As seen in Divinus Mk.II
Created by Kho, Cyclone, and Rtron
Run by Antarctic Termite, BBeast, and Muttonhawk
God of Creation (Perfection, Calligraphy, Oaths)
Created by Kho, Cyclone, and Rtron
Run by Antarctic Termite, BBeast, and Muttonhawk
God of Creation (Perfection, Calligraphy, Oaths)
Name: Toun
Alias: The Flawless One, The Porcelain Sire
Gender: Male
Domain and Portfolio: Creation (Perfection)
Domain and Portfolio Description:
The act of creation is universal in its potential. One god could easily create a fly that lasts a moment, or a race that lasts for generations. Creations that last are those that make effort to survive. They adapt and evolve by bettering themselves. They become efficient, innovative, orderly, powerful, and unyielding. By bettering themselves, they all – by nature or by will – pursue the virtue of Toun; that of ultimate perfection. Toun is the patron of perfection and his creations reflect this.
Beyond the standard abilities of all gods, Toun has a talent for crafting creations to serve particular purposes in the most efficient manner. Lesser creations keep everything clean and orderly, eating away and depositing any matter that rebels against a predefined pattern. Greater creatures seek out threats to perfection, resembling stilted, creeping automatons that pursue crusades against chaos in any capacity. All of Toun’s creations work towards one goal; replacing all chaotic elements in the universe with perfected, conforming patterns that never step back in constant self-improvement.
As well, any creatures that strive to self-perfection and the virtue of Toun attract the favour of Toun. This can come in the form of removing or mitigating a flaw in some form or fashion, or simply providing the means to do so.
Unfortunately, when extrapolated, the virtue of Toun goes beyond simple evolution. It holds an unrealistic standard for the entirety of creation in Toun’s own eyes. All creations are flawed in some tiny way, including Toun’s own. This is reflected in their appearance; cruel imitations of natural life, wrought of smooth, glistening porcelain hiding twisted, brutal mechanisms of flesh and metal below. Even without peeking underneath their skin, they are never quite right. Their appearance is unsettling to anyone, not for how perfect they are, but rather for how very slightly imperfect they are. Those who gain boons from Toun eventually progress to this kind of appearance as well.
Alignment:
The goals of Toun bring his alignment to Lawful Evil, but his behaviour is not principled directly to that cell of the alignment grid. He has a particular goal and will break the rules to pursue it.
Personality:
To describe Toun in a word would evoke ‘Obsessive’ in most cases. Far from the robotic, uncaring paces of his creations, he pursues his goal of a perfected universe with a passion that borders on insanity. When he is faced with a challenging obstacle, he becomes easily angered and feels entitled to continue unobstructed. Such slights against his vision of the universe often attract spite and lasting hate against the one who orchestrated it, whether they intended to stop Toun or not.
Underneath Toun’s outward bitterness and hate is a reflection of hate against himself. He is not a perfect being by his definition. He believes he is the one to perfect everything, but to hold him to such a standard is impossible. His goal is all that keeps him from auto-annihilation, or perhaps it is simply because he does not know how to truly destroy himself without being reborn as something that ruins all of his own work. In the meantime, he punishes himself for every flaw he produces. As everything he creates has a flaw by definition, he punishes himself often.
Though it is not often admitted, Toun’s exact standard of perfection is paradoxical. One cannot have perfection without removing all chaotic elements. As chaos is an integral part of the sum of all existence, the only true perfection comes from a state where nothing exists. Therefore, despite Toun being derived from the domain of creation, all must be wiped clean from existence in order to be perfect.
As a result, Toun is not a happy god. Any happiness he experiences is derived from the punishment of those who oppose his goals, but it is never a content happiness, it is only vengeance. However, he is aware of his unhappiness. Secretly, it is a longing desire of his to feel genuine happiness and joy as others do. He does not exactly know how it feels to be happy, but the jealousy of not knowing is, in essence, the flaw in his devotion to his goal. His ultimate flaw, if you will.
Appearance:
Toun’s preferred form is most commonly that of a robed man made of a glistening white solid that resembles a glossed porcelain or other ceramic. It seems fluid as it he moves, yielding to stretch and bend like a fluid. The shape of his body cannot exactly be described as human as only the general silhouette of his form resembles as much. Facial features, muscular tone, veins, skin textures, hair, fingernails, all minute details are smoothed over to the point of lacking any definition. The only eye-drawing feature is the single glowing eye peering from his left eye-socket. It is bordered by jagged cracks as if that part of his face had been broken out, but offers enough emotive response to reveal the depth of his obsession.
Stranger still is how Toun’s body contorts and bends unnaturally. Fingers elongate to reach out and finely manipulate things. His torso twists regardless of any semblance of a spine to see what is behind him. Most terrifying is that whenever he is brought to a strong emotional state, he destabilises. His form trembles and twists out of resembling a human at all. He turns into an unnatural creature with warped, elongated, clawed limbs and a razor-toothed mouth with a jaw that descends below any conceivable hinge of his skull. When this happens, his movements are the crazed thrashings of a tortured creature. The summary description of Toun’s destabilised appearance is a living nightmare.
Musical Theme:
Description:
The thought of Toun in the mind of those who witness him is similar to the feeling one gets when they see a mannequin with lidless, peering eyes; a feeling of unease and disturbance. His presence is alien because he is the epitome of flawed perfection.
Still, those who do not know the truth of his standard of perfection may even see his pursuits as noble. To spread a philosophy of self-betterment gives an impression of wanting what is best for his followers. To those who commit themselves to the virtue of Toun, the goal of perfecting the universe is not often thought of to its logical conclusion by Toun’s standards. If it is, it is not seen as a bad outcome amongst the loyal. This is because Toun’s word is that of chaos being the root of all suffering in the universe. To purge it is to reach contentment. Followers of Toun find his perfect presence to be comforting, as they may aspire to such near-perfection themselves.
All others see Toun as an insidious force of heartless, unfeeling annihilation. The more he creates, the more he assimilates and replaces, the more he destroys. If people refuse to follow his goal, he seeks to remove them. It goes without saying that this gives Toun a bad reputation.
The only way to appease Toun is to convince him that one is aligned with putting the universe in a final state of static order and perfection. His levels of trust, however, are based on his mood. If he has been recently deceived, he is unlikely to take the advice of another being. He may even do the opposite out of spite, without trying to process whether that is manipulation in the first place.
Beings associated with chaos or chaotic behaviours are never seen in a good light by Toun. To him, they undo his work and spite his ultimate goal. His brightest wrath is reserved for such beings.
Concealment Level: 1
Detection Level: Uno, Satu, Ein, Ichi, Dot-Dot-Dash, The Figure Preceding Two And Beyond Zero, It Totally Wouldn’t Be One…In Bizarro World.
Alias: The Flawless One, The Porcelain Sire
Gender: Male
Domain and Portfolio: Creation (Perfection)
Domain and Portfolio Description:
The act of creation is universal in its potential. One god could easily create a fly that lasts a moment, or a race that lasts for generations. Creations that last are those that make effort to survive. They adapt and evolve by bettering themselves. They become efficient, innovative, orderly, powerful, and unyielding. By bettering themselves, they all – by nature or by will – pursue the virtue of Toun; that of ultimate perfection. Toun is the patron of perfection and his creations reflect this.
Beyond the standard abilities of all gods, Toun has a talent for crafting creations to serve particular purposes in the most efficient manner. Lesser creations keep everything clean and orderly, eating away and depositing any matter that rebels against a predefined pattern. Greater creatures seek out threats to perfection, resembling stilted, creeping automatons that pursue crusades against chaos in any capacity. All of Toun’s creations work towards one goal; replacing all chaotic elements in the universe with perfected, conforming patterns that never step back in constant self-improvement.
As well, any creatures that strive to self-perfection and the virtue of Toun attract the favour of Toun. This can come in the form of removing or mitigating a flaw in some form or fashion, or simply providing the means to do so.
Unfortunately, when extrapolated, the virtue of Toun goes beyond simple evolution. It holds an unrealistic standard for the entirety of creation in Toun’s own eyes. All creations are flawed in some tiny way, including Toun’s own. This is reflected in their appearance; cruel imitations of natural life, wrought of smooth, glistening porcelain hiding twisted, brutal mechanisms of flesh and metal below. Even without peeking underneath their skin, they are never quite right. Their appearance is unsettling to anyone, not for how perfect they are, but rather for how very slightly imperfect they are. Those who gain boons from Toun eventually progress to this kind of appearance as well.
Alignment:
The goals of Toun bring his alignment to Lawful Evil, but his behaviour is not principled directly to that cell of the alignment grid. He has a particular goal and will break the rules to pursue it.
Personality:
To describe Toun in a word would evoke ‘Obsessive’ in most cases. Far from the robotic, uncaring paces of his creations, he pursues his goal of a perfected universe with a passion that borders on insanity. When he is faced with a challenging obstacle, he becomes easily angered and feels entitled to continue unobstructed. Such slights against his vision of the universe often attract spite and lasting hate against the one who orchestrated it, whether they intended to stop Toun or not.
Underneath Toun’s outward bitterness and hate is a reflection of hate against himself. He is not a perfect being by his definition. He believes he is the one to perfect everything, but to hold him to such a standard is impossible. His goal is all that keeps him from auto-annihilation, or perhaps it is simply because he does not know how to truly destroy himself without being reborn as something that ruins all of his own work. In the meantime, he punishes himself for every flaw he produces. As everything he creates has a flaw by definition, he punishes himself often.
Though it is not often admitted, Toun’s exact standard of perfection is paradoxical. One cannot have perfection without removing all chaotic elements. As chaos is an integral part of the sum of all existence, the only true perfection comes from a state where nothing exists. Therefore, despite Toun being derived from the domain of creation, all must be wiped clean from existence in order to be perfect.
As a result, Toun is not a happy god. Any happiness he experiences is derived from the punishment of those who oppose his goals, but it is never a content happiness, it is only vengeance. However, he is aware of his unhappiness. Secretly, it is a longing desire of his to feel genuine happiness and joy as others do. He does not exactly know how it feels to be happy, but the jealousy of not knowing is, in essence, the flaw in his devotion to his goal. His ultimate flaw, if you will.
Appearance:
Toun’s preferred form is most commonly that of a robed man made of a glistening white solid that resembles a glossed porcelain or other ceramic. It seems fluid as it he moves, yielding to stretch and bend like a fluid. The shape of his body cannot exactly be described as human as only the general silhouette of his form resembles as much. Facial features, muscular tone, veins, skin textures, hair, fingernails, all minute details are smoothed over to the point of lacking any definition. The only eye-drawing feature is the single glowing eye peering from his left eye-socket. It is bordered by jagged cracks as if that part of his face had been broken out, but offers enough emotive response to reveal the depth of his obsession.
Stranger still is how Toun’s body contorts and bends unnaturally. Fingers elongate to reach out and finely manipulate things. His torso twists regardless of any semblance of a spine to see what is behind him. Most terrifying is that whenever he is brought to a strong emotional state, he destabilises. His form trembles and twists out of resembling a human at all. He turns into an unnatural creature with warped, elongated, clawed limbs and a razor-toothed mouth with a jaw that descends below any conceivable hinge of his skull. When this happens, his movements are the crazed thrashings of a tortured creature. The summary description of Toun’s destabilised appearance is a living nightmare.
Musical Theme:
Description:
The thought of Toun in the mind of those who witness him is similar to the feeling one gets when they see a mannequin with lidless, peering eyes; a feeling of unease and disturbance. His presence is alien because he is the epitome of flawed perfection.
Still, those who do not know the truth of his standard of perfection may even see his pursuits as noble. To spread a philosophy of self-betterment gives an impression of wanting what is best for his followers. To those who commit themselves to the virtue of Toun, the goal of perfecting the universe is not often thought of to its logical conclusion by Toun’s standards. If it is, it is not seen as a bad outcome amongst the loyal. This is because Toun’s word is that of chaos being the root of all suffering in the universe. To purge it is to reach contentment. Followers of Toun find his perfect presence to be comforting, as they may aspire to such near-perfection themselves.
All others see Toun as an insidious force of heartless, unfeeling annihilation. The more he creates, the more he assimilates and replaces, the more he destroys. If people refuse to follow his goal, he seeks to remove them. It goes without saying that this gives Toun a bad reputation.
The only way to appease Toun is to convince him that one is aligned with putting the universe in a final state of static order and perfection. His levels of trust, however, are based on his mood. If he has been recently deceived, he is unlikely to take the advice of another being. He may even do the opposite out of spite, without trying to process whether that is manipulation in the first place.
Beings associated with chaos or chaotic behaviours are never seen in a good light by Toun. To him, they undo his work and spite his ultimate goal. His brightest wrath is reserved for such beings.
Concealment Level: 1
Detection Level: Uno, Satu, Ein, Ichi, Dot-Dot-Dash, The Figure Preceding Two And Beyond Zero, It Totally Wouldn’t Be One…In Bizarro World.
Creations:
Life (Automaton):
Lifespan: Ageless - does not reproduce.
Appearance:
Take the limbless, headless body of an elephant. Attach six, bulky, hairless arms shaped like that of a gorilla's on either side, each measuring at least a quarter of the torso's body weight. On the front is a long, flexible neck that squirms like a worm and can reach almost any part of its body. This is capped with a smooth, mostly featureless ovoid head that scans the surroundings and peers at you like it knows whether you are being honest or lying. Like mandibles, two small arms extend from this head and end in spindly, clawed hands for fine manipulation. Every surface on this creature is then covered with thick, interlocking plates of white porcelain that clink and scrape softly as it slowly strides through the wilderness. Only in the tiniest gaps between these plates can you spot the unnatural arrays of designed flesh reinforced with metal underneath. What you just saw was a white giant.
Description:
The white giants are a side project of the Porcelain Sire made for two reasons. The first reason was simply to have something to do while he tried to ponder what he should do about the mess that was the universe. The second reason was as a temporary buffer against the horrors that could assail the developing world of Galbar from the outside. Predominantly, Jvan's horrors of flesh and Mammon's demons.
To call the white giants 'living creatures' is a stretch, because they do not breathe, they do not eat, they do not defecate, they do not reproduce, and their intelligence is rudimentary at best. They are better described as automatons of flesh and clay, sustained by internal siphons of magic designed by Toun himself to exploit his intimate knowledge of the design of the universe.
For the most part, white giants are incredibly gentle creatures. They wander the world apparently aimlessly, but for a particular patrol pattern devised by Toun. They make pains to harm as little life as possible, with compromise to small things, like stepping on grass. If they hear an alarm cry of a creature in need, they will occasionally heed the call and investigate, but they will only help if it doesn't have to harm or adversely obstruct another creature in the process. For instance, they will help a cat get down from the top of a tree, but they will not help a gazelle being chased by a pride of lions. Funnily enough, their gentleness may allow them to be exploited by life in various ways, mostly stemming from riding on its back. While plants may simply start growing on the scattered soil that gets stuck on a white giant, animals may ride on one for transport. Their patrol patterns are nothing if not consistent after all.
The senses of a white giant are limited to touch, sound, and a special life-sense. The latter takes the form at the end of their ovoid head, as it pulses like an extra-dimensional sonar and detects the reflected signals of any living creatures. Otherwise, a soft, regular ticking from the head is evidence of a separate echolocation system, but it is limited in its effective distance compared to the life-sense. Tremors and textures are detected through nerves laced into their porcelain, but is not particularly sensitive. They are otherwise blind and do not detect scent.
For all their apparent aimlessness and assistance, white giants have a hard-wired imperative that reveals a much more violent side. If their life-senses detect aberrant life (that being, creatures not native to Galbar, but with other specific exceptions), they sound an angry rumbling from their cores and fly into a fit of rage, charging whatever aberrant creature is detected and assaulting until the creature is dead. Any creature may disguise themselves from a white giant by bearing the touch of either Slough or Toun in their being, or by simply being obscured completely by a life form of similar description.
As Toun did not create white giants as a renewing species, there are and will be no more than two billion on Galbar. The number will only decrease as they may be destroyed, unless more are made for some reason. To counter this, white giants do not die from old age. Their flesh heals and continues to function so long as the magic siphon in their bodies is not breached. If this happens, there is an outburst of entropic magical power that can cause 'undefined behaviour' in the immediate vicinity. When this dissipates, the corpse of the white giant is left behind; an empty husk of clay, flesh and metal. You monster.
White giants do not favour any particular biome. They are evenly spread across Galbar in any place that they will not be trapped. Currently, the only way to truly avoid them is to climb a mountain or go to the shattered lands.
Flaw: (This section will be included for all of Toun's creations.)
Toun assembled the intelligence of the white giants from manufactured imitations of soul components. In order to make these compatible with the body, empty slots for remaining soul components currently fit the consciousness of white giants. This is such that a white giant may be 'empowered' by a soul, causing it to become sentient in a WALL-E-esque fashion. It will still be a slave to its imperatives, but it could be considered truly sentient at that point. Without doing this in a controlled fashion, the end result may mean taking on strange habits and interests. It might start collecting rocks, playing with infant creatures, falling in love, or something similar.
The true flaw is that Toun could not guarantee that this could not happen accidentally during the lifetime of a white giant. If there is a strange scattering of spirits nearby a white giant, one could accidentally inhabit said white giant and trigger sentience. The chance of this happening is, of course, incredibly narrow and may make certain curators of spirits a little frazzled.
White Giant
Lifespan: Ageless - does not reproduce.
Appearance:
Take the limbless, headless body of an elephant. Attach six, bulky, hairless arms shaped like that of a gorilla's on either side, each measuring at least a quarter of the torso's body weight. On the front is a long, flexible neck that squirms like a worm and can reach almost any part of its body. This is capped with a smooth, mostly featureless ovoid head that scans the surroundings and peers at you like it knows whether you are being honest or lying. Like mandibles, two small arms extend from this head and end in spindly, clawed hands for fine manipulation. Every surface on this creature is then covered with thick, interlocking plates of white porcelain that clink and scrape softly as it slowly strides through the wilderness. Only in the tiniest gaps between these plates can you spot the unnatural arrays of designed flesh reinforced with metal underneath. What you just saw was a white giant.
Description:
The white giants are a side project of the Porcelain Sire made for two reasons. The first reason was simply to have something to do while he tried to ponder what he should do about the mess that was the universe. The second reason was as a temporary buffer against the horrors that could assail the developing world of Galbar from the outside. Predominantly, Jvan's horrors of flesh and Mammon's demons.
To call the white giants 'living creatures' is a stretch, because they do not breathe, they do not eat, they do not defecate, they do not reproduce, and their intelligence is rudimentary at best. They are better described as automatons of flesh and clay, sustained by internal siphons of magic designed by Toun himself to exploit his intimate knowledge of the design of the universe.
For the most part, white giants are incredibly gentle creatures. They wander the world apparently aimlessly, but for a particular patrol pattern devised by Toun. They make pains to harm as little life as possible, with compromise to small things, like stepping on grass. If they hear an alarm cry of a creature in need, they will occasionally heed the call and investigate, but they will only help if it doesn't have to harm or adversely obstruct another creature in the process. For instance, they will help a cat get down from the top of a tree, but they will not help a gazelle being chased by a pride of lions. Funnily enough, their gentleness may allow them to be exploited by life in various ways, mostly stemming from riding on its back. While plants may simply start growing on the scattered soil that gets stuck on a white giant, animals may ride on one for transport. Their patrol patterns are nothing if not consistent after all.
The senses of a white giant are limited to touch, sound, and a special life-sense. The latter takes the form at the end of their ovoid head, as it pulses like an extra-dimensional sonar and detects the reflected signals of any living creatures. Otherwise, a soft, regular ticking from the head is evidence of a separate echolocation system, but it is limited in its effective distance compared to the life-sense. Tremors and textures are detected through nerves laced into their porcelain, but is not particularly sensitive. They are otherwise blind and do not detect scent.
For all their apparent aimlessness and assistance, white giants have a hard-wired imperative that reveals a much more violent side. If their life-senses detect aberrant life (that being, creatures not native to Galbar, but with other specific exceptions), they sound an angry rumbling from their cores and fly into a fit of rage, charging whatever aberrant creature is detected and assaulting until the creature is dead. Any creature may disguise themselves from a white giant by bearing the touch of either Slough or Toun in their being, or by simply being obscured completely by a life form of similar description.
As Toun did not create white giants as a renewing species, there are and will be no more than two billion on Galbar. The number will only decrease as they may be destroyed, unless more are made for some reason. To counter this, white giants do not die from old age. Their flesh heals and continues to function so long as the magic siphon in their bodies is not breached. If this happens, there is an outburst of entropic magical power that can cause 'undefined behaviour' in the immediate vicinity. When this dissipates, the corpse of the white giant is left behind; an empty husk of clay, flesh and metal. You monster.
White giants do not favour any particular biome. They are evenly spread across Galbar in any place that they will not be trapped. Currently, the only way to truly avoid them is to climb a mountain or go to the shattered lands.
Flaw: (This section will be included for all of Toun's creations.)
Toun assembled the intelligence of the white giants from manufactured imitations of soul components. In order to make these compatible with the body, empty slots for remaining soul components currently fit the consciousness of white giants. This is such that a white giant may be 'empowered' by a soul, causing it to become sentient in a WALL-E-esque fashion. It will still be a slave to its imperatives, but it could be considered truly sentient at that point. Without doing this in a controlled fashion, the end result may mean taking on strange habits and interests. It might start collecting rocks, playing with infant creatures, falling in love, or something similar.
The true flaw is that Toun could not guarantee that this could not happen accidentally during the lifetime of a white giant. If there is a strange scattering of spirits nearby a white giant, one could accidentally inhabit said white giant and trigger sentience. The chance of this happening is, of course, incredibly narrow and may make certain curators of spirits a little frazzled.
Life (Sapient Creature): Species
Same word for singular and plural forms.
Hain
Same word for singular and plural forms.
Lifespan: 40 to 60 years typically. Old age takes them at around 130 given good quality of life.
Appearance:
A small crowd of vaguely humanoid pale creatures busy themselves in and around communities of huts. Instead of skin and bones, they have smooth porcelain in scaled plates covering them and acting as an exoskeleton.
Hain are just over half the size of adult humans, but take different proportions. Their waists are thin compared to their chests and hips, their long forearms are thick and end in three dextrous fingers and a thumb textured to grip things, and their feet are large and digitigrade (walk on the balls of their feet rather than their heels), with each section of leg being about the same length. This makes for a skittering and awkward frame, but the hain move as naturally as any other biped.
The most prominent feature of hain are by far their heads. A single pale skull of elongated porcelain roughly takes the shape of a curved beak. The underside of the beak reveals another piece that makes up the jaw, opening to reveal a rough set of omnivorous teeth. On the middle-rear of this beak-head, on either side, are pairs of small eyes. Their beak head flits from side-to-side when looking at something, not unlike a bird. Two small holes near the front of the beak serve as nostrils.
(Author's note: the appearance of these creatures are inspired by the myrs from Magic: The Gathering. However, myr proportions and appearance were a tad too extreme to use for reference images here. Not to mention, most of those little guys were metallic and glowy.)
Description:
The hain are a mostly failed attempt by Toun to create a slave race with longevity to serve his purposes. Hain take the essences of both Toun and Slough to make something unique and intelligent, but still driven by the influences of natural life.
Physiology
Hain are a drastic turn from the previous creation of Toun--the white giants. Instead of the bulky and powerful magical siphon, the cores of hain contain fully fledged respiratory, digestive, reproductive, muscular systems, etc. As well, their nervous system includes a brain that operates with true sentience, soul and all. Their senses are also conventional, save for two pairs of eyes that allow for depth perception on either of their flanks. A consequence of their eye arrangement make for blind spots directly in front and behind hain heads.
Their porcelain exoskeletons replace internal bones. This requires a specialised digestive system to cater for the raw materials. If the surface of the exoskeleton is damaged, they develop a replacement plate underneath the damage and moult the damaged plate off, all within a few days. They often break up the discarded plate to eat later. The exoskeleton is not nearly as thick as the hide of a white giant, breakable as a human bone would be. However, they do provide protection from scratches, insects, and parasites. Though small, hain can move swiftly and strongly in these heavy hides.
Diet
Wild hain are tool using hunter-gatherers, feeding on creatures they can ambush and edible plants that they can find. In particular, their diet requires the bones of creatures that they can break in their jaws as well as patches of aluminium silicates. They have a taste for both and an adapted digestive system to process them. Both unusual supplements primarily feed their porcelain exoskeleton.
Early Development
The reproduction cycles of hain are reptile-like. There are males and females that mate to fertilise large eggs in clutches of one to three at a time. These eggs must be protected in an open nest for fifteen weeks before hatching. Newborn hain have an egg pipping tooth and an exoskeleton so thin that you can see the beating veins underneath. They grow quickly via pre-chewed food provided by their mother. Once they moult their birth exoskeleton over their first white porcelain skin--normally after two years--they are considered old enough to start eating without assistance and become hain children.
Hain children moult their exoskeleton once every month for ages two to four, with each moulting period becoming less common. Their moults slow to every two months for ages four to six, then every four months for six to eight, eight months for eight to ten, sixteen months for ten to twelve, continuing on as they grow until sexual maturity at around age fourteen when the moulting period changes slow to a reliable constant of a year and eight months. At this point, the hain is physically an adult. Adult hain continue to develop mentally as they experience life, as is to be expected.
Society
Hain are curious and social creatures that currently live in tribes that can range from ten to forty individuals, depending on availability of food. They are led by a group of the oldest hain in the tribes
Generally, hain have similar levels of intelligence to humans, though they tend to have different proportions of personality traits amongst them. For instance, hain have a keen eye for improving process, either by taking routes of less resistance or by inventing new things. They think outside of the box and innovate wherever they can. As well, they are conflict-adverse when it comes to matters within their own tribe. This is simply because compromise is much easier than injuring their friends, given their exoskeletons. Fighting for the sake of fighting is seen as child’s play. Rough-housing is common between hain children and rarely causes too much damage.
Warfare between tribes is not unheard of, but primitive weapons made for fighting are restricted to heavy clubs and wrestling techniques to break joints. Arrows and spears are used for hunting, but aren’t very effective against one another unless they find a joint. As much as possible, hain try only to injure and deter their enemies. It is seen as undesirable to be a hain murderer.
As it stands, hain are polygamous, with loving relationships forming in groups of between two and six interweaved partners. If a hain falls in love with another, they tend to also fall in love with their paramour's other partners. If there is a partner that they do not fall in love with, or rejects them, they tend to fall out of love with the original paramour. Their perception of love and relationships follow on to be fundamentally different to humans in this way.
Given their social nature and cooperative attitude, hain tend to be somewhat collective in their thinking. Their wills are much stronger when they have friends around, but utterly weak and cowardly when alone.
Two caveats follow these observations: All of these features may change as hain develop in the future, though vestigial influences may shine through. Also, individual hain may show completely different behaviours from time to time, much like humans.
Slave Hain
Five tribes of hain were mentally subjugated by an enraged Toun in order to use them as intended. These hain have had their minds permanently stunted and follow Toun's will unquestioningly. When not serving a purpose, they operate with a base animal intelligence to sustain themselves. Other hain see these creatures as uncanny and tend to avoid them at all costs.
Flaw:
In Toun's eyes, the flaw of hain are their complexity. They are too susceptible to outside influence, too belligerent, too weak, and they have to be taught the required skills to serve him. They just have too much Slough in them. He mitigated this by creating slave hain; a shadow of the creatures he wrought, devoid of their once great potential.
Physical Creation:
Holy Site: 8 MP cost - 4 MP output
Cornerstone
Holy Site: 8 MP cost - 4 MP output
Appearance:
Cornerstone is a ring wall of solid porcelain, crenelated and towered at regular intervals. It bends in a circle, ten kilometres in diameter. The wall is a sheer one hundred metres high and fifty metres thick. The towers rise an extra ten metres higher again. The wall has no windows or gates, though kaolokinesis can shape it to provide access without destruction.
Within the walls is a surface of flat, porcelain tiles arranged in concentric circles all the way to the centre. It is barren for now, but slave hain have been carving out shelters and nests in the towers and Toun intends to form his own creations in the vast space acquired.
The fortress itself sits exactly on the equator, roughly in the centre of the white ocean that was created as a consequence of its manufacture. It has no land around it, instead sitting on a mesa of bedrock jutting up from the ocean floor.
Description:
After ponderous meditation on how to serve his purpose amongst the chaotic ruinations of his kin, Toun planted his feet into the ground and made a declaration. He would rebuild the world, piece by piece, until paradise reigns. All chaos would be subdued and all suffering would end. The first step he took was to exploit the inherent weaknesses of the reality around him to carve out one patch of paradise to start from. This area, so altered, is the fortress known as Cornerstone.
Cornerstone is a holy sight of Toun, outputting 4 might per turn. It serves as a base of operations for his plans on Galbar and a home to the slave hain. The unseen nature of Cornerstone provides a number of effects.
The most prominent feature are mental whispers of Toun's will for the slave hain to listen to. These are at first barely perceptible by any other sentient creatures visiting, but prolonged exposure makes the whispers harder and harder to resist. Staying within Cornerstone without a countermeasure to mental meddling for too long renders a sentient creature no more intelligent than the slave hain and will join in their labours.
Toun's whispers are also joined with a subtle re-wiring of sentient creature's magical abilities. This slowly allows a visiting sentient creature to perform kaolokinesis with talent proportional to how much the whispers have influenced their minds.
More beneficent is the nourishing effect of remaining within Cornerstone. Sentient creatures who open their minds to Toun's whispers find themselves no longer needing to eat drink, sleep, or otherwise maintain basic bodily needs. Oddly enough, this appears to have no atrophying side effects on neglected organs, suggesting that the nourishment also provides some sort of biological function spoofing.
Being a product of a god of creation, Cornerstone's physical form slowly regenerates any lost material in its tiles and walls at a very slow rate. Sundering the godly might that holds it together allows for Cornerstone to be destroyed, but superficial damage or stolen material heals over very slowly like a wound. This regenerating porcelain allows slave hain to use the material of Cornerstone itself to shape as they wish for tools, weapons, etcetera.
Background:
The advent of Violence on Toun's doorstep in such a threatening form as Vestec's avatar forced Toun to conceive his most powerful creations yet. The twins of betterment, Majus and Minus. Both are precise tools in the pursuit of universal perfection. They are not exactly conceived of raw creative power spun into reality like his other creations. Rather they are themselves avatars -- pieces of Toun's divine essence manifested in the physical realm.
In order to hold his own power into planned bounds, Toun used physical bodies that were inscribed with written characters. These characters describe their behaviour in a print exactly the same as the print used on the codex of creation itself. Such symbols and phrases are so potent that the behaviour they describe manifest on what they are written upon. These commands, written in perfect strokes of red ink and stored within the avatars' bodies, hold together a vessel to channel godly might and to interact independently with the world should Toun require their own volition. This is the first employment of the powerful (yet highly precise) Tounic calligraphy.
Physical Creation:
Majus
Name: Majus, the Greater Twin
Description:
The greater twin is the instrument of Toun's more visible, impactful local acts upon Galbar. Its actions are for all to see, hear, feel, or otherwise sense. It builds the great structures or tears them down with an equally great sundering blow. It is at the head of vanguards and in the thick of the melee. Its voice booms with unignorable presence as it carries out Toun's will. Its moves are large, deliberate, and nary leave the subject unscathed. Majus may seem like a brute that is easy to manoeuvre around with care, but all that it cannot do with its greatness is protected by its sibling, Minus.
Appearance:
Majus is a thin-set humanoid figure covered fully in elegantly domed white plate armour, pointed at the toes and at the ends of the fingers. A red Tounic insignia is displayed on its chest. It stands at twice the height of an average human and walks with a lumbering, robotic, yet deliberate gait. Where normal plates of steel armour accommodate holes for seeing or breathing, Majus' armour has none. The joints still visibly separate the segments into pieces, but the illusion of their rigidity is broken when they are in motion. The boundaries of the segments expand and retract as they move such that any gaps that might be revealed by motion cover themselves adaptively.
Majus' hands always carry a long white haft shod with a short curved rod that doubles as a hammer and a pick. The way this weapon moves in Majus' hands seems dissonant with its heft. It is sent in sweeping arcs that may extend or retract in reach in the blink of an eye.
Flaw:
Majus is an avatar the same as any other. It is subject to the same properties of avatars. However, when Toun is not directly controlling Majus, it has to rely on its inscribed intelligence. This is not particularly sophisticated as it is not built for anything other than mostly mindless servitude. Without Minus to protect it, Majus is vulnerable to even simple ruses and may be led into traps or manipulated against Toun's best interests.
Physical Creation:
Minus
Name: Minus, the Lesser Twin
Description:
Always in the shadow of Majus is a small figure in a cape. Like a mote of grit in the corner of one's eye, its presence is always apparent but just out of sight, especially when next to the captivating presence of Majus. This creature is Minus. The description of Minus being 'the lesser' is not as much a description of Minus' power but rather where it is directed. Where Majus channels power into direct and final strikes that echo for aeons, Minus' capability is in more subtle and drawn out actions. Minus is the manipulator that roots out spies and liars while playing them against each other. It is the investigator which brings a revealing light to the shadows. It is the whispering voice that warns of subterfuge. The right foundations wither or stand under its influence. In combat, Minus fights evasively and with small, debilitating techniques that wear the enemy down and bind them into inaction. Where Minus' subtle and flowing motions are insufficient, Majus takes the stage.
Appearance:
Just like Majus, Minus is a thin-set humanoid in a fully covering, gapless, white plate armour, emblazoned with a circular red Tounic emblem on the chest. On its own, Minus stands a few hands shorter than a strong human man and sports a lithe, flowing figure. Its armour moves as if lighter and thinner, but even with its smaller profile, the outline of Minus' body would seem to be no bulkier than an androgynous and petite human youth. Perhaps more distinctive about Minus is the light cape that flows from its shoulders. It is so thin and wispy that it falls like mist when disturbed. Then Minus moves quickly, it seems to dance around its manoeuvres in a confusing fashion, blurring and distracting from its true direction.
Minus' weapons of choice are twinned white chains that extend from its arms and end in small but impactful spheres wreathed in vicious flanges. The links of the chains themselves are also barbed and catch on loose or jutting elements of an enemy or on each other as they wrap themselves around a target. These chains seem to get longer and shorter as Minus fights depending on the situation. In contrast to the very visible swings of Majus' pole hammer, Minus' chains elegantly curl and whip in impossible patterns, seemingly contradicting where Minus is motioning them to go.
Flaw:
Minus is also an avatar, but its weakness is distinct from its sibling. Minus is a covert operative, only comfortable in the shadows or with the support of the mighty Majus. When caught on its own with overwhelming force and no easy escape, it is dispatched with a solid strike upon the Tounic insignia on its chest. Additionally, the intelligence that Minus has been bestowed is much more nuanced than Majus. It is not as easily fooled or flustered by guileful schemes. However, Minus does not sport the impact that Majus has in expression.
Physical Creation / Pact:
Currently signed by: Toun, Teknall, Astarte, Jvan, Ilunabar, and Niciel
The Oath of Stilldeath
Currently signed by: Toun, Teknall, Astarte, Jvan, Ilunabar, and Niciel
Name: The Oath of Stilldeath, Which Ensures Immortality Amongst Immortals In Company
Description:
The deaths of Vulamera and Vowzra in such close proximity drove Toun to such grief that he has attempted to make a pact to prevent more gods destroying one another. This has been set up on a voluntary basis, though Toun trusts that the grief caused by these losses shall impart enough good will in the gods to participate.
This pact is a might-bound pact that, with the power of Tounic Calligraphy, prevents all who sign it from causing the death of any other god that has signed it, as well as ensuring that no one will fight within the dome of the ruins of Chronos. Anyone who wants to do otherwise while having their name signed on the pillar must either destroy the pact with a wad of might or do something more creative and awesome to break it.
Whenever a god tries to break this oath, the power of the pact drains them of all inclination to follow through.
Note that the effective might cost of this creation is 25 might (20 from Toun, 5 from Teknall). Equivalent might must be used to break or suppress it, though I'm open to negotiation if you'd like some artistic license.
Appearance:
Located outside of the Gate Unguarded, the only opening to the ruins of Chronos and the lonely mount on the northern side of Galbar, stands a tall, white, porcelain pillar. Upon its length is a helix of red tounic characters that are inflected with such intense emotion that they impart an overwhelming feeling of grief and loss to any who lay their eyes upon it.
The characters themselves hold the meaning of an incredibly powerful oath, respecting the memory of dead gods. Any god that inscribes their essence upon the pillar will have a character representing them appear near Toun's insignia, binding them to the Oath of Stilldeath's terms.
It reads:
Here lies the memory of our sister of knowledge Vulamera and our brother of time Vowzra. Here in their tragic deaths, we swear an oath to never seek the death of any sibling of ours signed onto this pact. We do this for the sake of our souls as well as the integrity of our hearts, for death begets death, and grief begets grief. May this place within the gate be a place where no god sets foot to do battle. In sacred remembrance of this, we declare: Fate shall no longer toy bloody games between our bodies into this timeline.
Flaw:
Whether intentional or not, the oath does not restrict malicious activity between the signatories leading up to death. As long as they do not intend or cause the death of another signatory, the oath holds. This is not the case within the ruins of Chronos, under the dome, where all fighting and warring is strictly forbidden.
Life (Automaton):
Droningbird
Lifespan: Ageless – does not reproduce.
Appearance: A droningbird takes on the rough shape of a hummingbird, if slightly larger. It is small enough to fit within the palm of one’s human hand.
Its exterior is predominantly made up of delicate convex yellow-white porcelain plates. For the sake of strength and flexibility, the smaller strips that make up their feathers, beak, tail, and other smaller features are constructed from thin giant bone (aluminium).
The droningbird’s intricate, almost jewellery-like design, is interrupted by the spaces between the aluminium. These remaining parts hint of its internal structure, made up of painful-looking raw red flesh. Their eyes are glassy and blank, but tinge with a light blue when Toun is directly watching through them.
In spite of its inorganic parts, the droningbird is an agile and swift flier. It can manoeuvre with the agility of a small fly and beat its wings so fast that it hovers in place. The speed of its rapid metal wingbeats causes a dull droning that is its namesake. Wiry legs extend from its underside when it needs to land.
Description: Following the involvement of Toun’s avatars in the fight against Vestec’s Violence, Toun put thought into keeping aware of important events in the world. The prayers of mortals were unacceptably inconsistent, so he devised a creature to serve as his eyes and ears; the droningbird.
Like white giants, droningbirds are hard to classify as a form of life. They do not eat, drink, defecate, socialise, reproduce, or evolve. They more closely represent automata with an intelligence limited by their simple purpose. They are given a charge, and they then follow with as much stealth as possible, doing nothing but watching, smelling, and listening. What it senses is then forwarded to Toun’s mind as necessary. The droningbird’s vigil only ends if either the charge has been dead for a week, the bird is assigned a different charge, or the droningbird is destroyed. If the charge is dead, the droningbird takes up a watch of all general affairs within roughly a one kilometre radius until otherwise reassigned.
To assist in the droningbird’s stealth, the porcelain plates on its body can change colour and pattern to match its environment and provide adaptive camouflage. Look up the camouflaging of a cuttlefish’s skin for a comparison. If the droningbird is destroyed or disabled, the plates turn into white porcelain again.
Also like white giants, the droningbird is powered by a magical siphon – a collector for naturally occurring magic as planted into the world by Astarte. This magical siphon is much smaller than a giant’s for two reasons.
Firstly, the droningbird is a much simpler creature with a shorter expected length of service, far less exposure to danger, and no means of healing itself beyond maintaining the body is starts with. Droningbirds are not built to fight and are much easier to destroy than white giants.
The second reason is Toun’s use of Tounic calligraphy to inscribe the creature’s functionality without using the temperamental artificial souls in white giants. This calligraphy is largely protected from changes without deliberate and careful alteration by a different scribe. However, the inside of a droningbird’s front porcelain plate clearly depicts the Tounic character describing its charge. This can be erased and replaced to something else to ‘reprogram’ the bird’s charge. Unfortunately, doing so requires exposing the pulsing membrane of the magical siphon, that will render the bird destroyed if ruptured. Performing this reprogramming is delicate at the best of times.
The procedure to reprogram a bird to send information to someone other than Toun is an even more delicate procedure involving the tiny characters under the plates on its head. Slipping up with this alteration risks damaging the symbols that describe its behaviour, potentially causing the bird to malfunction.
As for what happens when a droningbird’s siphon is ruptured, the results are not potentially catastrophic to the local area as a white giant’s death. The raw magical energy release might result in a small puff of fire, a transmutation of the nearby stone into wood or vice-versa, birthing a flicker made of gold dust, the possibilities are as endless as they are unpredictable. What is certain is that the effect never reaches beyond half a metre of the creature at the time and is not nearly as powerful as a white giant’s siphon being ruptured.
Flaw: The droningbird is so simple that serving its purpose exposes far fewer potential flaws than most life forms. However, as a compromise to its light-weight and simplicity, it is a weak creature. Destroying can be as simple as shooting a blunt arrow into it.
Life (Endomaton):
Flying Siphonbeast
Lifespan: Ageless – does not reproduce.
Appearance: Measuring nearly ten metres tall and seven metres across, a flying siphonbeast has a prominent position above the walls of Cornerstone and any of Toun’s defenders.
As the picture shows, the flying siphonbeast is largely made up of an egg-shaped porcelain bulb affixed with wispy strands from the top, of the creature back behind its body and from its underside. On its front are several pairs of tiny glowing solid blue, almost insectoid, eyes. As with most of Toun’s creatures, the gaps between the siphonbeast’s porcelain shell reveal bright red unnatural flesh and aluminium reinforcement.
The creature has an opening on its front, but this merely appears to be a vent to regulating the magical energy that keeps it floating aloft. When this ‘mouth’ opens to let out excesses, it shines with a scintillating light and hums like a low chord on a pipe organ.
Attached to the bottom of the siphonbeast’s sides are two huge arms ending in strong barbed crab-like claws that reach to hold purchase on the ground to keep it from floating away in strong winds.
Apparently having no means of conventional locomotion, the siphonbeast gently floats along in the air. It is always level and can move laterally without any apparent physical agency at a slow speed. The fastest it can fly is no more than fifty-seven kilometres per hour for a short period of time.
Description: Further developments with magical siphons and Tounic calligraphy has allowed Toun to create tools for greater flexibility of his agents in the world. Repurposing the design of the white giant’s magical siphon has resulted in a creature that can sustain other creatures in its influence without much of the burden of supply and logistics.
The flying siphonbeast is the first magical siphon under Toun’s design that collects more energy than it needs to sustain itself. This makes it a particularly volatile siphon, but allows it to channel that energy to provide for nearby creatures in a manner similar to how Cornerstone sustains creatures within its walls. What this allows is a creature selected by the siphonbeast, a slave hain for example, to go without food, water, or rest while within reach of the beast’s soft, flag-like, and constantly waving strands. The siphonbeast may also provide a boost of magical energy to magic users in contact with its appendages, empowering them to cast greater spells. The advantage for Toun in particular is that a certain arrangement of Tounic calligraphy can allow an otherwise inanimate automaton to be powered by a siphonbeast.
One should not be fooled by the siphonbeast’s apparent balloon-like weight. Its armour is made from thick, self-healing, solid porcelain reinforced by giant-bone webbing to provide a near-impenetrable carapace to protect the large magical siphon within.
A siphonbeast may be trapped or damaged, but to destroy one, the magical siphon within must be ruptured. This can be done by breaking its strong shell, overloading its strands with a means of sucking magical energy too fast, or some other way appropriate to expose it to the rest of the world.
When and if the siphon is exposed, the magical energy released is far more powerful than a white giant. If measures are not taken to contain the leakage, the immediate effect can be a sudden change to the entire area within a one hundred metre radius. Like other magical siphons, the results of this are varied and unpredictable, but they can be potentially very destructive.
Endomaton:
The flying siphonbeast is the first endomaton creature made by Toun. A Tounic endomaton is, put simply, a creature that lacks autonomy and is instead piloted by a separate lifeform from the inside. This is as opposed to an automaton, that can operate by itself without further influence.
The advantage of having a separate lifeform within the creature is that Toun neither has to risk temperamental artificial souls nor over-complex and delicate Tounic calligraphy to render the creature functional.
In this case, as will be in most other cases for Toun’s endomata, the flying siphonbeast is piloted by a slave hain. The slave hain is grafted into the siphonbeast’s body between the eyes and is invasively integrated into its nervous system via the hain spinal column. The process is cruel and painful, but slave hain are nothing if not devoted. Once integrated, the slave hain feels all the sensations of the siphonbeast and operates it as if it were its own body. Removing a slave hain from an endomaton generally results in paralysis and/or death of the slave hain.
Killing the slave hain within the siphonbeast causes it to crash to the ground and stop moving or providing magical energy, but it does not destroy it. The siphonbeast can only be truly destroyed by rupturing the magical siphon within as explained earlier.
Flaw: An endomaton’s reliance on a hain pilot comes with two major downsides as a trade-off. The first is that the small hain is a single point of failure in the entire creature. If it dies, the creature is rendered nonfunctional. While this may not be a large issue due to the subsequent ease in recovering the siphonbeast with another slave hain, the fact that it is built to be piloted by a hain makes it open to compromise, leading to the second downside. Slave hain themselves are weak to everything that can afflict any hain. What’s worse, any hain may pilot a tounic endomaton if they integrate themselves.
Physical Creation / Artefact:
Currently carried by: Thacel, demigod of war
Vigilance
Currently carried by: Thacel, demigod of war
Name: Vigilance, Thacel's Blade
Description:
After Thacel's unplanned birth, Toun made the young demigod promise to improve himself and to not be a waste to the world. Upon accepting this task, Thacel was bestowed a sword by his father. The blade was meant to be both a protection for Thacel and a means to keep him under perpetual surveillance to ensure his compliance. Thacel mistook the sword for a simple gift in spite of Toun's description of it and named it Vigilance.
Vigilance is the embodiment of Thacel's promise, as well as something of a memorial to the late god of war, Kyre. The blade material, though porcelain in appearance, does not behave like porcelain or any metal. It is a contradiction of naturally-occurring materials due to Tounic calligraphy inscribed upon it. The calligraphy has granted the blade the lightness, flexibility, balance, sharpness and construction of an ideal fencing blade, while remaining exceptionally strong and always springing back to its original shape.
The black pommel of the sword is like the eye of a droningbird, but remains attuned exclusively to Toun. Toun is granted all sensory information of the area around it, while his direct gaze makes the jet stone glow light blue.
Finally, the sword exudes Toun's influence to a degree. All attempts to touch the psyche of the wielder require five times the amount of effort and power normally required to do so. This has the trade-off of the wielder being compelled to constantly criticise themselves and their actions. This ostensibly leads those who wield the blade to better understand and act upon their faults, but overuse brings forth perfectionism, depression, and anxiety from unrealistic expectations set upon oneself.
Appearance:
Vigilance is a thin and narrow fencing blade made of an impeccable yellow-white material. It resizes itself to the proportions of any intelligent wielder automatically, always suitable for fighting. An average human finds the sword to change near to the length of their extended arm. Its shape makes the blade suitable for quick, dazzling strikes that redirect and bewilder the enemy until an opening is made to swiftly strike into. It is a weapon favouring agility and skill over brute strength.
The guard is made of a hard, grey material fashioned into the shape of Toun's insignia, while the handle is made from a number of wood-like substance textured on the surface for comfort and handling. The pommel is a large smooth bead of jet with a wispy tassel of transparent white cloth that flows through even the tightest of grips with little friction.
A number of vivid red Tounic symbols are written near the guard end of the blade that describe its powers in cryptic concepts.
Flaw:
A sword is a simple enough tool to have little in the way of flaws. However, it remains that Toun is not a god specialising in weapons and warfare. The blade's suitability for purpose may be outdone by an item made by a deity better suited to making weapons.
Appearance:
The holy site of Loralom spire is made up of a complex of bridges, gazebos, and towers made out of a similar self-healing porcelain as the holy site of Cornerstone. The structures are contained within a crater nearly five hundred metres in diameter, flowing with freshwater streams from around Loralom. The architecture is suitably majestic, featuring smooth arches and columns designed to please the hain eye. No matter the weather upon the site, all of the white porcelain remains immaculately clean.
Four main bridges span the crater’s waters from the edge of the crater to the central spires, pointing in all four cardinal directions. They are each around eighteen metres wide. Four more narrow bridges slope in an arch from the edge of the crater to the central complex's lower floors.
The spires count eleven in total. Eight minor spires stand sentinel at the head of each bridge, standing around fifty metres tall and less than ten metres across. They are solid and have no discernible purpose. The two great spires flanking the centre are four hundred metres tall from bottom to top and, though built with solid thick walls and a web of supports, are honeycombed with rooms, stairs, halls, and narrow windows. This space is furnishable and was not long empty before the local Loralom hain established a monastery to Toun within them.
The central spire, named "Akol’s Spear" by the locals, appears to be the source of the holy site’s power. It is shorter than the twin great spires, reaching three hundred and forty metres high, but it is not for living in. Its tapered double-edged shape holds within its mostly-hollow structure a glowing blue stone. The tower's base is open from all sides, held up by a set of columns. Its inside walls are covered completely with perfect red Tounic calligraphy.
All porcelain parts of the holy site make up an unbroken solid lodged into the ground.
Description:
When the Marked Hain Edda landed on the shores of Yorum, her quest led her to King Akol the Young, leader of the beleaguered city state, Loralom. Edda was shown the utter despondency of Loralom’s situation; a traumatised populace, attacks from all sides, near daily death by combat, and survival only by the King’s talent at commanding a battlefield. All the same, she challenged King Akol to place his faith in Toun. To spite Edda where she stood, Akol dropped to pray to Toun, declaring his intentions to build his Loralom to greatness with or without him and that he would only help Toun and Edda if he was given a 'spear that shatters the earth' and the resources to secure his homeland. King Akol expected his exorbitant request to be answered with silence. Toun, however, answered his bluff, causing the Loralom Spire complex to burst out from under the ground.
Loralom Spire is a holy site of Toun, costing fourteen might points and yielding seven might points per turn. Its passive effects are fundamentally different from Cornerstone, save for its regenerating ability, renewing lost or broken materials.
The huge blue stone in the central spire glows similarly to the eyes of a droningbird. They provide a similar effect for Toun, allowing him to look through the stone, though it carries a more powerful sight to it. Looking through the spire stone allows Toun to see through arbitrary amounts of solid materials to a radius of two hundred kilometres. Incidentally, Toun can directly view any pilgrims that pray under the stone.
If a worshipper of Toun sits underneath the stone for long enough in quiet contemplation, the Tounic symbols on the inside of the spire influence their minds. They gain artificial memories of three things: A glimpse of themselves in a better position, their greatest weakness, and a flash of a peaceful and safe society, all devoid of context. Hain monks that reside in the spires believe this to be a glimpse into the future. In reality, it is merely the symbols telling a mortal mind to forge the memories around a particular prefabricated template, using their existing memories to personalise them.
The symbols themselves are near-incomprehensible to mortals when taken in as a whole. However, the symbols may be deciphered individually, allowing the Loralom monks to delve into Tounic calligraphy and its powers on their own.
Flaw:
There is no obvious flaw to the spires, except that its motives are not in plain sight. Toun could have mimicked its effects with a different creation at far less cost. The significance as a holy site is clear enough, but given that far more power was poured into it than Cornerstone for much milder effects on those within, an inquisitive divine might wonder to what other secret functions the rest of the power went.
Physical Creation / Artefact:
Currently carried by: Vestec, god of chaos
Tomb Weaver
Currently carried by: Vestec, god of chaos
Name: The Tomb Weaver
Cost: 12 MP: 5 from Teknall, 7 from Toun
Description:
When Zephyrion’s dark shard Xos the Unmaker began its rampage and murdered the god of war, Kyre, the gods Logos, Toun, and Teknall resolved to stop Xos before he could kill any further gods. While Logos wished Xos destroyed, Toun was loath to see any further divines killed, whether they were fratricidal maniacs or not. Toun and Teknall thus conspired to build a trap to imprison Xos while giving off the impression Xos had been killed.
Their joint project to build this prison was the Tomb Weaver. This large needle-like artefact is capable of tracing lines of powerful glowing gossamer through reality that, on command, tighten, trap, and draw the subject they ensnare into the flawless, slightly blue-hued diamond at the needle’s eye. These threads simultaneously construct a tesseract prison around the subject similar to the mechanism by which Chiral Phi (Jvan’s avatar) contains her rift to the Gap. This prison is then stored in the gem until such time as an external source releases the prisoner by breaking the artefact or otherwise undermining it.
The prison is a hyperdimensional loop without internal walls. The prisoner may travel in any physical or metaphysical direction and find themselves very soon where they started. All energy they release is necessarily directed back at themselves. Anywhere the prisoner looks, they see only their back. There is no escape from the inside, in theory.
The means by which the Tomb Weaver ensnares its victim is like a needle that moves through higher dimensions. As if it was coated in some pushing aura, light and matter diffracts around its point. When the point is thrust forward, it parts not just matter but reality itself. By these means it may pass harmlessly through almost any physical object, leaving behind no trace but its trailing thread. Gods have the easiest time weaving such snares by willing the needle at speed through the air and through their targets.
The Tomb Weaver is suitable for use in combat as its thread-trailing and reality-parting powers may be suppressed for use as a lance. While it was not designed foremost as a weapon, the immense power imbued into the needle makes it powerful in a fight. However, due to its ongoing function as a prison, it may lack the power in combat compared to an equivalently costed artefact weapon.
There is no easy way to release a prisoner from the Tomb Weaver. However, as a safety measure, there is imbued in the Tounic Calligraphy a means of loosening the tesseract in lengthy stages. The first stage provides trace levels of two-way communication between the mind of the wielder and the mind of the prisoner. The second stage allows the prisoner to express small amounts of power from the Tomb Weaver itself. The third stage allows the prisoner to escape, but tears the tesseract prison irreparably, requiring the artefact to be reempowered by a god for 6 MP before it can be used to imprison anyone ever again. Each of these stages can only be triggered by specific happenstances or rituals, each more difficult than the last and each relating in effect to the prisoner within.
Appearance:
The Tomb Weaver is a cylindrical needle forged from orichalcum alloyed with other magically-conductive metals. It measures a hand over one metre long and wide enough to fit comfortably in a human hand, though its material makes it a weighty bar to hold. Its physical construction by Teknall guarantees the highest quality.
On the needle’s length is an uncountable corpus of Tounic Calligraphy to dictate the needle’s powers. The calligraphic symbols are as much inked into the artefact as etched, ensuring that they may not be damaged easily.
On one end of the needle is the point, curving evenly into its taper and slightly bending the light that runs across it. On the other end, secured by sturdy claws clutching from the body of the needle, is a blue-hued, eight-sided, flawless diamond, glowing with power. This diamond encases the tesseract prison of the Tomb Weaver and produces the needle’s glowing thread.
Flaw:
The first stage of loosening the tesseract prison for weak two-way communication has a bug. Any wielder who aligns a thought with the prisoner can trigger that first stage, whether they be mortal or divine.
Creation Post: https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4419732
Miscellaneous Information:
I know, I know. With hain faces made from porcelain and not having as much flexibility, it can be hard to tell when a hain smiles. In light of this, some translation may be needed. The first thing to note is that there are still a few flexible features of a hain's face that can be read. Secondly, hain emotional expression is slightly more reliant on hand and arm gestures than humans are, especially in states of emotional arousal. Read on for more specifics...
So...what are we missing from human faces?
- Lips
- Eyebrow
- Nose bridge
What has been carried over?
- Eyes
- Jaw and mouth with teeth
- A head that can angle itself
- Hands and arms (this is not so subtle, but might make up for missing features)
Other comments and suggestions:
So...what are we missing from human faces?
- Lips
- Eyebrow
- Nose bridge
What has been carried over?
- Eyes
- Jaw and mouth with teeth
- A head that can angle itself
- Hands and arms (this is not so subtle, but might make up for missing features)
I know that there are more subtle expressions than the seven basic human faces, I'll just go with them for now as a starting point. Anyone can expand on these expressions for the sake of nuance when describing hain. Keep in mind that hain view things from the side of their heads, like birds, so make sure that you imagine the default position of their heads is side-on to the other party.
Anger:
- Eyes narrowed.
- Mouth open with teeth displayed.
- Head tends to stay still and focussed.
- Clenched fists, slightly bent elbows.
Fear:
- Eyes wide.
- Mouth closed, teeth audibly chatter, even if adrenaline has not been released. [Side note: Chattering teeth while idle and out of danger is a sign of long term stress and anxiety in a hain]
- Beak front turned slightly towards the subject, tends to flit from side to side to switch eye pairs more quickly and frequently.
- Slightly bent elbows, but fists not clenched by default.
Disgust:
- Eyes narrowed.
- Mouth closed and still.
- Head angled back slightly from subject.
- Hands neutral.
Contempt:
- Head angled back slightly from subject.
- Other features neutral.
Joy:
- One or both palms upturned and open.
- Beak angled upwards slightly.
- Other features neutral.
Sadness:
- Eyes narrowed or closed. Hain have tears like humans.
- Jaw generally clenched, but extreme sadness has the mouth held slightly open.
- Beak front angled downwards.
- One or both hands generally held against the side of the head.
Surprise:
- Eyes wide.
- Mouth clenched.
- Beak front angled towards subject slightly.
- Elbows bent to roughly right angles.
- Palms bared directly to subject.
Anger:
- Eyes narrowed.
- Mouth open with teeth displayed.
- Head tends to stay still and focussed.
- Clenched fists, slightly bent elbows.
Fear:
- Eyes wide.
- Mouth closed, teeth audibly chatter, even if adrenaline has not been released. [Side note: Chattering teeth while idle and out of danger is a sign of long term stress and anxiety in a hain]
- Beak front turned slightly towards the subject, tends to flit from side to side to switch eye pairs more quickly and frequently.
- Slightly bent elbows, but fists not clenched by default.
Disgust:
- Eyes narrowed.
- Mouth closed and still.
- Head angled back slightly from subject.
- Hands neutral.
Contempt:
- Head angled back slightly from subject.
- Other features neutral.
Joy:
- One or both palms upturned and open.
- Beak angled upwards slightly.
- Other features neutral.
Sadness:
- Eyes narrowed or closed. Hain have tears like humans.
- Jaw generally clenched, but extreme sadness has the mouth held slightly open.
- Beak front angled downwards.
- One or both hands generally held against the side of the head.
Surprise:
- Eyes wide.
- Mouth clenched.
- Beak front angled towards subject slightly.
- Elbows bent to roughly right angles.
- Palms bared directly to subject.
Other comments and suggestions:
Idea for elaborating further on Hain expressions- Because the default hain conversational stance is with the head posed sideways, they might be able to add nuance to their expression based on which eye is narrowed or closed, since their 'left' and 'right' eye at any one point isn't just a symmetrical reflection. While looking directly at someone, hain have a fore and aft eye, with the fore-eye closer to the beak and the aft-eye closer to the back of the skull. They are meant to focus together, so controlling the direction of each eye is like going cross-eyed for humans, but presuming that their eyelids move independently, narrowing each eye might have a different effect on the overall expression.
It might change across cultures, but my suggestion is to make it a simple intensity modifier, say, the aft-eye closes more easily than the fore-eye, so if the two are closed, narrowed, or widened equally (in the case of great surprise or fear), then the hain is more emotional than usual, because one of the two eyelids is unconsciously being worked harder in order to match it with the other- Fore-eye in case of narrowing, aft-eye in case of widening.
There are probably more creative ways to go about this, and it's pretty clunky to write into a sentence outside of insertions like 'both her eyes were narrowed harshly' or 'despite his cautious words to the excited hatchlings, his aft-eyes didn't widen quite so much when he pulled the viper from its basket', implying stronger anger and weaker fear respectively. But it might be useful.
Physical intimacy between hain are similar to humans in many ways. Holding hands, hugs, holding arms around shoulders, etc. all signify a closeness, whether familial, deep friendship, or romance in varying degrees. Though the hands alter the execution.
Hain beaks are too impractical for kissing like humans do. Instead of this, hain mutually bring a hand each to the mouth of the other. This comes from the hain instinct to hand-feed their children. Holding the fingers shallowly in the mouth is most common, and biting harder or thrashing occurs with high passion.
The significance of hand-feeding extends to deliberately laying hands on the body of another hain. If done for no other reason, it is a slightly greater sign of affection than usual. Laying a hand on a personal area, such as the face, holds the significance of a kiss on the cheek.
As with any body language, context also plays a role. Laying hands on another as part of labour, fighting, emergencies, or other situations generally does not carry affection, though the regular room for misinterpretation is ever-present.
A simpler exception to human shows of affection is bringing their heads close together. Again, hain beaks make touching foreheads together uncomfortable. The equivalent in hain body language is to rest the sides of the head together with the beak over the shoulder of the partner. Just like with humans it tends to be reserved for deep affection. From this position, hain have the closest view of their partner's eyes.
Hain beaks are too impractical for kissing like humans do. Instead of this, hain mutually bring a hand each to the mouth of the other. This comes from the hain instinct to hand-feed their children. Holding the fingers shallowly in the mouth is most common, and biting harder or thrashing occurs with high passion.
The significance of hand-feeding extends to deliberately laying hands on the body of another hain. If done for no other reason, it is a slightly greater sign of affection than usual. Laying a hand on a personal area, such as the face, holds the significance of a kiss on the cheek.
As with any body language, context also plays a role. Laying hands on another as part of labour, fighting, emergencies, or other situations generally does not carry affection, though the regular room for misinterpretation is ever-present.
A simpler exception to human shows of affection is bringing their heads close together. Again, hain beaks make touching foreheads together uncomfortable. The equivalent in hain body language is to rest the sides of the head together with the beak over the shoulder of the partner. Just like with humans it tends to be reserved for deep affection. From this position, hain have the closest view of their partner's eyes.
Portfolio:
Tounic Calligraphy
Toun's mastery of the domain of writing and penmanship is demonstrated by the marks that he leaves to communicate with his followers. This is Tounic Calligraphy, the writing that Toun used to design the world with his fellow deities at the very beginning. Its first characters are sprawled all over the codex of creation itself.
Put simply, Tounic Calligraphy is writing that is so perfectly expressed that it imparts information without needing to teach the reader how to read. They are not necessarily pictures or consistent alphabets, but the commonality is in its closeness to raw thought.
Tounic Calligraphy is so difficult to get correct that it can take an entire lifetime for a mortal to write it consistently. Even then, inscribing even a single simple concept can take months. Toun, in divine contrast, casually strokes such things in the space of moments.
The real power of Tounic calligraphy, however, is not in its efficiency of interpretation, but its effects on the real world. Words have power, perfect words have perfect power. When fuelled by passion, principle, a dash of magic, and even a little luck, Tounic characters can serve as orders upon the design of reality itself, much like the words on the codex of creation. In trivial ways, Tounic characters can serve as points in an oath. Through more complex processes, the Tounic character for 'talks', when written upon a tree, will oblige the tree to speak.
Mortals have yet to fully discover these properties of Tounic Calligraphy and their implications.
The post in which Toun gained the (Calligraphy) portfolio.
Portfolio:
Tounic Oaths
Many things have changed in the world, but the principles of Toun have hardly shifted in eons. From the Oath of Stilldeath that binds gods, to Sularn’s Oath, to the oath taken by Edda to build Yorum, Toun’s influence has involved immutable promises that affect the world around them. Now that he has unlocked the power of oaths, he may provide his power as an incentive to those that hold them.
A Tounic oath is an oath taken in the name of Toun and his principles. This may be anything from crusading against chaos to building a perfect city, anything principle of bettering oneself or the world that Toun approves of. Sularn’s Oath is an example of a Tounic oath.
Once a Tounic oath is taken, generally as part of a prayer to Toun, some red calligraphy may appear on the taker’s skin. This Tounic calligraphy outlines the edicts of the oath as they are understood by the taker. The calligraphy remains until the oath is broken, completely fulfilled, or otherwise released.
A Tounic oath provides rewards according to the devotion to the edicts outlined. These rewards may indirectly help the taker to fulfil the oath, but never directly contribute to fulfilling the oath by itself. For instance, if someone takes a Tounic oath to hold the title of the greatest chef in the world, they would gain subtle boons as they learn more about cooking. These boons may be just about anything. If the chef learns how to make a delicious cake, they may gain the boon of having the attention of prospective diners from the region. If they master the art of sushi, they may gain the boon of always having sharp knives. No matter what, the boons will never do anything to improve the dining experience of the people that chef cooks for.
Unlike a Beluarcian pact, that enforces the obligations of the parties involved, there is no necessary obstacle to prevent someone breaking a Tounic oath. Instead, if the taker of a Tounic oath breaks or ignores the edicts they agreed to, the benefits granted by the oath begin to fade and disappear over an appropriate amount of time.
For example, if someone takes an oath to live ascetically and gets wicked martial arts skills as a reward, they would find their martial arts skills wane and grow sloppy over time if they start overeating or living decadently. On the other hand, if someone takes an oath never to take a life and gets knowledge of the universe as a reward, all that knowledge would disappear from their mind in the instant that they kill someone.
The rewards and their rate of growth or decay runs on a case-by-case basis (hint: artistic license is granted).
The post in which Toun gained the (Oaths) portfolio.
This insignia represents Toun's cult and ideals. Indeed, it is his name written in Tounic Calligraphy. It is interpreted in many ways, but one property draws the mention of all who analyse it. The fading spikes reclining into one another shrink to such a fineness that they appear to never touch. However, the closer one looks, the closer the spikes get to touching. This suggests that if one looked close enough, they might touch after a while. It promises something attainable, though at what point it is attained is a mystery. When this is thematically compared to the concept of perfection, opinions begin to diverge about its nature.
When the azibo prophet Sularn received the blessings of Toun and Teknall, Toun made him take an oath and inscribed it in his skin:
- “You must always strive for improvement of your mind, your body, your soul, and the world in which you live. This shall stop at nothing but perfection.”
- “You must never do harm to any of my servants, be they white giant, hain of my home, or similar purposeful creature.”
- “And you must oppose chaos wherever it encroaches.”
This vow counts as ‘Toun’s essence’ for the purposes of getting a pass from white giants or similar creatures.
The ‘Hain of my home’ mentioned refers to the five tribes of slave hain currently in Cornerstone, not any other hain.
By inscribing the marking on the skin of another being while said being takes the vow, the mark will turn into Tounic calligraphy and become permanent unless the vow is broken at which time it fades and all its effects disappear. The vow cannot be retaken once broken (at this time).
- “You must always strive for improvement of your mind, your body, your soul, and the world in which you live. This shall stop at nothing but perfection.”
- “You must never do harm to any of my servants, be they white giant, hain of my home, or similar purposeful creature.”
- “And you must oppose chaos wherever it encroaches.”
This vow counts as ‘Toun’s essence’ for the purposes of getting a pass from white giants or similar creatures.
The ‘Hain of my home’ mentioned refers to the five tribes of slave hain currently in Cornerstone, not any other hain.
By inscribing the marking on the skin of another being while said being takes the vow, the mark will turn into Tounic calligraphy and become permanent unless the vow is broken at which time it fades and all its effects disappear. The vow cannot be retaken once broken (at this time).
The 'roll up the sleeves' Toun theme. Thank you Vec.
The theme of the hain.
