Turn 8 has started, please check the MP Spreadsheet for your updated MP counts. Please let me know if any number is off and I'll fix it when I can.
Now for an announcement…
TODAY MARKS THE START OF OUR FIRST X-TURN!
The Hands of Time move ever forward, as do its subjects. For the duration of this turn, you’re heavily encouraged to make at least one post (no matter how short) exploring any of Galaxor’s creations.
The way you interact with your chosen creation is up to you. You could write about adopting tech from the Dominion, you could write a simple short exchange between an adventurer from Sylann and one from the Dominion, you could even write and complete your own quest within the Dominion, free of all oversight and with full creative licensing (yes, up to and including which reward you get from its completion.)
Turn 7 has started, please check the MP Spreadsheet for your updated MP counts. Please let me know if any number is off and I'll fix it when I can.
With this turn change, a 40 MP cap has been implemented. Any MP that you accumulate past this point will instead go to a communal pool that I can then decide how to redistribute if needed. There have also been changes to the Quest System, which have been explained very generally in the Discord.
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Quest Board
Mundane Quests (for mortals and heroes only): - Copper’s Gone: A copper shortage has reared its ugly head, and with it the price and value of bronze has shot up immensely. An initial investigation led by a ragtag group of adventurers named The Rusty Nails has managed to track the source of the shortage to the mysterious closing of massive sections of the largest quarry in the Land of Origin, but before long communications from the group of adventurers ceased as well. At the moment, the Quarry continues to operate in a limited capacity, managing to ship out other metals such as iron, but there’s no telling how sustainable this may be. CLAIMED BY SAUCER
- Gloink, the Gallant: Tales abound of the heroic exploits of a human-shaped gloink covered in white armor. If these tales are to be believed, the gloink in question saved five kittens from a hungry hawk, defeated an Outer-corrupted squirrel in one to one combat, and even managed to help a construction crew finish their project before their deadline by working three nights in a row. The Gloink is beloved by the realm as a symbol of kindness and hard work… Or it was, until it was captured by a local militia who are now denouncing it as the one behind the cold-blooded murder of their leader. Now, people are split and can’t seem to decide what to do, and if nothing is done, the Gloink will be put to death by the militia. CLAIMED BY... KHODEX?
Divine Quests (for all): - The Many Masks Masquerade: It is said that an enchanting place can be found deep in the wild reaches of the Inner Veil. A place so grand and so exotic that one could get lost in it for decades. A place where one could see everything there is to see – for a price – except for one thing. Everyone and everything, including the animals and insects, wear masks in the Masquerade. Anyone who takes their mask off while in the Masquerade, disappears the moment no one is looking at them. The Traveler of Arbor, a renowned explorer, has on many occasions shared that they would “kill to go back to the Masquerade one more time”, but also that he has “Sadly forgotten where it is or how he even left it in the first place.” CLAIMED BY WRONGEND
The LITTLE GOD of the LITTLE THINGS | The FEIGHDFULC MATHAIR | LADY of the FADE | The KHODEXBORN LADYPRINCE of the FAE-FINTE | The FAERIE QUEEN | The GREAT VEILED ONE | MISTRESS of the PLACE BETWIXT ALL PLACES HIGH QUEEN of the FAIRIES
Domain Glamour
Glamour defined. Glamour, also known as gramarye, is the magick of the fairy queen. Glamour emanates from her being and so springs from a source altogether independent of any other magick. It exists with her existence, and with her cessation must cease. Glamour is the magick of the faerie queen who dwells within the Veil - not beyond, but within the Veil - that separates the material realm from the astral realm, the afterlife, and all other dimensions within the world of the Khodex. The great hallways of her kingdoms and wildwoods are the fabric and walls between the dimensions of the world, and by her will is the material melded into the immaterial so that the onlooker, should she so will, can no more know the mundane from the ethereal.
Glamour as All-magick. By virtue of Roisin’s creation out of the Khodex, glamour also acts as the great harmoniser of all existent and potential magicks into what may be termed the All-magick. By means of All-magick, Arcana can be accessed, the energies of the Astralis Lumen harnessed, and Chaos magicks be called forth. By means of it secrets can be channelled - though the greatest secret in existence, ever beyond the Eidolon’s grasp in keeping with its writing into the Khodex that no being be omniscient, is how the All-magick is able to act as a conduit for secret magick. By means of the All-magic also can runes be carved into rock, water, or air, and can new runes be discovered or created. By its means also can the tenets of tradition be fortified or by foul means shattered - and repaired and brought aright too, for the glamour of the All-magick is such a thing. By means of glamour the magicks of the R'kava are tamed for the All-magick, the hallways of past lives are negotiated, the pathways of death are traversed and the dead are summoned unto life. Moreover, by means of the All-magick are the meanings of things altered - not by science and prodigious learning and such cumbersome things, but by glamorous arts, words and songs of power, and mysterious crafts that none comprehend. Thus is the All-magick of the Little god of the Little Things. Needless be said, the All-magick also permits those who harness it - witches, beldams, druids, mystics, shamans, wizards, and ten hundred other names - to access the glamorous magicks of the Fairy Queen. This allows practitioners, by means of magickal items (such as wands and magic carpets), potions and concoctions, and words of power (incantations and spells - or sometimes, sheer will!) to shapeshift, fly, vanish, move objects and even buildings, heal or inflict disease, listen to or see far-off happenings through the Veil, deceive the senses by means of illusions and other deceptions, create potions of love and madness and much else, and even bind creatures of the astral realm to them as familiars. If a word of power, or a song or dance, can be found for it, then no magickal feat is beyond the willing practitioner.
Description
Wise beyond measure and kind beyond words, the magnolious queen of the fairies sprinkles her magicks unto existence, and wherever the echo of her impossible beauty is felt all swoon and are smitten... and driven to madness and pain! Bitterly does she hide her countenance and her beauty from all, sadly does she by glamourous arts and phantasmic potions and crafts scatter from the eyes of all the very thought or memory of her face. Like a rippling mirage on sun-scattered sands is her countenance, hidden not beyond the Veil of the immaterial but within it, inside it - and only by the laughter of her Fae children - and by poor glamorous disguises! - will her existence be known!
Full of love, most resplendent love, is the heart of the Little god of the Little Things, and though she cannot wander in her splendour from the Veil, still is she a most eager and most munificent host. If her countenance is never to grace mortal eyes beyond her kingdom, and if she is not to dance there in the world of blood and soil or hold court, then mortals - and their eyes - must be brought to be graced by her! Could one such as her, who knows only love, wisdom, and kindness, wallow away in her exile and be thought a world-hating recluse, a veritable scrooge, a dragon on her mountain of gold, a most vile and evil hag? Why, let her love-drowned heart burst and perish before such would be said of her! Here in her court, where her countenance shines most sweetly on all eyes and brings only pleasure and delight, will the song of great hospitality and generosity be sung.
Musical Theme
Roisin Magnolia is approved! I particularly enjoy the usage of the word Glamour to describe beautiful magic, a combination I guess of the old and new meanings of the word.
You may post the CS in the Characters tab, as well as post in the IC as Roisin, at your leisure.
Turn 5 has started, please check the MP Spreadsheet for your updated MP counts. Please let me know if any number is off and I'll fix it when I can.
Given that the vast majority of the fronts that opened up with the Outer Beast invasion have been wrapped up, I can announce that the first Transcendental quest has been completed! Rewards will be handed out in an upcoming post!
Enjoy our return to a relatively peaceful world, lads.
Turn 4 has started, please check the MP Spreadsheet for your updated MP counts. Please let me know if any number is off and I'll fix it when I can.
The Transcendental Quest is still ongoing, and its state is as follows: The entryway the Outer beasts were using to enter the material realm has been sealed thanks to the sacrifices of Voi and Lareus, but the two Greater Outer Beasts as well as the Lesser Beast hordes remain, as do the many settlements that have begun to be created around the Blood Ocean. The Dream Realm has been taken over by The Eidolon as part of their deal with the Outer God called the Presence, an action which has indirectly saved the lives of many dreamers who would’ve had their dreams invaded by outer entities otherwise. The Astral Realm is under siege by hordes of Outer Entities, with Luminaries giving their all to hold wave after wave of invaders back.
With the entryway to the material realm gone, the finish line is in sight. Glory be to the heroic gods of Galbar! First cohort to actually earn their station!
Lareus sat, one leg on top of the other, on one of the ornate chairs at his favourite dream-scape. It was a field of vibrant grass, swaying to and fro to the rhythm of a gentle breeze. The God of Dreams closed his eyes.
“This is… the best dream in… my realm.” He said, taking in a deep breath of the lavender-scented air. Curious, considering there were no lavender flowers in the entire dreamscape.
“It is calm, like a freshly reincarnated soul…” Voi agreed, his raspy voice coming from the darkness beneath his hood. The two blue orbs that floated in the darkness dimmed. Voi reached for his cup of green tea with his bandaged hands and poured the liquid into where his mouth would normally be, only for the tea to go all the way through and splattered against the chair he sat on, spreading throughout his black robes. It didn’t bother him.
“So… are you ready to… go?” Lareus opened his eyes and exhaled loudly.
“I think so…”
With those words, the two of them stood up and the dreamscape around them shifted and shivered away into a familiar sight - That of an endless desert on one side and an endless ocean of blood on the other.
It was only through the use of the Dreamlands that Lareus and Voi managed to teleport where they did undetected, but it was a one-time use trick for now. Lareus knew that the Dreamlands would be overrun as soon as he stepped out of them, causing chaos and pain throughout the dreams of all mortals. He knew so, but he also knew that some things had to be prioritised.
The other gods were too busy, too self-absorbed to react quickly to the threat, so he had gotten in contact with his only friend and set out on a quest of his own.
Still, he winced.
“The ya-gos… the dream bubbles… I can feel it all coming apart… at the seams…”
“I will help you fix it all, once we emerge from this accursed lake…” Voi stared at Lareus for a moment, then he stretched one of his arms towards the side and a scythe made of smoke and raw arcana materialised. Lareus saw this and touched his index and middle fingers on both hands to his temples, causing his circlet to glow and melt and wrap itself around his fingers. Four rings, all made of Larite.
“It is an ocean… but so be it… in we go, friend…”
And so they walked into the Blood Ocean.
II
The Outer Beast, both Greater and Lesser, had no souls. Instead, they had what Voi had gotten to call ‘seeds’. They weren’t fully aware of their actions, not even at the level of a normal beast from within the Universe, but they still felt pain, they still felt the desire to reproduce… It was strange. What was stranger still was the fact that their ‘soul seeds’ were all in various states of growth. Some of them had even managed to awaken into true souls. Those kills were the ones that hurt Voi the most. To kill an innocent, if violent, creature from another world and doom its soul to an eternity within his weapon was a grave sin. One that he had decided to shoulder for the sake of all that he knew and had created along with his fellow gods, his family.
One step, one slash. Both near and far in that direction, a thousand soul seeds ripped apart and were sucked into Voi’s scythe like a whirlpool.
Visibility was zero. The Blood Ocean was so dense that after just two metres or so of descent, everything was already pitch black.
Another step, another slash.
Behind Voi was Lareus. As usual, his eyes were closed and his fingers were pressed hard against his temples. Lareus was the only reason they were getting swarmed by thousands instead of millions. His weapon was no weapon at all, instead it was a set of rings that augmented his godly abilities. The ability to force his way into the minds of any outer beast with even the slightest bit of soul growth and impose dream after dream on them was terrifying. To think that Lareus had such an oppressive power, and that he never used it against anyone before…
But that still left the freshly spawned beasts. Wide awake as they were and wired to hunt anything with a trace of divinity in their blood, they were bound to go straight toward the pair.
But a thousand were no match for Voi’s Scythe. A single slash was enough to rip apart a thousand souls and leave the beasts’ bodies in a vegetative state.
Step after step after step. The saturated mud below their feet squelched unnaturally as they approached the deepest part of the Blood Ocean, where the seabed had collapsed. Deep below, an unnatural glow emanated from the sprawling black pools from which the hordes of beasts spawned.
Just as they prepared to jump down into the abyss, the flow of the blood changed.
In a split second, the Blood Ocean was parted in two. Lareus screamed in the silence of the depths and shot forward into the darkness, a trail of glowing divine ichor left behind him.
Voi couldn’t see their attacker. He, a God, couldn’t see their attacker. He desperately looked around, something that he instinctively knew would do no good. His grip on the Scythe tightened. His shoulders tensed.
The flow changed again. He was too slow. The thing came from above.
Three long barbed claws came straight down onto his head and split his two blue eyes down the middle and left a large gash in his smoky form. He lost his footing and flailed. Out of the corner of his vision, he saw the millions of previously asleep beasts awaken and rush to the trail of Lareus’ ichor, devouring it like a swarm of piranhas.
As Voi’s back touched down on the mud, the thing that had attacked them appeared from the darkness and sat on his chest. It smiled at Voi, row upon row of sharp fangs in its mouth. It had no eyes or ears, for it did not need them down there.
That’s when Voi felt it, this beast’s soul wasn’t a seedling, nor was it merely awakened. It was something… More. Just how many of his brothers and sisters’ creations had it devoured to grow that much?!
Voi stirred. Now that he had a lock on the beast’s soul, he had no need for fear. He simply reached up and touched the thing, and it went still.
“You shouldn’t have revealed yourself, you were too proud…” Voi said. He sensed a large swarm a few metres away. Hundreds of thousands, killing each other and crowding around one divine presence, all for a chance to eat just one more drop of ichor. “Lareus…!”
Voi shot up onto his feet and swung his scythe wide in Lareus’ general direction. Shortly after, he felt the pulse of Lareus’ Artefact activating once more. It was weaker and the effect radius was smaller, but it was there. So Voi jumped forth and met up with Lareus, who floated in a small bubble of his own ichor, surrounded by the bodies of thousands of lesser beasts.
One of his arms, half his abdomen and an entire knee were gone, and the rest of his body was so badly damaged that Voi doubted he’d be able to move for the next thousand years. But, he was alive. Lareus looked at Voi.
“You look… Like you got a close look at a train’s wheels…” Lareus chuckled.
“What’s a train…?” Voi wrapped his arms around his friend and started to float down towards the pools at the bottom of the ocean, in the submerged caverns.
“I don’t know… I saw it in a goblin’s… dreams…” After some moments, when they were close enough to sense the peculiarities within the black pools, Lareus spoke again. “It’s not quite the… same as the way into the Dreamlands… but I should be able to… shut it down…”
Voi nodded.
III
The two gods stood at the edge of one of the pools. Voi had set Lareus down so that he could reach into the pool and get to work on shutting down the portal, and was now on extermination duty. Every few moments, the God of Souls swung his scythe and reaped the souls of whatever unfortunate Cantar individual remained within the caverns. He sensed no corruption within the unfortunate few left alive after the portal had appeared, but risks could not be taken, not now and after so much sacrifice.
Both gods bled still. Hordes of beasts swarmed them still. The only thing that kept them safe was Voi’s Scythe.
As soon as he was done shutting down the portal, they could both make a quick getawa-
CRASH.
Lareus’ thoughts derailed. The outcrop of ceiling above them collapsed and behind that collapse was a form that moved faster than either of the gods’ eyesight could follow. Was it the same as before?! Lareus’s head, the only part of his body that he could still control satisfactorily, shot around trying to get a good look at their attacker. It was only a split second later that he felt a chill wash over his body. No, it was a god!
A blackened form moved so fast that it was like it had teleported into their field of vision. It stood there in front of them long enough for them to get a glance. Its claws dripped with energies not unlike those of the portal they were trying to shut down, its maddened eyes lusted for blood and violence, its shape was familiar, but distorted at the same time. It could’ve been one of the Outer Beasts, if not for the divine essence that practically dripped from it.
It charged. Its digitigrade feet kicked up all the silt in the cave as it did, enveloping both itself and Voi in the thick cloud.
“VOI!” Lareus screamed. The muted whoosh of Voi’s scythe cutting through blood echoed off the walls. Once, twice. Then there was a crash and a rumble. Ichor flowed into the blood ocean once more.
The unknown god came out of the silt cloud and crashed into Lareus. “GAH!” He gasped as the thing’s claws pierced through his torso. Half a second later, Lareus found himself half-buried in the stone walls of the cave. His vision clouded, but a good look at his attackers’ face up close told him all he needed to know. That unnatural grin, the unfocused and bloodshot eyes, the very aura of Violence spreading out around its body… Misri. They’d never met, but he’d seen her in the nightmares of mortals.
“It’s Misri! Don’t worry about me, Voi!” Lareus screamed as loud as he could. Caverns in the distance collapsed.
It was quick. One moment it seemed like Misri had been about to tear his throat out, and the next Misri was gone and a slash of Voi’s scythe cut Lareus in two.
Standing where they’d been a few moments ago was Voi, his ragged cloak drenched with ichor and split eyes dimming.
As Lareus dislodged from the wall and started floating down towards the dark pool below him, he saw with his blurry vision how Misri flanked Voi and thrust her claws into his head. A bright flash enveloped the blood ocean when her claws shattered his already damaged crystal-ball like eyes, and then Voi’s gaseous body floated up to the cave ceiling.
“V-Voi…” Lareus stuttered and coughed. Ichor came up. Ichor flowed from his torso and his arm and his missing lower half. There was no saving himself. He knew that now.
And yet luck was on his side. Sensing the death of a God, the hordes of outer beasts above swarmed Voi’s body and, by extension, Misri. It was the opportunity that Lareus needed, and he took it.
Thankfully, even though it was no longer within his body, his Ichor was still a part of him. When it flowed into the dark pool that was the portal, the whole thing bubbled violently and started to evaporate, much like Lareus’ Ichor. Before all his Ichor was gone, Lareus gathered his strength and lifted his one good hand to his brow, The rings on his fingers lit up. He would put Misri to sleep for the rest of time!
But he was too late. Misri burst from out of the swarm and with a single slash of her claws, Lareus had no hand. What followed was a blur. Claws came down upon him again and again and again. They gouged his flesh and sliced his bones.
One last thought crossed Lareus’ mind before darkness took him. ‘We did it… Voi, we saved the world…’ And then he passed amid the fading sounds of beast on beast carnage.
Eventually there was no noise in the cavern other than brutal howls of victory. Misri’s dominance over god and beast had been asserted.
IV
The cavern system where the Sparkfall Hivemind had once lived was now silent. There was no portal to the outer realms. There was no life, no energy. There were only bodies, ichor, and blood.
The last pool that made up the portal was now evaporating. It was so small that no beast could hope to come through, but even though that was the case, a force forced it to stay open for just a few seconds more. A cloud of smoke spread far enough to find what it was looking for – The bodies of the two fallen Gods. The smoke engulfed the bodies and chopped them to pieces and then extracted what they wanted – An incorporeal thing, the thing that the Khodex had uplifted and turned into a God. A thing that used to be insignificant, but through eons of honing and refinement had become special. The smoke shivered as the two bright specks of light were swallowed deep into it, and then as quickly as it came, the smoke retreated back into the portal, and then the portal was gone.
Only the two mangled bodies of the dead gods remained behind.
Lareus and Voi give their lives to shut down the Portal underneath the Blood Ocean. Misri is the murderer, aided by an artifact she received from the Outer Gods and Eidolon’s stealthy assistance.
Material Realm Portal has been shut down and no more outer beasts are coming into the Material Universe.
Turn 3 has started, please check the MP Spreadsheet for your updated MP counts. Please let me know if any number is off and I'll fix it when I can.
Deep within the Great Tree, the Khodex shivered. Encased and suspended in the air as it was, it was still impossible for any onlooker from seeing the way it silently rumbled and lit up. What had once looked like a large piece of obsidian to the mortals who lived at the Tree now looked like a gemstone filled with liquid light of all colours known and unknown, forming shapes and crashing desperately - and silently - against the crystalline surface of the cocoon.
“Big rock be Big crazy.” said a hunched over goblin from underneath its thick blankets beneath the towering statue of Syllia, his favourite spot to camp out at night.
“Me think small crazy. Not big.” Chimed in another goblin, much smaller and voice much higher pitched. It was a child, with her skin every bit as beige as the adult beside her. Unlike the adult however, she wasn’t covered in blankets but instead wore a thick tunic and bandages along the entirety of her arms and legs. “Not big. Tree big.”
“Choonga head small. Choonga no understand. Big crazy. Pah-wah-fool things pray to big rock all time. Big crazy.”
The child huffed and turned away, cheeks puffed out. The adult continued to watch the Khodex, flinching a bit every time the liquid light flashed bright and holding his breath every time the Khodex went dark. He couldn’t take his eyes off it and every one of his instincts was telling him to leave the Khodex’s presence, but he didn’t know where else to go. If big rock big explode, then no big distance be safe, right?
Deep in the Astral and Dream Realms, so far away that even the Gods who dwelled within couldn’t notice in time to react, a tiny spark went off.
It was an unassuming thing, a simple speck of light that soon vanished as if it had never been there.
And then it happened again. And again. And again for a thousand thousand moments, until a fingertip-sized Cantar redcap colony within the Astral Realm took notice of it. The watched it for a long time and when they were finally satisfied that it seemed to be inoffensive, they settled below the empty spot from where Sparks would fall.
Sparkfall eventually became a massive colony numbering in the billions of consciousnesses, fed by the strange light and warmth of the sparks. In the Material Realm, the Sparkfall Mind had taken over all the caverns, submerged or not, beneath the Blood ocean. They thrived, and despite being so numerous they were peaceful. They did not eat anything else and instead let the animals feed on them freely. There was no hunger and no cold, all thanks to the sparks.
It had been a long time. One day, one of the many mushrooms that made up the expansive Sparkfall Mind felt a sharp pain in its cap. It wasn’t being eaten, it wasn’t being stepped on, it shouldn’t even be able to feel those things either to begin with, nor should it be able to think. The redcap Cantar wracked its tiny astral mind trying to find an answer, and that’s when it realised - its mind was connected to its body, and it couldn’t hear the Hivemind anymore. It was stuck in its own immobile body in the Material Realm.
That wasn’t the only thing that wasn’t right. It could see, somehow. It saw blurry shadows and pulses of light and warmth around it. A massive network, many blinking lights, most of them wailing silently in pain…
The Hivemind had been shattered in a split second, and all the blinking lights were desperately trying to reconnect to one another. The flashes of warmth the redcap mushroom felt were proof of that. It was as if thousands of other minds were trying to talk to it, but they were all turned away by some kind of fiery shield around its very being.
Its vision clouded. All the lights dulled. Far away, a shockwave of darkness made its way through the entire network. Lights vanished without a trace by the hundreds of thousands, swallowed by some unknowable thing.
At the same time in the Astral and Dream Realms, the Sparkfall spewed light forth so strongly that it became a beam of light, one so incomprehensibly hot and unstable that as it moved around in its normal erratic manner, it tore apart the fabric of the universe.
In the blink of an eye, the largest and most successful Cantar Hivemind in the universe was simultaneously blown apart, shattered, sucked out of the universe itself and turned into raw energy. Energy that was absorbed by the ethereal beam of light that was now clawing at the edges of the universe, where the Khodex’s protection was most thin, and energy that it used to transform the innocent Sparkfall Mind into a living portal, an entryway into the Universe.
An earthquake rumbled below the Blood Ocean. Waves dozens of metres tall exploded in all directions and flooded and devastated anything around it.
Days later, from the depths of the blood ocean came Outer Beasts. Ancient, lumbering entities that dwarfed the smallest of mountains and the tallest of hills. The first one to surface was the Egrioth, a horse-like thing with six spire-like legs and 6 wings, with the head of a horse and the body of a lion, covered in bony plates as thick as the thickest city wall.
Then there was the Drowned One, which did not walk or crawl, but was instead carried around by its million spawn. It had no discernible shape or form other than that of a bloated, amorphous blob of green-grey flesh, with 3 wide white eyes on its front.
And there was the army of other lesser Beasts which spilled forth from the Blood Ocean covered in red mud, their claws and pincers and maws and stingers and minds all sharpened and ready to do as commanded by the two Outer Beasts.
As more and more spawned from the accursed ocean, they assembled around the two great beasts and bowed. A quarter of the Horde staying put and started building structures and roads by vomiting black slime into the sand, a quarter joined the Drowned One as it headed west towards Shangshi-La and a quarter joined the Egrioth as it headed towards the Land of Origins. As for the remaining quarter, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, they headed off in whatever direction they saw fit. Some went straight north, others followed their guts and went off in random directions, and others still chose to go back into the blood ocean.
It had been decades since the tribe had earned the name of “The Peevers”. Ever since that unfortunate encounter with the small river God, the Chieftain of the Tribe called Gorchok had faced nothing but humiliation after humiliation. From being forced out of their homes all the way to being spat at when seen travelling down the banks of the World River, the Peever tribe could catch no break.
That day was no different. After having been finally driven from the safety of the World River, the Peever tribe had settled in a particularly lush oasis just a few days’ travel from the nearest settlement. They numbered fifty strong, with a few children and elderly, and life was tough but survivable. That is, until a deformed thing appeared on the horizon. It dragged itself across the sand, almost as if it had no bones, and moaned and groaned out loud as it did so.
Naturally, a group of hunters was dispatched to meet the thing. It, which looked like some sort of desiccated red-capped deformed mushroom person, did not stop crawling as they approached. Instead, it groaned and moaned even louder.
“E…. He… lp… De… ad… Run…”
The chieftain, who had now just caught up thanks to his ageing joints, looked at the biggest and buffest of the hunters and nodded his head. The beaver hunter then smashed the red-cap’s head in with his massive sandstone club, making it explode into off-white chunks… only for it to continue crawling, only this time with no sound other than the laboured ragged breads coming out of its neck.
So the hunters wailed on the mushroom-thing and eventually it stopped moving. They carried what they could back to their home, cooked it and ate very well for the first time in days.
That night a dozen bull-sized creatures the shape of which they’d never seen before crawled over the horizon and descended upon the village, where they ate very well for the first time in days.
TRANSCENDENTAL QUEST #1: Hell in Heaven
The barrier between our universe and the Outer Gods’ Realms has been bypassed. A massive portal lies at the bottom of the Blood Ocean, spewing forth creatures of unknowable intent and power.
Two Outer Beasts spawned from the portal, the Egrioth and the Drowned One.
The Egrioth is a mountain-sized beast covered in plates of bone armour. Each step it takes is like a miniature earthquake and each flap of its wings is like a storm. It has its own kind of curse-based magic and can cast body-related curses as it sees fit.
The Drowned One is a mountain-sized beast that looks like an amorphous blob of flesh. It is carried by its spawn which number in the millions and it defends itself with hordes of such spawn, which can take on many different forms. It has its own kind of curse-based magic and can assault unshielded mortals’ minds.
Outer Beasts may be injured and killed by either a God using MP, via the use of a Godbane Artifact, or by finding and exploiting its weakness until it’s rendered harmless.
Besides the Outer Beasts, near-endless hordes of lesser beasts continue to spawn from the depths of the Blood Ocean. The lesser beasts have split themselves into four groups. One stayed around the Blood Ocean, where they are building some sort of home; one tagged along with the Egrioth; one tagged along with the Drowned One; and one was given free reign to do as they wished, which mostly involves heading straight for civilised areas and killing everything to both eat and take the corpses back to their settlement.
It will take many Gods and their Heroes to hold the eventual tide of uncontrolled chaos and destruction back, and someone will have to eventually brave an expedition straight into the heart of darkness in order to seal the portal by exterminating every last trace of what used to be the Sparkfall Mind as well as sealing away the light beam that’s currently tearing up the edges of the Astral and Dream Realms.
EXPECTED POSTS FOR QUEST COMPLETION: ?? DANGER LEVEL: EXTREME
The first Transcendental Quest has arrived! Details on how it works will be in the Discord sometime soon.