[h3]To claim a heart[/h3]

In the swamp where Egrioth had sunk after death, in the waters that had been tranquil since that day, something shifted and stirred as something rose from the depths. Earth bulged, and then exploded as three things burst from it, a witch, a stone, and a grotesque lump of flesh that pulsed with both life and power.

“Your a tricky beast, hiding this away in a leg of all places” the Breaker told the outer beast’s still beating heart “and ya would have gotten away with it, where it not for … whatever this is”

She glanced over at the rock that had poked into the heart while she had been attempting to harvest more flesh so she could use it to curse yet more outer beasts, causing it to spasm and give its existence away. It was by no means a natural stone, this was obvious due to the symbols carved upon it, although carved was perhaps the wrong word. It was as if something had pressed the symbols into it all at once, compressing the stone rather than cutting it away.

“Hmmm, now what does this say? Hmmm. Hmmmm?” the goddess hummed and hawed as she tilted her head to and fro while attempting to read the symbols “Ah yes, I think I see. It is you, your power outsider, that is written here. Pain. Hurt that can harm even I, a pain I know quite well sadly and-ow”

She paused in her musing as something jabbed her in the side of the head. She raised her hand up and grasped at it, only for her fingers to be prickled, forcing her to tear them away. Then she steeled herself, grabbed the source of the pain, and tore it from her face before tossing it into the waters, revealing it to be her riding goggles, now warped, half turned into the translucent purple curse energy of Egrioth.

“Hmmm, well that’s strange” she muttered, before glancing back at the runestone and immediately understanding what had occurred as the same force that had warped her goggles attempted to warp her now unguarded eyes instead 

“ack, what a nasty drawback you have” she complained as she glanced away, before thinking for a moment, and then tipping the stone fully into the water, before reading again. The marshland’s waters themselves twisted as she read through them, but the sheer volume ment a single learning had little impact, and soon enough she knew Egrioth’s heart from the runestone spawned by its energies. 

“Interesting, interesting … Now what in the world do I even do with this information, huh?” she asked, before thinking for a moment and then snapping her fingers in memory of something she had seen from on high while orbiting the world.

“Ah so that is what that was. One moment please” she requested of the heart, before blasting across the sea of origin to the other example of these stones she had seen. There, through a veil of mist, she snooped on Rúnaritari’s diary, and then once she had digested everything she thought she had a pretty clear idea of what the goddess had been going for. So after a quick pit stop to collect a bucket full of R’kava goop, she returned with a plan in mind

“Thank you for waiting dear” she told the heart, as she set down the bucket, as well as a small pile of knives on a convenient rock, before telling it “now let’s see if we can’t get you to cooperate, and cut you down to a more portable size to boot. I’m hardly going to lug you around as you are now, am I?”

If the lump of still living muscle could feel fear, it would have. Instead it simply suffered as the Breaker began carving runes into it. She too suffered, mainly because what she was trying to do kept warping her knives into unusable twisted things, and even then they kept breaking against the godlike flesh of the heart, resulting in what was very much just torture rather than anything productive. 

An increasingly frustrated Breaker cursed and swore, and then was suddenly replaced by the Maiden who screamed out “I can’t take it any more!!!!” in frustration as she grabbed all the broken knives, and the bucked, shoved them all into each other somehow in order to produce, of all things, a chainsaw. The blade whirred, R’kava running slick across it, before she began carving into the heart, rendering onto it not a rune they had learned from either stone, nor one written in the khodex, but a simple ring shape that was, functionally, because of the power of repetition, hers. 

Or, to put it another way, she carved the runic equivalent of slang or a gang tag onto it.

“There, that’s how you do it!” she declared, before passing off to the mother who hadn’t really been paying attention to any of this, and was rather surprised to find a wiring blade of godly harm in her hands. She stumbled, complained about this “reckless nonsense!” and then only after the other two badgered her did she carve a circle onto the heart.

The breaker followed it up with her bisected circle, and then proceed to go to down on the rest of the heart, carving a massive network of runes all across it, forming chains of curse runes linking the three, which when completed began squeezing and contracting inwards, shriveling the heart, contending its power tighter and tighter until the massive organ was the size of a walnut.

“And there we go, understand who’s in charge now, little thing?” the Breaker enquired as she picked up the heart in one hand and gave it a squeeze. In response a massive sea of translucent purple arrows formed around her, all pointing inwards at the goblin goddess herself. And yet, with a simple “no,” and a flaring of the runes carved into the heart, she willed them all to turn arch up into the air, and then rain down on a poor unsuspecting outer beast that had survived the battle here only to foolishly come to inquire as to what was causing all the noise, the rain of arrows resulting in it to feel so much pain that its nervous system exploded and it expired.

“Much better,” the breaker declared, before producing a mundane little locket for the heart to be set into so she could hang it around her neck. Then she proceeded to stash her new craving implement, strapping it to her bike for safe keeping. That only left the giant rock as a loose end, only for it to subsequently mysteriously appear in the ruins of Tricity, along with detailed instructions about how to not lose your eyeballs and a copy of a certain goddess’ runic journal as an added bonus.

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Start 15 mp

4mp to claim Witchcraft: Mastery over witches and their craft, which is a rather diverse discipline conforming more to an archetype, an idea, than a strict code or doctrine. Witches are in touch with tradition, and the power that tradition entails. Witches have familiars. They brew potions. They cast complex rituals under moonlight. They curse their foes. They fly through the air. Most importantly, they wear pointy hats.

In the context of existing magic systems however, Witches are in touch with reincarnation, the power of cycles, rune craft and the evolutionary fuel R’kava the most. They are very much about indirect power, such as enhancing the body, creating artifacts or cursing those of their foes, rather than chucking fireballs around. 

Gained as reward for participating in Hell in Heaven: the Heart of Egrioth (godbane artifact) : shriveled from titanic size to small enough that it can fit in a locket, the heart of this Greater Outer Beasts still beats, and grants the wearer the ability to wield its curse magic to cause pain even to the gods. Its translucent purple power can come in the form of storms of arrows, great building sized ballista bolts, sweeping blades and other mimicries of weapons of war, as well as producing simpler explosions and energy fields. Though these attacks do not cause physical damage, the intense levels of pain can themselves be lethal via causing circulatory shock.

2 mp witchcraft  (boosted to 4 by wheels) to make the godsbane item the paintsaw, a chainsaw like device capable of drawing for a bigger on the inside well of R’kava set inside of its hub, which is then slathered on the blades so they can be used to paint/carve without needing to dip the brush. It’s a godbane so it can be used to tattoo divine flesh. The base witchcraft keeps the inevitable warping effect rune carving causes from actually damaging the device’s functionality, while wheels make it nice and slicy. 

1 mp (boosted by witchcraft) to teach the people of Tricity about runes. Witchcraft boost used to make a copy of Rúnaritari’s diary runestone, which contains a fair amount of basic grammar and fundamental concepts.

End mp: 8
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[hider=summary]
Asheel digs up Egrioth’s heart, and a runestone that has formed next to it due to its immense magical power (which is a thing that can happen). She uses that to learn about curse runes, then goes and finds Rúnaritari’s diary holy site and learns some of her thought process on how runes should work from reading. Finally she returns, makes a godsbane chainsaw come tattoo needle, and converts the heart into a godsbane of its own using runecraft. Then as an added bonus she drops off the rock, a copy of Rúnaritari’s diary rock, and a bunch of notes on how to use em in Tricity so they can do rune stuff. 
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