Antarctic Termite — Roleplayer Guild

A figure swept across the sea, leaving a rooster tail the size of an oak in white water. Tiny though she was, she was tailed by huge, black cubes, dragging them. It was Lei, wearing her working mask, speeding through the dawn. Hardly subtle in her passage, her presence did not go unheeded.

The silhouette of a four-winged being stood atop one of many great boulders upon the rocky shore. Though he was only half illuminated by the morning light and nearly a league away, the kindly voice of Promus greeted Lei as clear as if he were right beside her.

"Hail to you, O Breaker of Shackles and Opener of the Ways!"

She skidded, casting a plume of white mist over the sea as it followed. "Hail!" She waved, but didn't stay long; in a splash and a shock she was dragging the enormous cubes along with her to the shape of the Man from Above. "Do you know," she yelled, flying winglessly up to hover over the surf ahead of him, "How long it's been since I've properly created something?" Her arms clapped and swept out, casting spray. "It is glorious."

"So it is. I am sure that the eons have allowed you to craft a very careful and exacting plan; a careless avidity is the death of a steady hand and immaculate creation, as I have been made to learn."

Lei tumbled in midair, like a swimmer. "They certainly have!" she lied effortlessly. "Perhaps even a plan capable of surviving contact with eighteen young gods. Not that the eons didn't keep me busy. I came for you as soon as the universe was clean." She tumbled again, this time upside down. 'Wreak havoc' was a very resilient kind of plan. "Say, that isn't your magmatic brute splashing around in yon coast-waters, is it?"

The sage looked down to own of his cyclopes as it cooled its fiery, nascent body in the shallow seawater. "Appearances are oft deceptive. These beings are of my make, but they are far from...brutes."

"Ah, I see," said Lei. "Your magmatic magister."

"Magister comes closer to the truth. I call them the cyclopes; they have an intelligence that will one day surpass ours, as well as an affinity for crafting. With the burden of time their wisdom and mastery will grow, even as their flames die. Such is the way that I have ordered their lives."

"...Will they ever master fashion?" Lei hovered over to the cyclops, which had been steaming in a pool of gravel, cooling its sizzling joints. With a snap of her finger some glitchenfae manifested, their tinny song and false colour startling it somewhat, and began to dress the being. "I hope so. We can't let the little brutes saunter around naked. Look at it, it's got crags. Shave them," she instructed the pixel sprites, as the fiery creature squirmed. "We'll make civilisation out of you yet."

"Aesthetic must come after other essentials, but in due time it shall come. As of yet, despite my efforts, they lack even speech. Their minds, like their bodies, still glow from the forge of creation. They must be allowed time to develop."

"Pressure is the complement of every metamorphosis, azoic or otherwise," said the Mater. "I'd like to leave a good impression on them." With a wave, her glitchenfae manifested elsewhere, seeking out more cyclopes on which to take measurements. Maybe accessorise, even, though stone was the only material available to them. But she'd be back. "...Say, where are we? I've never visited this beach."

"On the surface, it is not extraordinary. But look closely to the jagged rocks that we stand upon." She did so.

The robed god of civilization stooped down to brush a hand against brine-coated basalt. There were other stones, too; here and there a shining shard of obsidian, but Promus tried not to look at those. The black glass brought back memories of a horrific prison that he would rather not relive in that moment. "They are forged by volcanic flames. And look to the ocean, do you see it below? A fire wells up, but its endless rage goes unseen, for it is trapped below the seawater. In my mind, I have denominated these volcanic plains as Phlegra. In my travels across this world, I could find no better place for beings of fire to take form."

She looked on, and found that it was so. Phlegra."...Tell me, o Sage," she said, unaware that she had used the title, "How deep do you wish them to go?"

"I do not intend to shelter them below in these first years, nor to drive them to the despair that dwells in the darkest and most abyssal depths of the world. But if they desired of their own volition to venture below later in life, nothing would stop them."

Mater Lei finished her turn, and hovered bolt-upright with arms outswept, facing the ocean. Power crackled from her fingertips. "Then," said the god, "they will be in good company."

One by one the great cubes swept into the water, casting waves as they sank, and unfolded with hyperdimensional symmetry. Their planes expanded all over the beach, blackening stone and sand and cyclope alike, and new silhouettes joined them in the blackness. When the magic receded and the boxes disintegrated, it was like they had always been there.

Colour now shone on the shore of the Phlegra, deep colour that gleamed in jet and indigo. Things grew, huge flora that might have been there a hundred years, radiating threads of a red aura over the lapping cold of the waters, drinking heat from their roots far below. Among the anachronistic titans were smaller growths, young and spry, that dredged the shallow water for heat and dragged it to the surface as steam, forming hot springs and vents around which they clustered and bloomed. Beyond there swam life, trailing a blue aura as it darted, smooth plates of polymer skimming the surface of the waters as the waters washed the polymer flora in turn. Some sieved algae from the brine. Others hunted.

The whole reef covered maybe a square mile or two. Already it was growing.

"...Hope you don't mind."

The scene was scrutinized by He Who Stole the Wind for what felt as though it were an eternity. At last the pregnant pause was broken when Promus ended his silence. "Your designs...intrigue me. They are unlike anything that I had ever seen in the Old World, so your inspiration and creativity surely be great."

His gaze suddenly shifted from the strange creatures of the reef in order to fixate upon Lei. "I beg you enlighten me: what purpose do they serve? These humble eyes fail to see it," he admitted.

"There's another box," she explained, lowering herself to a kneel. The fifth box was small, barely the size of a single tree. Her cane was back in her hand again. "You'll see."

The top panel of the cube slid open, and inside was a sleeping creature. It was smooth and awkward of frame, with no eyes, only a box; and no lungs, and no heart, for its entire body was built as a sort of pump. Everything that moved about it was the work of pipe and piston, pressure threaded through vein and bone. And every component in its body could be found in the bizarre reef- from the heart of a shrimp to the frond of a cyath, it was the amalgamation of all of these living things, put together piece by piece like a delicate idol.

"A third golem, like the ones called Alto and Malkut? Is it meant to watch over this land of your making?"

"If Alto were a golem, he would be ten times as useful and half as hard to track down," quipped Lei immediately. Her hand stroked gently the shell of the colourless being. "Yes, these are automatons. But I could never restrict them to mere gardeners. Never, never. They're here to fill the earth, and subdue it, and hold dominion over all the fish in the sea." She pressed her magic into the being, and ley filled its transparent shell, and gave it colour. Slowly but slowly it came to life.

There was the utterance of one divine syllable, "Rise."

The inanimate shell slowly lifted to magically suspend itself in the air, and Promus examined this one even as the ley seeped in and it began to shudder. It was odd to think that Lei had built a breed of constructs with the explicit purpose of merely ruling some area, but did other gods not do the same with their beings life and flesh?

The question answered itself when the being began to move. Soon its limbs seemed not so bulky, its body not so stiff. It convulsed with a naive yet iron will, bending against his grasp as if instinct taught it to spring. From its infant throat it uttered a long and shredding gnash, pitched as metal sheets in a grinder. This being was not born to administrate but to rule.

He grimaced slightly at the noise as Lei silenced it with a finger on the forehead. 

"Nasty little scream on it, don't you think? Of course, it will need to be taught how to make use of proper speech," she said. "It has the equipment. But if I may be so bold and you so kind, I've been meaning to ask a certain favour."

He offered one small bow and one equally quick answer, "Director of the World, you need only put it to words."

Lei let the creature go. This time it was quiet. Only a faint whirr echoed from its throat. "That when it speaks, others quiet," she said. Lei turned to him from the box. There were others like it, nested in cubes that hid in the black. "Can you do that? ...Please?"

It is an odd being, made my a similarly odd goddess, with an odd request. But I will not question the one that freed me, not her.

"In service I bloom, like a flower in the dawn," Promus answered with what seemed like not even the slightest trepidation, and with a rapidity that may have even suggested eagerness.

He looked to the still-hovering automaton.

"I bid you and your kind to Speak with a cadence like thunder, a voice that brushes aside the meek like so many leaves on the wind." The decree given, the strange being of plastic and magic spoke, no, screamed with a tone like that of metal gnashing against stone.

"UNBIND ME," it demanded of its overlords, "THAT I MAY FEEL THE WATERS."

Somewhat taken aback by its abrupt manner, Promus glanced toward Lei for a brief moment before he prepared to say the word that would release. But she intervened. "Manners, please," said Lei, and let it fall with a jab of her cane-tip to the center of its chest. It landed with a heavy splash in shallow brine and sand, and lay there on its knees, becoming aware.

Its muscles were strong. Its voice was strong. Its mind, not yet fed by contemplation and company, would be strong. Mater Lei looked upon it, and saw that it was good.

"Now we've given them the seeds of patience, and the responsibility of power over their fellows," she said. "I intend to stay here for a while, and make sure they're nurtured." She looked at Promus, and not even her mask could hide the huge smile on her face. "...Thank you."

"A pleasure, and only a small favor before what you have already given to me."

But the Sage's eyes then turned toward the being in the sea, and more words found their way out from behind the curls of Promus' black beard. "You need a name," he told the thing even as it hid below the waves, but not out of their sight, "Your kind, I shall name the Telchines. But you still need a name of your own..."

The Telchine gazed at its limbs, understanding without knowing. "I am... strong," it said, settling its voice now into something not earsplitting, but harsh. "I... am Able."

He was rewarded with a small nod of approval.

"Strong, yes. A good start. But what do you know? Could you lead? Teach?"

The being was silent. For a while. "Now, I cannot. Soon, I may."

"That humility and optimism will serve you well, Able. You have a wisdom beyond your short time, so I will show you the way. Look to me, listen to me, learn from me."

A godly whisper so soft that it was silent left the god's lips, and when it found its way to Able it taught him many things.

"I have given you the power and joy of uplifting your peers," he explained, "But with that power there does come a duty. The seas of this world and the path of water will become known to you well, so it falls to you share this knowledge with others, just as I have shared with you. Teach not only your fellow Telchines, but also the other mortals, those that can be deemed worthy."

"I will make it so," said the new Lord of Civilisation, taking a single knee.

As Able received his blessing, Mater Lei set about dissolving the remaining boxes and breathing the kiss of life into each Telchine. There were forty in all, each much like the last. But not exactly like. "Live," she said. "I will show you the way. Follow these edicts." Her voice quietened them, as their rasping quietened each other. "SURVIVE, against all adversity that could break you. LEARN, in doing so, the ways of your world and your fellow being. MULTIPLY, when it is time to pass on what you've gained. And I will teach you the rest. We," she said, glancing at Able and Promus, and this time addressing not only the telchines but the cyclopes also, "Will teach you the rest."

When some small time had passed and the Telchines had dispersed into the dusk under the watchful ear of Able, Lei straightened suddenly and withdrew the Book of Alto from her coat. "He can at least do that for me," she muttered, inscribing some words upon it and returning it. "If he watches the Citadel, I can spend more time here." She looked to Promus. "There are a great many depths beyond Phlegra, and not so much life in them. Would you care to wander with me?" Lei extended a hand.

Once more Promus found his hand in Lei's. "I saw what lies below, when I went to forge the bodies of the cyclopes in the aquatic fires. There are abyssal depths so deep and so black that to look down upon them is to gaze towards the darkest gaps in the sky, those eternally distant voids that dwell between the stars. I would not desire to dwell there, and nor can I imagine any other ever wanting to do so."

"I'm sure we can find someone," Lei replied, and led them into the night.

Lei goes off flying with a bunch of boxes full of whatever she was just making. Surprise! She runs into Promus meditating on his cyclopes. It seems they fit right in the the location he's chosen for them, which is a volcanic coastline he's dubbed Phlegmland Phlegra. He still thinks highly of them, even though they're not much to look at now.

Lei decides to give the cyclopes some company and dumps her creations right there. Inside the boxes are a lagoon's worth of strange biomechanical creatures, many of which live off the volcanic vents, or create them as they grow. Others eat plankton or each other. The reef is pretty tiny right now, but it will spread. 1 Might to create the flora of the Hydraulic Lands. 1 Might to create the fauna. 1 Miracle to drag them from the workshop to Phlegra.

Promus says, 'y tho'

The answer is that the new ecosystem supports a species of hydraulic, slightly magical automata impregnated with ley. While they don't age or reproduce, they replenish their numbers by making more of themselves out of the many components available to them on the reef. 1 Might to create the Telchines, a sentient species. Since they're basically magi-robots, they're empowered by Lei's automata portfolio.

Lei brashly requests that Promus give them speech, specifically speech that is abrasive and silencing. She believes this will help them become rulers, and teach them to use words wisely. Promus is confused, but graciously obliges her. The first telchine begins to speak.

Promus takes a shining to the telchine. It names itself Able, and he promotes it to the rank of Lord of Civilisation so that it can teach the water-dwelling peoples all sorts of things. It humbly accepts the duty. 1 Might from Promus to make a hero out of Able.

Lei gives three edicts to the Telchines, teaching them to survive in their new environment (by what would be their equivalent of simple foraging), to study it and learn new skills, and to reproduce by assembling more of themselves. 1 Miracle on each of these blessings.

The Lords of Civilisation Civilization now have one member for each element, plus Azazael, so I'm giving them the title 'Teachers of Every Path' via Able, for 2 Prestige. Between them, there's nowhere they can't go.

Then the two gods disappear into the sunset, into the ocean, to make some new life. Whatever could come of this, I wonder?

Mater Lei
Start: 13 Might, 0 Miracles
End: 9 Might, 0 Miracle
Level Five
4/10 Acts of Creation

Promus
Start: 9 Might, 0 Miracles
End: 8 Might, 0 Miracles
Level Three
1/6 Acts of Creation

Able
2 Prestige
-

Lords of Civilisation
0 Prestige
Teachers of Every Path (I)
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