[center][img]https://40.media.tumblr.com/4f0c243d80adb7364cfdd22110297d81/tumblr_o2t1ksU5vW1u5gf80o1_500.png[/img][/center]
[right][url=http://emancipator.bandcamp.com/track/the-key]Emancipator: The Key[/url][/right]
As its creator moved on, the sculpture slept, unmoving but for dancing shadows that swept along the earth on the diurnal cycle it would follow for millennia to come.

It stood on sturdy legs of river-smoothed granite, boulders hauled from the mud to glint, sleek and grey, where the chosen forms of moss had not been planted into the painstakingly carved niches of its surface. The idol itself was of limestone, protected from rain-wear by a similar impregnation of lichens and clambering pygmy bromeliads, as was the platform on which it rested. Curvilinear in form. Scratched into shape so delicately it seemed to have [i]slid[/i] into existence, stone made into calligrapher's ink. A three-dimensional rune, perhaps? Cubist ode to the shape of a summer cumulus? Clairvoyant imitation of the skeletal iron ruins of skyscrapers yet to come to this world? Every angle of viewing was unique. It was almost as refined as a living body, and it was one of many.

Not so very far beyond, a string of thin vines clicked and rang as the breeze played with the ornaments adorning it. Weeks had passed. Some had disappeared into the extensive trail of work that now filled the region, but they had been replaced by many more, gleaned from land and sea, and there was little unadorned space remaining around the First Sculptor's neck. 

Gentle zephyrs played in the sand of this dune-flowing region south of the Shimmering Sea, and the Sculptor who had been Fishbones joined them, waltzing over the land in a path of flowing recurves. Its feet were sharply pointed claws, better adapted for the ice of the tundra or for finding purchase in the gravelly mountains or mangrove forests, but the Sculptor was not without options, and it folded its legs and slithered gracefully on with undulations of tails and belly.

[color=f6989d][i]Fishbones. Pale, flexible and strong. Supportive and sharp.[/i][/color] It had still been a good name in Heartworm's eyes, long ago. The First Sculptor no longer applied such strict meaning to it. Names and pronouns were but a single leaf, growing, twisting, changing and eventually falling away from the grand eucalypt of an individual's identity. Fishbones? Male? Yes, Fishbones suited it well, today. Tomorrow, perhaps, would be different, or tomorrow, perhaps, would be similar. Life is a joy of [i]many[/i] songs, and we must dance as we listen.

A hill. This one stood in virgin land, and the time was right, Fishbones knew, to consummate the intersection of inspiration and artist. Jvan would agree. Fishbones whistled to her across the ether, and Jvan sang back in kind, as a mother to a grown child.

A hill, yes; A unique and inseparable part of the terrain. This one was old, its soil eroded to expose porous limestone that Fishbones gladly chipped 'his' pointed feet into. Swaying rapidly to gain momentum, the Sculptor followed a helical path upwards, exchanging time for an exceptional panoramic view of the area. The bifurcation of a hain cranium had blessed him with not only a braincase of more than double capacity but a full set of eight eyes without a single blind spot. The only thing Fishbones didn't see was at the top of the hill, and that was quickly reached.

Life? Perhaps. Certainly not organic. Crouching into a tense defensive stance so low to the ground as to seem almost restful, the Sculptor observed as the thickset creatures grazed, though the grass was scant and reedy. Oh, no? They weren't picking at the grass at all, but scraping away layers of exposed, cinereous rock. That is, those that weren't looking back. They scrutinised Fishbones with simple eyes. Not so simple as to be bestial. No, there was some quality about the Sculptor that they were responding to... Consciously. [i]Emotively[/i].

The Sculptor's entire body began to shiver with excitement.

[color=9e0b0f][i]They are called Urtelem,[/i][/color] whispered a voice.

Taking delicate steps, shedding caution with every spiraculous breath, Fishbones stepped close enough to lay a gentle claw on the forehead of a young, curious bundle of smiling stone. The girl-child had never seen anything so sinuously sturdy. The artist had never seen anything so keenly curious about his body without being sickened by it. Many hain-families had lately been emboldened, for their tools had improved a hundredfold, and weapons among them. The foolhardy and courageously violent were always put down with swift ease, but their pacified remains were gorgeous. There was hainshell on the clicking necklace. A pair of delicate pincers took hold of it and eased it around the tiny elemental. An experiment, a step in the dark, a bleb of paint on the wall simply to see what it looked like.

The sculptor stared with detail-feasting eyes and strained every fibre of its body to listen as the Urtelem took the elaborate necklace in hand and, finding that it made a sound, beat it with budding palms in order to amuse itself.

That night, the First Sculptor slept little, for new names and projects filled its mind and made it restless for creation, and when it finally nestled between the solemn shapes of the Stone Men its dreams soared high into Mirage, where it worked with clay hands to fill an easel with glittering minerals and stood over the whole world in readiness to produce a masterpiece. It rippled wordless, melodic thoughts over the surface of the Gap, gushing out its fervor to work with this new material it had found. The All-Beauty caught its tune in hers and relayed it out across the world, where, in many places and many bodies, the young Sculptors pricked their ears and joined her.

Together the transcendent artists of Galbar formed a choir that night, and the name of their hymn was Potential.

[center]* * * * *[/center]

Jvan hummed along with her children, a mutual lullaby, comforting and hopeful for the progress of a new day. The [b]Mason[/b]'s offspring were an admirable work. Modest, quite, and yet not without the expressive flush of core emotional traits. [color=9e0b0f][i]And practical. An ornate tool, though I suppose he intended them to be rugged.[/i][/color]

There was no doubt that Teknall had constructed the Urtelem to be entrusted with a crucial duty on Galbar. As the planet grew brighter, the danger of slipping from complex contrast into a serious clash escalated, and the continuation of divine craft became a more delicate affair. White giants, ashlings, ants, and now even the hain had become uncompromising elements that required buffering tones if they were to be integrated into the overall composite of life.

Indeed, the world had become quite harsh to its minorities, as many heterogenous populations do. The Sculptors danced and twirled over the surface of the world in rising numbers- [color=9e0b0f][i]Total of eleventy-two adults, and six hundred, forty and nine adolescents.[/i][/color] Even as their progeny began to disperse worldwide with the transcendence of the first fluid-borne Djinni into the fold, a localised but fleet-footed threat had crawled out of the Deepwood to join that posed by the [b]Dawn-Ant[/b].

Of the new demigod, the [b]Wild Beau[/b], Jvan knew little, save what she had seen through Navy's eye in the moment before that, too, had been split open and its contents splattered over the savannah. [color=9e0b0f][i]Another puzzle... One that I'd enjoy unravelling if he wasn't such a risk.[/i][/color] A spiel over the ugliness of the fiberling, and then a flaunty, saucy [i]danse macabre[/i]. [color=9e0b0f][i]Well, I can't deny that he's a cute boy, but...[/i][/color] That was far too little information to act upon, or on which to neglect action. Power unchained could not be ignored. Who had created this magnificent, violent specimen? The [b]Madgod[/b]? The [b]Soul-Weaver[/b]? Perhaps even, in imitation of his own vanity, the [b]Lord of Change[/b]? It was impossible to tell. [color=9e0b0f][i]He is like... A perfect opposite to Vulamera. Outstandingly beautiful in form, wise enough to understand and display it... And yet while the expressionless Vulamera has a wondrous eye for design, the Beau only destroys.[/i][/color]

Jvan wondered what the [b]Shadow of Revelation[/b] had been up to after the incident with Perfectus. [color=9e0b0f][i]Probably nothing important.[/i][/color]

In any case, she had a rather different guest to attend to.

The [b]Glass Diva[/b] made an interesting figure, standing in the shadow of the god's gargantuan, cavern-riddled body. Fungal jungle accompanied by a myriad of other branching plants and animals had long since overgrown her as kelp and coral dressed her submerged half, but the carmine light of divinity was still clearly visible, and as Notte's eyes looked into the vast glow, Jvan looked right back. [color=9e0b0f][i]Meimu is cute, and dresses opulently; but this niece of mine turns heads by accentuating her own body. Clever contrast, Ilunabar![/i][/color]

She listened to Notte's request with the respect and keen interest of a curious, not entirely innocuous aunt. When the map was offered, an elongated, sleek silver fiberling emerged from the shining red depths to collect it, sinuous and elegant, like horsehair. Jvan was far from finished with that race, and the habitat she had become hosted several experimental breeds. Words pulsed vividly from the body, but manifested in a rather quiet voice, for a God.

[color=9e0b0f]"The race of Man... What a piece of work. In form and moving, express and admirable. In action, how like an Avatar; in apprehension, how like a... In any case, this is an admirable piece of information, Notte, and I'm grateful! ...And quite curious. Who made these?"[/color] Musing aloud by the end of her sentence, Jvan was truthfully curious about the newcomers and their origins, but it was Notte herself who interested her far more. Navy had never again had the chance to converse with Meimu. Here, then, was the Engineer's first opportunity to find out how exactly the [b]Muse[/b] stitched together her agents... It would be far from boring. Ilunabar did not simply create servile minds, Jvan guessed. She was the type to write characters.

For now, there was a wish to be granted, and it was the kind of gift the All-Beauty was pleased to give. [color=9e0b0f]"Simple threads? Notte, friend, I am a creator-deity, a living laboratory. The finest materials are always harvested from flesh... You ask for a crop, but [i]I will give you a Garden![/i]"[/color]

The black, sandy stone of the peninsula thrummed intimately beneath the Avatar's feet as physics thinned and the gently pulsating Other rose up like a tide. A spider's web of cracks radiated from her position, falling into the perfect circular and semi-circular interconnected runes that Ilunabar favoured. A small, lonely white bud emerged before the guest, imitating the very roses from which Meimu had risen. There was a moment's pause. The bud bloomed, and the ground bloomed with it.

The bulb exploded into a flurry of soft, skeletal white lace strands plaited into a spiralling floret, so light that it flew upwards into the air, followed by a million others. High spires and curled horns of trees and not-trees corkscrewed from the earth, their bark softly splitting into folds and fibers, their flowers dripping with rich dye. Mycelia carpeted the once salt-barren surface with pastel blues, yellows and pinks that spiralled as the fungi competed for space. From above drifted five-winged bird-like invertebrates with no name, displaying to one another with translucent tail feathers like flowing waves of silk suspended in water. Iridescent velvet-worms rippled up and down through the grove on legs that shifted hue as they moved, and sloughed their skins to leave gleaming, elastic residue. Fluffy spinster-spiders danced between the trees, leaving webs that caught whatever light fell on them and glowed with it. Hundreds of tiny fiberlings flitted around, mostly in uncoloured silver and white. A thousand forms of life sprung into the world around Notte, each offering a unique thread into an overgrown laboratory that produced simply by existing.

[color=9e0b0f]"I hope these will comfort and excite you, Notte. If not, well, I am always creating more, and my body has many doors. Just take heed of this- This fabric is adaptable and can hold many shapes and dyes, but though I like to make all of my art malleable, this garden doesn't yet have a strongly divine touch. The fashion and colour I leave to you and your mother. Pass on my regards."[/color] 

Jvan's tone changed, and the carmine light seemed to creep towards Notte in a pale fog, shivering with each word. [color=9e0b0f]"And now, dear niece, it's my turn to be curious, not about what you can do for me, but about who you [i]are[/i]."[/color] The left side of the Avatar's manifested body dwindled and faded out of view, exposing the lines of a skeleton, heart and lungs, revealing her for what Jvan knew she was: A half. From somewhere distant, the mirror-split half of Notte dispersed similarly, and flowed back together here to complete the body and bring her fully into the presence of the God. [color=9e0b0f]"Dividing the body is a simple trick, and as the Engineer of Flesh, I approve of it. Make one out of many. What interests me, Notte, is what it says about [i]you[/i]."[/color]

Was it possible for a disembodied voice borne on a glow to smile? Jvan made it seem easy.

[color=9e0b0f]"You have duties here on your mother's business, which I appreciate. But you have other errands you consider just as important, for yourself. Ulterior motives. Independence. Tell me, Notte, what projects are you tinkering with? What lusts do you hide and what wrath do you nurse? Who exactly did you steal these humans from? 

"I like this world we've made, girl. It's full of intrigue."[/color]

[center]* * * * *[/center]

The Shattered Plains was not a friendly environment, and Violet did not like its neighbours.

Vestec's essence reigned strong, and the ashen bodies of the Imbalancers took on an unprecedented level of dominance here. It was disgusting, and Violet had always wanted to leave, despite what the eye within it commanded. The place was so perverse that there was more chaotic imbalance than there was ordinary succession of life, and the purple fiberling found itself in a situation that worked strange things on its psyche: So endless was the work that had to be done to try and cleanse even a small corner of this place from destruction that Violet had become a thing that broke other things with an entirely unique level of abandon. As centuries wound down, the act left it with a bitter heart, and the fiberling had almost forgotten how to play.

Somewhere in the distance, the Unholy Presence had showed up again, as it sometimes did, and Violet ignored it aggressively. Violet continued to ignore it as a second divinity joined it and disappeared. By the time its eye finally compelled the resisting entity to investigate, there were at least three forms of godly presence in the broken plain and other sources of energy besides, churning reality around themselves so harshly that the sky turned black and roared at a reddened earth.

So much distaste for the smell of deity had crept into Violet that it almost preferred the mind-numbing hunt for ashlings to the absurd changes to the environment, to whatever arbitrary task its creator had in store now. Perhaps its anger jinxed it, because the optic fiberling didn't even come close.

The storm howled, and a spear of refined lightning rained to earth with a hundred others. The primordial energy struck neither Violet nor anywhere within a hundred metres of it, but the flash of plasma upon impact was still close enough to overwhelm its intangible body and blind its Other-borne sense of sight, and the stone of Galbar exploded like water, flinging the crippled organism away. Still more destruction came, before even a millisecond had passed, for drawn by its mindless task to smite and break a supreme spirit, the dissipating bolt lanced out white filaments of energy in all directions. One of them managed to home into the only Jvanic Eye within the region.

Having barely even begun on its trajectory, Violet was impaled on a string of divine willpower that pierced both eye and ovary and blasted its body apart on the wind. By an inevitable fluke, the All-Beauty was forever barred from knowing what truly took place on the Day of Empire.

Some mass remained. Blind, excommunicated, and confused, one bitter clump of fibrous mass remained to tie Violet's true body to Galbar. It collapsed somewhere in the desert and curled into a languid bundle, unfeeling, listening to the quaking earth as the gods shouted while rudiments of vision began to return.

Shattered and yet born anew, it was Violet that bore witness to the birth of the [b]Sovereign Emperor[/b]. Not an Envoy of the All-Beauty nor a Jvanic Eye, not a mute and simple Fiberling, but [i]Violet[/i], bearer of a memory that, deep inside, would one day be fanned into a flame.

A free individual.

[center]* * * * *[/center]

The village was silent. Stillness of night, gentle sunshine of day... Heartworm found it a thoroughly relaxing atmosphere to work in. The only stir in the air other than the occasional autumn breeze was the breath of twenty-six hain, dipping in and out of dreams in their sedated, collective doze. [i][color=f6989d]Some might consider me merciful.[/color][/i] The Horrorsome Engineer had not even injured a single one.

They hung like ripe fruit clustered limply upon a vine, like a row of corpses strung from the same gallows. The villagers' feet dangled over the ground, and the top of each hain's cranial exoskeleton had been tidily opened up to admit fusion with the large, fluid-filled tumour. They all shared the medium with the worm that swam through it like a parasite in a sagging gut. Heartworm perused their semiconscious brains from above, linking them together and splitting them apart, adding permanent infrastructure with each pass. It was restful stuff, compared to the other project that fluttered in a separate womb, and still it was full of promise.

[i][color=f6989d]The other project. A rather more ambitious undertaking.[/color][/i] So much time did Heartworm find itself devoting to the far larger of the two vesicles that, as the final stages of preparation took place, the bed of fitfully dreaming hain became a leiure activity in comparison.

There were tens of thousands of finished copies of them by the time the Holiest Mangle was ready to unveil the two-part masterwork, and each one had been painstakingly fertilised in advance. Nurtured by the vast womb, they already carried the eggs of the next generation. Their population would explode high into the millions within decades of release. [color=f6989d][i]Much like the insects I took them from.[/i][/color]

Indeed, the glamorous samples from which the project took its roots had been easy to find. Most of them were already present in the Heartworm's expansive mobile library of genetic data and desiccated organic remains. They didn't take up much space, and could be stacked together like a deck of cards. [i][color=f6989d]Wings.[/color][/i] Wings, yes, of moths and imagines, of dragon-darters and mantids, beetles, locusts, and fruit flies. Wings of odd things on distant migrations from the Deepwood, and things odder still designed by the Stitcher itself in adoration of the Rottenbone's progeny.

For this archetype, Heartworm had selected a name: [i]Faery[/i].

Each one was built out of wings, usually at least six, ranging into thirty or more. Some radiated helically from their origin and others were arranged with bilateral symmetry. They came in many morphs and colours, each growing only the wings of its own breed, the patterns mixing upon hybridisation. At their heart lay a faintly fluorescent core, a fragile, intricate knot of tiny muscles and organs transplanted from samples gathered in the Other, from which flowed the preternatural blood that inflated their veins. And from this core hung a single compass blade edged with the faintest trace of obsidian ichor.

Each blade of the Needle Fae was about half again the length of the individual's longest wing. It was flexible but superbly strong, and metallic in nature, like a rapier. It was the implement of life and death. The sheen of fluid midnight ink that coated it stained as deeply as guilt itself. It was the seed of Fae reproduction, and with it the strong and beautiful mated among themselves. The weak and drab would not be treated with such privilege. For them, the sword of a superior Needle Fae would herald only swift butchery.

The inspiration for this species that would war against itself eternally, Heartworm would admit, had come from the [b]Alluring One[/b], he who sliced beauty out of anything less exciting than himself. Our Lord Mutilation, however, is not just an artist but an engineer, as its divine sire always styled herself, and the population dynamics of the Needle Fae were not nearly so arbitrary as the dance of the Wild Beau. [color=f6989d][i]I am not a destructive god. I do this to protect my world.[/i][/color]

Needle Fae eat light, heat, and electricity. What matter they need to grow is siphoned from air, puddled from mud, or sucked from the Gap. They are omnisynthetic, and they have almost no flesh on which predators may sustain themselves. Without the harshest possible degree of self-annihilation or disease symbiosis, just a few millenia would see the Needle Fae grow exponentially, until the whole of Galbar's atmosphere disappeared under a metres-thick layer of faery. [color=f6989d][i]That would be... Entertaining, but unacceptable in the highest degree.[/i][/color] So the Needle Fae would consume themselves eternally, like the Ourobouros of myth, but they would do so at breakneck speed until equilibrium was established.

Only one, single force could override the nature of the Faery Duellists, and cause them to safely swarm: The voice of a Sculptor.

[color=f6989d][i]Yes. This work is good.[/i][/color]

And at last it was [url=http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/11/blooms-of-insect-wings-created-by-photographer-seb-janiak/]complete[/url].

Depositing first the thick, sealed vesicle of the Needle Fae, Heartworm then split and ejected the final product it had wrought from the Hain. They were fused by the skull, all of them, to a central, bloated bladder of billowing, gaseous energy, and as the afterbirth flowed away they began to wake up, too tired to comprehend, too weak to scream. Their retinas failed to focus from lack of use, and their flopped limbs remain numb. [color=f6989d][i]They won't have a chance to wake up,[/i][/color] thought Heartworm, without any emotional attachment to the issue.

The Emancipator left both of its works and floated on. As it disappeared into the sunset, the churning Other-breath within the bladder reached critical mass, ignited in a carmine blaze of light, and exploded.

[center]* * * * *[/center]

For a hundred miles around the place where a Hain village had suddenly become a crater bay on the south of the Shimmering Sea did the shock-sound of that eruption carry, bearing on its winds the first Faery generation and scattering it into the jetstream and over the whole face of the planet.

The Needle Fae were not the only thing that visceral blast spread. From the neural matter of the hain who had been sacrificed for the task had grown viral spores, protected by and freed from an immensely durable biochemical capsule as they were blown into the atmosphere. These spores were not self-perpetuating, and they did not need to be. Where other such viroid entities only injected genetic material to reproduce, Heartworm's artwork instead delivered a payload of rapidly-integrated, innocuously functional genetic machinery into the hain. These genes were dominant and versatile, and just a few generations would see them implanted deeply into the species.

[color=f6989d][i]Do they fear the Other?[/i][/color] Thus had Heartworm mused. [color=f6989d][i]Very well, but let them know it first.[/i][/color]

Each and every hain carrying these genes would feel a pull, in their heart, to brave what made them shudder. To take to themselves that which they knew would inflict pain, and emerge wiser. Many would regret what they did. Some would never do it at all. A few would rejoice in it and repeat the trial on every moult. Most would accept their conflicting natural instincts as they accepted the other realities of life- Through the trial of adolescence.

As the alleles rushed into the nostrils of almost every hain in the southern hemisphere and many more besides, a new and unifying tradition grew within them. Upon coming of age, a hain will take up the ink-slicked blade of a Faery, for such creatures are not sparse, and easily slain. The young hain will take this needle upon itself, and, guided by instinct, etch into its body the sharp, flowing motifs of a Forest Beyond, a Sea Beneath the Sea, a Starless Heaven, an Other- A Cancer That Breathes.

The designs are frightening and undignified, but they remain for twenty moons, until the hainshell of childhood is finally sloughed and the individual emerges as an honoured adult. The detestation of Jvanic material does not truly fade. It never will. But for a brief moment of life, almost every hain will know that they are stronger than this fear, that they have accepted and overcome it once and they will overcome it again.

The mature members of this race now canoed through the inlets of the Fractal Sea with the ambition and confidence with which they pioneered all other rivers and oceans. They understood their phobia for what it was, and no longer attached superstition to the subject of their revulsion. No longer would their distaste fill them with so much ire that they would throw themselves against a Sculptor knowing it would kill them. Fiberlings were now barred from enjoying the keenest aspect of their presence that instilled shock and shivers in the hain, but would be hunted on even ground. Needle Fae would not be cursed as apparitions, but harvested eagerly, their blades used for more conventionally beautiful tattoos and a veritable myriad of other functions besides, for the material was much more valuable in practice than the ease of killing a faery implied.

Heartworm had not cursed the Hain. It had blessed them.

[color=f6989d][i]Some might consider me merciful.[/i][/color]

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The Valley of Peace, some people might say, had done Amber a world of good. Weirder people might call its effects stifling.

Elsewhere and some time ago, Scarlet had partaken in the truest of fiberling games- The taunting and spooking of sentients. The red fiberling and its friends had nipped at the heels of the hain tribe gleefully, taking a child here and an adult there, breaking such little things as it could afford without culling the population or impeding the growth of its society. Balance in all things. More recently, Cyan had ceased to do something rather different and strange, repelling its siblings and playing with a not-so-different tribe with distinctly uncharacteristic placidity and empathy. From the natural path of Scarlet to the odd extreme of its bluer kin, Amber had found an odd midpoint in temperament.

Colourful mists and pastel trees filled the pale orange creature's senses, and they gave it a kind of languid calm. It still compressed itself and pounced, as was its nature. Perversion had entered its hunts, however, to the point where it carelessly defied the nature of a free predator and no longer ended a chase with death. Amber rather played extended and frightening games of tag. When it jumped and chased a furred animal, it ran it down in the old way, as a leopard does, and when its otherworldly engine of energy surpassed the finite stamina of the animal, it grabbed them- Then tugged out a chunk of hair, and simply left.

The conclusion of events had an element of surreality. The 'prey' stood up frightened and exhausted but very much alive, having received nothing but an adrenaline rush and a rough bald patch. Amber kept its sizeable Other-brain at least passably active in this way without delving into the natural course of action for a fiberling its size. Even when storm or landslide wrought imbalance that could only be righted by culling a competitor to allow another species to recover, Amber simply suffocated what the numbers had marked.

Changes all that were not, within the Vale of the [b]Mother[/b], so strange. But the peach-coloured entity would not spend much longer in this pacifying luxury. Its Eye called it elsewhere, and it followed.

Not without some feelings of muffled regret. Odd things had been emerging from the mountains, lately. Lively, pretty things! They were the biggest species Amber had ever seen airborne, far larger than the occasional raven or pair of tender birbs. Two arms, two legs, white wings... And crowned on the face by the most delicious-looking filaments Amber had ever seen. Its hunger instinct had started to dull with years spent in this place, however, and while Navy in its magnificent arrogance- May its lack of a soul rest in peace- Would have climbed mountains for the sake of pouncing the first flying humanoid it saw, Amber simply marked them as worth waiting on an opportunity for. Now that the call had come to depart, some other, smaller fiberling would have the privilege of being the first to steal a tuft of angelic hair.

Clearly, the price of peace was procrastination.

[hider=No Longer Canon]
Flowing out from between the mountains via a river valley, careful not to touch the water, Amber travelled out to the more normally forested foothills, and from there, onwards. 

As it started to close in on the [b]Great Artisan[/b]'s location, Teknall took notice by his divine sense. Running at incredible speeds, not possible for a mortal Hain, he left Gerrik behind at their camp and intercepted the Fiberling before it could make it over the horizon. Teknall drew up to the yellow Fiberling and asked, [color=965716]"You're following me, so here I am. What is it, Jvan?"[/color]

It was only the Jvanic Eye within the optic fiberling that identified the wanderer. In form, he was not so different to the strong hunter-gatherers to which he passed on his knowledge, though he stood with a confidence no ordinary hain commanded in the face of such a morass of hair. Cowed by the change of role, Amber stopped abruptly, having just gotten into the rhythm of a long, leisurely stroll in the sun. Its body shuffled to eject a fluttering mouth.

[color=9e0b0f]"Hello again, Brother Mason. Have you found the new race as full of potential as I thought you might? A throwing-club one of my Sculptors inherited tells me [i]someone's[/i] been teaching them.

"Yes... They were Toun's offspring originally, but we create and we move on, and our work is continued by others. Teknall, I find myself more and more enamoured with the Urtelem, and, again, with your incredible foresight. The world is growing crowded, as we knew it would, and though crowds are cozy, they are also dangerous. My children sing of the acceptance they receive from yours', which they struggle to find among other races.

"You have chosen an apprentice from those you love, brother, and I want your permission to chose one from your fold likewise. Let's forge a bond between Sculptor and Stone that they will both appreciate. Please, Teknall, teach the Urtelem to dance their thoughts with hand and body, so that they can share fellowship of language with the Sculptors, and I will give them the gift of balance and coordination as a herd. With bonds of language and cognition between themselves, and my own children among them, they'll express themselves with art and artifice, and... And I don't know what will happen then! But I want to find out, brother. I want to [i]see[/i] it.

"Will you grant me this?"[/color]
[/hider]


[hider=Summary]The First Sculptor continues to explore the world it inhabits. It eventually finds a herd of Urtelem. They fill it with inspiration and it considers the potential they have for use as tools.

Jvan considers the Urtelem and thinks them a charming and practical addition to Galbar in the face of increasing racial tensions.

Jvan considers what little she knows of Allure and decides that he will soon warrant investigation, because despite his beauty he seems to do a lot of destroying.

Notte arrives, and Jvan is grateful to find out about humans. Upon her request the Textile Garden is created, a grove full of all kinds of fiber-producing life forms with the potential to be 'dyed' by the magic of other gods.

Eager for any hot goss she can get, Jvan fuses Notte back into a single body and asks what kind of business she's been up to while still running errands for her mother. She also asks about who or where humans were made.

Violet is established to have been emotionally stunted by repeatedly having to clash with ashlings on the Shattered Plain, and resists Jvan's imperative to investigate the supernatural phenomena that accompany what she doesn't know is the birth of Lifprasil. When it finally goes to learn more, a stray bolt from Zephyrion's storm strikes nearby, destroying both the Jvanic Eye and ovary of angels that linked Violet to Jvan and stripping it of most of its mass. Violet survives, however, and some piece- A 'memory'- of the divine essence flowing around at the time latches on to the fiberling. The long-term effects of this remain unknown.

Heartworm creates Needle Fae, a small, non-sentient, rapidly reproducing but highly self-destructive species designed to help Sculptors protect themselves.

Needle Fae protect Sculptors in more ways than one, however. Using neural matter from the hain village that Cyan once shared, Heartworm creates viroid particles that spread new genes into the hain population.

Using these genes, Heartworm creates the Beautification of the Flesh, a tradition of body art shared by most hain societies. Upon the ritual end of childhood, hain catch a Needle Fae and use it to tattoo themselves heavily for one moult. Due to the origin of the genes and the source of the ink, these first tattoos are inherently Jvanic in nature, and the hain is therefore forced to cover itself in symbols of what it instinctively fears. Hain emerge from this two-year ordeal as ritually accepted adults, with a much wiser understanding of the irrationality of their anti-Jvanic instincts.

Amber is established to have become a lazy li'l snitch with rather confused and dulled instincts after millenia of living as a torment-loving species in the Valley of Peace. Its weakened instincts result in missing out on the chance to examine the newborn angels before it is instructed to seek out Teknall.

[s]Via Amber, Jvan asks Teknall to teach non-verbal language to the Urtelem so that they can act as working partners to the Sculptors, promising to add to their abilities of coordination and planning in return. It's a bit of an awkward request, but give her a break, she got emotional for a second there.[/s] This segment had some continuity errors and is in the process of being collaboratively revised.

[hider=Original redaction]Flowing out from between the mountains via a river valley, careful not to touch the water, Amber travelled out to the more normally forested foothills, and from there, onwards. Jvan had timed her order well, and the envoy did not have to seek long before it found another pair of wanderers, the image of whom had originated in a now-overgrown gazebo within the boundaries of the very valley it had just departed.

By choice Stone Chipper did not strike more superior an image than that of his apprentice, whose moults had left porcelain plates that bulged with the hidden muscle of a craftshain and traveller, a mortal still. It was only the Jvanic Eye within the optic fiberling that identified the two wanderers, and Amber found itself rather surprised to be stopping, having just gotten into the rhythm of a long, leisurely stroll in the sun.

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

"Hello again, Brother Mason. I see you've adopted a son- Of sorts, I guess..? In any case, I'll keenly accept you as a nephew, Gerrik, if you so desire to take that step. Has your master found your kin as full of potential as I thought he might? A throwing-club one of my Sculptors inherited tells me someone's been teaching them."[/hider]

[b]1 Might spent on creating and dispersing the Needle Fae
1 Free Point spent to nurture the Textile Grove into being
Free Action taken to teach body art to the hain as a rite of passage

8 Might Remaining
1 Free Point Remaining
Level Three[/b][/hider]