I know a Necromancer who would be very interested in these souls. And in that scythe too.
In fact, those were HIS Pack-Minds you killed, and whether you like it or not, he's comin for ya Helly girl. If only one of those Pack-Minds could return as an Undead or Cursed and run back to Thulemiz to tell him all that happened. Not sure if an Undead or Cursed can return if its soul has been stolen though. NEVERTHELESS, Thulemiz will find out somehow.
If Lambda and Thulemiz weren't at opposite ends of the globe right now...
By the way, I don't think I understand the Yonders well enough.
In a word, a Yonder is a fake landscape. Stealing Lao's soul provided the creative energy for his Yonder to mature from something that existed mostly in his mind to something that exists outside of it. The two whispering eyes hiding in a shadow on the horizon is Lao's Yonder attempting to interact with him directly, but the entire hell-world he was walking through is also part of its body.
The 'outside' of the adult Yonder appears as a shadow or wisp of spores, but given enough time to build its web, it can swallow up pretty much anyone into its body. Here they are stuck and the Yonder can beguile them or use traps and minions to try and kill them outright. Escape depends on the victims ability to destroy the Yonder's false terrain, which it has a limited ability to regenerate.
Djinni are huge, fast, and tend to make use of terrain advantages. A Yonder swarm should be capable of locking them down and fighting back with a twisted, half-remembered version of their own 'elemental' power.
Groups of peripheres in close proximity will collaborate on a shared hellscape rather than several separate ones. Victims will see them as a swarm of blank-eyed ghosts or dark figures on the horizon rather than just one.
Watch this space for when Termite adds more to the CS. (Maybe this will motivate Termite to finish a CS)
Two days. Two days without sleep. Beyond that, Lao had lost count. He was exhausted.
He ran. He stumbled. He made no progress. It had been forty days since the last dawn. The third dawn. Surely everything would be okay. If the sun would only rise one more time.
Lao watched the sky, watched black turned to mauve turn to orange turn to yellow.
Turn to brown.
"No!"
Olive green succeeded the yellow and no sun arose. Light began to flow to the world around him, sickly greens that made no sense on the backdrop of sky. Not as he looked at them. Lao shot his eyes around and saw the hues turn deader at his gaze, hoping to find something true green, something bright, not drab and dead and vile and grained and no no no NO-
"NO!"
Lao rammed his fist into the dirt and raised it to his face, watched grains of grit cling to his hand only to realise they were crustaceans.
"It's not REAL!"
None of this was, he was tossing in a fever bed, his body was sweating, his brain was churning, he could almost see the wild folds of twisted blanket tangling him, almost feel him on his skin...
But it was. It was all real. He could not convince himself that the truth was a lie, and the blankets smouldered in his grip, left him naked and alone. The gnarl-trees watched him with their slitted eyes.
Lao had called on Yah Vah, and Yah Vah had answered.
Yah Vah had answered.
It's all in my head. Lao picked himself up and was naked no more. He gripped his head and walked back on his path, knowing the watchers would follow. It's all in my head. All in my dreams. It's not real. That was the only answer he came up with, although he knew it was false. It had been all in his head. How had it come out?
Lao imagined a brain crawling away from its socket, though he knew he shouldn't; he couldn't help it. The vision manifested, there on the floor where he'd walked past just a second ago; if he wasn't used to it by now he would have reeled at the fact that he hadn't noticed it before. His own body lay bleeding there, a pink monster screeching in its head, then turning to reveal the jaws it must have screeched with, and scuttling into the dark. Lao stared at his body, transfixed.
It blinked.
"Aargh!" So desensitised had he become to the hell-world's tricks that this barely registered on him, only surprised him. That was what sickened him.
"YOU!"
Lao raised his Tounic staff to the distant horizon, watched the disk hanging at the end of it start to glow. It could trick him, get him lost, but it could not take from him. The pair of eyes appeared on the horizon as he bid. White eyes. Ripped from Vigilate and Scitis. He could see their skul-
"YOU MADE THIS!"
A bolt of porcelain shot into the dark, out from the center of the disk into the sky. The two eyes blinked and instantly went out. They lit up again. Lao roared. He could slay a man, not a world.
He'd called to every god, trapped as he was inside the hell, but none had answered. His cry was lost among the thousands they received every day. It was not often that a god responded. But Yah Vah had.
Lao started to sprint, away from the corpse, away from the gnarling trees, away from their gaze and into the hills, the bluffs shaped like faces wrought from bloodied stone. They outpaced him, those eyes, and fought him, raising trees up to bludgeon him, raising stone outcrops to tear at him. Lao fought, and fought back, but they knew him, knew him better than anyone.
They were him.
He was fighting himself. Every swing.
They threw Lao back, bloodied and beaten, but this time he would not stop. The end was coming. The eyes were drawing closer.
He'd called Yah Vuh because he was bored. And she had answered.
Lao ran across dirt and pond and wood and field, scenes of home now tainted with his wildest dreams. Trees with eyes and crops of teeth. Lakes of stone and crystals hanging from the sky. Darkness that was only gnats and soot. Nets among the grass. Spikes in every pit.
The more ground he covered, the worse it became. The more Lao saw, the stronger those eyes grew.
He closed his eyes and tripped, stumbling, throwing himself into the pit. The waters caught him and he sank, then floated, lying back on a pool a mile wide. It would not let him die.
Lao turned the rune-disk on himself, but fangs grabbed the end of his staff and dragged it under water. He tried to swim. He could only stand. The water was not deep. It dried up in an instant.
Lao fell to his knees and wept. The hell-world did not answer.
It did answer.
Whispers, everywhere, whispers without words.
"Just take it," he mumbled. "Take and let me die."
The great eyes were upon him.
Lao screamed, and Lao's body screamed, and the voices screamed, and Lao watched himself grow far away, fleeing skywards as brown turned to blue and Lao's body watched Lao's soul flying deep into the sky upon a shade...
...
'Lao' stood. He was bloody and sore, and after checking himself down for major injuries, took a brief walk to see if he still could. Yes, he could. That was swell.
It was mid-day. He recognised the terrain. Not much more than a day's walk from home; he'd make it before third moonrise. He checked for his staff and realised it was missing. Oh, well. He'd do some explaining to the runesmith. He'd get scolded, which was bad, but it wouldn't be more than he could handle. He'd only been gone two days.
So all in all, that wasn't too bad, thought 'Lao'. He planned to forget all about it.
And then he'd go back to his life.
He'd settle as a cleric, not some adventurer. That was a far more sensible approach. He'd marry Jikki, the miner's daughter, and have some kids. He'd work in the daylight and sleep well in the night, and every now and then he'd go and drink with his friends, for fun. He could handle it. Everything would be okay. He didn't need to dream high dreams any more.
'Lao' set foot for the village, striking up a two-note tune as he went. The music made him feel good. Feeling good was nice. Yes. That's right. Feeling good was nice. It was all coming back to him now.
Orbital velocity: one thousand, two hundred metres per second. Mass: half a tonne, existent. Estimated virtual maximum about eight million tonnes. Density: two kilograms per metre cube. Interpsychic resonance: stable.
With the first functional periphere matured and in orbit, I think I've done an excellent job. Even given the short notice and disappointing size of the entity, it still stands up to all but the most stringent of tests and largely lives up to its predicted specifications. I've despatched it to Ovaedis, to commence operation as a unit of primary point defense.
Lao's next life will, if nothing else, be an interesting one. It's a shame he couldn't have continued the one he was leading. Imaginative individuals are a precious resource on Galbar, as anywhere, and even with the cognitive programs I left in Lao's old body, we may see some detrimental effects on the local society. Nothing so bad as to outweigh the experiment of leaving a soulless mortal alive, of course, but it's not something I'd do readily. Given some years I would have used alternative means to develop a soul to maturity, but that is time I do not have.
I'll complete an initial production run of several hundred individuals, and see where I go from there.
Jvan creates yet another form of war machine. This one is called a Yonder, or periphere, a massive ghost-like entity capable of trapping other creatures in a vast and hostile living landscape. They'll tend to be pretty surreal.
Yonders are born as cognitive parasites, like Sculptors, but rather than fusing with and enhancing their victim, they trap them in a nightmare world of their own design until the Yonder has absorbed enough imagined landscapes to mature. Once mature, the Yonder rips away from the victim, taking their soul and a copy of their memories with them. While the vector for Sculptorhood is art, Yonders are born from spores.
Jvan intends to use Yonders as defensive constructs, knowing that change-eaters are fantastic hunters but awful at holding the line. She creates a few hundred of them and leaves ~four hundred soulless bodies behind. So that Galbar doesn't lose those creative genes, the soulless people are jury-rigged to continue operating in a pretty normal way, fitting in to society, raising children, and whatnot.
Obviously there'll be some bugs in a human simulator programmed by Jvan at a moment's notice without much effort. I'll leave it to your imagination.
One Might has been spent to create the Yonders.
Between Yonders, Sculptors, and Scribes, Jvan has unlocked the Beauty (Horror) portfolio. This is defined as surreal or existential horror as a genre of art, and the effects it has on a mortal audience.
Jvan 9 Might Ambient 0 Might in Ovaedis 2 Free Points 2C / 0D Level Six
3/3 Might invested in Beauty (Performance) 3/3 Might invested in Beauty (Horror)
Two days. Two days without sleep. Beyond that, Lao had lost count. He was exhausted.
He ran. He stumbled. He made no progress. It had been forty days since the last dawn. The third dawn. Surely everything would be okay. If the sun would only rise one more time.
Lao watched the sky, watched black turned to mauve turn to orange turn to yellow.
Turn to brown.
"No!"
Olive green succeeded the yellow and no sun arose. Light began to flow to the world around him, sickly greens that made no sense on the backdrop of sky. Not as he looked at them. Lao shot his eyes around and saw the hues turn deader at his gaze, hoping to find something true green, something bright, not drab and dead and vile and grained and no no no NO-
"NO!"
Lao rammed his fist into the dirt and raised it to his face, watched grains of grit cling to his hand only to realise they were crustaceans.
"It's not REAL!"
None of this was, he was tossing in a fever bed, his body was sweating, his brain was churning, he could almost see the wild folds of twisted blanket tangling him, almost feel him on his skin...
But it was. It was all real. He could not convince himself that the truth was a lie, and the blankets smouldered in his grip, left him naked and alone. The gnarl-trees watched him with their slitted eyes.
Lao had called on Yah Vah, and Yah Vah had answered.
Yah Vah had answered.
It's all in my head. Lao picked himself up and was naked no more. He gripped his head and walked back on his path, knowing the watchers would follow. It's all in my head. All in my dreams. It's not real. That was the only answer he came up with, although he knew it was false. It had been all in his head. How had it come out?
Lao imagined a brain crawling away from its socket, though he knew he shouldn't; he couldn't help it. The vision manifested, there on the floor where he'd walked past just a second ago; if he wasn't used to it by now he would have reeled at the fact that he hadn't noticed it before. His own body lay bleeding there, a pink monster screeching in its head, then turning to reveal the jaws it must have screeched with, and scuttling into the dark. Lao stared at his body, transfixed.
It blinked.
"Aargh!" So desensitised had he become to the hell-world's tricks that this barely registered on him, only surprised him. That was what sickened him.
"YOU!"
Lao raised his Tounic staff to the distant horizon, watched the disk hanging at the end of it start to glow. It could trick him, get him lost, but it could not take from him. The pair of eyes appeared on the horizon as he bid. White eyes. Ripped from Vigilate and Scitis. He could see their skul-
"YOU MADE THIS!"
A bolt of porcelain shot into the dark, out from the center of the disk into the sky. The two eyes blinked and instantly went out. They lit up again. Lao roared. He could slay a man, not a world.
He'd called to every god, trapped as he was inside the hell, but none had answered. His cry was lost among the thousands they received every day. It was not often that a god responded. But Yah Vah had.
Lao started to sprint, away from the corpse, away from the gnarling trees, away from their gaze and into the hills, the bluffs shaped like faces wrought from bloodied stone. They outpaced him, those eyes, and fought him, raising trees up to bludgeon him, raising stone outcrops to tear at him. Lao fought, and fought back, but they knew him, knew him better than anyone.
They were him.
He was fighting himself. Every swing.
They threw Lao back, bloodied and beaten, but this time he would not stop. The end was coming. The eyes were drawing closer.
He'd called Yah Vuh because he was bored. And she had answered.
Lao ran across dirt and pond and wood and field, scenes of home now tainted with his wildest dreams. Trees with eyes and crops of teeth. Lakes of stone and crystals hanging from the sky. Darkness that was only gnats and soot. Nets among the grass. Spikes in every pit.
The more ground he covered, the worse it became. The more Lao saw, the stronger those eyes grew.
He closed his eyes and tripped, stumbling, throwing himself into the pit. The waters caught him and he sank, then floated, lying back on a pool a mile wide. It would not let him die.
Lao turned the rune-disk on himself, but fangs grabbed the end of his staff and dragged it under water. He tried to swim. He could only stand. The water was not deep. It dried up in an instant.
Lao fell to his knees and wept. The hell-world did not answer.
It did answer.
Whispers, everywhere, whispers without words.
"Just take it," he mumbled. "Take and let me die."
The great eyes were upon him.
Lao screamed, and Lao's body screamed, and the voices screamed, and Lao watched himself grow far away, fleeing skywards as brown turned to blue and Lao's body watched Lao's soul flying deep into the sky upon a shade...
...
'Lao' stood. He was bloody and sore, and after checking himself down for major injuries, took a brief walk to see if he still could. Yes, he could. That was swell.
It was mid-day. He recognised the terrain. Not much more than a day's walk from home; he'd make it before third moonrise. He checked for his staff and realised it was missing. Oh, well. He'd do some explaining to the runesmith. He'd get scolded, which was bad, but it wouldn't be more than he could handle. He'd only been gone two days.
So all in all, that wasn't too bad, thought 'Lao'. He planned to forget all about it.
And then he'd go back to his life.
He'd settle as a cleric, not some adventurer. That was a far more sensible approach. He'd marry Jikki, the miner's daughter, and have some kids. He'd work in the daylight and sleep well in the night, and every now and then he'd go and drink with his friends, for fun. He could handle it. Everything would be okay. He didn't need to dream high dreams any more.
'Lao' set foot for the village, striking up a two-note tune as he went. The music made him feel good. Feeling good was nice. Yes. That's right. Feeling good was nice. It was all coming back to him now.
Orbital velocity: one thousand, two hundred metres per second. Mass: half a tonne, existent. Estimated virtual maximum about eight million tonnes. Density: two kilograms per metre cube. Interpsychic resonance: stable.
With the first functional periphere matured and in orbit, I think I've done an excellent job. Even given the short notice and disappointing size of the entity, it still stands up to all but the most stringent of tests and largely lives up to its predicted specifications. I've despatched it to Ovaedis, to commence operation as a unit of primary point defense.
Lao's next life will, if nothing else, be an interesting one. It's a shame he couldn't have continued the one he was leading. Imaginative individuals are a precious resource on Galbar, as anywhere, and even with the cognitive programs I left in Lao's old body, we may see some detrimental effects on the local society. Nothing so bad as to outweigh the experiment of leaving a soulless mortal alive, of course, but it's not something I'd do readily. Given some years I would have used alternative means to develop a soul to maturity, but that is time I do not have.
I'll complete an initial production run of several hundred individuals, and see where I go from there.
Jvan creates yet another form of war machine. This one is called a Yonder, or periphere, a massive ghost-like entity capable of trapping other creatures in a vast and hostile living landscape. They'll tend to be pretty surreal.
Yonders are born as cognitive parasites, like Sculptors, but rather than fusing with and enhancing their victim, they trap them in a nightmare world of their own design until the Yonder has absorbed enough imagined landscapes to mature. Once mature, the Yonder rips away from the victim, taking their soul and a copy of their memories with them. While the vector for Sculptorhood is art, Yonders are born from spores.
Jvan intends to use Yonders as defensive constructs, knowing that change-eaters are fantastic hunters but awful at holding the line. She creates a few hundred of them and leaves ~four hundred soulless bodies behind. So that Galbar doesn't lose those creative genes, the soulless people are jury-rigged to continue operating in a pretty normal way, fitting in to society, raising children, and whatnot.
Obviously there'll be some bugs in a human simulator programmed by Jvan at a moment's notice without much effort. I'll leave it to your imagination.
One Might has been spent to create the Yonders.
Between Yonders, Sculptors, and Scribes, Jvan has unlocked the Beauty (Horror) portfolio. This is defined as surreal or existential horror as a genre of art, and the effects it has on a mortal audience.
Jvan 9 Might Ambient 0 Might in Ovaedis 2 Free Points 2C / 0D Level Six
3/3 Might invested in Beauty (Performance) 3/3 Might invested in Beauty (Horror)
@pandapolio He looks pretty reasonable so far, there's no major errors or issues. I still think he's somewhat lacking in motives, though.
Even if he doesn't have some ideology or goal in the same way a more humanoid entity would, he should still have some desires, or fears, or prejudices, or other drives, even if that's just to explore himself and others.
This is particularly important because, again, we'd like to have some idea of what Amon will actually do when he starts out.
People, I think that it is not clearly stated so I will say this: AGE | GENDER | HEIGHT | WEIGHT are what you are supposed to replace, not just the brackets... First Avulus and now this...
...do gods even have any of these properties? I don't seem to remember them being on the original sheet.
@Antarctic Termite We need to talk about your Swiss halberd problem. Especially now that the Vatican guard have become involved. Have you tried defragmenting your hard drive?
I tried, but the Pope messaged our group chat declaring an official papal bull against the act, so I think he might be in on this.
(I have. It's just the one computer I set up about a year or two ago, that eventually started suffering simple crashes which slowly increased in frequency and severity until Windows was unable to reinstall. I moved to Linux for the extra stability, but the problems have slowly started to crop up again even so.)
(Having run a bunch of scans I've ruled out any problem with the software, graphics card+drivers, and probably the hard drive, which means it's a chronic issue with the CPU (or /possibly/ motherboard). I've basically dealt with the problem by installing a more stable operating system each time, but now that even Ubuntu is down I'm forced to face the fact that I'll have to dig deep into my shallow pockets to shell out for another processor.)
Just a heads up for anyone waiting on me: last night a colourfully dressed man in a steel cuirass walked into my room in the dead of night. As I watched, he drew an elaborately forged piece of metal from a bag, and took a pole from somewhere else, and riveted the two together; having done so, he whispered, "Du bist bereits tot", and proceeded to hack apart my CPU with the item before leaving, snacking on a pork sausage as he did so.
I do not know where he went. However, my CPU being fucked, I have no way to track him down. Tonight I set foot for Zurich, and hope I will find answers.
@Frettzo@Antarctic Termite The Astarte-Tira post was a very enjoyable read (somebady finally went nooorth. Whoop) but I think there might be some confusion about the geography and the location of things. So, best clear that up.
Geographical consistency? In a Tira/Astarte post? You must be out of your mind.
We'll leave it however you feel is most appropriate, this was just a result of me trying to get post pacing right without much reading back.
Lord Zee
MarshalSolgriev
urukhai
Alby47
Crispy Octopus
