter. One of hiding. She searched looking everywhere for where Telas could be hiding. She sent out spores worming their way into the earth, spreading out through the air. But he was not there.

She leaned in exhaustion against a large stalagmite, trying to think of her next plan. As she did so, she felt the deep threads she had woven into so many creatures in the First World. A wordless wail was all she could muster, her closest sibling gone.

Sandstorms and creatures often found themselves here. [Sound of Rocks Falling Down a Slope] had consumed many of them. It went for the safer prey, avoiding the other Temptations until it was large enough to safely absorb them. And it avoided the creatures who strode through Desire Heart with confidence. Those were dangerous.

But this one was different. She stumbled into the realm like a the weaker creatures, lost and searching. It followed behind, watching. A few times she turned and [Sound of Rocks Falling Down a Slope] had to hide. It didn’t know why, it could just make an offer now. It was obvious there was something she wanted. But still it watched.

She had found the center. Impressive. Very few lasted this far in the state she was in. But she would find nothing here. It watched as she searched anyway, picking up rocks, pushing forward offerings. Eventually she leaned against the large rock and then it heard the sound. The sound she made called to [Sound of Rocks Falling Down a Slope], it spoke of need, of desires and of loss.

”Child. How may I help?” And she spoke, she spoke of the pain coursing through her land and herself. She spoke of the carelessness of gods. She spoke of her creations and failures. She spoke of her wish to protect the land from the destruction she had seen arcane magic. And she offered to share all that she could give.

Glikmora and Glikmora’s Wail returned to Adanat. Together they brought their hands together and pushed them down into the soil of the land. Spores bled from Glikmora and Hope from Glikmora’s Wail. Together they pushed back the leylines that had torn through Adanat directing them around the land. In their place a new network was woven, that of sorrow and slow decay fed by the returning dead and feeding the now starving creatures.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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AP 2 rollovers: 8 AP

Create Avatar (3 AP) Glikmora’s Wail: A Temptation reshaped by taking some of Glikmora’s divine power in a deal, Glikmora’s Wail shifts between it’s Temptation appearance and that of a shadow of Glikmora. It still has the urge to tempt those around it, however it is even more forthright in dealings. That being said it feels drawn much more strongly to Glikmora’s domain of Luck than her other domains. [Truth (Deals) 5/10]

Mycellium Network (Counteract Altar Land Ley Lines) (2 AP): As the ley lines coursed across the world they hit Adanat especially hard given the land was riddled with waterways. Glikmora and Glikmora’s Wail pushed the Ley Lines out of Adanat and replaced the networks for local creatures with a unique Mycellium Network version that would allow creations like the Corpse Trees to exist, but not any new encroachment of Arcane Magic. [Water (Wetlands) 4/10]

Water (Wetlands) 4/10
Weather (Rain) 2/10
Medicine (Toxins) 2/10
Truth (Deals) 5/10
Magic (Necromancy) 6/10

AP 8-5= 3 AP

**DasIrrlicht** · 2023-10-12, 10:26 PM (ISO 8601)

Naury, Hostile Takeover
Corner after corner, the halls of Tiral's Treasury are seemingly endless. With floors of gold, furniture of silver and copper, it is designed around the very concept of opulence as it seems. And there is a single, living being on this plane, a stranger clothed befit in elaborate robes and the face covered befit a masquerade. And soon after having started the march from what must have been a random place along the curve, they arrived at the center: A small both, waiting for a Teller to staff it that never came to exist. Below it, the only vault that was in use at the time. Calling it Vault Zero seems just fitting, being that in the other two directions the numbers may be endless. However, it is Tirals Personal Vault laying there below the feet of Naury.

A meeting has been called in, the highest ranks of 'The Merchant's Guild' where to attend. A return to the very place they where founded at, a open plaza in a sunken town that nearly has been lost to be forgotten. The call was both surprising, but welcome. The Guild has been having trouble for some time now, as few reached out to them this days and they struggled to reach out themself. Only old deals that have hang unchanged for many years have hold many of the merchants able to enjoy their benefits. And since there is only one being that can call in such a meeting, in a unquestionable authority, this was a chance to climb a-new.

The obsidian Vault of Tiral refused to open for anyone who could not fulfill the basic requirement of being either Tiral, or her rightful Inheritor. Both are beings that simply no longer exist, or have never existed to begin with. However, the property within the Vault will be solving that issue. The Soul Coins all but one can trace themself back to one being, a divine entity that was the most instrumental in their creation. The divine being that created the value they are used to hold to begin with...

The highest of the guild are naturally Sea-Folk. Only they where able to witness the original display, before luring others in to join themself below them. The sole exception was the 'Mercantile Mermaid' herself, who hold the highest position on her own... Yet there, a different being was. It barley made an attempt at hiding what it was, a odd Seafolk, longer and larger then most, cloaked in a thick, unnatural mantle of silver scales and keeping the face behind a veil of shadows. This was not the Mermaid, nor was it one of the Merchants. Yet this was who called in the meeting one could not refuse to join.

The sound of the coins hitting the vault door at speed and repeatedly would have been deafening if there was anyone else to hear it. The contents are aware who they belong to, for there is no-one and nowhere else for them to be.

The stranger told them the facts. The Mermaid has ceased. A knife was drawn at them, yet it has gone trough the scales like they where made of the water surrounding them. Accusations followed where actions failed.

This Vault, and in extension every Vault on this plane of existence, has lost its owner. Naury would fill this vacancy. The Accusations where baseless. The Authority absolute. The Mermaids disapperance merely enabled the Stranger, they where not the cause.

A simple change in Management would solve the problems.

Spoiler: Naury AP Spending

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0 AP LEFT
3 AP LEFT

2 AP - Counteract (Bank Vault Security) [Law (Promises) 2/10]

A Change of Management
'Tiral's Treasury' is a nearly flat plane with a seemingly endless collection of vaults. And each vault has its own protections, eachs contents only accessible by the owner, followed by any inheritors, followed lastly by Tiral herself. However, the mercantile mermaid has left a vacancy. Naury, being the closest thing to a inheritor the soul coins of her vault can be assigned to, twisted the system to accept them as the new stand-in for Tiral in any way the plane can recognize. While the name of the Plane stays the same, the protections now refer to Naury as the rightful owner, as does the primary Vault that Soul Coins are send to for the purposes of earning Essence for Statgems.

0 AP - Create Mundane Concept [MUA Charge]

Mining
The People of the Chain have been hit by the spires like everyone else, yet in the mountainous terrain, few stand out for long before just melting into the landscape. Seeking out this especially ore-rich Megaliths and opening them up was a natural process of things. What the Chain lacked in expertise in working the materials, it could make up with in the pure quantity they could produce of it.

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1 AP Left

Progress:
[Society (Discovery) 4/10]
[Law (Promises) 2/10]

**Charya** · 2023-10-14, 07:49 AM (ISO 8601)

Shaleena had done as she had always done and just started to.

She had come into being already when the first thought about how the first world might be appeared in the creator's mind.

And yet she had travelled here from elsewhere.

Like a caleidoscope, all origins were true and neither was. Maybe she had been the first to come to be. Maybe she had not existed until she finally decided to act.

But her appearance had been gentle and silent and she had waited to step forward so that she might better understand those around her. Those that were like her and different and the things they made. This time things would be different. It was the first time in time, so every possibility lay before her.

She had watched well... Appearance still veiled from the Cosmos, yet gazing upon and smiling about the deeds of her siblings, she was trying to understand and the first actions formed, of mortals and immortals alike, into plans and into greatness... And the possibility of failure.

But she also had her own mind about how things might work.

Entering the First world, long afte rher siblings hat already started to work on it, she had nevertheless watched well... And a first plan had formed in her mind. For her siblings seemed to have so much fun with the little sparks of them - The beings with the divine light, that was so incredibly small, yet still allowed some of them - very rarely - To achieve great things. The beings they called mortals. But of course, she wanted to create best of them all... And that took careful planning. Many of her siblings had created land, land under the sea or even societies that lived on flying beasts in the sky... But yet she was aware, a race too powerful had not much reason for development. For furthering themselves. She could (and probably would) shower them with her support, but... If they had no obstacles, they would only become arrogant and stay the same. So, no dragons. No. Puny against a god, but most things mortal were just not up against them. No living dungeons either (Though the idea of pacts intrigued her... Contracts made for very good options to push things to your liking...).

And the lands... Hhrrrm. That was the problem when you came late to the party and wanted to be Unique. She needed a place that was specifically prepared, even before she made the race in question... A place they could not fall down from (no flying whales then) and crack. No place where they would immediately become seamonsters (While the idea was intriguing and certainly added to options, she neither wanted to intrude nor automatically give away her toys as soon as they were created... So not in the sea. And upon the land, where the other races were ?

Yes, exactly, other races. She wanted her people to be flexible and open, but well-defended. Hrrrrm...

In the and, she looked at the "Hands" around the world... Pondering. Around was the sea. On some already lived people too... Wait a moment... In the darkness of the void, Shaleen smirked as she rushed down into the world. ON ? Yes. IN ? No. And so she hollowed the hands. Not completely, for there needed to be above and below, materials to work with... Space to add more things. As the rules of the earth had decreed, the place would be the richer, the more inhospitable it was...
Now that was a nice game. She sealed the hands carefully. Yes, they were open to the sea, but this particular kind of stone was in fact a filtering kind of corall, which turned into stone upon dying, but kept its filtering properties, breathing in the saltwater, but collecting the salt - That gave them life - Within.This led to the bottom of the hands - The wrists so to speak - Were filled with water... Clean water, as the salt had been filtered out. On the other hand, the walls around, if treaded carefully, could be harvested with a renewable ressource as long as the coralls did not die out - Salt. Meanwhile, Corall was a precious and surpisingly strong material - She saw no reason not to share it with the merpeople outside too. So in one swipe, she had created a source for water, a precious substance and something that could be turned into a particularily special material for tools. She was proud on herself. The fish in the undersea lakes, the algae and mushrooms would feed her (yet to come) race. Of course every hand was different, due to climate and other people living on it already...

But that would only make it more fun lateron. To make sure nobody but her chosen would enter the hands to early and steal the place she had made for them, she put granite, Iron and similar veins into the top of the fingertips... It would possibly be mined, by her people or others, but it would be enough of a hold-up to give the goddess time to plan the rest of her work...

Oh right - She needed light, unless she would want her people to be blinded when they finally left their cradle... And so she gave them them Glowstone... A material that had the power to glow from within with light and warmth... Gentle only, giving Twilight, yet still enough to see by... She found that calming and it did not steal the idea of the shattered star.

Speaking of it...

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Create Land (2AP) (Hollow the Hands, put strong minerals to the top to keep people from entering them easily for now. Also creates the so-called "glowstones as part of the interior, a crystal glowing from the inside with light and warmth. While aplenty in here, they are known nowhere else in the world. Imperfections lead to less light, but they always stay warm.). [Planning (Architecture) 2/10]

Bless (1 AP) (The Shadow-Corall tends to migrate close to the Hand's wrists and in fact has filled up the tunnels that water enters through. In that way it is much harder for anybody inside to fall to the curse of the sea - for now - As there is simply no natural saltwater to reach. Once they come out, though...). As a side-effect, those corrals still filter the water upon dying, leading to natural sources of both water and salt. If forcefully taken from their homeground, it dies. But it is still strong like chitin and smooth like the inside of a seashell - But offers absolutely no protection against water, as that merely runs through. [Water (Life) 1/10]

Create Mundane Concept (1 AP) (Corall Breeding) (A secret not mastered by any race yet, a secret to be given to her chosen... Somewhen.) [Water (Life) 2/10]

Current AP-Pool:

16 (Start) -2 -1 -1 = 12

Current Domains/Portfolios:

Trickery (Intrigue) (Acquired)
Spell (Subtlety) (Acquired)
Planning (Architecture) 2/10
Water (Life) 2/10

**AlexanderML** · 2023-10-14, 10:54 AM (ISO 8601)

Desire Heart - A Heart Full of Love

The desolate land of veiled illusions and unfulfilled desires had continued on as it always had amid the arcane storms and its creator’s demise. Mortals occasionally stumbled inside, where they suffered from the desolation and were ultimately preyed upon by the Temptations living within.

It started with a warm breeze, a gentle one that promised greenery and the soft rays of dawn. The few mortals within Desire Heart knew not what it meant, except perhaps salvation that was ultimately denied; the Temptations that took notice saw it as a clever joke to increase the desperation of the mortals and thus paid little mind to the phenomenon.

Time passed with the winds coming and going. One day a flower was found, a small emerald green flower that had yet to bloom. There was nothing else near the flower, no one appeared to be caring for it. The flower for all purposes appeared to have just grown from the ground on its own; yet the Temptations knew that was impossible, this place was a perfect desolate land that could only change when someone marred it. Someone placed the flower here and a few curious Temptations of minor power began to look for the perpetrator.

More time passed and someone was found to be wandering Desire Heart; yet no Temptation could name them or even remember what they looked like other than they were humanoid. Mortals would sometimes be found in a daze after meeting them, which was how the Temptations found out it was female.

Things became more urgent with time, as the gentle winds began to overtake all others and the land began to grow flowers and grasses in all directions. Mortals started to find true hope amid despair, which was what finally threw the Temptations into a frenzy.

Many fled the increasingly hospitable realm, fearing what would happen should they stay. Others thrashed and struggled against Desire Heart to return it back to how it was, full of pride in their own might. While a few of the greatest searched for the perpetrator.

Gasp of Departing Soul was the one that became desperate enough to speak with Telas, to understand the will of the god and what ploy they had in mind with letting things reach this point. The signs of vegetation, of soft fields, the first tall flower-forests of the plane were seen near where the god should be; only a few spots of desolation stubbornly remained. Parting through a wall of thorns and petals Gasp of Departing Soul entered the clearing that they knew was to house their god.

They were not there.

Instead a field of flowers under a beautiful moonless, starless, night appeared before them. Water dew clung to the flowers as small animals scurried around. Mortals stood atop a hill where they basked in awe of something that shook the Temptation.

She was terrible, her bones and blooming eyes things so inhuman as to make even it startled. She was beautiful, her dress of countless heads a testament to her grace. She was anathema, for she nurtured what was within her grasp. She was perfect, for she was a leech that brought despair to what loved her.

Gasp of Departing Soul was overwhelmed by something at Her gaze; a yearning, a hate, a hunger that bore a hole into its essence. It writhed across the field towards the mortals and Her… and with a laugh devoured all the mortals there.

Flesh was crushed, warped, replaced; made anew as the souls of the mortals were trapped by the hole inside the Temptation. Yet they did not fit, none of them fit, and thus they were trapped within; warping Gasp of Departing Soul’s own essence and bloating its size.

In the end Gasp of Departing Soul and their now many souls screamed as they became something new.

Watching this process, the warped entity could tell that She had a frown as Desire Heart took notice of what occurred and repeated the process again and again with the Temptations that remained within itself.

Spoiler: OOC

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5/20 AP

-2 Create Land - The Morning Bloom: Across the plane of Desire Heart flower forests, green glades, sparkling lily rivers, kelp flower beds, and other forms of flower-themed greenery begin to spring up spontaneously. A macabre paradise of beautiful death bones are often found made into bridges, foundations, roads, works of art, or other forms of construction across the plane; with new bones appearing each time another disappears from the First World.

The lands are lightly conjoined, with distance and exact pathways being things still dependent on the will of the traveler. Small wastelands can be found at random; some hosting withering Temptations and others being spots where the Morning Bloom simply did not revive.

The sky always contains a starless night or a sunless day, the life itself bereft of arcane mana that the First World’s sky provides besides what little is brought in from the outside.

Evil (Corruption) 2/10

(Artifact Charge) - Alter Land - Lilia’s Desire: The heart of the plane becomes the personal garden of Lilia. Utterly hostile to those who are incorrupt, spores full of Lilia’s Love fill the air, vines create walls using skeletons to create murals, flowers larger than a man devour those foolish enough to gaze too long at their beauty.

Yet still for all its ugly exterior it houses a divine garden at its center with a copy of every flower species that has ever bloomed. Here Lilia herself often visits so that she may be looked upon.

(Artifact Charge) - Bless - Longing Buds: A kind of tulip begins to grow across the world. Their leaves make for delicious tea and those who drink it find that they house an unknown longing to see someone that cannot be fulfilled. Those who often drink longing bud tea will find themselves deeply contemplating the feeling as they are moving about their day, until they enter Desire Heart (typically at Lilia’s Desire). There they may let go of the longing either through flower-worship contemplation, or by witnessing the goddess; then leave once they decide on a destination.

-3 Create Legendary Subspecies (Temptations) - Tuatha: These complex creatures are the result of Lilia's Love beginning to infect even the essence of the Temptations, transforming ash and dust into delusion.

Still creatures of desire, Tuatha now seek to fulfill the hole they see within themselves; with the strongest instinctual drive to do this being the acquisition of the perfect soul.

Each Tuatha is composed of multiple different parts. Their body/landscape, their incarnate self(s) (mind), and their siog (minor souls). The number of souls a Tuatha possesses may produce stranger arrangements.

The body of a Tuatha is that of a fantastical landscape. Be it a gingerbread castle, cloudy garden, city street of demons, or other locales. Each is suited to the Tuatha’s taste and houses the multiple souls each collects. One cannot destroy a Tuatha without unambiguously destroying its landscape-body, though great enough destruction will permanently warp one. A Tuatha may keep itself stationary for long periods of time to lure mortals into itself but can move to new places when desired.

The incarnate self of the Tuatha is what a Tuatha uses to understand itself and contemplate thoughts and emotions beyond an instinctual level. It acts as the mouthpiece fully able to divorce itself from its own delusions and make pacts with mortals. Tuatha of a particular size and complexity may create multiple incarnate selves to manage themselves, and those who lose all their incarnate selves have a hope of creating a new one if left alive for long enough (though the end result is traumatic and the Tuatha will never be the same again).

The siog are complex delusions of the Tuatha, parts of themselves that live inside their body and function to keep lie that the body is a real place alive. Each one is made from a mortal soul a Tuatha bargained for, used like a mitochondria powering a cell. Siog can be broken apart into miniature versions of themselves, or reshaped by the incarnate self, and have no agency outside the Tuatha (going limp if ever taken outside it, returning to life once returned).

Tuatha are envious creatures, finding mockery in the existence of mortals who can find inner peace; when even the greatest Tuatha can never be satisfied completely. Tuatha want more acknowledgement, they want more capability, they want to do more; yet they will never be satisfied no matter how many hands or lives they obtain nor by any attempts to discard desire.

One particularly vexatious fact that the Tuatha know about is that Lilia frowned upon their creation and generally disfavors them compared to mortals. This leads to them being spiteful to even mortals she favors in small amounts, only truly sparing maiden cultists and those who visit Lilia’s Desire; all others being food they trade with to obtain their souls and trick with their fantastical landscapes and creatures within.

Evil (Corruption) 5/10

(Artifact Charge) - Create Organization - The Treior: A group of maiden cultists that exist primarily in and around Lilia’s Desire; the treior are knowledgeable about the ways of Desire Heart and the many Tuatha that make their homes within. Those leaving Lilia’s Desire for the ‘wider wilds’ are advised to have treior guide, least you become lost amid the changing landscapes and become prey for Tuatha trickery.

They trade this knowledge for food and goods from the First World, each treior slowly becoming a bundle of strange foreign clothing and knickknacks.

0/10 AP

**Demidos** · 2023-10-14, 01:40 PM (ISO 8601)

And so it was war.

A dizzying report, carried by an exhausted Starbird messenger, a single passing bird who had in the smallest of chances happened upon a dying Inksworn, locked in a cage atop a pyramid drenched in blood. The furthest flung scouts of the City of Kish-Eru had encountered another peoples, but they were not who they appeared at first. The report presented to the council is excerpted below.

Spoiler: Report from Inksworn: Dances like Stone

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To anyone hearing this, this is my last report. We discovered a town with regular scouting parties that seemed far more organized than the typical independent town. We thought them simple primitives albeit with an incredible architectural prowess -- they built massive triangular structures unlike anything I have seen before. They are highly organized and often wear clothes dyed in red -- only later did we realize the red is blood. Some of the savages ambushed us while we watched, and slaughtered my men, laughing and patting each other on the back as they drank their blood from their severed necks. My men fought back but they are unnaturally strong and fast, and they took us by surprise with the help of a giant beast of scales and with teeth like knives. I imagine I was spared for the moment due to the ink, but I am locked in a cage and I do not think I will make it. Prepare for the worst. They speak in a strange tongue but have gestured much in the direction from which we came. We are not prepared.

The report was sealed to the council, but the news rapidly spread. Gossip in the streets spread like wildfire, and the city was preparing for war. But this Kish-Eru was not the Kish-Eru of the past. The city had blossomed in the past decade, both literally and in the arts, and culture was at its heart. The metal towers that had fallen from the sky had been the subject of much commotion, but the city had suffered relatively little harm, and the towers were quickly repurposed into newer and larger buildings, true monoliths beginning to emerge from the flooded grasses. The presence of Lilia's Witches of the Old Bloom was causing a renaissance in alchemy, but they were not alone. A new style was taking Kish-Eru by storm, warrior bards who had founded a new group known as the Guild of Ursa. Ursa were warriors who had chosen to take up a second passion alongside the first in the arts, including music, art, or the most popular, storytelling. Although known as a guild, it was more of a loose association, with a simple structure of command. Every month, Guildmasters would offer single combat or a judgement in arts to be performed for the general public to any who wished to challenge their rule. Those who succeeded would become the new Guildmaster. Those who wished to not be associated with a new Guild leadership would be allowed to leave unmolested from that Guildmaster’s sphere. It was a simple concept, but it spread like wildfire to adventurers and wandering musicians seeking safe spaces, far beyond the reach of the First City.

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Sagmi watched as the Shattered Star’s power receded from the First World. “Oh – so thats how that works. How interesting. It doesn’t seem very fun though, being alone up here. Perhaps you will change your mind.” Words and notes, black even against the void, appear behind her form, and swirl into a melody, song, and story, sourceless yet present, an invitation that could only be offered from one Divine to another. “Come find me once you realize how much more it might be.”

With that Sagmi returns to her city and marvels at the changes that have been enacted by other divine wills during her absence. Alchemy is hawked from the streets and a skeleton roams the streets with friendly handshakes, while a rotten bloom is spoken to and worshipped by many. Fascinating. But the stories sometimes remain hidden, and that is not right – they should be told far and wide. And so she finds a group of likeminded artists and warriors and gives them the smallest of nudges, pushing them together. They will form something that might yet shake the world. There is one more nudge for her to perform – with a small exertion she tweaks the First Abyssal Dungeon beneath the city, the greatest of its kind, allowing it to siphon the smallest proportion of victims from its fellows across the world. Many who enter the Abyssal Dungeons never returned, but of the few who did, the smallest of fractions of them return not to where they began, but to a new place – Kish Eru, the First City. And their strange customs and dialects would soon begin to change the city yet again…

Spoiler: AP Actions and Other

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5 AP: Song of Heroes (Greater Utility Artifact: Bless): A standing song, a sourceless story, this symphony of words and noise wraps around Sagmi like a cloak telling stories of heroes and villains long dead and yet to come. Arts(Music) 5/10

1 AP: Create Organization (Guild of Ursa): A loose association of heroes, storytellers, musicians and adventurers, half adventurers guild and half bards association. The word Ursa means Heroes in the dialect of Kish-Eru, though the concept of heroes extends to any outstanding individuals in their own fields. The first Guildhouse is based in the First City, but the concept rapidly spreads, anyone who wishes can use this. Arts(Music) 6/10

0 AP Artifact Charge:Bless: Sagmi has blessed the Abyssal Dungeon beneath Kish-Eru with the ability to funnel some small proportion of applicants in other dungeons to itself. This is a one-way teleportation effect allowing people from all around the First World to end up in First City, cementing its status as a multicultural hub and hopefully in the future leading to more cultural exchange with far off continents. To other deities, please feel free to send through creatures to interact with the First City, I’ve left it vague as an open avenue for collaboration! Note the creatures will be Inksworn when exiting the dungeon unless you use some shenanigans.

0 AP: Sagmi has left a standing one-use invitation for the Shattered Star’s power to find hers. If used, they or any representative with sufficient power invested (e.g. Avatar, Hero, etc) will be able to find her or her similarly powered creations.

Remaining AP: 8 AP + 8 AP (2 Rollovers) - 6 AP = 10 AP

**Zelphas** · 2023-10-14, 03:35 PM (ISO 8601)

A Breeze in the Void

The First World was a joy to travel through; but so quickly, it seems, the travel must come to an end. Already, Salet felt itself pushed into the higher atmospheres, drifting out from air into airless Void. A breeze without air, warmth in crushing coldness? This is funny, in and of itself, and Salet laughed at the juxtaposition, even as it reached back to give a gift to those struggling below it. A power, originally from Telas--ah, but only barely, and others have already played with the power. If they notice... well, they won't do anything too drastic; it's against their nature.

Spinning up fully into the Void, Salet passes by the Shattered Star, breezing past the figure with a whisper of laughter in the airless, soundless space. I hope you don't mind company overmuch; if so, I can find other places to play, and I won't be here long, Salet states merrily, delighting in the way the breeze plays around the ringed machinery surrounding the other figure.

Emptying the Larder

Those who ate flesh without remorse gained strength beyond those who did not, in most cases. A direct fight was almost always a loss. And so, other methods had to be used to save those who were next for the top of the pyramid. Taking advantage of natural disasters was useful, but not reliable. Some tried their luck with Temptations, which was nearly the same thing, only with much worse results. Staging an attack to divert attention was costly, and the Empire began to grow wise to these attacks, so they had to be spaced out. And there were even some brave souls who took the place of the captives, buying their freedom by stepping up to the pyramid themselves. This often gained many more allies than just the freed would-be meals, for Remorse was common in those who ate the sacrifices... but not always, and those who sacrificed themselves still died.

Still, the people resisting grew, and those who gave their lives for one another discovered something remarkable: sometimes, the sincere desire to protect and defend gave them power beyond their means. It became clear that an oath, clearly thought and followed, with the intent of protection above all else, equipped the swearers with the power to keep their promise. A bodyguard became as powerful as ten when faced with nine foes. This power waxed and waned according to need, but it was trustworthy. So, blessing the wind, they trusted in it, and continued to empty the food stores of the Empire as much as they could.

The Second Feather

In the Void above the First World, another feather shook free from the great Cloak and fell down to earth. Spiraling towards Adanat, the feather touched a long, thin reed growing out of the swampy earth and transformed. The tall, thin creature blinked and whipped its spear-like beak around, tentatively spreading and flapping long, thin wings to steady itself on stick-like feet. Then, it lifted into the sky, searching for deeper water. Once it found a good spot, it dove, transforming from a birdlike outline to a thin, straight spear of motion before entering the water without a splash. It surfaced moments later, a water snake speared on its beak, and swam clumsily towards the shore.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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0 AP + 4 AP = 4 AP

Create Organization (1 AP) - The Empty Larder: A society within the Empire that is focused on saving as many people from cannibalism as they can. Given that cannibalism is a daily occurrence in the Empire, this is a huge uphill battle; still, the fact that many are willing to die for this cause and will take the place of other victims for the chance of activating the Cost of Consuming an Empathic Soul has helped to swell their numbers. [War (Mercy) 7/10]

Create Mythic Sub-Concept (2 AP, from Pact Magic) - Guardian Magic: By swearing an oath to protect a person, place, or community within clear guidelines (or occasionally in a moment of desperation), a mortal is given the powers to fulfill their oath. These powers change to fit the threat being faced and are purely defensive; attempting to use them to attack others or in any other violation of the oath causes them to disappear. [War (Mercy) 9/10

Create Monstrous Life (from Cloak of Many Feathers) - Lance Herons: Lance herons are tall (6-8 ft), incredibly thin birds with beaks that are about a quarter of their body length and incredibly sharp. Living in marshy areas with deeper waters and on coasts, Lance Herons hunt by diving after prey, spearing them on the end of their beak, and carrying the speared body to firmer ground to messily dissect and consume. Lance Herons also defend themselves in the same way, diving from great heights and spearing into those that would try to attack them.

4 AP - 3 AP = 1 AP Remaining

**DasIrrlicht** · 2023-10-14, 07:13 PM (ISO 8601)

WAR Profiteering, and another Trade
The Merchant Guild has been... Lacking, recently. However, with the change at the top of the ladder they are reinvigorated, and it could not come to a better time! Old trade routes who have run on routine and mere marginal profits see more, closer supervision. Internal corruption gets cut down, people are getting demoted and promoted to increase their efficiency, and recruiting once again runs great.

The easiest to rope into the trade again where the People of the Chain. Even within the formation, they where stretched so vast apart that one would not even need to leave the society to find buyers for the wares, and to gain foothold.

The Empire was always a interesting customer. Their traditions made them hard to work with, so many merchants dedicating themself to that section of the business do so by managing less informed subsidiaries. This merchants are rather far down the ladder, but 'getting rid of ones soul' is a service that many of the weaker members of the empire are willing to pay for instead of having to be convinced. Especially if it comes with a minor boon in power to help them stay alive. Newly, at least some of the subsidiaries seem to regret some of their choices of alligance, and instead aim to supply resistant groups, genuinly beliving that their services to them will help them in their troubles and make the empire weaker. Sadly for them, they are not fully aware of their higher ups dealings themself, and as such tend to have little impact on the scale, just making it bloodier for both sides.

Kish-Eru, like most societies, had from a early time on contact with some traders. Independent People. No seemingly no large network. But recently they have seen more traders from outside, bringing in and taking wears out that can not be traced back to the city, or any other group so far. While the mention of a 'Merchant Guild' occasionally echoed trough the talks, no such guild seemes to have had their head quarters in the city. Merely smaller traders associated with them. Another thing that made them unlike most groups of the place is that they apparently did not compete in the power struggles at all. They merely sought to supply as many groups as possible.
Here the group did both run into their possibly best customer, and their first group worthy to be called a rival.
The 'Guild of Ursa' was always interested in new, foreign equipment for the high quality the products usually promised, and the benefits that Statgems gave have made them excel in many ways, at the cost of something as inconeequental as a soul. The Lolipops also seem to have found a much higher amount of consumers there then in most other societies. Possibly a result of the local merchants mixtures, or it is simply because of the nature of adventurers and bards to develop somewhat of a sweet tooth.
In turn, 'The Witches of the Old Bloom' where a more mixed relationship. While there is plenty of weird and unknown ingredients the Merchants could provide them with, they also offered many, if mainly uncreative, concoction of alchemical value of their own. Which does cut into the lifesavings of many a Witch... The fact that neither side seems exceptionally prone to violence as a solution ^{(for their own problems, that is. Your problems CAN be solved with violence, and a small boost to your bodily strength!)} kept it from becoming critical. The fact that the Merchants themself are seemingly unable to perform a request outside of their choosen wares in a timely manner does help the Witches to stay competetive as well.

And all three would come together, of course, in the trade that is in the best interest of NON of them: The Weapon Trade.

Ore is easily mined in the Chain, and it takes comparable little to part them from it, as the Guild is common among there people. Shipping it out of the eye of the outsider-seafolk is the probably most risky part of the jorney, yet the ocean is vast, and the number within the original home of the Merchant Guild protects them well...
This Shipments then arrive at the coasts of the Empire, and get secretly moved inlands to large complexes of Blacksmiths, who do not ask many questions as long as they can keep a part of the valuable materials for themself. Blades and armour smithed after specification unlike the empires more prefered weaponry then get moved back to the coast, and is secretly transfered again.
There is many ships arriving these days in Port Tale, so few would notice if a smaller boat brings in a miniscule ammount of high quality steelwork, and leaves with alchemical substances again freshly mixed to be applied to the metals in transit to yet another coast...
The treated and customly smithed materials then arrive in 'The First City'. Patterns unknown to the locals and the empire, coated in substances only few know that not only aim to increase the dealiness, but also obscure most of the signs of the production process making them near impossible to reverse engineer.

Yes, as far as the Merchant Guild was concerned, it was a genious trade. Everyone got what they wanted. But only they would profit from it... Not simply disolving the guild when naury had the chance to deprive them of their main tool of trade was a mistake Naury may regrets as this war will be bloodier then it had to be...

So Trade was booming. Materials, Products, and Coin made from and with the souls of people willingly parting with theirs are moved all over the globe. Yet the value of this coin lays primarily in its limited supply, and what you can gain from selling it up to the Treasury. Its actual content was of little value to nearly everyone that handled them.

Yet, there was special use in it for some creatures. The Echo-Servants of Naury where rather limited in where they could go without suffering their undoing. When offered the chance to, under conditions, witness the first world directly and truly interact with it, many of them would take the chance. Naury equiped the ones with the possibility to 'lend out' the knowhow and experience of the dead souls to fulfill whatever task they will move to the first world to fulfill, and the Merchants got informed of the new service offered uniquily to them.

Functionaries, Echo-Servants send to perform certain task, before leaving the world again once their time runs out. There is ways to extend the time they have outside of the plane of echos, the initial payment is able to hold them for up to weeks of service on its own, even if rarely it takes so long till their task is fulfilled. However, some will stay for years away, powered by various sources of energy as they take on more tasks.

Spoiler: Naury AP Spending

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5 AP ROUNDSTART
1 AP LEFT

2 AP - Create Sub-Concept (Soul Coins) [Law (Promises) 2/10]

Functionaries
Using a Soul Coin, one can call forth a willing Echo-Servant from another plane (Usually the Plane of Echos, but under circumstances even one of the ones that Naury stationed directly in the Treasury.) This willing servant will loyaly follow its function, at the best to its abilities. Their stay is however temporary, and once the power of a coin runs out other means, or more coin, is required to supply them with the energy they need to stay. This usually takes the form of ground up Orichalcum or in some specific cases, the vitality of raw blood.
Each Functionary summond retains their own personality but utilises the experience of the dead to perform their tasks. It is not to uncommon for them to take extra tasks on after being finished, or during the finishing of the task they where originally summoned for, yet this is not covered by the original calling and as such depends on the Echo-Servants experience they came with if they will be able to.
Every Functionary follows this call willingly, and as such, it is theoretically possible to make a demand where no-one is interested in fulfilling it. However in praxis, it is functionally certain that someone is willing for one reason or another.

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4 AP Left
1 MUA Charge

Progress:
[Society (Discovery) 4/10]
[Law (Promises) 4/10]

**MutantDragon** · 2023-10-16, 08:09 PM (ISO 8601)

War Comes to the Faithful

These were interesting times to live in the Empire of the Sun. All times, of course, were interesting, but these times brought special wonders and perils. The sun itself had unleashed a cataclysm of fire and metal that scarred the land and brought surges of arcane power and madness. This was a sign to the faithful of things yet to come, and a sign to meet these things as would the sun: with fire and steel. A rebellion arose that forsook the sun's embrace and the true transcendence of hatred and wrath. Worse, some of their own began to turn soft and weak. Then came the Inksworn and his party. While the cultists were no strangers to such beings, they came to realize their prisoner came from another land, another empire. Not so strong as theirs, lacking as they were in the sun's hateful love, but larger than a mere village or town. So the Empire would need more to defeat them with the ease befitting the sun's chosen people. Harkit communed with the Genius Locus at the heart of the Empire, a Locus long since driven to fanatical heights of holy madness, and he requested, no, demanded, a Kami. One of the great forest Kamis that the Empire's Locus had conquered in the recent past. And then Harkit channeled his magic and his malice into the tortured spirit. For thirteen days and thirteen nights Harkit filled the Kami with pain and hate and arcane magic. When at last Harkit was done, what remained was hardly a Kami at all, but rather a crown. A twisted crown of living, writhing flesh that whispered deranged ramblings into the minds of all who saw it. Harkit placed this crown upon his head and ascended the steps of the central pyramid. At the top, he turned towards the city and shouted with a voice that boomed like thunder, carrying the raw arcane power of his wrath. He was calling his people to war. And woe would befall any who stood in their way.

---

In the days that followed, the crown's gibbering would be enough to drive anyone to madness. This was not a great affliction in the Empire, for all that were part of Harkit's inner circle were already blessed with madness. But aside from the wails of pain and backwards nursery rhymes, there were interesting scraps of knowledge to be gleaned. Harkit could snatch these insights from the constant stream of insanity. And with these insights he started to train himself. He formed his very body into a weapon. He would spend hours studying his meals as they died, testing the points of pressure and pain the crown revealed to him. He formed his bones into weapons, smashing them against wood and stone, going past the post of bleeding, past the point of breaking, past all human limits as the crown egged him on. He charged alone into battle, killing without his vaunted sword and instead with his fists and feet, knees and elbows, teeth and skull. And finally, once this art of barbarism had been perfected, he inflicted his knowledge upon the Empire. Those who survived became stronger than ever before. Those who did not, became more fertilizer for the flowers that lined the streets.

Spoiler: OOC

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Rollover! [2x]
2 + 10 = 12

Create Minor Utility Artifact (Crown of the Twisted Kami - Creates Mundane Concepts) 3AP: The Crown of the Twisted Kami is, as the name implies, a mangled Kami that has been shaped into a the shape of a crown, albeit one that is made of scarred and writhing flesh. What's left of its mind gibbers endlessly into the minds of mortals, and, while most is senseless ramblings, an astute listener will occasionally uncover scraps of useful information or insights into the greater universe... [Emotions (Hatred) 3/10]

Create Mundane Concept (Martial Arts) MUA: The martial arts practiced in the Empire are a brutal art of striking and grappling, designed solely for the purpose of destroying an opponent with unadulterated brutality, though the concept itself could take many different shapes if interpreted by different minds.

12AP - 3AP = 9AP
1MUA - 1MUA = 0MUA

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