[hider=God of Secrets] [center][h1]The God of Secrets[/h1] [h3][color=gray]"My Lord", "My Lady", other titles of varying note[/color][/h3] [hr] [h2]Domain[/h2][/center] The Domain of Secrets covers both the creation of and the keeping of secrets of various magnitude. Whether these secrets are political, emotional, physical, or universal, the domain is deft at weaving them. The Domain of Secrets is archetyped by the spy, the analyst, and the assassin. The God of Secrets manifests in the masterful manipulation of espionage and the camouflage of their own divinity. [center][h2]Myth[/h2][/center] The city; a disorganized sprawl of mouldering townhouses, their sullen gray papering washed with sea-salt. A slight seaward breeze, bringing with it the odor of malignance. A smattering of sewage, washed with the heady scent of rotting beams and tough meat. The maladies of a port after the end of the world. A city once marble and gold, reduced to a pitiable remnant, from the teeming hundreds of thousands of lives to the ghosts and the decrepit. Whispers, from a rotten mound of inequity. Once an inn and a whorehouse in equal measure, now a shell of its former self. Set languishing upon a portside no longer trafficked; save one wretched schooner, blasted sadly by storms past. The dockworkers long since fled, leaving the ship to be tied haphazardly to the pier by its crew. Waves wracked it, the ocean’s fury having overwhelmed cyclopean breaks. “The King be damned! What use are the crown jewels in the wake of Godfall?” A hoarse voice shouted, a tough man; a sailor’s captain through and through, a voice wrought from a lifetime of shouting over the swell of the wave and the crack of thunder. The crack of dying wood, the impact of muscle and bone. A wretched table slammed by a hopeless wretch, the weight of a life wasted by the death of divinity. The Wretch’s quiet voice, laced with despair haphazardly disguised as rage, “Speak with discretion, captain! We must think beyond the Godfall; the legitimacy of the throne comes from those jewels. They must be saved.” A tense murmur from the table. The sneer of the Sailor’s Captain. Glares from the Society. A counter argument presented, dripping with supercilious intent, “If we do not leave now, spymaster, we do not leave at all. The ship will be smashed upon the pier!” The table could not oblige the insult. Sabres were drawn with the intensity of doomed men. The Wretch cried, “I am the royal spymaster, and my word is the law of the king! We shall wait for the crown jewels, or we shall see your schooner lost!” Shouts of protest; the Sailor’s Captain backed by his men. The table was moments from violence. “Enough!” The Sailor’s Captain sliced through the tension; his hoarse voice commanding authority beyond station, “we will do as you say, you wretch, for the weight of our failures will rest on you!” A slight; the table murmured. The Society wavered, their constitution disrupted by uncertainty. An insult brooked was a goal achieved, their dignity in balance. The Wretch nodded an assent. Dignity was nothing to agents of the King; a precocious treasure to be sacrificed upon the pyre in the pursuit of the perfection of craft. The Sailor’s Captain would live in slight of the court, among the rare few. A death sentence irrespective, the Sailor’s Captain was a clever man, with numerous plans. The meeting of the Society and the Sailors broke up; their business complete. The Sailor’s Captain would not retire that starless night; in the old market, inhabited by the dead, the dying, and the doomstruck, lay his prize; gold was worthless. In the wake of Godfall, starvation was king. A suitable golden jewelry box could be found. A sufficient shining lock would ensure the secrecy of the absence of content. The jewel-priests could be fooled, their routes predictable and their urgency paramount. The crown jewels would remain lost, except in the minds of the Society and the King. A suitable sacrifice for the survival of the ship and the kingdom. The Sailor’s Captain was a clever man, and so his clever plan emerged unscathed. The King was loaded, the Society satiated, the Wretch in ascent, and the Sailor’s Captain alive. An ocean’s rage lay between them and the safety of the Kingdom; the black clouds above driven in their fury against humankind. [center][img]https://537485-1717813-raikfcquaxqncofqfm.stackpathdns.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Schooner-in-a-storm.jpg[/img] [color=gray]The tempest-tossed schooner braved its final voyage.[/color][/center] The enraged cry of the Wretch. The wailing and gnashing of the jewel-priests, their hearts sundered. The pooling of blood; the dagger in the back. The crown upon the deck, the King’s line extinct. “Upon this ship is a murderer!” Came the shouts. Paranoia was crowned in the King’s stead. The Wretch took upon himself a crowbar, and descended below, to the jewels. The safety of the future was paramount. The box was devoid of substance. A golden-liveried fraud, representing the destruction of the Kingdom. Crisis came to a head, the Wretch on the warpath; the Sailor’s Captain had seen his last day, and his crime against the court would not be so easily swept aside. The lines were drawn amid the tempest, the waves smashing in lockstep. Sabre and gun met; thunder cracked in tune. The warsong of death was played aboard the Schooner. The desolate tradition of the old world, unchanged by Godfall. In the end, all were dead in innocence; the Sailor’s Captain innocent of the accusation of regicide, the Wretch pure of mind if clouded in judgement. Only the guilty remained; The Assassin, the sole survivor. Godfall killed justice, and the guilty would receive none. Though the Schooner met its fate against the hard ocean, to safe shores the Assassin was delivered, upon the ship’s planks, the last remnants of the dead Kingdom. [center][h2]Forms[/h2] [h3]Base Form[/h3][/center] The special power in the God of Secret’s base form is that of utter mundanity -- they are a master of disguise, and can appear by all accounts to be a regular human, with regular needs and a regular lifespan. Once they are killed, naturally or otherwise, they can then ‘resurrect’ themselves as an entirely different mundane human. Whether this resurrection takes the form of beginning from birth, as a traveller from afar, or simply appearing one day, they can seamlessly slot themselves into society. With this comes an innate ability to conceal their divine trail; to the point that a god could personally hack the God of Secrets’ head off and never realize who they were really attacking. This illusion can be maintained so long as the God of Secret takes no godly actions. [center][h3]True Form[/h3][/center] In their true form, the God of Secrets manifests as the metaphysical concept of that which is hidden; To gods, it is a sixth-dimensional manifold mass of conceptual-made-manifest, permeable and wispy in nature. A hundred thousand different concepts, ranging from foul murder, to broken hearts, to horrors dredged from passages no eyes, divine or mortal, have ever encountered. To a mortal, seeing the God of Secrets in their true form is to break. Limited to three-dimensional perception, the mortal is driven simultaneously to the heights of happiness, rage, despair, and enlightenment. They learn of all relevant to them; their cheating spouse, the truth of their father’s death, the dirty blackmailing undertaken by their king -- though their minds are left too shattered to ever make meaningful use of any of it. [hider=The Interior of Conceptual-Made-Manifest] [img]https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/48cce9f4-3458-4fd7-930d-ce8c3a200c02/d3bbauh-248533c9-fe62-45c9-a923-e1e51b96911e.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOiIsImlzcyI6InVybjphcHA6Iiwib2JqIjpbW3sicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNDhjY2U5ZjQtMzQ1OC00ZmQ3LTkzMGQtY2U4YzNhMjAwYzAyXC9kM2JiYXVoLTI0ODUzM2M5LWZlNjItNDVjOS1hOTIzLWUxZTUxYjk2OTExZS5qcGcifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6ZmlsZS5kb3dubG9hZCJdfQ.BCku2XxTtOFYyhhrBSclONPqOh7dMP76i8EGDiJDc4Y[/img] [/hider] [center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5sQfEQR8MI[/youtube][/center] [/hider]