Rekkuza

Recollections: Where the Folds Meet

Camille Tremblay

"What do you look at me for, huh?!"

_______________________________________________ Camille Tremblay He/him | 16 | French-Canadian (Acadian) | 5'6'' | 110 lbs _______________________________________________ Fear _______________________________________________ Skills & Talents "You think how I speak is funny? I will make you regret it." ___________________________________ [+] French ⫻ French is Camille's first language, and he can speak, read and write it fluently. His English is a lot clumsier... Fisticuffs ⫻ Camille can and will kick your ass if you piss him off. Or if you scare him. Kinda hard to tell between the 2 with him. Worryingly high pain tolerance ⫻ Camille has learned to power through pain over the years. Bruises and broken bones don't bother him nearly has much as they should. Literature knowledge ⫻ Well-versed in classical and French literature.

Appearance ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ "Do not fucking look at me." Camille is pale, too pale for it to look healthy. He looks skin and bones, too, as if he doesn't quite eat enough. Despite this, and his shorter height, he's surprisingly strong. His hair is long and a bit unkempt, and he's clearly not gotten them cut in a long time. His eyes perpetually dart around, and his gaze is both deeply exhausted and filled with a wild, almost manic gleam. He's often sporting bruises both from fights and general clumsiness. His clothes are cheap and visibly old, as well as occasionally stained, but never truly damaged. He's always dressed in a variety of plain t-shirts, old discoloured sweaters, and scuffed jeans. He looks a lot like his mother. He hates it. He also hates being looked at too much. He tries not to think about it.

_{Psychology
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"So what if I get always angry. I am not scared when I am angry. It is better like that."

MAIN GOAL ⫻ Above all, Camille wants to feel safe. There's always someone, somewhere. Watching him. Wishing him harm. Planning things. He can't take it, can't take being afraid all of the time. He keeps himself from harm however he can, but he's never safe. Never will be, in this town where he doesn't belong.

PHILOSOPHY ⫻ You can't trust anyone. Camille doesn't fit in. He knows it. Everyone knows it. And that means that everyone can and will hurt him for it. They stare, they talk behind his back, blame him for things outside his control, and even his own mother... when in this situation, you have to fight back. You have to be able to rely on yourself, and only yourself. You have to get loud and angry, shatter that which threatens you, and show them all that they won't be able to hurt you without being hurt in return.

SECRETS ⫻ Camille hides a lot from people. But most of all, he hides just how afraid he always is, masking it by raging and lashing out. He hides just how scared and resentful he is of his own mother, hides how much her neglect has hurt him, for fear that would make him an even bigger target. And while deep down he knows that his paranoia is irrational, that while some people have hurt him, not everyone will, and that he desperately needs help to get better, he hides that too. Even from himself.

SEXUALITY ⫻ Camille has viciously repressed any kind of attraction he could have felt towards others.

FEARS ⫻ Camille is afraid of a lot of things. He's constantly anxious, mind conjuring up worst case scenarios. But most of all, he's afraid of other people, and especially of his mother.

REPUTATION IN CORNELL ⫻ Camille is an outcast. He's new to the town, and oddity in and of itself, with a heavy accent and clumsy English. He's the one that gets into fights, that yells at people, that always seem to be alone. The one with bruised knuckles and a black eye that distracts from his threadbare clothing and abnormal thinness. He's trouble, pure and simple, and people usually just try to ignore him.

FLAWS ⫻ His paranoia and anger issues understandably tend to drive other people away, and he's very adverse at seeking help for anything. This is partly by design, but these attempts at keeping himself safe is what's stopping him from creating bonds that could actually help him out of his situation.

_{Backstory
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"This is not my home. My home is right next to the ocean. This will never be my home..."

Camille was born and raised in the Magdalen Islands, in Canada. His father was Acadian, and his mother is American. They had met while she was on a work trip, and as his father used to say, it was love at first sight. They kept in contact for a few years, and eventually, his mother accepted to move in with him to his hometown and learn the language. They got married soon after, and a baby shortly followed. And so Camille was born, and then raised in a French-speaking household, in a tiny touristic village, with his only knowledge of English coming from school, and some help from his mother for homework.

Life was good. His father was a warm and affectionate man, and gave everything for his family. Despite being something of an anxious boy, Camille managed to make a few close friends over the years. His mother struggled slightly with adapting to her new home, but she did her best. Their village was small, barely a few hundred people, but it was tightly knit together. And the view on the Atlantic was to die for. It was all the young boy could ever ask for.

That changed when he was 12. His father was a tour guide, and during a tour, got into a boat accident. He was brought to the hospital, but after weeks of fighting for his life, he unfortunately passed away. Grief shattered what was left of their family. Their community was very small, a few hundred people only, and so people started talking. His mother tried to keep on, but could not stand to remain in the village and be pitied by her neighbours.

She threw herself into work more and more, beginning to neglect her son, or yelling angrily about her woes whenever he was around, sometimes even vocally blaming him for her life going off the rails. When Camille turned 14, she had enough, and left with her son back to her own hometown, Cornwell. He was forced to cut contact with his friends and what little family he had on his father's side, and all he was left from his village with was a tiny souvenir keychain he had managed to hide in his luggage.

Camille... did not enjoy being separated from all he ever knew to be thrust into a city whose language and culture he did not understand. This only aggravated the conflicts between him and his mother.

They have been living in Cornwell for 2 years now. His mother works in a dead-end job she hates, but pays enough for bills and food. Camille is isolated from his peers, both from being homeschooled for the first year so that he could get good enough at English to attend public school, and from the general difficulties that come with immigrating somewhere. Resentment keeps building in his home life, with his mother barely paying attention to him unless it's to scream at him about something. She fully refuses to even speak to him in French anymore. All the while, he himself has been growing more and more paranoid and isolated over time.

Instead of having to stay around other people, he spends as much time as he can alone in the woods. He goes home as late as he possibly can without prompting his mother into a screaming match. He skips meals whenever his mother actually bothers to cook for more than just herself, just so that he doesn't have to stay around her more than he needs to. he gets to class at the last minute, and leaves as soon as he can. He doesn't even really go online for more than research; he doesn't trust the people there either.

He hates this town. Hates how big it is compared to his village. Hate how dead it is in comparison. There was a dullness in Cornwell, one he's not used to. Such a populous place should not feel like a ghost town, or a pond of starving piranhas...

He tried to reach out exactly once. A party he'd heard of. Most likely an excuse to get drunk, but he wouldn't say no to that as well. Maybe he could find someone there, someone that he wouldn't have to be afraid of. He would go, he would try.

And then the Pit opened. And then Cornwell wasn't so dull anymore. And then he started being able to break more than just things, or people's jaws.

He's terrified of what's happening. Of not being able to leave anymore. Of the monsters. Of himself, and others with powers. But he doesn't have a choice. He has to survive, and if that means having to trust someone else sometimes, then he'll just have to swallow a scream and do it.

_{Abstraction
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"I will shatter everything."

TYPE ⫻ Adept

ABSTRACTION ⫻ Red and Purple Lux. Channeler is a lobster-shaped souvenir keychain from Camille's hometown.

ABSTRACTION DESCRIPTION ⫻ Camille's affinity lies in lashing out and shattering the fragile parts of reality, whether it be glass or space itself. It comes to him easy; he's used to breaking stuff and having to work around with the remaining shards. He's still more like to punch you in the face than cast a spell on you, though his new magic makes it much easier for him to do so.

Glass Manipulation (Red) ⫻ Can manipulate, move around and throw glass in a 5 meters radius, as well as remotely shatter lager panes of glass. Glass that leaves his range is no longer under his control, but does not lose its momentum. Shards under his control can reach a maximum velocity of around 10 km/h.

Portal Creation (Purple) ⫻ With a strike, can shatter through space like glass to create portals linking two nearby locations together. Anything coming in from one end will come out the other as if no space separated the 2 endpoints. Camille can also move around the openings after creation.

Through the Looking Glass (Mixed) ⫻ Can create long-distance portals by anchoring each endpoint in a pre-existing mirror. The mirrors will still function and look like ordinary mirrors, but will also be linked. Camille will be able to pass objects through or even fully traverse himself.

LIMITS ⫻ Most of Camille's abilities revolve around shattering things and manipulating sharp objects. This of course runs the risk of injuring himself and others accidentally. They're also highly responsive to his anger and anxiety, and Camille risks losing control if he ever gets too angry or scared.

Glass Manipulation ⫻ Cannot manipulate shards of glass much bigger than his hand, unless he is trying to shatter a large pane of glass. Has a maximum manipulation capacity of about 15 pounds of glass. The closer a piece of glass is to the limit of his control range, the less accurate and strong his control, and his max capacity is also diminished. Might cut or injure himself on his own glass if not careful.

Portal Creation ⫻ The portals are not especially huge, with a maximum size of about one person. Like anything shattered, the edges are jagged and sharp, and might injure anyone carelessly traversing through. The portals are not very long-lasting, and will close after about 2 minutes of being opened, or if Camille ceases to maintain them. Has a maximum range of about 20 meters. Shattering space to create portals is a very literal action, and requires a physical effort, like a punch, which can also lead to injuries like cuts or bruising.

Through the Looking Glass ⫻ The size of the portals is determined by the size of the anchoring mirror. The anchor will be destroyed if the mirror is destroyed, and will be moved if the mirror is moved. Camille has to touch the portals with his Channeler for them to be functional: other people, even allies, will not be able to use them if he is not there as an intermediary. Can only sustain about 3 pairs of linked mirrors.

WEAKNESSES ⫻ Camille’s magic is directly linked to his emotions. Anger and anxiety cause his shards to move faster and his portals to grow larger, but they also impair his control. The shards fly unpredictably, bounce off surfaces, and can hurt him as easily as enemies. He often bleeds from minor mistakes, and repeated use leaves his hands raw with small cuts. Glass pieces cannot be larger than roughly the size of his hand or 15 pounds without breaking apart or veering off course. Larger shards shatter unexpectedly, scattering fragments. Shards that leave his control retain momentum and may collide with him, embed in walls, or trap his feet. Portals have jagged edges and last for less than 2 minutes. Misaligned or unstable portals can injure anyone who passes through them. Creating portals requires physical strikes; missed or mistimed punches can bruise, strain, or cut his hands and arms. Portals vanish if he loses contact or focus, sometimes leaving him suspended mid-action. The Looking Glass relies on mirrors—moving, breaking, or obscuring one destroys the connection. Keeping more than three mirror pairs active strains his focus, leading to partial failures, lag, or misfires. Any disturbance in the anchor points can trap him or leave him vulnerable. All of Camille’s attacks are destructive, uncontrolled, and environment-dependent. Falling shards, collapsing glass, or misused portals often create hazards nearby. The more he fights, the more chaotic the battlefield becomes, increasing the risk of self-injury.

^{Other
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"...I miss Papa..."

- Camille loves literature. He however makes a point out of not reading any American or English literature if not for school.
- Despite his behavioural issues, he's got good grades in school, except in English class. The language barrier kinda screws him over there.
- If he ever was to see a therapist, he'd probably be diagnosed with something along the lines of cPTSD, anger issues, and/or schizotypal personality disorder. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be in the cards for now.

Recollections: Moon (Off-Urban Fantasy/Horror)

hell yeah im in!

Forgotten Sands: A Divine Journey into the Unknown

Learning

---

It —they? No, it— did not think. Not really, not yet. It did not have emotions, either. But it did feel things. It remembered, too. Remembered its Creator, remembered its mission, remembered all it had come across until now.

It remembered that bright periods lasted a certain time, then were followed by a dark period, and on and on and on. It remembered that three bright-dark cycles ago, it touched something liquid and cold, and became wet itself, and almost froze when the colder dark period came. It remembered the time it fell from high and almost scattered from the impact. It remembered every time its parts met and became one, and everything else his parts remembered.

But it could not remember heat since it became what it is now. It knew heat, it knew it had been in a very hot place when its great self had been created. But since it had been broken apart, it had only felt cold. Cold, cold, cold...

That changed pretty quick. It felt something move nearby, in the minute vibrations of the earth and air. Something big, much bigger than itself. It followed the new thing. And then it felt heat. The new big thing was warm, the air around it too. The new thing made sound and moved and moved other things.

Maybe the new thing was a person. It had never met a person other than its great self and its Creator. Right now, though, it wasn't a person, not yet. But if it became big enough, if enough of its kind joined it, it could be a person then, and it could meet the maybe-person. It followed the maybe-person.

It followed for a bit, and then got closer, and reached out, and touched the maybe-person…

…It was like a jolt of ice had touched her. Which was funny, because Toffee no longer really felt the cold. Or anything other than her feverish body. It kickstarted her awareness and her mind began to think, to reason, to react beyond instinct. She was sore, hungry, thirsty and her head was pounding. Why was she moving so slowly? What was she holding? With a slow turn of her head, her eyes rested upon her spear, dragged to the point the stonehead was gone. Dark splotches covered the spear where it wasn’t cracked.

Another jolt- no, a touch, made her blink and look in the other direction. Her eyes meandered until they reached the ground and she just… Looked at the pile of sand. Sand? Why was that strange again? Her eyes blinked at different times and it dawned on her- it was still winter. In the forest. Covered in patchy snow. And yet here was a pile of sand and it was following her?

She came to a slow stop and the sand stopped. Huh. Her mind, still processing this strange sight, found it hard to comprehend. Then the pile of sand reached out with a tendril and touched her. Right where the furs covering her leg had been torn to shreds. When did that happen?

Then reality came crashing down and Toffee’s expression went from numb slackness, to pure shock. She instantly backed away and kicked at the thing, before tripping and falling down into a snow covered bush…

…It had not expected the maybe-person to move away from it so fast, or to kick at—

The sand pile was scattered across the forest floor. It laid unmoving for a few long moments… before little by little, sand grains began to move around, reaching for each other and sticking together in pairs, and then more, and more. Soon, a larger blob of sand was the center on which all other sand particles converged. It rapidly grew back to its previous size, as if Toffee's kick had never happened.

It shook once, twice. And then it began to feel and remember. It remembered the kick, though it had happened to a previous self, not it. It remembered the feeling of scattering, and reforming. It remembered that the maybe-person (or just person? it had reacted to it, nothing else had so far) was nearby. And unlike its previous self, this one was much bolder.

I flowed smoothly to where the person was laying, and reached again, this time not just to poke, but to fully wrap around an ankle. It didn't try to harm or crush. It simply felt. The texture, the heat, the minute tremors of the skin, how it broke out into goosebumps.

And when satisfied, it let go, and waited for the person to move. It would follow. It would grow, and learn, and become a person, and meet the person in front of it…

…Toffee stared, dumbfounded. She had stopped struggling as the thing approached her, despite her instincts wanting only one other thing- fight. She shut her eyes as the battle inside of her was waged and before she knew it, the thing had touched her again. Green eyes snapping open, she looked, she waited and then it let go and stilled.

She waited for a few more minutes, never taking her eyes off the pile. When she was sure it wasn’t going to try anything, she picked herself up, wincing as the bush scraped her skin. When she was on her feet, she patted, removing most of the debris and snow on her. She looked towards where she had left her spear, thought better of it and took a single step forward…

…and it moved with her, following close enough to not lose her, but far enough that it could probably manage to dodge another kick. It shadowed her next few steps the same way, only once briefly darting off to the side where it had felt the call of a small, thumb-sized colony of its brethren. It had swiftly merged with them, and went back to following the person.

It still hadn't heard the person talk. Its great self had been taught language, and so it knew of it as well, but it had yet to hear it. Was the person unable to talk? Or did people only talk with other people? If that was the case, he needed to hurry up and become a person, if it was to learn about languages…

…“What in all the great spirits are you?!” Toffee said, her voice a bit shaky. She winced at the sound and her throat throbbed with use. How had- No no. Focus! The thing was unnerving and it was following her! Except when it darted away but then it returned!
“Answer me, damn you!” she cried, now a tad hoarse…

…it jolted at the words. The person spoke! It actually spoke! If it could feel emotions, it would tremble in joy. Now, it didn't really know exactly what the person had said… but it sounded harsh. Panicked? Or angry? Was the person afraid of it? It did not have a clear reference for those feelings, so it could not be sure. It did not damage the person, either, so why would they be afraid of it? It only followed, only learned.

It felt it, then. The call. Another collective like itself, but not small like the ones it had been merging with so far. A big one, like itself. Maybe even larger than itself. If they met, if they became one, it could be enough to make it a person.

It began moving in a direction, and then stopped, fighting against its instinct to just rush to its brethren. When the person did not follow it, it moved closer again, before moving back towards where it wanted to go. Would the person understand? Would they follow?...

…“Want me to follow, don’t you?” Toffee sighed, then she took a deep breath through her nose. She didn’t want to do this. She was hungry and tired and she needed to figure out what had happened to her. What was her last memory…? It was… Red. Red and blood. Blood and red. Pain and anger. Anger and pain. She gritted her teeth and pounded her forehead with her palm.

“Ancestors!” she cursed and looked at the damn pile of sand. It would be, if anything, a distraction from her own memories. Fine. She would follow and began to walk after it…

…the person followed! It began to move through the brush, stopping from time to time so that the person would not lose sight of it. It felt the call get closer. Just as he had answered it, its brethren also answered to its own answering call. They were getting very close to each other.

And as it went around a bush, it saw it. A collective twice, no, at least three times its own size. It shook with anticipation, and as if obeying an unseen signal, both rushed towards each other. They crashed in a spray of sand. Connection after connection formed, mixing their beings until they could no longer be separated.

The new self stayed still for a moment. It felt the wind and the ground. It heard the breaths of the person who had followed one of its parts here. It remembered so much more now. And then it felt something else, something new. Something inside, a strange metaphorical warmth, an elation. Joy.

It was a person now too! It could feel it. Could feel the real thoughts flowing in its mind. The wants, the curiosity, the emotions. We wonder if we can understand each other. We hope they are nice. We're so happy to meet them! Are there other people near as well?

It stretched its body, firming up its shape from the amorphous puddle it had become. It stretched up, and up, until it was about half the height of the person accompanying it. It stretched a tendril, and from it, other smaller tendrils, crudely imitating one of the person's hands. It waved the new appendage around, trying to catch their attention. It hadn't figured out how to speak yet, so this would have to do for now…

…Toffee stared in bemused disbelief. The sand found more sand? That sand became a child sand? Had that been a baby before? No, no focus Toffee! She slapped herself and the sting brought about a certain clarity only pain could draw. It was waving at her. But how? How could it see?

“What’s going on?” she asked aloud, hoping for an answer. When one did not come, the absurdity of it made her laugh but she sobered quickly when a stark realization overtook her. Her expression then grew dark and she spun around, growing more and more agitated. “Teefee!” she barked. “Teefee if this is a dream, I swear-” she cut off, not knowing really how to end that sentence. She would swear what? She had left Teefee. Oh. She had left her sister and Tad…

…The person talked more! They saw that it tried to communicate, and it even understood a bit of what they said! This was going great! If only it could figure out how to speak too, it could answer their questions… The person used air to talk… Maybe it could try something like that?

It reabsorbed its waving appendage, and opened its top to swallow a large bubble of air. It quickly made itself as hard as it could, so that the air could not escape, and then observed the person some more. The finer details were most likely lost on it, as it did not really see, and instead used its senses to feel the general shape of obstacles around it, but it understood the general gist of how to speak. There was a hole that could change shape, and when air left that hole, sound was made. So, it imitated it as best as it could.

A small hole linking the air reservoir and the exterior formed on its surface, facing the person. It tried expelling air a few times, but it took some tweaking before it managed to make a single sharp whistling note. It froze for a second, then started doing it again and again, finding different notes and sounds. “Fooooo… Fweeeeep… Fwee! Fee!”

It concentrated. It felt like it was about to manage a real mortal word. It shook its body, trying to add some percussive sounds as well. “Tsch. Fee. Tchee. Fee. Teefee? Ssshyou? Shyou Teefee?” It vibrated in pure glee, overwhelmingly happy to have copied the person’s words. It was doing it! It was speaking too! Maybe they could introduce themselves to each other now…

…She recoiled as if someone else had slapped her. This was no dream, she realized.. But she couldn’t rule out it wasn’t a nightmare either. When could sand talk? Then again, this wasn’t ordinary sand. Was it… copying her? Toffee narrowed her eyes. Only one way to find out.

“What is this?” she asked, “What are you…”

…Oh, that was an easy question! “Tch. Ee!… Tsheesh… Thish. Ish. Weee. Sshaaa. Buh. Bu.”

Mmhhh, okay, an easy question, but not an easy answer. It tried again. “We sha-bul-ho. Shabulo. Sabulo. We Sabulon! We rem… burrr… We are remember, we are peep... People! Frrriend!”

“Shyou tal… talk. Shyou are people alsho. Also. Cree… Kht… Cree-ah-tor… Creator said so!” It was really getting the hang of it by now! It was very proud of itself for trying so hard, which was a nice feeling. It was also very proud of the other person (Teefee?) for listening so well to it. It knew that it could just approximate the right vibrations, so it was grateful for the other’s attentiveness. Speaking was much harder than it had expected, it turned out…

…So it wasn’t copying her then. She noted that and her head began to hurt. If this wasn’t some sort of trick or dream or even a nightmare, then this meant that a pile of sand was communicating with her. Trying to, at least. And it had called her friend. Why? She was overthinking this entire situation, wasn’t she? Did it even know what a friend was? it obviously was just figuring out how to talk.

“You are Sabulon then? You are… People?” she asked, the words just sounding ridiculous in her mouth when they were targeted at sand. “Who was your creator?” she followed up…

…“Earth. Khthon. Khthon-Earth. Creator-Earth. He made Sabulon, made grrrreat one selfff. Then scattered ussss everywhere! Many ssssmall sssselves now, to learn and remember,” it recounted, thinking back to its great self’s birth in the Pale Wastes.

“Whhho made shyou, Teefee-Friend? Not Khthon. Too ssssoft forrr Khthon. So who? What? Why?” it questioned as it began circling the person, trying to get a better sense of their shape. Tall, and long, and soft, and with no way to change shape, it looked like. What a strange creature… or was it the strange one of the two?…

…Toffee tried to recollect if she had ever heard of this Khthon but she came up blank. She scrunched her nose as a cloud moved overhead and light fell on her face. She grumbled something unintelligible and then said, “I’m not Teefee. My name is Toffee. And I’ve never heard of your creator before and to be honest, I was made by my mother, not a creator. Well I guess in a sense she was my creator but that’s besides the point. Uhm,” she followed the creature as it circled her, “What are you doing…?”

…So the person was not a “Teefee”, but rather a “Toffee”. Good to know! And Toffee was made by a “mother”, whoever that was.

Toffee's question caught it a bit off guard. Was it not obvious? “We are obser-fing. Observing. Learning. What Toffee-Friend is like.” It remade its hand-like appendage to demonstrate, and then for good measure also made a long, swishing thing like the one on Toffee's back. A tail. “Learn the sssshape. Ifff we meet more Friends-Like-Toffee, we know what they are!” it explained excitedly, waving its appendages around, “Shyou are ssstrange for Sabulon. One big piece, not many sssmall pieces like us. So we learn!”

“Are shyou alone? Are more people around? We would like to meet more people!...”

…More people? Her face went slack. “There are no people around.” she said, “And I’m not your friend. We just met.” she sighed and sat down on a rock, finally looking at herself. She was shocked to see that most of her fur garment was torn and ripped. More alarming were the dark burgundy splotches. Had she been bleeding? Checking quickly for wounds she found only small cuts and scrapes. Then she felt her face and found the tacky-feeling blood all over it. Perhaps the greatest gut punch of all, was that she wasn’t bothered about this, whatsoever.

She gripped her face and moaned, “I’m a mess…”

…They weren’t friends? But she hadn’t tried scattering it since the one time it startled her, so she clearly wasn’t an enemy either… and it tried to be nice to her… if that didn’t make them friends, then what were they to each other?

That question would have to wait, though. Toffee looked… distressed. Did it make Toffee sad somehow? Was Toffee damaged?! “Isss Toffee alright? Doesss Toffee need help? We not know how flessssh works… Doessss Toffee need other Toffees? We can help! We not know where otherssss are, but we know where otherssss not are!” It twisted itself in distress, half reaching towards Toffee…

…She looked at the thing and couldn’t help but smile. But it didn’t really reach her eyes. “You’re sweet, Sabulon. You remind me of my sister, at least, who I thought she was. But no, I don’t need others like me. I’m just tired…”

…Oh, she was just tired. That was a relief! Tiny parts of itself sometimes got tired too, and went in dormance for a while. She was just one big part, though, so she probably had to go in dormance all at once. Though the cold was probably bad for her; it remembered finding something soft like Toffee, but it did not move or make noise, and it was very cold.

“Toffee can resssst. We find warm place, dark place, and shyou go in dormance. We make sure is ssssafe for shyou!” It pointed with its whole body to the east. “We remember cave, Earth-home, not farrrr. We sssshow shyou, if shyou want…”

…She perked up at that but only a little. Toffee wasn’t really sure if she could trust the pile but honestly, it just seemed way too… innocent. Which also reminded her of Teefee and brought about a really strong feeling of guilt. It would probably be the best for both of them if she just got up and ran but at the same time, she couldn’t help but want to protect this thing.

She stood up, placing her hands on her hips and said, “Okay Sab. As long as you promise not to murder me in my sleep, you can lead the way and I’ll follow. And I’ll teach you a few things…”

…It jolted and stood very straight, as if standing at attention. Toffee was going to teach it! How amazing! It did not know what “murder” was, so it did not think it would do it, but it would ask Toffee on the way, so that it would not happen accidentally. It did not want to make her mad, or sad.

“Toffee follow ussss! Cave is not far, we arrrrrrive before dark issss here.” Its shape became low and long, and it began slithering along the forest floor, trying to find the clearest path forward. “Shyou will see, issss nice. No wind to blow you away!...”

…“You’re an odd little thing.” Toffee commented as they walked. “But okay. Here’s a lesson for you, Sab. You seem really new to life, so just know not all people you’ll meet will be kind. I’m not particularly kind, mind you but others will be worse. They won’t be your friends.” She thought about her village and about Malac. She looked at the snake-like sand and pursed her lips, “Most might scream or be alarmed when they first see a talking pile of sand, that’s just how us humans react to strange things. They’ll get used to you, I’m sure.” She felt her lips crack a little as she moved her mouth and she rubbed her throat. “We should find some wate-” she cut off and realized she was stupid. Toffee then grabbed a handful of snow and put it into her mouth. It was freezing and the amount of water she got was miniscule but it helped a little…

…So not everyone would be as nice as Toffee? That was a shame… but it supposed how people could be not-nice was worth learning about as well. As for how others would react to it, it had handled Toffee’s initial reaction, so it would figure out how to handle the others in due time. For now, it had another question in mind.

“Shyou said ‘human’. Shyou human? But shyou Toffee. What issss difference between human and Toffee? Sssame thing?” it asked, a bit confused. “And what did shyou do with cold-wet? Shyou take and put in shyou? Why? Isss feels good?...”

…“The difference?” She said, pondering the question. Her brow furrowed. Was pretty hard to think about deep questions like that when your head was still pounding and your throat was dry but she’d try. “It’s basically the same. I am Toffee. You are Sab. I am human. You are… Sand, I guess?” She shrugged, good enough. “It’s called snow. Just another form of water, like the rain or a pond. I’m thirsty and it helps a little…”

…“Snow” could melt into “water”. “Water” could be found in “ponds” and “rain”. It felt good to be able to put words on what it had learned. It really liked Toffee, she was very helpful.

“We are Sabulon. Sabulon are ssssand. We are Sab to shyou. We think we undersssstand.” It seemed other people had more than one name. Toffee had already given it one. “Sab”. It was a funny feeling, but it did not hate it. It supposed it could be handy to be separate from other Sabulon, and… oh! That was the whole point of names, wasn’t it?

“We not know what ‘thirsty’ is, but more wet-water and ssssnow is on the way, iffff helpsss. But we will not touch wet-water, we not want to freeze! Freeze make moving not-easy.” Sab carefully went around a puddle of half-melted slush as it said this…

“...Yes. Winter has come. It’s my first winter, probably yours too. I can’t say I’m much of a fan.” she sighed. Silence stretched and Toffee’s thoughts began to encroach upon what in the ancestor’s names was she doing? Clothes ripped. Bloodstained. Fatigued. Hoarse. What had she done? Why couldn’t she remember?

“Hey… Sab? When you found me, do you remember what I was doing?” she asked…

…“Sabulon remember everything,” Sab stated matter-of-factly, “Shyou was moving, lesssss fast than now. Shyou was holding sssstick, and shyou was not talking, and then shyou kicked part of usssss.” It paused for a moment, trying to piece all of its observations together into one bigger conclusion. “Shyou… not looked well... Shyou look better now.”

Then it reared up a bit, pointing through the trees nearby. “We here! At cave!” On a little bit of raised land sat what looked like boulders that had crashed against each other. A small opening laid at the base of the rocky formation, an opening Sab knew led to a larger cavity, hidden from the elements, perfect to take refuge in.

“Shyou can resssst soon, and we not ‘murder’ shyou, whatever that meanssss!” It wiggled happily, proud to be helping its not-yet-friend…

…Toffee eyed the opening with apprehension, Sab’s words taking their time to digest. She had never really been underground before and wasn’t sure if she’d like it much. Still, it was shelter, wasn’t it? More importantly, “Can you even see me, Sab? How did you even get us here…?”

“...We remember way. Part of usssss wasss here before. We remember rockssss on the way, how fassst to move, how long to move. Issss easy!” it explained. “And we not see. We not have eyes! We feel. Feel light and feel other Sabulon. Feel heat and touch.”

Sab concentrated a bit more on what it could feel from Toffee, trying to get a better picture of her. “We know shyou ssssoft from touch. We know shyou are warm. We know sssshape of shyou. We know you not sssame color as bright-time sky. We know how shyour voice movesss in air. But no details.” It paused once more, trying to put its feelings into words. “No details that shyou can feel, at leassst. Isss not bad. We not not-see in dark, issss practical!”

It slithered into the cave entrance, and waved at Toffee through it. “Follow! Is sssafe. Khthon not get mad if you not steal…”

…Toffee staggered a bit as she stood before the entrance. The sand’s explanation on how it viewed the world really didn’t register with her. Even her own thoughts were getting muddied. She didn’t really catch the last thing Sab said either, as her mind began to swim. Her knees buckled and the exhaustion she felt finally caught up to her and she collapsed before the entrance. The world went dark…

…Sab, well, Sab panicked. For the first time ever, it felt fear. “Toffee? Toffee?! Can shyou hear usss?!” When she failed to respond, it began nudging her, and when that failed as well, it had to think of a proper solution. It wrapped around her waist and pulled, trying to drag her into the cave proper. It felt bad for the scratches its sandy self and the floor would create—it did not want to damage Toffee—but scratches were better than freezing in the wind.

Warm. Things needed to be warmer. Sab had thought Toffee would be able to make fire herself, but it seemed it was going to have to figure something out. It dashed out of the cave. It remembered how a tree had burned in a storm, and so it broke sticks from small trees and shrubs, and carried them back inside. It remembered the feeling of its parts rubbing against rock, against itself, and the brief spark of heat that it created, and began rubbing sticks against each other.

It took hours of tries and near misses, but eventually, a small smolder appeared. A small smolder that spread to the branches and the wood, and grew into small flames. Fire. Warmth. It wasn't much, but it would have to do. Sab would keep the fire fed, avoiding the too-wet wood. When the flames were high, it would sometimes heat itself in it and then lay on Toffee, trying to warm her up more directly.

It slowly counted the hours until Toffee would wake again…

…It would not be until a full day passed before Toffee finally stirred. When she did, she gasped loudly and sat up. She was momentarily confused by where she was. It was dark, only the faintest embers of red light lay next to her and furthermore, she was covered in sand. If it wasn’t for that fact, she would have dismissed the previous day as a dream. A strange dream but a dream nonetheless. She blinked the sleep out of her eyes. She was still tired but she was so hungry and so thirsty.

“Sab?” She said in a hoarser voice, if that was even possible. “What happened…?”

…Sab jolted up and climbed off of Toffee. “Toffee! Shyou back!” it semi-yelled, relieved beyond belief. “Shyou stopped moving and ssssspeaking! Was it dormance? It sssscared usss…”

“Are shyou well? Are shyou cold? We can make more fire…” It twisted itself in worry. “We not know what elsssse… water? ‘Thirsssty’?...”

…She nodded slowly. “That’s… Thank you Sab. I am thirsty, yes. And I’m hungry. I should go and hunt while I still have strength in me.” she groaned as she stood up. This creature had helped her, repeatedly and this was weighing upon Toffee. It was a good weight, she realized. It meant she had grown fond of it. How odd.

“Come on friend, you can learn some more if you stick with me for a bit…” Toffee said with a smile.

“Friend! Shyesss, we will follow Friend-Toffee!” Sab answered as it followed her out of the cave.

Summary

A Sabulon comes across a strange person, finds its voice and learns. Toffee finds a pile of sand that learns to talk, struggles with her memories of the previous few days and eventually comes to accept ‘Sab’ as a friend. Goes to show that friendships really do come in all different shapes and sizes.

Forgotten Sands: A Divine Journey into the Unknown

After leaving the crystal cavern housing the Great Bell, Khthon spent a long time wandering his realm and simply... thinking. Thinking about what he knew. Thinking about just how much was still unknown to him. Thinking about how while he knew his realm by heart, he was still mostly ignorant of the surface. Thinking how that had worked against him.

He might prefer to remain sequestered underground, but his God-Siblings and Ashuru at large would not stop moving just because he wished it so, and now he had been presented with a task. A task he knew too little about, a task that demanded of him a better comprehension of the world, a task that he would need assistance with.

He could, and would, ask the other Gods. But Khthon feared he could not fully rely on them. He had truly spoken only to a handful, and of those, he did not think he could trust them all. He made a short list in his mind.

Sarhush was arrogant, and too set on molding Ashuru as his whims dictated. He could not be sure his God-Brother would not see the Great Bell's warning as a challenge to worsen the situation.

Adria had been helpful during their brief collaboration shortly after their awakening, and seemed generally trustworthy, but Khthon had not felt or heard anything from his God-Sister since then, as if she had gone into hiding.

Alechior was fickle and impulsive, but they seemed to take the world's health to heart. He wouldn't have asked him to fix the soils, otherwise.

Excelsis was bold, and though their nature clashed in many ways, Khthon could recognize that his God-Brother's Domains and his willingness to study the world could prove invaluable.

And perhaps his beastly God-Sibling he had witnessed battling Sarhush, whose essence resonated within all that walked on the surface and now swam in his depths, would be willing to help, if only to preserve its progeny... All of his other God-Siblings, he did not know enough to make a judgment.

So, Alechior, Excelsis, and the Beast God. He would seek out those three first. But before he could put that plan into action, something strange caught his attention. Something with a spark of the divine in it, something strangely familiar.

He approached it, and emerged into what looked to be a slim ravine that might once have reached the surface. Dust and dried mud covered a good part of the inside, and a few brittle beast bones layed at the bottom. It had probably met its demise after a careless step too much, and had been swallowed by the earth. All of this was mundane, except for the last item laying in a little corner, the same item he had sensed. A simple clay tablet, though it did not feel like it had come from him. On it, two simple impressions; a human foot, and a human hand.

Khthon finally recognized the familiar essence that dwelt in the tablet. It felt exactly like Sarhush and his Me of Fire. He felt uneasy at the memory. Touching the Me and feeling all of his God-Brother's intent infused within it had been profoundly unpleasant. Still, he probably should take of this unknown Me, if only to throw it back to the surface.

He formed an arm and gingerly took it in his hand, bracing for the rush of information he knew would follow.

Things that move. Things that think. Things that make and change and shape. Things that come together, and are stronger from it. Things that do not let the world dictate what they are, what they can do. Things that change the world. Things that are not things, but people.

Khthon was... surprised. This one wasn't nearly as bad as the other. It was almost inspiring, really. The undercurrent of violence that permeated the Me of Fire was absent, mostly replaced by the will to change and transform, something he understood rather well.

...Maybe he shouldn't throw it away immediately. An idea had been brewing in the back of his mind, and this Me could come in handy. Yes, he could use it, he was certain.

His plan to call his fellow Gods put aside for the moment, Khthon called to the Earth, and let it carry him. His destination would be Ashuru's farthest reaches, where mortals had yet to reach, where sand covered all, where the Sun's heat burned hottest and driest. He emerged before a white dune, a great pillar of stone in the ocean of pale sand.

His one hand still clutching the Me of People, he manifested another, and reached for the middle of his body. And then he struck, and great crack forming and bleeding sand, red and black and golden grains raining like ichor. He bled and he bled, the divine sand mixing with the white dune's, until they were one in Khthon's very essence. He gestured, and the whole took a vaguely spherical shape, and lifted from the ground, isolated from the rest of the desert.

Then came the tricky part. He focused on the sand mass as a whole, and on each individual grain, and within each and everyone of them, poured his energy, and ignited a spark. A tiny, minuscule spark, not exactly of Life, but of Awareness, of Will.

He felt it when the sand began to move by itself. He felt as they shook and linked together, into a great whole. He felt when they began thinking.

He spoke to them. Not in the way of mortal language, but in the way stone speak to itself. Cracks and vibrations and magnetism and changes in heat and recrystallization.

"You are new. You do not know much, but you can think and learn. Let me teach you a few things." Khthon reached out and gently tapped the Me of People on the floating sand mass. He saw how each grain of sand slightly jumped as the information given by the Me spread through them like a wave. "This is what a person is. You, right now, are a person. You can be a different person. You can be multiple people. You can be not a person at all. It all depends on how many of you there are."

"Do not fear change. I have made you in my image. You are of the Earth, of Khthon. The Earth forever changes, is never the same twice. And yet, it remains the Earth. It is eternal yet ever changing. So are you." Khthon demonstrated by grabbing a handful of mundane sand, and compressing it into a sedimentary rock. He showed how the rock cycled different states, from metamorphic to igneous, and even a small pool of lava, before returning it to sand.

"You have been created with a purpose, but it is a purpose you will fulfill simply by being. You are to see the world, learn from it, and remember it even when everything else decays and forgets. You will not need for anything else, for you are not made of weak flesh." The surface of the sand mass rippled slightly as it processed all the new information. "Spread across the surface. Explore the depths. Meet others. Search for what is both known and unknown, and protect that knowledge carefully. And when I call for you, answer me, and share what you have learned." The sand mass vibrated in affirmation, as if almost excited by the prospect.

Khthon paused for a bit. He needed to concentrate a bit, as he prepared his last gift. "The others that dwell in this world, creatures both intelligent and not, are different from us. They are not of the Earth, nor are they eternal, and they do not speak as we do. For that reason, I will give you a gift, the gift of language, so that you may communicate." With a burst of divine power, he shared his knowledge of mortal language. Not of any specific one, but what a mortal language was at its core. The structure behind it, the way meaning could be obfuscated or clarified, how complex ideas were transmitted and organised. He paused for a bit, letting the sudden knowledge spread throughout the sand mass.

"I will spread you across the surface. You will no longer be a person, but you will remember what I have taught you. You will seek your brethren and become someone new. You are the sabulo, and I have chosen to put my belief in you."

With those last few words, the sand mass, or rather the sabulo singularity, burst outward, every grain flying off to every corner of the world. Soon, Khthon knew, he would have eyes all over the surface, ready to remember when no one else could.

---

In a dark corner of a forest, a small grain of sand moved. It would not usually be strange, for sand constantly was dragged somewhere by beasts or wind, but this one seemed to be moving through no other force but its own. It moved in a straight line, sometimes stopping for a short while, before changing its angle and starting again. Nothing seemed to affect it, not light, not heat, not the beasts roaming the woods.

Until it passed near another self moving grain of sand. As soon as they got close enough, they both started heading straight for each other, until they collided. They stopped moving for a long moment, and then... began rolling, stuck to one another, as if they were one.

The same thing happened over and over again... until, eventually, a head-sized lump of sand crawled out of the woods, as if seeking somewhere new to be.

Summary

Khthon ponders over his next step in acting upon what he learned from the Great Bell while wandering aimlessly underground. He regrets not knowing more about the surface, since he feels he could have pinpointed the nature of the problem much quicker if he did. He makes a mental list of the Gods he could contact for help, and settles on Alechior, Excelsis, and possibly Saries.

He then senses something divine in nature near him. He goes to investigate, and finds Sarhush's Me of People buried in an air pocket after probably being swallowed by a ravine. He takes it and has the idea to use it for something. He moves to a desert, where he mixes divine sand from his own body with ordinary sand, and gives the aggregated sand sentience, creating the sabulo. He tells them of their origin, their nature and their purpose, uses the Me to teach them about the concept of people and individuality, and gifts them the knowledge of language, before spreading them all over the world, so that they can act as Khthon's eyes and ears on the surface, and so that they can learn and accumulate knowledge about the world at large.

A bit later, in a forest, a sabulo moves around, and begins liking up with others, until the collective gains enough awareness to seek new places to be.

Conviction spendings
- Kthon creates the sabulon, sand-based, hive mind-forming, nonliving beings, and spreads them across the world (Create specialized mortal species, species defies logic (probably), nightmare, 4 conviction)
- Khthon gives the sabulon knowledge of structured mortal language, so that they can communicate beyond instinctual geological signals. (Instant knowledge transfer, hazy, 1 conviction.)

The Sabulon

The sabulo (plural: sabulon), or sand folk

The sabulon are fully mineral, modular, nonliving, yet still conscious hive-minds. They have been created with a purpose: to roam the world, to witness, to learn, and to remember. Just like how stone is eternal, yet ever changing, the Sabulon will persist forever, but never be the same twice. They're kinda like a "living" ship of Theseus, in a way, or if every cell in a human body could survive alone, but still form into a fully thinking human.

What do they look like?

A single sabulo is visually identical to a minuscule grain of sand, and only differs by its ability to move independently, seek its brethren, and the fact that it carries the smallest spark of awareness. A single sabulo is not sentient, or conscious, or thinking. It can only feel and react to its surrounding, similar to bacteria.

A mass of sabulon's form is fluid as long as they are sand, and can take whatever shape they wish, as long as it does not exceed their total mass or volume, of course. They have no sight, sense of smell, taste, or any standard biological sense. They instead sense their environment through thermal radiation (think pit vipers sensing heat, but with a different mechanism at its core), vibrations (which lets them approximate hearing), proprioception, and electromagnetic fields. They communicate using these same sense, and can emit weak electromagnetic fields for that purpose.

Sometimes, a mass of sabulon can solidify into a sedimentary rock, either through voluntary action or environmental conditions. This does not harm the sabulon at all, but does make them unable to shift their shape or break their bond as easily, "freezing" them into certain configurations. The same would happen if they ever were to melt and be remade into igneous rocks or glass. Once the rock or glass is broken or eroded back into sand, they will regain their former fluidity and mobility.

How the heck do their minds work?

When a sabulo manages to find others of its kind, something incredible happens. They merge into a larger sand mass, and combine their potential into a larger, more complex mind. Though each individual sabulo is still fully non-sentient, the collective as a whole starts being able to remember things, and even learn. What they learn is then stored as a kind of "data" in individual sabulo, and can then be innately known by future collectives. The larger the collective, the more intelligent it is.

When hundreds of thousands of sabulon combine together, they can achieve true sapience. A personality will develop, with preferences, dislikes, memories, and all other things that individuality entails. For the sabulon, individuality is only possible through the collective, and conscious collectives intrinsically understand that for them, the conscious "I" is an emergent phenomenon created by the unconscious "we".

This peculiar way of being permits two sapient sabulon collectives that meet to exchange some of their sand with each other, letting them share information and memories, or even fully merge into one larger collective. Such exchanges will almost always change their personality to various degree: "they" as an individual were always the sum of their parts. Change the parts, and you change the individual, though their experience will remain continuous (basically they don't act like newborns or like they just appeared out of nowhere) and if they have been given a name, they will generally keep it out of convenience.

This also means that conscious collectives do not fear scattering and the loss of their current individuality. Their "self" is already constantly changing, destroyed and replaced by something new. It is a natural part of their existence, and individual sabulon will eventually form new collectives, new individuals, bringing with them data and fragments of knowledge preserved from their previous experiences.

What do you mean, they're not alive?

Life is a biological process. The sabulon are fully mineral, with not a trace of organic material. This means that they do not breathe, eat, grow, reproduce, excrete, age... In short, they are nonliving. And since they are not alive, it also means that they cannot die. The closest thing to death to them would be the scattering or modification of a conscious hive-mind, which destroys the original personality, something they already do not fear in the slightest.

To truly destroy a sabulo would be to fully erase the matter that forms it from the world, as if it never existed, which is something no natural force is currently capable of doing. The Divine, however, is another story...

Aside: Sleep and the Dreamscape

Individual sabulon will take turns entering a kind of "dozing" or "resting" modes inside a collective, akin to sleep. This means that while the collective would almost never become fully inactive, bar outside interference or exceptional circumstances, there is always some sabulon "sleeping". These "sleeping" sabulon can access the Dreamscape as any other ordinary dreamer, but will not do so as a collective, but as non-sapient single sabulon.

They still keep their ability to form sapient hive-minds, however, and will do so if they meet enough of their kind in the Dreamscape. This means that some conscious collectives spend their entire existence in the Dreamscape, never knowing the real material world. Their experiences can in turn influence the collectives that individual sabulon are part of in the waking world.

Aside: The Singularity

If every single sabulo join in one single collective, they form a Singularity. The Singularity is sentient and sapient, but does not display individuality in the way that smaller sapient collectives would. With so much raw mental power accumulated in one place, the Singularity is closest to a kind of thinking supercomputer, and has the ability to think in multiple concurrent threads. Anything the Singularity is made to learn would also be conserved for every individual Sabulo afterwards, which makes it the fastest way to teach the entire species things, since you do not have to wait for the knowledge to disperse.

Thankfully, the sabulon do not seem to have any interest in forming the Singularity by themselves. It would bind them to one place, which goes against their nature. Grave circumstances could however shift their opinion...

Forgotten Sands: A Divine Journey into the Unknown

Ma'otah's Village

---

Dawn of the Bronze Age

At first, no one understood the true value of what was now known as tin. The miners had come up with a bag of the stuff, small black crystals embedded in granite. They hadn't know what to do with it, at first. The bigger crystals were rather pretty, though.

At first, they tried to separate the crystals from the veinstone. That process was rather simple; crush the stone and then shake it on a small flat plane. The heavier chunks will remain, and the lighter ones will fall off. It wasn't all that different to how they processed some other ores.

When they got a decent amount of black crystals, that's when things got tricky. What were they even supposed to do with it? A few rare chunks could possibly be used as gemstones, but the others were only broken, unworkable fragments. Still, they couldn't just... throw it out.

They set it aside for the time being, letting the supply grow as they concentrated more and more of the black crystal ore, until a metalsmith just thought, what the hell, why not put it in a furnace and see what happened? It's not like they had anything to lose.

That's what she did, dumping the ore in a crucible and mixing in some powdered black coal and limestone. They had discovered that these other stones, when mixed in with the right amount, rid copper and silver of more impurities when smelted, so she decided to use it here, just to cover her bases.

Incredibly, her flight of fancy actually gave results! She retrieved the burning hot crucible, and was amazed to see that the crystals had in fact melted, and that underneath the layer of slag, was something that looked an awful lot like a new kind of metal.

She ran off immediately to announce her discovery, that sometimes metals did not look like metal at all at first glance, and soon tin production was in full swing.

It was the softest metal they had ever worked with, softer than even gold. So soft, even, that a bar could be easily bent by hand, even by a child. It also gave off the strangest crinkling sound when bent. It melted at a very low temperature as well, less than half of copper's. It was too soft to be useful for smithing by itself... but that did not mean it was useless either.

They knew they could mix metals. They had tried with copper and silver, though it yielded little useful results. Now that a new option was available, they had new mixes to try.

That's how they discovered that adding a part of tin to 9 parts of copper simply made the result... incredibly better than copper in every way. It flowed better when melted, and made casting a breeze. It was more resistant and harder when solid, making using it a a source for tools actually viable. It was much more workable too. It was downright revolutionary as a material.

It was bronze.

They started testing by making a simple knife. They had tried with copper before, but the edge was too soft and dulled too quickly, and so they had stuck with stone blades. But as they doused the red-hot knife in water and ground its edge on a fine-grained stone until it was as thin as a hair, they had the feeling of having found something great.

The sound of the blade slicing through leather like it was nothing sounded like victory.

Bronze began to take over copper in every way. For jewelry, for sculptures, for cookware, and most importantly, for tools. Bronze knives, bronze axes, bronze hammers, bronze tongs, bronze arrowheads even. They were so much easier to make than than stone tools, and though some knappers still persisted in their crafts, they mostly made knives as art pieces rather than as tools.

New forms of weapons began to take shape, too. Knives and spearheads could be made longer, now that they didn't have to rely on finding a good enough rock to begin with. Artists and artisans did as they always did, and they experimented. What if they gave this knife this kind of curve? What if they made it perfectly triangular? What it they gave it only one sharp edge? What if, what if, what if?

Swords, bigger, longer knives that could be used at a distance, became a thing. Of course, nobody expected for them to find a real use; spears were much better for hunting beasts, and they didn't have anyone to fight against either. Instead, they became signs of status or talent in the art of smithing, for they were a difficult and resource intensive thing to make. Ma'otah, as the village's first and sole priestess, and also as a respected leader, was offered one herself, an intricately decorated blade with a brightly painted antler hilt. She began wearing it tied to her waist like jewelry, another kind of embellishment.

The Bronze Age was beginning.

---

Tolamu's Discovery

Tolamu had been pondering a very important problem lately: food preservation. Though many plants could be dried for storage, some things, like meat, simply rotted too fast to let the air and heat do their work.

Smoking, in addition to drying, would be a good alternative... but trees were scarce, and they did not have that much wood to spare. No way would he ever stoop so low as to use furnace coal for the task either. That stuff smelled and tasted like poison, and he would not dare serve it to anyone, least of all himself! And so smoked meats were reduced to only an occasional by-product of night-time campfires.

He wandered through the village, deep in thought. What else could he use...? Someone of his genius would think of something, wouldn’t he? Water and moisture seemed to be made made things rot. After all, fish and soft fruits went bad much faster than grains or hard roots. That was why they dried things to preserve them... A new way to remove moisture was needed.

He stopped by the old abandoned well. No one ever used it. They had been unlucky with the spot they had dug it in, as only disgusting water that only made you more thirsty came out of it. It wasn't even good for washing, since it dried out and stung skin. Everyone used the one dug a bit farther out the village, since that one actually gave sweet, refreshing drinking water.

...Wait a second. It dried out the skin?

He grabbed a bucket and fetched some water from the old well. He dipped his finger in it and licked it, frowning thoughtfully at the taste. It actually wasn't that bad when he didn't try to swallow it in large gulps... There was something in that water for sure, something interesting. He had to get it out.

He poured the water in a pot near a fire, and brought it all to a boil. And then he waited. And waited. Slowly the water disappeared, leaving behind a steam cloud, until there was no more but a sort of white crust on the bottom. Tolamu steeled his nerves, and with great culinary courage, licked the bottom of the pot.

Wow, that's a powerful taste. His eyes screwed shut and he made a face. He could feel his tongue dry out a little bit where some of the white residue stuck to it and slowly melted. Maybe in moderation, it could be used to season food... something to try out later for sure.

For now, though, he went to work fetching and boiling saltwater, each time scraping off the resulting salt into a bowl. And when he felt he had enough, he took a piece if raw meat, and buried it in it.

His first experiment would not be a complete success, but through trial and error, salt-curing would soon take shape.

---

A Lost Child's Tale

She was running through the bush, laughing merrily. Her mother had let her accompany her to the fruit tree grove to pick some food. She had been so proud to be allowed to help, though it only made sense. She was five monsoons old after all! She was a big girl now.

She held the basket for her mother while she forage, and she picked some flowers herself. She could give them to her dad, or maybe have her auntie show her how to braid them in a crown. Sometimes, her mother would lift her to sit on her shoulders, and she would pick the fruits she could now reach, giggling all the while

They were taking a break now, resting in shadows to wait out the middle of the day, when the Great Fire burned the hottest. She was running around in the grasses, chasing bugs and using her straw hat to carry pretty rocks. Her mother kept an eye on her, but not too vigilantly: the grove was small, and so she knew her daughter could not stray too far.

It happened very suddenly. She heard something near, something like... laughter? Yes, she could hear it well now. Just behind that bush, hidden behind a few arched trees, people laughed. Many people, from the sound of it.

She went closer, peeking out from the tallgrass. Beyond those trees... there really were people! They were all grouped around tall tables, or maybe just normal tables that were too tall for her, and they kept passing each other cups of something in-between cheers and laughs. They dressed weird, and looked even weirder, but they looked like they had so much fun.

She took a few more steps forward, curious. They spoke weirdly, too. She couldn't understand what what they were saying. Maybe she could hear better if she got a bit closer...?

One last step, an invisible threshold crossed, and she was gone.

She didn't notice anything wrong at first. In fact, she thought everything was quite spectacular! There were pretty lights everywhere, everyone was having fun, there was nice music she had never heard before playing... it was great! Sure she didn't understand the games or why so many involved throwing tiny bone cubes, and she one time grabbed a cup filled with something that smelled sweet but tasted really bitter and gross, but she had also found a cup full of sweet, cold berry juice, so it all evened out in the end.

She ran around for a while, looking at everything, laughing when others did, though she didn't why, listening to the others speak in a language she did not understand, putting some of her pretty rocks on a table and looking as someone spun a wheel for her using rules she did not know.

She ran around like this for close to an hour, just looking at everything, chasing every distraction, tasting every food that did not look too gross.

"Mama! Mama!" she shouted excitedly, "Come here! Look at what I found! There's so many people here!"

Her mother, of course, did not answer her. She stopped moving, smile growing a bit uncertain.

"Mama? Can you hear me?!" Her smile fell off entirely. Why didn't her mother hear her? She hadn't gone far, she was still in the grove! "Mama! Where are you?! Mama!"

Tears formed in her eyes as she panicked, and she could feel sobs build in her chest. "Mama, I'm sorry I ran off, please pick me up... I'm scared!" She began walking, not looking around has she had done, but rather looking for the way she had come in. But wherever she turned, she only found more tables. More strangers. More games she didn't know or understand.

She was scared. She was panicking. She wanted to find her mama, to have her hold her and tell her everything was alright... "I wanna go hoooooome!" she scream-sobbed into the crowd, closing her eyes huddling on the ground.

Everything went still and silent, then. She hesitantly opened one eye, and then the other. The people were gone, and so were the games. Instead, in front of her, sat a little pile of black stone marbles. In front of that pile, a circle was drawn in the dirt, with an equal amount of white marbles dispersed inside.

She sniffled a bit. She knew that game. She played it all the times with the other kids in the village. And she was very good at it. That thought calmed her down a little bit, and she picked up a black marble. With a flick of her finger, she sent it flying into the circle and crashing into a white marble, cleanly bouncing it out of the ring. She smiled a little bit.

One by one, each white marble was knocked out of the circle and replaced by a black one. Each time, she felt a little bit better, like she was doing the right thing. And when the last white marble was removed, a tricky shot that had her think about her angle thrice over, branches bent in front of her, and she saw the fruit tree grove again, the normal one. And then she heard... her mama! Her mama was calling for her!

She ran out of the door, tears once again streaming down her face, but because of relief this time, not fear. "Mama! Mama, I'm here!"

She crashed in her mother's arms, gripping on for dear life as she began babbling about how lost she had been, how scared and how sorry she was for running off. She did not notice how shaken the woman looked, how she held her daughter just as tightly, if not more so, or how her face was also streaked by tears and her chest shook with relieved sobs.

She would soon learn that she had not been gone for an hour or so as she had thought, but for 3 days, which did explain her sudden and inexplicable hunger. She would be asked many questions, about what happened, about where she had been, but she could not answer. Her memories of those days simply slid off her mind like water off a goose's back.

She only remembered people laughing, having a lot of fun, and then being very, very alone and scared.

Summary

Some miners come back up with cassierite, a tin ore. People first aren't sure what to do with the black ores, but still decide to isolate it from the veinstone, to salvage a few bigger crystal to use as gemstones. They keep the cassierite unusable as gemstones, which is most of it, just in case. Since it was just sitting there, unused, a young metalsmith decides to try her hand at smelting it, just for fun. Incredibly, it does work, and yields crude tin. Through further experimentation, metalsmiths discover bronze. They realize just how good of an alloy it is, and start using it for everything, including tools and blades, which were still made of stone at that point. The new advancements permit the creations of new forms of weapons, mostly swords, though they are considered ceremonial and decorative, as well as status symbols, rather than true weapons. Ma'otah is offered one of these swords, and she begins wearing it tied to her waist.

Tolamu ponders how to better preserve food. Simply drying doesn't work for everything, and smoking on a large scale would require more wood than they really have available. He passes by an old well that was abandoned because it only managed to draw saltwater from the submerged seas and not drinking water. He remembers some of the properties of that water, and experiments a bit, evaporating saltwater in a pot so that he's left with only salt. He considers using it as a spice, and invents salt-curing.

A young child accidentally falls into the Carnival while picking fruits with her mother. She has fun at first, though she understands very little of what's happening. However, she pretty quickly realizes that she's been separated from her mother, which sends her in a panic and breaks the Carnival's enchantment on her mind. The Carnival then presents her with a game she does know: playing marbles. She wins the game and is allowed back into the world, where she runs to her mother who has been looking for her for the 3 whole days she's been missing.

Forgotten Sands: A Divine Journey into the Unknown

Inside, the space was vast despite the ruin. The collapse had been selective, as though whatever force had built this place had protected what truly mattered. Debris littered the floor: chunks of that thought-substance, strange material half-dissolved in pools of lava, fragments of carved stone bearing symbols she did not recognize but which nonetheless resonated with meaning.

Around the perimeter, miraculously intact, stood twelve alcoves.

They had survived where walls had failed. Each was perfectly preserved, pristinely untouched by ash or lava, radiating the same quality of uncertain existence. More real than reality, more solid than solidity, as though they were carved not from matter but from necessity itself.

She approached the first alcove slowly, drawn by her ever-present curiosity. Up close, it hummed a strange tune that more so vibrated than sounded, should one even call it a sound. It resonated in the bronze of her skin, in the molten light beneath its cracks. Something floated within: a tiny star, no larger than her fist, spinning lazily in the alcove’s depths. It cast pinpricks of silver light across the ruined temple, cold and ancient and impossibly distant, despite its proximity.

She reached out, hesitant for the first time since her walking began, fingers stretching toward that captured starlight—

The star screamed.

There was no other word for it; A sound beyond hearing, a frequency that bypassed ears entirely, striking directly at the marrow of existence. The tiny light collapsed inward, folding into itself with desperate violence, growing brighter and brighter as it shrank smaller and smaller. For one crystalline instant, it was a point of absolute radiance, a memory of everything that stars had ever been: cold, distant, and watchful.

Then it died.

The implosion sent cracks racing across the alcove’s surface, like lightning frozen in stone. The woman stumbled back, eyes wide, as the fissures spread and deepened, and then fire erupted from within. Not lava-fire, nor earth-fire, but something fiercer, something that burned with intention and will. Golden flames consumed the alcove’s interior, devouring the darkness where the star had floated, replacing silver light with blazing gold.

When the flames finally settled, the alcove had transformed. Where cold starlight had dwelt, now a miniature sun hovered—fierce and young and alive in a way the star had never been. The cracks in the alcove’s surface had sealed themselves with veins of molten gold, and the vibration she had felt was now not the patient hum of distant light, but the roaring pulse of something demanding to be seen.

She pressed her palm against the alcove’s surface, and the sensation immediately overwhelmed her.

Heat. Glory. Light that does not merely illuminate, but commands. Fire as transformation, as judgment, as gift. The blaze that nurtures and the blaze that consumes. Dawn as promise, Noon as dominion. The eye that watches from above, that sees all shadows and permits none. Youth. Fury. The refusal to be ignored.

The woman gasped, pulling her hand back, eyes wide with surprise. The sensation lingered in her palm, crawling up her arm. More so foreign than unpleasant, it was something she had not been before touching, something she now contained. This alcove had changed while she watched—it had died and been reborn.

The second alcove felt different. She touched it with both hands this time, more boldly, curious to experience the distinction.

Edges. Divisions. The line between war and peace, between order and chaos. Blood spilled with purpose. Blood spilled with meaning. The moment before battle, and the moment after. The silence when the screaming stops. Sacrifice as currency, as language. The weight of what is given up and what is gained.

She moved to the third, then the fourth, touching each with growing eagerness, collecting sensations like the child she resembled collecting flowers.

Chance. Unpredictability. The tumbling of dice, the turning of cards. The laughter that comes when control is released. Joy without reason. Risk without regret. The gamble that is living, the play that is existing. The game that never ends.

Death. Ending. The quiet after breath ceases. The darkness that is not absence but presence; darkness as shelter, as rest, as the soft closing of the eyes. The veil between what is and what was. The embrace that all things return to. Potentially, even, the last kindness.

Discovery. The burning need to know. The spark that ignites in mortal minds. The reaching towards understanding. Glory earned through trial. Eminence achieved through suffering. The catalyst that breaks. The genius that emerges. The star that burns brightest before going dark.

Sky. Expanse. The dome that contains all things. Weather as mood, as judgment, as gift. Rain that nourishes, wind that scours. The space between earth and void. Magic as the world speaking to itself. Power drawn from the world’s very existence.

Kingdom. Hierarchy. The pyramid of power, the throne atop it all. Civilization as structure. Civilization as control, with the strong commanding and the weak obeying. The chain that binds society together, or strangles it. Progress through domination. Order through force.

Life. Growth. The explosion of green, the persistence of roots, the stubbornness of seeds. Nature as force, nature as law. The beast’s hunger, the plant’s reaching, the animal’s instinct. The wild that refuses taming. The primal that remembers itself forever.

Dream. The space between waking and sleeping. Oblivion as a gift, as a curse, and even as a teacher. Visions granted and taken. The realm where reality softens, where possibility expands. Inspiration that destroys. Hope that builds. The beautiful lie that makes truth bearable.

Deception. Masks. The face shown versus the face hidden. Corruption as transformation, as perversion, as the slow rot that changes what-is into what-should-not-be. The whisper in the dark, the poison in the honey. The smile with hidden intent. The truth that lies. The lies that become truth.

The eleventh alcove surprised her. Where the others had felt like single voices, this one sang in curious duality. Two melodies intertwined, neither dominant, neither submissive.

Surface. Calm. The mirror that reflects the sky, peaceful and inviting, promising gentle passage. The lapping of waves against the shore. The glitter of sunlight on water. The sailor’s hope and the swimmer’s joy. The endless blue that stretches to the horizon and whispers of freedom.

Then, beneath it, somewhere darker and deeper.

Depths. Pressure. The crushing weight of fathoms. The darkness where light has never reached, where currents drag the unwary down and into the unknown. Teeth in blackness. Cold that numbs. The drowned who do not return. The secrets the surface hides. The hunger that waits below the glitter, patient and ancient and vast.

She pulled her hand away more slowly from this one. It felt incomplete, as though the alcove waited for something, someone, to claim it fully. Like it waited to give voice to either the calm or the chaos, or the terrible beauty of both. An empty throne awaiting its monarch.

By the time she reached the twelfth alcove, she was trembling. Not from fear—she had yet to learn what that was—but from the accumulated weight of knowledge that she had absorbed. Each touch had added something to her understanding, layers upon layers of sensations and meanings that her newly-awakened consciousness struggled to organize.

The twelfth alcove felt like home.

Earth. Stone. The foundation beneath all things. Secrets buried in layers. Treasures hidden in darkness. The slow patience of geology. The deep places where light does not reach. The strength that endures. The silence that protects. The underground that remembers.

She pressed her forehead against it, eyes closing, and for a moment simply stood, breathing, feeling the resonance of herself reflected back. This one knew her. This one was her, in some way she could not articulate but felt with absolute certainty.

When she finally pulled away, the fissures in her skin were glowing so brightly that shadows fled to the alcove’s depths, retreating away from sight, away from mind.

---

The throne sat at the chamber’s center, though ‘sat’ was generous. It had collapsed partially into the lava that had pooled around its base, tilting the seat at an angle, half-submerged in molten stone. The back had cracked down the middle, whilst one armrest had been sheared off entirely. What remained was less furniture and more of ‘a monument’ to furniture. The idea of a throne where the throne had once been.

She waded into the lava to reach it.

The molten rock parted around her feet, or perhaps her feet passed through it, or perhaps there was no meaningful difference between her flesh and the earth’s blood. Steam rose where her legs submerged, but the lava did not burn her, did not consume her. If anything, it seemed to recognize her, flowing around her form with the deference of a subject moving aside for royalty.

She reached the throne’s base and crouched, studying the carving she could see despite the magma that obscured it. The symbols wrote themselves directly into her awareness, bypassing eyes entirely.

Who made us?

⚬──────────────────────────────✧──────────────────────────────⚬

The cavern listened. Khthon’s call echoed through crystal and stone, through geometries that predated his awakening, through structures that remembered a time before gods walked Ashuru’s skin. The Great Bell hung motionless in the refracted light, its surface crawling with symbols that refused to hold still, and yet as the God of Earth and Secrets spoke his demand, something shifted.

Not the Bell itself—the Bell remained as it had always been: immense, silent, patient. However, the script upon its surface began to glow, re-arrange slowly into something that, albeit still erratic, resembled patterns that lingered a bit. As if recognizing a kindred nature in the one who asked the void a question. Secrets calling to secrets, depths acknowledging depths, the void answering back.

The crystal roots are not stone, they are not mineral. They are something older—frozen thought, crystallized intentions, the skeletal structure of a mind too vast to truly comprehend even. They spread beneath Ashuru, like neurons beneath mortal flesh, carrying signals that were never meant for gods to intercept.

Something clicked in Khthon’s mind at that revelation. He had known that the roots had been something other. Though they dwelled in his realm, they stood apart from the rest. He had often wondered about their true nature. He now had an answer.

Once, they pulsed with rhythm, carrying dreams from somewhere deep—deeper than earth, deeper than the black sand, deeper than anything Khthon has yet to dig up or discover. The rhythm was slow, patient. The rhythm of something asleep.

And yet, the rhythm has faltered.

The cataclysms of recent days: the tearing of the world, the birth of the sun, the reshaping of seas and mountains, the utter devouring of the surface by plants and mortals alike… All of it sent shockwaves through the root network. Many died. Many more were damaged. The Bell registered each loss as a discordant note, a skipped beat in a song that has been playing since before memory.

Khthon became very, very still. He could feel it, a great and terrible truth was about to make itself known.

But the roots are not dying because they were truly damaged, no. They are dying because the rhythm itself is changing. Something stirs in the deep, something that was meant to sleep for ages yet. The roots feel it, and they are afraid.

The impressions faded as quickly as they came, leaving Khthon with fragments of memory rather than true answers. The Bell’s script resumed its chaotic dance, symbols scattering like startled fish, but for one moment. One single phrase held steady at the Bell’s crown before dissolving:

TOO SOON. SHE WAKES TOO SOON.

Then it was gone, and the Bell was merely a Bell again. Ancient, sure, but offering nothing more. Yet the roots beneath, those very ones that Khthon had tended and healed across all of Ashuru, hummed with a frequency he definitely had not noticed before. Neither pain nor death, but sheer anticipation.

A great fear took hold of Khthon. He could not gasp for he did not breathe, sweat for he did not have skin, or shake for he did not have nerves, but his body still showed his emotions. Cracks on the stone, small flakes chipping off and falling to the ground, dust and sand flying everywhere… He could barely hold himself together.

They were not the first, his God-Siblings and him. Something else lay within their world. And in their youth and ignorance, they had been careless. Too quick. Too rash. They had pushed the world too hard, shaped it with no regard to what might have come before them or any role they had been meant to play. Whatever slumbered was waking up because of them.

Khthon… Khthon could not do anything about it on his own. Mitigation would no longer work. It was too big, too much. Past differences be damned, he needed to find the others… or at least those that would be willing to listen.

”We did this… It’s our fault…” he whispered. ”Can we even fix it…?”

Summary

The woman-who-is-not-a-woman entered the ruins of the First Temple. She witnessed Arstus' death through his alcove, and then Liute's birth. She touched each alcove, learning of each God's being and essence. She noted the strange duality of Amut and the First Cephalopod's shared alcove, and felt a strong kinship with Khthon's. She then moves towards the ruined throne that once stood in the middle of the temple, and reads the inscription engraved on it: "Who made us?"

Elsewhere, Khthon receives the answer to his scrying. He learns of the true nature of the crystal roots: not minerals, but rather pure crystallised thoughts, the constituent parts of a great, primordial mind spread throughout Ashuru since before the Gods' existence. He learns how the drastic changes to the world caused by the Gods, be they cataclysm or the emergence of mortal life, seemed to have drastically accelerated some kind of process, the awakening of something that sleeps within Ashuru, and that this is what had been killing the roots. Terrified by the revelations, Khthon realizes that they, as Gods, had been careless, and wonders if they can even fix the issue. He prepares to seek the help of the other Gods.

Forgotten Sands: A Divine Journey into the Unknown

Khthon

The crystal roots hummed gently. Khthon watched them carefully, looking for any sign of harm or panic.

He had been running damage control for... a rather long time now. Scouring the entirety of Ashuru's crust to save what crystals he could, and mourn those he couldn't, was slow and tedious work, but Khthon was nothing if not patient.

Still, though Gods and stone did not get... tired, as mortals did, he still looked forward to some rest. It had been too long since he had the time to contemplate his hoard at his leisure...

In this way, Anakalypsos had been a great help in this task. Though at first Khthon had been hesitant to let another God's creation roam his realm freely, he had found the arachnid-like Avatar to be a most agreeable companion. It was silent, diligent, discreet, and did not bother him more than strictly necessary. Her help with locating distressed crystal roots had let him save many he probably wouldn't have found or reached in time to save otherwise. For that he was grateful.

By now, however, he felt he had done all he could. He could think of no more places to check, and whatever help he gave only seemed to offer diminishing returns. Now that the immediate crisis had been mitigated, all they needed, he supposed, was time.

...There was one last thing he could do, though. The Great Bell in its crystal cavern, the one Excelsis had described to him. If his God-Brother was to be believed, then it was linked to the roots. He could no longer help the roots as he had done so far, but maybe he could learn from their source...

For the first time in... what had probably been ages for those on the surface, Khthon fully emerged. The Sun's light felt much too bright, and his stone body rumbled unhappily at the feeling. He would have to endure it, and in any case, he would soon be back to his dim abode.

He had chosen to emerge near the ever-shifting mountains, those that had existed since before his awakening, and which he'd chosen to leave largely untouched. But though they predated him, the Unfinished Mountains still obeyed him, and when he asked them, "Which of you houses the Great Bell?" they answered in unison, "This one!"

He felt where the crystal cave's opening laid, knew exactly the path to take, and when a great wind burst came, he let the stone of his body burst into sand be carried to its entrance. He looked around as his sand reformed into stone. The cavern was... dazzling, both figuratively and literally. Had he mortal senses, the endless refraction of light in the cave would have been dizzying, if not downright nauseating. As a God, though, he could appreciate the beauty of such a place without vertigo spoiling it.

The Great Bell was an intimidating sight. Such a device being a portend of doom... it led to wonder who made it in the first place. But that would be a mystery to solve later: the current issues were much more pressing.

Khthon looked at the script, and then quickly gave up trying to read it as is. It was much too jumbled and rapidly changing to try and decrypt it as is. Instead he turned his attention to the room as a whole, to its essence. He could feel it, a truth just out of reach, unknown by all, hidden. A great Secret, one which he did not have access to, for now.

Khthon dealt in Secrets, yes, but always by creating them, not by revealing them. So this challenge was a new one... but not an impossible one. He reached out to the hidden knowledge of this place, called to it, tried to coax it out. He listened carefully, on the lookout for even a scrap to reveal itself to him.

"Come to me," he whispered. "Know who you belong to... Show me how to help and heal you..."

And when the knowledge would show itself, Khthon knew that he would seize it.

Summary

Khthon comes to the realization that healing and helping the roots as he had done so far is only resulting in diminishing returns, despite Excelsis' Avatar's, Anakalypsos', help. He decides to go to the crystal root's source, the crystal cave and the Great Bell to search for more ways to help. Since he can't make heads or tails from the displayed text, he instead decides to try and coax out some of the cave's secrets using his Domain.

Conviction spending
- Khthon tries to coax out/scry for hidden knowledge pertaining to the Great Bell and the crystal roots, especially regarding how to heal and maintain them, using his mastery over the Secrets Domain. (In-Domain, Hazy/Surreal? 1-2 conviction? Really not sure how to classify this one, tbh)

Forgotten Sands: A Divine Journey into the Unknown

Ma'otah's Village

Tolamu's people had always been filled with artistic kinds, or so he'd been told. Even before Ma'otah had met the One That Lay Beneath, and secured a steady supply of never-before-seen crafting materials, they had been creating jewelry and paintings and pottery whenever the time and supplies permitted.

The search for beauty was important. Desirable. A worthy goal to dedicated yourself to. And yet, and yet! They were oh so shortsighted about it. Too focused on the permanent, on what could be held and passed down, and not enough on the fleeting beauty of the experiential.

Yes, in this village where the sounds of metalsmiths' whistling and humming in time with their swings filled the streets, where great riches adorned every body in sight, where houses too were a subject of beautification, they were still content to feed themselves with charred roots and bland stews.

But not Tolamu. No, not him. He was different. He would not stand for this swill. And though it might make him an outcast (it wouldn't) and draw the ire of those who did not understand his lofty goals (that wouldn't happen either), Tolamu was set on revolutionizing his people's food. No, not just the food, but their entire understanding of what food even is in the first place!

He started his grand culinary quest very simply; by studying what food they already ate. It was roots, mostly. White and red starchy tubers made up a good chunk of their diet; they were filling, easy to grow and easy to collect. Various leaves and the occasional fruit followed, for much of the same reasons. Tallgrass seeds could also be eaten, either boiled whole or ground into coarse powder first, but were not especially tasty, though useful to thicken broths.

Meat was also common, but much less so: hunting was difficult and dangerous. Taking down an antelope was often not worth the effort and risk of injuries, especially when trapping already got them a few game birds or rabbits everyday. Meat also spoiled quickly in the heat, and had to be eaten fast.

As for the real rarities, they were honey and eggs, especially the unfertilized ones. If hunting for birds was tricky, finding their tiny nests in the brush and collecting whatever eggs might still be within was even harder. They were a rare treat, more often the accidental results of gatherers getting lucky and stumbling upon them than anything else.

Same with honey: the stinging insects protecting it were dangerous, and honey nests were pretty few in the first place, but at least it kept for a long time once put in a jar. They had even managed to make a small reserve, for use in case of burns or injuries.

In the end, he came away with three main problems with the available ingredients: a lack of variety, bland flavors, and the scarcity of the actually interesting ones. Basically, everything was too boring!

No wonder every meal ended up bland if the ingredients themselves were bad to begin with! He could feel something within him, like an inner fire, flare brighter at the thought. He could fix this, he could be different.

He began his search for new flavors by picking flowers. Animals ate them, so surely they had to have some culinary merit. Unfortunately, upon tasting, most turned out even blander than boiled white tubers, though some had a very faintly sweet aftertaste. One in particular elicited a light tingling on the tip of his tongue, and he kept it aside for now. But overall, it seemed that flowers were better at looking pretty than tasting interesting.

Tolamu's experiments continued similarly. He tasted everything, every fruit and every plant he could find that he did not know for sure was poisonous. He tasted tree bark and tree sap, carefully peeled fruit skins and boiled green wood, unknown mushrooms and dried medicinal roots. Some were success; one tree's bark, when peeled thin and dried, gave off a spicy scent, and a root used against nausea gave a most delicious aroma to poultry soup. Most, though, were failures. More than once he had to combat terrible stomach aches as he ate something that wasn't edible, fell victim to Grog Tree sap's paralyzing effects, and one time slept for three entire days after eating what could only have been a terribly poisonous mushroom.

These spices, as he'd started to call them, were a large part of what was missing to food, he'd decided. With the proper mix, even the blandest ingredient could shine. But he wasn't satisfied yet. No, he couldn't. He had fixed half of the problem, had given variety and flavor, but some ingredients were still beyond his grasp. How could he rest easy without being able to use all of his potential? His inner fire blazed at the thought: he could not let this rest.

Tolamu spent weeks looking for a solution. He'd first considered learning where the birds nested, only for that idea to be crushed once he realised that the partridge he'd been following simply abandoned her nest once it was compromised. He thought about getting them to nest near the village, but let that idea go just as quickly as it had came: those birds ran away as soon as they heard something coming, so why would they ever willingly go near?

...

What if they didn't willingly come near? At least, at first. Tolamu thought about it long and hard. It would be easiest if the birds nested near. They won't come by themselves, but if they have no way of leaving, then they would have to nest in the village. Catching some partridges alive would be tricky, but doable. Getting them to stay... well, he could... build them a house?

He got to work an evening, weaving branches into waist-high walls forming a square enclosure. He'd also taken the time to stack a few bricks, making a small square house for the birds to hide from the Great Fire. He'd even woven a nest from tallgrass, trying to make it as cosy as he could. Once he was satisfied, he grabbed a net, and went to hunt.

On the first day, he didn't even see a single bird. On the second, the same thing happened. On the third, he saw a small female flee into the brush, but never managed to find her. It took 6 entire days for him to catch a single bird, a plump female partridge that kept screaming until he released her in his enclosure. He did not leave her alone then, though. Partridges might not soar like vultures and eagles, but they were still birds, and could still fly. So, he grabbed his new quarry and his sharpest paring knife, and delicately snipped off every flight feather at their halfway point.

Satisfied that she could no longer escape, he went to bed, exhausted, and dreamt of an unlimited supply of delicious, nutritious eggs.

It took a few days for the bird to start laying. Tolamu took good care of her, giving her fresh water and a bowl of tallgrass seeds everyday. He'd also managed to catch two more birds, whose wings he'd also clipped. Company, and time, had seemed to be the key to getting the birds to adjust to their new surroundings. Little brown spotted eggs appeared one day in one of the nests, and Tolamu knew he'd succeeded. He grabbed them all and rushed to the nearest cooking fire.

Everyone knew and enjoyed eggs boiled in their shells, as was the classic way of preparing them. Tolamu, however, wanted to mix things up. Literally.

Through a burst of what he could only describe as burning divine inspiration, he grated a few white tubers on a coarse stone, and mixed the resulting fine mush in a bowl with a few dollops of honey. He added some spoonfuls of ground tallgrass seeds, a pinch of ground cinnamon bark, cracked a few eggs to add to the mixture, and mixed until he ended up with a thick batter. Finally he got out his latest innovation, something he'd commissioned from the metalsmiths: a flat copper plate, with risen edges and a handle, which they'd called a "pan".

Tolamu put a small lump of rendered animal fat in it, then on the fire it went. Once the bottom was coated with melted animal fat, the batter was poured in, and left to cook. The food started smelling good, the half-cooked batter was flipped, and left alone until both side became golden, and then everything was taken off the fire.

Tolamu looked in awe at his culinary masterpiece, the fruit of his singular genius. It used all that he had worked for, the new ingredients, the old ones, the new cooking methods. It was the first step into a new era of cooking, the first spark of true culinary beauty.

It was... a "pancake".

Summary

Tolamu is a member of Ma'otah's tribe, who is strangely obsessed over cooking (as he unknowingly carries a Spark for it). He can't stand the simple, bland potato-based meals that everybody else eats day after day, so he goes off to search for new, more exciting ingredients and flavors.

Through thorough experimentation, he manages to a couple different spices, but also mildly poisons himself a few times doing it, and even enters a short coma after eating raw lullaby shrooms, which he deems poisonous.

Not satisfied, he wants to secure a steady supply of rarer, already known ingredients, specifically eggs. He build an enclosure, and after many tries, manages to capture 3 live female partridges. He clips their wings so that they don't fly away and feeds them daily, until they get somewhat used to human presence and begin laying unfertilized eggs again. This is the beginning of the domestication of landfowl.

With his new ingredients in hand, Tolamu mixes together a potato-based batter, and creates the first pancake.

CHANBARA [Suits, Swords, and Sorcery]

@ERode Sounds great! Everything pretty much fits with what I had imagined :D

And I kinda love the idea of him being on probation cause he's too nosy. You leak the fact that the lunchlady got a DUI in 1997 once and suddenly you're a "liability" and "can't be left alone anymore" smh 😔

Forgotten Sands: A Divine Journey into the Unknown

Ma'otah

After the first furnace was built by Ma'otah, many others were constructed by the villagers. Most were used to fire clay, turning simple clay pots and figurines into proper earthenware and common mudbricks into harder, sturdier building materials.

The others were used for metalworking. Ma'otah and a few interested craftsmen dedicated most of their free time to experimenting with new techniques that the furnaces' high temperature permitted. They'd found a way to feed more air to the fire while keeping the furnace closed, making the heat within rise even higher. It was a clever construction, using a large pot, an animal hide, some cord and a tube to link the pot to the furnace's interior, which they'd called "bellows". By pumping the hide, one could blast air inside the furnace, without letting heat escape.

Higher heat meant an easier time melting metal, which took up a big part of their experiments. Many soapstone molds of varying sizes and complexity were carved and used, and copper and silver adornment were created with them; small round plates with a hole in the middle to be mounted on necklaces as pendants, large plaques with reliefs molded on their surfaces that would hang on the walls of homes, thick bangles to adorn wrists and ankles...

Small rectangular ingots were also often cast, to be put in storage for when they would be needed. They also had the advantage of being much purer than raw copper or silver nugget: when melted, all impurities contained in the metal would float to the top, and could be excluded.

The results were a bit crude, the edges often spilled over the mold when the liquid metal was poured from the clay crucible, and the object sometimes had to be melted and remolded multiple time to be an usable shape, but with time and practice, and refining the spouts of their crucibles, these problems lessened somewhat.

They even tried mixing different both copper and silver, which to their great surprise ended up not with a swirl of both, as they had expected, but with a uniform mass, softer than copper but much more brilliant. They tried different ratios of both metal, and carefully observed the difference in softness and patina, how some shined like gold, and others tarnished not into the blue-green of copper nor the dull brown of silver, but into a much darker gray color.

Having thoroughly explored casting, Ma'otah set her sight on a different, yet familiar way of working. She thought of the hammering of cold metal, still used plenty to make bowls and pots and plates, and of the woman who thought of warming the metal in-between cold working session, so that it did not harden to the point of breaking. And she had the idea, why not hammer the metal when still hot?

She took a stone hammer, one crafted specifically for metalworking and a copper ingot, draped a heavy leather hide over her chest, dragged a large flat stone near a furnace, and got to work.

She heated the ingot, not to melt it, but to softened it, and took it out using two long flat pieces of copper, so that she did not burn herself. Laying the ingot on the stone, she began hammering, and was amazed at how the ingot bent with barely any resistance under her strikes. She soon called for her fellows and all unoccupied craftmasters.

"See how the copper listens to each hit," she said, demonstrating with a few strike. "When it glows, it no longer is as stubborn as we all know it can be." She kept working the ingot with no real goal in mind, simply testing how it felt to work it. Her fellows watched with great attention, ideas already forming, some fetching more hammers and hides so that they could try their hands at forging too.

"What if," one said, "you were to strike not with something flat, but something pointy? Or something with a relief?" Proper tools were immediately fetched, and tried out. Pointy strikes led to small depressions, or even holes, and strikes with reliefs created identically shaped indents.

"What about if you made it very thin?" another asked. "Could blades be made? Axes, knives, arrowheads?" Blades were possible, it turned out, but far inferior to stone ones. Copper was simply too soft, so the edge dulled quickly under repeated use. They weren't even that sharp to begin with, with no real way to sharpen them.

Similar questions and suggestion kept getting thrown around. Strikes shaped hot metal well, but could it be bent? Was jewelry easier to make with forging than casting? Could two pieces of hot metal be made to stick together? On and on, the experiments continued, now with multiple people working at once, until night fell and they were too exhausted to keep going.

Before going to sleep that night, Ma'otah made sure to bury a small ceramic figure outside her home, quietly thanking the One That Lay Below for what he had given them.

Many things came out of this frantic day of working. Many new techniques, or at least leads towards new techniques, saw the light of day, though most would not be put into practice for a long time, due to the primitive nature of their equipment. Some things could still be put into immediate use, though, and metal kitchenware saw a neat increase in production; ceramic was great for cookware, but made poor spatulas. Copper was much better suited for utensils, as well as tools like hammers.

With metal also being able to be hammered into thin wires without becoming brittle, jewelry also advanced. Finger rings, whether plain or with jewels inlaid, became a normal part of people's wardrobe, and silver hoops mostly replaced bone earrings.

Slowly but surely, metal gained more and more importance in Ma'otah's village, and technology kept advancing...

Summary

Ma'otah and her village keep experimenting with metalcraft. They develop primitive bellows to fuel their furnaces, which they use to fire pottery and melt metal for casting. They experiment with different mold shapes, and even discover the possibility of creating metal alloys by mixing silver and copper, though they do not have much of a use for the billon beyond its aesthetic qualities.

Ma'otah, inspired by cold- and warm-working techniques, decides to try forging. She and other explore different potential techniques, though not many end up being immediately useful. They try making pure copper blades, but they are generally inferior to stone ones. In the end, forging mostly facilitates the production of kitchenware, tools like hammers, and finer jewelry like finger rings or earrings.