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[colour=lightseagreen][h1][b][i]Ashalla[/i][/b][/h1]
[b]Goddess of Oceans, Storms and Ice[/b][/colour]
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Ashalla pulsed through the ocean. She needed to find Shengshi, for there were important matters that she needed to talk to Shengshi about. But a taste she had thought she would never taste again stopped her in her tracks.

A storm gathered overhead, dozens of squalls flickering into existence, as a watery pseudopod lifted a single fish from the water. Its scales were marred by blotches of white and black and it swam in idle lifeless circles in the quivering limb. The storm and sea which was Ashalla cast her taste further, and she found that there were similarly afflicted plants and animals, and also many tainted white motes.

The storm above intensified. A bolt of lightning seared the world in half and struck the infected fish in Ashalla's grip, obliterating it. In the sea around her, the kelp which had been infected snapped frozen then shattered into a billion shards, stopping them from spreading the decay.

[colour=lightseagreen][b]"He had said it would not make any more,"[/b][/colour] roared a voice like a hurricane. Yet the plague she now witnessed made the previous blight seem like a gentle trickle. Lightning fell like rain, the thunder roaring with Ashalla's fury, each bolt destroying a Mar mote. Yet the motes were far more numerous than Ashalla's lightning bolts, and the lightning soon abated. [colour=lightseagreen][b]"This must cease."[/b][/colour]

At a whim, the water which Ashalla touched bloomed with microscopic plankton; billions of cheap living beings holding minute souls. A Mar mote drifting past was attracted to the algal bloom and entered into one of the creatures. In seconds the single plankter's soul frayed away and the creature withered and died, but in doing so the Mar mote had been expended. More motes drifted past and were absorbed by plankton. Ashalla swam and created more plankton. Many of the Mar motes would be carried by the winds over the ocean and never touch the plankton, but many more would be absorbed by this sacrificial buffer of life, reducing the grim harvest of the Mar Tree.

Before Ashalla could get far, she saw a dreadful sight in the sky. Lines of fire streaked through the heavens. Meteors, falling from Veradax. She had seen them before, but never in such numbers since the shattered moon had been created. Many of the lines of fire winked out as quickly as they had appeared, but Ashalla watched as one line kept falling, punching through the Blue then streaking down to the horizon like a bolt of lightning. There was a bright flash where it landed, and several seconds later a shockwave tore through the water where Ashalla was, followed by a fiery-hot blast wave in the air. As a billowing cloud of steam rose and spread from the point of impact, a tsunami washed outwards. Yet as the wave passed Ashalla it was stilled by her will.

The meteors continued to fall. That one which had struck before with enough force to level a city was an outlier - very few meteoroids of that size or larger were close to Galbar yet - but Ashalla still felt the smaller impacts and tasted the moon-dust and orvium.

Ashalla was not too concerned for the damage this bombardment would cause to her ocean. The water absorbed the impacts and rebounded gracefully. In a few hours the only evidence of even the largest meteorite strike would be the rock sitting on the ocean floor and a slightly higher concentration of dust in the water. But this was an assault on her domain all the same, and it stoked her rage even more.

Ashalla looked to the sky, and there she saw the full moon of Veradax in all its darkness, thin streaks of fire radiating around it. The moon hovered above the Maelstrom, currently hidden from view far beyond the horizon. The Mar motes, asteroid bombardment and broken promise were each a reason in itself for Ashalla to be spurred into vengeful action. So Ashalla swam towards the Maelstrom, plankton and squalls in her wake.

[hider=Summary]
Ashalla notices the Mar Plague and the asteroid bombardment and is ABSOLUTELY LIVID.

Ashalla makes some plankton blooms to absorb some of the Mar motes (0 MP, Oceans Discount).

She heads towards the Maelstrom.
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