BBeast

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

@Scarescrow Welcome back.

It seems that you have solid long-term plans. This is good. However, the IC has moved somewhat since you were last here. The only thing that impacts you is that Anzillu has turned its severed appendage into an Avatar, so that is no longer available as the story of Adam's birth. You will need to renegotiate Adam's parentage and origins.

Further, there are still a few other points I raised in the review that need to be addressed. You need to settle on some abilities. You need to elaborate on the personality. And some of Adam's short-term plans did not quite work, although with mortals getting closer that might be less important.

Submit a revised character sheet and determine the manner of Adam's birth, and we shall review Adam again.

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

Ashalla

Ashalla swam with joyous pulsations. ‘Your reef is gorgeous,’ Azura had said. Someone thought her creation was gorgeous. She had always known that her creations were beautiful, yet the affirmation left her jubilant. Ashalla swam eastwards to find new parts of the world to inspire her next creation.

She found a new continent which was currently quite rocky. She circumnavigated the coast around the south. The great volcano of Muspell was still sitting where Ashalla had seen it earlier. As the coastline turned towards lower latitudes the barren landscape gave way to grasslands and forests inhabited by insects and colourful birds. A detour southwards to the Eye of Desolation revealed that all the islands of the crater were now covered in plants and life. Then she travelled back north to travel up the east coast of Kalgrun, looking at the forests there.

Ashalla marvelled at the beautiful diversity of plants and animals. This area tasted of Phystene’s essence. Ashalla felt inspired to create a few living things of her own. She took a lizard and modified it, giving it wider feet for swimming, waterproof eyes, and a long snout with nostrils on top so it could breathe while mostly submerged in the water. She took a few birds and gave them waterproof feathers and webbed feet. And she adapted a few trees to grow in shallow sea water, their physiology made to handle the extra salt and their trunk suspended above the water level by stilt-like roots so they would not have to fight against the ocean currents. Ashalla felt quite proud of her additions to this ecosystem.

As Ashalla swam onwards, she passed through a strait which seemed to have perpetual rain clouds. Across the strait was a large sandy island, the beaches held together by dune grasses. In the middle of this strait Ashalla found something quite peculiar sitting on the seafloor. It was a wooden box which tasted of Vakk’s essence. It was filled with water, so Ashalla could see that its interior was filled with intricate mechanisms of wood and metal. It was unlike anything Ashalla had ever seen before.

Ashalla opened the box’s lid, and when she did the mechanisms started to turn, but they appeared to struggle against the water’s drag. She closed the lid, lifted the box above the surface of the ocean, drained it of water, then opened the box once more.

A ripple washed over Ashalla as the notes began to play. There was something about the tone of each note, the harmonies of overlapping notes and the rhythms as the notes changed which made the music greater than the sum of vibrations in the air. The piece pulled on her metaphorical heartstrings and she was mesmerised by the beauty of it. It was like the birdsongs of Azura’s gemstone gardeners, yet meticulously crafted such that no note was out of place.

Ashalla listened to the music box for a long time, rain gently pattering around her. Eventually the sky began to darken and Ashalla was pulled out of her reverie. She reluctantly closed the lid of the box. She would have to find some place safe and dry to keep it. Ashalla continued swimming northwards, carrying the box above the waves.

She eventually reached the ocean north of Kalgrun, and the water here was much cooler. At higher latitudes, she even started noticing chunks of ice floating in the ocean. She inspected the frozen water, pondering its uses and admiring the abstract curves and shapes carved by the water and sun. As the sun came close to orbiting the horizon, Ashalla noticed that the seafloor was rising. Her curiosity piqued, she swam northwards until she found land at the top of the world.

The island was a couple hundred kilometers in diameter and was ringed by mountains. In its very centre was a stone spire which pierced the sky which glimmered with Azura’s signature colour. The barren ground had a patchy covering of snow and ice.

Ashalla looked at the island for a while. From where she was looking, it appeared quite utilitarian. She also noticed the blue sky shift, and realised that Azura must be present on the island. Ashalla thought she would pay her friend a visit and show her the music box she had found.

The ocean surged forwards and gathered on the shore. This wave continued to roll uphill in defiance of all known laws of hydrodynamics. Ashalla collected snow and ice from the ground and melted them into her form to supplement the water lost as she dragged herself across the ground. It was a tough climb up the mountain slopes, but Ashalla would not let something as mundane as a mountain stop her. Eventually she reached the top of the mountains, slithered through a mountain pass, then flowed downhill like a torrential river into the valley between the ring of mountains and the sky-piercing spire.

The valley was barren. Ashalla pooled in a depression as she drunk puddles of rainwater and snow and considered her next move. The central mountain was very steep and tall. While Ashalla would not have admitted it, climbing over the normal-sized mountains had been an ordeal, so climbing to the peak of this vast mountain would have taken a lot out of her. Ashalla considered calling Azura down to her when she noticed movement down in the valley.

It was a creature, if that word could be used, of floating stone and clouds. It was carrying a load of rocks and dust, which it dropped on a pile of more rocks before turning around and floating back the way it came. Another almost identical entity came with another load of rocks and did the same. As Ashalla watched, she saw a whole procession of these entities.

Curious, Ashalla approached the strange creatures, which did not react to her presence. A pseudopod of water reached out and brushed over one of the creatures, which recoiled from her touch before returning to its task as if nothing had happened. It tasted of Azura.

Ashalla stretched a head up to look along the procession, and noticed that they were coming from a ravine in the base of the mountain. Ashalla flowed past the procession and into the ravine. She traveled almost a kilometer from where the autonomous creatures were dumping their rubble loads, the walls of the ravine growing ever higher and ever closer together as she did so. The ground below her made of the same rubble the drones had been dumping outside, the creatures having clearly been pushing their deposit site further and further out of the ravine as more and more material had piled up, threatening to seal them in if they did not press on further and inadvertently reveal the location of their work to those like Ashalla. At first this uneven gravel pathway was slick with snowmelt that flowed slowly downhill, but as she approached the end this centimeters deep river was replaced first by snow proper, and then by ice, making the path a treacherous one for those who might walk it.

Eventually, after dodging several dozen drones Ashalla arrived at the end of the ravine. Above her the tops of the walls reached hundreds of meters above her and were but centimeters apart, having curved together until, here, they joined together. Past the final few meters, the now cave-like ravine was its end point, a bleak cliff face of stone into which a grand entryway had been carved, vast enough to accommodate even the most colossal of the Gods. The walls around the cavernous gateway were smoothly carved and engraved with wavy wind-like patterns that framed it and brought the eye to an engraving perched atop the entryway. There, carved in the language of the gods, was the name of this secluded tomb: The Vault of Souls.

As Ashalla approached the cavernous mouth of the Vault she felt more strongly what she realised she had been feeling softly during her whole approach- a gentle yet bitingly cold breeze emerging from the vault itself. Yet as the flow of air increased the flow of floating stone workers subsided. They where now found higher up, seemingly riding an air current that flowed in opposition to the one at surface level. Stretching a watery limb high up she discovered a warm breeze dragged into the depths of the tunnels and realised that the Vault, in a sense, breathed.

Beyond the entryway the smoothly curved tunnel travelled forwards a way before transforming into a staircase that plunged deeper below the mountain, the way down pitch black except for faint lights emanating from the stone workers who continued to ignore her presence. Ashalla paused to look down into the depths. There was a moment of hesitation, not from any sense that she might be trespassing, but rather on whether she would be able to climb back up after descending. Ashalla quickly overcame her trepidation and poured down the staircase.

It was unclear for just how long she descended the gargantuan staircase into the depths but as she did so it became clear that there was a light at the end of the tunnel, a soft glow similar to that emanating from the Vault’s curators. When she finally glided off that final step she became the first ever to see the depths of the vault, for it was a place its creator dared not venture. In the depths of the earth, below the north pole itself, was a vast tube shaped room that stretched up and down for kilometers. Around its outside where rings of walkways linked by a dozen sets of spiral staircases that all crept their way up and down its walls. All of these had sturdy stone banisters that warded human sized individuals from falling off, as well as columns of increasing thickness and decreasing frequency that would do the same for larger creatures. The Caretakers did not use these stairs, nor were they protected by the banisters, and yet they continued to carve them while extending the core of the vault ever deeper.

As Ashalla exited out into this near pitch black hub she was able to see, thanks to her godly dark vision, a series of carved plaques set into the nearest supporting pillar that described what was contained on each floor. Most of these were empty but those that were not contained descriptions in the format of: tunnel number, species categorization, date of arrival (denoted in days since creation) and name starting letter. The floor she was on for example contained, among many other things, "Tunnel 3: Mice, 0 - present, A-Z"

Looking along the walls of her floor Ashalla could indeed see a number of tunnels, each one with a number carved above it and a similar plaque set near its entrance. It was from these tunnels that the soft glow that just barely lit up the place emanated. Ashalla reached a tendril of water into one of the tunnels and looked inside. Into its wall were carved thousands of small shelves, each one housing a singular crystal. Below these shelves an inscription had been engraved on a small placard, consisting of a name, species, date of entombment, and a brief description akin to a obituary. Every single one of these Ashalla read pertained to some simple creature or plant. Every single one of their very simple descriptions, ones that were written in the manner a creature like the one it was describing might speak to a god, had ended suddenly and violently.

Ashalla picked up one of the crystals and tasted it. It was a soul, yet one given solid form. It was also very cold. Ashalla replaced the crystal and looked around the room and the vault once more. Azura had… frozen all these souls, if that was the right word. Souls of the dead, preserved forevermore. With nothing more worth seeing, Ashalla began the long climb back to the surface. As she climbed, she pondered why Azura might have done such a thing. Did she have some purpose for the souls? Was she considering using them as a power source, like she had done in the drones? Maybe she hoped to keep a record of the lives of all creatures on this planet. Ashalla wasn’t sure, but she could ask.

When she made it back to the surface, she called out to Azura, who was perched high above the clouds. "Hello, Azura. What have you made here?"

Ashalla got nothing but silence for a few long moments before she got a response in the form of a rapid-fire series of questions "Ashalla? What are you doing here? Where are you?"

"I’m down the bottom of this big mountain you made. I came to show you a music box I found but then I saw your floating-rock-cloud-creatures digging a hole in the mountain and found a bunch of frozen souls down the bottom." Ashalla twisted so her face had a better view up the mountain. "Did you want to come down and talk?"

"Oh dear," Azura said, followed by another lengthy pause. Eventually she added, "Yes. I’ll come and see you. Be with you in just a moment so sit tight."

As she peered up the mountain Ashalla saw a pair of large doors being thrown open on the vast twin ringed structure built around its peak, out of which the Colossal Bird Body of Azura emerged. The gates slammed shut behind her, after which Azura sailed around the blue in a few lazy circles until she seemingly spotted Ashalla, at which point she descended rapidly to the mountain's base. The Azura that landed just a little way away from her was a different compared to the one Ashalla had battled the storm haunting Veradax’s shadow with. Dust, damp and stray feathers marred her radiant plumage. She had bags under her eyes and they were also slightly red.

Ashalla noticed Azura’s weariness. The water of her form stretched out towards the big bird and licked Azura’s right wing. Ashalla tasted traces of blood and sap from mortal beings. "Have you been in a fight?" Ashalla asked, mildly concerned.

Azura tilted her head in confusion "Hmm? No… Not yet" she said before taking a moment to examine herself. "Hmmm. I am looking a little worse for wear I suppose. Haven't had much time for beauty sleep or preening lately." The massive bird shook herself, dislodging a few stray feathers and a touch of the grime, but it did little to improve matters. She looked away, perhaps a touch embarrassed at being seen in such a state, and ended up looking at the entrance to the ravine. "Ah, I can see how you found the Vault so easily," Azura commented as she watched another pile of rocks being thrown into to the slowly expanding gravel field. "I’ll need to do something about that. Can’t have just anyone snooping around in there." Azura locked her gaze firmly on Ashalla and said, "I need you to promise me that you won't speak a word of this to Katharsos or anyone who might let this slip to him."

For the second time in her existence Ashalla had been asked to promise something. Yet like the first time, she would not take making promises lightly. "Why should I promise that?" Ashalla asked.

The claws on one of Azura’s talons scraped against the ground pensively before she answered, "It could hurt me greatly if you told him. But I don’t even need you to lie for me though. Just don’t go out of your way to tell him of the vault and its contents for just a little while until I am ready to make this knowledge public. Please. I would be in your debt"

Ashalla rumbled thoughtfully. It did not appear to be a difficult promise which Azura asked. "Alright, I shall keep your secret," Ashalla said.

Azura breathed a sigh of relief, visibly releasing some of the tension that had gripped her since her arrival. Then she bowed her head and said, "Thank you Ashalla. I will remember this kindness," before raising back up and saying, "I also owe you an explanation my friend. What you just saw in the Vault of Souls was the results of my initial experiments into preserving souls by crystallizing them into a solid form after death to keep them from being pulled by the Vortex of Souls. So far I have only worked with simpler minds but I intend to work with more complex souls when I get the opportunity. My end goal is to prevent souls such as ours and those of mortals yet to come from being committed to Katharsos’s flame as those that came with us from the void were."

Ashalla pondered this for a moment before asking, "But why would you bother preserving mortal souls?"

Azura cocked her head once more as if the very question confused her, and then responded, "They are like us. They think, they feel. They love and learn. When I saw them up there in Katharsos’s Sphere I realised that were it not for the idle whims of the Architect we could have been in their place, lining up to be reduced to ash by a monstrous executioner. I also realised that if I had been one of them I would have fought my end with all my might with the hope that one of the gods was working to save me. By mere chance however I was that god Ashalla. I came to them in their hour of need. I tried to save them. I failed. I failed them all Ashalla. But I will not fail again!"

"So you identify with mortals. Interesting," Ashalla commented dispassionately.

"I empathise with them yes..." Azura responded, visibly disturbed by Ashalla’s lack of sympathy for the mortals’ plight.

"So what do you plan to do with the preserved souls? I noticed they could be used as a power source," Ashalla asked

Azura answered Ashalla’s question a touch sheepishly, "I uh, haven't really decided. Yes they can be used for power, the Curators’ simple souls take advantage of that fact, but I know I for one would not like to be used as a source of energy without my consent, so I do not intend to use those saved as such. I intend to discuss this with others in time, mortal and god alike, to create a suitable life after death for the souls that end up in my care. For the moment however the most important thing is to perfect the art so that all can be saved as soon as possible. What comes after is a concern for a later date."

Ashalla rumbled once more. She then decided to turn her attention to other matters. She pulled forwards the wooden box she had been carrying around and held it between her and Azura. "I found this on the bottom of the ocean," she said as she opened the box, allowing the melancholic tune to play.

"That’s an odd place to find such a thing," she responded before the music washed over her. She became calm, serenely so, a passivity that was broken infrequently by violent twitches which were quickly quelled by the perfect melody.

Ashalla’s face shifted to one of concern and confusion. "Is there something wrong, Azura? You are acting strangely."

"I’m fine," Azura responded calmly, "I’m just tired. And busy. Very busy." Then she flinched as if struck and then growled "Why are you here!" before serenity overtook her once more and she fell silent.

Ashalla closed the music box with a click and the music ceased. Azura shook her head but seemed to not have noticed that anything was amiss and instead simply commented idly that "The music was nice"

Ashalla then spoke. "As I swam here, I saw chunks of frozen water and had a few ideas. If you want to keep this place secret, then maybe some kind of physical barrier would help. A vast plain of ice and snow, perhaps."

"Hmmm." Azura seemed to ponder this for a few moments. "Yes that could work. Snow to cover the gravel, ice to hide the chilling of the area around the vault. I could modify the curators slightly. Make them only dump materials during snowfall perhaps." She nodded enthusiastically. "That would be a wonderful way to hide it. Bit like throwing a white sheet over it."

Ashalla rippled in excitement. "Excellent! I’ll get started right away," she declared before flowing up the slopes of the mountain range. "I’ll see you another time, Azura."

"Thank you so much Ashalla! That’s two I owe you now!" Azura shouted up after her.

Ashalla eventually made it over the mountains and back to the ocean. She drank deeply of the ocean’s vastness, replenishing lost water and expanding back out to a comfortable size. As soon as she was replenished, Ashalla deposited the music box on the shore of the island and receded into the ocean as she started the task of freezing over the north pole.

The mechanism of freezing water was simple enough. She just had to move energy from the water to the surrounding environment. Because the ambient temperature was already hovering around the freezing point of water, this was not especially difficult. Ashalla pulled half of her form out of the ocean and carried the water’s warmth with it, flash freezing a portion of the sea into a great ice floe topped with twisting pillars of ice. Ashalla continued her dance spiralling around the north pole, conjuring ice twisted into fantastical shapes.

She did not forget the north pole itself. While her original plans did not include moving ice onto land, Azura had requested it, and it was a simple enough addition. Ashalla drew herself up to mountainous heights and began hurling ice and water over the mountain range into the valley beyond. She could not actually see where the water and ice was landing, but she assumed it was probably fine provided she didn’t throw enough water to flood the valley and the Vault of Souls. She wanted to build a solid foundation for a thick layer of permafrost which would help conceal the contents of the valley. If the ice got in the way the Curators could just dig through it.

With what Ashalla believed to be enough ice deposited within the mountain range, she continued her dance around the north pole. As she progressed outwards, she got more creative with the ice formations she made. Where many of the formations were twisted bits of ice, she took a bit more care with a few sculptures. Some she twisted into elaborate abstract forms. A few she carefully formed to refract the light in dazzling ways. Others she carved into likenesses of living things. She made likenesses of each of the gods. Of Azura she made multiple sculptures. She also made sculptures of all the plants and animals she had seen, for she had a lot of space to work with. She even carved a few maps of places on Galbar.

There was no utilitarian purpose to these ice sculptures. They made the terrain harder to walk across, but such a goal could have been achieved with much simpler formations. Rather, Ashalla was loathe to create a blank and featureless ice sheet. With a new medium to explore and plenty of blank canvas to work with, it was only natural for her to experiment.

After many days of work, Ashalla had stretched the polar ice cap to over a thousand kilometers from the north pole. It was chilled by the Vault of Souls and by being only on the fringes of Heliopolis’ beam, so the ice cap would remain indefinitely, but it would shift and change over time for ice was not a durable material. The sculptures were ephemeral, although the lasting impact of Ashalla’s will meant that they would surely be replaced by other artistic forms as wind, sun and water carved the ice sheet.

Her work done, Ashalla swam underneath the ice sheet and burrowed up through the ice near the north pole to retrieve the music box. Although this was one possible place to store it, Azura’s strange reaction to the music box made Ashalla feel that this was a bad location to leave the box. She carried it with her as she swam southwards to warmer, more occupied waters. Perhaps she would find another home for it elsewhere.

Summary

Because Azura praised Ashalla’s creations (back at the Great Soul Reef), Ashalla now considers Azura a friend.

Ashalla navigates Kalgrun’s coast. She modifies a few creatures, creating mangroves, salt-water crocodiles and sea birds (default godly power of mutation under Oceans Portfolio).

Ashalla discovers the Box of Orchestration. She identifies its creator and finds the music to be beautiful. She decides to keep the box, even though it doesn’t work underwater.

Ashalla gets to the North Pole and identifies Azura’s handiwork. She hauls herself over the mountain range, where she discovers the Curators and the Vault of Souls. She explores the Vault of Souls, giving us a look at the inside, before returning to the surface and calling Azura.

Azura is paranoid and suspicious that someone had found her secret soul vault. She makes Ashalla promise not to tell Katharsos, a promise which Ashalla eventually agrees to, before explaining the purpose of the Vault. Ashalla does not sympathise with the plight of the mortal souls, in contrast with Azura’s deep empathy for the mortals. Azura also doesn’t have a plan yet as to what to do with the mortals she saves.

Ashalla shows Azura the music box she found. Azura also appears to find the music beautiful and serene, except for when she makes brief violent outbursts directed at the music which she promptly forgets about. It is unclear why Azura behaves this way, but Ashalla decides that it’s best to keep the box away from Azura in the future.

Ashalla then pitches her idea for a polar ice cap, suggesting it could improve security. Azura likes this idea, so Ashalla goes off to execute it. Ashalla freezes the surface of the ocean for over a thousand kilometres from the north pole, and also covers the ice cap with innumerable ice sculptures of all sorts. While the individual ice sculptures are ephemeral, Ashalla’s influence in the region means that there will always be ice sculptures of some description covering the ice cap. They also make the ice cap very difficult to walk through. She also dumps a bunch of ice inside the north pole valley, extending the ice sheet inland.

Might Summary

Ashalla
Start: 6 MP & 7 FP
Spent: 7 FP & 1 MP on creating the sculpture-filled polar ice cap (major terrain modification, enhanced a tiny bit by Oceans I guess)
End: 5 MP & 0 FP
Portfolios: 2/10 towards Colour
8/10 towards Storms
9/10 towards Ice

Azura
Start: 0 MP & 0 FP
No Might spent

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

The spiralling clouds of Skylord Aurora hovered over the ocean, with countless lesser air elementals flitting about her form. Soon, a great mass of liquid hydrocarbons rose out of the sea beside her, Arene the sea-lord. The ocean teemed with the great density of hydrocarbon elementals. Finally, a small mountain of rust-red stone reared up from the ground, revealing Ferrum, and the earth shook as myriad stone elementals surged underneath it.

We are all gathered, Aurora announced. It is almost dawn. Let us not tarry any longer.

Aurora and her retinue took to the skies, Arene and her forces sunk back into the ocean, and Ferrum and his army merged into the ground. The three elemental lords headed north across the ocean, heading towards Promethean territory.

~~~~

Elemental army at [-4.2,10.6] moving.
Elemental army at [60.1,3.9] moving.
Elemental army at [10.1,-1.32] moving.
Observation: Elemental armies moving at dawn.
Knowledge: Elementals apparently lack long-range communication.
Deduction: Elemental armies using dawn as cue to move.
Consequence: Remaining elemental armies will move when dawn occurs locally.
Factoring deduction into prediction of elemental army locations.
Route plotted for D0003051.
Launching long-range missiles.

~~~~

A storm of driving winds, sleet, hail and fog rolled towards the colony in the far north, concealing the great horde of elementals within. Great boulders and shards of ice hurled in front of the storm triggered many landmines before the elementals reached them. Railgun shells and missiles were hurled into the storm, but the Prometheans were firing blind, making it impossible to tell whether the bombardment was effective. Destroyers which flew into the cloud were swiftly destroyed by the overwhelming number of elementals within.

The cloud rolled forwards and enveloped the front line of Promethean defences. There was the thunder of railgun shells, crack of gunfire, buzzing of capacitors, flare of missiles, bang of warheads, searing of flamethrowers, billowing of wind, creaking of metal, rumbling of earth, sloshing of liquid, crackling of ice. One by one the radio voices of Promethean destroyers fell to silence, while the cloud was still vast and impenetrable, merely slowed in its advance.

Yet a beacon of hope remained for colony. A bright flare of rocket-fire marked the entrance of a new Promethean Destroyer as it swooped down from its sub-orbital trajectory to powered flight parallel to the ground. The three thousand degree torch of its nuclear rocket engine billowed out below it. The Destroyer, designated D0003051, passed over the great cloud, and wherever the flame touched the cloud instantly evaporated, along with any elementals unfortunate enough to get too close to the fire. The wash of super-heated gases expanded outwards and the fog which had been concealing the elemental army boiled away to a few pitiful shreds.

The cover gone, the Prometheans were able to bring their artillery to bear, and the larger elementals were picked off from afar. A furious stormlord turned its focus towards the thruster-wielding Destroyer and shot off in pursuit. Sensing the threat, the Destroyer launched several explosive shells at its pursuer, which burst in mid-air. This hindered the djinn's pursuit for long enough for the Destroyer to throttle up its rocket engine and manoeuvre the fiery jet to be pointed directly at the djinn. With a screech of tortured wind the stormlord burned away and from this great rocket thrust D0003051 launched itself away. There were more elemental hordes to deal with, and D0003051 could not afford to squander propellant on wasted manoeuvres.

~~~~

Gale force winds battered the coast of a Promethean colony. The ocean swelled as Arene and her legions surged forwards, driven by Aurora's mighty winds. When this swell hit the shore, it welled up into a tsunami which surged forwards, unfettered by gunfire and flaming oxygen. The great wave tossed Prometheans about, and the dislodged robots were set upon by the myriad elementals with-in the wave. The tsunami only stopped when it struck a dike which the Prometheans had built to defend against such an assault. The momentum of the wave spent itself on the earth wall and the ocean receded revealing the army of elementals within, which continued their charge along the beach and up the dike.

They were met by more gunfire and artillery from beyond the barrier. Oxygen being pumped out of vents along the top of the dike coupled with incendiary rounds set the advancing hydrocarbon elementals ablaze, crowning the wall of earth with a wall of fire. Overhead fighter jets engaged air elementals to clear the way for bombers, which rained explosives upon Arene's legions.

This bombardment could not continue as Stormlord Aurora was close behind, forcing the flying Destroyers to withdraw or be destroyed. Salvos of missiles burst against her, although they did little to harm her vast form. Aurora's winddjinn darted out from the cover she provided to deliver rapid strikes against the Prometheans. Aurora herself lifted up many hydrocarbon elementals with her cyclonic winds and hurled them deep into the Promethean's defences where they could wreak havoc.

Then Ferrum's stonedjinn burst forth from beneath the earth, tearing apart the dike and the oxygen pipes within it as they emerged. The hydrocarbon elementals surged forwards through the breach. They were met by more concentrated gunfire and artillery. Yet Arene saw this and she surged forwards as a mighty wave, carrying earth and hydrocarbon elemental alike, sheltering them from the bombardment and carrying them up to the Prometheans.

Long-range missiles arriving in: 12 s.
promethean.N0001045> missile.002492.set_target(enemy.001415) ("Storm elemental, colossal")
promethean.N0001045> missile.002493.set_target(enemy.025431) ("Hydrocarbon elemental, colossal")
promethean.N0001045> missile.002494.set_target(enemy.001415) ("Storm elemental, colossal")
promethean.N0001045> D0003050.update_task(Task=task.3001282.000049,Status="execute")
promethean.D0003050: Processing Task No. 3001282 Sub-Task No. 000049.

Arene stood amidst the Prometheans, swatting them aside with limbs like tsunamis. More stonedjinn emerged from the ground to assault the Prometheans at close range. As the artillery weakened, Aurora pressed forwards. Yet, while the elementals watched the ground below, only Aurora truly watched the skies above. There were three specks of light, rapidly getting brighter. Aurora could immediately tell what was coming and her form started to disperse. She called out a warning. Arene, look out! Above you!

The liquid colossus twisted her visage to look skywards, yet it took her precious moments to find what Aurora had warned her of. She started to dive out of the way, but it was too late.

The missiles, which were far larger than any carried by a Destroyer, burst open to deliver their payloads. Explosions hurled forwards great metal rods, adding to the speed of the missile. These metal rods delivered devastating amounts of kinetic energy. The rods pierced through Arene like beams of fire, vapourising much of her body and tearing apart the rest of it through the shockwaves. Then the missile itself struck, an explosive in the fuel tanks converting the remaining rocket fuel and oxidant into a ferocious fireball, consuming what remained of Arene. Two such missile struck Aurora, although with her advanced notice she had managed to dissipate enough to soften the blow. Nevertheless, the explosions still sent ripples through her form.

Arene! Aurora cried out. Yet all that remained of the once-grand hydrocarbon elemental was a patch of smouldering carbon and a cloud of steam. Ferrum, Arene has fallen. We need you up here.

"I'll need cover," rumbled a voice from the earth. Then the earth itself shook and quaked as Ferrum rose up. Using seismographs and gravimeters the Prometheans had been tracking Ferrum's rough location, so they knew to avoid leaving Prometheans too densely clustered in that area. Still Ferrum crushed a Destroyer under a colossal stone hand as he climbed up to the surface, weathering cannon fire and missile bursts.

Several of Aurora's skylords rushed forwards and covered Ferrum in an obscuring cloud of mist and dust. A storm of pebbles and rocks was thrown up to hinder missiles and confuse the Prometheans' radar. Ferrum raged against every Promethean he could reach, his enormous mass able to crush steel armour with ease. Yet the cover which the skylords provided was meagre at best. Aurora finished reforming and pushed forwards to catch up with Ferrum.

Yet Aurora's path was suddenly blocked by a horizontal jet of three thousand degree plasma, ionising her front fringe. An eye of lightning turned to look at the source and saw a unique Promethean Destroyer made entirely of black metal and with an incandescent nozzle from which it had spouted the flame a moment ago. It was large and rotund in form, had caterpillar treads on both its underside and topside, a total of four nozzles pointing in all four cardinal directions and an array of more conventional-looking weaponry.

The unique Destroyer, designated D0003050, turned to face Aurora more directly and released another jet of plasma - a rocket jet, Aurora realised even as part of her form evaporated and ionised. She tried to Aurora swirled around the Destroyed to try to flank it, but the jets on all four sides fired leaving no safe direction of approach along ground level. Aurora gathered above the Destroyer, her form sloping up and away from the Destroyer to keep clear of the rocket jets. The Destroyer fired mortars up at Aurora, although its mortar fire was much less impressive than its rocket jets. Aurora slammed down on the Destroyer, slipped her grip between the firing arcs of the rockets, then lifted the Destroyed into the air and hurled it.

The Destroyer fired its rockets as it spun. Plasma jets sliced through Aurora who recoiled in pain, while also attempting to stabilise itself. The modified rocket nozzles lacked the thrust to provide true lift, instead optimised for maximal energy flux, but they helped a little. The Destroyer landed on its treads with a terrible thud which dug a crater into the earth. Yet, to Aurora's horrified amazement, the Destroyer had suffered hardly a dent from a fall and landing which would have obliterated other Prometheans.

Ferrum, I need some help over here, Aurora called as the Destroyer crawled out of its crater, jets of plasma and bursts of machine-gun fire dispatching most of the lesser elementals which attempted to hinder it while its incredible armour shrugged off the blows of those which did get through.

Yet Ferrum had another target in his eyes. Long-ranged artillery from further inland continued to chip away at his form. Between him and the artillery was the Nexus of this colony, and there were surprisingly few Destroyers between him and the Nexus. There were enough to hold back the lesser elementals, but a mighty stonelord like himself? Ferrum spared one glance at Aurora and made a decision. "I have a better plan," Ferrum roared as he charged towards the Nexus.

Prometheans were crushed underfoot. Bullets ricocheted off his form. Skylords swept ahead to keep bombers out of Ferrum's path. The artillery fire became more concentrated, yet even that was not enough to stop Ferrum's advance. In moments he was upon the Nexus and great stone fists plunged through its steel hull and tore it apart like paper. Ferrum let out a booming laugh, which was cut short when he saw what was inside the Nexus: not the usual manufacturing lines and half-built Prometheans, but stacks and stacks of explosives.

Ferrum did not even have time to curse before the Nexus detonated. A great flare of light filled the Nexus as the high-pressure blast wave converted it into twisted high-speed shrapnel. The blast wave ripped through Ferrum, reduced him to gravel and dust, and also hurled him outwards. The blast wave followed by the expanding cloud of debris shredded elemental and Promethean alike, and the battlefield was covered in a thick cloud of dust.

Ferrum! Aurora cried out. Two elemental lords slain in one battle by the plans of these accursed machines. The Prometheans had known the elementals' plans and made their counter-moves, willing to sacrifice one replaceable colony if it meant killing two irreplaceable elementals. And all the while this black-hulled fire-spewing indestructible monstrosity of a machine mocked her and wore her down.

Aurora hurled a great lightning bolt at the Destroyer, to no effect. She knew that all but the most hastily constructed Prometheans were properly earthed so minimally affected by lightning, but she was frustrated. Aurora looked out towards the horizon. Distant Destroyers continued to fire artillery and a squadron of flying Destroyers were inbound. Closer at hand there was chaos, the remaining elementals brawling with the remaining Prometheans. But while the Prometheans suffered no ill feelings from the destruction of their Nexus, the morale of the elementals had been shattered and many were fleeing.

Reluctantly, Aurora issued a command, Fall back. The battle is lost.

The elementals swarmed away. Hydrocarbon elementals slipped back into the ocean. Earth elementals sunk back into the ground. Air elementals gathered into Aurora, who rose up and flew away. Even as the elementals were leaving, Prometheans were dispatched from neighbouring colonies to salvage and rebuild the ruined colony.

~~~~

All elemental armies destroyed or retreating.
Calculating casualties
Re-calibrating strategy
Conclusion: Elementals unlikely (p<0.05) to repeat this attack for at least 2.1 years.
Increasing priority of interplanetary colonisation.

Kzinti Lesson

A reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive.

The elementals launch their largest attack on Promethean territory ever, with armies assaulting from all directions. The Prometheans saw this coming and had prepared accordingly.

One countermeasure was the Destroyer D0003051, which is a spaceship which uses its nuclear rocket engine as a weapon against elementals on the ground. It is a rapid striker cutting great swathes through elemental armies before flying off to deal with the next army. This is a direct application of existing spaceflight technology.

Another countermeasure was long-ranged missiles. The Prometheans don't have nukes, but they can still fit hefty 'conventional' payloads on sub-orbital rockets. This is a direct application of rocketry, ballistics, explosives and missiles.

Another one was Destroyer D0003050. It's made of adamantine, making it effectively indestructible. Its primary weapons are four nuclear rocket nozzles which function as the mother-of-all-flamethrowers. This required 1 MP for Adamantine Smithing (using Smithing Portfolio), and used most of the Prometheans' reserves of adamantine. (They probably also had adamantine-tipped tools before this, but nothing at this scale.)

A major battle involved three mighty elemental lords, Arene, Ferrum and Aurora. Arene was killed by long-ranged missiles. Ferrum was killed by a self-destructing Nexus. Aurora was repelled by by D0003050.

The elementals are repelled, suffering major losses. The Prometheans also suffered losses, but they can rebuild. With quite a few elemental lords slain, the Prometheans can turn more attention to space.

Might Summary
Teknall
Level 5 God of Crafting (Masonry, Carpentry, Smithing, Alchemy, Armaments)
Start: 35.5 MP (17.25 reserved by Workshop), 1 FP
Spent: 1 MP
End: 34.5 MP (17.25 reserved by Workshop), 1 FP

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

@Monkeypants

Hello and welcome. We do have openings for Demigods. We also have quite a few deities interested in mortals, so you should have little trouble there. You can check out our wiki page to see what the current roster is. Try to think of a specific niche your demigod can fill and a Portfolio they can start with.

If you want to discuss further, we can send you an invite to our Discord server. The Discord server is the primary location used for discussions of rules and story ideas among the players.

Fill out a character sheet when you are ready and post it here. Also talk with other players to find a divine parent for your prospective demigod. And feel free to ask any questions.

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

_{God of Death, Prince of Astral Fires}

Ashalla

Goddess of Oceans

The black night sky of Galbar was speckled with many pinpricks of incandescent light. Some of these lights were bright and some were dim. Some lights winked out while others came into being. Yet of all these stars, one was brighter than all the others and had persisted since the stars first appeared. Those with senses attuned to the metaphysical would see that below this brightest fire was the great Vortex of Souls, and falling from this fire was a great quantity of incorporeal matter best described as soul ash.

Even to those not attuned to souls, the effects of this ash-fall were clearly visible. The plankton which Ashalla had seeded in the ocean multiplied abundantly underneath the Vortex of Souls such that this part of the ocean had many mats of green algae and swarms of drifting crustaceans and jellies. It were these signs which drew Ashalla’s attention.

Ashalla swam through the life-filled water, amazed at how rapidly the plankton had bred here. As far as nutrients were concerned, this patch of ocean was no more special than any other patch. Focussed as she had been on the physical mechanisms of life, it took her some time to notice the slightly bitter ethereal taste in the water.

She turned her attention to this new taste, and it did not take her long to elucidate its nature. She was tasting the substance from which souls were made. She had tasted similar flavours from the other gods, but their souls were richly flavoured by personality and divine essence whereas this soul-substance was formless, save for a bitter aftertaste of death. She watched as the soul-substance was taken in by the reproducing plankton and realised that the soul-substance was being used in the creation of new living things without any need for deific intervention. The souls of plankton had been so tiny that she had not noticed them before, but now that she knew they were there she could sense the tiniest speck of a soul, with hardly any more form than the raw substance it had formed from, within each organism.

But where was this soul-substance coming from? Ashalla looked up, and now that she knew what to look for she could see soul-substance falling from the heavens, drifting down like ash. Ashalla towered up out of the water to feel the rain of ash, and out of the water she could detect a faint influence, like a gentle breeze or slow current. It spiralled inwards towards the centre of this algal bloom and pulled upwards towards the stars, and Ashalla could see that in the very centre of this ethereal Vortex was a star burning brighter than all the others. As Ashalla watched for longer, she could see stray, tattered souls being pulled up into the Vortex. She also sensed the flow of microscopic souls from countless plankton as they died, usually from being eaten, and drifted upwards. It was a peculiar vision.

Yet despite the blooms of life around her, she still disliked the flavour of this soul ash. It was almost bland, yet it held the faintest scents of bitterness, agony, death and loss. In small amounts it was hardly noticeable, yet here the flavours were concentrated underneath the Vortex of Souls. It displeased her, and Ashalla made it known.

”Why are you dumping all this ash in my ocean?”

---

As he sat suspended in the void of his own Sphere, Katharsos meditated. Save for contemplating existence and watching the scattered memories that manifested in the flames, there was very little to do in the Sky of Pyres. The other gods all seemed busy with their creations or their quarrels, of course, but perhaps his lot was not to create.

Once more, the faroff voice of a goddess stirred him. This time, it was not Seihdhara’s enthused and overly animated chattering, but rather another one’s irritated question. Ashalla, he realized. The head of fire rotated effortlessly as Katharsos positioned himself to look down the Vortex of Souls into the voice’s direction. He could sense that Ashalla was somewhere down there on the blue world below.

He was just about to offer his answer, but then he saw a few tiny lights. The souls of plankton and the other microscopic organisms of Ashalla’s make were as little more than motes of dust, but to his perceptive eye, they glowed like sparks. He was able to readily enough discern the nature of these organisms and identify them as sealife. Perhaps she would understand, then.

”Without this ash, there could be no life. Consider it my gift to you, sister. Where your ocean is, it will receive a heavy ashfall, so it will always be virile and vibrant.”

”I noticed that,” Ashalla replied, her voice carried across the aether to Katharsos’ mind, ”Yet your ash also carries the bitter taste of death.”

That was an unexpected objection. In truth he shouldn’t have been surprised to hear that others found the ash anathema to their senses, for those who were not yet dead or attuned so closely to death as he was were bound to find the smoke and aura of the Sky of Pyres to be nauseating at best. It was not hard to believe that some of that would linger upon the ash.

”Has it caused ill effects to manifest in the living?” Katharsos asked.

Ashalla paused to inspect the waters around her more closely. Eventually she replied, ”I do not notice any ill effects, but I still find that it tastes unpleasant.”

”It is not in my nature to antagonize or create offense, but you surely understand that the ash must fall. To cease its descent and inadvertently harm all life, on little more than a whim, is beyond consideration.”

”I ask not for the ash to cease, but for it to be cleansed of its bitter impurities,” Ashalla said.

”Perhaps such a thing is possible,” Katharsos conceded. But he grew silent as he contemplated just how one would go about creating it. Even for him, there were still many mysteries surrounding the soul ash. This conversation was already demonstrating that he didn’t understand it nearly as well as he’d thought.

Ashalla did not have the patience to wait for Katharsos to finish his contemplation. ”Can you do it?”

Her question seemed to echo back, once, twice, thrice in the canyon of mental space between them. Katharsos’ silence remained, but as she continued to stare impatiently above, there was the dim light of a falling star that seemed to rapidly grow in size. This was Katharsos himself of course, rappelling down the Vortex itself to race through space and the upper Spheres at a blinding speed. Even so the journey took longer than he’d have liked, but he used the time to think.

The Sky of Pyres could carry on its work for a time even if he was not present, though it nonetheless distressed him somewhat to leave the place unattended. Still, there were too many pyres to count, and so at any point in time the majority were always unattended. Perhaps he would do something about that in the near future.

As the looming orb of Galbar grew larger in his vision, he confined himself once more to the present. To date, he had yet to ever even witness the glory of Galbar in person; it had always been through the lenses of an unfathomable distance or the garbled memories and strange perspectives of some of the confused spirits pulled into his pyres. He suddenly was met with the air of Galbar’s atmosphere, and at such high speeds it all but extinguished the fiery mass of his great head. But he persevered through the rapid entry of the planet, and upon coming to a halt just a short ways above the water surface where Ashalla rested, he regenerated his fiery flesh. His head flared and metamorphosed from some red globule into the incorrigible visage resemblant of a tiger.

His rapid descent had allowed him to shed away the worst of the foul smoke and toxic aura that clung to him, but some scent of the Sky of Pyres stubbornly remained nonetheless. In truth, he couldn’t notice it, though Ashalla did even from such a distance. Katharsos looked down into the water and regarded Ashalla for a moment, who had manifested a face at Katharsos’ arrival. He greeted her with a slight and wordless nod, then concentrated his attention upon the soul ash that surrounded them. The countless flakes of infinitesimal size aligned themselves to his will, and they quickly came together, arranged themselves into a lattice, and coalesced as a pallid mass floating in the water. That represented all of the ash in quite a sizable area around them, but already more of the stuff was falling from the Vortex above or diffusing from other waters to fill in the void that he’d left behind in sequestering this chunk.

The chunk of ash began to slowly levitate up from the water until it came to be suspended before the god of death. Katharsos eyed the crystallized substance and exposed its intangible mass to a great deal of scrutiny, visibly aggravated by something. Though they were small, yes--so small that perhaps no other god would have noticed through mere inspection, he sensed impurities in the ash. They were things that hadn’t entirely burned in his pyres, like tiny bits of charcoal. In such minute quantities he expected that they would be harmless enough, save for the minute possibility of an organism having a noteworthy such ‘charcoal’ inclusion in its soul and consequently finding itself born with a faint recollection or two from another life. Perhaps this was the source of whatever foul taste Ashalla was sensing.

The impurities tore free of the crystalline structure, leaving behind a few microscopic holes. The chunk of soul ash then crashed back into the ocean without even creating a splash. The impurities, no larger than a few granules of sand, remained in the air besides Katharsos.

”Inspect the ash once more. I suspect that you will now find it utterly tasteless.”

As the ash mixed back into the water, it entered Ashalla’s form and senses and was subject to her scrutiny. True to Katharsos’ word, the soul ash was now utterly bland, a flavourless base from which souls could be made. ”It is satisfactory,” Ashalla said in a voice like the swish of water. But her eyes looked around and saw more soul ash falling. ”We shall need to find a more sustainable way to cleanse the soul ash, though. Perhaps some form of life, like how there are lifeforms which convert carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen, or nitrogen gas into ammonia and nitrates, or dead flesh into useable nutrients.”

”Such a process requires powerful magic; what appeared effortless when done by my hand would prove quite difficult for mundane lifeforms. You must realize that this is a feat greater than any of those other mundane functions that you mention life fulfilling. Still, as you seem to possess an aptitude and an affinity for creating life, I believe we can design a suitable creature to fulfill this role. I will offer what assistance I may.”

”Then let us design it,” Ashalla declared. A watery arm emerged and scooped up some of the soul ash which Katharsos hadn’t purified. The end of the arm spun rapidly so that the ash precipitated to the edges of that ‘hand’. Ashalla moved the soul ash and sculpted the appendage until a large droplet thick with soul ash hung in front of her for them to inspect. Ashalla also scooped up a mass of plankton in another arm and held it aloft in another globe of water for comparison. ”This lifeform will need to filter through large quantities of seawater to process as much soul ash as possible. It will need some of your magic for it to perform this processing. It will need to contain the impurities in some form which will not leak into the ocean, a form which will probably need some physical container. This lifeform should be plentiful enough to be distributed across this area and beyond. It should be resistant to predators so that its processing is not disrupted. It does not need to be mobile like the drifters because we know where the soul ash is most concentrated. And this lifeform would need to derive some benefit from performing this filtration.”

He blinked to take all of that in. Ashalla took the silence for affirmation and continued creating a design.

Ashalla raised up a third arm between the other two and sculpted the end of the pseudopod into designs as she thought of them. ”A tube to suck in water and soul ash, and a tube to expel it. Something in the middle to process it. It will need tendrils inside to capture food and soul ash, and also gills to get oxygen from the water. A few basic internal organs. Perhaps a hard shell to protect it from the environment. Make that two shells, which it can open and close. It can accumulate the impurities from the soul ash inside itself, then it can expel the purified soul ash. The higher concentration of soul ash near it would promote the growth of plankton and other life, which it can feed on. As for the impurities, we need some way to contain them without it being able to leak into the environment, even after the creature’s death.”

”Surely there is a way that these impurities can be altered and made to take a more inert form,” Katharsos mused as his eyes narrowed to hone in on the microscopic grains before him. He was at a loss, admittedly. His divine fires would do nothing to help him here; in fact, his flames were what had created these pollutants to begin with. It would take some other power to remediate the ash’s impurities and transform them into something stable and benign. But what other power did he hold? What tools could he work with besides mere fire?

He wracked his mind and stared at the defiant grains of sand. They might not have been large, but they remained the very incarnations of his failure.

”I’ll make a start on the creature while you think,” Ashalla said. She pulled together flesh and matter into the form of the template she had designed. It took her a while to grow the mollusc, but when she looked up from her work Katharsos had hardly moved. ”Have you gotten anywhere yet?” she asked, impatience creeping in to her tone.

Flames bent such that one of his brazen eyes looked downward to meet hers. ”My progress is not easily measured,” he replied vaguely. In actuality it’d have been easy enough to quantify nothingness. The entire time, he’d wracked his mind and found little in the way of threads to follow. The Architect had imbued in him no answers to this question, and so he was left with his instincts--that were just as silent, of course--and his memories, useless and obscured and scattered as they were.

Warmth, heat, and fire. He remembered those aspects well; he had embodied them once. But this soul ash was not raw iron; exposing it to a fiery crucible could not purify it.

_{purify…purity}

Ah, that seemed a promising line of thought. But what was purity as he’d once known it? He obviously understood the vague concept now, but once he’d had a much deeper knowledge. If only he could remember.

As Katharsos had been pondering, Ashalla had begun toying with the life growing in the waters about her, exploring new designs which could accompany the molluscs. Designs like some of the drifters, but instead static and unmoving. Perhaps creatures which would secrete underwater terrain for other life to live on. Maybe creatures imbued with colourful algae, the two species providing nutrition to each other. Perhaps a few more elaborate lifeforms, to take advantage of the richness of soul ash in this place, of similar complexity to the creatures in Phystene’s jungle.

Ashalla paused from her work for a moment to look up at Katharsos, who still had not moved. ”Have you thought of anything yet?” she inquired.

His patience was as a pool that often seemed as vast as this ocean below him, but now it had all but evaporated. The hint of a growl left him. ”Heat and fire will not work. I need some other means to alter it. Another tool to see it purified.”

I do not need tools, he suddenly realized. The revelation manifested as if from nowhere. I am not some mere fire spirit, I am a GOD.

The tiny granules vibrated as if shook by some violent wind, and by force of will he remade the tainted impurities into something new. It was an utterly black substance that was smooth and cold, hard and lustrous, utterly inert and insoluble. Perfection.

He relaxed, having not even realized how his fiery head had just violently swollen in a bright flash of roaring flame. Then he let the tiny grains-turned-pearls fall into the water below. He breathed, then finally declared, ”It is done.”

Ashalla swept the black pearls into her form, tasting and testing them. ”Totally insoluble and unable to flavour the water. Excellent,” her voice rippled. She lifted the prototype mollusc up to Katharsos in a globule of water. ”Now teach this to do it.”

He moved so close to the oyster that the globule of water might have broiled and shrank back were his head made of more mundane fire, but as it was he didn’t radiate quite enough heat to boil it away and kill the clam.

”Teach?” he echoed back. The prospect of ‘teaching’ anything to such a basic creature seemed absurd, for it had very little in the way of mental faculties or communicative abilities. Still, it had the potential to propagate and survive. It was easy to imagine colonies of this creature forming to sift through great amounts of water and the soul ash within.

Raw iron didn’t learn, but it had a way of taking to the shape forced upon it. Likewise, this creature was simple enough to be malleable. Though Katharsos had no aptitude for the subtle changes that other gods might use to manipulate such creatures, this one could be altered rather drastically without suffering from any noticeable ill effect. Its lack of intelligence also allowed Katharsos to set aside any qualms he might have had about forcing such a change, power, and ultimately burden upon some lifeform and all of its descendents into perpetuity.

With a small black flames, he burned into the oyster an affinity for soul ash such that it would be almost magnetic to the stuff, drawing it in from the waters around. Then he provided it with the capacity to sift out the impurities and transmute it just as he had done. Though his technique seemed crude, it had worked. In time, these creatures would create pearls larger and more pristine than the little flakes he’d first conjured.

Then he let the mollusc fall back down to Ashalla. He had come here primarily to appease her and to witness Galbar for himself given the opportunity, but upon becoming aware of the impurities present in the ash, he’d grown rather consumed by the goal. More time had passed than he would have liked, and the Sky of Pyres had been operating unattended all the while. It felt...wrong to leave it. To condemn all the broken souls that remained (though by now there were not so many, and the tides were slowing) to being recycled in flames without any to watch them in their last moments seemed cruel to him, even if such a thought was illogical. He didn’t need to justify it with logic, though. His intuition told him that it was time to return to his Sphere, and he meant to follow it now that his purpose here was done.

Ashalla was inspecting the mollusc and already prompting it to reproduce. A watery face turned up to Katharsos’ fiery visage. ”Thank you for your help, Katharsos. This should help cleanse the water.”

He offered a small nod back. ”You are welcome. It was good to see you, and this world itself, with my own eyes. But now we must part,” he answered her as he began to ascend back to the Vortex of Souls. “One way or another, we shall meet again.”

As Katharsos left, Ashalla turned her attention to filling this part of the ocean with life. With such an abundance of soul ash to turn into living things, Ashalla could stretch her creative abilities. This ecosystem would require light, so she raised the sea floor up so that the water was about a hundred metres deep. To provide a foundation for this place she laid down coral. These static creatures left behind their shells and skeletons to build up terrain. She discovered that the deposition of soul ash was not homogeneous under the Vortex of Souls but rather was patterned in a spiral, which caused the coral to grow in a matching spiral pattern. They were also embedded with algae which allowed them to take a rich array of colours. Within each colony of coral were many of the soul ash processing molluscs, enhancing the virility of the coral and giving the molluscs plenty of food to consume.

While these static creatures were very pretty, Ashalla decided that there needed to be more motion. So Ashalla made creatures with vague similarities to the lizards on the Eye of Desolation. Scales, internal skeletons, complex organs, a modicum of intelligence. Those were the only similarities, for Ashalla also had to give them a hydrodynamic form, grant them limbs for swimming, make them breathe water instead of air and innumerable other adjustments. Her end result was a fish. Ashalla continued to make more fish, of every colour and shape she could imagine. She also made many more molluscs, some soft-bodied, some with shells, as well as more species of plankton. For a long time Ashalla’s laughter rippled about the ocean as she created one beautiful species after another in this great reef, its life enriched by Katharsos’ blessing.

The world is your oyster

Ashalla notices that one particular region of the ocean is blooming with life, and chooses to investigate. She discovers that the cause of this phenomena is the Vortex of Souls, which is directly overhead and has been depositing an especially large amount of soul ash in the area.

Though the overabundant soul ash helps life to thrive, she finds that it carries a faint taste of death and agony. The flavor doesn’t appeal to her sensitive palate, so she looks up and decides to yell at Katharsos.

Katharsos, who was just brooding as usual, leaves his Sphere for some fresh air thinking that it’ll be a short trip. He’s sympathetic to her complaints and tries to help rectify the issue. Turns out that the soul ash has some impurities; these are ‘charcoals’, which are remnants of memories that weren’t fully destroyed when the former soul was burnt in the Sky of Pyres. These might come up again and have interesting effects later.

Still, the two agree to create an organism to purify the soul ash before it can diffuse elsewhere and remove most of these impurities. They end up with a species of bivalve mollusc that forms colonies and attracts soul ash so as to enrich their surroundings with lots of plankton and other life to eat. As they do this, they also sift out the ash’s impurities and stabilize it into the form of magical black pearls. Black pearls will get a wiki article sometime soon.

Ashalla builds a great big coral reef under the Vortex of Souls, using the soul oysters to boost the life there. It’s spiral-shaped and about 1800 km in diameter.

Might Summary
3 FP used to make Soul Oysters, all from Katharsos. 3/10 FP towards Purity Portfolio.

12 FP was used to create the Great Soul Reef (8 FP for large landform and 4 FP for the ecosystem), half-half between Katharsos and Ashalla. Ecosystem is enhanced by the Ocean Portfolio to have an incredibly diverse and colourful abundance of life. 2/10 FP towards Colour Portfolio for Ashalla.

Ashalla
Start: 6 MP & 21 FP
Spent: 6 FP
End: 6 MP & 15 FP
Portfolios: 2 FP towards Colour.

Katharsos
Start: 10 MP & 25 FP
Spent: 9 FP
End: 10 MP & 16 FP
Portfolios: 3 FP towards Purity.

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

@Kho That is a reasonable costing.

@Strange Rodent It's a grey area, because this is a property of a landform, and landforms are covered by FP. Since it was creating a geographical feature on Galbar, it is in the spirit of the Age of Creation.

Sanctuary

Anyone want to make a Sanctuary spinoff?

@Skai

I would be interested if someone were to make one, but I have too much on my plate to do such a thing myself.

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

@Muttonhawk @Cyclone @BBeast
I have edited the expenditure in the last post to the following:
--MIGHT & FP EXPENDITURE:
----Creation of the River Seihdhar across Kirron's continent - a minor landscape change. (-2 Free Points)
----Causing the River Seihdhar to run with Seihdhara's ichor rather than water. (-3 Free Points)
----Giving the River Seihdhar and the Seihdh Lake the properties detailed in the wiki page. (-6 Free Points)
----Making the Source of the River Seihdhar (the lower half of Seihdhara's corpse at the bottom of the Seihdh Lake) a Gateway to the Seal. (-7 Free Points)
0 MP & 0 FP Remaining

Please advise as to whether that is suitable.

@Kho

Reading the wiki article, it appears that, essentially, the effect of the River Seihdhar is to Bless individuals with blessings appropriate to Martial Combat, plus a some extra pertaining to physical health (if it were entirely under Martial Combat, you could do it for free, but the physical health stuff pushes it just out of the Portfolio discount). I very much like the effects. There is an argument to be made that it can be even cheaper. 'Causing the River Seihdhar to run with Seihdhara's ichor rather than water' could be done as part of the other items rather than as a separate item, so that would save you 3 FP. Note also that the Seihdh Lake gains properties simply by being a Gateway to the Seal. There is no benchmark for something which has the properties you propose, so the number you propose for the properties is as good as any. 6 FP feels good. One could argue that it should fall under a Monument, which puts it at 3 FP but not necessarily powerful enough, but you could hand-wave and say that the River and Lake are separate yet similar and connected Monuments.

P.S. And making things from the chopped up remains of gods is a very traditional thing in mythologies, so it's good that we've got something similar here.

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

@Kho The blood probably bears some of Seihdhara's characteristics, even if it isn't the primary carrier of her essence, so the river would reflect that.

The Giant's Bath is also the location of Hemen, the Gateway to Fengshui Fuyou, not Narzhak's place. It's a big crater lake from which Shengshi is presumably making a bunch of rivers. Shengshi will probably be interested in this new river Seihdhara has made.

The River Seihdhar will likely receive numerous tributaries, which would dilute the blood further downstream.

Divinus: The God RP, Mk. III. Finished in Record Time™!

(it flows with divine ichor. Which can't be good... but we'll let BBeast deal with the details)

@Kho

You what mate? You madman.

Although, you did put a blood river on the blood god's continent.

Did the hair seriously pull Seihd's corpse to the other side of the planet? Literally the opposite side of the planet?

As for the river, it depends on whether Seihdhara's ichor carries her essence or not. If it does carry her essence, then we've got all manner of problems, most of them revolving around how Seihdhara's corpse shouldn't be able to produce that much divine essence and that literally everything touching that river and its outlet would either die or become a demigod. If her blood is not the primary carrier of her divine essence, but rather her hair, then I have no idea what it would do. You tell me. Don't try to palm this mess off to me. Whatever effects this river has, along with all the other blood you dripped across 20,000 km of ocean, are coming out of your budget.

Anyway, a 3000 kilometer long river of godly blood is hardly a 'minor' landscape feature, even if rivers are normally only 2 FP. How much more expensive it is would depend on its powers. Also, rivers don't branch when flowing downstream. They merge instead. The river Seihdhar should instead be a single line, not a branching one, if you want it to have any verisimilitude.

P.S. Whatever you've done, I hope you've thought it through carefully.

Also, Asceal survived that explosion at point blank but Seihdhara, goddess of Combat of all things, can hardly survive atmospheric re-entry?

Anyway, I should leave you to it rather than inundating you with my panicked thoughts of 'What!? Oh goodness why?!'