[color=saddlebrown]“Hrrgghh.”[/color] A dozen mouths stretched wide in a fetid yawn. Buzzing things rose in a small cloud from the shifting body, which had until then been coated in them like a swarming black shroud. [color=saddlebrown]“Thhe moshht… Guts, my head.”[/color] Vrog’s hand groped around, digging ruts in the soil, until it finally found its way up to his head. Or, at least, a head that he thought was his. “Getta yer paw off, mudsnout! Head’s crackin’ bad ‘nuff without that!” [color=saddlebrown]”Nrrgh. [b]Shut it!”[/b][/color] He spun his wrist, sending the foreign head and everything attached to it flying a few feet away with a thud and a squeal. Groaning and grumbling in a few voices at once, he pulled his swollen bulk to its feet and let out an exploratory tongue, which was conspicuously missing its tip. As he rose, the tree he had been leaning against, deprived of its last support, careened down and fell by his side in a crash. Its trunk, corroded to a thin blackened husk full of rotted sludge, snapped open, releasing a swarm of thrumming pests. More crawled out from the grimy quagmire the top of wilted leaves had landed in. The land clearly had not gained much from having been his resting place. By comparison, the figure that approached the beheaded stump on wooden steps was incongruously clean, in a way that irked Vrog’s painfully sharpened senses. He snapped a pointing finger towards it, flicking a thin spray of corrupt sludge that was, however, carefully eluded. The attendant’s glowing head flickered and it shook a vise-hand, jangling the pocket-watch it had been holding for what must have been a long time. Vrog's tongue whipped towards the heap he had tossed away. [color=saddlebrown]“You there,”[/color] he motioned with a finger, [color=saddlebrown]“open that up.”[/color] The piggut sat up, chewing on a maggot picked up from the ground, and grunted "Do it yerself." [color=saddlebrown]“Like spit I'm going to.”[/color] The tipless tongue cracked like a lash, and the piggut rose to its hooves with a reluctant grunt. It trotted over to the watch-bearer, indifference to everything and everyone shining through its beady eyes, and tipped the cover aside. A moment later it jumped away with a shriek, shaking off the mouth that had taken a liking to its paw. "Rutter, y'knew it'd do that!" [color=saddlebrown]“Worth a shot.”[/color] Vrog's gurgling laugh turned to another groan. With a flick, a flask was in his hand, and a grey liquid poured from it into the watch as the mannequin held it flat. When it was empty, it went flying over its considerably more cheerful owner's shoulder. Free to stop holding his head as though it might come split apart any moment, he probed the air with more tongues. [color=saddlebrown]“How'd you get here anyway?”[/color] The piggut shrugged and belched. "If ye don't know that," it snatched a fat buzzing thing out of the air and noisily licked it up, "Came out with the water if I'd to guess. One thing I'm sure is the others ain't far behind." [color=saddlebrown]“Others? What d'you mean not far-”[/color] something rumbled inside him. [color=saddlebrown]“Spit.”[/color] The rumble moved up into his throat and was overtaken by a distant metallic banging. He stretched a mouth open, and a trio of swine-faced goblins clothed in coarse rags tumbled out of it. They sniffed around, gaining their bearings, then ran off into the thick of the woods, squealing and brandishing their cleavers. [color=saddlebrown]“Gut it, it's starting now!”[/color] Another wave of rumbling began to rise. Vrog shoved a hand into the mouth and pushed something down. [color=saddlebrown]“Grab the watch and get up here!”[/color] "That thing? Forget it." A metal wrist clicked, and the piggut went rolling. It picked itself up with an indignant noise, but snagged the watch in its teeth and latched onto Vrog's shoulders. Another couple of newcomers went trundling by. [color=saddlebrown]“Strap on back there. You drop the thing, you're dead!”[/color] The pair leapt off like a burdened frog, leaving a puddle of filth and a hovering cloud of gnats behind. The lantern-head head followed them with a blank stare, then wound up its eye and strode off towards the temple. [hr] A path of putrid tracks wound through the forest, now and then widening into shallow mires where the feet that left them had paused to disgorge some more visitors. Trees had been toppled at nearly every step with tell-tale impatience. The trail ended on a cliffside. Steam drifted skyward from the sea below, and enormous luminous bodies oscillated along with the waves. Vrog crouched near the edge, holding his middle mouth closed with both hands as something rumbled inside. The piggut on his back looked at the sea with unease. "Ghak? Ghe're gheing [i]ghere[/i]?" To its credit, it still had not dropped the watch. [color=saddlebrown]“Yes, now keghaghhhh-”[/color] Opening another mouth to answer had been a mistake. The rumbling receded, then suddenly surged up again and erupted from the new exit point. A torrent of rugged pink hide, specked with gleams of rusted metal and patches of discoloured grey rags, tore its way out of the maw, stretching and pushing it apart to fit its clusters of tangled shapes. They popped to pieces as they struck the ground, suine faces grunting and snarling at each other as each sought the rest of their packs. Vrog’s head was pulled apart to an alarming point as several bodies as large as himself emerged. The massive, bloated pigguts smelled their rivals as soon as they plopped out onto the ground, and their beady eyes flashed at each other full of beastly aggression, but only a few came to blows. The best part fell upon the mob of their lessers, itself about to erupt into one huge brawl. The chorus of angry squeals ad club strikes that followed was by no means quieter, but a fraction more orderly, and before long the gaggle split into groups that chased each other inland with a litany of grunted curses. If there had been any corpses, none were left behind - one could not fault the impish mob with being wasteful in this. Vrog leaned back, wheezing from the brutalized mouth and the ones around it. He rubbed the skinless gangrene under a limply hanging jaw. The piggut hanging from his shoulders took the chance to loosen a hand and pick its nostrils with a finger. [color=saddlebrown]“Gut it, feel way lighter now. You still there?”[/color] A crack and a curse followed as the jaw finally snapped back into relative shape. “Others wosn’t there yet.” It took the watch in its hand to answer, then bit it again and went back to its snout. [color=saddlebrown]“Spitting lot more of you that’s still inside,”[/color] Vrog grumbled and pushed himself upright with a hand, [color=saddlebrown]“But should keep them in till I’m over the sea now.”[/color] “Bet ya y’can’t.” [color=saddlebrown]“Bet ya I can! Loser keeps the watch.”[/color] [hr] [color=saddlebrown]“Told you. Should’ve fattened up ‘fore throwing me a bet.”[/color] “Ghuh-hah - ghu ghoht - lost some on them glowrocks.” [color=saddlebrown]“Some don’t count. Weren’t any of yours anyway.”[/color] The piggut tried to retort, but a reckless jump made it bite down on the chain. Vrog and his passenger dropped down the face of a mountain, caught a rocky outcropping with a crash, tumbled dangerously over a steep slope and slid to a halt at its foot. A cut-off tongue bent out in a hooked shape and probed the air. [color=saddlebrown]“Almost there. Couple more climbs left.”[/color] “Engh ghen?” [color=saddlebrown]“Then I kick your spit face to a place you can stop at. You can make more of you?”[/color] After a shrug went unnoticed, a grunt came by way of reply. [color=saddlebrown]“You do that, and we’ll all have the time of our spitting life.”[/color] The last words were rejoindered by a low, distant drumming. [color=saddlebrown]“Guts, they’re coming again.”[/color] As luck would have it, the heap of filth, metal and swineskin had landed in sight of a pass. The piggut banged on the left side of Vrog’s helmet, and the blind monster heavily turned that way. Their path up the dry rock, crossed in a jagged line of leaps, was accompanied by the mounting and ebbing of the rumble, louder than ever before. It reached a thunderous peak as Vrog vaulted over the crest of the pass, and, finding an unexpectedly steep cliff on the other side, began to half-roll, half-skid downwards. He rattled and clanked for a good stretch, leaving behind a trail of slimy stone worthy of a gigantic slug, before catching an inconveniently smooth rocky spur. The clattering mess drifted through the air with the grace of a displaced avalanche, scattering some low-flying kites, and for a moment it looked as though it might remain suspended up there for good. The illusion was soon dispelled by a resounding crash and a plume of salt that obscured Heliopolis and smothered a vibrant blue kite’s fabric in white. A snout emerged from a nearby puddle, covered in strands of pink weed. It stared as Vrog disentangled himself from the bundle he had landed in, staggered a couple of steps forward, leaned back and split apart. A jagged rift burst open around his midsection, and metal plates slid to the sides, baring an enormous pair of jaws over where his stomach should have been. The horrid maw gnawed, spat, awned wide, revealing a cavernous pit of pools of nauseating filth and pillarlike strands of mucus - With a tearing retching sound like the churning of an apocalyptic whirlpool, dozens, hundreds of squat pink bodies poured out between the sparse yellow spines and iron scraps of its teeth. The crowd of pigguts rolled as if punted by a gigantic foot. A few collided with each other and stopped within sight, or fell into mires and sat up, spitting saltwater. Most, however, continued to roll, spinning away towards the flat horizon with small white clouds over their trails. Curious kites followed in the drafts from their motion. The piggut with the watch crawled out of its puddle, licking algae from its face. Vrog pulled himself back up, wiped a small cascade of spittle from his abdominal mouth and dragged it closed with a brief, yet intense bout of muttered cursing. “What’s doing with this?” It shook the watch on its chain. [color=saddlebrown]“Throw something good in there sometimes,”[/color] Vrog distended a mouth in a stretched-out flat trumpet and breathed out a cloud of grey mist between its jutting teeth. The acrid fog swept over the piggut, triggering a spell of grunting wheezes. [color=saddlebrown]“You’ll find ‘em that way. Long as you do, you won’t regret it.”[/color] He snapped the outturned teeth into place with a finger one by one. [color=saddlebrown]“And if you don’t, you will.”[/color] As watch and piggut trotted away towards where some leftover newcomers were picking themselves up, Vrog’s shadow began to stretch past its contours, despite the glare from the sky staying as still as always. Though he could not have seen it, his tongue hovered it with unease while it grew, stretching out like an oily puddle and indeed seeming almost as bulgingly solid. Any doubt anyone might have had about that solidity was dispelled when the shadow stood up, towering a good few heads above its caster, and glared at him with four burning eyes. [color=#CD2626][b]”You thought I wouldn’t know?”[/b][/color] it reached with a claw that gained dimensions as it moved and clenched Vrog’s head in a merciless vise. Smoke rose from his putrid flesh where the pitch-black fingers touched it. [color=#CD2626][b]”I felt that, rothead. Someone took my guts and cleared them out. You know how long it took me to fill them? What scrap did you do this time?”[/b][/color] [color=saddlebrown]“Ow, spit, the head!”[/color] Vrog squirmed, or, more accurately, wobbled under the brutal grip, [color=saddlebrown]“Let u-”[/color] the grip only tightened, [color=saddlebrown]“Fine, fine, here’s the thing. I got good news, and I got bad news...”[/color] [hr] Hruf picked up a fistful of coarse white grains from the ground, licked them and threw them away over her shoulder. Most landed on Kniff, who phlegmatically wiped them off his face, stood up and hit Hruf under her left ear with his club. Hruf answered by punching Kniff straight in the still salty snout. The two traded a few more lazy blows before wheezing and collapsing on their backsides. Off to the side, Nahf kicked up sprays from a puddle with a hoof. “Salt, salt, more sodding salt,” Hruf grumbled, “Only things moving’s them wood crows.” The kites overhead hovered on unperturbed. “Why the rut’d Oruff get us ‘ere? Ain’t no feed, no snatch, nothin’.” “Dunno it was her that did,” Kniff huffed, “But the place’s mud rutstraight.” “Gotta be her,” Hruf insisted, “Went off somewhere, stays disappeared days long, then we’re here.” “Ask her yerserlves, ‘ere she is.” Nahf pointed at a squat approaching figure. Oruff was quick to waddle close up, munching on something. In one hand she carried a bundle of pink weeds from a marsh, and in the other a round metallic object kept oscillating at the length of a slender chain. “‘Ere!” Hruf waved her cleaver at the newcomer, “What kinda mudflat’s this? What got in yer head dragging us here?” “And what’s that stuff?” Kniff added, eyeing the strange trinket. “Place’s good,” Oruff smacked Hruf over the forehead with the shiny circle, swinging it on its chain like a miniature flail. It clicked open from the blow and bit the closest ear, eliciting an angry squeal. Oruff continued unperturbed. “Ya try this?” She waved the pink strands before the others’ snouts. Nahf shook his head. “What good’s eating leaves?” “No good just so, but I got an idea,” Oruff eyed a stray piggut poking through the ground a fair distance behind them and nodded at it with an expressive snarl. “Lots of ideas. Me, ya three and this lil’ thing,” she jangled the watch, which Hruf had extricated from her ear, “we’re going to have the time of our rutting life. Just ya watch.” [hider=Piggenesis] This post takes place pre-timeskip. Vrog wakes up with a terrible headache and an equally hungover piggut rooting around. The piggut tells him that more are on their way, and, sure enough, they start to appear in a way familiar to those who drink beyond their weight. Vrog takes it as a watch-holder and sets off for the Dragon’s Foot, dropping a few swine-goblins on the way. A rather large group materializes just before they cross the Saluran Mendidh. The duo with the watch make it to and through the northwest of the Foot, but can’t reach the Steppes in time, and the bulk of the newcomers is conjured in the Pan. Vrog tells the piggut to carry the watch around and feed it things, and he’ll make it worth its while, before Narzhak appears to take him to task for squandering [s]Might[/s] godly power. The piggut watch-watcher, whose name is Oruff, rejoins her friends and reassures them that they’re going to enjoy themselves in this world. [/hider] [hider=Might etc.] [b][u]Narzhak[/u][/b] [i]Starting:[/i] 12 MP, 9 FP 4 MP spent creating pigguts, a simple sapient species. More to come in the wiki, but, in short, they're small, gregarious, violent and voracious, generally short-lived but prolific. They have little to no drive to work or innovate and prefer to steal. Pigguts live in packs, led by warlords bloated by hormone overloads. They have a propensity for snatching and eating other species' children. Pigguts come with some things from their dreamworld, those being: 1 FP (enhanced with War portfolio) for a number of crude metal weapons 1 FP for the knowledge to start fires 1 FP for rudimentary cooking 0 FP (discounted with War port.) for a knack for salvaging and improvising weapons 0 FP (discounted with War port.) for a similar aptitude with armour and body protection In addition: 2 FP spent on forming a holy order, the Keepers of the Maw 0 FP (discounted with Cannibalism port.) on giving the Keepers the title [i]Fleshgorgers[/i]. For them, eating people is a mystical art. [i]End:[/i] 8 MP, 4 FP [b]Keepers of the Maw[/b] +1 Prestige for minor role [i]End:[/i] 1 Prestige [/hider]