Dawn Of Worlds IC

[NineOfSpades]

Nel took pause, and felt the ebb and flow of the world. Across the surface of the planet, and into its depths, she existed. The animals and plants which had been spread would be born, live and die. Even now, with the arrival of the spark of sentience, with the burrowing dwerrow, she was there. For a moment, she occupied herself tending to a clumsy worker, one who had slipped off of a ladder, falling onto the unforgiving stone far below. She touched his shoulder, and granted him peace as his soul passed into her domian. As it should be, and indeed, as it must be.

But there was something amiss. A disharmony with the balance, one which she'd sensed for a great many ages. It was born into the western lands, and had spread corruption in its wake, blighting the earth and bleeding it dry. There would need be work done here, she required an agent to act on her behalf, so that this corruption could be watched against.

Beside her, Valfar shifted against his chains, baring witness to Nel's work, but not commenting. The dragon had no desire to speak to his captor. The other gods had created life from stone and fire, and Nel had seen the results of their work. It was an adequate start, but she would need something more substantial. Locating a slab of sandstone, one which had sufficient mass for what she envisioned, Nel began to work the stone, giving it a soul, flesh, bone, and life.

The being that came forth was not as immense as her first creation, though she still towered over most smaller creatures. Shaped somewhat in Nel's image, the newly-born woman knelt down in respectful reverance to the Death-god.

"I am Sitre, my lady. You have my thanks for giving me life. What task is it that you require of me? The woman spoke. Valfar snorted in disgust and turned away. He had no desire to observe such a loyal puppet of his enemy.

"Sitre, go to the western lands. The world there is changing, and you shall be my agent there. Magic has been brought into the world: Study it. Learn its secrets. Also, there is a corruption which blights the earth, destroying life and bringing ruin in its wake. It is not a part of the order, and so you shall guard against it. In time, we will raise a city there, and it shall become the seat of your empire."

Sitre nodded, understanding. Without further word, she rose to her feet, and began walking, heading out towards the desert, in serach of its secrets and its power. Imma be making a race of giants, Egyptian flavored!

Spoiler: OOC

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10 points on Create avatar. 1 point remaining, 4 domain points. +3 to next point roll.

Spoiler: Sitre, Pharoh Of The Giants

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Spoiler: Appearance

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Sitre stands at nearly 50 ft tall, with great flaming red hair. Her skin is a dark amber, and her eyes shine like turquoises. Sitre is a loyal servent of Nel, and though her physical might is great, it is supassed by her intelligence and cunning. Sitre is level headed and patient, and acts with care and deliberation in all things.

[Extra Anchovies]

Something had changed the Dwerrow. No longer did their numbers only grow; from time to time It sensed that one of them simply... ceased to be. Gone. Only an inanimate statue left behind. This was... troubling, even to an intellect of Its scale.

Thankfully, these losses were only among the grievously injured or those otherwise unfit for further contributions to knowledge, and they could easily be replaced with another Dwerrow. Keeping a more stable population did reduce the amount of resources they required, after all, and it would not to for a Dwerrow to suffer endlessly should they be damaged beyond repair... perhaps this change may have been for the better.

But some of these Dwerrow ceased activity while holding knowledge that had not yet been shared with its fellows, or with It. This was problematic. But how to prevent this?

Ah, yes. That would work.

The Eye descended once more to the realm of the Dwerrow, and performed a deep and powerful ritual. Within each Dwerrow It instilled yet another spark of Magic, one more subtle and at the same time far stronger than those It had already taught to them. This was no mere trick; it did not conjure fire, nor did it encourage plants to grow, or any of the other myriad spells the Dwerrow had created or been shown. This was something more.

The Dwerrow no longer went about their activities - working, socializing, producing and sharing knowledge and magic - at every hour of the day. Now each of them paused once each day for a few hours at a time, and felt the wisdom and memories of their ancestors, and those of their ancestors' ancestors all the way back to the All-Father, and even the energies and feelings of the Earth itself, flowing through them. Through these dreams the knowledge of the Dwerrow from long ago is passed on to newer generations.

Spoiler: Effects of what just happened

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Each Dwerrow enters a deep trance-like state (called the Earth Dream) for four hours of each day, during which they commune with their ancestors, experiencing memories from any or all of the Dwerrow that preceded them. These memories cannot be searched through consciously; the visions a Dwerrow receives are selected seemingly at random from the knowledge and experiences of the dreaming Dwerrow's immediate creator, that Dwerrow's creator, and so on, all the way back to the memories of the All-Father.

The time spent on the Earth Dream isn't four hours of straight ancestral memories; much of it is devoid of past experiences, and in this time a Dwerrow communes with the earth itself, feeling the rhythm and flow of its energies.

The Dwerrow place extreme significance on the Earth Dream; disturbing the Earth Dream of another Dwerrow is a massive faux pas, and is only acceptable when matters of life or death have arisen (e.g. it's okay to wake up an Earth Dreaming Dwerrow if the cave starts to collapse, but not if you just need another guest at your tea party). It is a universal custom for Dwerrow to share the contents of their Earth Dream (both the ancestral memories and the emotions and energies they felt from the earth) with their fellows as part of each morning's meal.

Spoiler: Mechanical effects

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After Earth Dreaming for 4 hours, a Dwerrow gains the same benefit that another race would from 8 hours of sleep. It's basically the Trance ability of PHB Elves, but it's all Dwarfy.

The ancestral memories that a Dwerrow experiences are generally going to be of no particular consequence, but could be used to serve as plot hooks in the event of a particularly significant memory (e.g. one showing the location of a long-lost artifact). Same goes for the sensations received from the earth itself; generally they won't mean much, but if some horrible thing is being done to the natural world in a particular area a Dwerrow who enters the Earth Dream nearby may feel the earth's pain themselves.

Spoiler: Bonus Fluff

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Spoiler: Dwerrow Society

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The culture of the Dwerrow is highly organized and is made up of four social groups, which function similarly to castes but do not have a hierarchy: the Mages, the Craftsmen, the Warriors, and the Harvesters. Mages (which include priests, who are just as likely to be wizards as they are to be clerics) and Warriors are self-explanatory, Harvesters are those who collect raw materials (miners, farmers, loggers), and Craftsmen are those who take the raw materials from the Harvesters and convert them to finished goods (woodworkers, bakers, smiths). The groups are nominally equal but the Mages are the generally highest-regarded (and richest), followed by the Warriors, then the Craftsmen, then the Harvesters. It is rare for a Dwerrow to belong to a different group than their creator.

Mages adventure to further their knowledge and to make great magical discoveries to improve their prestige in dwarven lands. Warriors adventure to stop potential threats to the Dwerrow. Harvesters adventure to make a better life for themselves than farming or mining. Craftsmen tend not to adventure.

Dwerrow tend to live in groups of between four and eight members of each generation, spanning two or sometimes three generations for a usual total of somewhere between ten and twenty-five. Each such social unit is called a clan, and members are generally all of the same social group and perform most tasks (working, eating, Earth Dreaming, socializing) together. Small clans, especially those with only a handful of members, may group together, and larger clans tend to naturally separate themselves into one or more smaller social groups which inevitably turn into separate clans. Clans also tend to belong to larger groups known as Assemblies which exist for primarily economic and political purposes; for example, every Assembly in a city may have one or more representatives in the local government. Assemblies also form alliances with other Assemblies that are known as Great Houses, each of which is named after its foremost Assembly (determined by political power, wealth, numbers, and how long each Assembly has been in the Great House).

Due to their asexual means of reproduction, Dwerrow do not experience romantic love, but are nonetheless capable of forming very strong bonds of respect and caring with other individuals.

Spoiler: The Gods of the Dwerrow

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The Dwerrow mostly worship three gods:
1. The All-Father: the first Dwerrow. Only shared ancestor of all current Dwerrow. Worshipped exclusively by Dwerrow. Public worship of the All-Father by non-Dwerrow is a serious crime in dwarven lands; only a Dwerrow can revere the All-Father properly, for only they carry His ancestral memories deep in their subconsciouses. The fact that the Dwerrow don't like non-Dwerrow revering the All-Father won't be relevant until other races appear but as soon as they do it will be an element of the cultures and religion of the Dwerrow.
2. The Star-Eye: creator of the All-Father; known in the more formal, academic circles as the Eye in the Dark. The Dwerrow know vaguely of Its form (an eye with tentacles, depicted in Its holy symbol) and place of origin (although they know nothing more detailed than "descended from the stars", because that's how Yathogg explained it to the All-Father) through ancestral memories from the All-Father. Also worshipped by others as a god of magic (or at least It will be when there are other races).
3. Grimgaldon: although he was not involved in the creation of the Dwerrow and is not himself a Dwerrow, his power is respected and his kindness admired among the Dwerrow due to his role in guiding them forwards. Also worshipped by others as an earth god (or at least he will be eventually).

The Dwerrow also recognize most of the other gods (Stormur, Sol Invictus, Nel, Kalandor, Myah, Siderh, Neroneh), but they are not worshipped on any particularly large scale. For example, a prayer to Nel may be given at ceremonies for the dead, but

[bardanicer]

15 energy
4 domain

Spending 10 energy to Create Avatar - The Black Judge.

Will edit post with flavor later. Sorry everyone.

[Omegonthesane]

The deathlord had not been idle. No doubt fearing the truth that Tavteth would inflict upon the world, and not satisfied with the thing she had imprisoned and the thing she had built, she had made another giant to invade the desert.

That meant a change of plan.

From the southernmost end of the desert, the Hole in the World fled to the ice of the southern pole. There, it wandered for years, finally settling on a place where it was unlikely to be found.

It was not in the nature of entropy to raise things up; instead, Tavteth allowed some of the surrounding snows to melt faster. It extended its rage to the north, and the ground cracked, forming a channel that would become a river - a foul, dirty thing that spread pollution and disease to any water it came in contact with.

From this crack had come matter, and from this matter Tavteth worked to form a series of mountains in the coldest reaches. It had no direct power over cold, but the cold of the ice was no more unfamiliar than the cold of the void, and it was unlikely that mortals would come this far to interfere with things they ought not to understand. From here, while the world was built, while the Black Mirror - and later servants, when ideas came to mind - wore away at the laws of men, Tavteth would construct the place from where it could erode the laws of matter.

~~~

In the years since its creation, the Black Mirror had gone about its work among the Dwerrow. Many were selfish enough to make deals with mysterious benefactors who seemed to demand so little in exchange - just rumours, or a delivery, or to hurt someone who was already a foe, and they would have gold and pleasures to suit. Indeed, for the most part the Black Mirror's prices were not to hand over a resource, but to put a crack in the payer's integrity, to make them break the laws they believed in so as to weaken their belief in those laws.

Once a suitably large number of corrupt Dwerrow had been identified - or made - the Black Mirror formed them into a group, a mystery cult focused around the worship of the so-called Liberator, a purported god of freedom and pleasure who exhorted followers to do as they pleased. Of course, most people were there to make criminal contacts, paying only lip-service to the theology - the Red Brotherhood was a gang wearing the trappings of a cult, and its worship rites were meant more as communal entertainments than as meaningful requests for divine aid.

Spoiler: Crunch

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12p gained, 5p saved; 1dp gained, 4dp saved

9p: Shape Land on 06.08 and 06.07 to create a foul polluted river fed with meltwater from 05.08, filled with diseased water that shortens the life of any poor sod who drinks it (including trees, which sicken, bear less fruit, and have shorter lifespans)

3p: Shape Land on 05.09 to create a series of mountains - large enough to contain valleys.

1dp (Evil: Corruption): Command the Black Mirror to create an Order in the Dwerrow "The Black Skull", a mystery cult consisting of a self-centred band of malcontents willing to aid dark and mysterious forces they don't quite understand if it gives them a short-term profit.

5p remaining; +3 to next power roll
4dp remaining