[center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/7f28c785-bb7c-4826-8dbd-4f45a4e28f0c.png[/img]
[color=Peru][b]The Great Artisan, Divine Mason, Builder of Civilisations
Level 5 God of Crafting (Masonry, Carpentry, Smithing)[/b]
13.5 Might & 1 Free Point[/color][/center]

Teknall stood on the north-west shore of the Metatic Ocean, standing on ground which had been violently melted then re-solidified. To his left was the ocean, and far to his right was a glittering white forest of Acalya. Somewhere up ahead was a blinding white smear of light- the incandescence from Goliath's flamethrower in action.

Goliath had made good progress, but the Acalya was more stubborn than he had anticipated, and the Xerxian refugees were getting closer with every passing day. While Goliath was clearing the Acalya at the predicted rate, Teknall had noticed a few factors which made that rate inadequate. The spores carried a fair distance if the wind was favourable, and while the Sculptor and Urtelem guardians were able to uproot any spores which took root in small, individual plants, these few spores could still have a detrimental effect on passing creatures. Complicating matters was that the Acalya seemed to grow just as well underwater as it did in open air, and that had expanded the Acalya's reach to where Goliath's flamethrower struggled to cleanse it.

So Teknall needed to take action. Adamantine maul in hand, Teknall swelled in size as he allowed his divine radiance to manifest, and waded into the ocean. At that time Goliath stopped what it was doing and flew off, seeking out another forest to cleanse. Teknall kept wading, going deeper, the water soon coming up over his head. And he kept walking until he had reached the creeping edge of the Acalya's submarine advance.

There, Teknall raised his maul, then with a single forceful blow drove the tip into the seabed. From that blow the earth trembled and the ground cracked and fractured. Then it seemed that nothing more happened, although Teknall knew otherwise. Swiftly, Teknall withdrew the maul from the ground and walked out of the ocean. When he reached the shore, he did not stop, and continued heading inland.

About two minutes after Teknall had struck the ground, a second earthquake rumbled. Then there was an explosion.

Only now did Teknall stop and turn and watch. A colossal cloud of steam rose from the ocean where he had struck the ground. A second explosion rumbled, and more steam rose, this time mixed with flying chunks of pumice. A third explosion, then another, and the explosions fused together into a continuous roar. The water vapour, now mixed with a fine dust, formed a colossal black cloud, already bristling with lightning and ashen rain, which would have rivalled the storms of even the greatest djinn. A great wind driven by the updraft blew inland, against the crystalline forest.

The eruption continued to rumble, until a few minutes later lashings of a viscous red liquid coated in black burst above the surface of the water. The molten stone continued to spurt upwards and outwards, as though an artery of the earth had been severed. And the eruption continued to pour out a continuous supply of exploding lava. And this lava collected and cooled, slowly building up a mound of igneous stone, which eventually poked its way above the surface of the ocean. And the eruption continued unabated, continuing to climb.

Teknall had created a volcano, and this volcano would smother the Acalya forest in this region. The Acalya on the seabed would be smothered in lava and buried under hundreds of metres of solid rock, the volcanic fallout would provide another barrier to the Acalya's advance, and the new mountain would prevent the aerial spread of Acalya spores past it. Additionally, the foreboding volcanic storm should deter the Xerxian refugees from settling in this region, and in time the volcanic soil would provide fertile farming grounds for local civilisations.

It had been a fairly brutish solution. The creation of the volcano had created a small tidal wave (an outcome he had been careful to mitigate although not eliminate by minimising how much the earth had been suddenly shifted by the earthquakes), which might disrupt some nearby coastal villages, although not more severely than the annual monsoons. A volcano also lacked finesse. But on such short notice, with the refugees not far away, it had been the best solution available to him.

With that time-sensitive issue dealt with, Teknall disappeared.

[hr]

Teknall wasn't simply teleporting away. He actually wanted to disappear, at least as far as the senses of the other gods were concerned. 'A third deity in white, with metal creatures all around. Watching you.' How could he have been so incautious as to allow someone to spy on him like that? It had been just as well that he hadn't said outright what he had intended to use the Orbs of Darkness for, or else Logos would have certainly killed him. But if he had been listening, then Logos would know that Teknall was seeking the Orbs of Darkness, and being the strategist he was Logos could probably decipher at least part of Teknall's purpose. Teknall had to assume the worst- that Logos knew he was seeking the Orbs of Darkness. Teknall's only advantage, he hoped, was that Logos didn't know [i]where[/i] any of the Orbs were, while Teknall did. If Logos had managed to acquire that knowledge, then it would be better for him to abandon the project all together, but this risk had to be taken if Teknall was ever to be able to stand up to Logos.

So Teknall needed to be [i]certain[/i] that he wasn't being followed. He needed to ensure that his divine trail could not be traced to his destination. So he devised a strategy. Teknall teleported into the Celestial Citadel, one of the first Holy Sites in the Universe. Many gods had travelled these halls, and it was thick with divine essence. When Teknall appeared, he exerted every effort to conceal his own divine essence, and to hide the trail he left. In the halls of the Celestial Citadel, this ultra-faint trail would be nigh impossible to detect against the divinity oozing from the walls.

Having spent barely a few seconds in the Celestial Citadel, he teleported away again, manifesting quietly next to the Cube in New Chronos. Invisible even to divine eyes, Teknall hid his trail and teleported again, going to the Hilt. Then the Oath of Stilldeath. Then Cornerstone.

He paused for a moment longer in Cornerstone. He had said he would visit, and while this was no time for sightseeing he could spare a second to observe. This landscape of flat porcelain tiles was populated by subjugated hain and strange automata of Tounic design. It reminded him of how the Celestial Citadel had been, mostly barren and sterile, much too large and grand for its few occupants, isolated from everything. Toun wasn't far off in saying that there wasn't much to see here. He could admire the architecture, and his creations, but that was about it. He disappeared again.

Deadwood Sepulchre. Wraith Stone (hey, Vestec seems to have made some changes around here). Valley of Peace. Pictaraika (it's interesting what Ilunabar did with the Darkened Spires. Perhaps I could learn something that will help). Ovaedis. That shattered cocoon of Slough's in the northern tundra forests blessed by Belruarc. To all these places of intense divine power Teknall went, and hid his divine trail as best as he could. All the while, he was also watching carefully, observing for the slightest hint of Logos' presence which could very well blow his cover. Finally, running out of Holy Sites, Teknall made one last step, but this time not to anywhere on Galbar, or even the Universe.

He entered his Workshop. In his private dimension, there was almost no way he could be followed. Even if Logos were to somehow follow his trail, it would be broken where he entered his Workshop, and even Logos shouldn't be able to follow him here. It might have been excessive to cover his tracks so thoroughly, but Teknall couldn't be too safe. What if Logos were able to enter his personal plane, given just the subtlest clues left behind when he teleported here? That could not be permitted, so Teknall had made sure to cover even his trail leading up to the Workshop.

As Teknall stood in the Workshop, he recalled the map of the Universe Phi had presented him. So vast, with its many galaxies, there were just 56 Orbs of Darkness drifting through it. Those Orbs may be stellar in scale, but compared to the Universe they were just specks. Without the map, finding them would have been nigh impossible. He picked one, then teleported one last time.

Teknall drifted in the void of space, far from Galbar or any other known object in the Universe. To one side was an infinite expanse of distant stars. To the other side was solid blackness, darker even than the unending night sky. The darkness eclipsed a circular patch of the starscape.

It was one of Julkofyr's Orbs of Darkness. The mark of Julkofyr's defiance against Logos and the Universe.

Deep space didn't give much sense of scale, but this Orb was massive. This particular Orb had a radius of one million kilometres, including its fuzzy shroud of oblivion. It was not the smallest, which were still bigger than planets, but it wasn't anywhere near the biggest, which could be trillions of kilometres across. The scale of the Orbs was truly cosmic, which meant even Teknall's godly Perception could observe only a tiny fraction of it at once.

Before coming here, Teknall had already run calculations from his imitation of the Universal Blueprint as to the physical properties of these Orbs. However, Jvan had revealed that Vowzra had tampered with these Orbs, converting them into one-way Gap portals, so Teknall would have to collect fresh data to determine their actual properties.

As a first test, he would simply throw an object into the Orb. Teknall pulled out his railgun, leveled his aim at the Orb (not that he could miss such a big target), and fired. The metal slug flew from the barrel and travelled in a straight line towards the darkness ahead.

The bullet entered the outer fringes of the Orb's field of influence, which extended beyond the shadows. As per the design in the Codex of Creation, the Orb's field of influence negated physics, which would in turn erase matter and energy from existence. But not every physical law was equally strong, and the field of influence was not uniformly potent. Travelling through the fringes of the Orb's field involved travelling through several layers with differing degrees of physics negation, all of which Teknall had calculated earlier.

The first fundamental force to disappear was gravity. Gravity, particle for particle, was the weakest of Logos' four fundamental forces, and as such the easiest to erase. Out here in deep space the effect of this was negligible, with less than a femtoNewton of force between Teknall and the bullet, the only two objects nearby. But it was this effect that would be the most useful to Teknall, if he could harness it.

The next fundamental force to disappear was the so-called weak nuclear force, which was the next-weakest. This was the force which governed nuclear interactions and transformations. The bullet, being made of monoisotopic adamantine, had no nuclear reactions for Teknall to observe, but he would send a more appropriate probe later. While the weak force was important to the Universe as a whole- without it Ull'Yang's stars would not be able to perform nuclear fusion- its localised absence was not of great importance.

The next part of the Codex to wane in the bullet's flight was not one of Logos' laws, but that of magic. While Logos may have intended otherwise, his Laws were on equal footing with those written by everyone else as far as the Codex was concerned. And this meant that magic was not immune to the effects of the Orbs of Darkness, an effect which started at the fringes of the field's shadows.

The submaterium, of Mammon's design, was most visibly effected, but not uniformly. The submaterium consisted of innumerable connections between all objects, and those connections were of varying strengths. Deeper into the field, those connections were progressively severed from weakest to strongest. Teknall presently lacked the instrumentation to properly observe that phenomenon, but that was what was predicted.

Just as the weakest submaterium links were cut, Belruarc's magic began to fade also. Belruarc's system of magic was made to imprint patterns upon the Universe, manipulating matter, energy and reality to the user's design. However, while it excelled in versatility, flexibility and control, it lacked the visceral force of Mammon's or Astarte's magics. As such, Belruarc's magic was the first to be erased completely by the Orb's field on influence. Again, the bullet was not a suitable probe for this effect, so Teknall would need another test to confirm it.

Around here the third of Logos' fundamental forces was majorly affected- electromagnetism. As Julkofyr's domain was shadows, the effect had started a fair bit further out, at the shadows. The outer fringes of the Orb attenuated electromagnetic fields, which caused light to fade, leaving behind darkness. But here the effect became stronger. Light was blocked completely, such that only Teknall's Perception could see the bullet. Eddy currents and their resultant magnetic fields which were in the bullet, a byproduct of the electromagnetic propulsion of the railgun, were similarly quenched. A little further and the Coulombic forces holding the atoms together in the metal would fail, destroying solids and molecules. That would soon be followed by the complete destruction of charge, which would cause electrons and nuclei to dissociate.

But that destruction never came. Before the bullet could reach the point where it would fall apart into its constituent atoms, it faded from existence.

This was not according to Teknall's calculations, but it was not a surprise either. He had been told that the Orbs had been turned into Gap portals, feeding the Gap with matter. This function would be useless if the matter was destroyed beforehand, so it made sense for Vowzra to pick the cross-over point where it was.

With a crude initial measurement taken, Teknall now needed to obtain some more specific data. While the broad features of the Orb appeared the same, up to the Gap portal, Vowzra's tampering had likely interfered with many of the finer details, and these finer details would be important.

So Teknall disappeared into his Workshop and returned about an hour later, having constructed a small assortment of probes and measuring devices. Folding out from a pinprick of space beside Teknall was the Shard Conduit, his portable connection with the Stellar Engine.

To measure gravity, Teknall had constructed a large rectangular slab of solid osmium, weighing half a million tonnes, with a very sensitive gravimeter attached to one face.

To measure magic, Teknall had assembled a magical device of many components. This magical device didn't perform any notable function, but its many components operated using differing magics, so their individual weakening and failure would be used to indicate the effects the Orb had on magic.

To measure the weak nuclear force, Teknall had collected a series of radioactive metal ingots, each undergoing a different kind of radioactive decay.

To measure the effects on electric fields, Teknall had brought two connected metal orbs, which could have the electrons brought from one to the other by an applied voltage, then the orbs separated to provide two charged objects.

To measure the effects on magnetic fields, Teknall had brought a permanent magnet.

All these probes Teknall activated one by one and threw into the Orb, carefully observing and measuring the effects the Orb had on them at various depths until, ultimately, the probes were lost to the Gap. The gradual weakening and final failure of each one of these probes gave Teknall valuable data on the nature of the Orb.

Teknall also needed to measure the effect the Orb had on light, of all wavelengths. Teknall sent the Shard Conduit around the Orb, until it was partially eclipsed by the Orb's shadowy field. There the Conduit opened up, faced towards Teknall, and fired an intense laser beam, with the power of the Stellar Engine behind it. This laser beam started right down in the radio frequencies, with wavelengths measurable in metres, then slowly worked its way up through microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays and finally gamma radiation. As it scanned the electromagnetic spectrum, it also swept the beam through different depths of the Orb's field of influence. Teknall observed and measured the intensity of the laser beam after it exited the Orb. With this information Teknall was able to construct a spatially-dependent absorption spectrum for the Orb's field of influence, which added to his data and understanding.

Teknall had one last probe, and this one was the most peculiar of them all. The Orb was a Gap portal of sorts, which meant it must somehow interact with the Gap. This interaction was the most mysterious to Teknall, but also likely to have a strong effect on the nature of the Orb. As such, he needed to measure it. But conventional measuring techniques, or even his divine Perception, could not probe the Gap, and Teknall dared not enter the Gap to observe it directly. But, as had been demonstrated by Jvan, there were ways to send messages across that dimensional barrier.

This probe was a simplistic reverse-engineering of Ovaedis and the Sculptor telepathy network. It was a machine which could send messages across the Gap to a receiver, which Teknall had also built. The probe bristled with sensors, and it would process that information and send it to the receiver to be read by Teknall. All he had to do was send it to the Gap.

So Teknall threw the probe towards the Orb, where it was swallowed by the darkness.

For a few tense moments, the receiver displayed nothing but noise. Then an image resolved itself amongst the static. There were no words to describe it. The probe's cameras were trying to project the non-Euclidian geometry of the Gap onto a two-dimensional plane, and the result was an ever-shifting tangled bundle of stuff, imaged in grainy greyscale. But even this ghost of a shadow caused Teknall's mind to ache slightly. Superimposed onto the edge of the image were the numerical readings from the other sensors. Many of the sensors gave only errors, some gave meaningless and chaotic values, but a few gave some useful readings.

Despite the strangeness of the video feed, Teknall could identify that the probe was spinning. Soon the probe had turned such that its cameras were facing backwards, to where it came from. The Orb was unmistakable, somehow retaining its spherical shape even in the twisted geometry of the Gap. But it was not dark. Instead, it shone, appearing to reflect whatever passed as light in the Gap. It reminded Teknall of his Mirror Armour, a force which repelled so strongly it deflected light.

The probe turned further, and some objects came into the field of view. He recognised them as the other probes which had gone before this one.

Then the probe turned a little further, and a less familiar object entered the field of view.

Instantly Teknall's mind was racked with pain. It was exactly like the pain he had experienced when Logos had given him a glimpse of the Other-beast he had fought. And this image on the receiver, while far from direct, was much clearer than what Logos had shown him. Yet even with the being in view, it was still unfathomable. Even the screen could not properly display even a projection of it, the image distorting, darkening, obscured by static. There was a glimpse of something which might have been a tentacle, something resembling an eye, something reminiscent of a claw or fang, but nothing stayed the same for more than an instant.

And it was getting closer.

The Other seemed to have sensed the probe, and its soulless stare somehow seemed to meet Teknall's gaze through the receiver, and Teknall was paralyzed. The numbers on the side of the image twisted into horrific symbols. The pain raged like fire in Teknall's mind, with an eldritch pressure that would have slaughtered a mortal a million times over.

And it kept getting closer.

The image on the receiver was meant to be just pixels on a screen, a reproduction of a digital signal with ordinary photons, yet somehow the Other seemed to be getting realer by the second. It gained depth despite the flat screen, which only served to make its image even more maddening. It was getting closer to the probe. Closer. It reached out towards the probe, towards Teknall, towards the Universe.

With a scream Teknall clenched his eyes shut and brought his hands together, crushing the receiver into oblivion. And in that position Teknall stayed, his breathing short and quick, his eyes shut, his hands clenched, his body trembling, and his hain-teeth chattering.

How long it was until he opened his eyes again, Teknall wasn't sure. The trembling had subsided, although his teeth still chattered. He looked down at his hands and slowly opened them. From out between them drifted twisted metal, shattered glass and broken electronics, with no trace of that Other-beast. Yet that eldritch image was seared into Teknall's mind, haunting him still. His every rational faculty told him that the Other-beast was still safely contained in the Gap, but the primal fear induced by that otherworldly being was still strong in Teknall.

Teknall did what he could to calm down. He made an effort to breath deeply, and he occupied his mind with the data he had collected. He collated the numbers, compared them against models, adjusted for abberations and non-idealities, and developed his numerical verdict. That seemed to work. Teknall soon resumed regular breathing, regained control over his jaw, and had managed to push the eldritch vision into some dark corner of his mind.

Then Teknall left, doing what he could to cover his tracks as he did so. And the Orb of Darkness drifted through the void alone once more.



[hider=It's not paranoia if I'm right]
Teknall creates a volcano on the North-West coast of the Metatic Ocean, where the Acalya forest is. The purpose of this was to destroy the coastal and submarine part of that Acalya forest, and adjust local wind currents such that the crystal spores are not carried out into the ocean. This will allow the Xerxian refugees to pass safely.

Teknall is super-paranoid about being spied on by Logos. He has a project which he absolutely must keep secret from Logos. This project should help him stand up to Logos when their next confrontation occurs, but might get him killed if Logos finds out about it beforehand.

Fed by his paranoia, Teknall engages super-stealth mode. He suppresses his trail of divine essence, then teleports to most of the Holy Sites on Galbar, where the local divine essence would cover his own, all while checking over his shoulder ever second for any sign of Logos. Finally, he teleports to his Workshop. Even if someone were to follow his trail to this point, they would most likely be unable to follow it into his personal plane. (All this permanently increased Teknall's Concealment and Detection levels)

Teknall then goes to an Orb of Darkness, stellar in size, and in deep space, its location revealed by Chiral Phi's map. I unleash my inner physicist and take some creative liberties on the functioning of the Orb around the fringes of its field of influence, since a sharp cut-off between normal space and utter oblivion is boring and unrealistic, especially for an object of that scale.

First, gravity ceases to exist. A little deeper, the weak nuclear force (which governs nuclear reactions) ceases to exist as well. Then, things start getting shadowy, as the Orb begins to weakly attenuate electromagnetic fields. Around here the weakest occult links break. Then Belruarc's magic fails. Then the strongest occult links break. There electromagnetism starts to wane. Before electromagnetism can disappear altogether (which would destroy matter as we know it), objects encounter a one-way Gap portal and disappear from existence, being dumped in the Gap. This Gap portal, for those who haven't been paying attention, was one of Vowzra's modifications to the Codex.
(I would have talked more about how the Orb's field would have originally continued, but none of you would care.)

Teknall uses his Workshop to build a battery of probes to measure various parameters. With these science experiments, Teknall is able to get a more accurate understanding of the Orb of Darkness.

Teknall's final probe is made to take measurements, including a video feed, from the Gap itself and transmit it to a receiver that Teknall had also built. The probe works, and he is able to take some measurements of the Orb as viewed from the Gap, but the probe also encounters an Other creature (one of those nasty hybrid ones).

Viewing the eldritch entity, even through the camera, causes Teknall extreme psychic pain. He is paralysed in place as the entity seems to attempt to encroach into reality via the video feed. At the last moment Teknall regains enough control to destroy the receiver.

Teknall is left shaken, but otherwise apparently unharmed. He calms his nerves, then leaves.

[u]Might Summary[/u]
[i]Start:[/i] 13.5 MP and 1 FP (6 MP reserved by Workshop)
[i]Spent:[/i] 0.5 MP on making a volcano to block an Acalya forest, 2 MP on increasing Concealment level by 2 (from 5 to 7), 1 MP on increasing Detection level by 1 (from 6 to 7), 1 MP from the Workshop on performing a series of experiments to better understand the Orb
[i]End:[/i] 9 MP and 1 FP (5 MP reserved by Workshop)
[/hider]