[center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/ad73e4b7-b5f2-4478-a4d6-803d316455d5.png[/img][/center] Hair rustled and creaked as it crumpled, the tangled mass shrinking in abrupt pulses as it was drawn into itself and beyond. Another fiberling collapsed into a limp, disorderly heap, the force animating it dissolving to nothing, and a grey tide of darting tendrils and pincers swept over it. A third one darted aside and lunged with woven pseudopods, only for them to spasm and fall as it found the immaterial part of its body irretrievably gone and writhed in surprise. The crawling shapes on the ground pressed their advantage, and the creature drew back with several gaping holes in its bulk. The other two did not wait to see what would happen to them, rolling and slithering away from the gnashing ranks. They did not go far. One stopped as it began to fold upon itself, clearly despite its best efforts. The rest flaked, then crumbled to dust, as if shredded by something within them. Osveril swept a finger through the air, and the shrubs and bushes before it were sliced across by a line of sinking space. The hollowborn drifted forward and swarmed around it like moths around a light, vision bending around their nonexistent edges. It was gone in less than any amount of time, but most of them had already dived through it more than once. As branches and leaves fell, supported by nothing, the hovering folds scattered, assembling back together over their unmaker. It was no use, this was clear. The taint fought against the purging, and it had had all time to prepare. All the wealth of matter and the span of extension was at its disposal, and it used them like a single, vicious mind. Hair, stone, size - everything was on its side. Osveril could not be everywhere [color=2e2c2c]and nowhere[/color] at once, and its heralds could be overpowered without its guidance even before they met those mortals. [color=515354]Reach out with more arms.[/color] A grey finger pressed a sequence of buttons, and spiral forms flashed in Transgenesis’s glassy eye. Everything that life could do, it could do also, and more. Better. Impurity would devour itself. One step, and Osveril was no longer there. If better vessels were needed, it would build them, out of the best pieces the world had to seize. The hollowborn trailed in its wake, as fast as nothing could be. [center]***[/center] Dash, some moments of trotting, dash. Trot, trot some more, dash again. The smell was still there. Dash. It bent its tail to one side, swerving so fast its legs became a blur, then straightened it and ran on. Into a patch of tall grass. Another swerve. Through the stream. The one that smelled of sand and rot had already kept its track past water once, but it might lose it now. No. The scent was still there. Trot. Dash. Swerve. Dash. This thing was something strange. They had followed the same herd for days, but the one with the dead scent had not waited for a straggler to fall off. It had run at them and hit them with its sting. Like a tall hunter. Even they waited for the cattle to stray first. And they did not hit them all. And they did not hunt manglers. Dash. Swerve. Trot. Dash- The thing was by its side. Where it had been about to turn. It almost tumbled in an effort to avoid the dead-smelling body. Its tail swung aside, and it recovered. But it could not avoid the sting. The point caught it where the plates of the hind leg met those of the body, and its limb twitched with pain. It passed quickly. It waited, trotting. Many stings had a poison that bit long after the spike was gone. This one did not. It did not bite when the dead scent went away at last, or at night, or the next day. The spot was numb with pain, nothing else. Not even the weakness of a leech bite. Something strange. Avoid the dead smell. Hunt. [center]***[/center] Something moved through the undergrowth with little regard for being heard. Its steps were silent, but stems and small trunks staggered and fell where it passed, raising clouds of thin grey dust. Startled animals darted in all directions, and birds rose with alarmed cries. A warbler shot up, headed for a clearing in the treetops, only to be seized in mid-flight by a slimy green tentacle that lashed out from the foliage close by. A second, longer appendage stretched out to reach into the center of the confusion, clutching for richer prey, only to suddenly coil back, empty, as if struck. The oozing ambusher in the branches was not the only one drawn by the commotion. A large shape stalked among the trees, almost without a rustle. Its proboscidal tongue felt for the intruder’s smell, twisting when it found something unpleasant and alien. The occasional rodent that fled its way quickly turned about when it noticed the creature, still much to slow had it not been indifferent to them at that time. Something large and clumsy was near, a far better meal than a wood rat. The source of the disturbance was near. The great nectar blush slunk to the side of the path of collapsing shrubs, tilted its body backwards, then pounced, stinger stuck towards the lumbering creature in the grass. It was met by a painful stab to its own abdomen. The blush thrummed its wings and tore into the bushes, stinger ready for another lunge. But there was nothing - only the heads of fallen saplings, and a trail of grey dust. [center]***[/center] The ground shook, rumbling like a distant sea, as titanic steps pounded on it in a slow, regular rhythm. It ceased for an instant while a monstrous head bent down to snatch a lone tree with its powerful jaws, uprooting it whole, then resumed its leisurely pace. The beast had nowhere to hurry. It barely even seemed aware of its surroundings, let alone something out of its stolid gaze. Nor did it need to be. A small grey shape flitted through the air at the corner of its eye. It was too fast to tell where it was going, had the beast cared at all. It was not surprised when it felt something falling onto its back. Birds and gargoyles perched there sometimes. A few tried to nest now and then. The something pricked the hide on the colossus’s back. Though it barely felt the sting through its thick skin, the creature huffed and stirred its body to shake off the nuisance. It did not think to guess what it could have been - it was enough to know that it was annoying, and it was a relief when the weight, however slight, disappeared. Whipping its tail for good measure, the beast grunted and continued to chew the tree. The second time the grey shape flew by its head, it passed unseen. [center]***[/center] [color=515354]All that is born from the touch of Purity must know its cleansing urge.[/color] To end a world like this was coarse work, but this did not mean it would never need finer instruments. Ones better attuned to their function, and their wielder. Foulness that cut itself would regrow, but what withered from the breath of the void was gone forever. Adapting the devourers had shown this. Born as they were of flesh alone, much of Osveril’s strength had gone into merely completing their design, and it had too little of it to spare. A better tool would have to compensate. One that could fashion life and what was beyond at once. Aid in the bridging of worlds. It held up Transgenesis, and rifts in the universal weave gaped around it. Dust rose in waves from the ground beneath its feet, mingling with the wavering tendril-shaped clouds its shell breathed out. The hollowborn swarmed overhead, diving past the gaps and curiously swimming towards the glowing spear-tip, only to leap back from the solidity that was deadly to them. The dust wound its way into the staff, through channels of delivery and cracks that were not there. For the first time, Osveril felt how it was within. Cleverly built, yet all too full, even where it was not. Reaching no further than the physical, even in imitation. [color=C0C0C0][i]So much to correct.[/i][/color] Sharp grains and bladed shards cut and twisted, severed and welded again, melting and fusing into new conduits. Shaper and shaped became as one. A hovering void seeped into the harpoon’s funnel, shrinking from the matter that loomed to all sides. It was seized upon and fragmented, mangled and healed, too many times to count. Seeds of emptiness were planted by the myriad hands of the hollow gardener. They took root. They grew. They flourished. Spirals writhed on Transgenesis’s silent mouth. Angular, broken lines superimposed themselves over them, merged with them, became them. [color=515354]You relinquished All you had with this, Mother. Now it is mine.[/color] Like moss, a new row of keys crept up from beneath the staff’s surface. The symbols on them were as cryptic as the others. [color=515354]Mine to foster.[/color] Pink dimmed and faded to grey. [color=515354]Mine to mold.[/color] [center]***[/center] “What’d you mean, you can’t see them?” “Just that. Can’t see none. Come here and look yourself.“ “You mean the urts?” “I mean them all. Look yourself, I tell you.” Sekkal clambered up the small hill and tilted his beak, straining his eyes in the direction that his companion was pointing. These mounds were a favourite vantage point of travellers approaching the village. From any of them, one could see not only more than half of the huts, but also the small empty space at the center, and anyone who was passing through it. If one knew when to come, or was simply lucky, one could also see the boulder-like forms of the urt herd that stopped there now and again as it went by. They always had useful news from the west, and usually a Jahanite to translate them. From what either of the visitors knew, the herd should have been there now - but it wasn’t. Nor was the village itself. “...What the...” Sekkal was finally able to articulate. “What’s this?” Gettre only threw up his palms in perplexity. Where a circle of buildings had once stood was a patch of bare soil. Sekkal could even see the grasslands beyond what had been the village’s further edge, something that, while perfectly natural, seemed utterly unreal. The ground itself was neither brown nor green as could have been expected, but chillingly and inexplicably grey. Even more chillingly and inexplicably, no wreckage was in sight. No beheaded walls, no fallen roofs, nothing. All there seemed to be were lumpy shapes scattered about, too small to be urts, but nothing like hain or even human bodies. “You think it’s - them again? The burning ones?” “Could be.” Gettre’s voice was as tense as his own. “Doesn’t look like a fire, though.” Sekkal followed his brother’s finger with his eyes. The grey patch covered roughly the space where he remembered the village to be, but the grass at its rim was untouched. It did not even look dry, at least from that distance. Nodding to each other, the two hain cautiously made their way down the gentle slope and towards the blasted zone. There was no smell of cinder in the air. In fact, there was no smell at all. The grey surface crunched softly under their feet as they stepped on it. Gettre bent down to feel it with a hand, then scooped up a fistful of yielding, fluid matter. “And this doesn’t look like ash.” The substance ran through his fingers like sand until only a few grains remained. He began to open his beak as if to taste it with his tongue, but then thought better of it. His hand instead reached down to pick up something he had just then noticed, half-buried in the dust. An arrow, or rather most of it. The tip was shattered, despite being seemingly made of good bronze - about half of it was missing, as though it had somehow splintered off on hitting something very hard and sharp from an unusual angle. Gettre let his eyes slide along the ground. For some reason, he felt hesitant to look up at the shapes they had glimpsed from the distance. He had avoided them when approaching, only keeping the closest one in the corner of the back eye in case it was some ambushing beast, but it looked like nothing more than a strange stone, and had not moved. And still… His brother, less daunted by the vague eeriness about the forms, approached one near the edge of the grey circle, holding his spear pointed at it. From close by, it looked less like a stone. It was like the trunk of a small tree, broad and made of smooth, perfectly chiseled plates. Somehow, their impossible regularity was not what struck Sekkal as the oddest part. The thing’s surface had a sheen that looked oddly familiar, like something he had seen many times before. But not something he could name. “This look strange to you?” he called. Gettre shuffled to his side, the broken arrow still in his hand. “Never seen anything like it, for sure.” “No, I mean this…” he tapped on the growth’s side with the tip of his weapon. It answered with a dull, barely audible sound. “The way it- gleams? Not like iron or anything.” Gettre turned his beak to the side, looking first at the thing, then at his brother. “Strange.” he echoed, nodding. “Like giant shell.” He glanced at Sekkal again, then added. “Or hain.” Sekkal tilted his head, clenching his jaw in distaste, and the two moved further into the stain of desolation. The broken arrow proved to be only the first of several signs that whatever fate had come upon the village, it had been met with a fierce struggle. More splintered and notched arrows lay in the dust, near cracked throwing stones. Half of a spear was struck in the ground in one spot. Elsewhere, a glinting shard of amber crystal showed that the urts had been there for the fighting. And nothing was left after it. Nothing except the grey-shelled growths. There were more of them than it seemed from afar, almost identical in shape. Some were much smaller than the others, others slightly larger and without the same gloss. More than anything else, they looked like the legs of enormous, alien mushrooms. However bizarre, they gave no sign of being alive, and Sekkal was about to suggest they start searching for signs of the villagers nearby when Gettre motioned for him to look at one of the larger lumps. Unlike those that surrounded it, the stump was not flawlessly smooth. Some of its plates hung half-detached from the body, jutting outwards as through broken out of shape from within. Out of the gaps streamed a swollen, formless grey mass, bulging over the thing’s height and hanging down to almost reach the ground. From close up, it reminded Sekkal of dried foam. Only, it was riddled with small holes, and felt soft under the spear. So soft that the sharp point cut through it with unexpected ease, cutting off a sizeable piece. The brothers started back in disgust as the severed chunk fell, revealing a veined, fleshy interior crawling with bundles of worms. The vermin writhed sickeningly as they swarmed all over the exposed slice, tumbling down and twitching on the barren soil. Some scampered on half-formed legs and thrummed misshapen wings. One even managed to take flight, only to be hurriedly swatted by a hain hand. “What [i]is[/i] this?” Since he had first spoken that question, its answer had only sunken further into a grey haze. “I can tell it’s not the burning ones.” “Do you think it’s…?” He was quiet for a moment. Was that a sound in the distance? Just the wind. “Jah-” The abhorred name was cut short by a piercing screech too close to be safe. It was not the howl or scream of one of the plain dwellers - it was as loud as one, but it droned and scraped like the song of a cicada. No cicada could be that big. More answered it. They were further, but, little by little, he could hear them drawing near. “Let’s go.” Gettre had already caught his meaning without a single word. “We’ll see when we come back with people.” As they hurried away from the blighted spot, the screeches continued to resound, now closer, now further again, and hounded them even when the grey ruin was out of sight. [center]***[/center] It was a rare occasion when more than a quarter of the town of Cjejamra gathered at noon to listen to some returning hunter’s tall tales. Its folk were busy people, after all, and idlers who tried to distract them from their activities were summarily told to get lost, no matter how large their pearskin catch was or how many brush rats they had managed to tie together by the tails. As a rule, those who came back so early never brought anything better than rats and sickly pearskins, which firmly condemned them to the unenviable role of “waste of time” for the day. This, and then some, was all the more true for Immen. For all his being in truth a rather capable tracker, everyone knew him best as the most insufferable braggart in the lands around Gisab, and perhaps in the whole Ring. Scarcely a day went by without his voice being interrupted by shouts to be quiet, and the gods only knew how many of his unimpressive trophies had been confiscated and thrown away (one pond in particular must have been half-full of “giant” mangler skulls). Yet, to everyone’s chagrin, Immen was nothing if not persistent. And, for once, that persistence had been rewarded. No less than half of Cjejamra’s folk was assembled just outside the town, and more were approaching still, straining to peer over their fellows’ shoulders with curious faces. Artisans dropped their tools, traders picked up their wares, even some slaves eluded the lazy eye of their masters to come and gawk at the thing Immen had caught. For the first time, everyone was agreeing that it was something never seen before, and this alone made it worth shoving past the throng to get a good glimpse of it. The catch did not disappoint. Lying at Immen’s feet, between him, his grim-faced brother-by-marriage Anlde, who was for some reason holding his right hand hidden in the folds of his tunic, and Oltik the nervous-looking hain trapper, was a carcass so ghastly that many mistook it for a Jahanite at first. Its four legs bent backwards like those of running beasts, but the head, with those rib-like jaws and smattering of dull eyes, was that of a spider dreamed by someone in their second hatching. Pieces of its sharp-angled grey shell were splintered, and the leathery sails of its crest torn; thick dark slime seeped from the wounds. The most unsettling part, many agreed, was what stretched out from the toothless mouth. It must have been a tongue of some sort, but it resembled nothing more than a long, bloated worm whose head was a [i]second[/i] pair of mandibles. “...an’ we saw it pounce,” Immen was narrating, gesturing broadly as was his habit and raising his voice at the least appropriate points. This time, no one seemed to mind. “An’ so I say, this’s going to be fast, ‘cause there’s no way a thing this size makes it against three hairfiends. But then it bites one, an’ a piece of it falls, like that.” He let his arm collapse and dangle for a moment.”Then it starts clawing another, an’ all through it’s screaming like a whole pearskin herd by itself. Well, then the last crawls up an’ rips off the shell on its back, an’ while it’s turning the other gets it in the side over the leg, an’ then we know it’s done for. But it killed one of them an’ tore up half of another, an’ that’s something as none of us have ever seen with our eyes. “So we look at the hairfiends play with the body, but then they all draw up an’ roll off all sudden, can’t see why. We wait, we wait, an’ then we go closer to see what’s the matter. To be safe, I stick the spear into where the shell got ripped up, an’ it comes out like this…” He held up what must indeed have been a spear at some point, but was now conspicuously missing its tip. The haft below did not appear splintered. It simply ended where it had once continued in length. “We were sure it was dead, so Anlde went to look at the head, an’... It looked dead, but it got out its tongue, or what that is, an’ got his hand. Didn’t even bite, but that’s what it did.” As if on cue, Anlde drew out his right hand and raised it for all to see. It had only three fingers; everything left of the middle one had vanished, like after a clean, abnormally bloodless cut. Recent though the mutilation was, it seemed to be already covered by smooth, slightly grey-tinged skin. “Didn’t even feel it.” he commented in a flat tone of voice. “Still don’t. I just had half my hand, and then I didn’t.” “After that we stabbed it some more, but then it was dead for sure.” Immen continued. “An’ so we took it up to see if any knows what’s it for a beast, an’ if any can make something of it. Got a hard shell, sharp jaws, who knows what more inside.” “I’ll fetch Attanet.” someone called from the crowd. “You asked anyone on the way?” another voice inquired. “We went past the grove where the monk lives, the one with the head that looks like two,” came the answer, “An’ we went to see if it knew. Said it hadn’t ever seen any like this, too, and it’s not of Jahan-” “That’s good already!” Oltik quietly interjected. “It’s not that, but the monk said it’d known of more things suchlike, down south. There’s many in great packs, it said, an’ that whole villages disappear where they go.” Mutters, both dubious and uneasy, ran through the audience. “Nobody’s heard from Sappria in two weeks.” “Doesn’t mean a thing. You can’t listen to all a monk says.” “It [i]is[/i] to the south…” “Did you hear of what happened near Taril? That some of them went to talk to the urts, and they say they saw…” “We’ll have to go a while in the city and take a party to go check, just in case…” The discussion continued even as the crowd briefly parted to make way for Attanet the chipper and the handful of skinners that followed him to inspect the carcass. Somehow, the fact that Immen had brought the day’s news was the last concern on anyone’s mind. [center]***[/center] [color=515354]A balance of vectors ensures the proliferation of impurity. To every force corresponds an equal opposite. Without mutual annihilation. It perverts its own laws.[/color] A swollen gestator burst open with a wrench that would have sickened mortal stomachs, and a newborn shrieker clambered out of the tattered sac with a triumphant howl. A wave of crawlers was already moving to sweep up the remains while the hunter busied itself with the meaty stem. Something that had once walked on two legs, and now skittered on four, ran by, avoiding the blind advance of the insatiable creatures. Its own grotesquely inflated abdomen made movement difficult, but somehow it had still enough determination to drag it ahead regardless of its content. [color=515354]The solution is to answer every force with a greater negation.[/color] Osveril swept its senses over the surrounding zone. What had not so long ago been a forest had been converted into an otherworldly, monochromatic landscape of withered earth and malformed life. Colossal spongy growths towered to all sides, having completely engulfed the trees (and not only) they had parasitised. Swarms of winged pests buzzed in and out of them, coalescing into clouds and disappearing into the as yet untouched distance with their infectious load. Among the living pillars, short, robust trunks rose from tangles of vein-like roots, surmounted by disproportionately large bulbous growths. They pulsed and writhed, shook and breathed. Each of them was the incubator of a new ravenous life. [color=515354]Where life proves incapable even as a foundation, it is my duty to improve.[/color] The mortals had, as anticipated, proved uncooperative so far. It was inconsequential. If their minds did not accept purification willingly, their bodies would serve it by force. The Absolute felt a superior strength of life burgeon nearby. It did not turn - its hollowborn saw for it. The colossal simulacrum womb that had consumed the tallest mound in the wood whole quivered and burst open, yielding to the pressure of the gargantuan claws within. A vast shape, rivalling the greatest of the devoured trees, unfolded amid the gory ruin, splaying and stretching its segmented limbs and blinking to focus its unsettlingly intelligent, hain-like six eyes. The lower side of its bulky spined head split open along a straight line in the middle, and a dozen tongues - or tentacles - emerged to scoop up what remained of its birthing chamber. It would feed. It would grow. There would be more. [color=515354]The negation will always surpass the force.[/color] [hider=My Family and Other Animals] Since he was last seen, Osveril has learned that the world isn’t as vulnerable as he thought. Creatures like fiberlings, urtelem and presumably others - and, of course, these pesky mortals - constantly threaten the Crawlers, who are not equipped to deal with such obstacles. It follows that he must improve his designs, and he sets to doing so by sampling the genes of the most dangerous creatures he can find, annoying them in the process. It’s revealed in passing what happened to the transformed Wisp: Osveril mutated it into an entity known as “hollowborn”, which appears to be little more than an animated pocket of nonexistence. The hollowborn is unintelligent and rather fragile, but can multiply and be directed to move by its creator. To complete his general system upgrade, Osveril then infuses Transgenesis with his essence. Besides losing its touch of colour, the staff becomes capable of replicating and combining not only genetic code, but also anomalous properties such as the Crawlers’ hunger and internal void rifts. This function seems to be limited to effects of Osveril’s own making, however, and can’t grant major unnatural abilities on its own - some Might expenditure is still needed for those. [b](1 Might spent.)[/b] There follows a scene with two hunters of the Great Ring visiting a village not far from their own to meet a herd of nomadic urtelem that should be passing through it. However, they do not find a village at all where it should be. Unbeknownst to them, Osveril had visited it not long before, and clearly didn’t approve of what the locals had to say to him. There are signs of a struggle in the deserted zone, and what remains of its inhabitants have been mutated into unrecognisable hosts for a sponge-like parasite, which in turn serves as hives for some sort of insectoid. The hunters think of blaming first the Realta, then Jvan, but are chased away by the calls of unknown animals before they can investigate further. In another scene, set some time later, a hunting party returns from an expedition with the corpse of a strange creature they saw fight a group of fiberlings. This part in particular shows some aspects of life in the Great Ring - hunting is a major trade, given the wealth and variety of fauna in the region. This exploitation of natural resources has allowed for some notable technological progress, as implied by the existence of city-states (though significant parts of the more rural population still seem to be transitioning from a nomadic to a fully sedentary lifestyle). Chipper and Sculptor presence is mentioned, as is the practice of slavery, likely fuelled by the predatory nature of raid-based warfare. The strange creature, needless to say, is another new creation of Osveril. Grey Shriekers are roving predators, capable of coordinating at a distance through loud cries. They can also generate and project minor void-disruptions, which are especially harmful to fiberlings as beings reliant on a stable connection to Gap energy, but can otherwise be pretty unpleasant for anyone. [b](0.5 Might spent on the Shriekers' ability.)[/b] A final scene shows that the multiplying of new lifeforms is the result of Osveril’s crude attempt to create a destructive “anti-ecosystem” to outperform and extinguish natural life. In addition to the Shriekers, the parasitic sponges (which are in fact largely similar to lichens and fungi) and the insects that propagate them, other parts of it include plant-mammal hybrid surrogate gestation chambers and a gigantic creature (whose genome was derived in part from brush beast and, oddly enough, hain DNA) which seems to be the first of its own species. It’s implied that a certain length of time has passed as the withering spreads further and the local mortals prepare to face the new alien threat. [/hider] [hider=Might Usage] [b]Level 2 1.5 MP (3 starting, 1.5 spent)[/b] [/hider]