[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/7oQVf7m.png[/img][/center]

Azura chose the very top of the world as the place for her scheming against death. There she raised a roughly circular island upon which she erected a ring shaped mountain range, forming a sheltered and hidden valley at their center. Then she formed a final mountain directly atop the north pole. The lonely mountain in the valley at the center of the ring that pierced skywards with impossible steepness and was blessed for its hubris with eternal sunlight at its peak. Around this peak where her sphere and Galbar where forever one she built a great temple shaped like two wheels, one within the other. The spokes of these turbines where slanted to make them into great turbines. The outer spinning clockwise and drawing air up into it and in the process bringing wind and clouds into the valley and then into the Blue, while simultaneously making flying up to the fortress from the valley easier. The center one spun counterclockwise, pushing air down the sides of the mountain, making ascending that perilous peak on foot even more treacherous that it would have been otherwise.

The temple’s interior was utilitarian for the most part, filled with vast empty rooms that could be easily fit to propose later all linked by a grid of wide corridors that you could easily march a company of soldiers though. The scope of these was made primarily to prevent Azura’s newly discovered claustrophobia from getting the better of her even as she locked herself in a dungeon of her own creation. The only windows in the temple were arrow slits and the entrances where small number hanger bay like rooms guarded by sturdy gates operated by wind powered mechanisms, both decisions made to ensure entry was as difficult as possible. All of this was lit by Azura’s feathers set into torch holders and chandeliers dotted at regular intervals throughout the structure, each one carefully plucked from her body only for a replacement to rapidly grow in its place. This left the interior as bright as a summer's day and soft wind currents generated by the wind goddesses’ feathers ensured that the air was never stale.

The giant structure would be her bastion against death, and her laboratory for forging measures to counteract it. In a great hall in the outer ring she placed the soul pearl she had brought from the soul reef on a cushioned pedestal and settled herself before it to begin her study. 

First she simply attempt to replicate the hardened soul ash. Having chosen a place far from the vortex this was easier said than done, and the goddess spent hours fruitlessly grasping at nothingness trying to gather the necessary ingredient for her first experiment. Eventually however she decided to partially dismantle her pearl to observe the reverse of the process she was attempting to establish, which lead to a breakthrough that allowed her to create a single soul pearl relatively easily. The process of hardening the raw material understood and then practiced a few hundred times she moved on to the real objective. Solidifying souls. 

A Life bloomed before her in the form of a tiny seedling that sprouted into a delicate flower growing in a patch of conjured dirt. Azura took a moment to admire it, and then snuffed out its life. As soon as she did its tiny soul emerged and was gripped by the pull of the distant vortex. As it was the goddess attempted too wrest it from death’s grasp, only for it to slip away, for her hold had been to gentle. She tried again, holding it to tightly this time, causing the soul to be torn apart by their battle. Then she tried again.

And again

And again

Until finally she settled on not holding the soul back completely, but simply slowing its flight enough that she could work on it. Souls briefly stabilized she tried to harden them in the same manner as the soul oysters did with ash. At first she got only fine diamond dust that spread across the room, then fragmented stones and finally, after hundreds of attempts, the first solid crystal. It was fragile and ugly, but it resisted the vortex’s pull nonetheless. 

She could do better.

Days passed and as they did life bloomed and was extinguished thousands of times as the room slowly filled with dust and flawed crystals. Plants were replaced with simple creatures. First bugs, then lizards and finally mice, some of which were allowed to accrue memories over a short span before they too were committed to crystal. The scent of blood and death slowly filled the room. As the goddess worked she wept softly, for even though she believed what she was doing was necessary, that these simple lives were worth sacrificing for the potential rescue of sentient souls from Katharsos’s grip, her empathy could not allow her to become cold to the violence she was inflicting upon them. Yet even as she cried a deep old buried part of her was more than comfortable with these sacrifices. She hated that part and understand not from whence it came. She buried it deeper than it already lurked but could not extinguish it entirely.  As she learned and gained experience she expanded her scope from painstakingly preserving single souls to flash freezing dozens at a time, moving herself to a second room which was rapidly filled with purer crystals. Yet even this was not enough. She needed older souls with more memories to solidify if she was to hope to perfect the art for the void souls. It would be a tragedy if she came to their aid only to destroy their minds and memories because she had not mastered her invented art.

With a gust of wind Azura threw open one of the sets of gates to her newly minted fortress, letting the light of the blue stream inside. Beyond in the blue fluttered thousands of sky slugs, the simple creatures having multiplied without end without in the predator-less sky and had as a result easily recovered from the moonfall massacre. They would suit her needs well and so a second slaughter began.

[hr]
Several hours later Azura felt that she had gained all the knowledge she could bare to gain from the sky slug souls. She had also discovered a problem, namely that the sky bastion was rapidly filling up with Soul Crystals and that it was not going to be a sustainable place to put them. They were also making the fortress frightfully cold as they drew in heat to sustain themselves. If filled to the brim the entire bastion might well freeze over, stilling its turbine, sealing its gates and sapling the life from it’s occupants.  The Soul Crystals would, in the end, render the fortress worthless and unable to protect them. So she had dragged the tones of solidified souls down to the foot of the mountain, and carved a hidden entrance to a buried necropolis into a secluded crevice at the end of a ravine. Already feeling rather hemmed in however, the giant bird struggled to find the will to move into her newly created soul sanctuary.

[color=lightblue]”It makes sense.”[/color] She assured herself [color=lightblue]”the vault can be ever extended under the island and it’ll be safer from meteorites and the like. You just need to go in there and make the rest of it Azura.”[/color] 

After a few more moments of steeling herself she finally entered the tunnel. She got about 100 meters worth of tomb carved before breaking, the stress and exhaustion she had been suffering combining with her recently discovered fear of enclosed spaces forcing her to beat a hasty retreat back out into the perpetually twilight smothered the base of the mountain. She couldn’t do this. Not now, not soon, and yet time was of the essence. She’d need something to perform this task for her.

To achieve this Azura took one of the mostly blank memory-less crystals from her first successful crystallization experiments and formed a body around it. Air solidified into luft-stone that was infused with the dust of her first failures which formed a pair of arms and a head around the Soul Crystal. From the rear ends of these body parts emanate a cloud-like mist from which wind could emanate to push the creature around and let it maneuver its two disembodied limbs. Once it was finished forming the construct, that ended up being about the size of a small dog, it floated before her motionlessly, devoid of will or propose. To rectify this she pushed her mind into the smooth featureless soul crystal and ever so carefully carved memories into it.

She taught it how to carve, how to dig, how to build. How to understand souls, make temporary links to gain simple information from them to allow for categorization. To understand language at a basic level to engrave what they had learned about souls into notes that they and others could read. How to cooperate with more of its kind to complete its singular given task: to expand, organize and maintain the Vault of Souls. Then she made hundreds more of these all copies of the first. As soon as they were completed the Curator swarm set to work without any additional instructions. Some collect some of the already produced soul crystals and began taking them inside to store in the tiny Azura prepared section of the Vault. Others immediately headed to the depths and began carving out new tunnels and crypts for both those that had already arrived and for those that where yet to come.

Azura was content to watch them for a short while, but soon enough even the ravine became to claustrophobic and she had to extract herself from it. All that greeted her was the beak stone valley she had created. Rain was falling in the valley and where it fell above the vault it became snow. It was a somber sight, one that matched the grizzly business that had gone into learning what she had about making soul crystals. Her practice was not yet complete. She would need more complex souls if she was to perfect the process in preparation for saving the void souls. Yet she had made progress and could not help but feel pride in her work. She perched there on that lonely mountain side for just a few moments, letting the snow and rain washed the smell of blood, dust and ash out of her feathers. 

The moment of stillness was over all to soon, for there really was not time to spare for basking in her accomplishments. Azura took wing and soared back up to the sky bastion. There was still so much left to do. 

[hider=summary]
Azura
[list]
[*]makes an [url=https://i.imgur.com/R4ghs7b.png]island on the north pole[/url]
[*]makes a [url=https://i.imgur.com/jzlov1M.png]floating fortress[/url] anchored to the top of a mountain built on the north pole
[*]learns how to crystallize souls via a tone of animal testing
[*]fills up way to much of her fortress with crystal as a result of extensive practice at soul crystallization
[*]tries and fails to make an underground tunnel complex to store these in thanks to claustrophobia
[*] makes golems/robots/constructs made of floating rock, soul crystal cores and wind magic to dig out the tunneling for her
[*]hangs out in the snow for a bit for a moment's rest
[/list]
[/hider]

[hider=Creation notes:]

Soul crystals: Soul crystals are Azura’s response to Katharsos’s burning of souls. To keep the dead out of the grasp of his vortex of souls Azura has found a way to make the souls solid, granting them the mass to defy the vortex’s metaphysical pull. This solidification process creates a unique crystal structure with the hardness of diamond that come in a myriad of colors. The size of a Crystal correlates to the size of its body in life (generally about 2% of its former volume), while its density is a reflection of the level of intelligence the souls mind exhibits. As an example a human’s crystal would be roughly 5 cm while having twice the density of Gold while an ant’s would be a few mm in size and as light as a feather. 

Soul Crystals require some energy to sustain themselves which they gain by drawing in heat from their surroundings, resulting in them feeling cold to the touch. In large numbers they can also noticeably drop the ambient temperature of their surroundings. They can also absorbs more energy than is necessary, allowing them to be used as power sources for things like golems, future magic systems or ghostly manifestations. Crystals have reservoirs of power as well that can be depleted as part of a personal or forced sacrifice to gain significant burst of energy at once. 

Soul crystals have number of weaknesses. While very resistant to mortal weapons those of divine origin or with diamond or soul crystal tips can still shattered the souls made physical. They also have no protection from Katharsos’s fires if they are brought to them. Finally, and most importantly, a soul crystals need to physically grow to change, a lengthy process that prevents the kind of rapid personal growth or learning that a ethereal soul is capable of. They are also incapable of committing anything to long term memory without consciously growing new crystal growths to store those memories (an energy intensive process), or overwriting old ones. As a result even if a soul crystal is given a body to control it won't be the same as if it was a ethereal soul. Not only will the soul struggle with the aforementioned rapid adaptation or long term memory problems, it is also less attuned to its body as it is physically joined to that body at a single point rather than occupying it in its entirety, leading to a feeling of disembodiment. All of this combined makes a soul crystal akin to a static AI rather than a living person. A memory or archive of a life rather than a continuation of it.

Luft Stone: the stone used to create Azura’s floating temples. They defy the gravitational pull of whatever body they float around in just the right way to act as if they are unaffected by it while also not falling off it if it is moving. It is indistinguishable to mundane Granite in all other aspects.

Curators of the Vault of Souls: Constructs of Luft Stone powered by a soul crystal, these creatures are in charge of maintaining, organising and expanding the Vault of souls.They can perform no other task and will not obey instructions, nor attempt to remove intruders or interact with anyone who enters the vaults in any way. If attacked they will attempt to flee. If a soul is removed from its proper place they will attempt to retrieve it by snatch it from the clutches of a would be thief. Curators are capable of extracting some basic information from soul crystals such as species and can ask a soul some very basic questions for further record keeping purposes such as their name and a brief personal description. They do this by allowing the soul to briefly manifest a small light construct version of themselves that can be asked those questions. The soul is, of course, entirely capable of lying to the Curator and the construct would be none the wiser if this where to occur. 

They take the form of a central soul crystal surrounded by a small ring of stone that keeps it aloft accompanied by two disembodied arms it uses to manipulate the environment. Soft clouds form around the back of these three components that can create controlled gusts of wind to move them around. Curators are capable of producing a small laser from their “heads” that they use for carving stone, either to dig through it, to mason it into shelves, staircases etc or to carve in written signposting and labels for crystals. 

[/hider]

[hider=might summary]
Start points: 3 MP & 25 FP

3 MP: Divine ability: Soul Crystallization

4 FP: mid sized island: Isle of Twilight	

8 FP: mountain range: The Broken Crown Mountain Range and the North Peak/Pole

2 FP: for addition to sphere: The Sky Bastion 

2 FP minor land feature: the Vault of Souls

2 FP: extraordinary species: the Caretakers of the Vault of Souls 

7 FP: gateway. the tallest mountains that pierce the clouds will enter the blue during daytime

End Points: 0 FP 0 MP

Portfolios: Tonnikala (7/10) 
Birds (6/10)
Soul Crystallization(7/10)
[/hider]