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After leaving the crystal cavern housing the Great Bell, Khthon spent a long time wandering his realm and simply... thinking. Thinking about what he knew. Thinking about just how much was still unknown to him. Thinking about how while he knew his realm by heart, he was still mostly ignorant of the surface. Thinking how that had worked against him.

He might prefer to remain sequestered underground, but his God-Siblings and Ashuru at large would not stop moving just because he wished it so, and now he had been presented with a task. A task he knew too little about, a task that demanded of him a better comprehension of the world, a task that he would need assistance with.

He could, and would, ask the other Gods. But Khthon feared he could not fully rely on them. He had truly spoken only to a handful, and of those, he did not think he could trust them all. He made a short list in his mind. 

Sarhush was arrogant, and too set on molding Ashuru as his whims dictated. He could not be sure his God-Brother would not see the Great Bell's warning as a challenge to worsen the situation.

Adria had been helpful during their brief collaboration shortly after their awakening, and seemed generally trustworthy, but Khthon had not felt or heard anything from his God-Sister since then, as if she had gone into hiding.

Alechior was fickle and impulsive, but they seemed to take the world's health to heart. He wouldn't have asked him to fix the soils, otherwise.

Excelsis was bold, and though their nature clashed in many ways, Khthon could recognize that his God-Brother's Domains and his willingness to study the world could prove invaluable.

And perhaps his beastly God-Sibling he had witnessed battling Sarhush, whose essence resonated within all that walked on the surface and now swam in his depths, would be willing to help, if only to preserve its progeny... All of his other God-Siblings, he did not know enough to make a judgment.

So, Alechior, Excelsis, and the Beast God. He would seek out those three first. But before he could put that plan into action, something strange caught his attention. Something with a spark of the divine in it, something strangely familiar.

He approached it, and emerged into what looked to be a slim ravine that might once have reached the surface. Dust and dried mud covered a good part of the inside, and a few brittle beast bones layed at the bottom. It had probably met its demise after a careless step too much, and had been swallowed by the earth. All of this was mundane, except for the last item laying in a little corner, the same item he had sensed. A simple clay tablet, though it did not feel like it had come from him. On it, two simple impressions; a human foot, and a human hand.

Khthon finally recognized the familiar essence that dwelt in the tablet. It felt exactly like Sarhush and his Me of Fire. He felt uneasy at the memory. Touching the Me and feeling all of his God-Brother's intent infused within it had been profoundly unpleasant. Still, he probably should take of this unknown Me, if only to throw it back to the surface.

He formed an arm and gingerly took it in his hand, bracing for the rush of information he knew would follow.

[i]Things that move. Things that think. Things that make and change and shape. Things that come together, and are stronger from it. Things that do not let the world dictate what they are, what they can do. Things that change the world. Things that are not things, but [b]people[/b].[/i]

Khthon was... surprised. This one wasn't nearly as bad as the other. It was almost inspiring, really. The undercurrent of violence that permeated the Me of Fire was absent, mostly replaced by the will to change and transform, something he understood rather well.

...Maybe he shouldn't throw it away immediately. An idea had been brewing in the back of his mind, and this Me could come in handy. Yes, he could use it, he was certain.

His plan to call his fellow Gods put aside for the moment, Khthon called to the Earth, and let it carry him. His destination would be Ashuru's farthest reaches, where mortals had yet to reach, where sand covered all, where the Sun's heat burned hottest and driest. He emerged before a white dune, a great pillar of stone in the ocean of pale sand.

His one hand still clutching the Me of People, he manifested another, and reached for the middle of his body. And then he struck, and great crack forming and bleeding sand, red and black and golden grains raining like ichor. He bled and he bled, the divine sand mixing with the white dune's, until they were one in Khthon's very essence. He gestured, and the whole took a vaguely spherical shape, and lifted from the ground, isolated from the rest of the desert.

Then came the tricky part. He focused on the sand mass as a whole, and on each individual grain, and within each and everyone of them, poured his energy, and ignited a spark. A tiny, minuscule spark, not exactly of Life, but of Awareness, of Will.

He felt it when the sand began to move by itself. He felt as they shook and linked together, into a great whole. He felt when they began [i]thinking[/i].

He spoke to them. Not in the way of mortal language, but in the way stone speak to itself. Cracks and vibrations and magnetism and changes in heat and recrystallization.

[color=darkgoldenrod]"You are new. You do not know much, but you can think and learn. Let me teach you a few things."[/color] Khthon reached out and gently tapped the Me of People on the floating sand mass. He saw how each grain of sand slightly jumped as the information given by the Me spread through them like a wave. [color=darkgoldenrod]"This is what a person is. You, right now, are a person. You can be a different person. You can be multiple people. You can be not a person at all. It all depends on how many of you there are."[/color]

[color=darkgoldenrod]"Do not fear change. I have made you in my image. You are of the Earth, of Khthon. The Earth forever changes, is never the same twice. And yet, it remains the Earth. It is eternal yet ever changing. So are you."[/color] Khthon demonstrated by grabbing a handful of mundane sand, and compressing it into a sedimentary rock. He showed how the rock cycled different states, from metamorphic to igneous, and even a small pool of lava, before returning it to sand.

[color=darkgoldenrod]"You have been created with a purpose, but it is a purpose you will fulfill simply by being. You are to see the world, learn from it, and remember it even when everything else decays and forgets. You will not need for anything else, for you are not made of weak flesh."[/color] The surface of the sand mass rippled slightly as it processed all the new information. [color=darkgoldenrod]"Spread across the surface. Explore the depths. Meet others. Search for what is both known and unknown, and protect that knowledge carefully. And when I call for you, answer me, and share what you have learned."[/color] The sand mass vibrated in affirmation, as if almost excited by the prospect.

Khthon paused for a bit. He needed to concentrate a bit, as he prepared his last gift. [color=darkgoldenrod]"The others that dwell in this world, creatures both intelligent and not, are different from us. They are not of the Earth, nor are they eternal, and they do not speak as we do. For that reason, I will give you a gift, the gift of language, so that you may communicate."[/color] With a burst of divine power, he shared his knowledge of mortal language. Not of any specific one, but what a mortal language was at its core. The structure behind it, the way meaning could be obfuscated or clarified, how complex ideas were transmitted and organised. He paused for a bit, letting the sudden knowledge spread throughout the sand mass.

[color=darkgoldenrod]"I will spread you across the surface. You will no longer be a person, but you will remember what I have taught you. You will seek your brethren and become someone new. You are the sabulo, and I have chosen to put my belief in you."[/color]

With those last few words, the sand mass, or rather the sabulo singularity, burst outward, every grain flying off to every corner of the world. Soon, Khthon knew, he would have eyes all over the surface, ready to remember when no one else could.

[hr]

In a dark corner of a forest, a small grain of sand moved. It would not usually be strange, for sand constantly was dragged somewhere by beasts or wind, but this one seemed to be moving through no other force but its own. It moved in a straight line, sometimes stopping for a short while, before changing its angle and starting again. Nothing seemed to affect it, not light, not heat, not the beasts roaming the woods.

Until it passed near another self moving grain of sand. As soon as they got close enough, they both started heading straight for each other, until they collided. They stopped moving for a long moment, and then... began rolling, stuck to one another, as if they were one.

The same thing happened over and over again... until, eventually, a head-sized lump of sand crawled out of the woods, as if seeking somewhere new to be.

[hider=Summary]
Khthon ponders over his next step in acting upon what he learned from the Great Bell while wandering aimlessly underground. He regrets not knowing more about the surface, since he feels he could have pinpointed the nature of the problem much quicker if he did. He makes a mental list of the Gods he could contact for help, and settles on Alechior, Excelsis, and possibly Saries.

He then senses something divine in nature near him. He goes to investigate, and finds Sarhush's Me of People buried in an air pocket after probably being swallowed by a ravine. He takes it and has the idea to use it for something. He moves to a desert, where he mixes divine sand from his own body with ordinary sand, and gives the aggregated sand sentience, creating the sabulo. He tells them of their origin, their nature and their purpose, uses the Me to teach them about the concept of people and individuality, and gifts them the knowledge of language, before spreading them all over the world, so that they can act as Khthon's eyes and ears on the surface, and so that they can learn and accumulate knowledge about the world at large.

A bit later, in a forest, a sabulo moves around, and begins liking up with others, until the collective gains enough awareness to seek new places to be.

[u]Conviction spendings[/u]
- Kthon creates the sabulon, sand-based, hive mind-forming, nonliving beings, and spreads them across the world (Create specialized mortal species, species defies logic (probably), nightmare, 4 conviction)
- Khthon gives the sabulon knowledge of structured mortal language, so that they can communicate beyond instinctual geological signals. (Instant knowledge transfer, hazy, 1 conviction.)
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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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