Muttonhawk

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

@Muttonhawk Just do it like me and flip your monitor upside down. Way better than breaking your neck, I guarantee.

@Slime

*hits ctrl-r*

I think it's working.

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

@Frettzo Looking great, buddy. You accidentally drew it upside-down, though.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Lunise was under no rush. She peacefully stepped to follow Meesei and seated herself beside her, with legs bent to one side and one arm supporting her upper body. She continued to stare out across the flowers. The growing tide threw a distant thudding hiss as a wave crashed further away.

"I hate riddles, Meesei," Lunise said gently. "But...when you see a flower in a vase. When you see it bud and bloom in lovely colours. Do you not lament?" Her smile faded. "If you keep it close, you force yourself to watch it die. But the memory of the beauty it was and the comfort it brings makes you yearn to keep the flower still. It makes the time where you must let it go all the more painful."

Lunise lowered her eyes to Meesei's hand and took it in hers.

A short distance away, out of immediate earshot, Sabine let out a giggle from something Karl had said. They had picked a spot to themselves to sit as well.

---

Darahil spoke far more confidently than Ahnasha, despite his word choice. "I see no reason to attempt the enchantments, without guarantees as they may be. As Marcaille rightly pointed out, the nature of existing enchantments on the automata makes conventional magic inconsistent at best. There are simply too many unknowns. My recommendation is to allow a short period for myself and my scholars to try their best to silence a number of Dwemer spiders and perhaps a sphere or two, test them, and monitor their integrity." His eyes blinked to Fendros. "Meanwhile, in a secretive manner, we may begin gathering undead chaurus thralls. Closer to the execution of the plan, we may provide an informed recommendation as to the reliability of the automata. If they are insufficient, the thralls shall be waiting. If the automata prove sufficient, the thralls may be deanimated."

After a short while to think, Fendros let his hand fall on his fist on the table and nodded. "If we have the resources for both at once, that course of action seems reasonable to me. Does anyone else still have concerns about the undead?"

Oswall crossed his arms again. He was still cross, but conceded. "I shall tolerate them. You have promised me your responsibility and I am confident in it. I have otherwise made my opinions clear."

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

I find that happens when you round-robin four plots at once, Muttonhawk wrote, citing his own languishing stories.

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

@Oraculum Creation sheet templates are fairly bare-bones, so you can borrow the existing creation sheets ones in the character tab and clear the information to use as a template if you like. I'd only ask that you make sure to include its might cost (if any) and describe any information that's required to understand the creation. Also, if it's a holy site, remember to include the income it brings.

Creation sheets generally make things easier to keep track of, but a number of players currently have them on -- *ahem* -- their to-do list, so to speak. We would much rather you make one if you have a significant creation.

Another option is to make a wiki page. It doesn't have to be a huge wiki page like some of them are. Just as long as the same information that would be on the creation sheet is present, as well as noting the creation's creator.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

Sabine nodded enthusiastically and stood up, putting her bowl aside. "I think I will visit Ariel another time. She is very busy," she said. After dusting off herself, she stood near Meesei and lent her energy to the spell.

Karl exchanged a glance with Lunise. He had not seen the portals opening up close before.

Before long, they stepped through into a blast of tropical heat. Their eyes adjusted to behold the beautiful scene before them under the bright moons.

Whatever odd feelings Karl may have experienced from using a portal for the first time, they were promptly erased. Sabine took Karl's hand as he experienced similar amazement to Lunise upon seeing Blackreach. He couldn't help but let out a laugh.

In contrast, Lunise clasped one hand in another in front of herself and raised a soft smile. She breathed in slowly to take in the scent. She spoke so softly as to almost be inaudible. "Father described a scene like this. He went to Thorn on his first journey to Black Marsh. He told me, there are places in nature that humble us Altmer. For not all the best things come from magic. I have seen two such places in one night now. I think I finally understand what he meant when he told me."

---

"Neither armies put walking corpses on the battlefield! I can tell you from mine own experiences!" Oswall retorted. "The very idea that I would place my trust in Fendros to give us this plan is as far as I can go."

"Oswall-" Darahil made a half-hearted attempt to interrupt.

Oswall threw an arm forward. "I would not spit on my ancestor's grave by being responsible for-"

"Oswall! Oswall. Stop." Fendros lifted a hand. He turned to Ahna. "Calm yourself, Ahna. Both of you. This is not a place for spitting...Oswall," Fendros stared down Oswall's red face. "You can be guaranteed that I will take full responsibility if the use of undead takes a poor turn."

"Fendros, if I may?" Darahil tried again. He was unaffected by the shouting.

Fendros nodded to Darahil.

Darahil glanced to Oswall from the corner of his eye. "Before we are tangled in the morals of this plan, I must ask of a matter disconnected to our proclivities." Oswall lowered his head and looked under his brow at Fendros. "Have you considered that perhaps those in Do'rhajul's band could find the use of undead offensive as well? If reanimated thralls are used as reinforcements, then the entire strategy to subvert their beliefs about us and Vile shall be utterly undermined. And no amount of shouting shall change their minds."

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

I døn't think I can apøløgise enøugh før this pøst's strange symbøls. Please take them at a healthy pace.

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

Before Teknall reconstructed his citadel, terrestrial.

Teknall could keep his excitement. The Tomb Weaver's use would wait. Even past Logos' new armour, even past an inescapable trap, the dark creature could do something unforeseen.

Toun needed a plan.

With eyes closed and the arm-length needle in one fist, Toun ran a clay finger along its length. It rang out with a clear, haunting note.

Toun did not know the creature's name. Only what the golden elemental had shown him. It had most likely been rent from its original body as Aihtiraq had. In that vision where the only constant was change. It was a piece of Zephyrion, for it carried his essence.

He shifted his grip. Running a finger along the metal gave a different note. He tried another note. And another. He repeated the same four notes over and again.

For all the clarity of the vision he was given, Toun knew little else with any useful certainty. It was a divine being. It was, on appearance, weaker than him. Except when it brought forth that pearl of burning entropy. That weapon must be avoided.

The notes of the needle took on a music Toun had only heard once in a dream. A dream about a dancer in white. The comfort of it was no matter.

There was no telling whether the weapon would be trapped with the dark creature. Securing it from any other deity would prevent more blood being spread upon it. It was guesswork. Toun did not enjoy being restricted to so much speculation.

The chase occurred once more with the same music. Danger rang in Toun's mind. The dancer in white would not be stained, yet his efforts were for nothing. She dodged, she jumped. He could not hold her. His focus drew him away from minding his own feet. They were caught in the reaching fleshy arms below and bitten painfully in a razor-toothed maw. His body cracked in maroon flaws strengthened by shifting lights.

Toun shouted up to the dancer in white. "Who are you!?"

The dancer's mouth opened. She mouthed silent words.

You knew.

The rhythmic industry of Cornerstone brought him back to the present. His fingers halted the needle's music.

Toun's blue eye snapped awake. He viewed the working hain around him.

Toun inspected the gem on the needle's end. He then looked ahead, and he stepped across Galbar. The hunt was underway.

---

The first step was to find the site of Kyre's death. Toun knew the stench of dead gods all too well by now. Yet Kyre's essence was deliberately scattered. To where or for what purpose was not clear. Toun's anger suggested it was a deliberate attempt to hide, though the cunning of the dark creature could not be confirmed.

A few steps to triangulate found another clue entirely.

In the snowy northern reaches of the jungle tree, Toun's skin and robe made the snow look blemished. Around were black-barked trees sticking up like hairs on a colossal cotton spider. Toun strode in wide, deliberate steps, gliding through drifts that would have a human struggling at their knees.

The presence was here. He could smell the smoke.

A flicker of blue against the bark drew Toun's eye.

There.

Just as the flame hid away, Toun cast his arm forward. The Tomb Weaver flew in a blink with a bright thread behind it. It exploded through the tree trunk and swerved back. It turned and blasted through another tree. One more burst of wood splinters through another tree and the needle halted in Toun's extended fist.

"You think you can elude your great uncle, elemental?"

The shining threads connecting the shattered trees flickered with blue, before bursting into bright yellow flame. Toun abruptly pulled Tomb Weaver back. The flaming threads contracted into a single flume of orange power that coalesced into a struggling humanoid form. The great flame's arms and legs were bound by the thread of the needle.

Toun extended his free hand and let the djinni's throat dock between his thumb and finger. It thrashed and burned, melting snow and painting the white and black in waves of yellow. It saw its own flames reflected in Toun's featureless porcelain skin, and yet an angered blue glowered from the god's eye socket. That eye burned brighter than he.

"A fire does not smoulder in ice but for fear of a force greater than water, earth, and air combined!" Toun accused. "You saw it, did you not!?" He shook the throttled flame in the air. "SPEAK!"

The word boomed with a power that wracked the djinni's mind. Its struggles fell limp.

The flame giggled. The titter grew into uncontrolled gallows laughter.

"You ask but alas! I am at a loss
You took me from ross with an almighty poss
But not snow and not wood and not stone and not moss
Could move him if he had but a handle-like boss!"

"Did the dark creature speak to you? Answer me clearly or I shall feed you to the flickers!"

The demand fell on maniacal deafness.

"The sphere in his woss, he hides with his doss
and in fire and power, he makes gods into dross!"

Toun squeezed his fingers to silence the djinni. "Enough nonsense! Where is it!? What is it?"

"A slayer of swoss and viziers and tross
and bricks and clouds and winds and frost!
Chaos will cross the lands and the stoss
and this and the thoss and stars up abo'ss!"

"Bricks and clouds and winds?" Toun murmured angrily. "He is still at the Citadel..."

"Flickers will call his great noss in the hoss
for the coss and the quoss he is Xôs, he is Xôs!
DIE ON YOUR SLOSS! HE-IS-XÔS! HE-IS-XÔS!
HE-IS-XÔS! FOR WOSS TO UNFLOSS ON THE JOSS!

HE-IS-XÔS! HE-IS-XÔS! HE-IS-XÔS! HE-IS-XÔS!
HE-IS-ÔS! HE-IS-XÔS! HE-IS-!...ock..." Its face bulged.

Toun's hand closed into a fist around the djinni's throat. A crackle and choke and it was extinguished in a flash and a rush of displaced air. Where his body was, small motes of light fell like luminescent snowflakes. They floated into the ground.

"Annoying creature..."

Toun took a step. The jungle tree was quiet again.

---

All the other hiding djinn Toun found were similarly maddened. Their verses were all tainted by meaningless sounds, bearing no further information than the wildfire in the snowy forest.

"The matter, of course, makes the clay one go hoarse
to speak and live up to the name -- he is Xōs!"

And elsewhere...

"Close is the most and the wildest of coasts!
His mind, his tide, makes you blind -- he is Xós!"

The fourth djinni neck Toun crushed was the last he would suffer in his investigation. It had borrowed the accent of the local humans who spoke their language with the full length of their mouths:

"The end of the term begins with the worst
of your portents and verse -- that name! He is Xøs!"

Every single one repeated the last three words over and over until they were killed. The image imprinted on their mind, Toun found, was not one a djinni could fathom. It was defined more by its voids than its substance. And in those voids, there was an unease and horror that shattered their sanity.

It was a piece of their god. But a parent missing an arm and half its chest and head is no longer the comforting protector and guide. It is an abomination to the eyes.

He is Xos, he is Xos, Toun repeated to himself. Murderer, your name is known to me now.

---

With nothing else for it, Toun used his full capabilities to approach the ruined Celestial Citadel with caution. He understood this universe in its causes and effects to observe from a distance beyond mortal senses. And beyond Xos'.

Some spires floated on threads of clouds. Most had plummeted to the ground. A great cannibalistic feast of unseen flickers took what scraps they could, for many elementals were torn asunder. There were traces of trails left by gods. But no divine being was amongst the ruins.

Toun looked further. He scanned every meticulous detail he could from a distance. Only a most powerful being could hide from his eye.

Still nothing.

There were two trails most recently made. One was wrought with undoing. The other was chaotic in a more familiar manner.

Toun scrunched up the bridge of his porcelain face. "What is the meaning of this?"

Whether or not Xos was to return to the citadel ruins, he was not here now. Toun needed to investigate. He took a step into the still-settling dust and he was there in a blink.

Toun's suspicions were confirmed. The familiar trail belonged to Vestec. He followed their unseen marks through reality; both trails were twined in a melee. Toun's eye scanned up and around. He walked a gliding walk to follow them.

Vestec's trail stopped but for a tiny leap through space. The entropic trail scattered, determined not to be followed by many time-wasting false paths. Xos' next move was less of a concern to Toun than the glimmer on the ground beneath him.

He knelt down and waved away the dust. A puddle of deep, multihued ichor lay drying in the gravel. Toun extended a long finger, ending its taper in a tiny curl, and picked a sample of the ooze from the ground. He squinted his eye.

They had fought. Vestec was wounded.

Toun peered off in the direction of Vestec's escape. A sibling had beheld Xos and lived. His mind would gather more than a broken djinni.

Toun's turning feet crunched on the gravel as he stood. He flicked the divine blood off his finger.

Vestec, Toun called out cordially with his mind. His words reached his brother over time and distance similar to how Vestec had done before to him. We must have words. Expect me.

Mutton helps US readers to pronounce Norwegian words incorrectly

*DIACRITICS!* Some accents may make them not work in their verses. I apologise.

Toun ruminates over Xos and how to engage him. He realises that he knows less than he would like and needs to investigate further.

Between his ruminations, he plays the Tomb Weaver needle like a phallic symbol violin to the tune of the phantasmagoria trip-out song. This makes him flash back to the memories in a different way, leaving a cryptic clue as to what exactly was going on there. More on that in a future post.

Anyway, Toun stops and goes to sleuth out some more knowledge on Xos.

At first, Toun is frustrated by Xos' attempts to cover his tracks. He does not know whether this is deliberate or not, but he is biased towards yes because he's a vindictive arsehole.

Instead of Xos himself, Toun comes across a number of djinn actively trying to hide in environments anathema to their makeup. Toun interrogates them and finds that they have gone so bonkers that their verses have devolved into nonsense poems about a great and terrible creature with some manner of 'Xos'-like names. Now he doesn't have to refer to Xos with variations of that dastardly murdering sumbitch anymore.

Toun reads the djinn's minds and discovers that Xos is not something they can fathom as elementals, so they're traumatised to hell and back at seeing his power. Toun kills them out of mercy annoyance.

One of the few clues Toun did deduce from the minds of the mad djinn was that Xos was probably still hanging around the ruins of the Celestial Citadel. Toun had observed its downfall from one of his droningbirds, but the feed cut out pretty early and he assumed that Xos would have skipped town soon after his demolition party ended.

So Toun heads to the ruins. Or, more specifically, stakes out the ruins from a distant panel van with a box of doughnuts. With his level bonuses to perception, he checks it out from a distance first. He doesn't detect Xos, but he does detect two recent divine trails.

He hazards getting a closer look. One of them is Vestec's. Xos and Vestec must have had a scuffle. Toun goes and finds a pool of Vestec's blood.

With as much patience as he could muster, Toun calls out to Vestec that he'll be coming to have a chat with the gigglemeister about the disagreement he recently had.

No might used.

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

@Cyclone Noah Webster tried to fix English, believe me. He just made it worse.

Call of the Hunt [EliteCommander and Muttonhawk]

"There are Aetherium samples in Alinor's academic collections, to be sure," Lunise answered almost reassuringly. "For the longest time they have been seen more as a curiosity than anything else. Research expeditions are expensive and difficult, especially within the Cyrodilic empire, so most scholars of elven history settle for researching the closer Ayleid ruins. Dwemer have a certain austere charm to them, but their priorities are not as engaging to most in the Isles. With a few exceptions of their devices."

Lunise gave a sideways glance. "A human emperor commanding a Dwemer-built mechanical colossus with a power source charged with what amounts to a shard of an old god tends to turn even the most jaded of eyes."

The conversation progressed while Sabine prepared dinner. It was not a complicated dish but it was delicious all the same. Steamed vegetables salted and buttered to perfection alongside a white meat with a gamey flavour. Lunise mistakenly took it for some kind of sea creature and was corrected by Sabine. It was chaurus meat.

That moment was the closest any of them had seen Lunise to going sickly pale. However, she composed herself after a break from eating. Sabine's reassurance that anything poisonous or unclean was not in the meat she used was grounds enough for Lunise to eventually finish her meal.

Though Karl was evidently a quiet person, he began to relax his nerves after long enough in Meesei and Lunise's presence. He would sometimes lower his voice when Lunise had her condescending lines, though he was otherwise courteous and good humoured.

As they approached the end of their meal around the fire, Sabine put her bowl on her lap and spoke. "Meesei, what part of Thorn were you intending to visit? I would have told Ariel if we had more time in advance."

Sabine had visited Ariel on only one occasion since she learned how to teleport on her own. Her continued letters revealed that she had three very young children now. To walk in and try to pull her away for a surprise outing would put much pressure on her.

---

Oswall brought up his hands. "I understand. I would hear other ideas."

A gap of silence in the meeting eventually drew Fendros to speak up again.

"As it stands, we are going to put Ahnasha and Sabine under significant risk in this mission," Fendros explained, eyeing everyone. "If our most reliable idea so far is to employ undead, we will have to discuss how we are going to go about it. Now, I know it is against the principles of many in this room, I understand your reservations. But hear me out, for I believe we can undertake this in a more agreeable manner."

Fendros put one finger on the table in front of him. "First, I would only allow the council to consider undead in this; a dire circumstance. Do'rhajul presents a great threat to us and the clans and will stop at nothing unless we turn him or deal with him." A second finger on his hand uncurled. "Second, we will not use undead in any capacity but to slow the enemy down. They cannot replace our warriors and they do not pose a significant threat while our enemy is armed with silver. Third, we will not raise people if we do not have to. If we can make undead chaurus or wild animals, I would rather see them than spit on the graves of those with friends and families. Fourth, we will not use this as a precedent to allow undead to become regular in this war. We have the upper hand, and to use undead widespread would threaten the unity of our clans at this pivotal time."

Fendros put his hands together again. "Now, are there any objections?"

A grumble sounded from Oswall. "Fendros, I have respect for you and your pack, but not even the Empire and the Dominion use undead in warfare. They spread rot and violence and are used irresponsibly at every turn. They are the mark of those with no compunctions, no thoughts for the world of the sanctity of the dead." He lifted his chin. "But I understand that we are at war. All I shall say is that if this goes wrong, if this gets out or is abused..." He pointed to Fendros. "It will be on your head. And I shall be leaving this council until such time as you excuse yourself from our clan."