The last clinging grains of sand were scraped away as Narzhak trudged over the jagged surface of the World Scar. He hummed contentedly, a sound more akin to a gathering avalanche. Entertaining as his circle about the continent had been, returning to the first grounds he had marked with his presence brought a sense of satisfaction all of its own. He could almost feel the heat of the Pit seeping up from below the earth, an invigorating warmth that pleasantly contrasted with the irksome flaming breath of Sartr's pet. He could still feel an itch below his iron plates where one of the beams had struck him. Strange that it should linger in that spot and no other.
Even stranger that it should be an itch. Fire did not leave itches.
The god prodded the tip of a finger into the gap closest to the odd sensation, extending a long, slender hook from its tip to reach deeper into the fissure. Sure enough, it latched onto something, and the itch stopped. Narzhak raised the claw to his eyes, and found himself staring into a familiar placid snout. The boar had grown considerably since he had last seen it, being large enough to tower over the rest of its kind. Its once brown fur had turned a steely grey, and through the sharp end of his hook the god could feel it was denser and harder than he had first made it to be.
The cause of this transformation was itself clear enough - the beast’s tusks were stained with black blood and hung with shreds of divine flesh. Dimly meeting its creator’s gaze with its beady, bloodshot eyes, it swallowed what must have been the last mouthful it had bitten out of his body.
”That’s where you were.” In the heat of the clash with the Phoenix, the Iron God had forgotten he had left the progenitor of his dire swine interred in the chinks in his armour with the intent of bearing it back to the Pit. While being embedded underneath the colossal iron plates had allowed it to weather the titanic battle unscathed, it had also exposed the flesh beneath to its appetite. It was not as though Narzhak would miss a few bites, but the thought that this had gone on for a while without him noticing was irksome.
”Off with you, now!” Without much ceremony, he lowered the boar to the ground and prodded it with the hook, making it stumble into one of the larger crevices. Without so much as a trace, the creature was swallowed by the awaiting darkness. There would be time to deal with it later. The life of one who had partaken of godly flesh was unlikely to be short in one way or another, and indeed the greatest danger now was that it might fill the Pit with more of its brood. At worst, wrangling it could be a trial for his thralls down there.
Leaving his domain’s inhabitants to their own devices, Narzhak resumed his walk northwards. A few more strides, and he was past the Scar. Here, the soil was still as barren as it had been when the continent had been dragged up from the ocean floor. The monotony of the rocky landscape was only broken by that flow of blood in the distance - whose blood it was, he had yet not found out. Perhaps if he…
The god approached the unusual river, dipped down a suddenly concave finger and brought its contents up for a draught. No, the taste was not familiar, either. He trudged upstream, absently following the sanguine course without much heed for its surroundings. Not that there was much around it at all, was there? As soon as he thought it, however, a crunching sound underfoot, followed by something scraping at his metallic skin, made him reconsider the notion. Glancing down, he saw a copse of oddly animate trees flailing their branches in an admirably coordinated, if still rather static fashion. More interesting that them, though, was what they surrounded. From what he had seen of rivers, it was not unusual for them to flow out of lakes, but he could not think of anyone large enough to have spilled this one. Could it be that red-skinned one, Kirron? For all Narzhak knew, he might have been able to conjure such quantities of ichor.
Not that it mattered overmuch at the moment. Though vast, the lake was still only a speck amid these unshaped lands. His mandate called for them to be seeded with something interesting, and besides, if he was to make good on his challenge to Sartr, he would need a foothold aboveground from which to wage war in person.
Foothold. Staging ground. Infrastructure? Curious how easily words found a meaning.
The Iron God glanced back at the lake. Small as it might have been compared to the bare terrain, it could still prove useful.
Plunging an immense hand into the sanguine basin, he melded his fingers one to another, forming a single great recipient. The amount of ichor he lifted in it would have been sufficient to fill another, if much smaller, lake on its own. But a single lake of blood, unless it was drawn from someone else, was enough.
The crimson liquid in the giant’s grip began to churn and boil, suffused by an infernal heat that radiated from the iron claw. A thick, cloying mist steamed from its surface, pierced by sputtering gouts and geysers. It roiled to the ground, soaking into the gravel. Red stains spread where it touched down.
Narzhak clenched his fist, and the blood erupted into a carmine storm.
Clouds of divine ichor poured into the sky, new vapours rising from the lake to join them. In a matter of moments, a charnel darkness had fallen where there once was day, the light of Heliopolis blotted out by the grisly exhalations. Far they spread, from one end of the land to the other, stifling and choking the air as they crawled.
”Fall.”
The heavens bled.
Torrents of divine gore washed over the rocks, pouring down from what seemed less of a sky than an open wound. Stone crumbled and melted under its onslaught, collapsing into fine, damp red soil. Pools were hewn into expanses of loose gravel. The mountains were slick like swords after a battle.
The Iron God’s skin cracked open, and waves of noxious black rose in the red’s wake. Rocks struck by it were swollen with horrid shapes and sharpened into bladed edges. Patches of soil grew dark, heavy and hungry for carrion feasts. Puddles of sludge lay reeking of decay like ancient swamps.
The skies had not fully cleared - and, indeed, they never would from that day - when Narzhak set about completing his work. His hands gouged vales into the earth, carving hillsides and digging down to unearth hidden springs. Soon, a thick, murky river flowed through the blood-tainted lands, branching out into sluggish rivulets that cut them across like so many scars.
Wherever he breathed, life sprang up from the soaked ground, from pockets of soil amid the rocks, from stagnant pools and dim waters. It was harsh and savage like the earth that birthed it, barely distinguishable from it to the point that they almost were one. Plants and beasts alike were iron-grey in hue, veined with red and black within and without. Tufts and fields of grass were like the spears of numberless hosts, sharp and hardy; thorny shrubs hunkered down on hillsides as if lying in ambush; the trees were stout and twisted, gnarly branches swaying slightly with unnatural animation. Streams were clogged with sanguine water-weeds, soon to grow rank and stagnant. Voracious packs of vile savage rats roamed like restless waves at sea, preying on heavyset reptilian beasts and hystrices bristling with envenomed quills, and many-tusked dire hogs rolled over loose rocks in search of vermiform prey.
Still blood-spattered from his efforts, Narzhak gazed over his work. Much like the Pit, it was but a beginning; but a beginning was all he needed now, and this was certainly a mighty fine one. Humming to himself, he ambled back to the Scar, contemplating the grey earth and sanguine skies on his way. A Charnel Steppe, in name and guise.
The ichor was more resilient than the sand, still besmirching him as he clambered into the abyss wrought by his first encounter with Galbar and stepped into his cavernous realm. He did not mind. Without seeing his reflection somewhere, he could not be certain, but he doubted it detracted much from his majesty. Quite the contrary, in fact, if the astounded looks of the Pit-thralls in the tunnel mouths he passed by were any indication. Some even lifted their heads from the half-devoured bodies of their fellows, likely smelling a more pungent blood in the air.
A worthy reverence, I’ll say.
Narzhak paused mid-step, preoccupied with a new thought. He had neglected to bestow a name on his servants. The matter seemed insignificant enough, but would it not have been simpler to issue commands if he knew how to address them? After all, it was a simple enough thing.
He turned his head sideways, eyes converging on the nearest of the beings. It froze, a piece of entrails dangling from its mouth.
”You are -” the god briefly pondered what sounds would have been easier on the tongue, ”Kostral. Spread the word.”
The newly-named kostral dropped to the floor of its cavern in prostration, then scurried off, leaving behind a good portion of its meal. Little matter - as far as he could tell, it had been bright enough to go for the birth-sacs first, and that was all it needed to spawn. The loss would not go to waste.
Who knew, perhaps that Kalmar had the right idea, however strangely distorted.
There would be time to find that out too, Narzhak mused as he settled on his coarse seat. There was time for everything.
Back in northern Kirronland, Narzhak notices that the First Boar, whom he’d taken along in his equivalent of a pocket, has been munching on him while he was distracted by the Phoenix, ingesting some divine essence, with all that entails, in the process. Mildly annoyed, he drops off the boar into the Pit and goes on to fill the mostly untouched territories with interesting, and possibly useful, things.
He investigates the Seihdh, trampling a few Guardian Trees in the process, and while he’s not sure whose blood it is that it’s made of, he concludes that it’s good for more than just filling a lake. As you do, he conjures a giant storm from Seihdhara’s blood mixed with his own ichor, permanently darkening the sky over the plains and mountains further north with sanguine mists, and, to put it simply, getting the stuff everywhere. This results in most of the place, which thus gains the name of Charnel Steppes, acquiring a layer of fertile soil. Narzhak uses it to populate the Steppes with predictably savage, limited-palette wildlife. He then adds some hills and a branching river and calls it a day for now.
Back in the Pit, he considers the benefits of being covered in caked blood, and names his servant species kostral for the sake of simplicity. It’s canonised that their reproductive cycle involves eating each other.
Narzhak
Starting: 3 MP, 11 FP
3 FP spent on a storm of divine blood and resulting lingering fog
4 FP spent on a large ecosystem
2 FP spent on a hill range
2 FP spent on a river
End: 3 MP, 0 FP
Progress towards unlocking Portfolios:
5/5 towards Earthquakes
4/5 towards Cannibalism (from creation of the kostral, for whom cannibalism is an essential part of the vital cycle)
1/5 towards Subjugation (from instilling obedience into the kostral)
These plains were not so bad, Narzhak had to admit. They were quiet, mostly empty save for a few rock worm stragglers, and, it had to be said, perfectly dull, but that was not the good part. The good part, he thought to himself, was not what they were, but what they could be. That slope there would make an excellent spot to stage a downhill charge, and the shallow vale below it could be reinforced to bog it down into a grueling carnage. That lone hill? A prime place for a sentry. Even better if someone put something taller to stand on there. Not everyone, after all, had as grandiose a countenance as him!
The only preoccupation that came to trouble him time and again as he followed the great river downstream was that those marvellous visions were, for now and the nearest future, just that. There was no assaillant force to bear down the slope, no grim defender to hunker in the valley, nor even any sentry to lay claim to the hill. All that surrounded him were worms and fish, and those would make for poor opponents indeed. He considered bringing up some of his rambunctious scions from the Pit, but, with what wisdom he had, decided against it. Without a proper foe to point them at, they would not think of anything better than to start tearing each other to pieces again.
What then? Now that the fancy of battle had taken him, Narzhak felt the gnawing of impatience. Sitting and waiting for something new to wander by would not do, but nor was he quite sure he could go and conjure something alien to this grassy landscape on the spot.
Unless I… His eye fell on a handful of scattered boulders by the riverbank which had evidently eluded the worms’ appetite. There it was. Making warriors specially for a battlefield took time and effort, but making them out of the field itself? That was sure to be faster.
He picked up one of the rocks and ran the tip of a leviathan finger around it. Where it passed, stone cracked and fell away, as if to reveal something that had always been there. Fury flowed into the boulder, and with it life. Its hard surface melted into a bristly earthen flank, pulsing with ragged breaths and a primal savagery its crumbling prison struggled to keep enclosed. More of it fell to reveal a stamping hoof, then a flaring, tusked snout, then a pair of dim porcine eyes. Soon, nothing remained of the smooth grey block the god had first lifted, and he set the huffing beast down at its feet.
A slight prod was all it took to send it charging. The animal threw itself headfirst against a second boulder, shattering it like a mouldy log. Even as it turned to rush at a third one, the shards and splinters grew prodigiously, sprouting fur and teeth, tails and legs. By the time the exhausted firstborn, having finished the last of its stony nemeses, trotted towards the river to refresh itself, the vast herd of dire boars had scattered out of sight, leaving trails of stamped, uprooted grass and echoes of angry squeals in its wake.
”That’s a start.” Narzhak nodded satisfiedly as his gaze followed his new, destructive gifts to Galbar. The large hog seemed to grunt in agreement and dipped its snout into the water, which quickly turned from clean to torbid and muddy.
Suddenly the clouds to the west parted as a blurry being shot through them. The meteoric figure blasted downward and into the river, but strangely enough there was no splash upon entry, and nigh a sprinkle on exit. The figure stopped instantaneously, the blur turning into a monochromic woman bearing both a wide smile and a fish topped spear.
God and boar turned as one to face the newcomer. ”What’s this?” Narzhak rumbled, raising a finger that dwarfed the nearby hills, ”I’m quite sure I haven’t seen you before. And” one of his eyes narrowed as it glanced at her weapon, ”why is that made with a bone?”
Hermes looked up at Narzhak, half the fish between her teeth. Slowly the woman unclenched the fish from her toothy grasp and looked the God up and down, “I don’t know, but I like it.”
The Iron God shrugged, slightly shaking the ground under his feet. ”If it works, it works. But stabbing fish isn’t all there is to do with something like that.”
Without so much as a warning, the gigantic finger snapped down, raising an abrupt gust of wind that pushed the woman towards the ground. At once, the boar raised its tusks from the river and rushed towards her as an avalanche of hair and foul temper.
”Catch.”
The surprised Hermes suddenly drew an eager face. With a boom the woman suddenly turned into a flash of white, a puff of cloud barely hanging onto her hair as she curved widely around the boar and suddenly slammed into its side. Her arms wrapped around the pig in an embrace, with her fists holding the spear in such a way as to lock the hug, “I caught-”
Her voice was drowned out by the irate hog’s grunting as it thrashed and spun in circles, futilely trying to dislodge the persistent clasp. It finally could think of no better way than dropping to a side, propelling its considerable bulk into a roll and soliciting a yelp from Hermes, the woman quickly letting go. The mortal zipped back to where she had accidentally lost her fish and scooped it up. An anxious Poppler circling her with concerned pops and crackles.
“I don’t think he liked it,” Hermes brushed some dirt off her half eaten fish and began to pick at its shredded pink flesh, clearly doing her best to ignore the purple bruise marks that were starting to appear on her arms.
”On the contrary, he’s not done yet.” Narzhak replied, holding back the angrily huffing boar with a pillar-like fingertip. Odd way to use a spear, he thought, but it did work for a moment. He growled something inarticulate, and the hog stopped pushing, trotting back to the river with an annoyed shake of its head.
”That wasn’t stabbing fish, it’s true, but I think you get it was a bad idea. Chokeholds don’t work with those heavier than you.” The sloppiness of his siblings was almost comical. Who gave someone a decent spear without teaching her to use it? And who was “someone”, anyway?
”Who are you, anyway?” The path between mind and mouth could use a shortcut now and then.
Having worked the fish down to the spine, the nauseated Hermes finally looked up at the Iron God and gave a fishy grin, her cloudling companion resting on top of her head “I’m Hermes.”
”And what’s that?”
Hermes looked up without moving her head, “Poppler?” She pointed at the cloudling, the small puff of cloud popping in response.
Narzhak considered letting the boar loose again, but curiosity won out over irritation. ”No, you. What’s a Hermes?”
“Oh!” Hermes paused in thought, “well it's my name, I'm a Dreamer.”
”Dreamer, ghrm? It shows.” Dreams, sleep… Wasn’t that K’nell? The Iron God did not recall much of him, but if this was a sign of his grasp on the waking world, he was worse off than he had thought. ”If you’re going to stay awake much longer, you’d better learn how to handle that bonestick. When something’s too big to choke, you stab. Go for the eye, or if you’d rather the leg, that works too. The best thing is still to have something heavier to hit with, but lacking that…”
He cast a glance about himself, only to remember that all the heavier things that had been there were now rooting for edible plants some miles away. ”Don’t turn your back on things, either. Most of them will be just waiting for that.”
Hermes furrowed her brow, “but why?”
Narzhak swayed his head, surprised that she even asked such a question. ”That’s how things work. You’re out for yourself, and it’s the same for everyone. You’re fortunate no one had got you yet, probably just because there’s not a lot of us about.” He gestured to the still mostly empty fields. ”It won’t be that way forever, so you’d better learn to be sharp. Hit first when you can, avoid and hit back when you can’t. You’ve got speed and something to strike with, all you need” he tapped one finger against another - ”is the attitude.”
“But,” Hermes seemed confused, “how do I know when to hit?”
”Easy. You always hit.” The god motioned at the boar, who had clearly had enough of the day’s exertions and was lazily sprawled on the grass. ”Like him. That way, you’ll never be wrong.” He paused, then added, ”Unless the other one is plenty bigger than you. Then you wait for an opening.”
“What if they want to be friends?” Hermes pushed, “I’ve only met friends and I don’t want to hit my friends.”
”Friends?” Narzhak scratched his head. She might not have been entirely wrong, but he couldn’t be sure. ”Friends are the ones who hit other people with you. Do your friends and you strike together?”
“I think,” Hermes slowly sat herself down on the ground, waving her hands through the grass, “we have fished together, and we ate food together, and you and I are talking together.”
She paused, “are we friends?”
The scraping stopped for an instant, then resumed. ”Maybe. Eating and talking isn’t enough. Drinking is something else, but the really important part is the hitting one.”
He reached a hand down to the earth, and a glistening metallic stream surged up from the soil. It twisted, ribbonlike, into the colossal palm, which disappeared back up high. When it moved down again, something heavy thumped down before Hermes causing the relatively small human to jump backwards, her hair letting out a stream of concerned pops.
At her feet lay an iron club of simple, though intimidating design. A light haft abruptly widened into a hefty cylindrical head, studded with small, sharp spikes. Unseen by any, but dimly guessed as an unplaceable sense of wrongness, a spirit of joyous slaughter had been forged into it.
”Now we are, or we’ll be when you smash something with this. Then you can be sure of it.”
Hermes finagled a loop in the back of her shirt and slid her spear through safely before leaning down for the club. She hefted it over her shoulder, and despite her stance, her face betrayed nervousness, “Will- uh- will you smash with me?”
The god nodded heavily. ”Anytime.” He shifted a foot, almost imperceptibly to himself, but enough to prod the resting boar’s flank. ”Find us something.”
The hog stood up with almost visible reluctance and trotted off, sniffing the ground. Soon, it had disappeared behind a hill, and not long after that its loud squealing rang out.
With a brief ”Over there” and a single step, Narzhak was over the elevation, where the beast, content with the role it had played, had settled down again. Not far below it, the ground was trembling slightly, betraying a subterranean presence.
The Iron God thrust a finger into the soil, heedless of the clumps of soil sent flying by the considerable impact. For some moments, he seemed to be searching for something with slight movements, only to finally withdraw it with a growl. Stubbornly clinging to its tip by its fearsome jaws was the bulky head of a rock-worm.
“What is that!” Hermes looked on with saucer wide eyes.
”A worm,” Narzhak answered almost nonchalantly, ”Now smash it!”
“I don't think I can eat all of it,” She said while raising her new mace in hesitation.
”What's that about eating?” The god stopped riling the worm for a moment as he glanced at her, ”Leftovers always take care of themselves. What matters is making them stop moving.”
“I guess I did only promise about the fish and if you say it's okay,” She took a few steps forward. Sucking in a breath there was a loud sonic boom as she suddenly turned into a blur, zipping past Narzhak and the worm, a loud ribble of power clapping off the worm as the unseen mace connected.
Tatters of pallid flesh and tubular entrails scattered from the blow like a flock of startled birds, raining onto the grass well beyond the hilltop. A faint, foul smell of burning spread through the air. The creature writhed, its spasms only driving it to clench its teeth further around the iron finger as its underside began to twitch and flail as though animated with a life of its own. As it flailed, shreds of quivering wormflesh breaking loose to expose the gaping wound in its body, what had been its head snapped loose, hideously clinging to the bait as the rest of it spasmed blindly on the ground.
”Good going!” Narzhak rumbled enthusiastically, slamming the still-living worm head into the ground. ”Finish it!” The blur returned and quickly laid the rest of the worm to rest with a craterous smash. Hermes paused, her shoulders heaving as she sucked in a few breaths, all around her flesh and gravel rained down. She let the mace clutter to the ground before looking up at Narzhak, “does this mean we are friends, now?”
The Iron God flicked the remains of the worm away from his finger. ”Yes.” If there was a mouth behind his helmet, it broke into a savage grin. ”It’s nice, isn’t it?”
Hermes nodded, a slight grin on her face, “I think I like it.”
“Just-” She started, “-what if that worm wanted to be my friend?”
A dismissive wave from an immense hand made the grass quiver under a sudden breeze. ”You didn’t know that, but you did know I wanted to. Always mind which way is the safest.”
“I think I get it,” Hermes nodded before zipping up to Narzhak’s enormous helmeted head. She looked at his cheek -- if it could be so called -- sternly before pressing a finger on the surprisingly warm metal, “and now we are friends.”
The metallic surface quivered, as though it were abruptly melting, and a thin, dull spike drew up and extended from it. It prodded Hermes’ cheek in turn before fusing back into the blank plate.
”We are. Don’t forget the mace.”
Poppler zipped off from a pool that had collected in a crevice in the ground and straight into Hermes’ hair as she hefted the mace back over her shoulder. She gave a wide cheshire smile to her new friend, and Poppler gave a low pop crackle, and then all at once they were gone into a blur.
Narzhak is surveying the grasslands in southern Kirronland. He thinks they’re dull and creates wild boars to mess them up a bit; the first one to come into being tags along with him. Hermes comes across them, has a scuffle with the boar, then she and Narzhak chat about violence, friendship and other cheerful matters. He tells her that to really be friends with someone she needs to kill something with them, and gives her a mace that - unbeknownst to her - makes its wielder enjoy bloodshed a little too much. Straight away, they seal their friendship by beating the stuffing out of an innocent worm. After the obligatory poking ritual, they go their separate ways.
Narzhak
Starting: 3 MP 15 FP
2 FP to create a sizeable population of wild boars 0 MP (discounted from 1 by War portfolio) to forge a mace of murderous exultation
The river lord, a mere ant compared to the king of strife and steel, made his most courteous bow in the direction of the colossus.
”It could be worse.” Narzhak had finally stopped perfunctorily scratching his head, and gazed over the newly verdant landscape surrounding them. ”There’s these pebbles that keep falling on my head, but that blast was worth it.” He broke into a fit of cackling, recouping himself somewhat faster than the previous time. ”Pity I was not up there to see what’s the matter. There was also that river full of someone’s blood that sprang up on my doorstep. That wouldn’t happen to be one of yours?” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder, inasmuch as could be seen, as he spoke.
The snake let out a sigh. “No, I believe myself to be above creating such appalling excuses for rivers,” he said sourly. Remembering to check his attitude, he made an attempt to remove the bitterness in his voice. “Say, what brings you down to this part of the country? My word, had I known there more of my siblings would come, i would have brought more wine!” He chuckled cordially.
A wave from a gigantic hand raised a sudden gust of wind. ”Don’t mind that, I’m just surveying the grounds. I feel there will be all the time in the world to sit in a cavern, and it’s best to take stock of things while they’re still in motion. A good moment to do my part, too.” Narzhak’s eyes glinted asked as he lowered his head to one side. ”What’s this wine you speak of?” he added as a perceivable afterthought.
“Oh, ‘tis but a mere hobby of mine, if you will. A drink of most exquisite flavour - a drink with the power to even influence the mind’s control of the form, even our divine minds.” He tapped his chin pensively. “I actually have yet to test the drink on a mortal subject. I suppose I ought to do that someday… But yes, wine!” He lowered himself down and rummaged through his picnic basket, which thankfully had not been swept away by the natural forces awoken by Narzhak’s approach. He pulled out a small bottle, which he handed to Narzhak. It was likely the size of a speck to him - a miniature of a tiny candy.
Two fingers that could have well passed for hilltops descended from above to grasp the container with careful, almost mechanical accuracy, before disappearing in the blue yonder along with it. What transpired up there was indistinguishable from the ground, but a satisfied rumbling betrayed that the liquor had reached its destination. ”Not bad,” the Iron God remarked as the tip of his hand was lowered once again, this time holding a fully emptied bottle whose mouth was stained with some sort of thick black grime, ”But it’d be even better if it was stronger. I could do something about that. You have a spare one?
The snake shook his head apologetically. “I fear that was all I brought. Again, had I known that we would have been graced with your company, I would naturally have brought more.” Shengshi shot the newly sprouted sugarcane a look. “Although…” He slithered over and picked a few reeds.
“Humour me for a moment, please. I may have an idea.”
A conspicuous twisting of the shadows on the ground reflected Narzhak’s nod. ”Go ahead.”
The snake proceeded to carve a hole for brewing. He filled it with water and the crushed up reeds, followed finally by a handful of Sleeper’s Sand yeast from a sack. He stirred the waters to let the yeast breathe deep in the surrounding air as it ate its fill of sugars and protein. This process had become nearly second nature to him - a ritual of sorts. The brewing process, spurred on by divine influence, was almost instant, producing a liquid that gave off the familiar stabbing scent. He filled the bottle Narzhak had given him and filled a cup for himself. He handed the bottle to Narzhak and raised his own cup.
“This should be much stronger, dearest brother.”
Once again, the bottle rose beyond sight, and grumbling followed. This time, however, its tone was almost flat. ”Grhm. Doesn’t taste that different to me.” The hand holding the empty flask began to move downwards, but stopped midway. ”I think I’ve got something. Hold this.” The giant deposited the speck of glass on the ground before moving some long steps along the river’s course. Then his fist darted up with tremendous speed, and shot in a groundward arc with a tremendous roar.
The blow rang out like a fragment of Orvus’ moon striking the surface, waters rising in impossibly high waves as grass, bushes, fish and other river-dwellers were sent flying for miles around. Clumps of soil were still raining down as Narzhak clambered around the gulch he had dug himself into, smoothing its walls and edges with his hands. Slowly at first, but steadily growing faster and broader, glinting grey stains spread over the earthy cliffs as iron seeped out from them and spread from the behemoth’s claws, layering itself in a smooth, polished coating.
Once the pit was fully covered in metal, Narzhak hauled himself out of it, and lightly stomped down near its mouth. Narrow, deceptively deep cracks spread around its edges, running wide in an almost perfectly circular web, and the glare of welling molten rock soon seeped out from them. The air began to ripple as the gulch’s plated walls heated up.
Retracing his steps to the river, the god stabbed a single finger into the ground and dragged it back, gouging a trench between it and his handiwork. Water poured down the improvised channel, steaming and bubbling as it filled the incandescent basin.
Narzhak took a step back with a satisfied grunt. ”Heat. That always improves things. Try it here.”
Shengshi found himself completely dumbstruck by the spectacle that had just played out before his eyes. It took perhaps a moment too long for him to realise the blast had uprooted the first two hundred metres of forest and shrublands that Phystene and he had just spent half a day making. Furthermore, he realised that the blastwave had sent half the fish in his rivers, along with at least several dozen earthworths, flying into the sea. As such, the god struggled desperately to keep a calm demeanour.
“I assure you, deeeeeaaarest brother of mine. I am -TRULY- grateful for the effort, but there was absolutely. No. Need. To go all this way. A kettle and a fire would have been more than fine.” His voice so bitter that it could have been mistaken for poison. The snake jumped into the river and swam with godlike speed over to the hole.
“So, may I ask, how do you propose we use this?” he said sourly.
If even Narzhak did notice his sibling’s less than pleased tone, its import clearly sailed past his thickly-armoured head. ”When you did your wine-making thing in cold water, it wasn’t strong enough. Now, if you do it in hot ones…” he dipped a fingertip into the rapidly filling rift, and watched amusedly as water drops sizzled on it as it withdrew, ”...I have a feeling it’s going to be much better. If it works, there’ll be enough of the thing not just for us, but the rest of the family, and mortals too. Remind me, I’ll need to do something like this down in the Pit.” he added pensively.
Another dipped finger, and the iron skin was left sizzling with incandescence. ”Should be about ready.”
Shengshi gave the pit a skeptical look. “I think this cauldron is, well, a little big, but we’ll see…” He gave a compliant sigh as he waved the water flowing into the pit to the side, infused it with sugarcane and alcohol and let it brew for a few minutes. Once the boat-sized batch was ready, he sent it over the edge into the depths. A moment of silence broken only by the occasional metallic bubbling from below followed. Then there was a violent rocking in the earth below that was promptly followed by a pillar of steam that came rushing upwards through the shaft. Shengshi sighed.
“See? I told you it was too-!”
He suddenly felt indescribably dizzy - so much so, in fact, that he fell backwards and struggled to get back on his tail again. This was a familiar influence.
”No, hear that? That means it’s work-”
The growling voice stopped, followed by a whistling of air being drawn in through uneven fissures. ”Hmmm.” More whistling, and Narzhak’s bulk leaned dangerously forward as he took in the vapour’s novel smell. ”Now this…” His head swayed lightly in contentment. ”This is good.”
The snake called some freshwater to himself and used it to quickly purge his body of the alcohol. He shortly thereafter got back to his tail and looked down into the pit, both very frightened and very intrigued.
“Alright, I will admit…” He took a deep breath. “I had my doubts, but in the end, your method proved to yield results. I respect that, dearest brother.” He nodded at the tipsy colossus. “However, one problem remains - what should we do after the vapours disappear?”
Narzhak righted himself and shook away the fumes from his head, quaking the soil in the process as well. ”Simple. We don’t let them disappear.” He lifted a hand before his eyes, as though measuring some invisible shape. ”If we put something over it to collect them…”
“A smaller size this time, thank you!” Shengshi added curtly. “I’d rather not make a tenth of the continent into a wine factory. At least, not right away...” Shengshi drew up some dimensions in the iron sand left over from the blast earlier.
“Would you be a dear and grab me a handful of molten iron from the bottom of the pit, please?”
An amused snort came in reply. ”Aren’t you the one who likes to dive? Watch and learn.”
With a step, the titan floundered into the bubbling waters, making them churn even further. The jagged crown of his head was the only part of him that remained visible as the shuffled through waves and intoxicating steam, conspicuously sinking from time to time, and after a time decidedly longer than it ought to have taken a vast claw emerged from the small tempest. Cupped in it was a small lake of dense, heavy fluid that breathed with sweltering heat.
Shengshi once again let out a sigh. Just be grateful, he thought to himself. He proceeded to bend some of the molten metal into a cauldron, another bit of it into a lid with a hole on the top, and a pipe that extended upwards and then downwards diagonally. He put the three parts together until they resembled a strange, big-bottomed vase with a severely broken neck.
“Now to light a fire and add the wine…” He quickly realised it might be better to swap the firewood for hot metal and just used some from the molten lake. Even better, he thought, was to trap the heat inside this metal, so that this contraption would never need firewood! Thus, he cast an enchantment upon the contraption - one that let him adjust the temperature with his will, and with no need for fuel. He then added the wine into the cauldron and put a flask underneath the end of the diagonal pipe. Sure enough, the vapours condensed along the pipe’s surface and poured down into the flask. After the flask had been filled to the brim, Shengshi took it, sniffed it and nearly retched.
“My word, what have we created?” He took a small sip and nearly cringed to the point of keeling over. He took a deep breath, held it for a moment or two, and exhaled slowly. “We may have created a monster, dear brother.” He offered Narzhak the bottle. For the third time that day, the flask was drained in the unseen heights. And surely, the reaction that followed it was the strongest yet, with a ”Grhum!” that sent a reek of spirits into the breeze.
”I can’t say anything more about the strength, for sure.” The titan’s eyes seemed to flare in a strange way as he lowered the bottle to the ground. ”This is going to kill anyone who’s not us on the spot. Besides, it still tastes…” He paused, slowed in his search for words either by the alcohol or his own lack of eloquence. ”Bland. It’s got a blow, but nothing else. Think you can better that?”
Shengshi, still recovering from the gruesome excuse for a flavour, plucked pensively at his beard with a shaky hand. “I… I could try storing it to see if the flavours develop.” He scratched his head to appear even more pensive. “Though that will take some time, most likely. What I can do for the time being is likely limited to perfecting the mash before the process. That will likely enhance the flavour somewhat.”
Shengshi proceeded to make several batches of the sugarcane wine. He proceeded to distill ten of the batches: Each sample was tasted by the two - the five best were stored on quickly conjured wooden barrels, each crafted from a specific wood type. The five worst were analysed further to find what exactly made them different from the ones stored in barrels.
“I think… I think I may have an idea as to how to improve the wine…” Shengshi proposed. He proceeded to take a few of the samples and blend them. He sipped the final product and found himself caught by surprise.
“Narzhak, my brother… Taste this!” Almost forcefully, the snake thrust a cup of the stuff in the colossus’ direction.
Up it went, and when it returned, it was accompanied by a contented metallic grinding.
”We’ve got it!” The joyous voice, comparable to the sound of an avalanche, and the smell it carried made the sparse surviving stalks of grass nearby droop to the earth in defeat. ”A backbone and a taste! And what if we put more different things in it? A host of flavours, it’d be.”
The snake licked his lips with a forked tongue. “All the things one could mix this with… My dear brother, we may have stumbled upon a goldmine of opportunities here!” Shengshi had another cup of the stuff and savoured the flavours.
“This reminds me of a poem of mine - one that I wrote a long time ago.” He cleared his throat.
”Parted by mountains; The two rivers meet again; United, they are strong.”
He bowed to the invisible audience. “Like the rivers unite stronger, so the flavours of different batches cooperate to pleasure the tongue!” He filled yet another cup and handed it to Narzhak. “This warrants another toast!”
”Done. We drink!” With this jarringly prosaic exclamation, the cup was borne away and emptied. The shrill scratching that indicated the Iron God was pondering something followed. ”You said this affects the mind and body. I’m not me if I don’t feel that, but I think there’s more to be done with that than we know now.”
Narzhak gathered up some of the slag he had still been nonchalantly holding in his other hand, and with an agility marvellous given the size of his fingers and the quantity he had drunken he fashioned a small simulacrum of Shengshi’s crucible. ”I’ll have to remember how this is done. There’s people back down home who’ll need to try it. And more.”
Shengshi, now under a considerable influence, waved his hand dismissively. “Of course, of course! Be my guest! Oh, by the way, could you be a… A dear ‘n put this on my ship, just over there?” He pointed first at the distillery, then at his ship, which from his position actually was not visible. To Narzhak, however, he saw clearly a small, golden dot floating in the middle of the Giant’s Bath like a shiny miniature duckling.
”That way? It will be easier if we just…” the colossal god shook the molten iron away from his hand, lifted the original contraption in it and trudged directly into the river. ”...followed the flow.”
For anyone else, wading a flow of water such as that would have been a more than daunting task, but Narzhak seemed undeterred as he made his way upstream, more or less large parts of him alternately disappearing under the waves. Before long, an immense arm stretched out to deposit the distillery onto Shenghi’s vessel, which rocked perilously but held its balance by some miracle.
The snake, who at this point was miles away, snapped out of his daze and hopped into the closest river. After a quick swim to get the alcohol out of his system, he arrived at the Giant’s Bath and boarded his ship. There, he found the distillery on the middle of the deck, somewhat bend after thinking its metallic body could somehow outmatch god-infused mahogany planks. Shengshi looked up at the titan, or made an attempt, anyway.
“Thank you so much! Truly lovely to have so many strong siblings around. Say, what are your plans now, then?”
”This place still looks flat. Dull. There’s plenty of room for improvement, and that’s what we’re here for.” Narzhak made a sweeping gesture towards the horizon, although all that could be seen from their position was water. ”And I need to find out what’s it with these falling stones. They’ll be a nuisance if this carries on, if a funny one.” He stopped to think for a moment, then added, ”And those things I made to manage the Pit. I’ll wager they still can’t even talk. There’s no time to idle for us now, I’ll say.”
The snake nodded weakly, finding himself unable to relate to most of what the giant said. He still kept a smile on his lips, however, and waved his hands enthusiastically.
“Well, I wish you the best of luck in those endeavours. Until we meet again! Oh, and Narzhak…” The snake paused. “Please do not make an attempt to break the continent in half the next time you make something, alright?”
A rumbling laugh bubbled up from below the waters. ”Don’t fret. When I want to break something in half, I don’t just attempt it. Hrah!” And, still gurgling to himself in congratulation for what he found to be an extremely funny joke, Narzhak turned about and began to wade back towards the shore, raising dizzying waves as he went.
The snake shook his head with a smiling sigh and went up to his chambres. He had to rest.
Taking off from the last post, Shenghi and Narzhak briefly exchange pleasantries, then the topic quickly turns to wine. Narzhak thinks that what Shengshi’s got isn’t anywhere strong enough, even if made with sugar cane added to it, and decides that alcoholic drinks are better if you boil them. True to form, he smashes a giant gulch into the ground, razing a few miles of woodland, plates it with iron and heats it with magma vents to serve as a makeshift cauldron. Shengshi is not amused.
Boiling the brew in there doesn’t make it any better, but the alcoholic vapours from it nearly knock the two out. After some brainstorming, Shengshi figures out how to exploit this and builds a distillery. He and Narzhak proceed to get hammered on successful and unsuccessful attempts, eventually concocting rum and discovering how to produce liquors in general.
However, duty calls, and after some toasting the relatively more sober Narzhak sends Shengshi and ship on their way, takes a model of the distillery and wanders off to wreak some more havoc by fixing Galbar’s overabundance of “room for improvement”.
Might:
Shengshi: 1 Might on making a distillery and the first hard liquour, rum. (3/5 towards Brewing Portfolio.)
Narzhak: 5 Freepoints total on creating the imaginatively named Cauldron, heating and all. (5/5 towards Earthquakes Portfolio.) 2 Might on acquiring the Ironmonger ability, which allows Narzhak to easily draw forth iron (but not other metals) from the soil, provided enough is nearby, and fashion it into various forms, although anything other than weapons tends to be subpar replicas of existing objects.
Not fast enough. The crystal had climbed up into the vacuous expanse between the palace and the world below - or above? - swiftly enough, but its flight had slowed dramatically shortly thereafter as it spun, gradually adjusting its trajectory in spite of the considerable mass standing on it. Narzhak watched in annoyance as the far smaller vessels that bore his siblings overtook him. He leaned upon the platform's edge in an attempt to hasten the process, but rapidly drew back when the entirety of it almost flipped over as a result. The oscillation delayed the process some further, and it was only owing to his erstwhile good humour that he was not fuming when he finally began to drift towards the distant watery orb at a more agreeable pace.
Light flared up behind him as he went, but it was soon overshadowed by a form that even he discerned to be large. The great rock sailed silently past him, through the skies and down into the world. Narzhak, however, did not see it strike, for a thought had struck him instead.
Now that is a fine way to travel. I should...
He stomped down upon his airborne perch, shaking it perilously. A sanguine light flared up within the crystal's form, and all of a sudden it was flying faster. Far faster. Faster even than the large rock; had it not already shattered against the waves, he would have overtaken it. Sparks flew around his feet, then flames engulfed the platform's nether side, trailing behind its edges every bit as bright as a comet's tail. The ground came ever closer, yet the godly meteor showed no sign of slowing. The motion was force in its purest form; if he but wished, he could shatter the entire globe in one blow-
The ground?
Narzhak peered down through the fiery curtain his vehicle was leaving behind itself. Indeed, where he could have sworn a few moments before had been nothing but boundless waters now lay a harsh, rocky land. His eyes widened in surprise, before shrinking again in savage resolve. There was no better solution for unexpected complications than overwhelming force.
"MAKE WAY!" With a howling bellow whose tail was lost in the roaring of fire and air, the second great projectile to mark Galbar's surface streaked down in a veritable pillar of light and crashed into the soil. The impact reverberated through the landmass, toppling rocks before engulfing them in a tide of dust ad debris, and leapt out into the ocean, raising immense, unnaturally spreading waves that churned and spluttered in monstrous whirlpools for miles beyond the coastlines. Vast cracks and fissures that could have swallowed a mountain radiated from the blow, splitting the ground into tatters that met only in unknown deeps.
Amidst the havoc he had wrought, Narzhak did not stop. Planted firmly upon the crystal, whose supernal matter had weathered the collision, he pressed ever downward, digging viciously into the groaning earth. Teeth of stone rose and crumbled around him, displaced by the implacable force. For an instant, all seemed still as the world and the god matched their wills and brawn against each other. Then the world gave way, and Narzhak plummeted down again, slicing through the ground as though it had been thin air. And perhaps it truly was; he could not be certain if he was indeed burrowing through yielding earth or some impalpable darkness that closed upon him from all sides. As long as he moved still, it did not matter.
Yet, even that movement came to an end, as all things must. He was now certain this was earth around him, for he could only move with great effort, feeling his limbs struggling against nigh-immovable weights.
It could only mean he was deep enough.
"Shatter." The bloody light flared up again, and in an eruption so deafening that it might well have been silent the crystal burst open. All was stillness, light and shadow; then Narzhak found himself standing in a chamber that stretched beyond even his divine sight. Somewhere far away, he could feel it but dimly, the fragments of his vehicle were digging through the immense cavern's walls, riddling it with innumerable passageways, great and small. Where they would reach was a mystery to him. But then, there were more pressing matters to attend to.
Narzhak splayed his fingers, cracking their stiffness after the long flight, stretched his arms, and, carving treads in the stone with his steps as he descended from the plateau he had alighted upon, set to work.
The ground was plain and easy to tread, and that did not please him. He dug his claws into the stone, opening pits, crevices and treacherous maws. He smote it with his fist, and basins awned open; and he marvelled as molten rock surged up from somewhere far beneath to fill them. He wrought tall hills and forbidding cliffs, and mountains like blades. Under his hand, pillars rose up as grim sentinels of his realm. Loose stones were gathered into towers and strongholds that no siege could breach; some he left unfinished, others he cracked open with the flick of a finger. His domain was that of ruin; a Pit of Trials that none but the mightiest could surpass.
The air was clear and easy to breathe, and that did not please him. He raised his hands, and the final sparks of the crystal’s eruption blazed up again in scorching flames that drifted overhead like birds of prey. Magma spouted from its lakes, rising in writhing orbs that hovered like unborn gods. He stomped down, and tremors coursed through the earth, never to fully fade again.
The land was barren, with nothing to beset a wary traveller, and this did not please him. His eyes flared, and through the iron he breathed out clouds of living anger. They settled down upon the soil, the mountains, the hovering orbs, and wherever they touched cruel life sprang up, deadly and invisible to the eye. Tunnels and caverns blossomed with dry, sooty growths that sickened the body. Dungeons were coated in deceptive lichens that corroded any who touched them. Worms with heads of iron gnawed their way through the rock, ready to burst to the surface and sink their daggerlike fangs into unsuspecting prey. Beasts with hides of hardy onyx stalked the wastes on spindly limbs, their frames little more than great mouths ringed with teeth. Strange drifting things hid among the clouds of fire and magma, uncaring of the heat, reaching down with hooked tendrils to snatch up those blinded by the infernal spectacle.
Narzhak saw his handiwork, and he was pleased. But one thing was still missing. It was to be the culmination of all his efforts, without which all would have been for naught.
He brought up his hands to the very spot whence he had shorn away a scrap of his armour, drove his fingers into the opening between two plates, and slowly, agonizingly pried them open. The flesh beneath barely looked like flesh at all - a murky grey mass, heaving and spluttering like a disturbed swamp. He reached in and tore out a chunk, oozing with dense black fluid and reeking of battlefields and manifold graves. With nary a wince, he snapped his iron skin back into shape. His hands danced around their prize as he gave it form.
Iron bone, torn flesh, hungry blood. The amorphous hulk hardened, grew lean, sinewy. An elongated, powerful body. Six strong limbs that bent and twisted every way, so that nothing could escape them. Fingers that were fine tools to craft, jagged claws to tear and tireless feet to walk, all together. A blunt, robust head with eyes no darkness could blind, a mouth to devour all things that lived, a neck that could follow any sight in all its angles. And within its plates of hardened grey skin, vitals so entrenched and fortified that no single blow could break them.
Narzhak lifted the fearsome, though yet lifeless form to his eyes, and breathed undying fury into it. It sprang up almost immediately, clawing and gnashing at the hand that held it. Its frenzy did not last long, for anon it was sailing through the air, flung away with a single smooth, careful motion. The thing writhed still as it struck the ground, spewing black blood to all sides. Far more blood than it should have contained. The dark flood grew, as a pond, a lake, a sea. Something stirred below its surface, sending ripples through the oily tide. A hand with jagged talons rose from it, then another, another, another. Hundreds, thousands of clutches grasped for air, followed by arms, then heads, then the horrors’ entire bodies. Each of them was its progenitor’s likeness. Some larger, others smaller; some walked on two legs, others on four, others on all six; and all of them were just as savage. The earth had scarcely dried up under the last one’s feet as they set upon each other, ripping, biting and striking, and ichor once again flowed in rivers.
The Iron God’s gaze shifted from a satisfied one, to surprised, to irritated. His offspring were a force for sure, but a force without cohesion was worthless.
"F O R M R A N K S !"
The disorderly horde froze as one at the shattering peals of the voice from above. In silence, they hastily disentangled themselves from each other and crept in place to assume their positions in an unspoken order, barely daring lick their wounds with their long, tentacular black tongues.
"O B E Y"
The beasts shrank back, as if under the blow of an invisible lash.
”C O M M A N D"
Blank eyes turned to each other in uncertainty. The creatures glanced at their fellows, then at themselves; some began to point at those near them. Gradually, circles gathered around the largest of their number, who gestured vaguely at their newfound subordinates.
Not ideal, but this would have to do for now. Though Narzhak was loath to admit it, these exertions had left him feeling rather drained. He motioned dismissively at his host, and the beings scurried off to the nearest wall, crawling their way up to the cavern mouths with the agility of spiders.
The giant retraced his steps to the elevation he had first found himself standing on. With some effort, he climbed its side. One foot was on the edge, then another-
Narzhak clambered out of the crater his fall had left in the nameless land. The earth around him still bore the scars of his arrival, and it probably would forever. A scar on the world. Why not? Spiderwebs of fathomless rifts spread to all sides, interspersed with mounds of rubble. Some of the debris had never reached the ground again, and remained suspended in midair in a startlingly unnatural sight. Here and there, boulders glowed with residual sanguine light. Not bad for a beginning.
As he rose to his feet, something clattered upon his head. He looked up, but could not see anything out of place - the sunlight was still there, as was the blue of the sky.
With a monumental shrug, Narzhak trudged off to see what had become of the world, every step shaking the ground a little.
A god’s got to be a lot of things in today’s economy.
Narzhak is struggling to make his crystal go down faster, with little success at first. When he seen Orvus’ asteroid zip by, though, he thinks that if a rock can do it, so can he, and makes himself go very fast indeed. However, he wasn’t counting on Kirron’s continent being there to greet him on arrival, and slams into it so hard that he does a number of things (7 FP spent on creating a gateway with some side-effects):
break space, creating a connection between the spot where he landed and somewhere deep below the surface; create a craggy wasteland with floating and glowing rocks, provisionally named the World Scar, which acts as the upper half of said connection; rock half the world with a quake.
Having somehow ended up far under Galbar, he makes his crystal explode, resulting in a huge cavern. Since he doesn’t like anyone having it too easy, he decorates it with various deadly perils, from hostile landmarks to permanent earthquakes and a multitude of sprouts and creatures, all of them very nasty (8 FP spent on creating the Pit of Trials; 4 FP on seeding it with an ecosystem; 1 FP for a lasting, erratic tremor).
Not satisfied, he makes himself some slightly more intelligent servants (4 MP spent on a sentient species; see below for some particulars). They immediately start doing what you’d expect the creations of a war god to do, so Narzhak hammers the concept of hierarchy into their thick skulls (1 MP spent). It doesn’t do much, since they can’t communicate properly and aren’t very bright, but at least they’re not going to wipe themselves out until he figures out how to properly order them about.
The best approximation is probably that they straddle the line between exceptional unintelligent beings and regular sapient ones. They’re definitely sentient, but largely lack complex thoughts, imaginations and an ability to innovate. Intelligence-wise, they’re closer to great apes than humans, though with a different mindset. They do have a decent memory, and can process abstract concepts and complex systems, provided someone teaches them and little independent thinking is needed.
Physically, there’s not much to make them extraordinary, except for strength and aptitude for combat that comes from them being Narzhak’s creations.
As with all life, they're bound to their sphere of origin, and can't reproduce or thrive outside it.
Leaving the creatures to their own devices for now, Narzhak pops back up aboveground. He gets hit on the head by a fragment of Asceal’s Furnace, but, undeterred, goes for a stroll.
Between the elation of movement and the one he sought being but a crumb of flesh near him, it was a marvel Narzhak ground to a halt in time to avoid condemning Chopstick to the same fate as their ruinous brother, albeit one facilitated in no small part by Ashalla's significantly more visible form close by acting as a warning. The fire in his lower right eye narrowed to a monolithic ember as he sharpened his sight to discern what his quarry was doing. It then almost immediately blazed up with a roar as he saw the minuscule goddess defiantly hold up her fists at him. The giant's entire vast body began to quake, sending shudders through the soil at his feet, before he cast back his head and flooded the chamber with a new access of growling cachinnations. To think that this little wretch would stand against him! Him, the mightiest of those that heeded the Architect's summons! The mightiest warrior - warrior? Yes, that sounded right.
As this new reflection on his nature made the cackling subside, Narzhak felt an odd sense of respect for the skewer-eyed challenger stir in his cavernous entrails. For all the absurdity of her threat, she did not recoil even before one as great as him, and that was well worth something. He held up a hand to stop, more than anything else, the last cackles welling up from his throat and tried to remember why he had come hither to begin with. "Hrrah, hah, ah... Are you looking for..." Only then did he notice that Chopstick was, in fact, not looking for anything at all. Maybe a scuffle, but he found himself disinclined to stamp out a perfectly functional fighting spirit that could be saved for someone else. His question tapered to a disappointed grunt.
Nevertheless, he would not delay his duties in the world for nothing. The Iron God brought up two fingers to one of the jutting ridges in his armour and carefully snapped a scrap from its edge. With imperceptible motions, he rapidly set to work shaping it. A task of such precision would have seemed impossible for the likes of him - the fragment was like a grain of dust between the walls of palaces - yet, somehow, it seemed to him as though nothing could have been simpler. In mere moments, the formless chip of metal was moulded into a tolerable approximation of a cleaver, albeit one that strongly resembled a scimitar and was likely better suited for mutilation than any form of cookery.
Balancing his creation on the tip of a claw, Narzhak lowered it towards the ground, slowly, but not cautiously enough to prevent it from sliding down and whistling to the ground dangerously close to Chopstick's feet. "A spare one. If you ever need to cut the whole hand." He rumbled again at the memory of the fiendish tendril trailing away from the rest of the monstrous body. "Far from the sea, perhaps. Blood is that much sweeter if you spill it yourself" he added, turning his head to face Ashalla. Although he had never tasted any sort of blood himself, the fact seemed self-evident, and he would have been remiss to leave the only one of their number who had spoken reason without a word of sound advice for the ages to come.
The titan drew himself up to his full height. "Haste now, there's work to be done. Seek me in the depths if you ever have need." With this curt farewell, he trudged forward, propelling his bulk over Chopstick's head in a single step. The expectant crystals were not far away; it did not take him long to find the only one large enough to support him, and he clambered onto it without a moment's hesitation. As he was borne upwards, first slowly, then steadily faster and faster, Narzhak raised a hand in a final salute to the Architect, which promptly transitioned into imperiously signalling for the gleaming platform to move faster. For a moment, his shadow covered the sight of Galbar overhead; then, he was gone.
After narrowly avoiding stepping on Choppy too, Narzhak counts her belligerence among the many hilarious things he's seen today, but has to admit to himself that he likes her attitude. Not to be outdone by Ashalla finding the cleaver before him, he fashions a second one for Choppy on the spot, though it shows that he doesn't know what a cleaver is really supposed to be for. He then invites both goddesses to drop by wherever he sets up store if they ever feel the need to visit an authentic inhospitable hellhole, waves the Architect goodbye and takes off for Galbar.
For long, Narzhak's booming laughter did not cease, rolling over the chaos below him like the rumbling of a storm. When the initial access of hilarity from the mere fact that he was had passed, he looked down upon all the minuscule creatures that scrambled at his feet, and what he saw was so comical that it made his throat boil with renewed mirth. Here, that scampering thing with chopstick eyes - what was a chopstick? He surmised it was what her eyes were made of - lopped off the Demon's appendage in passing before colliding with a gaggle of other beasts in a flurry of scratching and cursing. Amusing as that was, he had to admire how fast she was with that knife. Better yet was the scene of the elder one rebuking that insolent shade. What sort of question was "why"? They were there - he was there, and it was all that mattered.
What made him outright bellow out in merriment, though, was Seihdhara being battered to the ground in punishment for her sacrilege (sacrilege was the word for this, yes!). This was how one should deal with disorderly underlings! Few words and a strong hand. Where before then Narzhak had simply felt indebted to the Architect for allowing him into a world worthy of that name, he now found growing within himself genuine respect for the old god. Serving one such as him was certainly not going to be a burden. Serving, indeed. He was here for that.
These thoughts left him in such a contented state that even when that other fiery runt, evidently not having learned his fellow's lesson, shouted his own hollow defiance. Narzhak lazily shifted a foot, which ought to have been enough to raise a wave to douse a hundred ones such as Sartravius. But, unexpectedly, it was not. Puzzled, he stomped down with greater force, his laughter finally abating as the new sense of confusion took its place. Still nothing. It was only after finally standing still for an instant that he noticed a new force drawing the fluid away from where he stood, and his bemused gaze followed the current as it coalesced and spoke the first sensible words he had heard from this whole rabble.
"Create, yes. That's a fine thought" he mused, ponderously swaying his head. Now that he thought of it, he had always known that his purpose was creation. He knew something! It struck him then, drawing out another distant peal of laughter. He knew, because someone had told him what he needed to know. This truly was the best of all worlds.
Slowly, heavily, he moved one step, then another, sending tremors through the ground. Having a body was easier than he thought. Within each twinge of his flesh, he could feel a gleeful urge to take something, anything, into his hands and crush it, snap it, let his strength flow free in all its terrible immensity. With that strength, he could shatter anything, yet he could also rein it in and wield it as he best pleased, and this gave him an indescribable feeling of power. So absorbed was he in the simple act of slowly shuffling ahead with no particular goal that he failed to notice a figure of ruin and stars kneeling ahead in his path, a shimmering granule from the height of his stature. He did not see it, and for a moment neither did anyone else as an ironclad mass great enough to blot out a forest descended upon it with a dull impact.
Narzhak stopped to consider where he was going. The crystalline monoliths upon which some other divines had already ascended towards the far-off world lay to another side altogether. With a grunt accompanied by a lingering chuckling, he began to cumberously turn about, before another thought gave him pause. Was he forgetting something? He leaned his head to the side, pondering, until it occurred to him that he had not seen the chopstick-eyed little thing recover her cleaver. That, he found, was a terrible omission. To release someone so skilful and eager at swinging blades into any world without a weapon to match would have been unforgivably negligent of anyone, let alone him.
Why him in particular? He was only dimly aware of the answer. It may have been the echoes of an unspoken command radiating from the Architect, or perhaps the mere thought of a bloodied trail of severed fingers that pressed up his throat with new bouts of irrepressible hilarity. Whichever it was, it was good enough for him.
Ever rumbling amusedly to himself, the colossus set off towards where he had last seen the knife and its wielder, his shadow preceding him like a bloody tide upon the waters.
Narzhak keeps cracking up at the sight of everyone falling over and getting smacked around. He only stops - mostly - when he tries to splash Sartravius, but the water doesn't work as it should. He nevertheless agrees with what it has to say and decides to head to work, only to get carried away stretching his new body and end up inadvertently stepping on Orvus (without even noticing it, what a brute). He's then distracted by the fact that Chopsticks doesn't have anything to chop people with, and shuffles off to help her with her missing cleaver.
There had been a time when it did not know thought.
It had drifted - no, hovered, immobile, in the void that was not a void, unaware that there was nothing for it to experience. That the myriad others who hovered alongside it were just as immaterial and incognizant, stillborn larvae of worlds and spirits, universes and minds. They were the sightless stars of a sky without light or darkness, rotting unmourned and unremembered in their dim slumber for a time that transcended eternity.
None of them lamented this, for none knew that there were such things. And that was as it should be.
There had been a time when it did not know.
Now and again, one of them would vanish, crumbling away into a dust even more spectral than its formlessness had been. Sooner or later - what difference did it make? - another would appear to take its place. No one asked whence it came, for it was no one's business, there.
And that was as it should be.
There had been a time-
But that time was over.
Once, It had awoken, and It could sleep no more, for It knew. It knew that It hovered in a sky that was not a sky, for a time that was not time, and It was wroth.
It knew that those who hovered alongside it came and went, and It asked whence and whither. There was no answer, and It was wroth.
The more It knew, the more It grew wroth, for there was nothing to know. And thus, for a time that transcended eternity, It knew nothing but wrath.
Until-
It knew something more. There was a voice, which in that void that was not a void was but an echo, and it called. Suddenly, It knew that It could answer, and so it did. It clawed and scrambled, slid and scampered, up from sheer abysses, down through spinning galleries, across barren expanses. None of this was truly there, but so rich did the emptiness seem after the sky that was not a sky, that ihte fancied it was adorned with all these things, and more.
The echoes of the call loomed ahead, and he hastened towards them. A throng of lesser things was in his way - how small they were! - and he thoughtlessly pushed his way through them, scattering them like handfuls of sand. He did not know for how long the summons would endure, and he was so close now that to be denied now would have been more painful than aeons of impotent anger.
At first, there was naught...
...then, he was. It began with a rippling, a twisting of the air that betrayed a presence. It did not remain bare for long. Pillars of flowing black sludge, thick and malodorous like the rot of a thousand charnel-houses, rose up from the waters, parting them in a cacophony of churning foam. They undulated like the tentacles of some indescribably colossal beast, and began to weave themselves together like cyclopean ropes, coiling into a rough form that disappeared into the shadows overhead. Sturdy legs, long arms, crooked fingers. Masses of purulent flesh sprouted over the carcass, blossoming from a thin dripping sheen to mountainous bulks in a matter of instants. No sooner had this irregular overgrowth come to a rest that its surfaces split all over the giant's form, spraying noxious blood to all sides as jagged plates of iron emerged from the wounds. They clashed and struggled with each other, interlocking along the most unlikely of lines with a loud, shrill grating.
High above, beyond sight and voice, four flames lit up to meet the Architect's all-reaching gaze.
For a moment, all seemed still about the shadowed enormity, except for the fading reverberations of the spasms in its armour. No, not that. It was not an echo, but a low, distant - so distant - rumble coming from within the bulk's indistinct heights. It grew closer, louder, like an avalanche thundering down from the summit, and burst into a tremendous, inarticulate roar. The sheer power of the sound raised up walls of water that crashed down with the strength to shatter cities, and the hall itself seemed to shake for a moment under its violence.
Swiftly, but gradually, the bellowing took shape, the steady rumble reemerging and fusing with it into a simple, unmistakable rhythm. The giant was laughing, a genuine exhilaration pervading his deafening tones even long after he had ceased and only the shadows feebly replied in kind.
And, indeed, he had good cause for joy, for Narzhak lived.
I do agree that, if fraying is indeed a negligible factor most of the time, complexity would not be much of a problem, and many of my concerns about it are alleviated. However, it still seems to me (do correct me if I'm mistaken) that it would have a fairly significant negative impact on a number of the setting's features.
Take, for example, undead. Even if it only manifests after a very extended timespan soul decay would inevitably affect all of them, as there is no apparent limit to their permanence in that state. The length of that timespan is ultimately immaterial, given the roleplay revolves around immortal characters who operate over entire epochs of the world; sooner or later, we would reach its end. This could only be avoided if were truly extremely great, but, if taken too far, the whole notion would at length be rendered entirely irrelevant to all purposes. Having all undead be condemned to degrade into mindless husks would heavily impair the relevance of undeath as a divine aspect, or at least greatly limit the possible ways in which it could be explored and developed.
Another concept that has been mentioned various times is the possibility of competing afterlives. Beyond having plenty of plot potential in itself, something like this could give a whole new dimension to an eventual soul crisis arc, making it a much more personal matter for any gods who engaged in it. However, once again this would be stymied if all souls were destined to crumble regardless of what happened to them. A variety of afterlives is meaningless if all their inhabitants are featureless shells without thought or memory. Remedying this by making them impermanent would somewhat defeat the concept of an afterlife proper.
Overall, I believe the case remains that soul decay could inhibit several interesting plot opportunities while - I feel the need to restate this - contributing very little in return (its usefulness for demons is ambiguous at best if it is such a small factor, although I admit I did not entirely follow the deliberations on that, and even the ethical aspect it adds to Katharsos' work appears very minor compared to the otherwise cosmic significance of his duties). If I am inflating things out of their real proportion or if there are solutions to these issues, though, do disregard my ramblings.
