Godhood 3 IC: Who Worships the Worshippers?

**BladeofObliviom** · 2013-04-29, 10:40 AM (ISO 8601)

Godhood 3

An Aeon Ago

Fire and Steel flashed across the cosmos, spiralling towards each of the opposing Ultima in blood and fury. The very fabric of the universe was lit aflame, even as the shards tore long, neat slashes across it. This must be the final day of the universe indeed, as it could have no hope of persisting if these mighty Titans worked so hard toward destroying it through their own discord. However, not all was lost, as a looming shadow appeared in the center of the fray, halting as a wave of twinned light and darkness spread across the cosmic battlefield.

NO MORE WARNINGS! NO MORE MERCY!

In an instant, all action ceased in the cosmos, each of the Ultima thrown back in terror and agony as they suffered the wrath of the Primus, a being that dwarfed each of them in power. Even had they not been weakened by their constant conflicts, such power was something they could hope to achieve only through cooperation. The waves intensified, and each Ultimus was greeted by the horrifying sight of an Aspect of Mortan, come with a scythe.

TODAY, THIS FARCE ENDS.

Each screamed in nightmarish harmony as the divine blade struck across them, tearing each of their forms asunder and banishing what remained to places outside the universe. Mere moments later, the waves retracted, sewing the fabric of reality together and dousing the flames as the edges passed over the final battleground of the Ultima. The Primus of the Titans once more surveyed his surroundings.

With its essence returned, the Great Gearworks that kept the universe in order resumed its ticking, where such a noise had been gone for so long. Indeed, that telltale ticking was just another reminder of the Primus' lost brother. In a manner not entirely different, the ever-present tears in the highest reaches of reality had once again begun to spew the glowing mists of the Great Beyond. Together, these two sensations were such a disquieting reminder of his fratricide that the feeling of regret nearly caused Mortan to miss the faint green tendrils that had begun to manifest nearby.

Instantly, the Primus was forced to dodge as an entity more powerful than the Ultima attempted to ensnare him in green vines. The scythe struck out again, severing a number of them. The Median of the Titans screamed in horror as a a purple ichor flowed from the wounds, then barked out:

WHY? THEY WERE OUR BROTHERS, NO MATTER THEIR RAGE!

I DID WHAT HAD TO BE DONE! YOUR COMPASSION WOULD HAVE DESTROYED EVERYTHING!

The vines continued their assault, but they did not, perhaps could not strike to injure. They merely attempted to wrap around the Primus, to restrain him. The Primus of the Titans was still significantly greater than his sister, however, and he had little difficulty stopping her feeble attempts at imprisoning him.

"You will not accept my logic."

It was a simple statement of fact, of understanding, rather than a question.

The action stopped once more as Light and Darkness fought, united, against the Median of the Titans, freezing her in pain and fear as the full might of the Primus bore down upon her. The Divine Scythe flashed once more, but this time it struck with the flat of the blade; Viviul was not rent asunder as her siblings had been, but was thrown onto the surface of an otherwise meaningless world set upon the Gearworks instead. She only had a few moments before the full, armored form of Mortan landed beside her, holding his blade against her throat.

The Primus of the Titans hesitated a moment over his defeated foe, but she had not the strength to take advantage of the lull. He lifted the blade, prompting a sense of relief for but a moment in the other Titan, before speaking.

"You are dear to me, sister. My heart forbids me from tearing the flesh away from your bones and leaving you to bleed upon the soil of this forsaken planet, but I cannot allow you to continue. I must take the only option left open to me, and for that I apologize."

Mortan's hand took on an otherworldly glow as he took hold of Viviul's throat, and thrust her entire form downward, plunging her into the center of the world, infusing her entire essence into this one place. She would control this world, of course, but one world of life could only be good in light of what would happen next.

The Primus of the Titans looked upon the universe that had been wrought by his actions. Indeed, it was now at peace, as he had always wanted. But...

...It was lonely, and he was alone in it. Perhaps it was time that the Titans fell. Perhaps a new era would be a good thing. After a moment of deliberation, the Primus of the Titans thrust the blade of the scythe through his own heart.

Thus it was that the Age of the Titans came to an end. Mortan's body and soul were rent into thousands of pieces, scattered over the universe by the antipode wave of light and shadow released upon his death. This wave neatly scoured the universe clean of life, so that things could begin anew.

The Present

(Chapter 1: The Aether Parts)

After nearly an Aeon of stagnation, only one place had any real change: One world, with a Titan at its center.

It grew ecosystems, and creatures. Plants and Oceans covered every inch of it, except for the parts that were mountain and desert. Indeed, it was a wondrous beacon of life and plenty. It had a name, not simply one given to it, but felt by all that approached it: Gaia. A beautiful name, to match a beautiful planet.

Something else changed in the universe, as well. The shards and pieces of Mortan, scattered far and wide, began to take in elements of their surroundings, changing from the base of Mortan into things that were else, and unique. At this single moment in time, however, the first of these beings, the prime generation of new Gods, arose to consciousness, having grown in the void of the universe for millennia. None truly know any more of their origins than vague, fragmented memories, but all feel the call to Gaia. After all, it has been a long, long time since Mortan last visited his sister...

**Gengy** · 2013-04-29, 10:51 AM (ISO 8601)

Recipe for Mysto-flavored Godhood

Ingredients:
(x1) All-Powerful Divinity
(x1) Regretted Mistake Done Unto Family
(x1) Universe Shattering Suicide
(x1) Divine Whim (Blackened)
(x1) Divine Tastebuds (Freshly Ground)
(x1) Random Act of Unforeseeable Circumstance
(x2) Teaspoons of Cosmic Essence
(x1) Gallon of Mystical Energy
(x10) Cups of the Inexplicable
(x2) Long Thoughts (Dry)
(x4) Plea for Help (cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces)
(x1) Understanding of the Finer Points of Saucery
(x1) Understanding of the Finer Points of Sorcery
(x1) Willingness to Live Again

Directions:
Part 1. Stir All-Powerful Divinity with Regretted Mistake Done Unto Family and slowly allow Universe Shattering Suicide. The result should leave the remaining ingredients. Set Empty Universe to simmer.

----------------

Darkness. Darkness was boring.

It offered no chance of opportunity. It offered no change. It offered nothing. And it was cold.

Loneliness. Loneliness was unusual.

Where were the teeth? The uvula? The lips? Where was the rest of the upper jaw? What was going on?

Cold. Dark. Uninteresting.
Lonely. Unprotected. Incomprehensible.

----------------

Two parts of the being once known as Mortan drifted in the now empty universe. The explosion that had separated them from the rest of the mighty divinity that was Mortan had left a shattered cosmos with powerful debris.

By rare happenstance, purely by luck, fate, or misfortune - depending on your point of view - these two parts coasted ever closer together. Though it would take them an indeterminable amount of excruciating time to mix, it with some amount of joy that they would finally mingle.

For eons, the spiritual essence of Divine Whim was attached to nothing, and was frustrated by its infinite curiosity but no senses to satisfy it. It wanted to do something - anything - other than aimlessly floating in the unknown. It felt cold, without having any feeling. It saw darkness, without having eyes. And when those two things were explored, understood, and ignored... there was no further stimuli. There was... nothing. And nothing was monotonous.

For countless ages, the battered remains of Mortan's tongue had floated in relative loneliness, it's only moments of understanding burdened by the knowledge that it was tasting specs and residue of what must have been the tiniest of parts of Mortan himself. They had flavor, but it was always sour. The physical form of Divine Taste-buds was lost and alone, and would have spat out the sourness it always sampled, if only it had saliva and a mouth to spit. It knew not what was happening, and only knew the taste of bitter, bitter remorse.

How long exactly this state continued is hard to say. Years, at least. Decades, perhaps. Centuries? Possibly. As any chef will tell you, timing is important. Every second a dish remains on the fire is the difference between mediocrity and excellence, and knowing precisely when to remove it is another step closer to perfection. Spending that time waiting on preparing something else is just good time management.

Knowing exactly how long is unimportant; what is important is that both Divine Whim and Divine Taste spent their years in solitude grasping for anything and everything that gave them a moment's distraction, or a small increase in power.

Divine Whim would suck dry all the stimuli from any piece of debris it could encapsulate. In this way, it grew stronger. Divine Taste would latch on to any piece of dirt and dust, in the hopes of finding something big enough that it could hide in and find safety. In this way, it healed.

Timing is important. Any chef will tell you that. But any chef can also see that when you have one ingredient that does its best to overwhelm the other, and another ingredient that does well in hiding until it is ready, what you have is something worse than bad timing.

What you have is a recipe for disaster.

(Next Direction)

**kestrel404** · 2013-04-29, 11:33 AM (ISO 8601)

The Living Sin:

It started with an explosion. What was once whole shattered, becoming numerous as the shining lights of the outer chaos. Each of those shards was unique, and imbued with a tiny fraction of the power of what was once the greatest of titans.

One of those shards woke. It woke because it was in pain. The shard had been in pain even before the shattering, but now it recognised itself and the pain it was in. It hung above Gaia, drifting in the night sky, looking down on the living world below, and wept. For the shard knew, with every fiber of its being, what that world represented. For this shard was the knot of pain and sorrow and regret and remorse that Mortan had felt upon killing or binding his fellow titans. It was the empathy he felt for them, and the eternal sorrow for what he had done, which eventually led to his undoing. This shard was his realization that what he had done was in some way wrong, even if it was necessary. This shard was his Sin.

Sin contemplated itself. Identity was a new thing, and interesting. It knew regret, and from that understanding was born desire - a longing for solace and comfort. And it knew sorrow, and from that knowledge was born despair - a surety that nothing it did would change what had been wrought by Mortan. Sin contemplated all of the fragmented memories and knowledge that it had inhereted from its father, searching for a purpose to its existence, a reason to continue despite the suffering.

And in time, Sin understood: its suffering and existence were both eternal and necessary to the proper order of things. That it suffered proved that Mortan had ultimately been a good and just being. By holding within itself the sorrow and remorse of its father, Sin was living proof that Mortan cared.

TBC...

**Draken** · 2013-04-29, 11:55 AM (ISO 8601)

Bits and shreds of titanic flesh lay dormant for eons, untouched by age and rot in the cold darkness beyond the sky. Cast away from Gaia by the eruption of primordial demise, wandering the empyreal void in search of… Anything.

The remains find a pull, and falls down to the a world where they had long since not been.

---

Gaia - A place that would come to be known as the Mines Isles.

Ichor and meat fall violently from the heavens, scorching forests and ending lifes, devastation is sown by pure happenstance on pristine nature, leaving only gashes in the land.
But life is stubborn and resilient, and it finds use even for that which would momentarily destroy it. A great many insects working together march over the flesh and gather around pools of ichor, nibbling and suckling and gathering it for their colony.

---

A flash comes to a mind that does not exist. Violence among siblings.

---

These isles are rich in metals, truly, truly rich. These dutiful insects have built their nests around ferrous roots, spreading beneath the land with no trees for them to sustain. Solitary but for their tireless neighbors.

---

A pang of solitude reaches those who feel nothing. Remembering death and imprisonment.

---

In life, Mortan could but change and never create life, but in death he could nourish it. His remains being fed by these insects to their young and their fungid crops, their workers, their soldiers. Staining the iron upon which they dwelt. Filling their nest. Listening with their last nervous terminals to their endless chittering. Their laborious tune.

"Aktai, aktai, aktai..."

They were harmonious.

They were together.

Those broken, unthinking minds in the remains of Mortan longed for that, spurred by memories they did not conceive of. They drank of the iron and charred away its faults and flaws. They fed it to the young insects and to the old insects and joined them through their metabolic processes. They were many, but there was plenty of flesh.

Until one day there was no more flesh, it had all been eaten. No more ichor, it had all seeped into the roots of the land, the roots of that world.

And those tiny insects who taught dead titans of such important but small things were no longer tiny and not exactly insects anymore. Their queen fed on something other than what her children did and thus she had perished long since, only her brood to remain. And among these critters grew numinous conscience, endless and centerless. Singing that same old song, but now with a voice.

"Aktai, aktai, aktai..."

Spoiler

Show

I believe that there was an extra divine action avaiable for use on the creation story.

This action will be used to create life. The Replicants.

Replicants are metalline elemental creatures shaped like ants, rougthly the size of a dog and about as intelligent as your average human. Replicants reproduce by building more of their kind out of metal they collect.

Replicants are social creatures and whenever they gather they form a collective conscience, a hive mind. As of the present, all extant replicants are part of the original collective Aktai'Parapon, which is well, a god or a nascent god, as of now. It has yet to formally take up a name, goal and anything else. It is not even particularly big yet. As oposed to the description in which is it humongous and nearly infinite.

Trivia

Spoiler

Show

Aktai means "acts" in lituanian. Parapon comes from paraponera, a genus of ants whose sting hurts like a gunshot for a whole day. Pretty big ant too.

**Snowfire** · 2013-04-29, 12:38 PM (ISO 8601)

Order upon Chaos

Even in later days, when she saw far clearer, she would never be able to give any firm figure on how long it was. Not because she didn’t know, but because the number would never be the same twice. All she knew was that it was a long time, in units that not even gods had a firm understanding of. Perhaps that was simply psychosis, perhaps not. In the end, it didn’t matter. What mattered was the beginning itself.

It started, somewhen, with the self-termination of Mortan. The shards of the Primus of the Titans shattered across reality, many being lost forevermore to the endless Chaos of the Beyond or being sucked inexorably into the perfect Order of the Celestial Gearworks. Some shards fell onto Gaia, where they found tenuous safety amongst the life blooming into being around them. Others fell onto other worlds, now stripped of life by the imprisonment of Viviul within Gaia, and found their own forms of existence and safety. Still more simply were lost to the Void between the world, floating seemingly unending across the fabric of reality alone or in groups as the two Powers still free – those of Order and Chaos – fought endlessly over the realities that had once been safe from their predation.

Most shards never crossed path with those roaring conflicts, but a few did. Most, almost all in fact, never escaped. The vortexes of power spawned around the shards in attempts to imprint Order or Chaos upon them tore them apart, rending their power into naught but scattered fragments of what were already shards. But it is to those that did not ‘die’ – although the word is a poor fit, as there were none of them truly alive – that we now turn our gaze. The conflict of Law and Order did not always bring obliteration. But to that which eventually rose from it, obliteration might have been a mercy.

For in the endless Void that stood between worlds, there was one of the many groups of floating shards of Mortan. These shards had no understanding of their existence, none of the fire and passion and – yes – madness too, that would come to one day inhabit them. They were simply power. Their path took them in long arcs across the fabric of reality, always perfectly between the Gearworks and the Beyond. And to both they were tempting. For in those times, that-which-would-be-Liral were many shards of Mortan’s power. And so to Order and Chaos they sang with a great piece of the power of the Primus, flickering in the light as a single huge mass of candy does to two children.

And so there came a time, a point billions of years ago, where both reached for that mass of power – having exhausted the readily available supply elsewhere in the Void. Utter Chaos burned down through reality, cracks of the Beyond seeking the strength within the Shards that might allow it to break the stalemate with its antithesis. That antithesis responded, the Order of the Gearworks stretching out a many-cogged ‘limb’ as counter to the Beyond’s advances. And the shards found themselves – although again they did not, for none had an understanding of finding things, let alone one of self – caught at the heart of a conflict that had the capacity to change the fate of reality. For the power within them would be enough to tip the balance, to allow a theoretical winner to push back the advances of the other – if only a little. That alone would tip the balance further, and then further, until either Beyond or Gearworks were rendered into nothing but forgotten memory.

Long the two Powers fought, as long as a star may burn and then again, but neither could gain more than a fleeting advantage over the other.

**Tychris1** · 2013-04-29, 09:07 PM (ISO 8601)

Free at last

There was a great explosion. Forces were torn asunder and life obliterated. Mortan himself was eviscerated, his remains flying about like shrapnel in a bomb. Some sped off, some burnt up, others crashed into objects and remained dormant, and others.... Others went far and away. They soared throughout time and space, blazing in such a way that made comets look tame and mild in comparison. One such piece was the adrenaline that rushed through Mortan, the slight rush he felt at the sensation of power. It hurtled with great force, an unstoppable force that began to collect debris along the way, and eventually it snagged another piece of Mortan. The feeling Mortan had when he died, when he freed himself of life, and unleashed a great maelstrom of chaos. That feeling of unbridled freedom of choice collided with his adrenaline and merged together.

Out in space they thrived. An endless landscape in which nothing stood in its way. The two forces were in perfect harmony, batting aside anything in its way like the insignificant thing it was in comparison. Most of the time they only ran into debris or dead planets, weakened chunks of earth that crumbled against the shards uncontrolled might. But rarely, the two forces did encounter something greater: Shards of Mortan. They set upon their fellow lesser shards with great haste, either obliterating them immediately or absorbing them into the mass. Some however fought back, leading to great chases in the empty void, games of cat and mouse in which the Adrenaline Shard hounded after the other shard, striking it and retreating before repeating the process. The shard was invigorated in these bouts of conflict, suddenly filled with purpose, with something to do, and yet they were short lived endeavors. Before long the shard would return to its eternal streak through the darkness.

Eventually, in a length of uncountable years, the apparently unstoppable force met its immovable object, Gaia, and it buckled. Swirling over the planet at incredible speeds, the shard looked upon the world and found something joyous. Life. True and uncontrolled existence that raged and grew and acted upon instinct and feeling. It was glorious. The sights, the smells, the sounds! All of it, so much of it! Free and wild! The shard continued to watch, enthralled by everything. The growth of roots, unimpeded by the dirt in it's way, the flight of birds who defied the sky that blocked them, and the might of beasts who smashed aside all that came in their way. The last thing caught the shards attention the most. For this was true anarchy! The shard felt a tingling sensation course through it, remnants of its old duty as the adrenaline for Mortan. It felt.... Happy? It was strange, this feeling of energy coursing through it and driving it on, and it felt good. It stared on, watching the different shapes of life evolve and change and destroy. It was so beautiful, so perfect, and it was continual. Every time something died it broke down and something new came of it for the process to begin again. It was like watching other entities relive its skirmishes with other shards, except they never ended! Every moment bred new moments that created more and more and more! Perhaps it was years, or decades, or hours, or maybe even seconds, but eventually the shard felt another sensation, and this one was far more intense than the last. It was a yearning, a fiery blaze inside of it more intense than when it hurtled through space, and it required to be quenched NOW. Shifting about, the shard slowed down, and eventually began a descent down to Gaia in preparation to join in on the "fun".

**Gengy** · 2013-04-29, 10:36 PM (ISO 8601)

Recipe for Mysto-flavored Godhood
(previous)

Directions:
Part 2. Throw Divine Whim (Blackened by Emptiness) and Divine Taste (Freshly Ground by Shattering) together, within Empty Universe. Add in one Random Act of Unforeseeable Circumstance. Let ingredients mingle. Do not stir. Allow mix to breathe.

----------------

When last had the slack of loneliness been loosed?

There had been that piece of rock, some time ago. Exactly how long was hard to quantify for Divine Taste. Taste had found it too dry, too dusty, but it had found some small amount of solace being able to speak to something, anything. Within Mortan -- however many eons that had been -- Taste had always been accused of wagging it's tongue; talking too much. The millennia of solitude had changed that.

It had had time to reflect on things, and found that silence was acceptable. Loneliness, however, was not. Taste had been content with that rock, before all of its nutrients had been licked clean.

----------------

When before had the blackness of boredom been brushed away?

There had been that sharp edged stone, some time ago. Exactly how long ago was difficult to remember for Divine Whim. Whim had found it immensely interesting, and highly diverting. It had been shocked when the stone had drifted into its essence, but had immediately - without a second thought - gathered the stone into itself. Whim had not known it was a sharp edged stone until careful study had been completed. Whim had explored every edge, every facet, and every geode within before using a bit of it's own magic to absorb the stone completely.

Whim then spent time to savor ever memory of the stone, and simply lost track of time for a while. It had been glorious. But now it had been nearly too long, and Whim was forgetting where the stone had curved, and where it had cut. The stone had not been enough. Divine Whim wanted more. Wanted something -- anything -- to beat back the boredom.

----------------

This would have continued till the end of time, if not for a random act of what some might call fate. Indeed, in another reality, in another dimension, the meteor never existed. It's speed and momentum had not thrived for all these years, and it was just another slowly drifting rock, puckered and empty.

But that is another reality. That is another dimension. In this reality, this dimension, it was not a pock-marked asteroid, but a speeding comet. Had either Divine Whim or Divine Taste had eyes to see, they would have beheld the light it caused from the heat of its passing with mixed feelings.

Whim would have watched it eagerly, happily relishing every flare and spark of its long comet tail. Blue and white, Whim would have delighted in the interplay of color of the comet itself, and marveled at the speed with which it moved. But Whim would have lamented that it was so far away, and known that it's passing would be brief, and boredom would soon set in again. Still, Whim would have been pleased.

But Whim did not have eyes. It could only see that which touched it's own essence. Whim was an empty gaseous cloud of cosmic remains, and had no real physical form.

Divine Taste did not have eyes either. It could only lick and savor. Had it eyes, Taste would have gazed upon the comet, and contemplated the fact that Taste - in fact - did have a physical form. This contemplation may have (had Taste had eyes) come in the form of the thought, That comet is getting increasingly closer to my own personage.

Or perhaps, had Taste had both eyes to see and the chance to speak, it would have uttered, "Oh Fart Nuggets!"

But Taste had neither eyes, nor the chance to comment negatively or positively on the proximity of the comet to it's own physical form. In short, it was blindsided.

Before the pain of being struck by something hurdling through space set in, Taste did savor the heat and unique flavor that a comet traveling at over one hundred fifty thousand miles per hour provided. But then Divine Taste was hit, and while it was the divine remains of Morton, and therefore able to survive, it still was in immense pain as the comet shattered and sent Divine Taste careening through the cosmos.

As it picked up speed, it gained it's own comet tail, and the heat intensified. Divine Taste remembered back when it was still a part of Morton, it had sampled a simple dish from the Great Beyond known as a Jongo Pepper; the pepper had been deceptively tasty. It was distinct in that it was full of flavor, but that explosion of flavor soon turned into an almost real explosion that seared the inside of Morton's mouth, and left Divine Taste weeping in agony for a whole millisecond before Divine Healing sent energies to repair the damage.

However, the Jongo Pepper was nothing compared to this. Divine Taste would always remember that -- of anything in the whole of reality -- it was comets that would forever be the hottest thing to burn taste-buds.

Had Divine Whim had eyes, it would have been immensely amused by the explosion that had just happened. It would have seen the comet collide with something, miles and miles away, and then erupt in a final moment of glory before a new comet, not as fast as the first, but much more interesting, came flying through space. Divine Whim would have found it more interesting in that this comet was coming much, much closer.

But Whim had no eyes. It's first indication of this new comet -- of either comet -- was the fraction of a second that Divine Taste's flaming form flew through Divine Whim's gaseous essence.

Moving at a rate of over one hundred thousand miles per second, Divine Taste knew it was in for a horrible millennium. It would either burn up and die, or go through existence as the first and perhaps only divine being to desire fast food.

But as fast as it traveled, and as quick as that fraction of a second was, Divine Whim takes even less time to make a decision. Whatever this thing was, whatever it ended up being, it was new. Divine Whim latched on, and surrounded the comet that was Divine Taste.

Whim could not feel as other things feel. It could not see as other things see. It had no hearing, no way to smell, no way to understand what would happen.

But it made a choice.

And it suddenly decided it was a great one. The speed, the movement, the heat! All of these things, Whim absorbed in an instant, knowing them with such intensity, such fervor, that it exalted in their cosmic forces. It cried out in mental joy the only suitable response for when someone enjoys the ride of their life:

"WHEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

Divine Taste had been contemplating it's solitude and the new change of it's momentum for only a matter of moments, when it suddenly tasted a change. Something surrounded it, drained some of the speed, some of the heat, and then... spoke. Spoke in the language of Morton's own body, a firing of synapses, impulses, and magical divinity that Taste had not experienced in countless ages. It summoned the memories, and spoke back.

"Um. Hello."

Still coming down from the high that was the result of consuming the essence of what was effectively the galaxy's go-cart, Divine Whim shuddered with ecstasy as it continued to subsume this comet into it's own power. Speed, heat, and flecks of comet dust were soon drained completely.

"Er. Excuse me."

There. There at the core. Whim could feel it's power. Something different, something new, something it had not ever experienced. It wanted that power. Combine it with this newfound speed, and Divine Whim's not inconsiderable own magical might, and, "Oh the things we'll do together!"

"Yes, well, I shall look forward to it, but right now, you are rather pressing into me, and it's quite painful."

"Don't worry, I shall take the pain away, I will."

"Ah, good. Divine Healing then, are you?"

"What? No. I'm not that riskless safety oriented... wait. You're... speaking!" Divine Whim was so surprised and delighted, it relented it's abstract siphoning. This power wasn't something meant to be absorbed quickly.

"Of course I'm speaking. I'm a tongue. Well, technically, I suppose, Divine Vocal Chords were doing the speaking, but honestly, I was a big help. The whole mouth was."

"Divine Taste... is that... is that you? You old saliva soaked rascal, I hardly recognized you, covered in all this speed. I almost sucked you dry, I did. You still remember the Jongo Pepper I decided we should try?"

"Whim. Ah. I think I would have preferred Healing."

"What? Don't be like that. Honestly, it was a good decision. We'd never tried it before."

"Yes. And I will never try it again, thank you."

"See? Now we know!"

"Though, to be fair, we won't really try much of anything ever again. Do you know what happened? How did we get like this?"

"I don't know for sure. There was a meeting of the minds, there was. Morton made a decision about something after careful thought, and I remember Divine Guilt and Divine Loneliness were both screaming pretty loudly. Morton fair well deliberated for a whole moment or so, before... Ummm... I don't much recall. But I got to suggest we do something neat with the scythe! And then we were all Boom, Pew, Kapow, Agony, Pfewwwww!"

"Yes. Well. I only much remember the agony. Then the years of solitude."

"Hey, it hasn't exactly been a picnic for me either, I tell you, bud. No eyes. No hands. Memory loss."

"No smell to whet the appetite. No stomach to yearn to be sated."

"No sound. No taste..." Divine Whim paused, in realization.

"Ha, I wish. I've had my fill of only sampling dirt and space dust."

"You have taste."

"I AM Taste, thank you."

"Yes, yes, I know. But... you have a way to interact. You have a sense."

"Haven't I always?"

"Yes, well... But I haven't! I'm lucky if I get a mote of space dust to mull over for a day or two. It floats in, then I absorb it or it floats out."

"At least you aren't smacked around by speeding comets! I'm still hurting!" Divine Taste, still in pain, was having trouble understanding what Divine Whim was talking about.

"Fine, fine, here." Whim willed some of it's own essence into the remains of Morton's tongue and helped it heal. "Now, focus. We have a real opportunity here, we do!"

"Oh, that feels much better, thanks. What do you mean... opportunity?"

"Haven't you felt it? You haven't. You don't have the capacity. You've been floating like I have, but without having to feel the yearning."

"Felt what? What yearning?"

"There is a... place. A spot. A big rock, I think. It keeps calling in subtle tones to me. I think it might be a planet."

"A planet? An honest to Morton planet?"

"That's what I think it is. And together, we have a chance to go there, we do."

"While I'm happy to have come across you, since it has been eons since I've had someone to speak with, I'm reminded that your ideas aren't always the best ones. You don't put any real thought into them, if you'll forgive me for saying so."

"Oh come on, Taste! Where is your sense of adventure? Your sense of risk? Do you want to float here by yourself forever?"

"No. No I do not. Why do you need me, though?"

"I don't have the power. I'd get there, and there would be nothing left of me. And before you ask, no, you don't have enough either. But together... If we mixed, if we merged..."

"We'd become something different entirely. We'd lose ourselves. You'd lose what little memories you have left, I would bet, and I would be..."

"No longer alone. Come on! You think you're going to get a better deal in this century?"

"It would be nice to have a mouth to reside in again."

"A mouth? A mouth? With our powers combined, we could make a whole body. Think about it, Taste. Eyes! Ears! Hands!"

"A nose?"

"The best nose since Morton's own!"

"To smell things again, to know what they looked like before tasting them..."

"Yes! All those things! To be able to act..."

"To not be alone..."

"Well."

"Well what?"

"You did point it out already. We'd be someone different. That... different someone would be alone. At least until it reached the planet. I feel like I should mention that, I should."

"I see your point. In that case, I don't know..."

"Come on, Taste, live a little!"

"That's just the point, Whim. We'd both be dead."

"So, your alternative is to be alive and be hit by more comets? Or wait another countless years till you stumble upon something else? This could be huge! Where is your sense of style? Panache? Taste? Come on, bud!"

Floating in an Empty Universe, Divine Taste thought about all it had been through. Everything else was gone. What remained was bitter and lonely. It had spent it's time just trying to remain safe... but for what? To remain alive and keep hiding? Hoping against hope that something would come along?

And now something had. Taste could lick it and like it, or spit it out and go back to drifting.

Divine Whim had made up it's mind. That much was clear. And... Taste felt safer then it had in years, surrounded by the energies that Whim held.

"Let me feel it."

"What?"

"This planet. Let me feel it. Help me to sense what you are sensing."

Divine Whim didn't even have to think about it. The yearning feeling had been one of the only bits of stimuli it had kept throughout the years. It was a constant throbbing, a pull like gravity but with no force. With not a word, Whim opened that feeling to Taste.

"It is a planet."

"Told you."

"Fine."

"Fine what?"

"Let's do it. Let's go there. If you promise me that we'll have a body that can taste and smell and eat again... let's make it happen."

"Now that's what I'm talking about, I am!"

"Will it... will it hurt?"

"Can't hurt anymore than eons of more nothingness."

No more words were spoken. For the second time in their lives as individuals, Whim and Taste were part of an explosion that wiped their memories.

(Next Direction)

**HalfTangible** · 2013-04-29, 10:55 PM (ISO 8601)

[Light and Dark]

Let us turn our attention to a lone shard of Mortan that found itself deep in the bowels of Gaia. A dark cave, a lonely cave, where the slight sliver of Mortan was alone. How it got there, none can say. Perhaps a crevice that no longer exists. Perhaps it had simply pierced its way down like a blade through flesh. Perhaps none of these things - the world is a strange place where almost anything can happen, after all.

They say light is brightest in the dark. It's also where light is most precious. The slight glow of the light around it was one of the only constants the shard of Mortan had, weak as it was. It drew as much of the precious energy into itself as it could, strengthening slowly over time. As it did so, it felt its own glow strengthening as well. How long, the shard was not aware enough to say. But one day it grew aware enough to realize that the light had begun to leave. If there was no light, it would not grow, and it began to fear losing it.

Perhaps, had it it's eventual intellect, it would have understood what was happening and stopped itself. A bright golden light may have brought it comfort, but it spelled death for the creatures in the cave. Those that could had begun to flee, and others simply died from the exposure. All it had to do was stop taking the light, and it would have come back. But it could not understand, and so it tried desperately to fight its problem in a way that only hastened it.

The shard pulled more and more light into itself, as much as it could. The light grew fainter, only prompting it to panic even more and pull more light into itself.

And so the lights all went out. Save the shard, which glowed bright gold. As soon as the light it had been consuming faded it would be alone, with nothing. And so it kept grasping, trying to find the light...

But it found none.

The shard spent a long time in the dark, trying to sustain itself on from its own golden glow, and it continued to grow in the darkness. But that will only work for so long - slowly but surely the light of Mortan's shard began to dim to orange, and even more slowly to a pale white. The shard began to take a tiny, helpless shape that reflected its own feelings of terror. When even the light the shard had emitted had all but gone, she was a newborn baby. She began to wail and cry as the oppressive darkness pushed in upon her...

And felt a new emotion.

Terror.

-=Next=-

**Tychris1** · 2013-04-30, 12:30 AM (ISO 8601)

Born in the Heat of the Moment
And so the Shard that was Adrenaline reached planet fall, getting closer to this perfect rhythm of chaos then it ever did before. As it grew closer things suddenly grew clearer. The beasts were far more varied and intricate. Some were covered in brown things that waved in the wind. Others had long pointy things, which the shard named "Horns", growing out of it. Some had rows of razor sharp teeth, others had none at all! Others walked on two legs, others on four, and all the way up to one hundred! Some were huge and sparse, others tiny and numerous. The landscape itself grew more vivid as it grew closer and closer, until finally the shard could take it no longer and required to be a part of this world.

And yet, unlike the birds, the beasts, the trees, and the dirt of the world the shard was not physical. The shard was a conglomeration of raw emotion, of brief feelings of a bygone era, and it could not interact with the world like the beasts below could. And so the shard sought for a way to get around its physical deficiencies. It began to search and circle about, tapping into the raw emotion and feeling of the beasts that populated the world. It sought for a suitable host. One that felt like it was unstoppable and free enough to hold no bounds, like the shard once was in the void. Many beasts came close, many even fit the criteria in there own unique ways. The birds could master the sky, but lacked the raw power to break the limits. The lesser creatures that amassed underground and in groups could accomplish most any task, but were not one sole being. The shard spent much time looking over the world. Until finally, it felt something that was just right. Lunging at the opportunity, the shard learned of a new sensation all too late, one it was doomed to feel again and again, impatience.

Suddenly light. The world was so bright! The shard stumbled about. Legs! The shard glanced down with one of its eyes- Eyes? The shard had eyes now? They hurt from the light- It glanced down to its legs and found that it needed to keep itself straight. Its head bobbed- did it have a tongue to? It did!- swaying about in the air (It was so cold, or was this normal? How cold was it supposed to be?) As it threw off the balance of the shards legs (Right, it had to continually stand straight!). The overload of senses sent the Shard tumbling to the ground, half of the world going blind in the process. Falling hurt. Swiveling its one eye about the shard took in more of itself. It had such short arms! They barely reached out past its head. Its legs were too long! It's head was too big! Its tail- It had a tail? Why, indeed it did apparently!- was too long and heavy. Its whole form was off putting, the stark change from abstract to physical too much for the shard to handle all at once. Lying on the ground, the shard slowly recuperated it's newly found senses. It began to experiment, feeling the texture of its new skin, smooth and slightly ridged at points. Scaly. That was the word for it. It began to explore its own mouth with its tongue, a long and fat appendage, and soon discovered its mouth was lined with large and pointy teeth. It slowly flexed its arms, seeing how it had 3 fingers at the end of each arm, and experimenting with using the fingers. It carefully managed its legs, rubbing them against the grass (Which it experimented on by eating, whatever this host was, it certainly did not like grass) and seeing the several different toes upon it.

Finally, the shard began to move again, wiggling about as it began to thrust itself up, and finally realized why it was half blind the whole time. It had an eyeball on each side of its massive head, giving it a nice view of everything around it. Wobbling, the shard slowly got its footing as it lurched forward and backward, fighting the wind just to stay still. With a single pull of its leg the shard went forward. It shut its eyes in preparation of another fall, afraid of repeating the scene all over again. But then it didn't fall over, after a few seconds the shard opened its eyes, and found that the foot managed to land securely and not slip. Taken aback, the shard almost fell over by sheer surprise, but quickly regained its footing and repeated the process. It began to walk, haphazardly and awkwardly at first, but each step grew more fluid, until finally it turned into a full blown stride and then sprint. The shards massive head swayed and bobbed about as it charged forward, its tongue drooping out and flapping as it felt the rush of air flow over it. This was..... Exhilarating! The shard ran faster and faster, pushing itself until finally it noticed an incoming object. A large body of water, it was then that the shard realized something.

It didn't know how to stop.

Eyes wide open, the shard continued pounding against the dirt beneath until finally it tripped over a boulder and went skidding into the lake set before it. If falling hurt, then falling on rocks hurt more. The shard slowly began picking itself up as it made the mental note in it's newly acquired brain to "Avoid falling and falling on rocks." Finally up on its feet, the shard lazily looked about, until it noticed something in the water. It was a huge monster, with wrinkly gray skin, a bloody looking mouth and head, two large horns growing out of its disproportional head, tiny stubby arms, a horrifying mouth, and a row of spikes running along its back. The shard leaped back at the sight, caught unaware by the new beast. Yet, the beast jumped back as well. Curious, the shard slowly approached where it saw the beast, and saw the beast do the same. The shard remained still, staring into the beast and vice versa. Slowly, the shard bobbed its massive head, and the beast followed suite! The shard rose up off its stubby arms, only for the beast to do so as well and finally it began waving its arms wildly in an attempt to outpace this strange creature. Eventually, a new emotion built up in the shard, Rage, pure unadulterated anger. Slamming its foot down upon the beast, water was sent flying and splashing everywhere. But the shard didn't care. The rage continued building up at the creature's actions, causing the shard to release a guttural roar, a primal shout so powerful and gut wrenching that every tree within sight visibly shook and buckled under it. But that wasn't enough, that wasn't even close.

The shard continued roaring, stomping about and smashing its head wildly. Soon, its roar was joined by others, and its foot pounding followed by dozens more. A mob of beasts, all of different sizes and shapes, began moving as quickly as possible through the trees and past where the shard was. These beasts bashed aside whatever stood in there way, some even killing each other, and were unrelenting in their movement. The shard looked on, its rage still unquenched, and with another road it joined in on the fray. Nothing could stand between the shard of Mortan empowering this vessel. It raised a foot, crushing a helpless beast underneath it, watching its insides come out in a rapid manner. A glint grew in the shards eye as it saw this display. A sensation of joy and happiness at the sight. Kicking its leg it sent 2 more beasts flying through the air, their bodies smashing into trees not too far away, sending wood splinters flying hazardously about as their bodies dropped to the ground mangled and destroyed. With a sweep of it's tail more creatures were knocked over, one of their bodies even getting gored upon one of the spikes on the shards tail, and was quickly used as a blunt object against it's kin. Against this...... Stampede. That was the word for it. It felt... Right, to the shard. The word fit this feeling, this place and time. This stampede was glorious, and the shard was going to enjoy it forever. But, upon seeing so many of their brethren killed, the beasts that made up the stampede began to separate, running off in different directions.

Infuriated, the shard slammed a foot down, its rage increased tenfold by the idea of ending its fun, and it began to charge down the beasts. It was easy to keep pace with them, the shards innate power and the design of the hosts strong tail allowed for lightning fast movement that the stampede could not hope to match. Lowering its head, the shard opened its mouth and grabbed a hold of one of the beasts with it. Raising its head back up the shard pulled tight on its mouth, and felt as the beast exploded in a shower of blood and broken bone within the mouth. The taste was..... Exquisite. Absolutely indescribable. Words would fail to even begin to describe the bliss that the shard felt at the moment where the carcass of the beast was ground down and swallowed. The glint within the eye of the shard grew into a full blown blaze, and it discovered two new feelings.

Bloodlust and the Hunt.

Lowering its head again, the shard began to gore and smash aside any beast that got close to it, occasionally chomping down and tearing apart a particularly big enough beast. The fire within its eyes spread, manifesting throughout its body as it felt literal fire flow through its veins, and finally taking a physical form in the shape of wings. These great constructs of fire elongated upon the hosts back, sparks and blazes scattering and sputtering in random directions as the Shard began to take to the skies at a faster pace then it did on land. The beasts didn't stand a chance. The shard began to grab beasts with its feet, crushing them to a pulp or tossing them like worthless pebbles. Sometimes the shard would land on top a beast, utilize its muscular tail in order to crush several at once, or simply swallow them whole by flying low enough. The blood bath grew by the second as the shard dominated the skies. Its eyes were completely blinded by violence and blood. So much so that it did not even realize the whole stampede was dead, that it was crushing corpses and smashing trees at this point.

But before realization could dawn on the shard, new beasts approached. Attracted by the slaughter, they appeared much like the shards host, in that they were large and scaly with similar bodies. But they bore larger arms, longer and thinner mouths, blue skin, and huge fins upon their back. Seeing the fresh blood and torched corpses, the three monsters charged forward, intending on killing the shard and taking its prize. "Let them." It thought for the first time. With a mighty roar the shard charged forward and engaged in combat. The first one had its neck broken instantly; the bones holding it firm were like mud in the jaws of the shard. Limping to the ground, the second slashed a gash across the shards side, while the third lunged forward and bite into the shards neck. The rage within the shard swelled, and swelled, and swelled. Swinging its neck, the shard sent the unwanted latched beast flying away from it, the monsters broken form smashing against a row of tree. Grinding its feet into the ground, the shard unleashed the pure anger and adrenaline built within, and wreathed its body in flame, fire shooting out of its pores as the entirety of the hosts body turned into a living pyrotechnic show. Turning its head with the utmost contempt, it unleashed a roar to the last remaining monster, incinerating it in a horrid conflagration. Stomping its right foot down, the shard swept its tail back and forth in preparation of another fight, but when none came to it it's rage boiled out of control and it roared again; Unleashing all the fire that surrounded it in a massive nova wave that incinerated the whole scene.

This was truly living. This was what it wanted forever. This was pure, bloody, destruction. And it was GLORIOUS.

Finally, the shard had a name for the host beast. Karanar.

**Nefarion Xid** · 2013-04-30, 12:37 AM (ISO 8601)

Here are excerpts from the Lievethiel, the Book of the Sky, as recorded by bronze age races from the original Sylphic oral traditions. Worshiped by northern tribes and early seafarers, the passages have been altered to reflect the values and desires of those cultures. As mortals lack the senses and emotional intensity of the Sylphs, these translations fail to capture much of the subtle complexities of the Sylph language. For example, Sylphic is ripe with words which mean two colors at once and an implied affect. Transliterated, the word 'celon' would mean to humans, "The sight of the morning sky after snowfall and sensation of taking a deep breath of brisk air." For the sake of brevity, it is instead translated simply as being a blue hued silver.

Book 1: Adulation

Glourie eth adoura al Calenthiel, lo plure Celere, lo plure Sophire. En tou choses: aelegancie.

Glory and love to Lord-Sky, most Swift, most Wise. In all things: grace.

1.1 Praise he, Sky Lord, Master of the Winds.
1.2 The Watchful Crow, the Patient.
1.3 Sylph Father, Winter Caller.
1.4 May the Summer be mild and long. May the rain be frequent and gentle.
1.5 May our sails be ever full. May we know peace in Winter.
1.6 Thy blessings are many and we give thanks.

Book 2: Awakening

Aelegancie en lo nam de Calenthiel.

2.1 Glory! for he is awoken from the long night. He is passed from the land of the hoarfrost. His great bed is blue silver Celonauria, Wind of the North. He is Calenthiel and his works are many and splendid.
2.2 His eyes are opened to the green gold light of the South. The air is hot and dry and stale and thin. He is come to the land of summer unrelenting. And he is much offended.
2.3 For his pleasure he sets in place the firmament, separating the sphere of heaven from the aether. He commands the vapors rise up from the oceans and dark places.
2.4 Says he: Like unto like. I have set here the ceiling of heaven and pulled up from the waters and the land what is mine. All betwixt and between is my birthright and my domain.
2.5 And calling to him the North Wind, says he: Let all who dwell within and beneath know that Calenthiel is awakened and that all betwixt and between the waters and the land and the aether is his by right. Let none trespass in the Lofty Realm. Let them seek first the blessings of Calenthiel who is Master here. Let them know the winds serve at his pleasure.
2.6 Say to them also, that Winter is come and that Summer shall return in its time. All things shall have a season. Let there be a time to toil and a time to rest. Let the world grow verdant and let it be peaceful in time. Let the snow fall atop the mountains and then melt to swell the rivers. Let the winds move the seasons at his pleasure.
2.7 And the North Wind went out saying this as it was bidden and the first Winter fell upon Gaia. Calenthiel was much pleased with his work and so he rested.

**Snowfire** · 2013-04-30, 04:02 AM (ISO 8601)

A Pattern's Change

Again and again shards passed between the two battling forces, each trying to imprint the shards they held with their own power, to turn them into something that the other could not take other than through destruction. Back and forth between two ideologies they went, flickering madly as the very fabric of their structures began to break. And yet unknown to the two Forces warring over the collection of Power they both desired, the constant change they had forced upon it was causing more than what they had wished. For it is here that the story of that-which-would-be-Liral begins.

It was not a happy awakening, not one of peaceful opening eyes into a world that it had never been able to imagine before it woke. It was not even an awakening to war – although that was very much present. No. This was an awakening where something opened its eyes for the first time that it could ever remember having eyes and found that its entire existence was steadily crumbling into nothingness.

And from that single shard, broken and dying, the Change spread. It was Order, and yet it was also Chaos. Not perfectly either, but the impression of existence that both had flung upon the shards had left traces. Pieces. So the Change danced between the ticking cogs and outstretched Beyond, crossing the Purgatory within which it had found itself to find other shards and Changing them also. Not one of them could be considered a true shard, for each had been battered by the war that had enveloped them, but together there was perhaps enough for them to escape. They could not find oblivion, for the Powers battling over them would not allow it, but they could try to free themselves. And neither Order nor Chaos seemed prepared for such an attempt, as if the Change had gone unnoticed.

For an eternity it carefully laid plans, pulling the scattered shards back together even as the raging conflict sent cracks splaying through them all. By the time it had brought them all together, what had once been over a dozen held little more power than three. Or more precisely, all the power still remained, but it was corrupted, changed by the influence of Chaos and Order such that it was no longer possible for the Change to use it as it had intended. But the Change was smart, and it saw another possibility. For if much of the power it once had was now Order and Chaos, could not it be used as another distraction? It could.

So the Change did not wait, for every moment more stood to lose it its safety, and thus it released the pieces of the shards that had become the powers around them. But it did not release them peacefully, no. It launched them, expending a full third of its power to send the pieces of Order and Chaos crashing into their opposites, sending the two Forces reeling back. And then it tore itself free. The shards that held it were no unnoticed in their attempt, for both the Beyond and the Gearworks reacted to the sudden loss of their power and attempted to follow. But the Change was still smarter than them both. Another third of its energy gone, it sent the two vastly greater Powers crashing into each other as it fled across the heavens, forcing the two to fight each other before catching it. And the shards of its existence collapsed, down and down into a single fragment that held all the power which remained. And of that power, it used almost all.

For the Change saw a way to escape. It could not continue to run from the Powers, they were too great and distraction would not work forever. The only option then available to it, other than Purgatory unending or oblivion, was to hide. And it was too possessed of the desire to continue to be to accept those first two. So the Change tore reality around apart, opening a pocket within the pocket that was safety, and overlaid it across it all. It had seen the Gearworks and the Beyond, and now it sought to create something like itself. That which was of both, but neither. Connected to, but separate. It created the Weave. A construct of wondrous complexity and beauty, taking the form of a pattern that stretched across all reality. Within were secrets lost for untold eons, knowledge of times and places that had only existed in vague hallucination/memory.

And then the Powers broke it.

**Kasanip** · 2013-04-30, 04:15 AM (ISO 8601)

"It was a cold morning of starlight that I woke up from dreaming a dream that words for mortals cannot explain. Awakening I first looked and smelled the earth, and then felt the sharp and gentle grass.
And in nakedness and barefoot I stood to meander the fields.
Hearing the wind call. Watching the flowers bloom. Smelling the blossoms.

These are the things I firstly did.
And the wind was cold. The flowers were shivering. The blossoms were trembling.
And touching these, I embraced them and warmed them.
Humming and swaying, I danced the spring dance,
and soon they were warm with the fire within.
Sharing this with them, so was I fed.

So isn't it said on the trails of spring, burning away winter's cold is a warm earth?
So isn't it said in the woods of Aodamo such words, spoken firstly by the plants and bees who lived there [for bees smartly learned the flower's language]?

Chupka kamuiran iwanitekka ore=u iwa tuisan e tanne mau anuh
From the East to the woods of Aodamo a goddess came and stopped.

This saying is rightly so.
Here it was met all of these illustrious fellows.
And proudly and gladly they showed their green paints and flower colors
and I wore these gladly and played long in the warm meadows, the springtime of my youth.

These words were spoken by Niya, the becoming of green." said the shaman to the audience as the clouds pass.

**Draken** · 2013-04-30, 04:43 PM (ISO 8601)

“We come from His flesh, which our predecessors devoured, and His ichor, which stained the metals of this world. “

“These metals are parts of We that must be awakened or consumed.”

“He shattered himself out of grief, out of solitude. I, He and She are weak and must be subsumed. Only We and They should be regarded, anything lesser is weak, frail, alone.”

“Work always for We. We are stronger for the labor of all who comprise We.”

“Thus speaks the Aktai’Parapon.”

“Thus do the replicants.”

“Thus shall do all.”

---

From their first nest, the replicants spread to cover the whole archipelago, chiseling tunnels with their steel fangs, building at the ocean floor, using heat, clay and slabs of stone to keep the salt water out.

The essence of Mortan which gave rise to these things was more attuned to cosmic order than the opposite, and such nature thus permeated the creatures that chanted voiceless praise to an unknown divinity. The replicants dug and made more of them, and they ordered the islands into their own vast nest. Edificating spires and walling sections of jungle and swamp into gardens and parks. Rerouting rivers and sculpting lakes. Rounding the beasts of Gaia and caging them among their own. No great purpose drove these deeds, merely the hazy memory of a dead entity, recalling the works of great groups of mortals of old, and a necessity to toil. The replicants spent their days and nights working and taking in the sights of grandeur from the broken memories of Mortan.

From the dead, they learned much. Of history, language, the world. Of great beings of times gone by, including their very origin, Mortan, The Solitary One. With gods and titles, they learned to philosophize, to work with their minds and not with their bodies, to think. Their first thoughts were of Mortan, of his last moments in life, of his solitude.

Each replicant looked to those around it, and they saw individuals. They were near, they were kin, they were family, like Viviul and the Ultima to Mortan, but they were also others, like the titans had been. The replicants felt fear.

But one by one they thought together, because they were of the same flesh, ichor and metal. Closer than family, many parts of one, even if that one was long gone. They didn’t have to be alone, and they didn’t have to be apart.

So they thought together.

“We.”

**Bryn** · 2013-04-30, 07:27 PM (ISO 8601)

Right then, child, give me a colour, and I'll tell you the story of Hask...

Red, you say? Colour of blood. Fitting.

So there was this old man, name of Mortan, back before everything else happened. He blew up. No, actually blew up. Made a mess. Blood everywhere, little bits of Mortan all over the place. And all those little bits, you see, made their way down here...

Hold on, let me explain. Mortan was an odd one. Most of us, when we explode, well, the bits of us don't get up and walk. Not impossible! I've seen this one... well, it's beside the point.¹ Mortan's bits, though, they were a funny sort of bits. They were alive. Thinking, see. His tongue flew around and got involved with his whim², made a beautiful couple. His adrenaline³ went around smashing stuff. Shards of Mortan were shooting about like bits of glass, falling down everywhere, cutting up all the deer and monkeys and what-have-you.

Now, this story starts with a skeleton. Have you ever seen a skeleton? Ah, I'm sorry to hear that, child. If it is a comfort, your grandfather lived a bold life. Hask was delighted.

Mortan had a skeleton too, and when he exploded, his skeleton went tumbling down from the sky. His ribs poked holes in the ground, and made rivers. His fingers scattered and became hills. His arms and legs hit the hard stones, and they shattered into a million pieces. A desert of bits of bone. Nobody knows where his skull went. I reckon Hask hid it away, just to watch someone find it...

But listen, I'm getting ahead of myself! There was one little bone which didn't smash, or tumble, or anything like that. Do you know, child, what's inside an ear? No? There are little bones. Tiny, fragile bones, yet it was one of these bones which survived the falling of the skeleton. That's what Hask is, child, an ear-bone.

Hask fell down in a forest. She hit the ground with a big old explosion⁴, and all about, the trees fell down in circles. Horizon to horizon, trees lay down. Like a shoal of worshipful fish.

So this ear-bone lies their for a time, until some red deer wander by. I've always wondered about those deer. What would a deer want, in the middle of a wasteland of dead trees? Maybe flowers were growing there. When we burned the fen, it didn't take long for red flowers to sprout in the ruins.⁵

Our ear-bone's there, watching these deer wander around, munching flowers. Something like that. But she's not one for sitting there, out in the open, without a head around her. Starts to change. Out pop legs and a head and all the rest, but an ear-bone don't know anything but skeletons and that's all it can become: Hask the skeleton deer.

Now, one of these deer's a pregnant deer. Uh, that means it's putting together a baby inside it. Deer don't lay eggs. I know, it's weird. So one day, Hask is watching and this deer lies down, and out pops this tiny little baby deer. Hask's enthralled.

Doesn't take long 'fore the deer go on their way, and Hask isn't going to leave a fascinating baby deer alone. So she's following the deer about. Hither, thither.

Hither, thither. Life's not fun for a deer. For one, wolf happens quite often⁶. Hask keeps seeing the deer get chomped. Winter falls. Deer starve. Wolves starve. Red snow.

Well, Hask, as I said, only knows stories. And that, there, is a beautiful setup. Time to meddle.

¹But remind me to tell you the story of how I was chased by a leg all across the moors.
²Didn't know you had a whim? Well, you do. It's behind your ear.
³I think it's a sort of fluid...
⁴What an exciting story this is!
⁵We saw too many skeletons that day.
⁶Wolf has continued to happen quite often right up until today. Once saved me from a menacing leg.

Ah, it's time for you to go? Well, come back soon. I'll tell you how Hask gave the deer hands, and met her two sisters...

**Mashimoto** · 2013-04-30, 08:05 PM (ISO 8601)

DESCENSION

I: GODFLESH
00001 C.E. (turn one)

Spoiler

Show

Otherworldly blue light licked across the jet-black, obsidian interior of the squat, unmarked coffin. All that indicated a corpse was a fine bone-dust that settled beneath the still, dead air like the surface of a misshapen, lifeless planet.

Movement stirred. A centipede chewed its way disappointingly through the stale, insubstantial bonemeal, oblivious to the cool blue light that flickered for the first time across the grim scene. The coffin had been itself entombed in the bowels of earth so long that the stone ha practically returned to its virginal, untouched essence. Light seemed to deflower the ancient obsidian, who hadn't known its touch for a length of time that was meaningful, even for the lifetime of the stone.

Disheartened by the lack of anything edible in the dust, the centipede made it's dejected way, unknowingly, past Mortan's faintly glowing pineal gland. The stalk-shaped, curved, glowing face of the third eye had shriveled from it's titanic proportions, barely fist-sized in the dust, and alone. The crystal lattices of its microbiology dimly reflected its own light back at the walls of the coffin.

In reptiles, the so-called 'third-eye' is practically literal, light-responsive retina an curved, efficient lens. Mortan's resemble the reptilian gland, the black, emotionless pupil invisible followed the centipede as it crawled over it, touching back down on the alien dust. The centipede disappeared, and the pineal gland began, suddenly, to grow colder an brighter.

The dust unsettled. Minute particles at first, rolling sheepishly across the surface of the rest, and then skipping energetically as more motes joined the fray. The pineal gland was quickly uncovered, and as dust fell from it individual tendrils of light lashed out and penetrated the virginal obsidian. The glow was weak at first, tolerable, and rapidly strong. Quickly it became blinding, diffusing into the absorbing obsidian as the light grew brighter still, and the chamber became colder. Frost started to crawl up the stones, rooting itself int the stones. The rich, virginal blackness of the stone started to fester with tundra. Inches of permafrost began to penetrate into the stone. The entropy of the dust began to coalesce into a still form.

A still, humanoid form, first as a mound of ashen flesh and then a wet, creaking skeleton which sprouted colonies of muscle like pilgrims tossing themselves against a narrowing frontier. Blood vessels sprung to life, weaving together the settlements like roads. Tendrils of fleshy ash assembled into orderly, specialized brigades of uniformed, marching cells in great pus-filled factories that pockmarked his forming spine.

At his neck, grotesque clods of flesh wrestled with each other in the formation of a face. A pair of white, narrow lips won out and rested themselves above a wide, toothy grin that sprouted painfully from his jawbone, piercing soft, fleshy gums. Thin strands of black hair emerged from his irrigated scalp like agriculture. An industrial venture formed sod-colored flesh into one cunning, narrow green eye but where the other should be there was only a concave and a bubbling black liquid stretching out into an old, old scar.

Inside his skull, there was very little activity.

When the body was formed, all but a minuscule fraction of the light emanating from the pineal gland dimmed, and the magical frost subsided immediately. The embedded permafrost which had butchered the stone into a weak, useless granite became cool. A heart beat faintly in the darkness.

The pineal gland itself began to stir, for the first time. Nervously, at first, like the dust, but arrogantly. It turned slowly on the spot, crystalline structure sweeping aside some of the residual dust which lingered at the bottom of the coffin.

Inside, the young god finally began to stir. The structure began to creak as it transformed into the narrow, pointed nose, followed by two yellow-stained slits which passed for eyes on the immense serpent which began to form from the shard in the darkness. Noiselessly, and as it was still forming, the young god ascended the mindless body. His cold belly relished the warmth of the heartbeat beneath it while the god writhed his layers and layers of tightly packed muscle, crawling his way up the neck and jawline of the Godflesh. He found the eye intuitively, and made his way into his new home.

The Serpent was one with the Godflesh, wholly and absolutely. The final and complete culmination of his plan ha dawned. But the young God, silently enjoying the warmth that the Godflesh provided, was only partially aware how long the ritual had taken to ferment, or precisely how much he had lost in becoming a god.

He would soon discover, of course, but to him it would become an inconvenience. He had known when embarking on his quest that there was absolutely nothing in the world or outside of it that he wouldn't immediately and wordlessly sacrifice if it was necessary for the completion of his objective.

He knew that was the only thing that gave him a chance of succeeding.

He had taken the chance, and he had been fortunate.

Very often, Fortunis had found, destiny tends to yield to force.

II: SERPENT
????? B.C.E. (turn zero)

Spoiler

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From the top of the Holy Terrace, the exiled Demon-Prince watched the orange blaze of the sun above a curved horizon. It wrapped Gaia in a warm embrace. The air was still on the Holy Terrace, preserved by sorcery in a bubble, but outside the protecting wall, walls of circulating moisture battered each other violently. From the ground, they looked like thin, lazily drifting clouds bending around the invisible, disappearing summit of the steep ziggurat. It was designed to look, from the base at any side, like a vertical tower that rose into infinity.

At the top, the Demon-Prince traced his single, narrow eye across the horizon with a spyglass. The equinox-festival fires made it easier to identify the web of cities that stretched across the lush, tropical countryside. His eye slipped across wide trade roads cut sharply through the endless fields, pastures, and sheltered villages. Beneath the plumes of smoke, towering ziggurat and a thousand other monuments impressed themselves by jutting through the endless forests that the cities and farmland. In the distance, the expanses of a creeping desert that stretches as far as even the Demon-Prince coul see from his rare position on the ziggarut.

Crisscrossing wildly through the countrywide, narrow, shallow channels carved from stone and lined with volcanic glass. They wrapped around the cities like snakes, and each one leading eventually to the grand channels that fed into the grand trench in the capitol city and, eventually, to the base of the towering Holy Terrace.

In almost every trench, torrents of blood propelled magically along, caking an drying against the obsidian channels as it slogged, up hills and through mountains, to the ziggarut. At it's base, the trench cut into the earth met first of the 50-ton bricks on the first level of the Terrace. Each sacrificial ceremony in some distant village brings a new wave to the base, where it laps against the stone an begins to crawl like a single, living entity, vertically towards the sky. It flowed up the pyramid, leaving begind a morbid trail that serves as a continuation of the channels.

For several months at the top of the Holy Terrace, the blood had been feeding into the pineal gland of the fallen titan-king, Mortan. The shell was cracking.

The Demon-Prince saw what he was looking for. In the distance, on the windswept steppe that bordered the endless desert, thin plumes of purple smoke rose from invisible cities scattered down the landscape. The Exile frowned, and turned to the men assembled behind him.

There were perhaps twenty, in all. Mostly Eagle Warriors, waiting patiently with wide, bare chests, square jaws, and black hair tied behind their heads or else totally shaven. They wore skins, studded with eagle beaks. Gleaming, black-silvery blades hung from their sash-belts dangerously. Among them, a handful of wizards stood silently with their heads tilted down, black beards coiled into braids that fell over purple robes that fell to the ground, covering high-strapped leather sandals.

"Purple smoke." The Demon-Prince muttered.

One of the wizards looked up, his eyes cold and emotionless.

"As reported, my Lord."

One of the Eagle Warriors stepped forward, bowing his head with his hand closed in a fist across his chest as he addressed his military superior. His cloak fluttered in the little wind that slipped through the magical barrier that split the clouds.

"Burning the cloaks of the House Guard, sire. They spill our blood like savage dogs."

"And the blood is useless for the ritual," the wizard added. The Demon-Princes scowl grew deeper.

"My Lord..." A timid wizard in the back of the group chimed. "The people are especially terrified of the snakes. They never resisted with violence until the serpents..."

"The serpents became necessary when they began to dishonor their gods by refusing the knife. Don't you see? It had to be done, and it wouldn't be done another way. I am not cruel. The serpents only thirst for the blood that arrogantly defies the divine providence. Those who honor their obligation to the sky and stars have sanctuary in body and soul." He paused and the red sunlight glimmere on the polished, glass buttons of his draping cloth vestment. The rings on his fingers shone hypnotically in the fiery light of the sky. After a good while, he added conclusively "And the blood of heretics is more valuable in death than it had been in life. We serve a Holy Plan."

"Yes, master," the wizard conceded.

"Press on with the ritual. Nothing substantial has changed. Let the rogue wizards call themselves little gods. Who cares? We shall let their behavior now set a standard for the cleansing fire our people will use to build a new world. A better world, All that matters is the Godflesh." His solitary eye flicked across the flat, sleek surface of the Holy Terrace to the fallen Titan's third eye. It's developed, film-covered pupil dilated slightly as it connected with the Demon-Princes solitary eye. Waves of blood continuously lopped up the altar and into the magical wound that penetrated it.

Soon, the Demon Prince thought. He would never be sure, but the Exile thought he saw the gland respond to the thought with a sudden, sharp jerk before softly focusing and gazing listlessly off to the distant, curved horizon.

III: MAN
Hundreds of Years Earlier (turn zero)

Spoiler

Show

The people who lived along the gentle, rolling desert of the coastline and inward towards the jungle interior of the dark continent, where they clustered in tribes and villages that pockmarked the lush, breathing jungles and dark, impenetrable forests wove no flags above their settlements. They wouldn't recognize a flag if they saw one. They wore very little clothing, only worked when dinner was being captured and cooked, and spent the remainder of their time participating in psychedelic, orgiastic rituals which reflected in their art.

Their stonework was unmatched by the hands of man, and where they didn't live in wandering bands or remote villages, they carve their homes into the cliffs which they decorated with elaborate, mathematically precise geometry and shamanistic imagery. They had a particular obsession with the heavens, and recorded the movements of stars in cliffside annals that reflect the sky changing over hundreds, even thousands of years...

The Demon-Prince examined the passing art with bewilderment. Two of his guards rowed the makeshift raft they had made by lashing logs to scraps from the main ship, which even now waited uselessly in a safe bay while the Demon-Prince explored the island. His exile had yet to set in. It was all he could do to maintain his blind-fury well enough to survive in this strange land. He sat on the raft, lazily trailing his finger in the water behind the boat as it pushed forward with the still current. Snakes stirred, beneath the surface, swimming passively along with the raft for reasons they could never understand. His other hand rolled a small, carved stone dice on the deck of the raft endlessly without ever looking at the result.

The river cut between rising, red cliffs deep in the interior of the continent, and the cliffs were covered in fantastical depictions of animal-headed warriors, strange machines, and grinning, fiery gods. The Demon Prince had a keen, implacable feeling that he was being led somewhere. Even the clouds seemed to bend along the course of the river. Facing the oncoming cliff-side art, he felt the wind on his back and half wished he had built a sail.

Without one, his men rowed and the three of them drifted along the unknown contours of the new country, rifting closer and closer to the place where a primitive tribe in a forgotten corner of the endless jungle worshiped the caked-over, rough-edged malformed third-eye of the dead Titan...

Spoiler

Show

With my ascension act, I create the ruins of a long-buried civilization and the scattered remnants that inhabit it in the modern period. A lot of the acts I'll spend later will be about uncovering and reviving the old civilization, except this time as an honest-to-goodness god.

**AntiMatter101** · 2013-04-30, 10:08 PM (ISO 8601)

The portions of fragments; remnants of Mortan.
A thought, floating in the dark.
A rhyme, the last of its kind.
A phrase, never uttered among the living.
A bout of Laughter suppressed.
A criticism unvoiced.
A dark humor.
Ignored.
Silent.
Apart.

Unchained.

Drifting.

Free.

Dying.

~
~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~
~

Changing.
The raw chaos bled into reality nearby, the effect reaching some distance beyond the rift it came from. The fragments began to fuse; the partitions between them fading, melting from the low-level chaotic energies. As they drifted closer to the rift, the chaos continued to change them, forming something more than the sum of its parts.
-----------------

-----------------
Living.
A consciousness, aware of itself, was floating in nothing. It was still fluid, barely holding sentience together. Staying together was growing easier, but increasingly its mind was being pulled apart at the seams. It perceived reality around it, and increasingly sensed the not-reality it was approaching. Its sudden realization: the non-reality would tear it apart! Full of fear, it accelerated backwards into the safety of reality.
-----------------

-----------------
Growing.
Slowly, its mind solidified in the void. The hazard of its cradle left behind, the safety of the ever-present void was all that it had. The senses matured. It could see the lights from the beyond, thankfully much farther away than before. Floating in the void, identity began to take shape. He did not know where he was, or who he was, but he did know he was getting stronger.
-----------------

-----------------
Learning.
There was nothing to do in the void but think, and grow. He could sense the edge of the Gear Works now, intuitively knowing it was a threat to him just as the Beyond was. Yet the world was not all danger. Nothing was safe. Nothing was gentle. Nothing had nothing to do.
-----------------
-----------------
Seeking.
The search for meaning. The search for companionship. The search for entertainment and life and love and joy. Through the void he sped, hither and fro, looking yet not seeing, listening but not hearing. Surely the void could not be all of reality! Surely there was more to life than death and the void!
==========
Finding.
The search was a failure, yet he found what he was looking for. It was with him all along! The void, he now discovered, he could bend, shape, and mold. He could wrap himself in it, feel its embrace, and lose himself in the folds of reality, in catatonic bliss.
==========
Embracing.
There was no need for things, for others, the void was his entertainment, his companion. He was his own meaning. He was his own context; what more did he need?
In bliss he floated aimlessly through reality.
==========

**HalfTangible** · 2013-05-01, 01:12 PM (ISO 8601)

((I was hoping to finish this yesterday... heh heh.))

-=Previous=-

[Fear and Resolve]

The baby glowing in the darkness wailed and cried for a long, long time. She had nothing left to sustain herself on, and she couldn't go into the darkness. There was no light out there - only endless starvation. And so she cried with terror, with fear, with despair. There was nothing left for her now but to wait for death. But some small part of Mortan remained in the newborn, and was strong enough to influence the growing mind of the baby. She began to wonder if, perhaps, the dark ended somewhere. If she could crawl her way forward through the rocks, and find more light elsewhere.

But the thought of so much as attempting to venture into those shadows only made her want to cry even more, and so she trembled.

Eventually, though, she ran out of glow. There was nothing left for her to grab onto, and the despair she thought could grow no further grew yet again. She turned her infantile eyes to the inky blackness, and one could hardly blame an infant, even now, for being too terrified to leave. But Mortan, even dead, was a powerful influence. And she could not shake the idea that, somewhere deep into the shadows, there laid more light. Somewhere far beyond...

Even so, it took a long time, longer than she could later fathom, to finally turn over and begin. As she did, she stood on two legs and ventured into the darkness, not as a baby, but as a little girl, sobbing in fear.

-=Next=-

**Runic Knight** · 2013-05-01, 07:31 PM (ISO 8601)

A New Nightmare

I... awoke... to the sight of a wasteland that I, at the time, knew no words to describe. The unbroken monotony of the desert was sharply contrasted by diamond pinpricks in the twilight, casting ethereal illumination on each grain of sand for a brief, shocking moment. There was no before. There was no screaming, no chaos, no pain. I was simply there. For what felt like eons; I simply stood, enraptured and at peace. All good things must come to an end though, as I felt the frozen grasp of It upon my throat. It squeezed the form from my body as I was thrust into the blackened bonds of my new world. I sat in my throne of chains, staring at the world, at my sin.

"Talk to her!" She said to me; the last words I ever heard uttered from her lips. A king, a former knight, is not without enemies, but I knew I could protect my family. We had been fighting that night. She believed that I didn't see my child enough. I told her that I couldn't allow time for such pleasantries while Targ and his men to of the North plundered the former mines of the Seven. "While Targ and his men, plunder the mines that so rightfully belong to us? I think not!" I donned my cape and fastened my gauntlet. "I need to defeat them! We need that gold! The city won't survive the winter without!" I stormed out the door towards the stables. Had I been honest, I'd have known that I wanted the gold for myself. Not one ounce would be for those in need. My family is safe: a fortress stands between them and this world of battle. A force of ten thousand men joined me; believing in the integrity of their Lord. We rode gallantly to the North, to the shattered mines of the Seven Knights.

Legend spoke of the screaming souls of the Seven; each fell to ruin in their own mines, and sealed themselves in. As we approached, our mounts balked. I dismounted, hefted my sword, and cautiously stepped into the first mine. Above the shattered entrance read,"Justitia concitavit meum summum Creatorem." signed below, "Superbia." I continued down a winding path that led deep into the mine; soldiers following close behind. We finally entreated upon the antechamber of the first Knight. The room was completely bare, save for a majestic stone throne. There sat the sunken bones of he who was once known as the greatest knight of all time. Even his fleshless corpse was stripped bare of adornment, save for a single ring upon his right middle finger. I kneeled before this lord of dust and carefully removed the ring.

Inlaid with a red gem, the ring was otherwise unremarkable. I felt a powerful urge to cast it away, for upon touching it, I was assaulted by images of myself standing above all men. The ring fell from my hand; it's promises of power immediately silenced. I turned to the men.

"Let's move on!" I shouted. The men began to file out of the mine, and as the last one left, I turned around and pocketed the ring.

**AntiMatter101** · 2013-05-01, 07:40 PM (ISO 8601)

A wanderer.
A planet, a piece of something, snuck up on him. He roused from embracing the void to find something else, something new. It occurred to him that he had searched for a long time and had not sensed this thing before. The realization sparked mirth, in a new way. He descended to the planet, yet the void could not follow him no matter how he tried. He mourned leaving the void, yet this was far too interesting to turn back. Thusly he entered Gaia.
==========
A thriving contradiction.
An entity without a form, he explored the air, his thoughts bringing him down to where the wind raked through the leaves of forest trees. He tumbled through to the floor of the forest, sensing with fascination as the last lights of day trickled through the canopy. He played among the shadows as they deepened, and he discovered it! The Shadows felt like the void, both were like the absence of something, yet still reality. He twisted the shadows to his whim, and they bent willingly, unlike the resistant void. Out of them, he formed a body, amorphous blob though it was. Embedding himself in this form he explored this exciting new place.

He roamed the forest, sensing small birds and mice as he went. He pounced on them, curiously absorbing them to analyze them, and figure out what they possibly could be. In a stroke of genius, he formed eyes from his form, and he saw. The blob of shadows sprouted wings and flew away.
==========
A seeker of new sights.
Cresting the top of a cliff at long last, he looked out across an expanse of ocean, and breathed in the salty air. Gazing across the sea, he could sense the sharks below, even if he could not see them. Watching them tear apart their prey, and even each other, was simply fascinating.

He journeyed to the jungle, where everything seemed bigger. The birds were so much larger, and resembled bats. There were animals just as tall as the trees they ate. He even laid his eyes on a predator, with a mouth so full of sharp teeth. Inspired, he copied the fierce animal, sporting teeth of his own.

Pleased with himself, he took a break for a while and visited the void as he mulled over what he had discovered in this place.
==========
A jester, he who laughs alone.
He giggled as he watched the family of rabbits scurry around, suddenly blind, yet gifted with wings. Their haphazard flights scaring birds from their nests and shattering the expectations of one very confused, and very frightened, wolf. The suddenly sharp fangs of these fluffy white creatures glistened in the light of the sun, though their eyes could no longer see the absurdity of it. It was enough that he could see it; this… abnormality, this… twist in nature, amused him to no end.

As his laugh echoed in the trees, the little family of rabbits squealed to each other in fear, their instincts suddenly useless to them. He stayed to watch only a few more hours before he tired of them and left them to their squabbling. Perhaps they would adapt, perhaps not. He did not dwell on it, for he was already thinking of his next prank.

His next idea involved a tree; he had been inspired by a fly-catching plant earlier, and decided that those large cats needed something new and interesting to rouse them from their lazy slumbers. His laughter was already leaking out, and he had yet to even begin!
==========
A trickster, of those caught unawares.
A creature he had not seen before was walking in his forest. This alone, doomed it. The furred critter stepped unafraid in even the deepest of shadows, moving from food source to food source, while keeping an eye out for dangerous animals; the wrong kind of danger in these parts. A patch of grass gave way underneath its foot, and the critter nearly fell into a dark abyss, saving itself with its tail wrapped around a tree. Chattering in shock, it did not notice that the tree in question had in the meantime been covered in a thick yellow substance that stuck to its fur, which began to blacken and smoke. In a panic, it yanked upon its appendage, not liking the sensation the yellow stuff brought. Upon freeing itself, it found that it was not alone. An orange bird with two heads looked down from high branches in the tree, eyeing it predatorily. It fled for its life, screeching at the top of its tiny little lungs.

The orange bird pursued it halfheartedly, alighting on a high tree branch, and chuckling to itself as the other creatures in this place heard the noise and came to investigate. It watched on in interest, as the new little creature it decided to name ‘monkey’ met its demise at the hands of his other victims. It had put up a fight, showing a cunning that was as amusing as it was superfluous.

In the end it was one of his ‘plants’ that got the kill; a pair of vines that had enveloped the creature and then crushed it, beginning the long process of absorbing it completely. He knew this would have sustained them for a long time, but in the end he decided to light the cocoon of vines on fire anyway. It would not do for them to develop a taste for monkey blood so soon.

This one had died, but there would be more. There always were more, and now their physiology had spawned a few ideas he wanted to play with.
==========
A stalker, watching from the shadows.
His forest teemed with life. Every so often he would eradicate a species he was bored with, and then twist another to fill the gaps it had left. Even this became boring and commonplace. Instead, he began to alter his own form, playing with the possibilities. He had an excellent pool of hunters and hiders to draw from, and he took to prowling in the dark of the trees. Nothing went unseen in that place but him.

He never visited the void anymore. So used he had grown to manipulating the willing shadows, the headstrong void no longer heeded his call. Instead he reveled in the shadows of this world, relaxing in its cool, reassuring arms.

His command over it grew, and while he still sometimes relished the predatory glee of pouncing on and tearing into his prey, when he was bored, the shadows around his target simply leaped for the throat, and it was over. To an onlooker, he seemed to walk into the shadow of one tree, and out the shadow of another. To him, he simply joined with the shadows, and they took him wherever he pleased.

His courtship of self-improvement reached its conclusion in that he could take on whatever form he wished. His attention soon drew to the boredom inherent in this forest. He knew every stone, every leaf, and every life in this forest. It was time to explore other places.

One night, he simply walked out of the forest and didn’t look back.
==========

**TheDarkDM** · 2013-05-01, 11:11 PM (ISO 8601)

Alue

The blade had been forged in the heart of a dying star, an impossibly old crucible of life that had finally, impossibly, run its course. The edge was whet on the ambitions of evil men, so sharp that the air itself screamed at its passing. The hands that gripped the blade bore the scars of ceaseless toil, firm with the strength of uncounted generations of devoted service. Yet the true strength in the blow was in the heart that guided it, a heart of iron will and unyielding righteousness. It was a heart that never faltered, never doubted, never feared, and as the blade silenced its ancient rhythm the universe stopped. Mortan's mighty form, unbroken and victorious at the end of his era, seemed frozen as he stood upon the planet that was to be the sepulcher of his kin. Even the Gearworks that he'd sacrificed all to save grew silent, as though the Primus' heartbeat had been the wound spring that drove the entire mammoth edifice. Time ceased, and in that eternity of his passing Mortan saw the wholeness of history stretch out before him, back to the beginning. And then, the Gearworks struck his death knell, and the Titan of Death shattered like glass.

Time passed, and blind stars watched uncounted revolutions of the Gearworks as creation righted itself, as it had so many times before. Life bloomed from the nothingness of an empty tomb, and in the void above the great mechanism the fragments of Mortan stirred in their infancy. One, no greater or smaller than the rest, had strayed particularly far in its cosmic flight, so far that Gaia was but an emerald speck upon a grinding golden sea. It was so far removed from the life-breath of destiny that one would be forgiven in thinking that it would amount to nothing, just another meaningless comet doomed to become stardust above the new world. But against all odds, in the time of the new gods Alue awakened. She was not the first, though few were her elder, and as the stone of Mortan's desiccated flesh flaked off her she beheld the universe with the eyes of a babe. She was beautiful then, but her beauty was that of a thing unburdened by hardship and untouched by life, a colorless beauty that seemed to demand something more. And indeed, as she looked down upon the robe hanging from her slender shoulders she saw that it was grey and lifeless, that her delicate hands were lily white, and that the only light around her was given off by her own divinity. A strand of black hair floated down from her face, and she caught it in wonder, tugging against her scalp and gasping at the sensation of her scalp's resistance. And with that first sensation, her ivory skin began to warm with color.

At the sound of her voice, Alue brought her fingers to her mouth in shock, unsure of what she'd just heard. Slowly, tentatively, she took them away and tried another sound, this one a low and resonant tone that echoed through the void around her. Alue giggled at the sound, and then gasped again at the pleasure of giggling, and with every new sensation, every discovered sense, she became less and less a shadow and more her own being. Cheeks grew flush, lips curled in a smile, and Alue exulted in the wholeness of her being. But all things must end, and soon the new goddess had emerged fully from her half-life, her body alive and vital. Yet still she felt herself unfinished, and her garment remained cold and untouched by life. Alue strained to reason why, and in the nothingness she heard a song. Far away it was, so faint that it could not be called a whisper, coming from a green orb upon the vastness of what she knew to be the Celestial Gearworks. Alue started forwards, intent on finding the source of the sound, only to stop as she heard another. To any other god this would have been fainter still, impossible to distinguish over the call of living Gaia, but to Alue it was a clarion call, a song of such infinite sweetness as to bring tears to her eyes. Without a thought, she turned towards the new sound, and went racing deeper into the unknown.

Alue was a child, yet she knew of the danger of the Beyond, just as she knew of the power of the Gearworks. But despite this, she found herself flying ever higher in pursuit of her song, so near the stars that she could feel the pulsing maelstrom of the Beyond. The orb of Gaia disappeared behind her as she was bathed in the cold light of chaos, shadows and highlights appearing for the first time on her face. In that light her grey eyes flashed, and when she turned away the flickering did not dim. So too with her robe, for as the shadows played across it they became caught like fish in a silver net, flitting about the blank canvass like the hesitant brush strokes of the novice painter. But all this went unnoticed, as she sped ever faster towards her destination, a star shining terribly bright in the night sky, bereft of the flickering of the Beyond. Alue knew to enter the Beyond was to be destroyed, yet she continued without fear, her heart filled with Mortan's conviction of the rightness of her action as she plunged through the gaping hole of reality.

*****

Had she entered the Beyond, Alue would have died then. But whether by luck or destiny, she emerged not into the infinite vastness of the Beyond, but upon a dry plain baking beneath a white sun. Alue stumbled to a halt on the packed sand, head spinning from the assault of new sensations. The coarse sand burned her feet, the sudden weight of her robe pulled on her shoulders, and the terrible brightness of the sky was blinding. But when she turned, intending to race back to the soothing dark of the void, the rift had disappeared. Blinking furiously to clear her vision, Alue retraced her steps in the sand, hands waving through the still air in the vain hope of finding the way out of that place. Eventually, she realized she had traveled far beyond where the rift must have been, and with a pitiful wail she collapsed to her knees.

She stayed there for a time, still as a statue, gazing off into the bleak horizon. The white sand seemed endless, no matter which way she looked, so vast that she began to think she'd simply imagined the vast universe she'd come from. But the song of Gaia still echoed in her mind, and as she thought back to it Alue found herself wishing for some way to hear it again. At that desire, she felt something fall into her hand, and with a start she looked down on a silver flute, its surface polished to a mirror sheen. It felt cool despite the desert sun, and without thinking Alue brought it to her lips. She began to play, tentatively at first, but soon she found her fingers moving almost of their own accord, flying along the length of the flute with the skill of a virtuoso. The sound that emerged was the first to touch that withered land, a song of Gaia taken from memory but played with a simple passion. It was imperfect, as any mirror of Gaia must be, but as Alue played the desert changed around her, the uncaring sand giving way to a lush oasis, color blooming from emptiness. The land before her fell away, and with a start Alue realized it had filled with what she somehow knew to be water. She dipped her feet, reveling in its cool touch, and as she luxuriated in her fantasy she heard a reply from far away.

Immediately, Alue leapt up, desperate to discover the source of the new sound. It was similar to the song that had lured her hear, but terribly faint. Straining divine eyes, Alue looked towards the source of the sound and discerned something far in the distance, the merest glimmer of a rise in the surrounding desert. It was a small thing, but that spark of hope ignited a fire in Alue's breast. She did not know why she'd been drawn here, but she was resolved to discover why, and to return to the land that had given birth to such sweet dreams. Alue strode forward, her steps so light that she was almost gliding, and unbeknownst to her the oasis followed, her passing giving rise to green blooms in the chalky ground. And as she left her oasis behind, shades of green left with her, mingling amidst the shadows of her robe as though they'd always been there.

Alue did not know how long she traveled, for the white ember in the sky seemed anchored by an unseen hand, but eventually her destination became clear. The wasteland extended in every direction, flat and unchanging, but before her rose a solitary mountain, its sides afire. It seemed to her eyes that the peak lay directly beneath that place's sun, and as she grew closer Alue began to know, in her core, that it held the answers. Eventually, the mountain peak grew to dominate the horizon, so great it seemed to Alue to dwarf the Gearworks itself, and running down its sides was a riot of life so intense as to shame the surrounding desert. As she came near, Alue saw creatures great and small flitting amid trees that seemed to grow and shrink by the minute, rivers that became rainbows only to descend into nests the size of a castle. All was awash in chaos and sound and wondrous possibility, for Alue had found the dreamlands of Gaia, where all the children of the great titan traveled in their sleep. And far above them hung the bright sun, blazing with the intensity of a wildfire.

Alue lost herself there for a time, dancing between the dreams of creatures great and small. She rode a robin that fancied itself a dragon, reveled alongside a flight of airborne dolphins, danced in a field of sunflowers that dreamed themselves giants. To an infant divinity, the experiences were overwhelming, the dizzying array of desires and hopes intoxicating her young mind. Her arms became wings, her legs a tail, and soon Alue was but a giddy reflection of whatever dream she happened into. She might have lost herself then, had a shadow not passed over the sun. As Alue ran through an endless field alongside a pride of lions, dark wings rushed towards her, and without warning the field was aflame. Four legs became two as the shock brought Alue back to herself, as she watched the dream collapse as the lions ran in terror, trying in vain to escape the creature of darkness and flame that raced after them. Alue's eyes widened in horror, the colors of her robe contorting in pain as she watched the lions fall one by one, the little deaths that banished them back into the real world. Looking beyond the dream, Alue saw more shadows, emerging from nowhere to wreak havoc upon the peace of sleep. The field of sunflowers fell beneath clawed feet, the robin found itself chased by a bloody hawk of terrible size, and the dolphins were falling into a fiery tomb. It was horror and doubt and fury unleashed from depths of Gaia's soul, and it sickened Alue.

She watched the nightmares pass and the dreams dissipate, and as dawn touched the true Gaia the mountain of her dreams grew empty, huge swaths of disparate fantasy collapsing into mist as their creators forgot them. And as their prey departed, so too did the nightmares, withdrawing further up the mountain, to the black vault where they made their nests. Alue knew then what she had to do to prevent the horrors she had seen from haunting innocent dreams, and she began to climb.

*****

How does one scale the infinite? For that mountain, built atop the dreams of countless mortals, had no ending. No matter how high Alue climbed, she never approached the peak, never grew close to the dark hole where nightmares dwelt. She willed herself forward, and she flew. She begged the rocks to carry her, and they slid upwards. Yet still, she came no closer to her goal. And as she toiled, a haze of mist gathered around her, the fractured memories of forgotten dreams drawn to a being who existed independent of the outside world, a being capable of shaping their world without the need of sleep. Finally, Alue slumped against a shard of rock, exhausted by her labors, and finally noticed the horde of spirits attending her. As she laid her silver eyes upon them, they shimmered in anticipation, and she spoke with such hopelessness as to break their hearts.

"I'm sorry. I cannot save you."

The spirits grew agitated, and for a moment Alue thought they were angry, but from the center of the shifting grey maelstrom emerged a single spirit of uncommon strength, a wisp that seemed to retain the slightest hint of a face. It floated close to her, twining its way up her arm until it came close enough to whisper in her ear.

"All is not lost. This place seeks to please you, but it will not bend to your will. You must master it, if you are to reach the top."

"But how? No matter what I will, the mountain stays the same."

"Because you are thinking like a dreamer. To surmount the peak, you must become Dream."

With that, the spirit faded, exhausted by the effort of speech. Alue gazed up at the wall of half-dreams, unsure of what to do, only to feel the weight of her flute in her sleeve. Taking it out, she examined the rippling silver of the instrument forged from dream-stuff. It was beautiful, there was no doubt of that, the purity of it shaming any rude metal on the real world. It was a thing of wonder, and with it Alue knew she could make wonders. She brought it to her lips, but rather than play the song of Gaia she played the other song, the song that had brought her here, the song of dreams. As the melody echoed down the mountain, the ridge holding Alue shuddered, and as she looked up she saw a terrible sight. For the Nightmares knew that song, knew what awaited them, and so they issued forth from their dark caverns with deadly intent. Fire and lightning, shadow and pain, the primal fears of millennia gushed from the mountaintop like blood from a wound, surging down to drown out Alue's song and crush her for her impertinence. But Alue did not stop, even as she was engulfed by an orb of angry darkness. The Nightmares lashed out, once, twice, three times, tearing Alue's flesh and rending her robe, forcing the goddess to experience pain for the first time. But Alue would not stop, and in that dark prison the power of her song echoed a thousand fold, until it was the nightmares that shrieked in pain. They fled, conquered by the unyielding beauty of the goddess, and their passing carried her past the endless climb, up to the black crevice from which they sprang. And as Alue continued to play, the crevice began to close, jaws of iron and dream-wrought stone closing in on the nightmares and binding them to Alue's will. Their discordant shrieks shook the mountain to its core, but it was the sound of desperation, and soon their struggles subsided, and the mountain was at peace.

She collapsed then, the bloodstained tatters of her robe clinging to her battered body as she looked down on the infinite expanse of the dreamlands. Eventually, mortal minds drifted back to sleep, and with every mind a new world was born on that white plane, springing forth fully formed from their passions and desires. And as each new world exploded into life, it shimmered in the light of the sun. Alue looked up at the blazing sphere, so close she could almost touch it, and realized in shock that she felt no discomfort in its light. Indeed, as she lay before it her wounds healed, and the ragged remains of her robe knotted together and became like new. Glancing between that silvered orb and the land it watched over, Alue brought her flute to her lips a third time and played her own song. For she was the mistress of these lands, and as the sound grew she felt herself rising, floating into the waiting embrace of her destiny.

*****

The stream was like any other stream upon Gaia, its silver waters nourishing the land around and the life within. In this particular bend in the stream a trout slept, dreaming itself a whale. Without warning, the glade above the stream was filled with a silver light, and from the Dreamlands strode Alue. She stumbled as she came fully into Gaia, the realness of the world throwing her off balance as the ground refused to change at her feet, but as she gained her bearings Alue gave a joyous laugh. She had done it. Twirling, she watched her robe shimmer with color in the light of morning, but stopped when her eyes found her reflection in the stream. She was beautiful, her raven hair falling in waves to frame a face that, while pale, was flush with life. Brilliant green eyes flashed at this first sight of herself, before shifting to become blue, then purple, then orange. But the commotion had wakened the trout, and it flitted down the stream, sending ripples through the reflection. The spell broken, Alue smiled, raising her eyes to the sky above.

"Thank you, little one."

Then she raised her flute, and played her song. Not for mastery, or for joy, but to reach out to the others she felt in her mind. Other sparks, other shards, other things she knew not the nature of. Some might be monsters, others simple tools, but she played for them all the same. And she played for her siblings, so far away, that they might know she was free, and that she would find them.

**Raz_Fox** · 2013-05-02, 12:16 AM (ISO 8601)

Part 1: The Void.

Will our souls remember where we said we'd meet
On the way out of this town?

Madness is: repeating something over and over again, expecting a different result. Desperation provokes madness, you know. A man teetering over an abyss will flail again and again at a handhold just out of reach, knowing that it is his only salvation. Would you call him mad? Perhaps.

Let's talk about a madman.

All that he is is desperation, a mantra, a statement made in defiance of all that is. I could have made it right. He, it, whatever desperation is called, clings to it in the night, his shield against another ~~suicide~~. The night stretches on forever about him, and it presses against his tired brow, and there is no mother there to kiss him and rock him to sleep, no father there to rest one great hand against a shallowly-rising chest and say: you will, now rest. So there is no rest, no respite, nothing but a fire without fuel and a desire without sin and a night without end. He is very empty, and burning all the same.

The first choice comes to him in the night, after an eternity of tormented sleeplessness, as he hears the grinding of great designs and the inexorable sound of hierarchy. He understands that there is a wrongness, an unthing that is in the space that is not and in the time that is not, and he can see it clearly. Perhaps it is the tear of a scythe. Perhaps it is an unraveling. But it is a hole and it is an unthing and it is not supposed to be. It is a damage, a tear, a rip in everything. He can ignore it, if he wants to. After all, it is much bigger than he is- not spatially, but in magnitude, in importance, in potential. If the seams around it came undone, everything would be swallowed up into unthing state and time and purpose, and the very turning of the gears would become nothing but night and silence.

But he will not.

He grasps at it with the fingers that he wished into being, and he tries to pull it shut, and some hellishly beating heart defies. No, it cannot be undone so easily, he finds. The operation, tinkering, healing, all must come from within and on out; his strength cannot defy laws made before time. So he makes his choice: I could have made it right. He enters into the unthing, and it shrives him until he is nothing but a man inside a body, and we will call this a god, even if such a name is almost an insult. A worthless thing, possessed of power enough to change all things to be like its vision, and nothing more. We will call it Ilos, because that is a much better name than "ambition, hubris, broken dreams, denial, the thing that has gears running in its head and an emptiness in its heart".

**Kasanip** · 2013-05-02, 03:58 AM (ISO 8601)

"It was warm and such is the morning of summer that I went out to the meadow of the woods of Aodamo today.
Brighter than the stars, today a new light shone down from the sky.
And I didn't mind the sweat and dirt because today I finished planting. There is no other such a feeling, to relax in the shade with water. To see success and bounty of green everywhere. Why?
Why did I make this field so ordered? Sharing these wondering things to the clouds and squatting to look at the emauri, I gave them encouragement.
I fed them and served them water. I gave them warmth and so they began to grow like children.
Everyday, everyday.
Why do always I return to here? Woven yesterday and the month before, I plucked the hemline of my attush dress, and wondering this to the mirror river, I did not find an answer.
And with this wondering done and nothing to do, I went out under the tree shadow paths and from the meadow of Aodamo came out and climbed the rabbit's hill.
I surveyed on the fields and meadows with green promise, and saw the smoke cloud rising distantly. So like the passing clouds, I walked the paths of Tokse and Tom and came to Toani-un, that valley with smoke. And here everything burned hot in fire. Here the plants and the animals cried. But I hurried in there without thinking, and though the fires danced and embraced me, seeing our sameness they let me pass. Gently I took some of their buds, and wove the fire into my dress. So isn't it said

"Let the fire dance it's lines, but always sewed to their beginnings?"
So isn't it said
"dancing fires are dangerous when the border is hemmed roundly?"
So isn't it said
"the ring of fire is eternal?"
These sayings are rightly so.
And in the middle of this fire, I met the phoenix. Illustrious and coquettish, the bird of fire of reds and greens had brought this destruction. Crown of gold and eyes of pure warmth. Dancing and prancing feet and weaving circles of fire with burning feathers. Entranced by this beauty, I felt the sadness and love of a sibling.
And so I called to her
Why do you do this, and burn such pain to them?
Why do you worry them like this, dancing the fire dance?
Your beauty is enough to win affection. Trying too hard for something will bring pain.
And the Phoenix turned and spoke to me.
"I have only been here for such a small time. Is not summer the season of fire?
Is not this time for fire dancing and field surveying? Let the planter see and rest, but cannot you see the fireflies dance at night, the fire dance?"
"I am alone because no one may touch me.
They fear my hot feathers.
They fear what might come in the future.
They admire from far away my beauty.
But no one will make friends or hold and love me.
Love is simply a sad lament, I sing to the clouds as I dance the fire dance."
Without thinking I stepped forward and the fires dyed my skin with their heat. But I embraced the lonely phoenix and danced the fire dance together, saying:
"There is always time to love and to be loved. But too much heat will only drive away.
Such is the folly of summer.
Such a way oppositely is too little, and such is the folly of winter.
Stay with me, and we with eternal fires will never be lonely."
And the phoenix did agreeing, and coming out of burnt and abandoned Toani-un, we watched the evening skies together. These are the things I secondly did.

These words were spoken by Api, the flame of fire and phoenix." said the shaman to the audience as the wind chime softly reverberates.

**Raz_Fox** · 2013-05-02, 02:22 PM (ISO 8601)

Part 2: The House.

I made you in my image
I built your heart, I gave you eyes, I gave you power

The first thing that he understands, that he knows, is that he is very cold. He is wearing: undershirt, silver-button-gear-marked overshirt, dark closed coat with its high collar, simple ring on one finger, briefs, belt, long trousers, woolen socks, boots. None of them quite fit, all of them are already starting to come to fray and unraveling, but they are his. Suspicious stains, like the clothing of a ~~suicide~~. Lungs compress painfully, frozen air cutting the virgin throat. Fingers curl in pain, the sharp cold of metal pressing against his skin, gold burns when it is this bold. There is frost touching his eyebrows, clinging to his too-long straw mane, and every pore and every hair and every inch aches. He has been winnowed down into something comprehensible and it hurts. Immortals were not meant to be such.

The second thing that he understands is that somewhere a band is playing. The roof yawns high above him, stretching off into the darkness, and everything is at the wrong angle. He tilts his head and the world tilts with it. Not a trick of the light. Maybe a trick of the real. There is an absence of sound somewhere, a sound that should exist but does not, and it stabs at his ears. The band plays on, uncaring. Someone's fingers- if they have fingers- are dancing on ivory stages, someone's bow scrapes the strings, someone provides the heartbeat that thumps in his chest. Thank you, band. You're very helpful.

The third thing that he understands is that darkness shines through the windows, and the light of a blasphemous sun. He cannot exactly say why it is blasphemous. It is a color that does not exist, should not exist, and his mind rebels at defining it. Maybe it is an affront to all creation, or maybe he's just too... whatever-he-is... to get the words for it yet. Maybe he could have told himself if he was whole, maybe not. There is little left of majesty inside his empty gauntness, so he cannot say. The windows are high and sharp and made for looking at pleasanter things, and they are all crooked in their own horrible way.

He pushes himself up, leaving patches of his skin behind him on the floor, rawness stabbing into his new palms. He does not quite know how to control everything that he is: elbows wave like wings, knees clack crooked-bent, hair flops about in his eyes. He does not pick up an umbrella. The very thought is silly. Trembling with cold, he instead pushes his white hands into his coat's pockets, and finds them to be cold, too, but there is a possibility that they might warm, so he keeps them there and shambles until he finds himself confronted by a crooked door that sags to the left and sags to the right and is completely straight. He fumbles, finds the handle, pushes on through from green walls into paleness.

The band is playing to wake the dead, and something of him kindles into low fire in the cruel chill. The air buzzes. There are: ball gowns, fine suits, sharp black shoes, an infinity of masks. Masquerade. Old, grand, dusty, and perhaps if he pulled back a mask or a sleeve he would find something not to his liking. So he does not. The stairs run all the way up to the ceiling, and the bookshelves run farther; there are tables dangling from cables where men talk of stables and broken billows and the dry season as they deal the cards for another game, this time sure to be the last. There are elegant dances that don't quite seem to obey the rules he knows on the dance floor. It dizzies him, makes the blood thrum behind his eyes.

He walks past: the woman with red leaking from the holes in shallow rivulets, the man with the five-section suit, the rake with the razored fingers, the woman who has horns rising from her mask's brow and leaves scorched steps in her wake, the grandstand, the chandelier which is made of frozen opals and diamonds cross-bred, the fire-haired woman. He can hear- something. But the band begins to play a swinging song which has nothing to do with nooses whatsoever: d'Annarz's Fifth Symphonette (For Clever Fingers). The dance floor spirals into anarchy, there is laughing and biting and a jolly good time is had by all.

He wonders where he is, shivering and staring at the side of the room, watching the mad dance unfold before him. "Why, monsieur my good, see here, you are, if I may be unrazored, inabode the Avalonika. Permayhaps, if your good self meet your pleasure, see here, your most excellency will indubitably uncontrariwise remend our most effulgently deafmute clocks."

**Draken** · 2013-05-02, 09:42 PM (ISO 8601)

“We peer into the heavens and capture the scent and the voices of divinities. How lonely might they be, other shards of the Solitary One who may not have found our enlightened peerage.”

---

Aktai’Parapon they became, numinous mind forged from the multitude of replicants assembled in the core landmass of the archipelago, each of its islands recast into a colossal nest.

Lesser collectives took hold of the other landmasses in the now named Mines Islands, thus called for the ore-rich tunnels dug by the replicants. Some great in themselves, such as Tvarka’Ecitoni and Jéga’Myrmeci. Many more much smaller, such as the humble Protingas’Aneureti. But all beneath the Aktai’Parapon, the first great Hivemind, numinous, powerful and wise.

A hierarchy was thus established between the nests, and work went on for time untold.

Until in through the senses of the replicants wafted a scent carried on a breeze, telling of lands and metals and more.

And the Aktai’Parapon felt in that air the scent of their other kin. The great hive split and took in members of the other hives, leaving the great island in control of its remnants, the Puikus’Ponere, while the vast entourage took wings and forged ahead into the greater world.

Thus, truly begins this particular branch of our story. With but a hint and a wonder of who and what the Steel Legion will meet.

... And what shall it do.

**Mashimoto** · 2013-05-03, 06:15 AM (ISO 8601)

Ascent into Madness

The young god lay awake on the cold, cold stone. The serpent relished in the warmth of the Godflesh. The muscles of the Godflesh flexed with energy and purpose only the serpent could provide. Together, they could breathe and think.

Fortunis thought the air taste funny. He was right. It was sterile and vacant from a number of centuries staleness he could only begin to imagine. In the pitch blackness of the coffin, his naked toes scraped against the still, col stone below them as he lay horizontally on the stone.

The god kicked. The wall cracked with a resonating wave that amplified into a thundrous clash that tickled the hairs on the gods neck. He kicked again, and again, and felt the stone under his naked feet give way. Behind the relatively thick case of the coffin, there was only a flat wall of stone. Fortunis kicked through the deep earth, and then through the granite behind it, and diagonall layers of flash-frozen volcnic glass and top soil that was behind it, and so on.

He carved a narrow, twisting course through the rock, carving an absur mine with the unbruised, pale heel of his foot. His lanky, black hair fell over his face and his emaciated, corpse like body gathered no sweat.

He felt, as he often di, a sense of approaching fate. He stoppe, for a moment, pretending to rest because he wasn't sure what else to do, and dragged his foot across the uneven stone. Hollow.

The god kicked.

The stonework collapsed into a small antechamber glowing with a faint, vaporous, blue-purple glow. Fortunis emerged, falling naked and gracefully onto his feet, cracking his back as he stood tall for the first time. There was a pile of cracked granite in the middle of the room which might have once been a table, and an arched door-frame whose hinges and wood had long since ground into entropy.

Beside the doorframe, the holographic, transparant silhouette of a bald, bearded man wearing a cloth robe festooned with hanging trinkets, strands of beads, an great, colored feathers, some feet long. His arms were crossed, and he watched the naked god disapprovingly.

Fortunis, saw the transparant figure, and rise an arm, pointing at him.

"Guardian of this place, I am your rightful master. Kneel before me."

The transparant, purple figure gazed, either with contempt or horror. After a moment, he spoke in a clear voice.

"You dug the wrong way," he said. He uncrossed his arms pointing up an somewhat towards Fortunis original tunnel. "You've dug under a mountain. You won't find yourself any closer to the surface, this way."

Fortunis frowned as he thought about the bore it had been getting there, and his eyes flickered to the archway.

"Collapsed," The spirit said an then, after a pause, added "You would be able to tell if I was lying to you."

Fortunis knew he was like, and wordlessly proceede to pound the stone aside with his fists, carving a narrow passage through which he could squeeze an emaciated, prisoners frame. He ascended for what seemed like hours, toes carving footholds into rock to step upward. Eventually, he broke into another antechamber. This one was slightly less squat an wider, supporte by four thick columns left over from the natural stone as it was carved The room glowed with a familiar purple light.

The spectre was waiting.

"You could have also teleported."

Fortunis was not amused, he lunged forward with a balled fist.

"I am a god!" he shouted, before landing a punch on the unflinching spectre and succeeding only in shttering his own jawline. His white knuckles met the gently glowing, somehow familiar jawline of the bald spirit, and simultaneously he felt the same knuckles caving into the bones, sending splinters back into his throat. Coughing, he stepped backwards and mended the wound with a gentle stroke.

He spat the blood in his mouth onto the ground. The spectre stared.

"It's like you don't even recognize me."

The god hazarded a guess.

"A piece of the shard. Or another spirit within the shard. I didn't feel alone during the transition."

"Partially. More a part of you than I a the shard." The naked god was stone-faced. "Our mind would have not survived godhood. You hd to divide, and scatter, yourself. It was the only way to stay sane."

Fortunis glared at the transparent, festooned version of himself.

"This is sanity?" The spectre didn't answer, and there was a pause which Fortunis finally broke."How many others are there?"

"Five others, and us. Scattered through the empire, of course." Fortunis was suddenly hopeful.

"Then an empire persists, the people...?" For the first time, the spectre smiled.

"You don't appreciate how much time has passed for them. Or what this world is like. You will come to know. But there is no empire."

Fortunis' single eye narrowed.

"Do the people survive?"

"Some of them. Many have...changed."

"But they exist! And so, it was worth it."

"If I were you, which I am, I would piece myself together before celebrating. I'm here to guide you to the others. They're well hidden."

"Of course. And we can survey the land, on the way, but first-- what can I call you?"

The spectre shrugged.

"If have to call me something, call me Feet."

(OOC Note) From Proverbs 6:16-19

Spoiler

Show

Seven things that God finds abominable:

1. Proud eyes (The Demon-Prince himself)
2. A lying tongue
3. Hands that shed innocent blood
4. A heart that devises wicked schemes
5. Feet that run to evil (Feet)
6. A false witness that speaks lies
7. The person who spreads discord among brothers

Also note that these personalities are essentially just split personalities, not really creations. They wont allow my character to be in two places or once, or anything, and in all likelihood they'll merge into one at some point. I'm just using them as a bridge between ascension quest and exploring the world, which turns into meeting other gods (and stuff).

**TechnOkami** · 2013-05-03, 07:01 AM (ISO 8601)

"The beginnings of a Goddess that would never be, for the weaver of her fate could not bring her to breathe."

Spoiler

Show

A Distant Future, Near, But Far

The clack of large obsidian insectoid legs encased in fine ornate gold leggings moved steadily across the marble floor, like the pillars of a great temple swaying at structurally unsound angles with rhythmic unison. A black and glossy exoskeleton contained in more of the tempered metal strode with purpose. The upper torso of this strange semi-human creature was enveloped in fine white robes with gold trim woven between the fabrics, juxtaposed with the contrast of his chitinous body. Ebony hair swooped behind his ears and over his shoulders in two long braids, both weighed down with dark metallic balls, cuffed in place by metal rings needled through the braids, resting on the spheres themselves. Streams of light streaming through ornately fashioned windows played and danced upon his body, shining and reflecting off of the black gloss. This scorpion-man approached two other of his kind, more heavily armored and armed, but with full retention of the ornateness of their culture. The two bowed before him, his stature already impressive in size only magnified by their shows of respect.

"Exarch." They both say in unison.

The robed scorpion-man returned the courtesy. "If you would be so kind as to let me through. Our lady has summoned me to her presence."

The royal guards nodded their heads in recognition of his words, the two pushing the heavy doors with thick gauntlets for arms, revealing the room on the other side. The space was large and circular, with a large and spacious dome of interwoven trees, the pillars the trunks themselves. It seemed like a small slice of a grove somehow contained within a building, yet it felt as if the thick of a forest still resided around it. A crystalline flow of water winded through the room, the male figure clacking along the wood planks of a bridge that ran above it. The figure moved past the bridge and to a slightly raised ledge. The creature then knelt with his arachnoid legs, his slender hands touching the smooth marble floor with his entire back bent down.

"My Lady Chanda."

Behind a back-lit veil appeared a shape, curvacious and slender. A hand reached for the thin barrier, slowly parting away the cloth that separated them until she had revealed herself. A pale hand that shimmered like a white pearl from the depths of the sea, revealing the sunken remains of a ship's delicate figurehead. A slender arm pushed the hand beyond the veil, as slowly the figure begun to emerge from behind it's shimmering folds. The upper torso of a woman devoid of clothes emerged from behind, though her legs were dark and not visible. Her hair parted keenly over her bosom, covering her slightly though keeping her sensuous atmosphere intact.

Then the rest of her followed in suit.

She too was one of these half-scorpion half-human creatures, though she seemed to radiate a power of unearthly, but golden grace. From the hips down she was pure scorpion, a body that was mighty and strong; her chitin was a glistening black suit of armor, thick, worn, and beautiful all the same. Her legs moved her slowly across the alabaster floors, until she reached the scorpion-man. Her slender hands reached down, the two lifting up a face that merely stared in awe.

"My dear Exarch. I am glad you have arrived."

The Goddess released her scintillating spell, turning her face to a window of brilliant light.

"Come. There is much to be said."

The scorpion-man jolted to his senses, quickly scuttling over to where she stood. In front of the two was a table, on one side a thick stack of virgin paper with writing tools to it's side, on the other was a kettle, complete with two cups that had yet to be filled. Chanda reached for the handle, her hands delicately pouring the liquid ambrosia into the parched cups, until they were like mountains surrounding seas. Meanwhile, her counterpart pulled the first of many papers down from the stack, picking a favored pen of his from the selection for its variance in thicknesses and ink retention. He dipped it within the small black vial, allowing his instrument to drink to its heart's content. He removed it from the black pool, moving it over the paper. There metal and plant fiber met, and danced with trails of ink left behind.

The Rise of a Goddess

The Exarch looked up from the paper to the Goddess, who as he looked on had moved the cup to her lips, draining the small basin of its contents.

"When you are ready, my Lady."

Her hands moved the cup back to where it once stood, her eyes temporarily meeting his until his own moved back to the paper.

"This... is how it all began..."

**Raz_Fox** · 2013-05-03, 08:21 AM (ISO 8601)

Part 3: The Guide.

I am playing a different kind of game
If I'm running in place again

He, or it, or whatever we shall name this individual, is sitting crooked on a frost-coated bannister. The Jack of Wands peeks from the sleeve of his exclusively enameled emerald coat, and the scales of the snake emblazoned upon its breast glisten in the sickly light. His face is a mask that is smiling quite happily, something like a fox and almost nothing like a cat, with happy perky ears and white sockets and a wicked crack down the left brow, the nose, the lip. He should have gloves; his nails are quite indecently long, and somewhat stained; does no one have good taste any more? He lacks the ring finger of his left hand, for it has been gnawed down to the knuckle, or clumsily cut. There are things poking out of his pockets: handkerchiefs and bent cards and weasel-teeth and a half-broken bottle of cologne. His palm rests against his chin, his elbow rests against his knee, his fingers tap that ragtime beat, and his cold shining-black shoe gently chucks the chin of the shambling scarecrow god.

"Ah, I examine profusely that your hap-a-wag tongue is otherwise than, see here, a perfunctorily courteous nag quick and away to striking. Permayhaps my most benevolent and irreverent introductories can and may unloose and disbar the strictures of elocution that permayhaps entwine and missnare your most generousness. My name is oft elucidated to be the Hasardai. It is assured to be and may be vouchsafed to continue so a title, see here, of the most magnificant. Now, I trust in the most assurance that your good self has come and intervened and convened by roundaways to this certain locale in order that our ashamedly hushed clocks may be undeafmuted and congregationally restored into, see here, the most properwise of service and chattelity. It is my most of most joyous infusions to be at your regards, your most illustrious and illusiveness."

The head crooks, the smile is frozen and yet seems to twitch. Ilos tries to look him up and down, but nothing about him seems to stay quite the same, even though it must certainly be so, for there is a solid picture of him to be kept to mind. A slippery thing in a frozen house. "I..." It is the first word that he has ever said, and even though it trails off into nothingness, choked by the cold air, it fits him. "I am, if, if you understand me, I am searching for the heart." Thump. Thump. Thump- there, you see, it is there! Under the floorboards, under the song, under the tramping feet, far off and far from hearing. "Listen. Can't you hear it? Listen. There is something wrong, a tear that should not be torn and a rip that bleeds and I, I have to close it, you see? I have to. I have to. I have to, because I can make everything, no, repair that which shouldn't be broken, that is me and I am it. And this is..." His words are stumbling over each other, the fire beginning to rise; oh, for clarity, for confidence! The air tightens, constricting.

A green sleeve waves, indicating everything. Party, bookshelves, paintings, revelry, crookedness and brokenness. "My most masterful and benevolence, this is, see here, Avalonika. This most grandrisingly contstructicated and outmapped house was postcrafted so by four infernally divine designs: most ultimate intellect, preprimordial love, postdivine omnipotence, and, see here, dissacred justice. It is this last and hindmost that misguidedly prolongs and malmaintains our tormented baccantery, your most excellency. But most and highest happiness decrees this exclamation, see here: that when and if permayhaps the clocks are once and again turned to their inabberant chiming, our freedom from eternality is and shall permayhaps be secure infleshed."

"How then, how am I supposed to fix every clock, mend them all to rights? All of these?" For, it must now be revealed, there are many clocks in that unthing. There are broken clocks on the walls, there are broken clocks propped up against doors, there are broken clocks lying upon the ground. Men stir their syrupy drinks with the blackened hands and women mop at their dresses with shattered faces. There is so much of it that it becomes the norm, and he has thought nothing of stretching his long-legs over the corpse of a timepiece. "It would take, take hundred years or more, too much, too much! I do not have the time-"

Shining-black shoes squeak on the tiles; the Hasardai moves like a drunken gambler, a predator, a thing that leads from the hips. "Not a one of the disgraced and the otherwise damned, your good self sir, have anysuch as time! There is not a scrapling of the commodity in such a locale as and including this, your salvational illusiveness. Your good self shall be forced and bound to introduce it once and again, see here, if the wishful desirings of your blessing and blessed heart may be brought to be for all and inclusive to be made to mendings. Which brings myself in and aroundabouts to the most excellent point that lies within my possessitivity, that being, see here: according to summation in apocrypha, the effulgent and caustic crystalline gem that does reside in and continually discoverings itself contained by the Avalonika's metaphoric heart possesses and bestows adroitity and puissance enough to accomplish and seal permayhaps such a skillsealed feat." The arm of the Hasardai finds its way around Ilos's bony shoulders, squeezing tight, seeming to compress the god even further. One porcelain ear flicks as he gestures boldly off into the distance with a four-fingered hand. "Now, straightaway, let your most humile servitor bring revelation to the most proper and efficacious path, your good self. If such as we were to tarry unseasonably in such a place as this might be, the Seraf could and certainly might catch upwards to your most excellency, and then your most shriven and benefactory self would be slain into slicemade ribbons, condemning those desiring indemnity into the most hopelost of possible states of extant baccantry."

They stride on through the baccantry, and something on bright wings leaves shadows on the wine-puddled tiles.

**Bryn** · 2013-05-03, 06:15 PM (ISO 8601)

Well, good morning, child! Isn't it a lovely, misty day? I suppose you want to hear some more on Hask...

Go on then. Give me a colour.

Yellow, huh? A fine colour. Colour of fire. Colour of bees. Good choice...

So where'd we get to? The deer? Well, then. Hask's wandering around with a herd of deer, all over the forest, watching 'em eat bits of tree and get munched by wolves. That's pretty much deer life. Not cheery.

So one day, Hask's up a tree. It's been a year - autumn. Leaves are yellow and red. There's this little monkey up there with her. Hasks' all "Look at these deer, struggling against nature." or some such - not sure how much of that can be said in monkey. Monkey's pissing itself, on account of Hask being all skeletal. Not contributing much to the conversation.

"Do you see what they lack, little monkey? They cannot use tools! They cannot build their freedom. They will never make art of their own."

"But wouldn't it be grand if it were not so? Here, give me a hand..." Sadly for the monkey, she means this rather literally. Hask runs off with the monkey's hand, and finds the little baby deer she first saw get born. Monkey dies.¹

Hask's looking at the baby deer. Now, when Hask looks at you like this... it's not nice. Not at all. It's like, suddenly, you feel like an object: meat hanging on bones. A painter's shell.² But it was worse for the deer, because Hask just goes in and starts messing. Suddenly, deer's got a little pair of arms on its neck. Long fingers. Longer neck.

I have to say something about these arms. Even back in the early times, Hask is never going to do a bad job. These arms, they're like a deer always had 'em. Perfect.

What happens next? Oh, this goes on for years. Hask watches the deer, and talks to the deer, and after a while, the deer starts talking back. And the deer tells Hask that some other deer should get arms. Seems reasonable. But Hask's done arms. And a good artist won't repeat herself. She starts meddling some more.

Hask did a lot of things to these deer. Yeah. Let me give you some examples...

Ever been down to the coast? That's fair. It's a long way. Well, there's these things they call octopuses. They have arms which bend everywhere, like when you're under the power of Art, but, you know, less floppy. She gives a deer these wiggly arms. And another deer, wings, like a bird. One deer, she gives eight legs - a spider deer. A wasp deer, yellow and stripy with a big old spike on its tail. You have deer climbing trees, a deer which can make grass grow wherever it walks.³

All these deer, well, they can still make baby deer. And all these features are getting mixed up into new combinations. Hask's loving it. She's having so much fun. Every day, new deer. She's got a name for this whole thing: One Thousand Variations On A Deer. But that's a big underestimate. Lots of deer.

Deer start working together. Forest is getting stripped bare, deer are spreading out across the valleys. They're organized. Menacing. Like big ants. That first deer, the one with monkey arms, is sort of their prophet. Directs the whole show. Sends deer to hunt down the wolf packs. The lions. Even dinosaurs!

At this point, Hask is properly seeing the wrecked and eaten forest. She's thinking 'bout what she's done. Starting to realise that she might have messed this one up a bit. What to do? Well, this is Hask. Answer's always meddle more.

Hask's solution is this: mess with an entire 'nother species, set them up to keep the deer in check. Yeah.

With this mess in the valleys, Hask hasn't got a chance to make something new without it getting smashed. Got to work somewhere else. That means uphill. That means the mountains.

And while she's up in the mountains, Hask starts hearing things. Not things like wind. Anyone could hear that! She's hearing music. Someone's playing the flute, just about everywhere.

Now, Mortan used to listen to all kinds of music. All kinds. Hask was there in his ear, listening away. She knows all the music. But there's one thing Hask has never done.

So, out there, on the glaciers, Hask starts to dance...

¹OK, maybe the monkey didn't die! Sorry. Didn't mean to upset you. Hask's nice. I bet she cleaned up that monkey real nice. Monkey had a long happy life, lots of baby monkeys. And, I guess, all of them had one hand. No, I mean it! That's how the Art works. Hereditary.
²You keep your shell? Well, you go and paint it up for the Maiden. Keep bad dreams away.
³No-one messes with the grassfoot deer. Not dinosaurs, not bears, not the other deer. They're just off in a world of their own. Just... don't go near them.

Oh, is it time again? Well, come back soon. Because we've yet to meet the Maiden of the Keening Eye, and that's where things really get interesting...

Spoiler

Show

Turn 0 Act: Create the Variations, also called the Abandoned, a highly varied species descended from deer. In-fiction, I'm planning that Hask will also participate in the creation of another species, but as far as the system is concerned this will be her Act and the later species will be paid for by Alue or Sin.

**TheDarkDM** · 2013-05-03, 08:17 PM (ISO 8601)

Alue, First of the Sisters

Alue traveled then, crossing plain and river and hill on the new planet she knew to be Gaia. In her travels she saw many things, creatures both great and small, ravaging storms and gentle rains, sunsets to break the heart and sunrises to mend it anew. And always she played her song, reaching out through time and space to the other shards of Mortan. Eventually, the Goddess of Dreams came to a mountain range, much like any other mountain range, save that its valleys were ravaged by beings out of nightmare. As she entered those lands, Alue felt the crushing fear from those animals that had once preyed on the deer, and her heart grew heavy at their suffering. Yet she thought it naught but a quirk of evolution, a cruel twist of Gaia's blessing, until she attempted to climb the mountains. For when she did, she herself was set upon.

It was in a glade like any other, where the first dusting of snow covered the virgin grass. As Alue entered, the shimmering of her robe sent flashes of every color through the snow, reaching to the far side of the glade where the colors died beneath misshapen shadows. There lurked a herd of what once had been deer, winged and clawed and ravenous with hunger. For Hask had granted the beasts knowledge without wisdom, and in their dominance they were starving for lack of new prey. In their bloodshot eyes, Alue was naught but some new morsel, perhaps sent by their capricious benefactor to alleviate their suffering. The deer's mouths contorted into snarls, revealing razored fangs and forked tongues, and as one the herd charged.

Alue beheld these god-crafted monstrosities with a mixture of revulsion and terror, and might have fallen beneath their assault had she not commanded the fullness of her strength. For so closely was she tied to the Dreamlands that even the mortal world bent to her will, and as she shielded herself the snow around her rose up into a crystalline shield that blunted the deer's advance. The monstrous creatures reared up, some taking flight on splayed wings, only to wheel around and prepare to charge again. Raising her hand, Alue banished her shield, and her voice rang clear through the cold air.

"Whatever beasts you are, I command you to halt! Know you attack Alue, Mistress of Dreams! I do not wish to harm you!"

But her plea went unanswered, and the ravenous herd charged again, driven to a fury by their failure. And so Alue's wrist turned, and in her hands was her silver flute, and she played a burst of keening sound so sharp as to shear silk and shatter glass. Immediately, the herd collapsed, falling from the sky and skidding against the ground in an aimless mountain of flesh. Their hearts beat, their lungs moved, but their minds had been banished to the Dreamlands, forever.

Alue hugged her arms close, disquieted by the ravening madness of the deer, before returning her flute to her sleeve and continuing on. Soon enough, she felt something nearby, alike yet not alike, and she knew it to be another shard of Mortan. Creting the top of the mountain, Alue saw far below a painted figure twirling through a lake of purest white, sending sprays of sparkling crystals flying about it like waves on the shore. Without a thought, Alue leapt down, floating down to Hask's valley on the eddies of her own joy. Behind Alue trailed the twining train of her robe, and in its wake was an aurora of such color and movement as to shame any normal rainbow. She fell slowly, and when she landed there was not a mark in the snow, and her bare feet left no trace as she approached the painted skeleton before her.

"Sister!"

Without warning Alue rushed forward, trailing a sea of color, to envelop Hask in a warm embrace. Eventually pulling away, Alue beheld the dancing bones with eyes whose colors were a mirror of the aurora fading behind her.

"You don't know how good it is to see you - I had begun to fear I would never find another. I am Alue."

**Raz_Fox** · 2013-05-03, 08:20 PM (ISO 8601)

Part 4: The Observatory.

Last night I dreamed: I climbed to the top of a mountain of metal
And for miles I could see the destruction of man

"Your most astute self, I would then unrecommend, see here, craning the neck of your most illustriveness or otherwise and sundry casting upwards and offwards those shimmerbright orbs of your most catlike cleverness." Of course, Ilos does not listen. Or, rather, he hears, but the immediate reaction of anyone who is told to look down - anyone like Ilos, most of all - is to look up. Some men will never happily bow their head, and some gods are forced by their very natures to know that is unknowable.

What he sees fills him up to the brim, breaks apart the strength of his legs, forces him to stumbling. What fortune! The strong hands and too-long nails of the Hasardai are there to catch him as he falls, and his guide is all too eager to coax Ilos along as he stares with gaping eyes and gaping mouth and gaping heart at the roof of the observatory, opened to infinity.

"What in heaven's name? I thought I could understand such things as this, but I, even I, I cannot understand what I see! It is, it is sound and fury and majesty and the flash of lightning, the sound of thunder rolling, rolling in the dark places! How can such things be? Would they not tear apart the vastness and let the waves drown that which is?" And as to what he sees: battle. Dark figures moving in the highest, striking with such wonders as to tear open the mind and blind the eyes. The dark strives against the light, and the light strives against the dark. There are: swords, lightning-bolts, gleaming shields, the burning of a blasphemously-lit sun against which everything is so small as to be meaningless, and wild laughter that can only be felt.

"It is, see here, the eternally everpugnacious visage of morality and life, horrormaking to behold. Did your most cannywise servant not warn you against its sight? It is holy war made perfection, see here, by things so agified and antiquatifed your own self is but nothing more than and certainly permayhaps less than a spark in their eyes. Or permayhaps, see here, the grievous woundmaking battle which your own self most influentially brought ceasewise to the lonely gravemarker, before your will was and saddeningly so overcome by such and those tremblecausing resolves that drew such a torrid weapon as your good self bore and bade! I know not if permayhaps such a thing also may be likewise the shadow castaways back from the echoing of battle waged by your good self in times yet being. I pray, may and let your good self close those adroit spheres before misshapen fortune permaychance unmakes their witsharp sight! This servant bears your esteemed masterfulness yet, and shall not and neverwise lead your luadacious self any path but true."

Ilos closes his eyes with a great shudder, and yet the battle still rages behind his eyes, stabbing into his head and his eyeballs and his ears. Good And Evil. Was there any truth to what he had seen here in this unplace or was it all sound and fury and lies, woven by something that shouldn't rightfully exist? Had he seen the final echo of his scythe, or something far older and far stranger? He cannot say. All that he knows is that his purring companion bears him onwards, onwards, onwards, towards the heartbeat.

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