[center] [img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/2b4925ee-b215-4b89-a794-5058a6c53e13.png[/img] [colour=lightseagreen][h1][b][i]Ashalla[/i][/b][/h1] [b]Goddess of Oceans and Storms[/b][/colour] [/center] The storm which was Ashalla rolled over the northern coast of Atokhekwoi. While it was far easier for her to travel over land as a storm cloud, the sheer vastness of Atokhekwoi tired even her. It was ultimately the dry climate in the middle which made her turn away, for she had begun to lose water faster than she could recover it from the environment. So Ashalla returned to the ocean where she was most at home. The storm rained heavily over the sea, the cloud slowly shrinking and lightening. A few hours later there were only a few stray cumulus clouds and strands of cirrus, and Ashalla was the ocean once more. Immediately she began to plan her next creation. Kirron's mega-fauna and the smaller beasts of the forests elsewhere had inspired her. Many of these creatures were warm-blooded, breathed air, gave live birth and produced milk. This mammalian template appeared to be popular, so Ashalla decided she would attempt her own variation on the theme. Ashalla began to coalesce some biomatter into several new creatures. While they would not be fish, their general form was quite similar to that of a fish, for that form was optimised for ocean life. The basic mammalian physiology needed a few adaptations. Respiration was the biggest modification. The lungs needed to be much more efficient, as did the storage and usage of oxygen. An extra nostril was routed through to their top-sides so they could breathe at the water's surface more easily. The salt balance in the bodily fluids needed to be adjusted so as to allow these creatures to drink sea-water as fish could. They were given extra layers of fat to keep warm in cold waters. A few other modifications were made, such as enhancing their hearing to make good use of water's ability to carry sound, and adjusting their sleep cycles to ensure they did not drown. This was the basic template for her new life-forms, but she could still fit a lot of variety within this template. She made a few of them massive, larger than Kirron's dinosaurs, because given the buoyancy of the ocean she could do that without complication. The pattern was similar to the Eclipse Whale, but that was mostly by coincidence. The only thing abundant enough in the global oceans to feed such vast creatures was plankton, so these giant swimming mammals were given wide mouths and bristles of keratin in place of teeth with which they could filter out nutritious drifters from the water. Ashalla also made smaller swimming creatures, although still much larger than most fish. These ones she decided would feast on fish, so she gave them teeth. She also ensured their eyes were near the front of their snouts so they had binocular vision, and their enhanced hearing was combined with the capacity to make sharp clicks so they could locate objects and prey using sound. Ashalla painted their skin the colours of the ocean. As she inspected the creatures she had made, though, she felt unsatisfied. They were so utilitarian. Adapting a land-based physiology for life in the open ocean had been a fun exercise, but her creations needed a bit of artistic flair. So Ashalla taught them to sing and dance. They would call through the ocean, their thunderous voices carrying their songs for vast distances. They would swim around each other and leap from the water with great splashes. They would be social and have fun doing so. Satisfied at last, Ashalla gave the creatures life. She named them whales and dolphins, or cetaceans collectively, and sent them throughout the ocean. Ashalla also created new species of fish which would swim in the open ocean in great schools for the dolphins and toothed whales to eat. These fish ate plankton and smaller fish. In their great schools the light would shine off them in dazzling ways as the group danced in their own manner in an attempt to appear larger and more intimidating towards predators. Not that it would stop them from being eaten, but it would give them some defence, and it made them more impressive. These fish Ashalla spread throughout the ocean with the cetaceans. In roaming the world creating her new life-forms, Ashalla came to the north pole. She glanced at the ice sheet and reflected on it for a few moments. Then she made a decision. Fog rose from the ocean and a storm began to brew. [hr] The great storm which was Ashalla billowed over the ice sheet at the northern end of the world. The cloud hung low, a blizzard raging across the ice and stirring up snow. She looked over the ice formations and sculptures, feeling them with her fog and snow. Most of them were different to how she had remembered them. Time, weather and sunlight had eroded away many of the original sculptures and new ones had taken their place. But these new ones contained only abstract forms with no sense of coherence, for the processes creating new sculptures were blind and dumb. Ashalla found it disappointing that the beauty of this place had faded over time. But Ashalla was not one to wallow in defeat and disappointment. Rather, she was a creator. So she would create a solution. She would create creators to maintain the sculptures and create new ones, and she could marvel in their creativity. She just had to figure out what these sculptors would be. Shards of ice and snow stirred around within Ashalla. The ice sheet was inhospitable to organic life, but Ashalla had seen from the Curators, cloudlings and Xiaoli that there were other ways to make life. A being of ice crystals and frilly snow formed within Ashalla's clouds. This entity would draw energy as a heat engine, converting heat flow between it and its environment into work and potential energy. Of course, as a construct of ice, it would only survive for long periods of time in areas which were freezing in temperature. This entity was to be a sculptor of ice, so it would need an affinity for ice. Ashalla granted the entity the power to shape ice with its touch, melting and refreezing the water it touched with its spindly limbs to make the ice malleable. In this way the entity would be able to make ice sculptures and other structures of frozen water with relative ease. With the physical design established, Ashalla began to form more of these icy beings. While these beings would be safest in the North Pole, if they stayed in the North Pole forever they would have no inspiration for new creations. So Ashalla gave these beings a migratory instinct, such that they would fly south during winter and return to the North Pole in the summer. She gave them a few more instincts to maximise their creativity, tying those instincts to their methods of reproduction. Finished making these icy beings, Ashalla breathed life into their frozen forms, which accepted souls from the invisible soul ash around them. Then Ashalla withdrew her fog and the beings basked in daylight for the first time. The delicate ice crystals of their wing-like limbs shimmered in the light of Heliopolis, the beings fluttering about with their foot-wide wingspan. Spindly stalks of optically clear ice curled away from an orb at the head of their bodies, twisting and looking at the world around them. Icicle-like legs allowed the beings to land on the ice sheet and rest their wings. Soon all the beings had landed, basking in the sunlight as little rivulets of water ran up their legs and froze on their thoraxes. After they had drunk their fill and were fat from the ice, a great breeze blew across the ice sheet and picked up the beings, carrying them southwards. Ashalla's voice was also carried on that breeze. [colour=lightseagreen][b]"Fly, winter-spirits. Learn and create."[/b][/colour] [hr] [right][url=https://youtu.be/XJBnfurQBY0]Anthony Greninger - Snowfall[/url][/right] The warmer seasons were resting in the Purlieu, leaving winter on Galbar. Many of the higher latitudes were receiving snow from the So'E at this time. The usual greens and browns of nature gave way to a blanket of pure white. With the snow-falls came the winter-spirits. On the northern parts of Kalgrun, Kalgrun's mountains, Li'Kalla's Island, and even patches of Swahhitteh and Tendlepog the winter-spirits found perches in the snow-covered landscapes. They sat in the branches of trees made bare, having shed their leaves over autumn, or on mounds of snow or frozen ponds, but never in the shade. Their snow-dust wings spread out collecting the sunlight, providing them with the energy needed to replenish ice lost during their migration. During night time, once the winter-spirits had cooled to ambient temperatures, they were inactive, so some sought to find a safe perch out of the way of wandering animals before nightfall. Their actions were also sluggish when the weather was overcast, but when the sun was shining the winter-spirits fluttered about, studying the world around them with their sensory ice-stalks. The winter-spirits had a curious nature, and flew up to inspect an interesting creatures they saw. And there were many interesting creatures. Kalgrun had griffons, trolls, dire wolves and bears along with a menagerie of other creatures and plants. On Li's Island were Parvus' beautiful insects, frogs and lilies, along with the strange creatures of mud, the beings of the salt-depths, and the monsters which lurked in the caves. On Tendlepog there were walking trees, cloudlings, exotic insects and numerous marsupials. On Swahhitteh, besides what had migrated from Tendlepog, there was also a great forest with muscular undergrowth and clear cords for trees which twisted the light in inspiring patterns. Some of the winter-spirits were crushed or eaten by the subjects of their study, as the winter-spirits were fragile beings, but as agile and harmless creatures with no nutritional value they usually avoided drawing undue attention. The winter-spirits also practiced shaping ice. They mimicked the flora, fauna and terrain around them in their sculpting. They even built new perches for themselves. In this way ephemeral ice sculptures appeared across the northern latitudes during winter. Once winter started its journey back to the Purlieu and the first signs of spring were beginning to enter into Galbar, the winter-spirits fattened themselves on the melting snow-patches before taking flight and migrating north. Like giant snowflakes in a snow flurry the winter-spirits carried themselves through the sky and over the ocean until they reached the northern ice sheet. On the ice sheet the winter-spirits set to work sculpting the ice into shapes they had seen. Each winter-spirit claimed a patch of ice to shape its own sculpture, often using worn down unclaimed sculptures as a base to save on work. The process of sculpting was slow for the winter-spirits were not large, but over time a vast plain filled with art took shape. The forms of the beasts and plants of Kalgrun, Swahhitteh-Tendlepog and Li's Island were common, but other forms also emerged. Some created chimeric fusions of the forms they had witnessed. Some attempted abstract forms, playing with shapes or light. Some shaped landscapes and maps. For each winter-spirit, the creation of elaborate art had an important purpose. As the sculptures were finished, the winter-spirits took off to inspect the sculptures of others. When a winter-spirit found a sculpture which impressed it, it waited around that sculpture until it could find that sculpture's creator. That second winter-spirit would follow the first back to its sculpture. If the second winter-spirit was not impressed, it would return to its sculpture, leaving the first winter-spirit. But if it was impressed, the two winter-spirits extracted a droplet of water from each others' abdomens and together they sculpted a new winter-spirit. In this way new winter-spirits were made from the best sculptors among them. And so the cycle was established. During winter, winter-spirits flew south to study the world and gain inspiration. During summer, winter-spirits nested at the north pole, breeding and creating new sculptures from the inspiration they had learned in the previous season. Thanks to the work of the winter-spirits, Ashalla's ice sheet would never be lacking in beautiful sculptures. [hider=Summary] Ashalla feels like creating marine mammals, so she creates cetaceans (whales and dolphins). Besides the utilitarian features, she also teaches them to dance and sing. She also creates oceanic fish which gather in impressive schools to feed the toothed whales and dolphins (baleen whales eat plankton). She spreads these throughout Galbar's ocean as an ecosystem. At the north pole, Ashalla creates winter-spirits. These are extraordinary creatures made entirely of ice. They are powered mostly by the warmth of sunlight and consume ice and snow. They fly, and look vaguely (very vaguely) like butterflies made of ice and snow with a one foot wingspan. They can sculpt ice like it was wet clay. Winter-spirits migrate south during winter, where they study flora, fauna and landscape. They are only present in places with ice and snow. They return to the north pole over summer, where they use this inspiration to create sculptures. They breed here, with the quality of the sculptures being the metric for sexual selection. Ashalla made them primarily to maintain the ice sculptures on the north pole's ice sheet. [/hider] [hider=Might Summary] [u]Ashalla[/u] [i]Start:[/i] 1 MP & 5 FP [i]Spent:[/i] 4 FP on an ecosystem (enhanced by Oceans to encompass the whole ocean) involving cetaceans and oceanic fish, inhabiting all of Galbar's oceans. 1 FP on the winter-spirits, an extraordinary species. [i]End:[/i] 1 MP & 0 FP [i]Portfolios:[/i] 4/10 Colour 10/10 Ice [/hider]