[hider=Khthon, God of the Depths]
[center][h1]Khthon, God of the Depths[/h1]
[img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019ab966-ec89-7326-8cb6-af9d08e017d4.webp[/img][/center]

[b]Concept:[/b]

With a mastery over the Domains of Earth and Secrets, Khthon is the embodiment of the Earth's dark depths, and their many treasures. While most Gods turned their gazes outwards once they awakened, Khthon turned his downwards, seeing a refuge in the black sand that made up their newborn world. He dug down, deep down, leaving the surface and the light far behind, and carved himself a solitary, hidden spot, which he soon filled with precious gems, veins of glittering ore, and deep, silent caverns.

He jealously guards his treasures. Though he is willing share if shown proper respect, whomever attempts to rip away more than what is given will face his wrath. Those who pray to him are often those hoping to find a share of buried treasure, those daring enough to become spelunkers, or those hoping to bury their own secrets for safekeeping...

[b]Appearance:[/b]

One who gazes upon Khthon's form might think him an unfinished sculpture. A rough chunk of greyish stone makes up most of his body, with the top half roughly shaped like an armless humanoid torso. His face and expression are much more delicately sculpted, though the proportions are still a bit unnatural. His eyes are completely missing: for what good are eyes in a realm which light never touches? Those who manage to look past the light coat of soil covering him will noticed the many thin veins of quartz, gold and copper crisscrossing over his form.

Khthon's true form is malleable in shape, though always mineral in nature and always lacking eyes, but this one is the form he favors, since Mortals seem to more easily recognize him when he [i]doesn't[/i] look like a boulder.

[b]Motivation:[/b]

Khthon cares little for what other Gods and Mortals desire, or any foolish notions such as "Good" or "Evil". He cares most for one thing, and one thing only: protecting what is his. One might think, what does a single jewel or a single ore vein mean to a being as powerful as a God? And one would be somewhat right: it is not a matter of quantity, for Khthon could always create more. It is... a matter of principle.

Khthon has answered your prayers, and offered you bounties aplenty, and yet you wish to tear at his realm to take more than is deserved. Khthon was given secrets as offerings, and the bones of mortals were laid to rest in his embrace, and yet you thoughtlessly wish to rip them away. You take and take, without ever giving in return. Such arrogance shall not go unpunished.

[b]Roleplay Example:[/b]

Khthon observed as the Mortals, "miners" he believes they called this kind, knelt in silence before his cavern. They had decorated the entrance with colorful glass trinkets, small soapstone carvings, and flower garlands. He could feel their nervous energy as they prayed and whispered promises of offerings. [i]Gold, gold, gold,[/i] they repeated in their devotion.

Mortals truly loved gold, that much Khthon knew well. They wished for it at almost any opportunity. They wore it and traded it, set the gems he gave them within it, and even, though very rarely, [i]ate[/i] it, though for what reason, he could not fathom. Still, despite their strange ways, Khthon had to admit that he could appreciate the Mortals' craftsmanship: the jewelry and coins they buried with their dead as funerary offerings were amongst his favorite treasures.

The miners rose as they finished praying. Khthon was pleased: they would find their gold today.

[b]Availability:[/b]

Once or twice a week during the end of semester, more during winter break.

[b]Experience:[/b]

I'm honestly pretty new to PbP! I've done it a tiny bit on an unrelated site about a decade ago, and I've played plenty of TTRPGs, but I've only been on here for like a year. I've still not got much experience, since sadly most of the games I'd joined had to stop pretty quick for one reason or another (not the fault of anyone involved, things just don't work out sometimes).
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[hider=Minor Creations]
- The Eversharp Axe: A supernaturally durable, prehistoric flint axe head whose sharpness rivals that of steel. Will never lose its edge unless fully destroyed.
- The Subterranean Seas: A vast network of flooded caves and underground saltwater lakes, into which the primordial ocean was drained. Though their creation wrecked devastation on the existing marine life, it still manages to persist underground.
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[hider=The Sabulon]

[center][b]The sabulo (plural: sabulon), or sand folk[/b][/center]

The sabulon are fully mineral, modular, nonliving, yet still conscious hive-minds. They have been created with a purpose: to roam the world, to witness, to learn, and to remember. Just like how stone is eternal, yet ever changing, the Sabulon will persist forever, but never be the same twice. They're kinda like a "living" ship of Theseus, in a way, or if every cell in a human body could survive alone, but still form into a fully thinking human.

[hider=What do they look like?]
A single sabulo is visually identical to a minuscule grain of sand, and only differs by its ability to move independently, seek its brethren, and the fact that it carries the smallest spark of awareness. A single sabulo is not sentient, or conscious, or thinking. It can only feel and react to its surrounding, similar to bacteria.

A mass of sabulon's form is fluid as long as they are sand, and can take whatever shape they wish, as long as it does not exceed their total mass or volume, of course. They have no sight, sense of smell, taste, or any standard biological sense. They instead sense their environment through thermal radiation (think pit vipers sensing heat, but with a different mechanism at its core), vibrations (which lets them approximate hearing), proprioception, and electromagnetic fields. They communicate using these same sense, and can emit weak electromagnetic fields for that purpose.

Sometimes, a mass of sabulon can solidify into a sedimentary rock, either through voluntary action or environmental conditions. This does not harm the sabulon at all, but does make them unable to shift their shape or break their bond as easily, "freezing" them into certain configurations. The same would happen if they ever were to melt and be remade into igneous rocks or glass. Once the rock or glass is broken or eroded back into sand, they will regain their former fluidity and mobility.
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[hider=How the heck do their minds work?]
When a sabulo manages to find others of its kind, something incredible happens. They merge into a larger sand mass, and combine their potential into a larger, more complex mind. Though each individual sabulo is still fully non-sentient, the collective as a whole starts being able to remember things, and even learn. What they learn is then stored as a kind of "data" in individual sabulo, and can then be innately known by future collectives. The larger the collective, the more intelligent it is.

When hundreds of thousands of sabulon combine together, they can achieve true sapience. A personality will develop, with preferences, dislikes, memories, and all other things that individuality entails. For the sabulon, individuality is only possible through the collective, and conscious collectives intrinsically understand that for them, the conscious "I" is an emergent phenomenon created by the unconscious "we".

This peculiar way of being permits two sapient sabulon collectives that meet to exchange some of their sand with each other, letting them share information and memories, or even fully merge into one larger collective. Such exchanges will almost always change their personality to various degree: "they" as an individual were always the sum of their parts. Change the parts, and you change the individual, though their experience will remain continuous (basically they don't act like newborns or like they just appeared out of nowhere) and if they have been given a name, they will generally keep it out of convenience.

This also means that conscious collectives do not fear scattering and the loss of their current individuality. Their "self" is already constantly changing, destroyed and replaced by something new. It is a natural part of their existence, and individual sabulon will eventually form new collectives, new individuals, bringing with them data and fragments of knowledge preserved from their previous experiences.
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[hider=What do you mean, they're not alive?]
Life is a biological process. The sabulon are fully mineral, with not a trace of organic material. This means that they do not breathe, eat, grow, reproduce, excrete, age... In short, they are nonliving. And since they are not alive, it also means that they cannot die. The closest thing to death to them would be the scattering or modification of a conscious hive-mind, which destroys the original personality, something they already do not fear in the slightest.

To truly destroy a sabulo would be to fully erase the matter that forms it from the world, as if it never existed, which is something no natural force is currently capable of doing. The Divine, however, is another story...
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[hider=Aside: Sleep and the Dreamscape]
Individual sabulon will take turns entering a kind of "dozing" or "resting" modes inside a collective, akin to sleep. This means that while the collective would almost never become fully inactive, bar outside interference or exceptional circumstances, there is always [i]some[/i] sabulon "sleeping". These "sleeping" sabulon can access the Dreamscape as any other ordinary dreamer, but will not do so as a collective, but as non-sapient single sabulon.

They still keep their ability to form sapient hive-minds, however, and will do so if they meet enough of their kind in the Dreamscape. This means that some conscious collectives spend their entire existence in the Dreamscape, never knowing the real material world. Their experiences can in turn influence the collectives that individual sabulon are part of in the waking world.
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[hider=Aside: The Singularity]
If every single sabulo join in one single collective, they form a Singularity. The Singularity is sentient and sapient, but does not display individuality in the way that smaller sapient collectives would. With so much raw mental power accumulated in one place, the Singularity is closest to a kind of thinking supercomputer, and has the ability to think in multiple concurrent threads. Anything the Singularity is made to learn would also be conserved for every individual Sabulo afterwards, which makes it the fastest way to teach the entire species things, since you do not have to wait for the knowledge to disperse.

Thankfully, the sabulon do not seem to have any interest in forming the Singularity by themselves. It would bind them to one place, which goes against their nature. Grave circumstances could however shift their opinion...
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