Antarctic Termite

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

But read the latest post;

@Cyclone

now that sounds like a jolly good idea.

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

Did anyone have eyes on the Terrestrial Citadel?

If not, I'm going to have Hemrick, Malley and the Vestecians set up there for a while via shadow tunnel, presumably until ogres evict them.

...I kind of just want Mallet to pop in and admire the big hammer sculpture Teknall left there.

@Kho Phi would appreciate a minor favour from Belvast sometime, by the way, but it's not involved in any short-term plans.

If you do that / I'll be some / To find you

The missionary held open his book, and the watchhain read. The longer he read, the more he realised that this man feared not death; for he was reading not only his text, but also his face. Humans have such expressive faces, the watchhain thought.

"They told us you were barbarians," he said out loud.

The missionary grimaced a bit but shrugged. "We grew to pity you, likewise," he said, "for living in caves... and such. Sunlight is good for a man."

The hain was not a man, and in fact preferred the cool of the dark, but he let it pass. "This verse. What does it mean?"

"Oh, ah... Is the translation off?"

"I wouldn't know. I read it as, 'if you blaspheme, that's forgivable, but not...'" The language barrier wasn't tall, but words hopped from time to time. "'-bright, because it's an act of blind hatred'. Something like that."

The missionary re-read the words. Even in South Tounic, the doctrine of Phi rang clear. 'Fear not retribution from ye elder gods, whose souls are grown thick; fear nor the Zealotry Mortal, for they can only slay; fear only that in your own heart, for a little wisdom breeds great ignorance, and only ignorance breeds great wisdom. Thus let your blasphemy be as the raging child, and remain thus, and in age be humble to all things...'

"It means that we must not presume we know the gods well enough to speak for them," the man clarified. His name was Silas. "Whether we offend god or mortal is irrelevant. The important thing is not to act wise when we are really ignorant. What's wrong?"

The watchhain shook his head a little. "Irrelevant..." One little word that could have damned his entire family. How long had the missionary been doing this? A month? Ten? He knew humans and rovaick tended to measure bravery by cullion size; this man's must have been enormous. And you are sheltering him, he thought. Maybe you have... big cullions of your own. It didn't really fit.

Silas smiled, and shook his head. "I don't fear death, Kilago," he read from the hain's mind. "Only yours. Pray with me, in your heart, in the dead of night, if you have to. Believe in God, and She will claim your soul. If not when you die, then when this land is liberated. Change is coming."

Kilago dipped his beak and shook his head. "When I die, friend," he said. Maybe it was because he was an outsider himself that he could see this side of the story at all, but he had grown up with the rovaick of Rulanah. The Azibo were strong. The legion was strong. There was no revolution coming. That he knew.

"Well, then," said Silas, disheartened, "follow the good gods Toun and Teknall, and be safe. All worship has value, and there is no shame in lying for a while. This verse, see... 'Such is the law of Prudence: faced with the choice of deception and suffering, it is permitted to silence one's faith, and once you confess in your heart the lies you have spoken in the name of God, you will be forgiven. Only among your Chiral sisters never lie, for God hates to see mistruth as She hates to hear you suffer.' Be kind, Kilago, be humble, work hard and pray often- that's all She asks."

"...It sounds beautiful," he admitted.

"It is," Silas said.

A knock at the door.

Silas gestured once ('quickly!') and bolted in an instant. Kilago immediately exited the room. "Sir! Yes, Inquisitor, yes, sir..."

Kilago heard nothing from the back of the room. He kept his palms still as they searched the watch tower, and found nothing. He alone noticed the disturbed meltwater around the far arrowslit, the one broken open by a Dwarvish ballista, leaving a hole that led to an almost sheer face on the stone edifice below.

And they say their god works no miracles, he thought.

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

@Kho I've been assuming like six to seven feet. A rovaick that fits in with humans without being a goblin or azibo. Could be wrong though

If you do that / I'll be some / To find you

The site of the miracle was empty. Of breath, at any rate. Wax puddled on the floor, the product of a hundred candles pooling together as they flickered. The hall was not dark, but they flickered anyway, marking with warm light the shrine of the City God, Mysa. The sunlight cast dappled beams from the surface of the rippling water below.

A mist erupted from the pool.

"Have you had your fun?"

The centermost candle of the shrine array brightened, just a little, swaying as it wavered. A breeze had caught it, only one little flame among a multitude that were perfectly still, swaying it on the line between flaring and going out.

"A jealous spark in you, little son."

The mist thinned, revealing the form of a powerful man on its breath. Phlogiston tossed his hair. His arms were crossed. "Do not taunt me, Mysa. This canal was our domain, and remains so, by your agreement. Keep to your lane."

"Keep to my lane!" a merry laughter from the candle. For a moment it flashed, and in the fire was the shape of a woman, fat and healthy from the wealth she ate. "Keep to my lane! Oh, you! You little fool." The water bubbled beneath Phlogiston's feet. "You think you can divide this city, in neat little lines, and have your share untouched, while my power encompasses all. It was necessary, my dear, all the people cried for it. Who am I to deny them?" Low, mirthful laughter.

Phlogiston's heel ground against the surface of the low pool. It whitened. Steam filled the room. "I had purpose in denying them, and you are nought but an opportunist. You are a scavenger, a seeker of mortal affection, and it is disgraceful. You spoil your subjects! O great and powerful Mysa, these people rule you. How are you to say you control them when they have not learned to fear you and take mind? Nay, o firelady, they take you for granted! How shall you deny them when you are become but a tool in their fickle lives?"

"With cruel satisfaction," said Mysa, hardening somewhat. The shape of the candle brightened, a tiny image of her true splendour. " 'Control them'? To hear you talk! What will our dear Phi say? She shall take it for insurrection."

Phlogiston rolled his eyes. "My father has always controlled these people, since the birth of their nation. The line of Phlegethon is and remains the First Spiryt of Metera." He cast out his arm, and a great cloak seemed to follow, thick and royal. "I am his son! You fear him, and I fear nothing. Phi is feeble! She cannot hear us talk. My own sons prevent her. It is but you and I here, o Mysa," he sneered, with cold command, "And you have overstepped your bounds."

" 'My bounds.' "

With a vicious flare, the candles erupted, their wax igniting into liquid fire. The light filled Phlogiston's fog, and before he had braced, five daughters of Mysa now stood on the candles. They were lean and bitter, emaciated, hungry spiryts eager to burn. Mysa's greed was great.

"Remember where you are, fog-whipper," rasped one.

Phlogiston twirled his hand, slowly flexing his wrist, and two brothers of his stood beside him. "...You would risk this. You fool."

"I will not risk anything but our own-"

A noise. Both parties flinched. They cast their awareness out.

"...Syokoy."

"Bahahahahaha!"

The waters erupted, again into a figure, but this time with no class. Water sprayed everywhere, extinguishing half the candles, which were immediately relit by a sister. The channel cooled, a line drawn around Syokoy where white met cool transparent blue, expanding until only the feet of the eight other djinni were still hot.

"Two's company, but I prefer crowds," he said, teasing. "Or not- you may leave now, son of Phlegethon; the two true elements are here now, and you are irrelevant."

Phlogiston hissed.

The daughter took a step forward, tossed her head. "This does not concern you. Go back to your business, Syokoy. Go tease some women. You know that they're the only ones who'll stick up with your perverted delusions, and then only out of fear."

Syokoy flexed his arms, unbowed. They morphed fluidly from his human to his fish-like forms. "The mortals like me. My perversion-" he laughed. He couldn't help it. "They represent you as a candle, Mysa! They commune with Phlogiston through the steam that pours from their kettles! So what if I should take the proud form of my element? It's a fish, you tightened prudes, a fish! Elegant! Refined! What's there to be afraid of? Y'vahn? Bah."

"...You are worse than Lumikki," grit Phlogiston over the fingers on his eyes. "The truant."

"She never served Boreas for long, you know," he commented.

"We eat fish," said the daughter, who was tired. That brought conversation to a grinding halt.

"...'til next time," said Syokoy, disappearing. The dorsal fin of a mighty shark followed him out down the channel. Phlogiston shared one long look at the daughters of Mysa, and then he, too, was gone. The hungry daughters turned, shrugged, and disappeared. The moment had been exhausted. The candles went out.

Smoke filled the empty room.

Ah, thought a voice, kids.

---

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

@Kho It has to be after Xerxes got blown up, since Tauga was in Xerxes all the way up until the point where it got blown up, and only started importing Grotlings to the ocean a few decades later once Alefpria was done with her. Your timeline is right, though- Xerxes got nuked only two or three years post Realta.

anyway

The Journey's End

Yonders

Species - War Construct - Interplanetary - the Other

Appearance: Yonders, also called bounds, endings, limits, peripheres, or a variety of other names spoken in whispers, are vast ethereal constructs used as both mass monitors and war machines by Jvan. Their typical appearance from 'outside' is that of a cloudy or hazy shape, sometimes with a passing resemblance to their natal host. This cloud bears certain marks or features according to what the conscious larva was most readily visualised as by the host prior to maturation. These features may be skulls, large, staring eyes, faceless lines of teeth, or luminous sigils. These ghostly forms typically occupy at least one or two thousand metres cubed, but readily shrink and overlap with other Yonders. Counting faces in a Yonder cloud is a semi-reliable way of judging their numbers when they are at rest.

The 'interior' of a Yonder is an extradimensional space occupying at least a kilometre cubed. This space is edgeless, generating endlessly around the location of any entity with the misfortune to be lost inside. New terrain is continually grown as the prisoner moves. The 'exterior' body of the Yonder is also present in its 'interior'.

Yonder prisons are unsafe regions filled with creatively distorted facsimiles of what the natal host knew. Lakes, forests, deserts, mountains, cities and all other forms of typical landscape can be found here, but elements of them may intersect or be constructed in wholly unnatural ways. Space may warp and mirror, distortions of gravity are common, living things behave in unliving ways, and inanimate terrain may not be so.

The interior of a Yonder also distorts time. Depending on how strained the Yonder is to preserve its internal territory, it can slow or speed time around a helpless mortal by factors of ten or more.

Some examples of a Yonder seen from outside may be found here. Boo.

Life Cycle: Yonders pass through three distinct life phases on their way to power. An adult Yonder is composed of a haze of hyperdimensional spores. At the end of their lifespan these spores occasionally shed, and can be inhaled by wandering mortals, though the chances of infection are low and the spores do not incubate for long.

Once inhaled, the newborn Yonder exists only as a construct of the host's imagination. The host mortal begins to unwillingly use their mind's eye to project strange and hazardous features onto the world as perceived by their senses, first in glimpses and pareidolia, increasing rapidly in intensity and realism over the course of a few days external time. In time these glimpses become a constant stream of hallucinations affecting all senses. Once the internal world, not yet fully existent, is sufficiently unrecognisable from the host's environment, the developing Yonder pupates by quickly and quietly pulling the host into hyperbolic space.

The host may spend a considerable amount of time here, wandering Yonder space and further developing the periphere's library of potential weapons. Inevitably, the Yonder matures enough to exist outside of the host, and pulls the hallucinatory landscapes away, exiting the host body in the form of an adult spore cloud and taking the host's creative soul with it.

The abandoned host body is equipped with a handful of complex psychic algorithms that adaptively corroborate the body's actions with memories, old and new, held in its brain. This allows a soulless body to pass for a relatively normal and entirely competent, if rather simple, person. The algorithms are quite resistant to total failure but are known to be riddled with glitches. Soulless bodies, for example, don't retain any natural fear of Other-based entities they may have had, and may bear elementary knowledge of Jvanic history and philosophy.

The mature Yonder will seek out others of its kind, locating them by unknown impulse, and spend much of its life in such a colony. Adults sometimes flee to populated regions out of loneliness and nostalgia, and swiftly return, having left spores unwittingly. Yonders are susceptible to encrypted signals sent by All-Beauty, which they will follow without question. They are not known to die naturally.

Description: The adult Yonder is capable of rapid movement through all but the densest media, and does not need to eat or breathe. Though they are limited to speeds of a few hundred kilometres per hour or so in air at surface pressure, they can rapidly achieve orbital velocity once the atmosphere thins.

Yonders can 'settle', 'rooting' themselves in to a location and taking any engulfed mortal entities with them into the Yonder places. Once settled, a Yonder exists mostly hyperdimensionally and is extremely difficult to notice or identify, though the location it occupies in three-dimensional space does not change. Yonders cannot engulf mortals unless settled, although they may engulf additional mortals once settled.

As Yonders tend to be affectionate entities when surrounded by their own kind, they don't mind existing in close contact with other peripheres, and a colony may temporarily fuse if need be. While this action may or may not fuse the 'exterior' of the Yonders, it will conglomerate the Yonder places into a far larger and more diverse hellscape with substantially greater regenerative properties.

Yonders can be killed by targeting their spores when they are not settled, although their supply is near limitless and they flee confrontation by scattering spacewards or settling. A settled Yonder, likewise, can be killed by destroying its peripheral landscape. Though impossible for lone or magically inept mortals, an army or magician may be able to defend themselves from the traps and monsters thrown at them, while destroying elements of the Yonder place faster than it can regrow. It is absolutely critical they they do not travel far when they do this- leaving behind any part of the Yonder place will dissipate it, and the damage one has done to it, and allow its mass to be recycled freely into new terrain.

Interactions: Yonders are by nature shy, and recluse to their dark spaces at the edge of the populated universe if so given a chance. They can communicate only by telepathic means, and even then only in encrypted code, understood not even by Sculptors. Mouths formed within the Yonder places typically speak gibberish or regurgitated mortal memories, which may be used to set traps.

They do respond to Sculptor signals, though, and the artists may use Yonder companions as a mobile studio lair.

Adult Yonders mean no harm to the average wanderer, and may permit them to enter their special places and exit unharmed. They may even help struggling travellers who need a place of rest, though they are poorly equipped to provide it. Yonders open their gates to travelling Voidsketchers compulsively. Fiberlings are the only currently known entities capable of existing inside a Yonder place that is not at rest. There may, however, be others.

Unlike ordinary matter, change-eaters are capable of growing and reproducing if fed with the matter present within Yonders.

Yonders treasure keepsakes of their former lives, and will defend and hide them deep within the yonder places, mourning their loss. They cannot bear to be reunited with the bodies of their natal hosts.

Names are the only aspect of Yonder language that have been readily translated, as the Yonder retains the name of its host prior to maturation.

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

only when it comes to gluexgadar smut. it'll be something like...

@Kho

i was imagining this tbh

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

Now I'm interested in knowing who you think glue is xD

@Kho

...does it matter?

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

also gluexgadar smut when

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

More nonsense for the Phi post. Somehow I have a long backlog again.

Also, heads up on at least part of the reason why: since I was unable to pick between biochemistry and chemistry for one of my majors, I've taken a semester to do both, without dropping my other major (agricultural science). So I'm pretty much swamped with clashes, labs and content over the next few months.

The rest of the reason is all just procrastination.