[center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/adb01259-53a5-4c37-8dd0-07d9259d9823.png[/img]
[b]Alpha.[/b][/center]

Chopstick Eyes looked about her and the Charnel Steppe, chewing her dartweed, and said, [colour=wheat]"Hmm."[/colour]

A passing boar spotted her, sniffed assertively, and continued on its muscly way, thrusting its snout through the steely twigs and shrubbage of what the place called vegetation. Chopstick cracked another dartweed husk, munched for a second, then spat a burst of nutty flechettes that snapped through the sound barrier and reduced the boar to so much prime pork chops. Most animals learned to avoid her, after a while.

Chopstick Eyes watched the sun go down for the millionth time and said, [colour=wheat]"Hmm."[/colour]

It was time to get out of this place. The sun rose and went down several times in the time it took her to formulate this idea. The no-sleep regime wasn't really doing her much good. 

She took a step in some arbitrary direction.

The sun went down again.

Fuck.

What she needed to do, she realised, was develop something that would do the walking for her. She needed a vehicle... No, a steed. Something large, muscular, like the boars, but swift, elegant; something gracious and powerful, to strike fear and awe into the hearts of hot babes. What she needed, in short, was a [i]horse.[/i]

Chopstick took out her notebook and set off briskly doodling the schematics for her new animal. It would have long legs, and be substantially taller than a man. It would have a slightly arched neck, and a long, large head thereon, and something (but not much) of a tail; it would be well suited to travelling long distances across such a steppe, and be coloured accordingly, pale browns and greys and perhaps even black. She hmph'd in pride, ripped the doodle from her notebook, and folded it into a tidy origami shape, into which she nestled a crisp dollar bill, fresh from the Bazaar. Within a minute, it took on flesh.

[center]
[hider=Behold: the majesty of the first horse!]
[img]https://site-547756.mozfiles.com/files/547756/medium/Camel2.jpg[/img]
[/hider]
[/center]

With a clap of her hands, the horse reduplicated itself a dozen times, forming a sizeable self-perpetuating herd. Chopstick heaved herself on top of the finest specimen and rode off back to the boiling strait. She was of a mind to return to the Feasting Forest, and have lunch.

[hr]

The Saluran Mendidih, it turned out, was a rather hostile place. When Chopstick tried to swim across it astride her holy steed, her camel melted; she went back inland on foot to find another, only to have that one melt on her too. She ran through three camels, two boars and a jackalope total before she shook herself awake and realised that this wasn't such a good idea. Eventually she just swam the strait, which turned out remarkably warm and soothing, once she'd given herself a few years of tiptoeing to acclimatise.

It was an exceptionally barren place, though, all told. Deep in the water, magma pillowed, rolled, crusted and steamed, forming great misshapen stones that ambled down back into the trenches and were subducted to melt and rise again. Watching lava at play was mesmerising, but Chopstick Eyes was acutely aware that she and Ashalla were probably the only ones ever to enjoy this view. No one standing at the shore would ever enjoy anything like this, and even down here, much of the colour and glow of the affair was lost to the light-eating deepwater.

Nothing a quick trip to the Bazaar couldn't solve.

After a while, Chopstick was done wheeling and dealing. And keeling, and reeling, and... mealing and peeling. (As it turned out, the whole endeavour was financed by an unexpected uptrend in the Bazaar fruits-and-grains market.) The fruits, so to speak, of her labour rested quietly atop the surface of the waters, rocking gently side to side.

Mostly they were spheres, or spheroids, or domes, though some were more curious shapes. Chopstick spotted cubes, tangled pipes, tubas, and even the occasional self-intersecting non-orientable surface (these she gave a wide berth). Each one had a surface of heat-eating glass that did not incandesce, no matter the temperature, revealing in crisp true colour the flow of magma within. Stained by bio-alchemical ichors Chopstick could not hope to understand, the blood and innards of the lava lamps bubbled and oozed through liquid tissues, their veins glowing brightly in every colour a mortal eye could see and then some.

Each lamp was rooted deep in the strait, a segmented metal stalk holding them aloft, like the bulb of a sleek and narrow stem. From there they drained their magma and spread their roots, pushing up new sprouts. Some had scales on their stems, some rough rusted crusts, and others still smooth metal.

Chopstick Eyes congratulated herself on the bargain she had secured, and fled that place before the Architect's judging eye could see her there much longer.

[hider=more to come in the near future??]
After proving her ability to use dartweed to become a living Remington, Chopstick Eyes creates... uh... [i]horses.[/i]

Then she decides the Saluran Mendidih isn't spicy enough and adds an organometallic lava lamp forest to it. Clever mortals may be able to use these solid, if ever so slightly mobile, surfaces to build hanging bridges or swinging-ropes to get across the strait. At least if they're suicidally reckless. Where's my goblins at?

[b]Chopstick Eyes

1 Free Point on glorious desert horses
2 Free Points on giant living lava lamps (1 Might towards lanterns)

8 Might (Native)
6 Might (Age of Monsters)

Markets | Knives
Kites (4/5)
Lanterns (2/5)
Cuisine (4/5)[/b]
[/hider]