Muttonhawk — Roleplayer Guild

A little atmosphere.

The slave hain all skittered about their business through the centuries, oblivious to the statue of perfect gleaming white standing in the centre of their lodge. The stockpile was filled and reduced many times, to the point where Toun's suggestion to himself to take action seemed to be a forgotten myth. These hain had just too much Slough to be easily maintained.

All strangers who approached the lodge, whether they were hain or beast, were driven away. The slave hain were not individually intelligent, but they had a link between them via Toun that quickly helped them to coordinate against danger. Enemies were swarmed by them, not knowing the regular fear and weakness of hain as they were assailed with bone, tooth, and porcelain fist.

Local intelligent hain tribes quickly learned to avoid the area. It was dubbed cursed, full of hain that would not communicate or welcome you. Their numbers were greater than any single tribe could sustain on its own. Something was controlling them.

That controlling thing had been wallowing in his calculations for time uncounted. Most of Toun's thoughts were restricted to computing the best manner to bring forth his wishes. His haunting visions had apparently left him after such a great act of creation as the hain. This confirmed his suspicions that his essence had a flaw that would have to be treated rather than cured. He had no doubt as to its origin.

This thinking, of course, spawned renewed animosity against the infliction of his cursed visions. These feelings spread to include the denizens that sought to ruin his paradise in the first place. Those creatures with a divine essence that knew not what they did. He would have his revenge as he shaped the world to its true form. Not escaping would be those that sought to doubt Toun. Always questioning, always seeking to contradict. They simply did not understand. Their punishment would be exclusion from the paradise they sought to stifle. And lo, they will weep with their regret.

The boiling hate that simmered in Toun's still body was all he could to distract from his self-percieved failures. The clarity of his rage could channel energy into his grand plan, motivating him to look forward instead of backward. Behind him were memories that he was almost afraid of at this point. He was so naive back then.

Toun was not keeping track of how long it took. By the time he decided to enact the next stage of his plan, he had almost forgotten how to operate his body.

Toun's movements were jarring at first. He opened his eye to find that the lodge around him had changed. As per his will, the slave hain had kept the building tidy and orderly, but stains and dust across any and all exposed surfaces were left untended due to the lack of necessary tools. Toun took a step, his foot clinking against the once glossy floor below him. Another slowly followed. The third step was elongated enough to bring him all the way outside. The slave hain gave curious looks at the contorting statue but did not halt their duties. Their minds no longer held enough natural fascination to heed their ancient guardian actually moving.

The environment outside of the lodge had certainly changed since Toun last beheld it. Slough's life had spread across the entire planet, by the looks of things. With the other creatures that had sprung from her globules of life, Slough's predators had likely consumed all of the leftover hain by now, Toun had little doubt.

Regardless, Toun now had a new direction to take. He would not act here, not so close to her sister's precious valley. Toun turned south-east and began to walk. Or, at least, it was merely walking to him.

The slave hain around Toun started to cry out in alarm as they found their minds forcibly ordered to get into a line formation of rank and file. The influence spread to the rest, leaving behind food, eggs that had not yet hatched, their home, and falling into line behind their eternal perfect master. In the second that the slave hain were lined up, they found their sense of time and space becoming dilated. Toun remained constant before them, but the world flexed by as if they were looking through a glass sphere in all directions. They were travelling fast and far, with no effort from themselves.

The trees and green thinned into a more barren terrain as they reached their destination. There were tufts of grass and the occasional shrub in this desolate land, but little life to be seen, far as it was from regular rainfall and the seminal pits of Slough's influence.

Toun lifted his head as if surfacing and taking a breath from above a pool of long-held bitterness. He observed that they were on the equator, equidistant from the impact of Slough's arrival and the wake of Teknall's hammer. It was the perfect spot for what Toun had planned. Truly, no other place on any other planet could provide such ideal conditions.

This will have to do, Toun conceded to himself, cynically.

Not forgetting a single detail, Toun stepped around to his slave hain and gave a thought as a command. As one, every single slave hain squat down and wrapped their hands around their knees. Their heads were held forward onto their legs such that they assumed a foetal position. A short rumbling sounded before Toun flicked up an arm and caused a great, overwhelming snapping to sound. Faster than a blink, every single slave hain were each encased in porcelain eggs. Toun extended his hand and lifted his fingers gently, and as he did so, the eggs lifted from the ground and began to hover into a formation of concentric circles around Toun. Once spaced just right, Toun gently willed the eggs into the soil, burying them without digging a spadeful.

"Mortal bodies may not witness this and yet live, my servants," Toun said as if the slave hain could hear him, let alone understand his words. "You will be sustained and protected in my embrace, held still until we are ready."

Toun's chest expanded as if he was taking in a deep breath. And now, it has been too long. It is time to begin reconstruction. A lonely moment passed, allowing an errant gust of air to blow pale brown dust across Toun's ankles. Toun's arms extended suddenly on either side of himself. He held his palms open and curled his fingers with a strain that spoke of harnessing incredible power. The protests of reality were subtle at first; a light buzzing in the air that grew in intensity. As the sound hit a volume beyond bearing to listen to, Toun's expression of power became visually apparent. The ground and the air began to shine like glitter, spreading out from Toun and emanating a great radiant heat. Toun hovered slowly off the ground as his blue eye began to glow with greater intensity.

"Fate and Creation, hear me now! All will suffer the consequences of opposing paradise," Toun began to incant. "For the sins of the gods, repentance shall be had!"

The glistening elements began to intensify, placing a lens of overwhelming sensory feedback over all details. The touch of the air was itching, the sounds of the world anxiety inducing, the taste of the air was oppressive, and even the sky looked as though it was pushing back.

"As I, Toun, make this world better, our penance shall be reforging it anew!"

The tips of Toun's fingers began to bead with the red ink that wrote upon creation itself. The liquid pooled into his palms and ran down his joints. The resistance of reality seemed to yield to this substance, holding its breath as droplets bulged and shook at the end of Toun's knuckles.

"Brick by brick! Word by word! This space shall be made perfect!"

Toun's last words boomed across the desolate expanse as all else was silenced. At once, four droplets of red ink fell from his knuckles and fell to the earth. The pattering upon the dirt sounded within the space of an instant. All else was light.

Power lashed out in a mighty explosion of writhing transmutation. The dusty ground quivered and smoothed into a clean, glossy floor of levelled, perfectly laid white tiles. These tiles formed a pattern of concentric circles from where Toun stood, flipping and lowering into place as they were transformed from the earth around them.

Another volley of four ink droplets fell from Toun's fingers, sending another shockwave outward. This accelerated the spread of the tiles until they had covered a circle of exactly consistent diameter. Roughly ten kilometres across, the circle could reflect the sunlight onto Galbar's satellites like a cosmic doctor's mirror. Where the circle stopped, its edges overflowed outward with yet more transmuting power. It reached into the ground below and the earth shook and screamed with grinding protest. It was changing at a greater scale than small tiles.

The immediate vicinity had controlled parameters to its transformation. It was the designed part. However, the divine amounts of brute creating power had a fallout for miles beyond. Tendrils of magic lashed out against the rock, rearranging laws temporarily and putting them back in place with allowance for the change. Seams of gemstones sprang out from the ground before turning into acid and sizzling the base that was the air. Metal spikes, red hot, burst forth as if thrown by giants under the crust of the earth. The air threw about hailstones that turned into balls of oil and then into river pebbles. Swathes of land were ravaged and upturned in this manner--seemingly more chaotic than the changing plains themselves. The influence of the magic radiated ever outwards until it even brushed up against the ironheart range.

The transformation was all but complete. One last solid ring rose out of the ground around the tiled circle with a cacophonous rumble felt half the world over. It rose slowly as it built upon itself; a looming wall of porcelain. Its shape had harder edges than Toun's other creations. It was a ring with four faces, one hundred metres high and fifty metres thick. Vicious pointed crenellations grew out with a backwards lean like shark's teeth. Equidistant to one another, larger shapes grew at wide intervals to form towers, crowned with similar cruel gleaming parapets to the walls below. This wall had no gates or windows. It had no seams to suggest flawed mortal construction. Not a single physical detail about it could be described as flawed in purpose. This was Toun's domain now; a speck of his paradise as a beachhead upon creation.

And the earth surrounding it was not forgotten despite the devastating upheaval. Toun had not spent all his calculating centuries with such a glaring chaotic mass as accepted consequences. Much like the iteration of great weaving patterns of mathematics, the writhing and lashing powers of creation that had upturned so much began to regress. The varying states of the matter around Toun's new fortress were all settling until homogeneous, down to the last touched detail. Though, it was not unchanged.

The sky cleared around the fortress as a familiar lapping sounded against it. The walls were surrounded by a vast ocean of salt water. Such a relatively mundane end to a vast display of power as was just apparent was a testament to the perfection in Toun's planning.

The ocean's coast upon the rest of Galbar was not nearly as perfectly shaped as Toun's fortress. Indeed, there were thrusts of gulfs and fjords alongside curling, scarred peninsulas. Bays of soft sand and scattered islands, orphaned from the great mainland. As if skirting the impact of a crater, even some hills and mountains saw fit to rise from the result of the ocean's creation. The occasional chalky white-grey cliffs were even exposed, though this display of Toun's brand was not by any intention of his.

Now in the middle of a vast, silent courtyard, gleaming with blinding brightness from the sun, Toun's feet gently lowered to the ground with dull clinkings. As if the tiles were made from liquid, the round shapes of Toun's slave hain eggs rose up from the ground and melted. The mass of the egg shells was sucked into the tiles completely, leaving the now awakened slave hain to look around their new home.

"Be not hungry, nor thirsty, nor fatigued in this place, my servants," Toun said gently, "this is the cornerstone of paradise. Stay near and you will hear my whispers. You shall serve me here from now on as we make this world perfect."

Wordlessly, the slave hain took up a new formation and followed the stream of their master's will, channelled through the very atmosphere. With Toun's skill and precision, they found that their hands could take material from the porcelain tiles and shape it as they were ordered to. The strongest hain headed for the walls with porcelain weapons in hand, ready to stand vigil against invaders. The more dexterous hain followed along with the intent of building shelters for them all. The last remaining hain followed along for the purposes of keeping the walls and tiles pristine and clean. The five tribes would be spread thinly across the ring wall's expanse, but with no need to feed, they would breed to man it fully in due course.

For the first time since he laid his fingers upon the codex of creation, Toun felt as though he was no longer lost. "From this blemished slate, I may see my dream of paradise come forth after all."

Toun sets out on a trek, heading east with slave hain. He calculates, broods, and thinks about what to do next.

He is free from his haunting visions for a while.

He feels his power growing to the point where he may be able to get a true foothold for his plan.

He reaches a spot that he deems appropriate to declare his intentions, in the barren land between the deepwood and the ironheart mountains.

Toun releases power from himself in an overwhelming wave. This wave forces the very matter around him to transmute to his whims. He creates a ring wall several kilometres in diameter. The floor within is flat, level porcelain tiles with a flush and clean surface. The ring wall is thick, with regular towers and crenellations to defend from. The wall has no gates. This makes up Toun's new holy site and base of operations, named 'the Cornerstone'.

The Cornerstone is a structure that emanates a sustaining energy within its area. This nourishes slave hain and any other soul-harbouring body such that they do not have to eat, drink, or sleep within the walls, but shapes their minds to become subservient and follow Toun's will.

This was a lot of might used, so the fallout from such a huge transmutation forces lashes of wild consequences to whip across half the entire planet. This causes a huge ocean to be formed around the ring and various landmasses around it to be shaped. Dubbed 'the metatic ocean' (unless someone can come up with a better name), this massive body of salt water stretches roughly from the edge of the gilt savannah to a shortish distance from the ironheart ranges to the northern tundra and then a roughly equivalent distance south. Its coast follows no obvious pattern. It does not join with the fractal sea at all.

As a way to save providing further resources and as a means to better carry out his will, Toun imparts the slave hain with the ability to shape porcelain in a similar, but lesser manner than himself. They use this to begin setting up shop. Other sentient creatures that stay in the Cornerstone for long enough are also bestowed this power, but by the time they become powerful enough to use it practically, they would be slaves to Toun's will due to the nature of the Cornerstone as a holy site.

The creation sheet for the Cornerstone will come eventually.

Might Accounting
Before: Toun - L3 - 11 MP - 2 FP - 3C/3D

-8 MP to create 'the Cornerstone' holy site. The metatic ocean created in the fallout.

-2 MP to forcibly impart kaolokinesis upon the slave hain and any that enter the Cornerstone.
(Kaolokinesis is an arbitrary word I have made up for porcelain shaping powers.)

After: Toun - L3 - 1 MP - 2 FP - 3C/3D <Holy site turn counter: 0/4>

"I figured as much," Gallus responded dryly, "We'll take rests as needed and set up camp nearer to sunset." He glanced over his shoulder, "If we're lucky, we will have evaded any attempts to follow us. There's still a chance that they could pick up our trail, though. We shouldn't relax just yet."

Gallus thought it unnecessary to fill the apparent gaps in Hiritus' knowledge regarding lycans. He would not be living through the night anyway, but if he knew lycans better, he would probably have more reason to by distrustful of Gallus' lone defection. Otherwise, it was food for Gallus' thought to have the recent swelling of the lycan population expressed from the perspective of victims of feral initiates. It was an ironic side-effect that recruitment to Hircine's ranks would inspire recruitment in Vile's in turn. Gallus wished that infections could be more controlled amongst lycans, if only to reduce overall suffering.

"One more thing," Gallus began, "Apart from those that arrived in the Orcrest clan with you and Dar-tzesa, are there any other infiltrators there?" There was unlikely to be much else to ask unless something came to mind while they walked.

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