Antarctic Termite

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

<Snipped quote by Frettzo>

And a Russian one, no less.

@Double Capybara

As if we didn't know that already from the giant gulag in the ocean.

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

yh termite is such a dummy uuuugh

@Frettzo

me lol

I don't actually have the energy to partake in this line right now, fortunately. Just presume there's a fancy glass eye lying in the dirt nearby. Jvan will watch.

the ever growing list of innocent hain killed or consumed by random shit

@Muttonhawk

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

I need humanoid to put their juices into plants. Plese give me some meatbag dna juice. PM me whoever is interested in having their characters have a hand in inadvertently creating the new Galbarian race.

@Frettzo

*pours out bucket of expendable side characters*

_{also dabbles}

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

You say 'coward.' I say...'sloth.'

@Muttonhawk

<.< I'll deal with this insulting behaviour later. Just as soon as I finish the creation sheets for Mother Suprema and Father Dominus. EXPECT ME

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

I didn't bring it up because it didn't really line up with the rhythm of the post itself, so I didn't bring it up...

@Muttonhawk

Coward.

Outer Space — Stolen Frigate 💣

@Strange Rodent you might be better off trying your luck elsewhere. This one's been dead for months, and the forum is shutting down anyway.

Feel free to give it a shot if you like, but I don't think there'll be much response.

The Cancer that Breathes

Metera, City of the Sky

Metera

Physical - City - Galbar

Description: The Voice of the Painter has prophesied that a city will be given unto the people of the Composer, and that it will be taken away again, ruined by war, gods, and anarchy. This prophesy was fulfilled by Jvan in exchange for Chiral Phi's abstinence from her affairs. Self-constructed by the rain of warped space upon the ash cloud of Mount Bormahven, harvesting the volcanic energy of that cataclysm, it is a gigantic, mobile construct capable of feeding and sheltering the Meteran people until their prophesied end. Phi's signals control its many active processes.

Appearance: The city of Sky appears to float upon the coastal waters. In fact it is walking on three colossal tentacles. Made of the same deep grey basalts as the rest of the city, they are segmented and, though slow-moving, tremendously strong. Each is over a kilometre long, but typically coiled over itself, and by steady rotational movement the whole city can travel with barely a tremor felt by the people above. All three tentacles are hollow. Two are filled with water, one siphoning up and the other spilling down. The third is empty, and when the city walks on land, it transports men and goods and beasts.

Upon the tentacles sits a vast and shallow bowl. Like the lower twelfth of a sphere perfectly severed, it is filled with water and the boats and gondolas of Metera, as well as their euryhaline aquaculture. Waterfalls spill down into the bowl from the city, and water also flows up from the bowl into the myriad channels and aqueducts that turn its mills and transport its goods (and wastes). Channels are everywhere in Sky City, and most of the city's water is flowing to or from the bowl. The rest is still- reservoirs of caught rainwater.

It may not look it, but this bowl is actually a sphere- it is the petrified lower tip of an atmospheric bubble maintaining a relatively constant gradient of temperature and pressure. The city's inhabitants could theoretically survive should the city be ejected into outer space, as there is a lower limit of air conditions that the sphere will permit. On Galbar, the bubble is barely noticeable and about as permeable as any other air.

The city itself is vast and grand. It is larger than any city of its age ever needs to be, and much of its interior is abandoned or even derelict, though Sky is quite resistant to erosion and as such will not be a ruin any time soon. Somewhat similar in design to naturally occurring clusters of basalt pillars, the Sky City is divided into many many rooms and halls and towers, temples and shrines and baths and channels. Despite its size it is surprisingly airy. Gaps between the towers permit light, and even parts of its interior are kept lit through other means.

The distortion did not end when Sky City was finished, and it remains a site of tremendous warp. Gravity pulls every way imaginable, such that one thoroughfare may be on the floor and another floating in a canal on the ceiling. Other puddles of gravity have formed permanent singularities, and, fed by streams of water, illuminate large rooms with halos of sunlight.

Non-gravitational anomalies are less common and substantially less dangerous than those in the Submaterium, but may still catch a foreigner unawares. Most are three-dimensional translations of shapes that can only be possible in two-dimensional space, such as Escher stairs. The city's shadow tunnels open mostly into Penrose triangles.

Life: Metera is a garden city. Many of its roofs and walls are suitable for agriculture and utilised as such. Trees grow gladly in niches all over the city, as do weeds and flowers. While the food output is not great, it is helpful for sustaining the population.

Even more lively are the waters of the bowl. Aquatic produce of every kind is grown here. Shoals of fish flourish in the shallow water, as do molluscs and crustaceans. Beds of seagrass abound, and edible seaweeds are a staple.

Yaks, horses and llamas are common livestock in the city, all used to carry goods, though grazing is obviously impossible and as such fodder must be imported constantly. Chickens and pigeons are somewhat easier to keep, although the mobile nature of the city makes pigeon post impossible, and stray cats tend to do well for themselves (as always). As Metera's influence grows, new animals will make their appearance.

A handful of djinni live in the city, and are given their own temples. Chief among them is Mysa, a firedjinn who is kept fed with coal at all times, who warms much of the inside of the city and knows many recipes. Others include Syokoy, the water guardian, who may be seen anywhere in the city's million water-channels and always where he is least expected (mostly to tease women), and Lumikki, the forgetful and melancholic bringer of snow. Several sons of Phlegethon live here also.

Other spirits, smaller ones, tend to pop up and attempt to instate themselves. These poltergeists, as they have come to be known, must be dealt with respectfully but prudently if the peace is to be preserved.

Three Bludgeons, the survivors of the quartet lost by Tauga at the battle of Xerxes, have been caught in Chiral Phi's song. They shine high above the city and protect it. Meterans venerate the ophan colony as a noble spirit.

The Cancer that Breathes

Stone Isopods

Urteverm

Species - Bestial

Appearance: An urteverm, or slater, is a creature very similar to Urtelem in composition yet more like an insect in shape and intellect. Much like urtelem, they are capable of curling into a stone ball, although verm balls are both smaller and smoother, almost polished. A curled verm is marble-sized as a larva, and reaches maturity at a comfortably palm-filling size and weight. Substantially older individuals can approach the size of dogs when unfurled, though the true limit of a slater's growth is not known. Stories, of course, are told.

Unfurled, a slater resembles a long isopod, or woodlouse. Wild-type urteverm are however much more jagged than a pillbug, and touching them should follow the same protocol as touching a porcupine or especially nasty cactus. Domestic breeds are much smoother. Both have a line of crystals down their back, one per segment, that have peculiar radiation- and telepathy-amplifying properties, and may fluoresce in a variety of colours. The colour sequence is useful in identifying individuals.

Slaters have anywhere from six to sixteen limbs or more, which are slightly finned. They bear short antennae and small black eyes.

Life Cycle: Verms lead simple lives. Adults mate by fusion, much like urtelem, and after the split each parent carries a number of live young. These grow under the armour segments of their parents for some weeks before being birthed live in litters of four to twelve, depending on the size of the parent. Most of the youngsters inevitably die, as juveniles will rapidly cannibalise one another if not separated.

The primary barrier to verm growth is acquiring the minerals needed to produce its crystals, which are retained across moults. A poorly fed urteverm will still mate and bear young, but the offspring will be stillborn. A slater requires both igneous stone and some organic matter to grow, which it grinds with glass-sharp corundum teeth.

An urteverm grows by moulting. Its geomancy is substantially weaker than an urtelem, and as such both changing its shape and protecting itself from wear by weather and its own subtle radiation is difficult. As such much of its body must be shed and replaced often. It takes about six instars over one year to reach maturity. After this moulting slows down exponentially.

Moulting is an active process. A submerged slater in moult produces enough heat to boil water easily. The radiation it emits during this time, about a day or so, will make its crystals shine brightly and also poses something of a cancer risk.

Description: Urteverm are notable animals in that they are a source of elemental magic, which allows them to swim through stone and gain energy from consuming it. That this magic is constantly leaking in the form of radiation and shed shells means that they can function as primary producers even in pitch darkness.

Upon their creation Heartworm blessed these insects with a variety of pseudofungal parasites and symbionts. The symbionts mostly take the form of lichenous growths which feed readily on the high-energy stone of the slater shell, and can turn a smooth ball into a mass of colourful organic growths. These can grow quite large if the verm is restricted from tunnelling,
and bred into edible cultivars. Such lichens will happily continue to grow on the shed exoskeleton for some time, and swiftly recolonise a freshly moulted verm.

The parasites, on the other hand, function much like the cordyceps fungus. Secreting acids to burrow deep into the verm's brain, it guides its motions towards the signals given off by other verms and causes the dying victim to infect others until the population in the region is restored to normal levels. A well-kept farm will usually be safe so long as wild verms are kept out and infected ones are removed. The larger the farm, however, the greater the risk of plague.

Like urtelem, verms are empathic. However, their animal intelligence makes this ability largely useless for anything beyond simple communication through stone. They mimic signals of fear or satisfaction among others of their species to avoid danger and seek food and mates.

Around mortals, this leads to some odd interactions, especially with wild-types, who are smarter and more sensitive. Wild-types will be drawn to those feeling strong emotions, and can sometimes be seen playing harmlessly with happy children. They will sulk and curl around mourners and skitter away from the afraid. Be careful not to get lost in a verm tunnel when you are suppressing rage or self-hatred. The creatures will be drawn to your violence, and by the time they begin to feed your fear may not be enough to drive away the swarm.

Parasite urteverm are even stranger wielders of this power. The parasitised brain must by necessity be smart enough to outwit its healthy prey, and as they latch on to emotional signals, the parasite swarms have been known to make mistakes. Beware the chains of light that shine brightly in the dark. Beware the beam of emotion that has learned to flow both ways. Beware the dreadful urge to throw yourself into the depths to escape the misery beneath your feet and chase the bliss that lies below.

Money won't get there / Ten years passed tonight / You'll flee

The Blowfly ascended, borne aloft by a tetrahedral array, up past the barrier of clouds. There was a long moment of darkness, blood rain, red cloud soaking her every fold, but then she rose; breached into the clean sky, baptised in gore. Below her the cloud shone white in every direction. Above her the stars once more fell. She watched them come.

For a moment, she almost felt something.

The first Cosmic Knight fell; she got the measure of it. With the second she collided. The ophan cord cut effortlessly through his body, severing him through the spine. She felt the quake of the impact ricochet through her ophanim, so thick was that armour. She wasn't even sure it was dead.

The Knights realised, and the sky scattered. Falling Knights swerved and arced wildly to avoid her razor wind, most succeeding. The rest fell to earth as soldiers no more. Some targeted her, falling towards her blade, but Tauga dodged or tore through them, unhindered, until they began to realise that too many were throwing their lives away for nothing.

Then things changed.

The first collision barely knocked it off course, the Knight slamming into Tauga's ophan with a streak of heat. The second came rapidly, and soon as a rain: chitin after chitin soldiers slammed into the Bludgeon, forsaking their assigned impact points to strike instead the alien weapon with which Heartworm had blessed her. They leapt off, cushioned by magic, but losing their deadly energy as they did so. The blows were constant. Chitin upon metal. There was little else to be done.

But the speed of the Knights was greater than anything Tauga had seen before, even Realta. As plumes burned, the metal creature dented, and heated, and began to lilt; the others could only hold it aloft. The impacts were too much. Melted by internal damage, the ophan's cords flickered and went out.

Trailing ethereal plumes in a slow and painful rain, the Bludgeon fell.

More Knights coming. Already they were homing to her remaining Bludgeons. Tauga considered rising to smite at their source, but it was impossibly far; she would have to leave. With a sweep of her arms, she sent the Bludgeons away.

And fell, and fell, and fell, and landed, on a heap of rubble, which was all she'd ever ruled, and her tendrils swept out through the city like a bomb. And they saw her as a shadow in the ash as the one she truly was: Tauga the Blowfly, Lord of Xerxes.

* * *

The Bludgeon careened into Xerxes, impossibly huge, impossibly heavy, almost slowed by the utter shock of its magnitude, until it smashed into the city and destroyed.

Buildings were like standing water, people were like flowers. Trailing plumes that scattered in every direction, seeking safety, it rammed the earth with a force that was not equalled by any mortal before or since, and lay where it fell, the earth still quaking.

A stray plume shot through the tremendous gouge left by the dying ophan, unfettered and untouchable. It fled, light in the shroud of ash, passing Dagon, Knight and Rotfly, escaping as the Alefprian soldiers poured in. Blood rain poured, but it was already mad, thoughtless. Its senses, unseeing, were keen. Its sisters died around it, struck down, choked by ash or soaked by blood, but it managed to escape.

A sphere was closing around the city. Chaos was playing its game. The arena was forming.

Chaos...

'DEVIL HEAR MY PLEA!'

It was a soulless prayer, but it worked. It worked.

The barrier thinned just enough for the ethereal feather to escape, though it knew not what it was escaping, into the outside- into a river. It fled along the water, doomed with every flutter, losing energy. It emerged into the sun.

At least it would not die in that place. But it would die. What was the point, in preserving its life, when all it had was gone? It knew no such thoughts. Its mind was nothing but chaos. It merely saw.

Without the ophan, the feather could not resolve its own instincts. It raced back into the point from which it had come, rising from the river, but it found nothing, only a vast hemispherical crater into which water was mysteriously barred from flowing. It fled out to the mountains. Somewhere in its memories, was the thought that mountains were home.

Elsewhere in its memories it knew that they were... not.

The feather churned, turning on itself, dying. The sun was bright. The clouds were gone. The ash was gone. It wished it had stayed in Xerxes. There it could die in war. As a victim. Helpless.

No, thought the ophan feather. This was a good place to die.

Maybe.

* * *

...Hmm. This is weird.

The feather felt it was moving, but it wasn't flying. It had sensations it had not felt before, not in a long time. Corporeality. Mass. Memory. Thought.

A body?

Yeah, it had a body. Nice. Nice. Nice!

NICE!

...not nice. It hated nice. It hated... Niciel. That was it. It would never return there again. Never to the Valley of Peace.

The feather stopped, confirming its first command to its foreign body. It was not airborne, that was for sure. Its senses were dulled, locked away, trapped by something. Aluminium? That and carbon. A flesh engine. The feather released itself, sensing the borders of its prison, and flew easily away from its new body. It immediately tried to kill her.

A White Giant. Hm. That explained a lot.

The feather re-entered her host, found it immediately quietened, responsive. She probed her memories. What did having a body feel like? Oh yes. Like... That.

The giant reared up on four hindlimbs. Inside the body, the feather was blind, but she could feel her weight shifting. Yes. This was good. Did she have senses? Yes she did. Touch, heat, kinesthesis, balance, sound, timing, echolocation, humour (she brought that one herself), and a long-range one she didn't recognise but liked the feel of. No hunger. Pain, maybe. She'd figure that out in time.

There were other souls in here, or soul-like things, placeholders. The feather kicked them out. Deleted them. Good riddance.

She realised she had power. She had always had power. Great power- how else did an ophan stay aloft? How else had she slain her enemies?

And now she had a body.

The feather flexed its knuckles, felt its muscles tense within its shell. It localised its awareness to its faceless head, stretching the small hands thereon. The porcelain ovoid swayed at her command, back and forth, curling up and down on a neck segmented with ceramic plates so cleverly layered as if to be flexible. It flexed its back, felt lichenous components click and shuffle in their mechanisms. Piece by piece it tested the armour, and the massive tendons locked within.

Tick, tick, tick, went the giant. The sensation was rapidly becoming routine, like a heartbeat. Tick, tick, tick, tick.

The comfort faded quickly. Where to go? What to do? Who to talk to? There was no language it could form in this shape, no angelic hymns it could sing. The feather's head whipped around on its long neck, jumping shadows. No Ophan. No colony.

Something moved. The parasitised giant scrabbled away, then launched itself at a suspicious-looking tree. It broke to splinters in its fingertips. Quiet again. Sawdust settled. A familiar scent of chaos on the wind.

Very familiar.

I'll manage, thought the rogue angel. I've come this far.

Money won't get there / Ten years passed tonight / You'll flee

Sable.

A pile of rubble in the middle of an old stream valley. A sound of takk-ing stone on stone, intermittent and variable. Someone was throwing rocks. Not with much force, either.

"A halo from my father," said the voice in the gulch. "A blade from my mother. A thousand curses from Yivvin, and..." A cocked head, as the next fistful of rock cracked down the walls. "And good hearing from Aihtiraq, I guess. That's one thing to be thankful for."

The boy looked up to where a sable marten was curled upon a crag, looking down at him. The two seemed equally startled by each other. His pockmarked metal disc followed his head.

He cracked a smile, looked down. The ferret-thing scampered away up the rock. He turned back to the D-shaped blade sticking up from the rocks, its handle embedded in its spine. He stood up from the rocks.

"Was this the best you could do?" he asked, addressing the walls. The Jvanic spines had been cleared out long ago, but things still grew back. Forked slender points, facing skywards. "An abomination? Another bastard, to throw into the fire? Was the rape of my mother worth this?" He kicked a rock.

"What am I, a Jvanic elemental? A Djinni whose element is you? Or maybe something more like a change-eater? Is that why I must burn everything that I touch?" Sable picked up a rock out of the many, many that lay. It sank into his hand. His skin was water, the flesh beneath as mud. He watched as the stone dripped out the other side, soiling the clear fluid that covered his surface, dripping away as sepia that fled back to him on the ground.

"Or am I a Sculptor? Yes, that makes sense, does it not? Someone to tell the story you refuse to believe. Someone who knows his own narrative, a character who chases the conclusion for its own sake. You just want it to look nice, don't you? No matter what happens, you're just chasing the story."

Sable waved his hand in front of him. He was, in body, the spitting image of what Flux had been three centuries ago, before the change. Only younger. The sepia clouds were falling away into him again, leaving his outer flesh clear.

"You're willing to believe that the responsibility for change lies with anyone but you," he murmured. "You pay morality a tribute because it stung you in the past. Do you think you can atone for your sin the same way you solve all your other problems? By making horrors and abandoning them?"

He swept his arms up to the sky and raised his voice. "Is that what I am? Am I the body who's destined to fight you into a standstill? Is that not correct? Am I not the one you chose to fix all your mistakes? Cure the wounds you inflict and mete out the penance you owe?"

Sable's fists hardened.

"And I will, no matter what it takes. I will thwart you. So... Who am I?"

"Am I your keeper? Am I a harbinger?"

There was no answer. Sable lowered his hands and his voice.

"Am I a messiah?"

There was no answer.

Until, eventually, there was.

"SABLE! Quit your teenage monologuing and sweep out my fucking dojo!"

A broom clattered down among the rocks from somewhere far above. Sable's keen ears heard something about 'I'll make a good goblin out of you yet'.

"Yes, Auntie! I'm coming!" Sable resolved to go within the next five minutes. He looked back out at the gulch. Nothing.

He sat down on the rocks, facing the blade.

I miss them, Sable said, quietly, in his head. I never met them but I miss them. I miss your voices. His fingertips drummed on the stone. "You should never have died. Why did you die?"

The blade's rune gleamed at him. Wit's End.

'May the one who takes up this sword forsake its use, and all other arts of combat, until words fail them.'

"I accept this oath," he said, and put his hand on the blade. It glowed. Sable put his other hand around its grip and pulled.

It was stuck.

"Oh damn this," he whined, yanking the huge ceramic sword with both hands and a shoulder. He grunted with effort as the blade stuck fast in the dirt.

"Sable! Your oryx wants feeding!"

"Coming, Auntie!"

He spattered the ground with his hand, shaking it out to reform it. The rocks dissolved into the ink-marks, the ink-marks flowed back to his feet. At last he heaved and the weapon came free.

"Coming!" he yelled again, setting the blade on his back, where a curve of liquid held it in place. Sable scrambled up the rock.