In which a goddess eats a drakhorey, makes some dogs, and christens a great fucktard race.
PREVIOULSY: After creating the drakhorey and the phoenixes, as well as trapping a drakhorey soul in a massive pillar, TONTA wandered around watching the world die! She saved no one until proto-MOUSE THE WISE told her to save the animal kingdom. In doing this she mixed all the animals into a great creation soup, which emerged as strange amalgamations on the shard - such as cloudy whales and octopi whose piss is the rain. She pledges never to save anything ever again. Later she observed mankind and, after stumbling on some kind of proto-furry cult, decided to destroy them by creating the ape/monkey race of the MONKILLI. She also created many other species and turned MOUSE THE WISE into a mouse for rejecting her generosity. Following this TONTA followed the spirits of the dead to the Underworld where she discovered demons feasting upon souls. She fights them and eventually comes upon the Path of the Dead and meets the death goddess Eku. The two battle but quickly find themselves complete in the presence of the other. They walk and talk until they reach Dol Arlessa, the ultimate resting place of souls before reincarnation. After having a great time together, the Festival of Death & Rebirth begins and Eku, to the shock of all, dies! Tonta and Umat, Eku's daughter, then leave Dol Arlessa.
Tonta, as you might imagine, was pretty pissed off. In fact, she had walked herself into an increasingly more pissed of state as she retreated down the Path of the Dead (and every soul who crossed her way knew from the stony glares she threw their way to give her a wide berth). So it did not help her mood in the slightest when she emerged back on the Shard to find that the world had turned into some kind of fiery hellscape. Mountains spewed fire and great burning boulders crossed the sky and lakes of lava congealed and simmered here and there. And the place seemed to have attracted her children for even now she could see some three or four drakhorey flying high above or wading through the flaming lakes or reclining on a rock here or there.
In her pissed of state they seemed like a godsend, the perfect punching bag to take her frustrations out on. She battered the one who was peacefully reclining until her was a mess of flame and scales and blood, and when she turned to take out her furies on the others she found that they had swiftly vacated the area. She sniffed. It would have been nice to play with the others, but one was sufficient, she figured. She seated herself on a makeshift bloody seat and absentmindedly picked at her nose, wiping the bits of bogey off on the meat below her and sighing. "Fucking Eku," she mumbled with a slight yawn - because damn that was a long walk back down the Path of the Dead and it took a bit out of you.
She toed at a bit of pooling lava as she rested, and she caused it to rise and fall and made fanciful shapes out of it. It struck her that one of the shapes looked quite a bit like a dog. She leaned forward at the thought and drew out the shape until a great lumbering hound of rock and magma stood before her. She yawned again and watched it skulk off, then leaned back into the yet-warm meat mattress and closed her eyes.
Now of all the things she expected to see when she woke up, weird walking drakhorey were not of them. She watched the strange drakhoric anthropomorphs for a few seconds as they milled about her nonchalantly, and then leaned forward so that a great serpentine drakhorey erupted from her back and snaked like lightning towards the biggest the anthropomorphs. One bite took out his head and torso. There was a brief pause... then the rest of him was taken up in a quick movement.
Well. They weren't so nonchalant around her after that. In fact, they avoided her like the plague for a good long time, though every now and then she would spy one of them peeking at her from a distant ridge (perhaps thinking itself subtle or out of her range). After a time, one short and stocky one neared her - groveling and trembling and attempting to debase itself before her. She could see that it had something in its hand, and a quick inspection suggested it was some kind of offering. One of her serpentine appendages speared forth. The creature cried out and fell back, letting the offering fly, only for her living appendage to grab it and retreat to the reclining goddess, dropping the offering in her hand. She raised an eyebrow when she saw it. "Oh, but you're a cheeky one aren't you. A flower eh?" And not just any flower, for it had been made of cooled magma and studded with crystals and gems. It was no piece of art, but some effort had clearly been put into it. "Cute," she noted sweetly, then casually threw the flower back at the creature. It rooted itself in its skull and the creature fell immediately dead.
"Lady." A voice rumbled. Tonta looked to the side and found the soul of the drakhorey staring at her. "Seriously. What's your deal?"
"Oh, you're still here?" She frowned, "thought you'd have been sucked into demonville by now." The soul - and this was no blob, this was an enormous drakhorey soul - seemed to grow concerned at this, causing Tonta to smile. "Or, you know what, I think I'll keep you. What's your name?" She grabbed him and fiddled around with his tail.
"Uh, Varak Adech," came his response. "What are you doing by the way?"
"Just working on..." his body tightened all of a sudden and his arms and legs flattened, "that," and she swallowed his now-serpentine form and watched as, almost immediately, a new serpentine appendage grew out of her back. "And you know what, in your honour Varak Adech I will name these weird creatures that came out of you... Tontatites."
"...how is that in my honour?" The new appendage gave her a quizzical look.
"Yeah, I'm honouring your sorry arse by naming them after me," she explained.
"Uh. Well. I'm honoured and all. But maybe don't honour me?" There was a brief pause, then a mumble. "'cause that's the shittest thing I've ever heard."
"What'd you say?" Tonta snapped, eyes flashing.
"Uh, I think you should go with something nice-sounding rather than trying to honour me. I am honoured enough anyway, chuffed to be... uh... some kind of extra arm for you. Or something."
"I don't like your tone guy, but whatever. I'll call them Fucktards. Nice and easy to remember, and they'll be sure to know what they are."
"Uh, how about something simple like, I dunno, varasons?" The Varak-appendage suggested.
"More like sons of bitches, but yeah whatever, fucktard varasons it is. Hey, fucktards! Come here." And her voice seemed to summon the hundreds, nay thousands, of the strange creatures. The goddess lined them up and stood ceremoniously before them. She brought forth her stick and for perhaps a week walked from one to the next, boinked them on the head, and christened each of them "first fucktard... second fucktard... tenth fucktard... hundredth fucktard... five-hundred and thirty-seventh - or was it thirty-ninth, fuck this." It was in fact the five-hundred and sixtieth, but at that point she grew bored of the ceremony and picked one of them at random to continue it. On being thus chosen and elevated above the others he grew in size and seemed immediately more authoritative and commanding. Without hesitation, he continued the fucktard christening ceremony with great solemnity.
Tonta, for her part, got to finding a way out of that gods forsaken hellhole.
Tonta emerges from the underworld and is really pissed off. She kills a drakhorey and makes a bed out of his remains. She makes some weird volcano hounds (an ash species and a magma species). She then makes the (fucktard) varasons, a species of small anthropomorphic drakhorey.
Souls now take on the form of their physical body (this was actually done in the Eku-Tonta collab, but forgot to put in the MA summary). Create volcano hounds to stalk the Ashlands. Create sapient race: (fucktard) Varasons.
After creating the drakhorey and the phoenixes, as well as trapping a drakhorey soul in a massive pillar, Tonta wondered around watching the world die! She didn't bother saving a single person until the Wise Blob called her and told her to save the animal kingdom. And so she did, but in the process she accidentally mixed up all the animals into a great creation soup. In her attempts to get some of the animals out of the soup, she created strange amalgamations and set them loose on the world - such as cloudy whales and octopi whose piss is the rain. She pledges never to save anything ever again.
excerpt from:
The Book of Reflection
by
Mouse the Wise
I. On the God that Was, Is, and Will Be
I begin this book of reflections with a greeting to the God That Was, the God That Is, and the God That Will Be. I salute that being who Was before the first ending of the world; by whose will the world was first made, was first made to end, and was first made to be saved. It is to that being that I send my salutations and my regards, and it is the pleasure of that being that I seek and aspire towards. And I declare, so that all creation may witness, that my great aspiration and my single-minded purpose is the preservation of the knowledge of the ways taught by that being - carried in the hearts of generation after generation of pious ancestors until it came at last to so incapable and poor a creature as myself even as the world ended all about us. I pen this record so that when in time I will have passed from existence there will remain a word calling people to the remembrance of that glorious being and to the remembrance of the ways He taught us before the world ended and the beings we now call gods emerged.
Worthy of worship indeed are the new gods, for they are powerful and they saved something of the world from complete ruination. But we must be careful, those of us who are dutiful to the gods and seek out their pleasure, of ascribing to them more worth than is theirs - for those of moral rectitude do not ascribe to anything more worth than is due to it, and do not ascribe to anything less worth than is its rightful due; and those who like to be praised for what they are not and what they have not done are truly most impoverished in spirit and are despised.
And so, in worshipping the new gods we must first know what a god is, and why the God That Was, That Is, and That Will Be is a true God while the new gods are gods insofar as they wield an aspect of divine power. Any true God, and this must be known by any who pursue true knowledge of the divine, must by its very nature be eternal without beginning, and so uncreated. It precedes all things and is preceded by nothing. By this metric, we can ascertain that there was a time when the new gods definitively came into being - indeed, they came to being in my own lifetime. Before that point, the new gods did not exist at all, of that we can be certain - and there are those still amongst us who bear witness to that, as I do, and the new gods (were one to ask them) would bear witness to that also. There was a time where they did not exist, and then they came into existence. Thus they have a beginning and are not eternal, are preceded by other things and do not precede all things. That is the nature of the new gods.
From our observation of the world, we can see that many things come into being by the will of the gods. Northing is self-created, nothing emerges from itself, everything emerged from the gods. And we can also ascertain, since the world was coming to an end not too long ago, that all things perish if not maintained by the gods - and that is why our world came to an end and there is now only a small part of it that remains. For a reason we cannot ascertain the divine power that maintained our world decided to stop maintaining it for a brief time, and then the new gods came into being to once more maintain our world. The thinking mind can piece all this together: if all things that have a beginning are created, and the new gods had a beginning, then the new gods must have been created. Since all that exists is created and has a beginning, and since the new gods - and, indeed, our universe - have beginnings and are capable of ending, they must have been created. At some point in the chain must have been a first creator, a creator who is by necessity uncreated. An ultimate creator-being.
It was that ultimate creator-being that created the new gods and gave them an aspect of its great power. Now a thinking person will say: well, if that creator-being created them and gave them such great powers, then that being must have been even greater in power than the new gods. And that is manifestly true - for if I come to you and tell you that I will give you a mountain of gold, then that must mean that I have more than a mountain of gold, or at the very least equal to it. Thus the being who created all of the new gods must be at the very least as mighty and powerful as all of them together - and it is probable that this being is many times more powerful than even that, perhaps even of infinite power since in truth it is the ultimate creator and maintainer of our world, capable of destroying it at will and restoring it at will.
I shall content myself with this on that topic. Know then that the great being of whom I speak is the God That Was, Is, and Will Be. His ways are unknown to the new gods - perhaps in His wisdom he sought to hide Himself from them. But we who yet have memory of the days before the new gods were created remember also the teachings of our pious forefathers, the same teachings that the God taught us. To gain the pleasure of that being who is able to create and uncreate the gods and so is able to create or destroy our world at will, we must follow His ways and teachings. I spoke of this to the new goddess Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut in the days before she turned me into a mouse, but she dismissed my words and refused to give it thought. Are we to guide who do not wish after guidance? We can only deliver the message and leave the spark of this knowledge alive that perhaps there will come one day a generation of people who know the truth and live by it, who honour the God That Was, Is, and Will Be and who honour the gods He has sent forth into this world as His deputies. But we must never be blinded from the light of truth or be deluded into thinking that the deputies are true gods; we will then have fallen into the deep crevices of untruth and darkness.
II. On How I Became a Mouse
There have been those who have asked me to tell of why Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut turned me into a mouse, and I shall pen that tale here. Know that Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut is a being that speaks great profanities and I do not write these words here except out of faithfulness to the discourse between her and me.
Sometime after Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut created those magical bees, which suck nectar and magic out of flowers and trees and put it into their honey, she poured the soup of creation into a gourd and turned that gourd into a wooden staff - and so if you see her carrying a wooden stick or a sceptre or something of the like, know that held within that are all the creatures that were or could be. It was, of course, on my advice that she chose to save the creatures; and though she saved no animal that existed in our world before, she gave us strange creatures that hold some of their physical traits and echo their ways.
She decided to continue her explorations of the world once the bees had flown away and insisted I accompany her. "Only if you promise to do good by all creatures we cross," I told her. She laughed at me and forced me into a cage, and took me along with her anyway. She is a capricious and cruel being!- may she be guided to the path of goodness and high morals. We went then and we observed the terrible state of affairs of humanity; much goodness had been forgotten and the tree of evil had taken root in their hearts and its branches speared at the skies. To Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut this was amusing, and so I chastised her now with kindly words and now with harsh ones; but my words increased her in nothing but waywardness and moved neither her heart to feel nor her mind to think.
When I called on her to damn the cannibals who ate one another, she ignored me and ate with them. When I called on her to damn the sons and daughters who abandoned their aging parents when they needed them most, she ignored me and sat with the abandoned old folk and watched them die - though she was capable of saving them! When I called on her to damn those who commanded their people to be patient and forebear while they ate the best of the food and more than their rations, she caused the food of the needy to rot while that of those who lorded over them to grow bounteous. When I called on her to damn those who, finding that they had physical power over others, went raiding and raping and transgressing against others, she praised their freedom and wilfulness. "Have you no shame, lady?" I asked her, "you who have taken the form of woman, have you no regard for the sacredness of the womanly form and the holy bonds that precede the union of man and woman? Have you no regard for the chastity and honour of those whose form you have assumed?"
"Alright look here you fucker, I didn't bring you along to do my head in with your nagging. Since you won't shut your yapper I'm shutting it for you," was her response. And I was not able to speak after that for a long time. Not until we one day came to a cave and inside it we found a group of people dressed up as animals and going around on all fours, yapping and barking and acting in all ways like mere creatures. I remember that Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut stared silently at them for the longest time before turning to me and saying: "What. The. Fuck."
Those were the first humans that Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut obliterated. At some point during her week-long obliteration of the place she released me from the bindings of silence and I was able to speak to her and calm her. But nothing I could say could dissuade her from her newfound conviction. "Humans are a blight. They need to be exterminated."
I have no doubt that many monkilli will refuse to accept their creation story, but this is the truth. They were made by a fickle and capricious goddess who did not care for the true sins of humanity, who was neither interested in learning morality nor teaching it, and instead decided to whimsically destroy the human race because of this strange animal-fetish cult made up of some five or six people. This is the truth, and if the monkilli accepted it then they would halt their futile vendetta. But as it were, it was at that time and for that reason that Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut tapped her staff upon the earth and caused to emerge therefrom the many monkilli races. And even at this moment that strange species goes forth to carry out the will of a goddess whom they do not truly know but regardless adore. But they are a young species, and they will learn.
After that Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut created much, and I had the opportunity to witness the creation of many strange and terrible and wonderful things. She filled the world with all nature of snakes and lizards then - she has a strange affinity for such things, she seems always to start with them. Great lizards and small, of all shapes and colours - and that is quite beside the dircaans. She decreed crocodilians of all sizes to roam the many rivers that sprouted from the heart of the Shard, and placed on the rivers and lakes and seas and oceans seals - aye, river seals and sea seals, she cared little for constancy or consistency but made as the fancy took her. And as the ocean was birthed she sent forth fishes small and fishes great, lumbering behemoths and barely visible magical plankton. Though she made no more cloud fish, the flying fish seemed to be made to occupy the world above and the world below while immediately being of neither. There were frogs and toads and salamanders, some of them veritable giants relative to others. Birds of enormous size, birds of the tiniest proportions, flightless birds and birds that by all logic and reason should not have flown and yet did. Cats large and small she loosed, bears and bear dogs, bats and rodents (and, of course, mice!), moles and voles and otters and weasels and ferrets and badgers. Great leaping hares and small rabbits, raccoons and their like, skunks at whose small even I - then still a soul - was made to weep. The civet and the mongoose and the hyena were not left to wallow in the soup, and there were mouse deers and musk deers, great deers and small deers, and bovines roaming in great herds. Pigs were loosed and camelids joined the giant snow camel (humpless camelids and humped, large camelids and small), and on the rivers the hippo was made to challenge the crocodile. There were more yet, she was for the first time untiring and persistent - armadillos were sent forth, marsupials, possums and opossums, wombats, platypi, rhinos and tapirs, dawn horses, anteaters, monkeys and apes and squirrels and beavers. They are more than a mere mortal can hope to remember, all that was in the soup and desired release found release - and when she was done she looked into the soup and found that even after such exertions it was no closer to being depleted than when she first pulled out the grobin. And she understood then, I believe, that the soup would never be depleted so long as she herself was undepleted and I saw her smile a satisfied smile and one would have almost thought her innocent and beautiful then.
But I shall now list some of the more interesting specimens here with an accompanying attempt at visual representation:
Mushroom Boar: A large boar with fungal growths that dwells in Vatrai.
Mosasa: A giant aquatic reptile that inhabits the oceans and seas. It can reach fifty-eight feet in length, making it a veritable leviathan, and is a truly formidable apex predator that can prey on even the largest forms of aquatic life. Its sight is extraordinarily keen while its sense of smell is quite deficient. In a similar way to crocodiles, mosasa attacking one another tend to grapple the other's head with their jaw, causing severe head injuries and often leading to death. They also occasionally engage in cannibalism.
Head-shielded Fish: A small heavily-armoured bottom-feeding fish that lives in estuaries. Its diet consists mainly of worms and other burrowing organisms in the mud and algae.
Great Bone-headed Dunkler: An enormous, armoured and jawed fish, reaching thirty-two feet in length. It has a two-part exterior of armour-like bone, which makes it a relatively slow but powerful swimmer. Rather than teeth it possesses two pairs of sharp bony plates that form a beak-like structure. They are able to open and close their jaw at incredible speeds and produce a very powerful bite force on closing their jaw. They live in shallow waters during adolescence and move onto deeper waters in adulthood.
Lesser Bone-headed Dunkler: A relative of the aforementioned Dunkler, it often reaches some twenty-six feet in length. It does not have the same boney teeth of it relative, but is rather a filter feeder. It uses its capacious mouth to swallow or inhale schools of small fish, krill and plankton. Its mouth-plates were made in such a way as to retain prey while allowing water to escape as it closes its mouth.
Lada: An enormous filter-feeding fish, capable of reaching lengths of one-hundred feet. Despite its size, it can often fall prey to apex predators.
Cirnus: A large, short-necked aquatic reptilian that can reach lengths of thirty-six feet. An apex predator, it is a fast swimmer and actively hunts down or pursues its prey. Being an apex predator, it preys on large aquatic life forms such as the aforementioned lada, alongside smaller ones.
Water Angel: A strange fish that has an elongated body, a whip-like tail, and long, wing-like pectoral fins. Its armor is made up of a complex mosaic of small scales. It is an enigmatic creature, but the goddess poured strange magicks into it and gave it her blessing.
Canthala: An elusive fish that tends to live in shallow coastal waters, especially around islands. It can reach lengths of twenty feet. It is generally not fit for sapient consumption due to its poor nutritional value and can cause various illnesses of consumed.
Dircaans: A diverse species of giant reptilians. They include carnivorous and herbivorous subspecies, and some, such as the comb-headed and one-horned dircaans, also eat small wildlife and fish on occasion. The small dircaan is too small to ride and occupies a niche similar to that of goats and sheep in some communities. The water dircaan is semiaquatic, and so is adapted to aquatic environments and is generally to be found stalking swamps, rivers, and wetlands.
Badger Dircaan: A herbivorous dircaan with a bone-like beak, able to reach lengths of six feet. Boasts powerful hindlegs and claws that enable it to dig up roots and tubers, and its powerful bone-like beak can make short work of tough plant material.
Tiger Dircaan: A carnivorous bipedal dircaan of moderate size, capable of reaching lengths of sixteen feet. It has a massively built skull bearing dagger-like teeth, large eyes that allow for extremely keen vision, and elongated nostrils providing a strong sense of smell. They prey on creatures large and small, including the badger dircaan.
Winged Dircaan: Sometimes also called the Lesser Drakhorey, though there is little in common between the firebreathing leviathans of the heavens that are the drakhorey and the comparatively mundaned winged lizards that are the winged dircaans.
Great-beak Dircaan: An enormous dircaan, beaked and toothless, which is capable of flight. It boasts a wingspan of up to forty feet and a standing shoulder height of ten feet. It has an exceptionally large and sharp beak, large eyes that enable telescopic vision, and tends to inhabit plain environments that give way to cliffs so as to facilitate its glided flight. While entirely capable of such flight, they are extremely capable land predators, snatching up their prey from above - often coordination in large groups so as to prevent smaller prey from escaping with their larger size and great wingspan.
Now, when Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut was satisfied with all this, the goddess turned to me and asked what form of life I wished to be breathed into. My response came swift - too swift, I now know: "I have no desire for life, my lady." I told her, and hindsight has taught me what a great lack of wisdom lay in those words.
"Go on, I insist." She said, smiling that pleasant and innocent smile of hers. Beware you who associate with Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut! Beware, for such a smile often precedes some cruel and inexplicably callous act on that divine's part! You have been warned, so let there be no cries about the injustice of it when you find yourself gazing into that smile; you were informed of this before and associated with her regardless, so taste you now the bitterness that comes with such evil company!
"I do not fear death, my lady. I am excited to see what comes next." I told her in response - a second mistake! Mouse the Wise? Why, Mouse the Fool! And so her smile then became so sweet that it was really quite sickening, and I had no sooner looked on her countenance before I found myself a mouse - and when I looked up again and beheld her visage I found that she was no longer smiling. (And yes, I admit that her darkened face and glowering eyes were more merciful by far than that sickly-sweet smile.)
"You were offered a gift, prick!" She screamed. "You don't reject a fucking gift - especially not from me! But since you had the gall to taint my good name and drag my honour through the dogshit of your oh-so-pious rejection, you will now be obliged to carry my curse into eternity. Live well, Mouse the Stupid Dumbfuck."
And that was the last time I saw Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut before her journey into the realm of death.
The first two parts from a book called The Book of Reflection by a character called Mouse the Wise. The first chapter is an argument about how the new gods aren't true gods, and that there is in fact a greater divine being called the God That Was, Is, and Will Be who created the gods and the world and should in fact be worshipped. The second chapter details the journey of Mouse the Wise, back when he was still a soul, with Tonta around the world. They see all th evil things humans are doing, and Mouse calls on her to punish the wrongdoers and stand up for the oppressed, but Tonta doesn't much care and eventually forcefully shuts him up. Then one day they come upon a few people in a cave dressed up as animals, and Tonta is so disgusted that she smites them and swears by the firmaments and the ligaments that humanity must be obliterated. So she makes the monkilli to do just that. She then create a great many creatures, a few of them listed in the post. When she's done she turns to Mouse the Wise and offers him a reward: she will give him a new body and a new chance at life. Mouse doesn't want new life and tells her to let him die. She insists. He insists. She turns him into a mouse.
Creation of the monkilli. Creation of a great deal of animals. Cursing Mouse the Wise Stupid Dumbfuck to eternally occupy a tiny anthropomorphic mouse's body.
Tonta made the massive flying dragons known as the drakhorey! They started eating monsters and mortals wantonly! She made it so souls will only ever speak in hushed whispers! She ate a drakhorey and made a great mountain-statue out of his upper body! She made phoenixes! Whatever will she do next the tonta!?
T O N T A
In which a goddess is told to be nice, saves the animal kingdom, and actually fails at saving the animal kingdom
After she'd left the Pillar of Baknul-Who-Yet-Lives behind her Tonta got to observing the world. She walked for a long while, now whistling a tune and now humming to herself as the world disintegrated all around her. She noted the animals fleeing hither and thither, their souls screaming (in whispers, mind you) for her to save them. Tonta waved at the insufferable sods and walked right on by.
"Lady, what's your problem?" Tonta froze, frowned, and turned towards the voice. It was one of those souls, literally indistinguishable from any of the million others flowing to wherever they were flowing.
"You... you tawkin to me?" She drawled, turning more completely towards the featureless floating orb, "you tawkin to me? 'Cause I don't see nobody else round here..." she paused for a few tense moments, "who the fuck do you think you're tawkin to?"
"Well yeah, I'm talking to you. Do you see any other ladies round here?" The floating soul said.
"You make a good point fella," Tonta laughed, leaning on her stick as all tension suddenly dissipated, "you're pretty loud for a soul y'know, I could have sworn I told you all to shut the fuck up." The smile was gone from her face and her eyes were cold and hard.
"You wouldn't have heard me if you didn't want to hear me, lady. Now since you obviously want to hear from me, shall I ask you something? A small favour."
"Yeah, sure buddy. I have some time to kill." She fiddled with one of her nails absent-mindedly.
"You see all these here animals running hither and thither? Trying to escape death and hang on to life?" Tonta looked around and nodded at the soul's words. "Well, why don't you save them?"
Tonta pursed her lips and kissed her teeth, before releasing a sigh. "Oh, I don't know. I'm not really feeling that right now y'know? You get me? You feel me?"
"I get you I get you - but what if that doesn't matter right now, hmm? What if you just need to get over whatever it is you're feeling right now and doing what needs to be done?"
"Yeah, well, I don't know if that sort of thinking is for everybody. And who says this saving animals business needs to be done anyway? Look at them - one moment they're alive in that bag of flesh, and the next they're alive but like you. This death business is just a continuation of life by other means, they're just dumb shits who don't realise it. If they just accepted death without all this screaming then they get to keep living without any worries!"
"You know what, I don't even disagree with you." The soul said. "I'm all for dying - in fact, I look forward to whatever's coming next - but look, not everyone is ready for that, and it would be an act of kindness from you to save them and also an opportunity for you to teach them how to better accept death."
Tonta blinked. "Buddy, like, why the fuck would I teach them that? I have better things to do like. I dunno. Like walking and shit."
"Well, I think you'd actually enjoy being nice. You know, it would be an interesting experience." The soul suggested.
"Hmmmmmm," Tonta hummed, her brows furrowing in doubt, "you don't know me fella, I definitely wouldn't enjoy that."
The soul's response was swift. "Well, you won't know until you give it a shot! Plus, you want to leave a mark of your presence on the world no? A great and mighty goddess like you!"
"Goddess!? Me?" Her face contorted in surprise. "Seriously?" She smiled. "What does it mean though?"
"It means that you are the most powerful thing in the world, that's what it means my lady." The soul's words seemed to please Tonta immensely.
"Oh, but you do know how to flatter a lady, and you're quite wise for a featureless, boring blob. Okay then, let's give this saving business a shot then! Come on!" And with that, she grabbed the wise blob and went skipping a few steps before exploding into a hundred thousand bits of pollen that went flying across the breaking world.
She didn't quite know for how long she flew, but as she picked up more and more creatures crying out to be saved the hurricane of flying wildlife became rather hard to miss. I guess you know the world is coming to an end when you see a hurricane of flying wildlife.
Now at some point during that hurricane's existence, perhaps in the interlude between the destruction of Galbar and the coming of the Shard, Tonta managed to forget to keep all the different animals separate and intact, and so when she finally came to settle them down on the Shard she found that many of the creatures had rather unfortunately... agglutinated.
"Well, I guess you're cute." Tonta murmured as she rummaged through the strange creatures she had not quite managed to save. "Oh, you want to be called a grobin? I guess you're grabbin that name eh? Eh? Yeah, well, fuck you too you ugly fuck. Never liked you anyway." And so the little grobins made of the shard a home.
She reached into the tempestuous mess and- "Yowch! WHAT THE FUCK, LET GO LET GO YOU FUCKING MONSTER!" And so the cark, that strange melding of cat and shark, was flung into the world. More carefully Tonta reached once more into the living soup.
"You really messed up you know." The wise blob said for the hundredth time.
"Yeah, well, this was your idea fucktard. HeY tOnTa, wHy dOn'T yOu bE nIiCe?" She mocked as yet another strange creature emerged, a giant bipedal bird that did not look nice in the slightest.
"Now that's quite the terror bird." The wise blob intoned. And thus was the terror bird loosed upon the shard. "What was THAT a combination of?"
"Don't ask me, wiseguy." Tonta muttered as she pulled out the next creature from the soupy mess. "Ew. EW. EW EW EW EW! What the flying fuck, what the hell man, why?!" In her hands was some disgusting slug-deer.
"Well, it's cute... in its own way." The wise blob said. Tonta gave it a dirty glare as she released the slugdeer and got to peeling her skin off to cleanse it of the creature's slime. Once her skin had regenerated, she pulled out truly enormous camelid megafauna, which she dubbed the snow camel, and sent it to populate the cold southern shard. Next came a giant flying lizard creature, which asked to be named the flying axolotl and would make its home across the warmer climes of the shard. Then came gigantic moths, followed by long-horned bisons to join the snow camels in the south, followed by giant pangolins and markhors. The wise blob was pretty impressed, but Tonta looked into the soup and saw that it was far from finished and plopped onto her back.
"Argh, I'm tired, when will it be done?" She had no sooner said that when giant lizards clambered out of the soup and went lumbering onto the shard. "Hey, those look like that delicious drakhorey. Mmmm." Giant elks went in the wake of the lizards, and hellish pigs went screeching after the elk and caused them to scatter across the shard. After them emerged a confusing amalgamation of deer and eagle that asked to be called a peryton.
But the strangest were yet to come. When Tonta next reached into the soup her hands came up with white cloud-stuff, and for a few moments she thought the soup was done and that was all. But before her eyes the clouds began to move and gigantic cloud-whales swept up from the soup, followed closely by all sorts of cloudy incirrata. "What the fuck. What are they going to eat?!" Tonta muttered to herself, splashing her hand into the soup. The droplets immediately took flight after the skyborne behemoths in the form of enormous swarms of flying krill. Tonta looked on for what felt like hours as the swarm continued to leave the soup.
"You messed up big time." The wise blob informed her. She stopped looking at the swarm and fixed him with a death glare until the last of the swarm had gone. When she looked into the soup she found that not even that giant swarm had depleted it. She reached in and out came gigantic mussels, each easily the size of a boulder.
"What. The. Fuck." She intonated as she threw them at the shard. They landed in the north and were followed by equally large crabs that would feed on them. She looked into the soup again and paused. "I swear if anyone ever tells me to be nice again I'mma tear their head off." She glanced at the wise blob. "I'MMA TEAR THEIR HEAD OFF."
That was when the weird magic bees decided to buzz out of the soup.
Tonta is minding her own business watching the world die when some soul blob asks her to help save the animals. Tonta don't care tho. But then he tells her you're a cool and strong goddess man, and she be like awww dang, you flattering me okay bro I'mma save the animals for you, just watch. She makes a glorious animal hurricane and saves the animals. But the hurricane has turned them all into a flesh soup and when she comes to disentangle them from each other she ends up with weird amalgamations. So she fuckin failed to save the animals. She spends time getting all sorts of weird things out of that soup. Biggest change is that clouds are now giant whales and octupi that feed on swarms of flying krill.
Aliases: The Drakhoreya [lit. The Drakhorey Mother]; The Drakhoreyka [lit. The Drakhorey Devourer]
Domain: Life.
Life Defined. To be alive is to be ensouled - all that has a soul or spirit is alive, and all that is bereft of such is not. Life allows for the well-observed condition distinguishing things like animals and plants from inorganic matter or natural phenomena - this includes the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding 'death'. Though having a soul will not necessitate the manifestation of physical life, physical life is not possible without a soul. Since life, thus defined, is intrinsically ethereal, it can exist without being tied to physical matter - spirits, ghosts, and other immaterial entities are entirely valid life forms. Such things are not ensouled, they are soul. We therefore find that death - true death that is - only occurs with the destruction of the soul; the ebb and flow of physical life is peripheral. As all souls are by nature sapient, even those of non-sapient creatures, direct spiritual communication with souls is entirely possible for those learned in such magicks.
The Power of Life. The powers of this Life Domain enable the god in question to freely create or nourish things that have the quality of life, unlimited in this regard by anything short of its imagination. Power over Life also includes the capacity to deny a creature of life or to strip a particular place of it - this is a simple process of desouling a particular entity or place. Life is different from health; something can be alive but in extremely poor physical health. However, the presence of souls is also critical for life and may prevent ailments caused by a lack of soul - if the winds lose their souls then they may stop blowing, if the water loses its souls it may stop flowing or being beneficial to other life forms, if plants lose their souls they may wilt and die, and similarly when sentient species lose their souls. Thus, with the ability to regulate, communicate with, and control souls, this Life Domain enables one to create new, and nourish existing, life forms.
Centuries after the fact, when Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut finally arrived to kill him, Hylsek Adech was to recall with greater lucidity than ever before how the terrible race of drakhorey and their progenitor came into the world. Everything was coming to an end around then and (even though Hylsek Adech had then not yet been birthed) he knew that Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut had come in a great fit of inexplicable rage - as though she had been torn away from something very important and now sought to loose her wrath on the distraction that entrapped her. Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut was, therefore, followed very shortly by one hundred thousand burning meteors that lit up the darkening heavens of Galbar's fragment; it was an act of cosmic creation willed at the moment of Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut's own genesis. One could say that she was created creating. Perhaps it was the way Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut was then screaming (for she came screaming), or perhaps it was the inexplicable fury in the great sonance, but it was in that moment of their inception that Hylsek Adech and his drakhorey kin realised - with as great a lucidity as only Hylsek Adech was to experience again many centuries later - that Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut was the only thing in the world they would know to fear.
As the drakhorey broke free of the burning meteors, and as they came into being out of those hurtling isles of magma, the underworlder critters who had risen with rapacious hunger to glut themselves on the soft, yielding meat of the overworlders allowed themselves a pause and a heavenward gaze. They looked at the sky as they had enviously glanced of the overworld in prior times when it was denied them. And if they had not heard the scream of Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut, the goddess whose genesis was occurring before them in the heavens, then they most certainly heard the clawing and growling and hungering of her sky-born terrors who even now lacerated the face of the sky on their earthward passage to feast upon the horrorsome underworlders.
Hylsek Adech, spreading his blazing wings and swinging his rock-hewn skull - which even now ran with veins of magma to the three smouldering embers of his eyes - had been the most impatient and most excited of them all, and so he was the first of the drakhorey to descend and sear the surface of the world with a flame that was less flame and more hammer. He hammered the earth unrelentingly, he forged it anew with the ash of overworlder and underworlder alike. He wiped the slate clean.
There was to be no reward, of course. The drakhorey had known there would not be one from the moment they heard Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut's scream, and so they were not so much saving the world as trying to run away - from her. Even then the drakhorey had known to run away, and even then they had known it to be a vain endeavour. Hylsek Adech had been the first of them, however, and so Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut had done him the honour - in her own twisted way - of leaving him for the very last.
Personality: Just wants to have a bit o' fun, really. Extraordinarily affable and amiable, quite social and gets along with pretty much anyone - rarely anything can get her riled up or truly insult her, though she may well pretend it has if the whimsy takes her. No dispute is ever truly personal - 'don't get riled up, it's just a bit o' fun.' Her personability aside, she is otherwise quite unpredictable and fickle - she is just as likely to be casually cruel and capricious as she is to be generous and giving. She is not by nature kind or 'good'; any 'good' she does stems primarily from her own whimsy and pursuit of pleasure. Something truly more powerful than her may well terrify her - her nonchalance and fun-loving attitude is greatly derived from her firm conviction that there's nothing out there that can pose her any harm or threat, or that can truly limit her. Attempts to threaten or limit her may stir her interest and she may play along for the fun of it, but should it become apparent that she is not quite as in control - that some entity is able to toy with her as easily as she toys with the world - then things become a whole lot less fun for her.
Goals: Being a Life god, she will naturally want to create life and watch the world bloom. She will look down on any attempts by others to create life that is not tied to souls and may well launch a crusade against 'such sacrilege!' if the whimsy takes her. She will also, for no clear or logical reason, take to possessing random humans, who will go on living without realising they are the hosts of a god. She will actively fight and ally and plot and scheme with others for the fun of it, and will stop the moment it bores her - no alliance or contract is sacred as far as she is concerned.
Appearance:
Base Form. Tonta has two primary base forms. The first is a wraith-like black and grey form boasting a bark face akin to a primitive wooden mask with two dark holes for eyes. This form is immediately corporeal and ethereal, or transitions between both states so seamlessly that it appears to be the case. Different parts of her may be corporeal while others are simultaneously ethereal. This form is broadly humanoid. See an image here.
The second is broadly humanoid, easily mistaken for a human or an elf were it not for the innumerable serpentine appendages that emerge from below her cloak and appear to be, to all extents and purposes, extensions of herself. See image above. But clothed. -.- IN DRAGON LIMB THINGS.
Beyond these, Tonta, being a Life goddess, will also appear to humans in the form of various life forms - she may manifest as an ant in one place, a rock in another, a puddle elsewhere, and a member of any sapient species at yet another, to play tricks on or otherwise test individuals and groups for her sporting pleasure.
True Form. Tonta's true form is that of a great shifting spirit, female and humanoid in shape. In its benign aspect it causes life across the world to bloom and does no damage to any living thing that gazes upon it or is otherwise in its radius - rather the opposite. In its malign aspect her true form saps souls - and so life - from all things across the world, but the most terrible effect is on everything within her range of perception. The Drakhoreya form is a lesser version of her malign aspect, which takes on the form of a great ethereal, vaporous drakhorey. This is Tonta's inceptual form and gives off a world-altering scream that births drakhorey.
In which a goddess shuts the world up, murders wantonly, and makes blood juice birds
A while later Tonta stopped screaming (if one listened closely they would have been able to make it out for a rage-infused "woooooooooooooooooooooooooow!"). The drakhorey had broken free and now soared in every direction to tear the risen underworlders limb from limb and to rain fiery death on human and monster alike.
They were fair like that.
There were exactly a thousand of them at that moment, but it would not be long before their number started to shrink. With each one Tonta devoured a great serpentine limb would grow from under the wraithlike yellow cloak that completely covered her nubile form. But at that very moment the whimsical quest to eat them all had not quite manifested to her - she was Drakhorey Mother, not yet Drakhorey Devourer - and she instead hung silently in the dying heavens. Or at least, she was silent. Everything else was fucking loud.
The source of the cacophony was not singular, but it was rather everywhere. The air was screeching, the smoke was bellowing, the earth was wailing ceaselessly as bits of it broke everywhere. The creatures too - monsters and animals and people alike, screaming ceaselessly and relentlessly and with impossible loudness. Some were horror-filled, others agonised, some were trying to draw her attention to one fact or another, others whispered in tempting tones of secrets hidden and waiting to reveal themselves if she only leant her ear. Tonta didn't give a flying peacock's left toe though - "would you all just shut
the
fuck
up!?"
It was very quiet after that. In fact, from that very moment and into perpetuity souls and all spiritual life-forms would only ever speak in hushed whispers. Tonta was surprised. And satisfied.
A spell seemed to break then and she was no longer frozen in the skies of her inception, but falling. Her collision with the earth was cushioned by the first drakhorey she would ever kill - a truly monstrous great pale thing. The collision left his upper half here and his lower body there and burning blood more or less everywhere. Feeling quite contrite about all the mess, and feeling that her first kill should in some way be memorialised, she heaved the great torso (it made little physical sense, like an ant throwing a lizard about) and skewered it on a stone pillar that erupted from the earth as if by its own will. Then the goddess stood back and beheld the gory sight. The drakhorey's soul stood by her and looked too. "But why?" He whispered, deeply flummoxed. She could tell because he was giving her one of those wtf faces.
"Oh! You're here!" She caught the drakhorey's soul and forcefully pushed it back into the abused and bisected form. Its hushed screams were almost comical. "Oh stop being dramatic Baknul Adech. It wouldn't be a cool monument if it didn't have your actual soul in it. Now," she gave the ensouled corpse a puppy-eyed look, "would you please turn to stone for me?"
He did.
The Pillar of Baknul-Who-Yet-Lives
Just for your knowledge: it was at that moment that Tonta thought it would be quite fun to hunt down the rest of her accidental children. She had not yet quite gained a reputation for devouring them, though in all truth she would not gain such a reputation until many decades stood between her and the first such devouring. As she walked by the bloody mess Baknul had thoughtlessly made while dying, the droplets drifted upward and congealed into two great fiery birds - a huge male who looked more like a flying firestorm than a bird and a considerably smaller and more sensibly birdlike female. They gave off a distinctively sonorous song that seemed to echo and ripple in all directions before beating their burning wings and lifting off into the sky. As Tonta continued to walk more of Baknul's blood rose up and congealed into those burning phoenixine forms and went singing in all directions.
She left the lower half of Baknul's bifurcated corpse behind her and when the goddess was gone from view the critters of the underworld crept out and approached to feast on the remains of one who had not so long ago feasted on them. Hear me now: well should this lesson be heeded! - (though it would be many years before Tonta would even think to consider such things) - that above every great and powerful being is one more powerful yet.
Following straight on from the Myth from the CS, Tonta is in the sky and the dragons she made are flying everywhere killing people and underworld monsters alike. The world's souls are being very loud so she shuts them up, and now they only talk in hushed whispers. That's how you get some fucking peace and quiet. Then she elbow drops a drakhorey called Baknul Adech from 5,000 miles or something. He explodes and she makes a cool stone pillar/monument thing out of his upper body and shoves his soul in there for good measure. It's a pretty big monument, say as tall as the Eiffel Tower. After that she cleans up his blood and makes cool phoenixes out of them - the males look like flying firestorms while the females are far more birdlike in appearance. We end on a moral because this is a moral tale with many lofty ideals and principles strewn throughout for future scholars and philosophers to analyse.
Just a cool looking pillar, nothing fancy about it. No MA there. Creating drakhorey. This is a TEMPORARY species that will not exist post-timeskip, but as they will be destroyed over the course of the timeskip and so will likely have an impact on world history I guess they cost 1 MA. A cool special bird species with special powers that I'll probably think up later. They should reasonably come to inhabit (in small numbers) forest and mountain biomes. 1 MA. Making all souls and spiritual life-forms speak in whispers/hushed voices. I guess this affects everyone so 1 MA.
Aliases: The Drakhoreya [lit. The Drakhorey Mother]; The Drakhoreyka [lit. The Drakhorey Devourer]
Domain: Life.
Life Defined. To be alive is to be ensouled - all that has a soul or spirit is alive, and all that is bereft of such is not. Life allows for the well-observed condition distinguishing things like animals and plants from inorganic matter or natural phenomena - this includes the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding 'death'. Though having a soul will not necessitate the manifestation of physical life, physical life is not possible without a soul. Since life, thus defined, is intrinsically ethereal, it can exist without being tied to physical matter - spirits, ghosts, and other immaterial entities are entirely valid life forms. Such things are not ensouled, they are soul. We therefore find that death - true death that is - only occurs with the destruction of the soul; the ebb and flow of physical life is peripheral. As all souls are by nature sapient, even those of non-sapient creatures, direct spiritual communication with souls is entirely possible for those learned in such magicks.
The Power of Life. The powers of this Life Domain enable the god in question to freely create or nourish things that have the quality of life, unlimited in this regard by anything short of its imagination. Power over Life also includes the capacity to deny a creature of life or to strip a particular place of it - this is a simple process of desouling a particular entity or place. Life is different from health; something can be alive but in extremely poor physical health. However, the presence of souls is also critical for life and may prevent ailments caused by a lack of soul - if the winds lose their souls then they may stop blowing, if the water loses its souls it may stop flowing or being beneficial to other life forms, if plants lose their souls they may wilt and die, and similarly when sentient species lose their souls. Thus, with the ability to regulate, communicate with, and control souls, this Life Domain enables one to create new, and nourish existing, life forms.
Centuries after the fact, when Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut finally arrived to kill him, Hylsek Adech was to recall with greater lucidity than ever before how the terrible race of drakhorey and their progenitor came into the world. Everything was coming to an end around then and (even though Hylsek Adech had then not yet been birthed) he knew that Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut had come in a great fit of inexplicable rage - as though she had been torn away from something very important and now sought to loose her wrath on the distraction that entrapped her. Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut was, therefore, followed very shortly by one hundred thousand burning meteors that lit up the darkening heavens of Galbar's fragment; it was an act of cosmic creation willed at the moment of Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut's own genesis. One could say that she was created creating. Perhaps it was the way Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut was then screaming (for she came screaming), or perhaps it was the inexplicable fury in the great sonance, but it was in that moment of their inception that Hylsek Adech and his drakhorey kin realised - with as great a lucidity as only Hylsek Adech was to experience again many centuries later - that Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut was the only thing in the world they would know to fear.
As the drakhorey broke free of the burning meteors, and as they came into being out of those hurtling isles of magma, the underworlder critters who had risen with rapacious hunger to glut themselves on the soft, yielding meat of the overworlders allowed themselves a pause and a heavenward gaze. They looked at the sky as they had enviously glanced of the overworld in prior times when it was denied them. And if they had not heard the scream of Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut, the goddess whose genesis was occurring before them in the heavens, then they most certainly heard the clawing and growling and hungering of her sky-born terrors who even now lacerated the face of the sky on their earthward passage to feast upon the horrorsome underworlders.
Hylsek Adech, spreading his blazing wings and swinging his rock-hewn skull - which even now ran with veins of magma to the three smouldering embers of his eyes - had been the most impatient and most excited of them all, and so he was the first of the drakhorey to descend and sear the surface of the world with a flame that was less flame and more hammer. He hammered the earth unrelentingly, he forged it anew with the ash of overworlder and underworlder alike. He wiped the slate clean.
There was to be no reward, of course. The drakhorey had known there would not be one from the moment they heard Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut's scream, and so they were not so much saving the world as trying to run away - from her. Even then the drakhorey had known to run away, and even then they had known it to be a vain endeavour. Hylsek Adech had been the first of them, however, and so Hyatonta-Ekninot-Mahtut had done him the honour - in her own twisted way - of leaving him for the very last.
Personality: Just wants to have a bit o' fun, really. Extraordinarily affable and amiable, quite social and gets along with pretty much anyone - rarely anything can get her riled up or truly insult her, though she may well pretend it has if the whimsy takes her. No dispute is ever truly personal - 'don't get riled up, it's just a bit o' fun.' Her personability aside, she is otherwise quite unpredictable and fickle - she is just as likely to be casually cruel and capricious as she is to be generous and giving. She is not by nature kind or 'good'; any 'good' she does stems primarily from her own whimsy and pursuit of pleasure. Something truly more powerful than her may well terrify her - her nonchalance and fun-loving attitude is greatly derived from her firm conviction that there's nothing out there that can pose her any harm or threat, or that can truly limit her. Attempts to threaten or limit her may stir her interest and she may play along for the fun of it, but should it become apparent that she is not quite as in control - that some entity is able to toy with her as easily as she toys with the world - then things become a whole lot less fun for her.
Goals: Being a Life god, she will naturally want to create life and watch the world bloom. She will look down on any attempts by others to create life that is not tied to souls and may well launch a crusade against 'such sacrilege!' if the whimsy takes her. She will also, for no clear or logical reason, take to possessing random humans, who will go on living without realising they are the hosts of a god. She will actively fight and ally and plot and scheme with others for the fun of it, and will stop the moment it bores her - no alliance or contract is sacred as far as she is concerned.
Appearance:
Base Form. Tonta has two primary base forms. The first is a wraith-like black and grey form boasting a bark face akin to a primitive wooden mask with two dark holes for eyes. This form is immediately corporeal and ethereal, or transitions between both states so seamlessly that it appears to be the case. Different parts of her may be corporeal while others are simultaneously ethereal. This form is broadly humanoid. See an image here.
The second is broadly humanoid, easily mistaken for a human or an elf were it not for the innumerable serpentine appendages that emerge from below her cloak and appear to be, to all extents and purposes, extensions of herself. See image above. But clothed. -.- IN DRAGON LIMB THINGS.
Beyond these, Tonta, being a Life goddess, will also appear to humans in the form of various life forms - she may manifest as an ant in one place, a rock in another, a puddle elsewhere, and a member of any sapient species at yet another, to play tricks on or otherwise test individuals and groups for her sporting pleasure.
True Form. Tonta's true form is that of a great shifting spirit, female and humanoid in shape. In its benign aspect it causes life across the world to bloom and does no damage to any living thing that gazes upon it or is otherwise in its radius - rather the opposite. In its malign aspect her true form saps souls - and so life - from all things across the world, but the most terrible effect is on everything within her range of perception. The Drakhoreya form is a lesser version of her malign aspect, which takes on the form of a great ethereal, vaporous drakhorey. This is Tonta's inceptual form and gives off a world-altering scream that births drakhorey.
...Wise beyond words, beyond human years knowledgeable, the Most Beneficent - who is Uhulmikown - walked the ways of sun and moon and whispered in the darkness and whispered in the light for forty days and forty nights. In his heart was no despair, though they who were most beloved to him were in the grasp of the Enemy. Faithful and seeing, in his certainty strengthened, of his victory sure, he who is the Most Beneficent walked the forty moons and forty suns until, hailing the Northerly Gale, there manifested before him a host ten hundred strong.
Ask not: 'wherefrom didst they emerge?' Do not questioning say: 'what foulest magick, from what dark abyss of the deathlands, what scorpion-born horrors were they?' Do not exhort or catechise with such empty words as: 'on horseback were they - or horsemen were they - or was it the great black bull or that of the great one horn that was their steed? Or horror greater, was it the wing-eared greyness of the great snake nose?' Aye, ask not - know only that the Darkness Beyond Sight trembled and shimmered when they came. Know that the Northerly Gale carried them. Know that He, who is Eokihiltchin, who is the great progenitor and father, and She, who is Bihmat-Iyan-'Uk, who is the great Fog-Serpent of the Blue Eyes, who is the chaos of the sea and the great terror, who is the great deliverer and mother, blessed and ordained them and built them from might and struck them from stone and made their voices of thunder and the glint of their eyes of lightning.
'Hail!' Spoke the Most Beneficent, and their counter-greeting was the grating of the heavens against the cliff of the world. And under the twin-stars of the Holy Month When No Blood Must Be Shed were that hallowed host to greet with death Giwabi the King and with the crushing fist of abolishment salute Giwabi the Kingdom, and were they to hail with the voice of eternal forgetting the treachery that is Giwabi the GodKing. Thus shall it be written after a time in the Tablets of 'Amkula Bujunda. ...
Identity: Lady of the Great Sullied Court, the Fyghfolk Queen, Red Fern, Red Fury, the Queen of Smoke and Sighs.Artistic Depiction.
Type: Rogue - Fygh (pr. Fee or Fay or Fie)
Persona: Red Fury is rather easy to anger and takes insult with equal ease - but she does not show it so easily. Sooner or later, by hook or by crook, those who earn her ire ultimately pay. Back when there were one hundred and sixty-three Fygh Courts across the world, she was the most important and most powerful. Now there is only one Court and she its sole Queen. There is therefore no space for doubt: she is the most important and most powerful - and all the Fygh who come before her know to know it. Is she feared? Naturally. But is she also adored? Why, who could doubt it? Feared, adored, and blindly obeyed by all Fyghfolk, such is the power of the Fyghfolk Queen.
Powers: But beyond the obedience of her subjects, Red Fury has another great power. It is one that makes her truly worthy of her place at the top. She is the last of Fyghkind's ancient aristocracy - an aristocracy known for the great magicks and formidable powers they could once bring to bear. While all Fygh are beings of magic and so have certain powers - whether it is the nature-warping powers of dryads or the death-bringing gaze of barghests - Red Fury can manipulate and wield the magic that flows through existence with the mere power of her voice. She can feel where magic is concentrated, can whisper to it until it does her bidding, and so achieve great magickal feats the likes of which were long thought to have perished from the world. By the power of her magicks are men turned to stone, princes into frogs, princesses into ogres. By it are cities brought into eternal sleep and others lost forever in a world of illusions. By her potions are queens made to fall in love with donkeys and are hatreds planted in the small imperfections and cracks that line any true love. Poisoned apples, tightening corsets, and deadly combs are only a few of the magickal items she can bring forth into the world by the power of her words. It is not understood how her powers work - even she may not truly know - but speech is the key to her powers. If she is unable to speak, then she is near enough powerless. Her powers, like all magic, are also rather slow. It takes time to whisper poison into an apple or complete a curse to turn a man into a donkey.
Race: Fygh exhibit great diversity. Some take on the appearance of human children while others appear barely distinct from monsters, and others yet take on plant-, animal-, or water-like features. The great majority are very small in size, though certain types tend to be fairly large - an example is the barghest, which takes on the form of an enormous shaggy black dog and is generally a portent of doom to all who see it (and often attacks and kills lone travellers). Some Fygh may have tails, wings, or more than two arms or none (if, for instance, wings replace their arms). Whether they have wings does not dictate whether a Fygh can fly - that is more often dictated by the type of Fygh it is.
While Fygh may appear to be male or female, they do not reproduce or procreate physically and so these appearances are merely aesthetic. Some may exhibit human-like sapience, while others may appear like monstrous creatures that cannot be reasoned with by non-Fygh. Being creatures of pure magic the Fygh do not have a fixed lifespan - so long as they have a source of magic, they are effectively immortal.
The destruction of magic is therefore lethal to Fygh. If it is possible to trap one and deny it of magic for long enough then it will inevitably perish. Another sure way to destroy a Fygh is with iron or steel implements as these are devoid of magic and immediately void whatever they touch of magic. Different Fygh will also have different weaknesses - some may not be able to cross running water, some may not be able to cross a salt perimetre, others yet may perish at the sound of their true name, and much else.
Myth: 'The Fygh are old magic - deep and dark and hidden within the stuff the world is made of. It is said we are even older than the Black God, that in the twilight of time and creation itself there we were, eyes wide and silent and knowing. Aye, we are the oldest magic, pure and distilled and alive.
'When the Black God called upon us it was not out of any great love or loyalty for him that we rallied to his banner, but out of enmity to Man. Ah, Man! That newborn race who thought to tame the wilds and flatten the earth and bore through the mountains and dictate the course of the rivers - where they would flow and where they will not, when they will flood and when they shall not. That newborn race that casually went about the business of exterminating Fygh and magic alike. Well, that race had to be made to perish.
'Divided then into our one hundred and sixty-three Courts, we could not quite agree on this course of action. Red Fern, however, then the Queen of Smoke and Sighs, knew then with an insight all others lacked that there could be no other course. There was no place for magic and the Fygh in a world in that Man continued to occupy.
'We fought one another then - on one side those 'Unsullied' who would slay themselves that Man may live and that Man may slaughter all, and the rest of us 'Sullied' who would rid the world of Man's cancer and let the wilds and all the chaotic beauties of magic loose. The Black God fell, the 'Unsullied' cheered as they cast Red Fern and us, their Sullied brethren, into the Fade...
'And we heard their cheers for a while there in that prison of ours, but then in time they cheered no more. Empty are the halls of the 'Unsullied' today. The echoes of their laughter are heard only in the halls of memory - our memory. For we remember. And though they were fools, yet were they our kin. The Fade grows thin now, and Red Fern - why, Red Fury! - has for a long time whispered her curses and promises of vengeance into the fabric of the world. We who are Sealed - who were lambasted as 'Sullied' - stir. We rise. We come.
'The Black God is dead, but we remain - and by our hand alone will be the final abolition of Man.'
Identity: Lady of the Great Sullied Court, the Fyghfolk Queen, Red Fern, Red Fury, the Queen of Smoke and Sighs.Artistic Depiction.
Type: Scion - Fygh (pr. Fee or Fay or Fie)
Persona: Red Fury is rather easy to anger and takes insult with equal ease - but she does not show it so easily. Sooner or later, by hook or by crook, those who earn her ire ultimately pay. Back when there were one hundred and sixty-three Fygh Courts across the world, she was the most important and most powerful. Now there is only one Court and she its sole Queen. There is therefore no space for doubt: she is the most important and most powerful - and all the Fygh who come before her know to know it. Is she feared? Naturally. But is she also adored? Why, who could doubt it? Feared, adored, and blindly obeyed by all Fyghfolk, such is the power of the Fyghfolk Queen.
Powers: But beyond the obedience of her subjects, Red Fury has another great power. It is one that makes her truly worthy of her place at the top. She is the last of Fyghkind's ancient aristocracy - an aristocracy known for the great magicks and formidable powers they could once bring to bear. While all Fygh are beings of magic and so have certain powers - whether it is the nature-warping powers of dryads or the death-bringing gaze of barghests - Red Fury can manipulate and wield the magic that flows through existence with the mere power of her voice. She can feel where magic is concentrated, can whisper to it until it does her bidding, and so achieve great magickal feats the likes of which were long thought to have perished from the world. By the power of her magicks are men turned to stone, princes into frogs, princesses into ogres. By it are cities brought into eternal sleep and others lost forever in a world of illusions. By her potions are queens made to fall in love with donkeys and are hatreds planted in the small imperfections and cracks that line any true love. Poisoned apples, tightening corsets, and deadly combs are only a few of the magickal items she can bring forth into the world by the power of her words. It is not understood how her powers work - even she may not truly know - but speech is the key to her powers. If she is unable to speak, then she is near enough powerless. Her powers, like all magic, are also rather slow. It takes time to whisper poison into an apple or complete a curse to turn a man into a donkey.
Race: Fygh exhibit great diversity. Some take on the appearance of human children while others appear barely distinct from monsters, and others yet take on plant-, animal-, or water-like features. The great majority are very small in size, though certain types tend to be fairly large - an example is the barghest, which takes on the form of an enormous shaggy black dog and is generally a portent of doom to all who see it (and often attacks and kills lone travellers). Some Fygh may have tails, wings, or more than two arms or none (if, for instance, wings replace their arms). Whether they have wings does not dictate whether a Fygh can fly - that is more often dictated by the type of Fygh it is.
While Fygh may appear to be male or female, they do not reproduce or procreate physically and so these appearances are merely aesthetic. Some may exhibit human-like sapience, while others may appear like monstrous creatures that cannot be reasoned with by non-Fygh. Being creatures of pure magic the Fygh do not have a fixed lifespan - so long as they have a source of magic, they are effectively immortal.
The destruction of magic is therefore lethal to Fygh. If it is possible to trap one and deny it of magic for long enough then it will inevitably perish. Another sure way to destroy a Fygh is with iron or steel implements as these are devoid of magic and immediately void whatever they touch of magic. Different Fygh will also have different weaknesses - some may not be able to cross running water, some may not be able to cross a salt perimetre, others yet may perish at the sound of their true name, and much else.
Myth: 'The Fygh are old magic - deep and dark and hidden within the stuff the world is made of. It is said we are even older than the Black God, that in the twilight of time and creation itself there we were, eyes wide and silent and knowing. Aye, we are the oldest magic, pure and distilled and alive.
'When the Black God called upon us it was not out of any great love or loyalty for him that we rallied to his banner, but out of enmity to Man. Ah, Man! That newborn race who thought to tame the wilds and flatten the earth and bore through the mountains and dictate the course of the rivers - where they would flow and where they will not, when they will flood and when they shall not. That newborn race that casually went about the business of exterminating Fygh and magic alike. Well, that race had to be made to perish.
'Divided then into our one hundred and sixty-three Courts, we could not quite agree on this course of action. Red Fern, however, then the Queen of Smoke and Sighs, knew then with an insight all others lacked that there could be no other course. There was no place for magic and the Fygh in a world in that Man continued to occupy.
'We fought one another then - on one side those 'Unsullied' who would slay themselves that Man may live and that Man may slaughter all, and the rest of us 'Sullied' who would rid the world of Man's cancer and let the wilds and all the chaotic beauties of magic loose. The Black God fell, the 'Unsullied' cheered as they cast Red Fern and us, their Sullied brethren, into the Fade...
'And we heard their cheers for a while there in that prison of ours, but then in time they cheered no more. Empty are the halls of the 'Unsullied' today. The echoes of their laughter are heard only in the halls of memory - our memory. For we remember. And though they were fools, yet were they our kin. The Fade grows thin now, and Red Fern - why, Red Fury! - has for a long time whispered her curses and promises of vengeance into the fabric of the world. We who are Sealed - who were lambasted as 'Sullied' - stir. We rise. We come.
'The Black God is dead, but we remain - and by our hand alone will be the final abolition of Man.'
Lord Zee
DracoLunaris
Frettzo
Cyclone
Vec
Torack
