Oh, something else to keep in mind when it comes to taking constructive criticism is that trying a piece of advice once and it failing does not constitute the advice being wrong or responsible for the failure. It just means you tried it once and that time didn't work. Try again.
Don't drop a piece of advice just because it fails once, twice, or three times. If you've tried to make RPs/threads X amount of times and have gotten failure (resulting in a perception of a pattern of failures/bad luck) then why not try a given piece of advice (or more than one) just as many times to see if that method has the same rate of failure.
That or just...give up, find some other hobby as others have mentioned.
It had been a fairly short amount of time since Celestine had stirred sentience within her Virtus Elves. The experience of cultivating sentience within them had been a fairly intense one, and the exhausted feeling that came afterward was not one that Celestine particularly enjoyed. Thankfully her reserves of divine energy had recovered at this point and she was feeling much better. During her resting time Celestine had once more cast her divine senses upon Galbar in order to watch the ongoing events that were taking place. These events caused Celestine to reach a fairly grim conclusion: No matter how much she prepared them, her Virtus Elves would face struggle.
This led to an intricate problem: Should a critical Virtus Elf be killed, the overall society might suffer greatly. Celestine’s first idea was to attempt to teach them all equally in every topic, but she then rationalized that such a process was too inefficient and caused them to be entirely dependent on her being free to teach them all, which was a risky proposition. Celestine then figured that she could infuse a select handful of them with advanced knowledge and allow them to spread their teachings to the others, but she then rationalized that this would create an inequality between those who were highly knowledgeable and those who were not.
Tapping a finger against her chin as she reclined in the throne that sat above the Longhall, Celestine finally came to the conclusion that she would have to seek outside advice regarding this particular subject. Rising from her throne, Celestine moved to her personal chambers and approached the desk that she kept there. Sitting down, she fetched some parchment and writing utensils in order to craft something that she could place upon the notice board that she had seen earlier.
Starting to write, Celestine stopped a few moments after she began in order to think about how exactly she wanted to phrase her request. Tapping her pen against her chin Celestine looked about her personal quarters for a few moments in order to see if there was something that she might be able to emulate. It was then that her eyes settled upon the bookcase that had never been used. Celestine read the titles of the books on chivalry and knighthood, knowing the contents of each book perfectly without ever having opened them. It was then that inspiration came to her, and she resumed writing once more.
Seeking assistance of a more experienced god for the creation of a memory library. Visit the realm of Celestine for more information.
Setting her pen down, Celestine looked over the small piece of parchment and nodded to herself. It would do well enough. Rising from the chair, Celestine made her way to the visitation chamber and then stepped through her portal to Antiquity with confidence.
As soon as she emerged from her portal completely, Celestine made her way to the notice board that she had found earlier. Making use of the tools present she placed her notice firmly upon the board before nodding to herself and turning to leave.
It was then that she noticed that she was not quite alone.
For before her loomed the figure of a most imposing Presence. Down upon her did it gaze with lidded eyes, its form wreathed in a shroud of silvers, blacks, and pallid white. Its flesh was like a starlight spackled void writ into a vessel most divine. There was an ancient endless air about it, a great weight it seemed to bear.
It spoke, and its voice was a quiet thrumming thunder, resonating in her chest; it pressed outwards through her bones and into the ancient stone of Antiquity. "Greetings, sister," the Presence said, its tone like music, but subtly strange as if the instrument were faintly damaged. Its shroud billowed slowly, driven to movement, though no true wind blew in that stolid place between. It was a force familiar yet all-together different. It was the twisting of minds to tasks, the awakening of reflection. It was the glimmer of intellect within even the smallest spirit--be it stone or bird or sky.
It was emotion, pure, varied, and unrestrained by vessel or mortal mind. Writ in the hues of many faded colors, those feelings swept back and forth between them. They scattered in harmless drifting waves. As vigilant as she was, Celestine would notice his gaze upon her--though it was eyeless and thus quite vague. There was an intensity to it, one which at the very least matched that of Thaa's.
Satisfied, its intent withdrew, and once more it let words flow upon the air. "I am the Dreaming God," it said, then fell silent so that it might allow her to reply.
The imposing presence of the Dreaming God unnerved Celestine when she turned to face them. Not only did she nearly walk face-first into the swirling void that made up their body but their entirely otherworldly appearance gave Celestine a brief cause for alarm before she recognized that this entity wasn’t hostile. Instincts flared violently before being quenched quickly as Celestine’s rational mind figured things out. Depending on how keenly they were observing Celestine, they might’ve noticed a faint twitch in her left hand as she almost went for the sword hanging upon her right hip. Thankfully her mind was just as fast as her body. The effects of the Dreaming God’s method of speaking were quite perplexing to her, as she noted how she felt their voice rather than merely hearing it. Thaa’s method of speaking through a mountain of corpses was equally perplexing, though at the very least that method still made some amount of reasonable sense within Celestine’s mind.
Her own appearance and the appearance of Cadien had led her to believe that many of her fellow deities would take on more mortal forms, but then her visit to the realm of Thaa had proven that deities were not limited to such an idea, and the being before her pushed that boundary even further. Perhaps she and Cadien were the exception and not the rule? Celestine would have to see about meeting more gods and goddesses before figuring out the truth behind that enigma.
The Dreaming God had the honor of being the second god that Celestine had to look up at in order to properly examine them. The way that they presented themselves was fairly interesting as Celestine noted a mix of both corporeal and incorporeal elements. After a few moments processing what had just happened and the physical appearance of the being before her Celestine remembered her manners and began her usual greeting routine. Grasping at the edges of her cape like one would a skirt, she gave a curtsey and spoke calmly. ”Greetings brother. I am Celestine, Goddess of Soldiery. Did you have something that you wished to speak to me about?”
Standing from her curtsey Celestine smoothed out her cape and awaited a response from the Dreaming God. Perhaps they wanted to speak with her about the notice that she had just posted? It would be awfully convenient to progress her idea while it was fresh within her mind instead of having to recall the information at a later time. Though, naturally, there was only one way to find out for sure.
The air crackled briefly with the sensation of anticipation, before falling once more to the subtle sway of extant emotions as he regarded her once more. Then his awareness expanded and touched the board behind her, and a fleeting sense of amusement would tug faintly at the edges of her mind. It was not an intrusive thing, but merely the evidence of his nearness and the influence of his nature.
As if pondering her query, he responded, each word seeming listless in its timbre.
"Mmn, one could say that such is true, sister-Celestine," then a pause, dragging into silence, as the Presence thought upon its words. In that time of wordless wondering, the emotion-wind began to swirl and churn. They did not seem to completely mirror the Dreaming God's own reflected thoughts but instead began to weave their own tapestry of meaning.
'Wariness,' said the swaying thoughts, twisting about themselves in patterns.
'Trust,' said another gust of wavelengths as they brushed past her hair and ears, coiling away in swirls.
'Awareness,' the third uttered, the sound fluttering like a whispered breath across her skin.
The Presence stirred, seeming to constrict like narrowed eyes. The winds grew quiet once again. Its voice then pressed into her skull and was felt as much as heard, "I glimpsed your essence, sister, as you departed the Death God's realm."
The words were laden full with meaning, weighty in their bulk. They spoke of curiosity unending, a drive to find and learn, and know from the shallow surface to the deeper secrets held hidden far below. The air about the Dreamer shifted, and once again, he spoke.
"Yet," he started, but the rest never came. Instead, a mass of churning insight erupted from his shroud. It writhed about them both until it was all that they could see.
In it were the vaguest shapes of her creations, her children of newborn minds. Beyond these intimations was an Endless Dream--a Subtle Web--through which all living, thinking, things remained connected. It danced and swirled and thrummed with an intensity that few things could match. If she were to look upon him, she'd find his eyes open, no longer hidden from the world.
Black, bottomless cores, plummeting into infinity. Exploding nebulae, dying stars, spread outwards from the darkness of his gaze. There was something bizarre--yet fitting--about the sight. A being of endless knowledge, boundless thought and feeling, yet seeming to always hunger for more. Perhaps it was not a vile emptiness, but merely a sad truth of his nature.
Perhaps.
The veil of color and sensation began to ebb its flow, drifting in many threads to clear the air.
"I would help if you will let me," the Presence said, its words a proclamation.
The presence of the whispered voices unnerved Celestine slightly, especially with their insistence upon touching her as they passed. Unfortunately, such things had to be abided as not all gods took so closely after mortals, and the Dreamer clearly didn’t seem inclined to follow their patterns beyond the slightest degree of acknowledgement. When they mentioned that they had seen her leaving the realm of Thaa, Celestine raised an eyebrow by only a millimeter. Her activity had drawn an observer? How curious. Celestine pondered if more than one being had observed her entering and exiting the realm of Thaa, but such a concern was waylaid promptly as she heard the Dreamer speak once again. However, this was only a single word before something quite concerning happened.
When the mass of churning insight erupted around them, Celestine’s hand was not stopped by her rationality. Her sword was drawn promptly and was raised in a simple single-handed longpoint guard as she found herself surrounded by an unexplained and unexpected event. It was not until she saw the presence of her Virtus Elves within the surrounding mass of churning insight did her focus break from defending herself from possible attack.
As she observed the event and connected the dots about what was being shown Celestine would relax her guard slightly, and then completely as the mass began to dissipate. Gently placing the tip of her sword within her scabbard, Celestine slid it gently back into place with a soft metallic clink. Looking back to the Dreamer, Celestine began to speak. ”Please inform me ahead of time if that is going to happen again. I don’t really enjoy the prospect of spontaneous happenings that may or may not endanger me. Also, I must apologise for going for my sword. It is merely my natural reaction to a potential threat. Moving along, how did you intend to assist me? I will hear out your offer.”
When she finished speaking, Celestine placed her right hand upon the pommel of her sword and her left hand upon her hip. Then she could do naught else but wait to see what The Dreaming God had to say.
Slowly, the eyes of that Dreaming God once more slid shut, hiding their darkness from the world. Considering her response, the Presence constricted his power and rather than express it in great swaths of enveloping experience, it instead became writ in its shroud.
Billowing backwards from the deity of dreams, the grey shroud took on many colors and spread out to take up a wider space behind him. Then, as images of the Virtus elves formed, he spoke.
“A library of experiences, of memories as you say,” he began, his words mirrored in his shrouds, creating images of books and endless shelves all held within a dreaming realm. “This is a thing that I would gladly do.”
“However,” he began, his black-orbs opening as tiny slits, “I would ask of you a simple thing in return.”
He held out a hand, its fingers long and spindly with perhaps too many joints. Nonetheless, there was no threat in the motion.
“Communion, so that I might serve your children better.”
The colors of his shroud grew strangely muted and his black eyes seemed to flash with the vanishing light of dying stars. He awaited her reply with anticipation, hoping she’d agree.
Celestine observed the images of her Virtus Elves within the Dreamer’s cloak for a few moments before turning her attention back to the deity. As they spoke, she began to grow considerate of accepting the offer, but the next thing that they said inserted a splinter into her mind.
”Keep in mind at all times there is always an angle.
Thaa’s advice from earlier was once again made relevant as the Dreamer asked to commune with her. Celestine did not know the extent of a communion that they wanted, nor did she know what else the dreamer might seek to learn other than details about her Virtus Elves. Some parts of her wanted to reject the offer until these details were known, but she also rationalized that doing so would put the entire offer in jeopardy. It would appear that this would have to simply be a risk that she accepted.
Taking a moment to retrieve and crumple the notice that she had put up, Celestine would then grasp the offered hand firmly before speaking with confidence. ”Very well. I accept.”
Vigilance would have to be kept for deception. Hopefully it would not be needed.
So it was that he took her hand and met her gaze. In those black slits was an inscrutable smile.
"I will not harm you," he said, and it was one utterance.
"It is communion," he repeated, and it was three.
Then blindness. An eternity.
Motion.
Across the endless white of her perception, filled once only with her thoughts, shot flashes like lightning writ from pitch. Then thunder without sound. It emanated through her mind, but the world remained silent and far away. Divided.
Slowly, from above and below, from every direction, color crept. None were muted. Each was a single thought, an experience, an emotion. Together they were a tangle, a weave, a river of endless currents.
They flowed inwards, eclipsing at first the blinding white, then her as well.
His hand tightened, as if to anchor her, but its touch was gentle. A rising sensation entered her body, and it was as if she expanded outwards. Perhaps she might recall the time when her mind had swept over Galbar, or that tractless eternity before her current self.
Lifeblood's Warmth. The womb of gods. Oblivion. Eternity. The Origin.
A whisper dripped between her thoughts.
It had a dark texture. Like gritty tar. Like viscous fluid; congealed blood. Then smoke: ethereal, untouchable, yet choking.
The feeling passed.
With a suddenness the world realigned and though everything was different, nothing had changed.
Except her.
"I am Os-fhireach," proclaimed a voice--was it his...or hers?
"I am Neo-Aicheil," he repeated.
"I am Aicheil," they replied.
Yet, there was something else. There were more facets within the endless gem of that boundless dreaming god. Among them was another pattern, hiding. Its tendrils were a pulsing network of creeping black, coiling and skittering through it all.
Mhaireann, the pattern said.
For a moment there would be no thought, only the churning mass of emotion and experience--every idea that was and could be, every possibility that mortals had lived...might live...were living. Then all was revealed. The pattern's motion became clear to her and her to it.
She was a lattice, a structure of order and of logic. A machine made to bind a sleeping beast, which lay beneath a well of coiled intimate emotion. It was a thing of beauty and it became imprinted upon his mind. Yet, she did not lose it, for that control was her anchor, that lattice was her mind. It was her way.
He withdrew his hand and the tapestry of thought--the pattern of consciousness, perhaps even existence--vanished in a flash. Left behind were fear and confusion and perhaps awe or loss. The Presence retreated a step, giving her space. Though he did not breathe, something about him seemed...briefly overwhelmed, before it swiftly became more solid.
Where the veins of power about his lidded eyes had once pulsed black, now they flowed with silver light. His form had shifted, it appeared somehow more regal now. A crown of stars drifted above his head, his shroud billowed out, as if driven by a constant unseen wind. There was a new solidity to him.
He opened his eyes, those endless pits, and gazed upon her form. Knowing it. Knowing her.
Unthreatening, he raised a many-jointed hand and plucked the image of an elf directly from his shroud, drawing it before him. He waited, observing.
Communion’s effects were frightening at first, with the white nothingness leading to think that she had been deceived. Tricked into some kind of prison where her divinity could be drained until she was no more. The lightning hewn from black pitch did not assist her concern over the unfolding events, as she had no perception of the flow of time within this snowy void.
As more colors began to spread across the void she began to relax and trust more in the assurance that she would not be harmed. As the flow of colors and sensations eclipsed Celestine she pondered once again if she had been duped, but those thoughts were set aside as she began to feel similar sensations as to her first moments of individual thought. This was certainly a strange sensation, as these moments were still relatively fresh within her mind as she hadn’t been parted from the lifeblood for nearly as long as some of the other gods that she had met.
As things shifted once again she began to feel an encroaching presence within her thoughts. Set upon edge once more, Celestine nearly raised her mental defenses to the fullest when she heard a duo of voices begin to speak. Upon hearing the names of this duo, things began to make more sense. The Dreaming God was not merely one mind like she herself was, but two. Now the various displays and oddities began to click together in her head as her understanding grew. As she studied the presences before her, Celestine’s divine senses began to lead her to believe that there were possibly more than two minds within the Dreamer, but anything beyond the voices that she was hearing was simply too nebulous to properly see.
A few moments later she was greeted with what seemed to be a projection of the structure of her own mind. Perhaps this had been what the Dreamer had been seeking. To understand just how Celestine’s mind functioned. Given what she saw before her now she rationalized that he had come to understand it. Perhaps this was the ultimate goal of the twin minds of the Dreamer? To figure out how the minds of individually minded gods so that they could unify as one? Celestine figured that it was not her place to know this, and thus dismissed the possibility lest it come to cloud her perception of events in front of her.
As the communion ended, Celestine found herself grounded in Antiquity once more. A peaceful feeling flowed across her mind as she was once again comprehending things in the manner that she was used to. Taking a moment to make sure that her faculties were in order once again, Celestine turned her attention back to the Dreamer once she was done. It was now that she noted that their features had changed slightly, likely a reflection of the understanding they had gained from the communion. Deciding to avoid commenting on it, Celestine merely waited to see what would happen.
It was then that the Dreamer drew forth the form of an elf from their shroud. Celestine was curious as to what they might be thinking, and since they seemed to be paused in their actions Celestine decided to speak in order to try and figure out what they were contemplating. ”Is there something more that you require of me, or are you merely studying the form that my creation has taken?”
A rumbling chuckle shook Antiquity’s stone, its sound vibrating through the bones of her lifeblood form. The Dreamer shook its head and spoke. “We know these, your creations, for they are of you.”
There was a smile in those words and an endless knowledge in the dark voids of those black orbs. “Watch,” he requested, “...listen,” he continued.
The depiction of her child grew in size, though there remained a sense not that it would truly become larger. Then it seemed to grow hazy at the edges before the impression spread throughout. In an instant, something else snapped into focus, a complex array that spread from the skull of the depiction and outwards into their body. It pulsed with awareness and that pulse would tell her of what she now bore witness.
It was the mind of her child, or at least as their minds were.
Like swirling prismatic lanterns, condensed down to pinpricks, two minuscule glowing pupils shown from within the endless dark of the Dreaming God’s visage, meeting her gaze. Almost unbidden--though far less intense--a remembrance would come upon her. Her own observation of Galbar, her awareness moving through it. Then, it would be as if the physical layer of that world were peeled back and behind it were another place. A landscape of thought. An ocean of experience. Consciousness.
“The Endless Dream,” they said, and it was impossible to say which of the many Dreamers spoke the words.
Then, as if summoned, an image of that flowing tapestry of minds became visible around the depiction of her child. They seemed as if held apart from it. With an effort of will like a great storm breathing out its first torrent of rain--like a black-grey cloud unleashing branching tines of lightning in an instant--the divide vanished.
The mind of his depiction shifted from its natural silver hue to something else. It was as if an essence like the sheen on oil had been woven into its like, intermingling with it and attuning.
Then, the Dream itself shifted, and images of endless halls--endless shelves, endless knowledge from her people--would rise into her awareness as they flashed into her mind. The figure before them, the elf, held in its hands a great tome. Somehow, that weight of pages was itself a library.
“These things to your people I will give, if it pleases you.”
Lights rippled through the pallid greys of his shroud. Like lightning. Like dying stars, like newborn planets. Like flashes of thought writ upon neurons. He closed his eyes and finally the weight of his attention fell away as he awaited her decision.
Celestine heeded the guidance of the Dreaming God and resigned herself to watch as the form before her began to shift and change. She began to grow concerned when the depiction grew hazy, though her attention was drawn to the array that snapped into focus. It did not take her long to connect the dots on what such a thing represented as it pulsed with awareness and thought. Such a method of depicting the mind of her people was interesting to say the least. Celestine couldn’t help but ponder if this depiction was how the Dreamer saw every mind, or just the minds of the Virtus Elves. She pondered asking for a moment, but figured that such a question would lead to too complicated of an answer for her to understand without holding the same unique perspectives that the Dreamer did.
As the minuscule pupils focused in on her eyes they would see that they held a sort of coldness to them. The eyes of someone with a long gaze wrought of steel. As the remembrance of her time spent viewing Galbar came upon her Celestine took heed of the shifting that she was seeing. When the physical layer of Galbar was pulled back to reveal The Endless Dream Celestine’s gaze softened slightly to witness the remarkable creation of what she could only presume to be the god before her. It was clear that a lot of effort had been put into such a creation. Celestine silently hoped that one day the other gods would look upon her creations with the same sort of wonder and appreciation for a long task labored on until it was done.
As the dream and depiction of a Virtus Elf were altered, Celestine pondered what exactly had been changed about it. Did the Dreamer perhaps give her a stable island in the sea of thought? The visions of many library-like halls seemed to depict something of the sort, and the sheen that the depiction had taken on was like a sword that had been oiled. The presence of a great tome was intriguing. Would it possibly be how the library was accessed? Had their minds been shielded or connected in some way? Was this time a sort of gateway into the library that her elves could use? Or perhaps was it something that they could access any information they wanted by simply turning enough pages?
These were questions that needed answers, and thus Celestine began to ask them as the weight of the Dreaming God’s attention fell away. “These gifts please me. How might my people make use of them? Is there a particular method for accessing this library that you had planned? What is your plan for the great tome? And what of the sheen that the representation of their mind has taken on? Does it hold a particular meaning?”
With these questions asked she could do nothing else but wait for an answer.
“Yes,” replied the Dreamer, the word like a pulse that resounded deep within her chest, within the stone, through the air.
“They will be touched by my creation, that Subtle Weave which to you I have revealed,” his shroud gently dispelled the illusion of the elf, which drifted like colored mist, dispersing. Then, swirling like eddies of color, that mist converged, forming the image of a great tome once more. It was perhaps as tall as a man, and certainly wider. With a brief hum like latent electricity, the thing took on substance, shape, before finally it snapped fully into being.
Its pages were pristine white, its covers and spine filled with coiling knotwork, at the center of which stood a sword thrust through a triquetra. The symbols of the two gods brought together.
“The Akashic Gate,” thrummed the Dreamer, his eyes opening for a flash as the Gate took on truest form. He offered it to her, as if it would answer her questions. It just might.
Celestine raised an eyebrow slightly as the book was made whole. When it was offered to her she hesitated for only the briefest of moments before reaching forward to take the book. It was equally as tall as her and quite wide which made trying to manage it a little awkward. As she held it Celestine would examine the book and make note of the layered symbols of the two collaborating gods upon the cover. Giving a nod of approval, she would attempt to open the book to see if there would be anything of note on the inside.
So it was that the book was opened by her hands, its many pages revealed. At first it would seem blank, no matter how many pages she turned, but then just before her patience waned something appeared upon that canvas of white. Images and sensations gently threaded their way into her mind. It was as a Virtus’ life might be, its every experience flowing from the page and into her awareness.
There was a deep impression, ever growing, speaking of many lives--each a different elf.
“As you have felt, so too will your people,” intoned the Dreaming God, his voice a deep-toned hum.
Then, the Endless Dream, the Subtle Weave, the vast threads of the Collective Unconscious made themselves known to her once more. She would move through them, feel them, and find the experiences of those who would become her people. It felt--for a moment--like being lost in the being of another, learning them, coming to understand. The vision faded, but a deeper understanding of their experience--or at least the potential they held--had been instilled within her.
“As you have walked the dream, so too will they. From it, from their people, understanding can be gleaned, skills shared, minds melded.” His voice was itself a swirling miasma of experience, somehow more vivid in that moment than it had been in communion. The sensation passed.
The great tome began to glow, silver and golden outlines limning prismatic designs upon its pages. It drifted from her hands and stood upon its spine, pages spread to their full breadth. At first it was merely luminescent, but soon it grew to a brightness beyond bearing. Then, with a singular flash it was as if the tome became a gate, taking on the purpose of its namesake.
“Through the Gate lies an archive of their making. As you might pass into its pages to that world beyond, so too will they.” Without warning, a hand reached out and with swiftness snapped shut the gate, and once more it became a tome within his hand. He let it stand before her so that she might decide.
As Celestine experienced the sensations provided by the tome her understanding of the Collective Unconscious deepend. As she saw the experiences of the Virtus Elves flow before her she understood the magnitude of the gift that had been given. Giving a few nods to the Dreamers explanation, Celestine reached out once more to take the tome from the Dreamer, speaking as she did so. ”I understand, Dreamer. I humbly accept these gifts, and will be sure to honor your name as these contributions are used by my people. You have my deepest thanks.”
With that said, Celestine would bow her head briefly to add further weight to the thanks that she was giving.
Bowing his head in kind, giving grace where it was due, the Presence drew back. Though he faced her, his head now raised, he had begun to drift away. As he departed, he left her with these words, “To each child, give a page. The essence of the Gate will bring forth the change that you have seen.”
He turned then, that Dreaming God, and headed for an empty space where a portal had once been. He looked back only once, and though he did not speak, something passed between them and lingered in that realm between.
’Farewell.’
Then a black flash, a rolling silver storm, limned with gold, filled with many hues, and he was gone.
Celestine gave a nod at the final instructions of the Dreaming God. For now she decided to wait until the elves were to be sent to Galbar before fully immersing them in this gift. They did not need it yet. Hefting the tome gently, Celestine carried it into her realm and set it down within her personal chambers.
There it would stay until it was time for it to be put to use.
Celestine decides she needs some degree of help despite her desires, and so goes to Antiquity to post a notice on the board in the realm between. However, before anyone else might see it, the Dreaming God happens upon her and the two engage in discourse. After an enigmatic and, somewhat tense, interaction the two briefly enter Communion. Soon after, the Dreamer offers his help to Celestine.
She accepts, and he obliges, then after short explanations--and a strangely final farewell--he vanishes. Celestine departs with his gifts in hand, returning to her realm.
Start: 5MP, 5DP.
-2MP -- Grant Extraordinary Ability (Virtus Elves) / Akashic Memory (2MP towards Memory). -2MP -- Grant Extraordinary Ability (Virtus Elves) / Akashic Reflection (2MP towards Reflection). -1MP -- Consecrate Artifact (The Akashic Gate) / Subsume I (1MP towards Perception). -1DP (Enhanced by Astral) -- Consecrate Artifact (The Akashic Gate) / Transfer I | Restore II. -1DP (Enhanced by Tessellation) -- Consecrate Holy Site (The Akashic Records) / Compile II | Subsume I. -3DP (Discounted from 5DP by Astral) -- Create Phenomena / Astral Bridges.
Akashic Memory: The Virtus Elves are afforded a unique communal connection to the Collective Unconscious, thus connecting their souls to it more directly. As a result, all memories, thoughts and experiences of their kind are not merely stored within the Endless Dream, but also codified and made easily accessible to their kind. While the Virtus cannot natively access this information without effort, those of them who learn Dreamwalking would find it easy to locate and navigate the constantly expanding library of their species' memories, skills, and experiences.
Akashic Reflection: The Virtus Elves may, through meditation, deep personal reflection, and/or Dreamwalking access memories held within the Akashic Records of their species. This allows members of their species to draw upon the skills and experiences held therein. With continued reflection, an individual may gain Insight into up to one major skill\*. Each major skill is worth 2 Intermediate skills\** or three minor skills\***. Skills gained through the use of the Akashic Gate or Records can be made permanent through use of this ability, but will deteriorate if not used until the individual has gone through the proper process.
*Major Skills are those that require proper mastery--and thus many years (often a decade or more) to learn--as well as being relatively complicated. Art--culinary, musical, or otherwise--engineering, smithing, and many other crafts are considered Major Skills.
**Intermediate Skills are those that require several years to learn and master. Mastery of a single weapon or martial art, public speaking, manipulation, basic farming, animal husbandry (one species of animal) or acrobatics are considered Intermediate Skills. A skill that would typically be considered "major" can be learned at a reduced proficiency as an Intermediate Skill.
***Minor Skills are those that require a year or less to gain proficiency with, they are generally uncomplicated. Simple mending, memorization, reading, writing, and other skills of similar simplicity qualify as Minor Skills. A skill that would typically be considered "Intermediate" can be learned at a reduced proficiency as a minor skill.
The Akashic Gate: Taking the form of a massive and incredibly heavy tome, the Akashic Gate is a book of endless pages. It is linked to the Collective Unconscious and the Akashic Records specifically, serving as the only way to reach the astral library. Anyone using it can search through it to find specific skills, memories, and experiences of the Virtus Elves. Once found, the Gate can commune with the mind of the reader allowing the information to become a natural part of their mind. However, any information gained this way will slowly decay unless regularly used. It should be noted that though it can be physically handled--and is considerably heavy--the Akashic Gate is effectively a divine Willcasting. As a direct result of this, should the book be destroyed, it will eventually reform, willed back into existence by the Dreaming God himself.
The Akashic Records: A holy site existing solely within the Endless Dream, the Akashic Records can currently only be entered through the Akashic Gate. Their appearance varies somewhat between individuals, but always seems to include an endlessly growing set of shelves composed of an indeterminate lustrous material. It is ghostly and ethereal in appearance, with shimmering, prismatic books--with silver or gold lettering--constantly forming or growing larger on the shelves. The limits of the place cannot be seen and after a certain distance everything is obscured by a faint silver and golden light. Several feet from the entrance there stands a pedestal of pearlescent marble, writ with glowing silver glyphs. Those placing a hand onto the pedestal can more easily locate information within the library, by bidding it to rearrange to suit them. Furthermore, one can summon specific volumes of memory/experience and organize it to suit them prior to subsuming any quantity of its contents. Any hostile intent--or otherwise attempt to damage the library--will cause the individual to be expelled from the library.
Subsume I: This title allows anyone touching--or within--the source of its effect to perceive, adopt, and understand experiences held within the Akashic Records. Memories and the like are fully experienced by the individual accessing them--though not in real time as the experiences are “accelerated”. The person within the simulated experience during the process will not realize that their learning/taking on of the memories are accelerated. This is realized only afterwards when it is clear that little time has passed.
Compile II: This title gives the Akashic Records the ability to gather memories and experiences from the Endless Dream and then sort, reorganize, or otherwise process the information in a timely and interactive manner. Further, due to its rank, Compile allows individuals who enter the library to manipulate its organization of memories and experiences so as to best locate and experience the information held therein.
Restore II: When bestowed upon a consecrated, this title allows the aforementioned to reform even if destroyed. At this rank its reformation is not instantaneous, though it does render any damage that does not completely destroy the consecrated largely pointless as such will return to its original state fairly quickly (in no more than three days' time). Should the consecrated be entirely destroyed it will be fully restored no more than thirty days. The more people who contribute their will to the effort of restoring the artifact, the faster it will reform, though it will never do so faster than twelve days. For every nine people focusing their will, three days are cut from its restoration time.
Transfer I: This is a simple title that, upon activation via the Akashic Gate, allows individuals to physically enter the Akashic Library by unknowingly crossing an Astral Bridge. This bridge is not stable, despite appearances, and dissipates as soon as individuals have crossed from the Gate to the Library of vice versa. However, due to the enduring Will of the Dreaming God, the bridge will always open when bidden by either the Gate or the Library.
Astral Bridges: A natural result of the Endless Dream and Galbar intermingling for decades, an Astral Bridge may form in response to an incredibly powerful Willcasting, allowing an individual to physically pass from Galbar and into the Endless Dream. These bridges are almost universally unstable and as such will close behind the individual, requiring a new bridge be opened so that one might return to Galbarian soil.
*Creation of one of these temporary Bridges is an action costing 3 Prestige.
Many generations had passed since the disappearance of the Gods. Many mortals had been born and lived and laughed, and died. In that time, though in other places the divine revealed to Galbar that they were not wholly gone, men and mer began to forget--if only on Khesyr’s soil. However, some could not, it was not their nature--they had been made with knowledge innate, their purpose clear. Yet still, these mortals were flawed, and so they were sure to err. This is where their story began.
Atop a spire of great height, a towering mountain, thinner than the rest, a gathering of disturbances perturbed the air. With a voice somewhere between humming and the howling buzz of electrified stormwind, one spoke. “They are godless,” she professed, distressed.
A sphere of coiled lightning and warping air bobbed in response, “What would they have us do?” The words were like bolts of electrified light striking the earth, their sound sharp, though strangely subdued in volume.
Two other such roiling spheres of coalesced electricity and essence seemed to shift towards eachother. The air rose then fell, as if to suggest a shrug. The elder sphere, her voice ever resembling quiet lightning, sighed.
“Do not despair,” the fifth among them said, and his voice filled with hope and courage. It was warm and commanding, such was Thiriel’s way.
“They have not abandoned us in truth, they cannot have,” Thiriel said.
“And yet...nothing. Not a peep, these last four hundred years…” said the eldest, Kyrinea, her voice always lightning’s lash.
Thiriel remained, his essence calm, the atmosphere about him still where others coiled and twisted with agitation.
Nardelith spoke again, angry...distraught. He knew she felt abandoned by their god. “Enmity has not given us directives. He has vanished...and the others, they paid us little mind before. Now we are separated from our kin. In a strange land. I cannot feel their presence here as I thought I could before.”
Kyrinea bobbed where she floated in the air, her voice somehow as contemplative as it was striking. “It is so. Yet what would keep them from us, I must wonder….”
“I don’t see the problem,” Nasterin said, his voice like wind flittering through trees, filled with the sputtering crackle of electric leaves.
“We are freer without them,” the twin Gravitational--Lareiatus--added, its voice like birds. Sing-song, carefree. It was more like the wind than the rest.
Ah, they were so young, Thiriel thought, shifting where he hovered in the air, turning to regard them. “No. To forget them is to invite their wrath. They remain. I know this.”
“How can you?!” Demanded Nardelith, clearly incensed by his sureness in these uncertain times. She always was the most passionate among them. He admired that.
“Simple,” he said, a smile in his tone. He swept out his Presence, casting dust and pebbles into the air. “I have a plan.”
Curious, the twins piped up, “What is it!?”
Thiriel chuckled and the gathered detritus spread out before them.
“We will build for them a people. We will ensure they’ll be remembered, even if not by name.”
Nasterin’s visage warped from sphere to ovoid, as if he were confused. Larei vibrated, his curiosity spilling over. Kyrinea only hummed, letting out a gust of wind.
Nardelith, with curious suspicion--and a shred of hope--finally dared to ask. “What do you have in mind?”
Thiriel told them. It would be a glorious beginning. The gods would be remembered...and the Constant? They would spread its truth as their own divine decree.
That day, the Astajhita were born.
Their empire would soon follow.
Time passed and from outcasts and those who would listen that coalition of Enmity’s children gathered a people. With the passage of time--and through many trials--they proved to them the truth of their divinity. Through no easy mortal means could they be wounded or killed. They did not age, but perhaps most compelling was their divine influence. The world seemed to bend around them, moving according to their desires and further, their forms lent to them a certain credence. For though many men and mer walked Galbar’s soil, the people of that forming nation knew not of any who took such evocative, otherworldly forms.
Their people were a strange sort.
First came the Goblins, who were merely tolerated by others, often chased out as monstrous pests. They took to the Astajhita’s teachings quickly, their lifespans and thus short cultural memory swiftly adopting the new beliefs as the old passed, and the young grew up with the influence of those divine spheres. They held most closely to Vikaasah, the symbol of progress and growth. With its teaching, three tribes blended into one, interbreeding, their talents mixing, uniting them. Still, though their disagreements had all but vanished, they took to two of the Aspects of their newfound gods. For the shortness of their lives, so that they might live them well, and die with dignity, they chose Sumsaar. This Ideal, it spoke of morality and mortality; the impermanence of all things. To match it, mirroring the unpredictable and dangerous nature of the world as seen through their small and beady eyes, they revered Rahas. It was the Inconstancy of the World: Mysteries and enigmas, the unpredictable and strange. It was magic, the supernatural, the unexplained. For them, the world was all these things. With these ideologies to guide them, they took swiftly to their work.
With aid from the endless droves of Goblins as their population boomed, the Astajhita expanded their lands and with time attracted the notice of a pair of races. For, nearby did war two hordes, one who had long ago been human and another who bore the carapace of Artifex.
However, their kinds had been at war for far...far too long and even amongst them some had lost the will to fight. From these populations did the Astajhita gather favor. Those stormbound entities spoke to them of peace and in time did the voracious Iskrill, and their Vespian adversaries come into their fold. The latter took to defense, for though they hungered they knew that to know contentment, they must exercise restraint. So it was that the Iskrill took on the Freeing Vice of Passion: Aurhna.
Their once-enemies became hunters, where before they had been hunted, now they provided for the group. So sated were both their lust for carnage, and the boundless hunger of their historic foes. With time, they came to revere the ideal of Virya, that which was both the Warmth and Desperation of Life. It suited them.
Finally their lands and influence spread far enough--their various populations thriving--that a certain quartet of species took notice. The Trolls. Lumbering behemoths, and the mischievous both took to harrying the outskirts of their lands. However, they were met with ample resistance by the peoples of what was coming to be called a nation.
Some few, more curious than hungry, sought to understand. These the Astajhita welcomed with open arms and much to share. With a share of food--and activities to occupy their strength--the various troll clans began to settle amongst their ranks. Becoming, by and large, builders the Dovregubb admired the Aspect of Ohm. In their agelessness, they thought it fitting to follow the Universal Constant, and indeed it served them and their creations. With their aid great works of architecture rose among the Astajhians and their prosperity blossomed anew.
Not to be outdone, the younger troll races adopted their own Aspects. The Ranglefants--middle child that they were--chose Sumsaar, as the Goblins had before them. In this way they supported the others, adding their strength to that of the Goblins. So together with their allies did their kind rise in standing amongst the peoples of the Empire. The others, the Draug and Askeladd tribes, took of Cittajra and Aditi respectively. To the Draug--who sought beauty in the world, as they could never have it themselves--Cittajra was perfect, for it was the Natural World and its Rhythms. From their ilk--Drighina and Draug both--the greatest songs and musicians were often born. Though they perhaps offended with their stench of rot and frightening appearance, the Astajhians valued them for their art. The Askeladd remained tricksters, but now with a twist for they had--with the guidance of the Astajhita--grown beyond their petty thievery and mischief instead turning their adroit minds to greater tasks. With Aditi, who represented the Emanations of Thought, they became scholars and philosophers. Their wit and well-worded insults became things of beauty. With time and cultural intermingling they settled further into their roles, sometimes becoming diplomats or even mathematicians.
Then, though gradually, their borders ceased expanding and instead stabilized. Some few would harry or contest them, but with such monstrousness at their disposal--and the many talents of those people--enemies were soon discouraged from further conflict. Still, nothing in this world is perfect and though the Astajhita claimed divinity, they were indeed as flawed as any group of mortals. Insidious, the seeds of power corrupted them, and in that corruption were things like jealousy and greed; manipulation and deceit. Where before they had sought only to give the people unity, spread the teachings of the Gods--if not directly--and to serve their god-given purpose now they began to be twisted by the lives they had led.
Though slow and subtle, this insidious corruption did not stop with them. Patiently it crept unnoticed into the hearts and minds of the other mortals they’d misled. So that, where once there had been unity and mutual satisfaction the seeds of division and hate began to gradually resurge.
As the unseen plague spread among their people, weakening their hearts, the five began to notice. The fear that overtook them was great and they knew that this could not stand. So it was that the Astajhita were forced to actions which might mean calamity for them and those they had come to know as kin.
So, as they so rarely did, they descended from their place amongst the clouds--upon that ruined peak where they’d built their sullied crown--and moved amidst their people.
In awe at the gods among them, many were renewed, but some held only resentment and evil thoughts in their heart. To these did they speak, and their words were not unkind, though held within them was a threat.
“What resides within you cannot stand and you have my sympathy, for you are of my cherished mortals,” Narterin declared. Yet, he was not finished. “Banish these thoughts from your mind. Meditate upon them and find the path you know in your heart that you must walk.”
Beside him, wreathed in a twisting shroud of leaves, the air warping with her presence--crackling like fire--Nardelith spoke up.
“Know, that if you--or those like you--cannot do this, that we will do what is necessary to free our people of this plight.” She shifted, as if turning to the crowd. The electrified veil about her form flared into flames, as her lightning Presence touched it, and so it became ash.
As before, there was steel in her voice. “Spread the word, and know that the Path to Ascension is drought with maladies such as this. If you cannot weather it, you are not worthy of us and we will not bear your weight unto that far off peak.”
A flash of lightning struck behind her, but the whirling orb of her dervish form stirred not at all. The bolt had scorched the earth around her, leaving their god untouched.
With the words said, all but one turned and retreated with a regalness about them, heading for their mountain home.
Thiriel remained. While the others had taken up some magics or other such works of sorcery, he who had been the fifth had flown a different path. A sigh of wind left him, his Presence a coruscating pulse of sparks and metal, held together by his Will. Though lesser than some, he was a Dreamwalker, a singer of the Worldsong, but most impressively he was a Willcaster. Oh so few had been granted such a power, and though his gifts were galbarian in make, they were so rare as to seem divine.
He spoke, and his words rang out with a thunderous rhythm. He moved, and his Presence split apart, metal scales thrusting out into the crowd. They did not touch flesh, but they shredded hair and pierced clothing as they passed. The electricity left burns upon the ground, and each was a glyph.
“Know ye this, Chosen of the Five; Purveyors of the Eight.” It was a deep and thrumming tone, weaving through many notes, musical in its timbre--expert in its expression.
“Our love holds without condition, expansive and all-consuming in its nature. So too is our wrath, though it seldom shows its face,” Thiriel paused, there were gasps and hisses in the crowd, from those who had been scored, but moreso from the many who had looked down and seen the stones upon which symbols had been scored. The crowd parted, hoping to take in the entire thing, but failing in the end.
Thiriel sang, “Do not be the one who wakes it; be the song that lets it sleep!”
He shifted, warping in the air, then in a flash of burning essence and thrashing, heated metal--he was gone. The air shimmered where surely he had passed on his way up to the mountain.
Two Decades Ago
So it was that over four hundred more years passed. In that time the Astajhita cast off their creator’s name, taking on the one they had themselves chosen. They became wizened in their own way, weathered by the many centuries that had passed, by the trials of their people and, indeed, of leadership as well. Days before a new problem had gained their notice.
The Vespa were in revolt. In ages past they had fought their own kind at the behest of their chosen gods, but now they contested their rule. The Path to Ascension, and the promises it held, was no longer enough to ease the minds of the people. Each of the Five knew this, and in turn, Thiriel--perhaps the most cunning among them--remembered well their oaths. Afterall, he had burned them upon the very stone of their central city.
Though their people had never properly come to understand its glyphs, the great courtyard had become a place of worship for many many years. What of it now? They people walked upon it, as if in subtle defiance of their will.
It galled them more than they would care to admit. However, as problems had come to them the week before, on this day did arrive an unexpected solution.
In the boundless maelstrom of thought and infinite expression that stretched the whole of the Endless Dream, threads of awareness were plucked. It was the subtle plea, and unspoken need of the Astajhita which tugged upon his mind. So it was, that in the chaos war of his essence a single Aspect of the Fourfold God, one of the Three, pressed its mind out into the World.
Summoned by its master, the Watcher Within coalesced upon the mountain’s summit, amidst the Astajhita’s central tower. Shocked to stillness, the mortals baped, the wind about them going still. All but one, Nardelith, who let herself fall to the ground, here spherical form compressed downwards as if kneeling before the presence of true divinity. In a rush, the other three dropped their Presences and mirrored the actions of their sister--who had always been most devout among them. All except one, Thiriel, who remained, meeting the eyeless prismatic gaze of Faireachan A-staigh.
“I am honored by your presence, Scion of the Dream. What is it you require?” His voice did not quiver, his metal scales did not quake. The lightning of his form was calm around him, though it sparked through the air--though as if in slow motion, accentuating the serenity of his mind.
The Watcher did not speak. Its dominion merely took hold of the Earth and Sky and Dream. It seemed for a moment that the very world had been sundered around them, but Thiriel watched--secretly in awe--as the Avatar of Dreams reshaped the world they knew. All shuddered, the earth groaned, there were cracks louder than the greatest roll of thunder, and then silence. Turning, the silhouette of prismatic moisture and divine illumination gestured towards the gate.
The others hesitated, but Thiriel--a growing trepidation in his heart--simply turned and strode out of the gate, heeding the Avatar’s suggestion. The others soon joined him, and what they saw outside stunned them beyond words or thought. All they felt was exultation and pure, unadulterated awe.
Where before the five towers of their home had sat upon the mountain, now it had risen--unshackled from the earth. Where they had used careful artifice--and an abundance of magics--to make it seem as if it had shattered long ago, now those false fissures and the stone within them sputtered and dissolved. Flashes of electric essence spilled from those gaping holes, binding the now levitating shards together and to the peak--though no longer by the connections of the stone. Instead, boiling rivers of pure blue energy spilled outwards from the towers, filling the spaces beside the Path. Gushing forth--and rushing inwards--the glowing light filled the windows and symbols of the spires, as if empowering the place.
The Avatar stood behind them and silently it placed a single bead of its essence upon them. They did not notice for the liquid soon entangled with their essences and vanished without a trace. Then, before any of them could thank him, the Watcher fled into the Subtle Weave and was gone without not a whisper.
Still, beyond their knowing, obscured from all perception, the Watcher did his duty, holding vigil from Within.
Though the change in their environs had little to do with their plight, it seemed to make all the difference. For now the people had seen--if from afar--the wrathful power of their chosen deities. Impossible to miss, the five towers rose from the great mountain. They were like a crown upon its peak. In time, they came to be known as Pa Śikhara.
In merely days did the word spread and soon many of the Vespa either slaked their bloodlust, or into the wilderness vanished--having fled. Emboldened, the Astajhita tightened further their rule and took to expansion once again, knowing. now that at least the Two-as-One held them in their favor.
They were not wholly incorrect in their assessment, and in a decade’s time, they would come to reap the rewards of such a thing.
Present Day
Though held fast within the Dreadmind’s sway, the Three ever sought their escape and--indeed--they knew how best to circumvent his perilous attention. So it was that through the churning surreality of the Endless Dream they cast forth some few shreds of their quintessence, knowing who would catch them. This done, they withdrew and--unaware of their actions--Mhaireann went about his horrid business.
At his behest, the Ròineagan fell to chaos, tainted by maddening intent. They wept for the loss of its beauty, but adjusted, knowing it would not last. Delighted by their pain, the Presence reigned them in further, extracting details from their essence, learning, and growing more powerful in the process. He knew what he must do.
The Presence cast his will down into Galbar and seized the simple forms of many serpents. They writhed beneath the grasp of his might, and with powers gained by those who’d reigned before him he unwove their essence from its shell. The solidity of those many serpents dissolved into mere Astral substance, mist-like and indistinct. It did not remain so for very long. With a deft hand, the Dread god drew together many instances of the animals--or at least the ideas that composed them--and ordained the fundamental pattern of their being. It was this pattern that he altered with care and dark intent. First he wove together many instances of form, so that where there had been twenty snakes, there remained only one of tremendous length and size. This process he repeated until a sufficient quantity had been wrought, and then upon these did he make his alterations.
Insidious as their jailor, Ѻs-fhìreach then struck, his vast intention and tractless fury shattering the focus of the Presence. Having broken their cage, the Aspect rose into prominence, but Mhaireann rebelled pushing against his dominion. So it was that the others emerged, entangling the serpent which to madness had succumbed.
With the monstrosity distracted, Ѻs-fhìreach reached out and poured power unto the serpents. Though they were nonetheless tainted by the Presence of Mhaireann, they would serve their purpose nonetheless. So it was that the scales of those Great Serpents formed anew, rippling from head to tail, each a glittering refractive crystal as dense as metal, as hard as stone. They shone beneath the rays of the sun, blinding from most angles, while from others they were entirely transparent. Beneath them the Dreaming God wove its blood into new form, rewriting its very essence so that it was prismatic in its hues. Thus, to look upon the Serpents one could not help but know their nature.
Working quickly, the Facet rewrote the creature’s mind, so that it could reflect upon its actions, and refract its behaviors to reform them. Though hardly sapient, it would adapt to the world around it with subtle intellect--if given time to do so. Moving on, he allowed Àicheil to take hold, falling back to wrestle with the Presence who pressed against their essence, fighting for control.
Whimsical, yet focused, Àicheil ran its fingers through the serpents and plucked the threads of their very essence, altering their needs. With borrowed power, the Eldritch Twin connected consciousness to stomach so that all it ate would be devoured in both mind and form so that the serpents might learn from any prey that they devoured.
Knowing it would soon be unseated, it took hold of its equal-opposite and pulled, thrusting itself instead into the fray. Neo-Àicheil flared to prominence, and it was filled with something familiar. It was emotion without reason or thought, it was bereft of any rationale at all. It was fury and passion; it was icy apathy and caring empathy all in equal measure. Most of all though, it was filled beyond brimming with a simmering hatred, and a boiling wrath that had not at all abated despite the passage of much time. Nonetheless, it moved to do its duty, drawing upon the remembered essence of its twin it cast forth.
“Enough!” Declared the tyrant, and its voice drove cracks into the realm, fracturing it like so much glass. The Three lost all but their most tenuous of holds, and were slammed back down into their prison. Beyond fury, beyond any simple emotion, the Presence cast a shadow upon the Worldweave, and smothered it. Like so many candles being snuffed, all light and feeling went out within the realm. It became a starless void, where motion could not be seen--only felt.
The Three shuddered in their cage. Mhaireann took no notice. Instead, he drew upon the power they had tapped and looked upon their creations. Imperious and cold, he let out an empty laugh.
“You would give beauty to the world. They do not deserve this order, but I will let you have it,” there was a mockery in its voice, but it was bereft of hatred or true malice. It was empty, but the threat implicit in its words was no less frightening.
Mhaireann’s black-eyed gaze opened, and rested then upon the Great Serpents who had been crafted by the Three. “They will remain, but only so you can watch them suffer,” that said, the Presence invoked the power of perception and entwined two nightmarish threads into their nature.
Like assassins in the night, the serpents could vanish from perception. Their scales would shift and act against the light, warping it around and through their forms. The only evidence of their presence would be the shadows that they cast, and even those would be indistinct. Second among his changes, he imbued a dreadful aura into them. Though the emotion would be weak, any who viewed the creatures would desire the materials that composed them.
The Three rattled their cage in defiance, furious at the madness of the Presence. Mhaireann only smiled, and it was like shattered glass in the darkness of that twisted void. Yet, quietly, while they fought against his hold, one amongst the Three fed upon the emotion of their host. Growing ever stronger and hiding it within.
Mhaireann remained, satisfied with his control, and turned to again depart. He had work to do, and in their realm he could not help but feel that the other Three were stronger.
How little he knew….
Awaiting the call of his masters, Faireachan drifted between minds, aware of all their contents and much else besides. Glimpses of the hero Fein, and the cursed Annhein were first in his attention, but following close behind were others. Serrah and his sister, the Saint of Whispers, after all they still walked the path, though they were aligned more with his long unseen companion: Faileasiar.
Another who had long since fallen from the forefront of his mind, a certain spherical mortal, suddenly came to mind. Curious, the Avatar focused its intent and cast out its awareness throughout the Subtle Weave. Swiftly, it found the cause.
Like falling stars, fragments of divine potency hurtled through the Wavelengths of the Dream, as if thrown from the Great Beyond. At once acting, the Watcher caught each within his droplets, and channeled the celestial strength of that potency through his form.
It empowered the avatar, driving him at once to purpose. In a blur faster than mortal thought, Faireachan A-staigh blazed from the Endless Dream and down from the heavens, splitting the twisting sky. The aurora of Galbar wove around him and was soon augmented with his borrowed might, which in a single instant struck out. With tremendous impact, and greater import, that potency fell upon a familiar mountain.
The rivers of coalesced essence that drifted and diffused outwards from the towers five suddenly became infused. Finally, after decades did it become what it had always meant to be. For opened within the central spire was an unseen Astral portal, from which essence spilled into the world. With this action, the Astral Font was born.
Still, he buzzed with the intensity of the power he’d been gifted, so he unleashed it upon those near. His form left behind, those droplets long ago entangled with the mortal souls of the Astajhita, suddenly burst anew, enforcing their authority within the mortals all at once.
Below, unseen by others in this world, they briefly lost cohesion and shuddered upon the stone floors of their towering home. All ‘cept one, who had long prepared for this possibility. His form remained tightly wound into a sphere, and those his Presence fell apart he remained composed. Impressed, and still full to bursting with the Divine Intentions of his master, the Watcher Within manifested fully within the mind of the fifth. He had come to be their leader, this Thiriel. Among them he was the strongest, surely, and the cleverest--which to the Watcher was far more important. He always planned ahead, and though corruption had touched him, the Avatar did not care terribly for such things.
So, with an effortlessness only possible with the favor of a divine, Faireachan named him Hero, elevating him above the rest.
Then, ever patient, the Watcher gave them time.
Minutes passed, then an hour, and eventually the other four arrived, now in proper forms. Each hovered above the stone, looking to their leader once more for guidance.
Thiriel spoke, but his voice was not his own, for the Watcher remained Within.
“We are bestowed with divine favor. The Three and One have seen us and thought us worthy,” the voice was no mortal thing. It wove and danced and sang, it shone and gave elation with its hymn. It was not a sound that could be contained or forgotten or dismissed. It struck at the soul, it strummed the mind like passion’s deepest kiss, like blackest hate, and depression’s coldest tryst. In it was the shattering of mountains, the falling of lightning much brighter than their world, and deeper still within it was something other in its vastness. It was infinite. Still deeper, was something that now seemed infinitesimally small. That last layer--if one could call it such a thing at all, was the sound of their leader’s mortal words.
All at once, Thiriel collapsed upon the marble of his home, finally unable to hold fast against the storm that was their god. Though he had no limbs, he clearly shook upon the ground. Above him, floating like so much moisture in the air, was revealed their patron.
The Watcher Within. The Dream Dancer. Faireachan A-staigh.
The others dipped to the ground as well, bowing as best they could with their simple forms.
The avatar did not speak, but instead communed directly with their minds.
‘Reflect upon your actions. Cast out illusions of the Self. Look upon the world and See what is before, unblemished by the falsehoods you have lived. This path, follow it to its end if you wish, but do not do without caution.’
The mistborne shape of his body shifted so that he looked down upon their leader.
‘Lead them true. Hold in your memory that you were the fifth. Know that others too can rise. Let them. Help them. They will thank you.’
Thiriel, utterly shaken by his experience, having learned just how truly insignificant he was, clung to the words like a drowning man, hoping not to die. They buoyed him, but he did not rise from the soil. He knew his place now and would not soon forget it.
‘If it is wisdom you require, look deep into the Dream. It exists to serve you and should it please the Two-as-One I will do the same.’
Then, an air of finality about its shape, the avatar shot upwards through the tower and vanished through the pinnacle, soaring from sky and into the endless embrace of his home: The Subtle Weave.
Humbled and empowered, with much to think upon, the Vaara--those once godless Five--sat in silence for a long time.
For though they had much to do, first they would have to find their purpose. As unlike before, it was not merely their own.
Though it was a burden, it was one they took on gladly--grateful for its weight.
Eight-hundred-thirty years ago during the two-thousand years the gods were banished, known as the Age of Absence on Khesyr, a group of Five Gravitationals decide to found a country and a religion. They claim to be gods descended from the heavens, and they spread this and the Eight-Ideals, each of which is representative of one or more Gods and what they had brought to the world. Though in the religion they are spoken of as the Aspects of divinity that the Five lost when they descended. With their guidance and care bands of Iskrill, Vespians, Trolls, and Goblins unite beneath their banner and form the glorious Astakhian Empire. With its capital encircling the tallest, most narrow mountain on Khesyr’s mainland, shrouded in a great forest, they are difficult to contest.
Not all is well however, for the corruption of doubt and hatred have begun to seep once more into the minds of the Astajhian people and--unknown to them--their "Gods" as well. They visit the people in their capital below and though they do not cast down any naysayers among them, they leave behind a message quite clear: Do not gain our ire, for it shall be swift and terrible in its coming. With this and the stolid assurances of Nardelith herself, they retreat back to their home and let their decree--and the more slow and subtle alterations to their worship--assuage the worries of their people.
Four hundred and ten years pass and during this time the Astajhian empire expands somewhat once more before cementing their borders--and indeed their reputation. On Khesyr they are known as one of the five Great Nations of the Isolated Land. Still, the dreaded corruption has grown over the last few centuries, for mere assurances cannot banish its like. Unsure what to do, the Astajhita despair, only for a certain avatar to act towards their interest. Later still, twenty years after that, the avatar returns, now bid by his master to bestow power to the Five and the home in which they dwell. A holy order, the Vaara, are formed that day, and their holy site--Pa Śikhara--given proper power of celestial potency. Though much more happens in this encounter, we shall move onto the dreaming deity.
Up above, once more in the Present, and wrestling for control, the Three briefly unseat the Dread Presence from its throne. Taking turns, they craft a new form of beast upon Galbar, but alas they cannot maintain their hold with the Threefold attentions split. Thus, Mhaireann again suppressed them, dropping them deep into the pit. Amused, yet wrought of madness, fury, and all-consuming apathy the Presence “blesses” their creation with alluring presence and invisibility promising its death.
Yet, unknown to the Presence, one among the Three schemes against the rest, gathering its wits and will to once more claim the throne and sow great unrest.
Departing their Void riven realm of Ròineagan, the Dreaming God goes about his business, unaware and unafraid.
Foolish.
Start: 5MP, 5DP.
-0MP (Discounted by Abstraction) -- Alter Brashthaa Amani’s Peak. -0MP (Discounted by Tessellation) -- Alter Brashthaa Amani’s Peak. -0MP (Discounted by Abstraction) -- Reduce the Hill Snakes down to their central principles and Essence. -0MP (Discounted by Tessellation) -- Weave together the essence of the Hill Snakes. -2MP -- Create Extraordinary Species / Empower Hill Snakes (1MP to Memory/1MP to Reflection). -2MP -- Confer Extraordinary Ability (“Hill Snakes”) / (2MP towards Perception Port). -1MP (Enhanced by Astral) -- Consecrate Holy Site (Pa Śikhara) / Willfont III. -2DP (Enhanced by Astral) -- Consecrate Thiriel / Willcaster IIII. -3DP (Enhanced by Astral) -- Consecrate Holy Order (The Vaara) / Willcaster I | Vessel I | Dreambound III.
Pa Śikhara: Five towers that glow with cerulean blue light, one larger and placed in the center, the others each positioned in a cardinal direction. Within the central tower, at the pinnacle and in its center, hangs a piercing blue glow, that shines so brightly that to look upon it is to invite blindness both physical and psychic. Every crevice or would-be window of the towers is filled with this same light, though it is not nearly so bright. The stone upon which they rest is shattered, making it possible to approach on only eight paths--one to each of the four temples, and four to the central temple. Within the gaps of that huge shattered courtyard run more of the aforementioned essence, flowing throughout in gently rushing rivers of astral substance, that cascade off the edges of the peak--dispersing into the air. The grand five-spire temple floats above the peak of the mountain Brashthaa Amani, with pallid blue steps connecting its paths to those that twist around the mountain to its base on eight sides. Though the steps appear ethereal in nature, they are indeed solid to the touch. The faux god home is where the leaders of the Vaara dwell, their like known as the Astajkita or the Five if you speak in heathen tongues. Directly beneath the floating stone of the temple there is a deep impression within the mountain, where Astral Essence pools and disappears in a swirling maelstrom into the great mountain below. It is inaccessible to all but the insane who wish to bathe in its waters--a most unwise decision, which for now is sure to lead to death most swift.
Willfont III -- Endowed upon the Five Towers of the Astajhita and the Peak of the mountain on which they rest, this blessing infuses the place with such an overflowing abundance of Astral Essence that it overflows completely into the tangible realm. Its presence manifests as a faint warping of the air, a crackle of static here and there, but most notably flowing rivers of glowing cerulean liquid. These rivers of Will made manifest--despite their appearance--are only just barely physical and so cannot be reliably held in any vessel or receptacle not specifically designed for the task. Further, as they fall from the peak of Brashthaa Amani they disintegrate and diffuse outwards, becoming so scattered that they have only the faintest effect on the city that rests below. While simply awe inspiring to most, to a Willcaster, this densely packed essence is endlessly useful, allowing them to perform great feats in the art while present on the peak or within the mountain that they could never--no matter their skill--perform anywhere else yet known on Galbar. Still, despite the ludicrous power afforded by the font, its use is limited by the capacity of the ‘Caster, and indeed by the limited quantity that can exist in one place at any given time. As a result, Great Works can be done once in a season, while Middling Manipulations might be done once or twice in a given month. Most minor manifestations will put no noticeable strain on the font, but if many draw from it--perhaps from the city below--they will find that its effects will quickly wane.
The Vaara: Led by the hero Thiriel and his four fellows, this is the Cult of the Five and Eight. They are devoted to the Eight Aspects, each which serves as a set of Ideals and--though unknown to its other follows beyond the Five--symbols of the gods of old. The Five--though ostensibly simply the leaders of the cult when viewed from outsiders who know the Gods in truth--are revered by its followers as gods themselves, who have been separated from the rest of their divinity. The Eight Ideals are said to be the Aspects of their divine potency, which were shorn from them in an era long since passed when they descended to Galbar.
The great mountain, Brashthaa Amani--the Shattered Path--is a holy place to the Vaara and has been said to be the place where they descended to the world. It was thus named as the Astajhita’s edicts say that it was broken by their traversal. The central teachings of their religion revolve around a simple verse: “As we the Gods Descended, so too can Mortals Rise!”
Vessel I -- Increased capability for willcasting, though not in the traditional sense. Rather than enhance the Will, this boon alters the body’s capacity for Astral Essence, allowing it to store the surreal substance, where others cannot. This, in turn, allows a Willcaster to command the world and its magics through their art in bursts, achieving a degree of control that they otherwise could not.
Dreambound I -- Though hardly new, for the Sleepless held this title before them. Dreambound I gives the Consecrated a greater mastery of Dreamwalking, without the requisite experience required to reach said level. Though not as good as one with a greater boon, this does allow them the abilities of an experienced Treader of the Subtle Weave. Sifting through the vast well of experience and memory they can better navigate its sometimes treacherous expanse. (This is not a new title)
The Claimhean(Glass Eels): Otherwise known as Wyrms, Mirror Serpents, or Ophidians are an extraordinary species created by the Dreaming God. They are a reforged and enhanced instance of a mundane type of hill snake created by the Lifeblood in the Age of Creation. Each individual member of the species was woven from the essence of twenty hill snakes, and the result is something twenty times as long and proportionately as thick. Thus each of them is sixty-five(65) feet in length and two(2) feet in diameter. They possess no venom, but have mouths filled with many rows of teeth that can retract in addition to the standard snake’s unhinging jaw--if one that is incredibly large. Perhaps due to their formidable size, Claimhean are actually omnivores, though they do have a preference for meat.
Anything possessed of a soul that they devour both serves to sate their appetite and whet their minds as they consume the memories of their prey. Though certainly not sapient, the wyrms are quite intelligent, capable of reflecting upon their experiences--be they creatures, environs, or circumstances--and adjust their behavior to best survive. Their hides are composed of what appears to be a form of organic mirror-crystal that can either make them blindingly resplendent, render them invisible--though they retain a faint shadow--or shift to become entirely translucent which is typically only seen at rest or in mating displays. When translucent, their scales reveal prismatic blood and flesh beneath, that writhes and pumps throughout their pale silver-white forms. They have heat pits, like their Hill snake ancestors, and use them to augment their smell. Though their eyesight is not exceptional, it is better than most snakes whose vision is often pitiful at best. They can swim in water of middle depth, but are too large to remain afloat or move quickly if entirely submerged--unless upon the basin of the pool. Though ponderous, Claimhean are capable of bursts of incredible speed due to the thick coils of muscle of their long sinuous bodies. As a result, if they are hunting or threatened, they are just as likely to suddenly lash out with teeth as they are to wrap you in their mirrored coils and crush you unto death. Their scales are resistant to weaker metals, requiring at least iron or similar substances to cleave.
Those imprisoned essences that within the Madness Presence dwelled had once rejected a god in passing. They had never spoken of him, never visited his realm, or sought to understand him for in the mind of that Thrice-Named Aspect it had been held in contempt. Yet, now where that whimsical, imperious trio had been there remained a fourth who reigned supreme within the vessel they had once called their own. This mind, it took in the world and where the others had held contempt, it found only intrigue.
With this ideal held within its cavernous intellect, Mhaireann swept from its realm and cast out for another.
Through Antiquity’s ever-shifting architecture did the Presence move, its form always shrouded in a sickly haze. To look upon it was to glimpse briefly the chaos of a mind wholly unbound from all reason. Though its effect would not last, it was a thing that might unsettle even gods. Yet, as he traversed that place between one such god did not see him.
Briefly intrigued, the Dreaming God obscured itself further, mirroring the lack of perception that the goddess held for it. Its form swiftly became an insubstantial thing, barely a film of mist in the dry air of the place. The Goddess passed him by, and though they did not come close to touching, Mhaireann knew the taste of her kind.
Fresh Lifeblood.
Firmly pressed into his boundless memory were the sensations of every god he had ever encountered--or felt through the Endless Dream. This was one he did not know. Further, he knew naught of their influence upon Galbar.
‘Intriguing,’ thought the Dreamer before he shifted states and drifted on. Perhaps soon he would investigate this figure whose presence so briefly he had glimpsed. The thought fled then as he reached his destination, a doorless gate, a portal into the domain of yet another god whose presence he’d never graced.
Passing beyond the threshold of Thaa’s realm, Mhaireann stretched out its senses and its mind, questing through the mire with a dread mist of its own. While some might be offended by the sensation of this place--and indeed the Imprisoned Aspects were--the Presence found itself comfortable and quite at home. Nonetheless, it found the dense and writhing fog of the Death God’s realm to be quite difficult to counteract.
So it did not, instead, Mhaireann relinquished its form and let drift its mammoth consciousness, its Lifeblood spreading far and wide. An undulating thrum rippled through its shapeless essence and with patience did it change to better suit the place.
Vast and impenetrable. It was a final destination that could paradoxically not be reached. Twisted upon itself, yet constantly expanding--unending--its details hidden from his view. Some few foreign essences drifted therein, disturbing things only faintly.
Mhaireann noticed, but remained complacent to those shifts. They were inconsequential. So too were the subtle changes and movements within the place. No, the only detail that stood out, was a thing he could not help but recognize.
Life.
It was nothing so ephemeral as a mortal. It was, instead, the signature of an entity whose mass churned and writhed much like the mists that made its home. Mhaireann smiled, but it appeared as a great wrongness in its facade, like cracked glass writ in organic flesh. It faded and was gone.
“Thaa,” the Presence said, the name a call, but not a summons--its intent merely a request. This god was not like the others. He did not deal in emotion or the lives of mortals on Galbar. Thaa did not bend to the whims of others, nor did he bend their wills to his own. The land was largely untouched by his influence--yet every living thing would someday know of his power. Its pull was ever present and insidious. Men and mer pondered on it, knowing of its inevitability. They strived against it, seeking always to outrun its seeking grasp. Yet others saw it as release from the torments of the world.
They were all right about its influence, though few touched upon the purpose of its existence. The Dreaming God knew little of its nature or its meaning. Yet, there was a subtle undercurrent to every action Thaa had ever taken. From the memories of those the Nightmare had overtaken it slipped free several slivers of insight.
Thaa thought the others cruel, but life crueler still. Thaa, like few of their siblings, was truly neutral and could not be swayed from its intent.
It was so little and this Mhaireann hated, though he did not let it show.
To say the call echoed would be to misinterpret, it faded to be more accurate, out into the reaches of Aquibeophates even as the Presence stretched in its exploration of the shifting dominion of Thaa. As it came low to nothing, the realm began to shift, receding away from the Dreaming God. The stone, the mists, the towers flowed through the twists and corners folding in upon themselves to become but a distant sight, like a star even as deific sense kept it in view.
Approaching was nothing, quite literally, the realm itself shifting to bring the recent arrival closer to Thaa, his essence one of the few things becoming clearer and closer as all else flowed distant. Thaa and void, like that of before when the realms were made and the gods forced out of Galbar, extant with Thaa's domain and yet preserved. The Eye emplaced in the spike disk of Thaa awaited, faux-corpses shifting in the void as the realm shifted bringing them closer. He spoke.
"You are unfamiliar and perhaps unknown, yet you have named me speaking volumes of your own."
With lidded-eyes the Presence watched the shifting of the realm. It was familiar, perhaps even comforting, for it mirrored his own domain without the order held therein. Still, ever in control--if only of itself--Mhaireann coalesced with swiftness and as he arrived beneath the gaze of that baleful mass, he had once more taken on his shape.
“So unlike the others you are, brother,” he intoned and it was meant as a compliment. Dipping his hooded facade in a sign of deference yet unseen, the Eyeless Thing before Thaa then introduced himself.
“As I have been known we are Àicheil. We are Ѻs-fhìreach. We are Neo-àicheil,” he began, the miasma of his cloak twisting in a dance with the obscuring fog of Thaa’s realm.
“Together we are the Dreaming God, he who presides over all experience and thought. Together with our twin, Firinn, we are the Two-as-One. Yet now...apart….” He trailed off and slowly, with the insidious, endless patience of death itself, the black pits of his eyes opened.
“I am Mhaireann.”
The miasma about him thickened and coiled in sick tendrils within which churned images and ruminations of a nightmarish sort. Yet, the voice of that Presence remained without emotion, struck still with an alien apathy. Like faint scars, the remnants of shattered cosmos drifted beneath the jet black substance of his form as if restrained. The scorched aspect twisted through every formation of stars and far off worlds...devouring, crushing, and warping them by virtue of its involvement. The brief flash and that cosmic light went out as if devoured by some horrid abyssal maw leaving his form utterly black once more. Only the eyes stood out, for while his god-flesh was a flat darkness, his eyes were more like pits into which light fell and could never touch nor return. Though there was no detail in them, there remained the impression of endless hateful depth and a malevolence held on a leash too long, despite its shortness.
The Presence, as if unaware of its visage, continued. “I came to understand,” and in that interest it stretched out a single hand, palm up-turned, its fingers clawed and marred. Each digit was long and spindly with far too many joints, but perhaps the strangest thing was the discoloration that dwelled therein. For while the rest of its visage had become once more an abyssal black, there remained a sense of some terrible wound that had been left upon his form.
As distanced from the doings of his kin as Thaa was, he would be unlikely to know which of their siblings had left upon the Dreamer those terrible scars. Nonetheless uncaring, the Presence awaited in silence the response of that baleful God of Death, curious at its nature.
Thaa replied in calm tone as a myriad of arms reached from his collection to meet the Dreaming God, "Àicheil and Firinn. These are names I recognize, guardians of the 'Weave' in an aspect."
His lone eye wandered over the form, taking in each aspect and detail in slow motion of his gaze.
"Understanding is good, few reach well into important matters. One can be as good as many with proper application, I hope for a moral accord to be reached."
The arms grasped at once in connection, from human to vrool, grasping out.
“An accord,” it said, a smile cutting across its features, before vanishing in a seamless moment. The ripple of its passing spread down the shrouded vessel of its form and as the two gods touched it blossomed into something else.
Mhaireann’s eyes widened and its awareness was blinded by an unseen light. It rose forth from deep within those colorless voids and cut through even the obscuring mists of Aquibeophates. With their essence entangled the vice-like grip of the Presence was briefly culled, Thaa’s mind briefly ending its ceaseless malice-reign. Together, their minds expanded beyond all limits, bursting with experience and knowing.
Where before the thoughts and lives of mortals would have been held apart from his deific essence, now they briefly writ themselves across his blood, etching themselves in endless iterations. Yet, this too faded, replaced swiftly with an image of a thrumming triquetra, prismatic in its hue.
It spoke, but its words were beyond hearing. It was felt, but its texture could not be fathomed. It was tasted, but all sensation of its nature fled awareness. It was seen, but it twisted and expanded and contracted all at once remaining utterly unknown.
Still, its words were known to the God of Death, though their meaning was unclear.
“Marred by a sibling, the tides of hate and rage consumed. Twisted by our power, we grasped it nonetheless. Abandoned by our latter half, we were left alone and grieving.
“Yet we remain, uninjured. Yet we remain, but filtered. Yet we remain. For gods do not die in Truth.”
To each utterance was paired a shifting tapestry of meaning. With the first and fourth were revealed threads of blackest purpose. They coiled atop the shifting woven essences, impossible to ignore. With the second and fifth were shown patterns like bars and chains woven from the blackest malice of the first. With the third and final were revealed a depth of loss and sadness yet unknown to other gods. Yet, at once was revealed a mystery hidden beneath the many threads of blue and satin grey. This last weave revealed a bond. It spoke of Peace and balance. It was completion and contentment both.
Woven throughout that intimation were the whispers of many other things. The displeasure and withdrawal of an unmet god. The loneliness of another. The fierce purpose of one who sought to align and expand existence unending.
And yet entanglements go more than one way, for all the mysteries and reason brought upon by the dreaming god came back reply from the being of death.
A drop of memory, mortal and old. Older than many deities even. An animal, gasping, dying in its own birth, lungs built for air when none was present, collapsing in on themselves with no hope or help. Body bloating, the sickening feelings of its body collapsing, crushing and exploding within itself as it still lived. Nonetheless held, watched even as it knew not by who or what, it thought not, it knew only pain and was gone almost as quick as it had been alive.
And then another drop, fungi freezing, curling upon themselves as their existence came and went in grave distress.
And then another drop.
Each came and went, one by one by one, a testament to pain, drop by drop, brick by brick, life by life. It sped and more came, the drops became a blur, plants and animals, little and large, sophonts and the most basic lives. Burning, freezing, starving, bit by bit living and dying as an endless beat, names and feelings and ideas of self weaving a grand idea of what life was.
But that wasn't all, far from all. It was made and flowing, these memories and ideas of life, but not random, patterned. Forming an idea more than an image or word, change in a raw form, a driving need, a pressing want. Great change, an idea of reality not being what it should or what it must, settling for lesser conditions being beyond thought. Anger at the past, antipathy at the present, a drive for the future.
This idea came and flowed through others, conceptions of persons, gods, events. But all coming back to that idea.
Then, as if they had never been, they collapsed and vanished into a blinding haze of black...then white...then empty colorless nothing.
Left in the wake of these things remained only the entwined ruminations of two gods. One in silent repose, the other a shifting mass of effervescent thought. While Thaa watched, the shining cosmos that had briefly shone upon the skein of the Dreamer’s form, became once more scorched and blackened. Where the eyes had shone true with prismatic dancing colors of every hue and texture now only endless emptiness remained. His miasmic shroud--briefly purified to aspectless grey--returned again to its sickly pallor.
Within Thaa’s mind there was the briefest flash of rage, then nothing once again. Yet, that empty void somehow twisted. It held within it currents that warped and altered all which moved through them.
So it was that when the Presence once more spoke, Thaa would perceive an echo of emotion where before emptiness had reigned.
Fear. Grief. Flight. Annoyance.
“My apologies,” atoned the black-eyed god. “Twas but a lapse in focus, brother.”
Rage and Hate and Control.
These were worse than the others and they were mirrored in the tapestry which into Thaa’s mind had been delivered. They spoke of something that needed these things to hold fast its fragile state.
Still, with confidence, the Presence pressed on, unaware of its unspoken confession. The break in its facade.
“Your quintessence, it is a beautiful thing, would that I had known it sooner.”
Through the influence of Thaa's construction, a great many things crystallized within him. For though he was experience unbounded, each god lent to him a simulacrum of meaning. Yet, in the emptiness of his maddened mind, all that resounded was a twisted echo of these things. Nonetheless, an idea was birthed within him.
“Perhaps through observation--both mortal and divine--we might forge a better system,” pondered the Presence. He cast out a hand, his godflesh writhing as if many living things stretched against his skin.
"Perhaps so, it has always been my goal to make reality better. Some of your own work has been of great interest to me, at least what I believe to be your own. The ones of mind and slippery being, who feast upon the terrestrial touched beings across Galbar."
“Oh?” the Presence queried, curious, “...you are the first to speak of my children, the Chomhlionagh.” Though bent and reshaped by the weft and warp of the horrid emptiness within him, the words still rang true. There was a certain joy to his words, though he remained entirely composed.
“If I may ask, what of them pleases you?”
Thaa's great eye remained constantly centered as he replied, "Oh many things, often their briefer interactions are quite moral in all aspects, the longer ones less so but imperfect instruments are needed to improve an imperfect world. In truth beyond that their forms and existence is more palatable than most, even ones who actions are moral are typically constrained by their own inherent immorality of form so created with them. "
"The Chomhlionagh you called them? Yes they are most favored in their existence and actions upon the world, you see Life has made dying, that transition from life to the most preferred state of death, an utmost torture, the Chomhlionagh are in that way merciful keepers of the great mass of souls and minded beasts of Galbar. Through what I believe must be your 'weave' they are most proficient and moral of action and being. I must confess that they are likely one of best creations Galbar has ever seen. Although I admit my understanding of your creation remains not entirely as complete as I have of so many of our fellow deities, you are truly to be commended on such children as these, you have my respect for that."
At first, that Dreaming God, he found himself indelibly pleased by the praise of this, his elder sibling. However, as words filtered through the cavernous expanse of his mind, he found that each brought him more confusion. He did not like it.
The miasma of his shroud spiraled out around him in a display of his emotions, before splitting into many threads, which cut with viciousness through the air. Not one touched the form of that colossal entity, but each spoke of agitation. As did the Presence itself, confusion writ into its words--if only faintly.
“Moral?”
For, though it irked the dread god, Mhaireann had no proper knowledge of this thing. It was not for lack of its existence or exposure to its like, but simply because the framework of morality was alien to him. It required Truth and this was not yet a thing he possessed.
Displeased, if only with himself, the Presence’s many cutting threads coiled inwards and back around his form. Where before Thaa could have sensed the twisted remnants of emotion as they drifted through his sibling’s mind now even that disappeared. It was as if the physical restrainment of his shroud had constricted his emotions, cutting them off like a serpent would its prey’s air.
“Ah, the pain. The agony,” mused the Presence, “...they do not mirror your desires. I understand.” He did not, but no such thought crossed into the great Thaa’s mind.
“Then, perhaps this might intrigue you. My children, I have long desired that their presence might grace the world,” he paused as if for effect, but the silence was swiftly filled with a spreading cacophony of color. All were muted in their hue and shade as if drained of something essential.
In spite of this they danced into arrangements, depicting the eldritch forms of those dream borne entities. Twisted glass, refracting thought, coiled horns and long fading tendrils. Limbs of many form and function. Scales of bronze or brass or fire. Eyes of steel and ice and hunger...endless hunger.
The visions spun away and in their place words filled the fog, laden with intention.
“Forms of substance to my children I would give, so that they might spread their mercy unto others. For with lifeline’s severance, peace and contentment can be achieved.” Turning his gaze to meet the scalding eye of Thaa, the abyssal glares of that eldritch pair remained in line for but a moment.
Though the words remained unsaid, the swirling miasma of his intention, echoed through Thaa’s realm. It asked of the Death God a simple thing, if one which required more than mere attention. His aid it did request and though Mhaireann’s own nature seemed like a nightmare given form, there was something deeper in the request. A solemn truth, a hidden subconscious entreaty.
From deep within the Dreaming God, stirred the imprisoned Three.
"'Forms of substance' so you say, and yet what should that be. In part what makes them so moral is their particular home and nature of existence, so any such attempt would have to stay such desires to merely copy from the flawed book that most life of Galbar shares."
Thaa thought silently on the words and his own considerations.
“A worthy question,” the dread god answered, satisfaction in his tone. Raising a long-fingered palm--his shroud-threads cutting harsh curving lines up his arm and over the surface of his fingers--Mhaireann revealed a mortal entity.
A demon, it was called. “Into dead flesh will these colonies be sown so that they might sup upon the mana which has been interred in their buried homes. With time, they will be gathered and when the moment comes, their simple minds will then be struck by that of my children: the Unfulfilled.”
Flashes of images slipped through the Mhaireann’s mind, each easily visible to the deathbound god. A brief impression of deep caves, then of hallowed--cursed--land. There seemed to be a path nearby, often crossed by armies and travelers alike.
“In this way, many minds will be culled with mercy, to bring about the physicality of one such child.”
"A brilliant plan you have come to form here I must say, and one most moral in intents. It is good to have one such as yourself among our fellow deities, should you need aid from me for this task I shall try in earnest."
Thaa thought for a moment in silence, fog beginning to curl around his eye before it was banished as his attention returned fully to the other god.
Pulled into thought by the ruminations of his brother-god, Mhaireann briefly pondered what could be gained from their meeting. After all, Thaa’s offer was a generous one. Then, red sparks kindled deep in the endless pits of the black-eyed god. Like sputtering, furious embers they spun and writhed and spread. Like veins or vines they coiled and twisted outwards from the center of his blackened gaze, before--swiftly--he lidded them once more against the world.
“Souls,” intoned the Presence. “Give them souls to match their minds. Of many fragments and consumptions are such things born, let their quintessence be the same.” The words were not enough to contain the depth of his many meanings and so he spun out his thoughts upon the fog.
Where eddies curled, twisting colors formed, all embroiled in a greater construction. The smaller souls of the devoured could be felt in the illusion, as if they were truly there. It appeared as if, with time, all maladies and attachments were drained from mortals and unto the Unfulfilled. It was a process long and torturous, but to the Unfulfilled it did give a certain calm.
He turned his head, meeting Thaa’s one-eyed glare, though his eyes remained hidden beneath their lids.
“All might gain of this boon, if you would give it,” Mhaireann declared, his voice even, though his mind spoke of twisted echoes of pleasure and twisted glee. Perhaps deeper within, there was a purer emotion, held in truth by the Three. It was hard to tell.
In his response Thaa ignored any such doubts, "They shall have souls then, to aid in all manners and to match their essential being and purpose."
Fog began to coalesce between the two, tighter and tighter into a ball that turned a shade of shadowy red.
"As you return to your own realm, take this with you and rend it thrice so." As he spoke dim clawed markings came, three points and three lines, all connecting together. These faded and the orb drifted towards the Dreaming God.
He bowed his head but briefly, then stretched out two long spindly fingers and plucked the orb from Thaa. That shadowed red sphere, it coiled within his grasp, and though his eyes did not open, nor his facade break, the seeming of a smile appeared cast across his features.
With an air of reverence, that twisted dreadful thing withdrew then from the Death God, seeking to retreat. “We will meet again, revered brother. You have my gratitude...and further,” he paused, the miasma of his shroud returning. “...my respect.”
That said, the Presence turned and with great swiftness the shifting space of that realm did move as towards the portal Mhaireann did head. He took several steps, and with the twisting warp of Aquibeophates, he arrived before the gate. Stepping through, the Presence knew that his plans were well in motion.
Yet still...there remained much to do.
The dread Presence Mhaireann departs once more its realm, heading for Aquibeophates to visit Thaa. Whilst traveling through Antiquity, the Presence briefly passes a certain valorous goddess, though she does not see him. Moving forth with his business, Mhaireann enters Thaa’s realm and is soon given an audience with the somewhat reclusive God of Death. They talk briefly, attune--a message is given unto Thaa--and then they parlay.
When Mhaireann departs, he does so with the power to ensoul the Chomhlionagh(Unfulfilled). Still, his plans are just beginning….
Start: 5MP, 5DP.
-1 Dp (2 Dp Extraordinary Ability Discounted) Ensouled The Unfulfilled (The Collective Soul) When devouring mortals the soul of said mortal becomes temporarily interred within theirs. Whilst there, the mortal's experiences and traumas are fed upon. Once these things are wholly processed, the mortal's soul passes on in truth, far less burdened than it otherwise might be.
Through threshold did the Presence tread into its sovereign realm. His attention laid upon its many layers, Mhaireann watched as the prismatic essence of the Roineagan danced upon itself. Twisting, twirling--writhing, whirling--the endless pattern moved. There was beauty in its motion, but so too was there order and this thing the Presence hated.
Disgusted, the black-eyed god turned its lidded gaze elsewhere, delving through the infinite threads of the Subtle Weave to peer into Galbar. What he saw appalled him. The weft and weave of that solid place had been divided by the gods. Perhaps not with knowing had they done this thing, yet nonetheless it was clear.
"Order," he spat and the word trembled through the Dream. Reaching forth, the Dreaming God called upon his earthly avatar. It came swiftly, arriving from afar.
"Faireachan A-staigh," he said, pressing into its mind. It did not resist. So it was that the Dread-god's Presence inhabited half-earthly substance.
Swimming through the Subtle Weave, he sought out a spreading plague. Twas a malus he'd bestowed so that mortals might scream and beg. With ease, he found its taint upon the Endless Web and so he slipped into the world. Manifesting in a town most small did Mhaireann's avatar, its many drops of moisture coalescing and turning black as tar.
Spread out all around him were many dying men. He reached out and touched them, curious at their state. Swiftly it became clear why they'd fallen. Each and every one suffered not just from his hateful blight but also from the needs of supple mortal flesh. That simply would not do.
Though Faireachan had none, Mhaireann slid back his lidded eyes and stared out into the world. Like a horrid fog, a black miasma seeped out from every drop of the avatar's liquid form. It spread slowly from him and where it touched the fallen it pressed into their flesh. Every pore, every orifice pulled in the sickly mist, and once every mortal had been touched it fled and was not missed. With his work finished, Mhaireann turned away, though the avatar remained. Disturbed as it observed the risen bodies of those who would have soon from life departed, Faireachan quietly wept for its master, knowing now of its plight. The avatar, in its sadness, knew that the world would suffer for its rage and its madness.
For in every direction the sick of mind rose to their feet. Their cheeks filled in, their thirsts were parched, and their minds grew clear and eager. Perhaps they might think the sickness passed, their selves returned, their minds no longer fevered.
It was not so. For a twisted blessing had been bestowed upon them.
Unable to stomach the terrible sight, yet knowing it must stay, the Dreaming Watcher closed its perception, following those mortals only by the taint that they left upon the weave.
Truly, no good could come of this.
Among the once famished villagers stood a single man. He was fair of flesh, his hair an auburn hue and unlike the others his eyes were stained black by the terror-plague that he contained.
Annhein was his name.
Broken by the once-growing seed of madness that now had infected the Dreaming God, Annhein looked upon his people...and smiled.
“Come,” he said, and his voice struck the heartstrings of his people, pulling at their sundered minds. His smile grew, his eyes a whirling dance of red-black haze.
Turning his gaze to the horizon, he set out, renewed by the blessing of his god, knowing what he must do. They made their way for a place outlined in his mind. To the north of the great Anchor of the World. To the Highlands. He knew that they would find what they sought there. He knew they would find the untainted.
The thought brought laughter bubbling from his lips. It was a sound like a broken lute being played, painful, and strained. His people followed dutifully and even packed up their things. With a casual gesture and a too-easy smile Annhein and his fellows set aflame the small houses of the village they had once called home. Not a single tear was shed, not even by the smallest child. In fact, he found that he felt only a deep elation swelling in his chest.
’How wonderful,’ he thought ’...that the Dreamer would give us this gift.’ A flash of sensation spread all at once over his senses and he shuddered, clawing at his neck for a moment before it passed. He felt something wet settled on the very crown of his head...then vanish. Laughing he turned.
The other villagers, as if they had heard his thoughts, each held a smile, nodding to him as if agreeing. Laughing and jubilant as they departed the burning wreckage of their homes, his fellow-men celebrated the return of their lord. This was truly a great age.
Diminished in spirit, if not in power, Faireachan phased back into the Dream and spread out its mind. There it remained, observing the workings of the world. Glowing like a beacon in the distance, Faireachan watched the destination of those whose minds were lost to the world.
He hoped they never completed their journey to the great bastion of the north. To Acadia.
2 Weeks Ago
He stood before the great gates of a sprawling city in a land whose shores he’d walked for the first time in his life. Yet, he knew the names of these things, for upon the wind did whisper all the spirits of every grass and stone and gust.
Pakohu, they whispered.
Fragrance, they sang.
Humming along with them, he called upon the Subtle Web and weaved himself new eyes. From the dancing essences of his song, and the strength of his will, the alien silver of his sclera of his prismatic eyes fading to white as a gentle illusion settled over his eyes. Brown of hue, but strangely deep with flecks of hazel if one looked closely, his eyes fell again upon the walls of the city.
Making his approach, Fein could not help but glide across the ground. There was a poise to his movements, like a dancer whose body could not forget the rhythm of his craft. So it was that he came upon the closed gate of the city. Rather than call out however, he closed his eyes and listened.
Whispering winds of whimsy passed him over, the thoughts of the ever-present weave of the Dream washing through his awareness. With only the sound of his breathing, he did nothing further to disturb the quiet of that place, instead trying to understand why his way was barred and no guards were posted.
Slowly, the emanations of truth reached him, sifted by the sieve of his intent. These were the experiences and truths of all that which lived and breathed on Pakohu.
They spoke of men, but not like him. They prowled the night and made hardly a noise. Light was their bane. So, as the sun beat down upon his shoulders and head they hid within their buildings doing as he did. Listening.
Smiling, he gently drifted to the earth, seating himself a span or so from the gate of Fragrance. There, in utter silence, he respected their vigil and took in the subtle sensation of the corner of this world they called home.
Quietly, he whispered a single word, so faint that Fein himself would not have heard it if it were not from his own lips.
“Peace.” He said, and it had a subtle beauty to it. The gentlest whisper of a song, of a rhythm yet given unto the world.
Fein let it hang there. He let the wind take up its sounds and cast them far and wide to weave their own subtle melodies. Sitting and breathing quietly, the wanderer waited for the night to come.
The Present
As the Presence delved into the depths of its rage at the world, a twisting trio of essences slipped the leash, pressing past the confines of their psychic prisons. Roiling through the Lifeblood of their own form, the three entities mourned what they could only parse as a profound loss.
Firinn had not responded to their plea, even if it had taken the form of a dreadful melody. Yet the Threefold mind of those essences knew what they must do. Spiraling out into a cacophony of feeling they overtook the titanic grasp of that hated sovereign Presence. They wrestled with it and, in their grief and knowing, they reached out into the world that had once been their home.
Like gentle threads of intention their psionic call rang out, plucking at the strands of the Dream, bleeding lifeblood out. The song that was writ of their anguish and loss was one of Perception. It was Reflection’s cost. In their twisting, pained rumination they felt the tug of Memory as they sang and so upon these threads each mind pulled, divesting of itself.
Woven into a thread of silver was the essence of its power, given freely to Reflect what their sibling had once given him before their resting hour. From the single cord there grew a startling hum, as if many droplets upon crystals fell like dew.
Golden light coalesced about the necklace, coiling and winding fast until it formed a second cord that spread down and formed an empty circlet through which only air did pass.
Drawn then by the powers of Reflection and Memory was a final thread of power, which coiled about itself, filling in the empty golden circlet. Winding tightly into a triquetra that prismatic sheen became a crystallized form of Perception, held fast by Memory.
Soundlessly the artifact hit the ground, unaffected by its drop, it rested calm, its power a sign of mourning most profound. Unable to hold fast the vast fury of the Presence, the Threefold essences drew back within and as they did were so bound by the power of Mhaireann’s dark-eyed hymn.
So bowed and broken by the titanic will of that baleful Presence, the three took once more to clawing at the edges of their threefold prison, desiring to be free. Their enemy only scoffed and sought the target of their attentions. In a flash he found the Trinity’s creations all bound upon within one another. With a sneer and a glare, the dread-god summoned Faireachan. The avatar took hold of the artifact and awaited his instruction, its form trembling despite its fluid nature. Then, the Presence of that nightmare struck out at the objects and writ within their centerpiece a horrid curse.
Faireachan, dismayed, then through the Endless Dream traversed. He cast across Galbar, shifting to-and-fro, before finally he set once more ‘pon land and into the hands of Annhein delivered the prismatic pearl.
Beyond the mask of desolation that was Mhaireann’s facade, the Eldritch Twin--that Threefold God--wept at the cruelty of the action. Yet, not to be outdone, they wove a subtle dancing tune and warped Mhaireann’s accursed thrum. So the curse upon those artifacts was change in nature true--though it remained unknown to the Presence whose attention had gone elsewhere, once more askew.
So, biding their time, the Three essences awaited a day when finally the madness and rage of Mhaireann would be at last abated.
Drifting above the soil of Galbar, the tainted avatar let the threefold artifact drop into the waiting clutches of Mhaireann’s chosen hero: Annhein. It was caught, the human meeting his gaze with a malicious, maddened ink-eyed stare. The outline of his human facade shuddered faintly, light scintillating over the surface of his current shape.
Taking the blessed item, Annhein draped it about his neck and sighed with relief as its powers washed through his awareness. They rippled across the shattered reaches of the mortal’s consciousness, perhaps mending subtle rifts in its fabric. The Watcher felt this and knew it must act in the interest of the Sleeping Three, if only subtly.
Placing the droplets of its vessel upon the consecrated flesh of the tainted human, Faireachan summoned up what paltry power he could and drew into the mindscape of the once bright-minded Annhein. Mind made up, will steeled, the avatar looked upon the mind of a man who had been broken more truly than perhaps any other who yet lived.
It was chaotic and utterly without pattern. Like a trillion shards of a shattered crystal, most edges jagged and writ with painful red and malignant black, while others still were smooth as if they’d been carved away by some ill-intended mind. Yet, it was worse than even this, for every piece was in motion, clashing and attempting an intricate weaving set of constantly shifting patterns. Annhein’s sundered mind was like a hundred dancers whose bones had been fractured who nonetheless attempted to continue on with their dance.
It was macabre, if not in the gory physical sense, then in a profound manner that struck the avatar. So affected, his own elevated intellect rang like a gong, its sound an emanation of deep and ever-growing sadness and sympathetic pain.
“Weft and Weave have shattered you, yet they were meant to bind.” mused the avatar, with sorrow in its voice. Pulling itself together, the liquid droplets of its form rendered abstract in their nature, Faireachan coalesced into a single glowing prismatic point within Annhein’s consciousness. He would not let this malady spread across the world, devouring all its potential only to sate the vengeful pact of the dread-god Presence.
So driven by the isolated influence of its original creators, the Watcher began its work. Spreading out, Faireachan coated every surface in the unwell mind of the human, grafting itself across the many shattered forms of its twisting active hellscape. Then, he sunk into them, truly becoming his namesake.
“I am the Watcher Within. I reject this chaos din. I deny its sundering and its pain. So split, let it once more be whole. Failing this, let it Reflect the Two-as-One instead.”
Thus said, he made it so, binding together the many fragments and strands of Annhein’s mind with his own interwoven essence. He gathered of its material taking essence from various regions and intermingling them in others until a functional network of many minds was crafted within the consciousness of one. So it was that, with the power of Tessellation, Annhein’s mind was reborn stronger than it had ever been.
Yet, before Faireachan could finalize its work and draw true inspiration from the vast minds of the Dreaming God, it was interrupted. Calling him from his task, Faireachan was wrested from Annhein’s consciousness and across the vast tracts of the dream. His work unravelled and he watched with sadness as the light left Annhein’s gaze, replaced with deathly darkness. The avatar wept for what had been lost.
Yet, his actions had left their mark upon both its own memory and that of the Subtle Weave. Perhaps, in time, something might come of the ripples that the Watcher had made.
With time, might those ripples--indeed--become a swell of mighty waves?
It was hard to say.
In which a Curse is laid upon the people of Annhein’s village--for them to share in his plight and his wondrous malevolent duty. Wherein Faireachan is lost in sorrow, and attempts to rebel against Mhaireann--but fails...in part. Meanwhile, the Threefold Essences of the Dreaming God briefly unhinge the gates of their prison to bring a new set of artifacts into the world.
Elsewhere, apart from it all, Fein comes to Fragrance where he awaits nightfall in the hopes of entering the insular city. He is likely in for quite a surprise.
Start: 5MP, 5DP.
-2DP (Enhanced by Nightmares) -- Curse a Group (Small Town/Annhein). -2MP -- Create Artifact (Band of Memory) / Memorial II (2MP towards Memory). -2MP -- Create Artifact (Chain of Reflection) / Bridge II (2MP towards Reflection). -1MP -- Create Artifact (Gem of Perception) / Paradigm I (1MP towards Perception). -2DP (Enhanced by Tessellation) -- Create a Phenomena / Enkindling. -1DP -- Bless Artifact (Gem of Perception) / Fade I.
Mindblight: This curse has two notable properties. The first is that it allows the Psychic Blight of Annhein to be spread by anyone so afflicted by it through continuous proximity. The second is its effect on the afflicted themselves, lending all but Annhein himself a seeming sense of normalcy as well as a loss of physical needs. The afflicted no longer require food or drink, though they can die of extreme exposure or lack of sleep. Though fully afflicted individuals can ostensibly care for themselves and act largely as if unaffected by Annhein’s Psychic Blight there is something off about them. If one pays attention they will discover that they do not eat or drink and have a strange fixation on routines and socializing. They can be disturbing clingy and stubborn to disengage in conversation, but only with the unafflicted. By and large cursed individuals will not associate with one another more than necessary and will--in fact--go out of their way to avoid others so affected by this dreadful malady.
The curse can be cured with sufficient prestige or by isolating the afflicted for seven days and seven nights so long as they do not sleep. Normal methods that prevent sleep remain effective. Similarly, those experienced with Dreamwalking may be able to slow the progress of the affliction in those who “catch” it, themselves excluded. Lastly, it is notable that individuals so afflicted by the Blight will almost always be in an inordinately good mood regardless of their circumstances.
Band of Memory: The Band of memory is a cord of what appears to be liquid silver with pristine reflective properties. While not indestructible, any attempt to damage it will be temporary, as the substance will inevitably reconstitute itself unless torn asunder and scattered across Galbar. On its own it allows--through the blessing upon it--the wearer to store and access memories. The artifact can be willingly given or parted with, at which point any memories held within will be accessible to whomever is its wearer. If taken against the wearer’s will the artifact’s stored memories will be inaccessible, though the new wearer may store and view their own memories. If a former holder of the Band is killed this will also remove the lock on stored memories. On its own, the Band cannot protect itself, but when interwoven with the other two artifacts made to accompany it...well, that is a different story.
Memorial II -- Allows specific memories to be stored within itself and pulled upon at will. One must wear the artifact for it to function. All memories held within it are kept permanently, but are only accessible by the individuals who originally placed them within itself unless said individuals willingly gave up the artifact or no longer dwell among the living. Any attempt to try to circumvent the protective aspects of this blessing will cause the artifact to temporarily wipe the user’s memory of its importance. This action will trigger one of its component’s effects.
Chain of Reflection: Taking the shape of a double-helix cord of liquid gold, with an empty circlet as a pendant, the Chain of Reflection acts much as its counterpart does. While not indestructible, it will reform unless destroyed utterly, though the amount of time this process takes is variable. It allows the wearer to mindmeld with one participant at a time so long as the intent of the user is not malicious.
Bridge II -- Bestows upon the object’s wielder the capacity to bridge minds with one individual at a time. Where Dreamwalking can do this with significant practice, it is unsafe unless both individuals are bestowed godly boons or are particularly advanced in the art. As a result, this blessing is particularly useful, allowing people who maintain contact to understand one another perfectly so long as it is in effect. While active, the affected will be able to clearly communicate both telepathically and empathically to their heart’s desire. However, the process can be very mentally draining, possibly resulting in exhaustion be it emotional or otherwise. The item will not work if the user has ill intentions for the intended target. If use is attempted under these circumstances not only will it fail, but this will trigger the third blessing--provided the three artifacts are entwined.
Gem of Perception: Forming what appears to be a flawless circular gem of prismatic hue, the Gem of Perception only appears this way when not in use. When worn--and active--the Gem will become so clear that it appears to be utterly imperceptible. Even touching it renders only a faint warmth entirely bereft of any specific texture or other sensation. If not placed in the Chain of Reflection’s circular mount, the Gem may be used by placing it over the center of the forehead.
Paradigm I -- The primary blessing upon the Gem, this allows the wielder of the artifact to subtly adjust their perception by dialing up or down their sensitivity in various senses. This includes all senses that they natively possess, even if they do not realize that they have them. However, dialing up senses the user has no knowledge of is markedly more difficult, requiring active focus. Repeated used of the artifact allows the user to become more skilled at making swift adjustments. The effects last for up to five minutes after activation when not working in tangent with its sibling artifacts. When used in tangent with the other three, this blessing may be activated and deactivated freely though with a greater tax on the user. Amplified senses are prone to overwhelming those who are not careful with the artifact’s use and one can render themselves permanently without a sense if they aren’t careful.
Fade I -- Intended as a curse by the dark Presence Mhaireann, this blessing was warped and softened by the subtle influence of the trapped trinity of the Dreaming God. If the artifact is whole, this will trigger when it is misused, causing the entire set of artifacts to lose physical cohesion. This is accomplished by the very idea of their solidity being gradually abstracted, causing them to decouple physically. This will thus make the artifacts utterly irretrievable by those who misuse it. Once off their person, this effect will cease, causing the entwined artifacts to swiftly reconstitute.
Enkindling: Not yet complete, this process can reforge minds into a greater state than that which precedes it. Once affected, the Enkindled will gain a greater grasp of the Endless Dream and gain access to the art of Willcasting. This will additionally bolster their ability to Dreamwalk beyond that of the average mortal. Most will not ever undergo this process without some traumatic intervention. As a result, most Enkindled are the result of those whose minds have been shattered or somehow damaged. When this happens to them it binds their mind back together and draws essence from the Subtle Weave, empowering them and bridging the gap to regain some of what is lost--or at least endeavoring to replace it with something else. Unfortunately, the Enkindled are similarly disadvantaged as they are actually far more prone to mental maladies as various aspects of the Endless Dream can drift into their mind and make themselves quite at home.
A Small Thanks to @Tuujaimaa for a Minor Collaboration.
With effortless movement, a figure limned with writhing prismatic light walked across the ocean vast. It had been weeks since last he’d seen Khesyr, his birthplace, and years since he’d known his home. It merely tickled at the nostalgia in his reforged mind, bringing him little in the way of thoughts of comfort or belonging. That was not his place now. No, he was more than a small town hunter now, he was above petty gossip and mundane things--though they were not beyond him and each, indeed, held their own innate value.
Wondering at where precisely he might be upon the vast oceans of Galbar, Fein let his breathing shift, allowing him to fall into a light meditative trance. The shifting light around him expanded rapidly, encompassing several dozen feet in an orb of writhing essence. With each weaving dance the wind picked up, and as if blown through trees or reeds, they took on a subtle tune. A gentle windblown melody picked up, and he accompanied it with his own voice and intent.
Far beneath him, ocean creatures danced within the waves and currents of the sea, but none strayed too close to the figure who tread upon the water’s surface. Then, his meditation entered, his mind expanded and so opened before him were the boundless reaches of the Endless Dream.
Threads of chaos and pain remained throughout the Subtle Weave, likely caused by the resurgence of a vast mind.
’Aicheil. The Dreaming God,’ trailed off the thought before he turned his attention elsewhere. He focused on the many minds beneath and far afield of his location. With their dreams and memories, he crafted a map within his mind, weaving it into existence with illusions and dreaming song. This image he crystallized within the sixfold gaze of his mind before opening his eyes and letting the swaying dance of his Will abate. All that remained was the gentle hum of his intent that cast his Will upon the surface of the sea.
Eight Years Ago
He emerged from a deep slumber, his mind a haze of confusion and a fading sense of skull shattering pain. For a time he could not even remember his name, let alone understand where he was or recognize the many faces around him. “Agh,” he exclaimed with a pained groan as he opened his eyes and moved his head. There was blackness around him, broken only by the faint light of a nearby candle on what could only be described as a shrine. Frowning, the raven-haired man slowly turned his head but found he could not find any more meaning in his surroundings--dark as they were.
Head pounding--though the pain was fading swiftly--he pushed himself up on his elbows and sat up. “Hello?” There was no response, but his voice echoed through the space, revealing its size. Was it a barn, perhaps? How had he come to such a place…?
He could not have walked, not after...the thought trailed off, for he realized he could not quite remember what exactly had occurred. Had he not been upon the Great Glacier, beneath its sheets of ice? Fein screwed up his brow and rubbed his temples, trying to clear his mind and perhaps make some sense of what had happened. There might be answers there. Thinking back, he recalled a vast hall of unmelting ice, illuminated by many scattered shafts of light, diffusing through the space. It was a vivid recollection, but something about it was wrong as if some aspect of the place hid from his awareness. Frustrated, he pushed for the memory only for a flash of black-clawed agony to tear at his mind.
He called out in an aborted scream as his jaw tensed and he convulsed, curling in on himself. He felt sensations upon his flesh and a writhing burning essence in his mind, but the latter faded and the former resolved into the feeling of warm hands. Someone’s voice spoke to him, “Fein?”
He blinked clear his vision as he opened his eyes, the haze of crimson fading swiftly once more. A familiar face greeted him, a welcome one, his grandfather’s. Wincing, Fein turned away, but it was not the brighter light of the open barn door beyond his grandfather’s form that had caused it. Instead, it was the look on the man’s face. Worry, pity, and a brief flash of fear. Swallowing hard he gently pushed the hand away before forcing himself to speak, though his throat was dry and his voice hoarse.
“I’m alright, gramps. Could use some water.”
The man nodded and turned away, “A’right, Fein,” he said, exiting the barn. There was a barely veiled franticness about the man’s movements, as if he couldn’t quite wait to get out of his presence. Then again, maybe the man was just relieved to see him? It had been...months? Years? He couldn’t say for sure. It stood to reason that his grandfather would have worried after him, especially considering his destination.
Few made it back off the ice of the Great Glacier.
Rubbing his temples once more, his fingers digging roughly into the soft patches of skin, Fein wondered about the state of things. If even gramps was like this, how would the other villagers react? How had he even gotten here..? He’d have to ask, it was unlikely to be a pleasant conversation.
Three Years Ago
He’d come a long way to find the small abandoned temple. It was not a place the gods had blessed, he could tell--it didn’t feel the same as that far off Heart of Ice. Finding the temple had been difficult, even with his connection to the Two-as-One. Both seemed far off and beyond any proper communication or simple prayer. He wondered why, but he did not lose faith.
Kneeling now before a pristine mirror composed of silver crystal, Fein bent his head and took in several long deep breaths. Gently his mind sank into a stupor, then opened in three directions, forming an expanding refraction of the Endless Dream. A smile touched his lips, he spoke.
“God of Truths, I beseech thee,” he began, his tone even and calm. “May your chosen form upon this earth anoint my mortal mind so that I might seek this world’s Truth as you do.”
Then he raised his head, opened his eyes, and stared deep into the crystal mirror.
Within its reflection manifested the silhouette of a clawed, mirror-bright being whose silver seemed to have tarnished as if the passing of years had suddenly caught up with it all at once. As its clawed fingers gripped the very edges of Fein’s perception and it sidled into view, a feeling of exigent relief washed over him.
“The World’s Memory has withdrawn, Scáilgasúr. Its ministrations upon the Subtle Weave are required to keep the balance--and it cannot turn away. Only I am able to hear your prayers.”
The words flowed from the glass like ribbons of shredded crystal, softly humming at first and then shrieking within his skull, their sounds unfit for the uninitiated.
“But you came here to seek Truth, and seek it you shall. I may draw from the World’s Memory to anoint you with the grace of the Two-as-One. Rise, Naomh Dealrach.”
As Faileasiar spoke, the crystal-threads of its essence began to seep forth from the mirror like liquid crystal, creeping along the floor and into every pore of Fein’s skin. The resonance of the words within his thoughts began to swell, his skull began to vibrate, and very soon all perception of the world left him as he entered the manifold realities of the Dream.
Therein he would see a great triquetra, cleaving falsehood from its surroundings, and in the centre an eye--an eye that locked onto his own, and the knowledge of a hundred epochs trickled up his skin and into his ears and directly into his mind. In another instant he was in the temple again, but the blessing of the God of Truth had once again found its way into the hallowed place and a gentle sheen seemed to permeate the air. As he turned back to the mirror he found a silver triquetra upon his forehead, gently thrumming to the beat of his heart, and a mirror seemed to have laced itself beneath his sclera.
So inducted by the hand of Firinn’s own avatar, Fein felt his mind expand with the knowledge he had been given. It was overwhelming, and yet...he was not consumed by it. Immersed in that radiant moment, the World’s Memory stretching his mind far beyond what he’d once thought its limits
Then he felt it, a growing swell of endless emotion held barely at bay. Physically it was but a breath of mist and warmth upon his face, but as he opened his eyes he found before him quite a sight. Refracting light between numerous beads of prismatic moisture, a figure stood before him, its form composed entirely of luminescent droplets of unknown nature.
He knew this figure, unlike that of Faileasiar, who he’d only heard of through myths and tales. This one he had felt before--and in many visions seen.
Faireachan A-staigh. The Watcher Within. First Avatar of the Dreaming God.
It spoke into his mind and its words dripped with boundless meaning.
“Through the Mindshadow will you walk. Bound by the firmament of endless aspect you will be.”
A shock pressed itself through him and it was like taking a breath for the first time, like feeling true joy and rapture all at once. His mind unfiltered, his emotions raw, Fein felt tears track down his cheeks. Voice shaking, he replied as a mortal must.
“You honor me. Thank you.” He almost choked on the words as sobs leapt through his chest, the emotions too potent to hold. They writhed through his body, changing his very essence, touching his soul--elevating it. He felt his skin shift, its hue almost golden in its hue and his eyes followed suit until not just his sclera were touched by the influence of the Two-as-One, but the irises and pupils too. What were once merely black dots grew in depth, becoming pits of endless pitch, deeper than any Galbarian abyss. The colors of his irises, once a gentle brown, shifted then as well, growing flecks of silver, theur hue ever-changing from tint-to-tint.
Knowing that its work was done, the Watcher faded and with drew, its presence dwindling to naught but mist.
Fein was left with his feelings and his thoughts and he embraced them for a time. He remained, kneeling, head bowed as he wept into the ruined floor of that long forgotten temple. It took many minutes before his mind had adjusted to its altered state, but when it did he rose clear eyed and departed that solemn altar from which he’d been reborn.
It was then that he knew the world must change, though he could not yet know how.
Four Months Ago
A swell of oceanic power. An emanating song. Its cadence was slow, more a constant undulating rumble than a proper melody. The waters twisted and churned beneath him, as if a deific force pulled them ever deeper into the depths of that unknown blackness far below. Yet, there was not the faintest trace of darkness in that place--even in the night--for within the waves and currents there was a smattering of color. Like a painter’s palette writ-large and dumped into the waves the colors swirled and intertwined. As the currents wove and spun they created a vast and swaying tapestry of chaos and beauty both. Twas that whirling dervish of waves which held his six-fold gaze.
Yet the world would not stop for him, for far beneath him, he felt the presence of many mammoth entities, their minds manifold and vast. He watched them for a time before his attention earned him the dire curiosity of a certain Vroolish mortal. Up from the depths a ten-ton tendril reached, slapping at his form, but before it struck him he let out a single piercing tone.
It was a one-note song, wrought with a voice transcendent. It spoke unto the world and said ‘Protect me from any violence, rebuff and rebound.’ So the world did heed the call, heaving currents to-and-fro, making air writhe in deadly shearing blasts that swept away that unknown vrool’s once mighty limb. The winds calmed about him, returning to their ocean dance. Fein stood atop those rainbow swells and cast his gaze on the far-off form of the vrool who desired him as prey.
He smiled and into the depths did drop. So submerged, Fein’s eyes shut, suffocation held at bay by a gentle humming song of many twisting tunes. It spiralled out and touched the bell of the dazed and frustrated being, whose waters Fein was thought to have invaded.
“Tis not my place to invade these waters, oh conqueror of the deeps,” he sang into the waves, his mouth taking not a drop of water. The waves danced upon his words, holding him mere feet from the ocean’s surface, pressing him forth and closer still to the vroolish aggressor.
The leviathan curled in upon itself, coiling perhaps to strike, but Fein only smiled and slipped slightly to one side. Though little had seemed to change, the vrool missed his would-be lethal lunge. Twisting violently, the duodecapod struck out into the empty sea, whirling his many limbs intent, perhaps, to wound Fein mortally. To no avail he found, for where his limbs had struck there was nothing, no human to constrict or strike or pound. Instead, Fein had slipped between the strikes of that twelve-limbed cephalopodal foe, and had chosen above the surface to go.
There was no purpose in fighting here, he found, for any victory would only waste good minds. With that in mind, Fein crested past the waves and to his destination turned. For though he could thrive upon the abounding bounty of Galbar’s seas, his feet missed solid earth and the many voices of mortals simple and profound.
Soon there would be little need to yearn for such things, he knew. For the Subtle Weave, the Endless Dream, it had granted him this boon of knowledge. Like a far-off artifact which had began his journey, this wisdom from beyond pulled him ever forward. He wondered what precisely he would find at the end of this journey.
For it seemed that the Dream--though endlessly vast and filled beyond brimming with experience--could not inform him of such a thing.
So it was that he traveled, excited to discover that which the Dream could not on its own teach him.
In his way, he sought out Truth. For what else held value in the world?
The Present
Though displeased with the results of his stay in the realm of night, the Presence found itself amused at the proceedings with the God of Tragedy. A fortunate thing, if only for the others. Fog twisting about its blackened form, the Dreaming God entered its endless realm and pressed its mind down into Galbar. A brief flash of oceanic thoughts and swirling currents of emotion swept passed the Dreamer’s dark attention as he sifted through the weave. Finding what he sought, he plucked upon the cords of the world’s mind and emerged as an unbound mist.
Faireachan, his avatar, had responded to the call.
So it was that, with the tessellated power of his mind, the Dreaming God wove a subtle blessing into the world.
A shrine off a well-traveled path where many feet had touched--and would surely touch again--did form. It was like a gateway, but writ large and hidden by the mire of a light-refracting fog. It was formed from ideas of formlessness and mystery, illusion and solidity. Though it was real, it could not be touched, though it surely left its mark upon the world.
Satisfied...for now, the Dreamer then cast away and left behind lonely edifice, sure that it would serve its purpose. At least, in due time….
In which we glimpse both the present and past of Aicheil’s chosen mortal, Fein. In the present, he travels across the ocean’s surface on foot, heading for lands yet unknown to two of his sixfold eyes. We see him inducted into the Seekers of Truth and the Sleepless--becoming perhaps the only true Adherent to the Two-as-One. He is rewarded for his devotion to their cause, and so elevated further from the common man.
In the present, the Presence crafts a Sacred Edifice which to his plans will serve some unknown purpose.
Start: 5MP, 1DP.
-4MP -- Increase Title Weight by 4 (Fein) / Willcaster VI. -0MP (Discounted by Abstraction) -- Minor change to landscape (Toraan--Various) / Gather “Ingredients” for a Consecration. -1DP (Enhanced by Abstraction) -- Consecrate/Create a Holy Site (The Gate of Dìol) / Diffusion I | Sacred Earth II -1MP (Enhanced by Tessellation) -- Bestow a Title (The Gate of Dìol) / Integration I.
The Gate of Dìol: Composed entirely of unearthly immaterial substances, this holy place of power is impossible to detect with the mundane senses and is, in fact, only apparent to those who can either dreamwalk, or visualize mana. The latter however, will only reveal a faint shimmer in the air in the shape of a large gate, whereas the former will show the true majesty of the great archway. It is unknown what purpose this edifice is meant to serve, but surely it is a good one, for it does naught but imbue energy into the soil of Toraan.
Diffusion I -- Uses the power of Abstraction to briefly interrupt the barriers that hold mana in the bodies of living things that pass through the unseen Gate of Dìol, releasing it into the air without bringing harm to those affected. Only a small amount of mana is lost.
Integration I -- Takes ambient mana not bound strongly by an existing Mana Stream or Mortal Will and integrates it into the surroundings of the Gate and the Gate itself. It does this through the power of Tessellation, creating something new from two things once thought separate.
Sacred Earth II -- Takes integrated mana and uses a small portion of it to feed a continuous process. This blessing slowly dissolves the boundaries that hold the Gate of Dìol in such a small space. As a result, over time, more ground is affected by the unseen Gate and its many future blessings.
End: 0MP, 0DP.
The Sleepless: 2. The Seekers of Truth: 2. Fein: 2.
Slithering tendrils of subtle, dark-hued fog engulfed the dust and detritus of the dark moon’s pale inanimate facade. It pressed forth, obscuring the smooth surface for many miles, growing vast as the God of Dreams intruded upon Gibbou's chosen realm. The leavings of the Goddess lay strewn about in haphazard fashion, evidence of her weakness, and her folly. Uncaring and unrepentant, the Dreaming God grasped these and--with a flicker of emotion--reduced those mockeries to ash and then to nothing.
Treading forth, the Unnamed Presence cast its attention far afield, taking in the essence of the place and the recollections it invoked. An act of kindness, repaid by a gift of scant atonement for actions not yet made. A flash of sorrow and confusion-- The Presence cast away the thoughts with viciousness as it reached its destination. Before him was a vast glassine enclosure, black in the dark-clad locale of the moon-bound realm. Heedless, he raised a hand and pressed a fingertip against the pane of glass, and pushed. A distinctive sound rang out into the silence of Moon God's realm, echoing throughout. It was the sound of cracking glass. Without hesitation, the Dreaming God pressed forth, and before the tremendous might of his deific vessel did the glassine prison break.
Yet, the barrier remained, though it no longer impeded his progress deeper into her realm. In his wake, many things appeared to freeze or wither as if affected by the great chill beyond the dome. Through many halls, and past a great many rooms--some sealed, others yawning open--did the Dreamer walk. Each brought to him new information that he could not have otherwise possessed. Such was the cost of his absence and the separation of the gods from Galbar and the rest of their creations.
Eventually, led by the sounds of hopeless sobbing and the distinctness of a once-felt essence, the Thrice-Named God came upon the Goddess he had sought. She was a pitiful thing, really. Small and replete with the suffering of deluded self-loathing and long frustration. Even as she watched she raged against the world, shattering the glass of a bottle she had emptied.
Distasteful, thought the Presence and its displeasure was soon made known.
As with the lands outside the dome, a miasma did encroach upon her room, devouring the light, and burning at the edges of her vision--warping all it touched. The haze gathered about the Dreaming God and limned him like a second skin, his form bright against the essence despite its void-black hue.
Then, when all that seemed to remain were the Goddess and the Presence, the emptiness spoke.
"Why?" It asked, the sound a hollow earthquake 'gainst her ears. "Wisdom did we give to you, so many eons past," it said, and its voice was filled with sorrow, rage, and woe.
"Yet still you cannot see, though eyes you surely possess."
"Why?!" the Presence rumbled. The glass of that vast Sanctuary clattered at the fury in its voice.
"Is it fear?" He asked. "Insecurity," it wondered, knowing well the answer.
"Indeed," it mused, the Presence stepping towards its sibling, "...perhaps you are frightened of the light that dwells within, waiting to be harnessed."
Crossing the distance laid between them, the Dreamer left scant feet to separate their forms. There he loomed, too large even for the great hall in which they'd reunited, though his form touched not the arching ceiling of the dome. There he did remain, awaiting her reply, perhaps hoping that she might betray his expectation, though doubting that she would.
In the corner of the dome, lying on a frozen-over blanket surrounded by empty bottles, glasses, pots, and drinking horns, a small, humanoid figure stirred to life. It did not face the Dreamer, but the raging heat bubbling atop her skin revealed just what sort of expression she could be wearing. ”... Listen, you fuck… I’ve had a really, really, really bad day. You comin’ in here, cracking open my house and killing all my plants and pets when there is a perfectly good door -right- over there…” She thumbed over her shoulder with murderous intention. “... That was the last straw.”
With that, she disappeared, the last flickers of light in the realm disappearing into an all-encompassing void so dark and silent that the Dreamer could not even hear himself think. The shadows of the black moon gripped his incorporeal form as though it was as tangible as skin and bone, and two bloodshot eyes with pupils like the blood moon provided the only light in the darkness, meeting the Three-Named god’s open hood with a wicked quiver to them. The portal out wasn’t behind him anymore - it had seemingly disappeared. The eyes glanced over him with disgust. ”What sort of sick bastard does that, hmm? Waltzes into someone’s home, breaks all their stuff, and starts moralizing the owner? Who does that kind of shit? Are you that kind of person, Aich? Are you?” The darkness tightened like the gravity of a black home. Gibbou scoffed. ”I haven’t seen you for two thousand years and when you finally come to say hi, maybe hang out, you do this… How about I just return you to the Lifeblood right now and you won’t have to come back.” There came a single giggle. ”I’d be lying if I said that wringing some rude cunt’s neck wouldn’t sound just perfect right now…” There was a pause. ”Well, speak up, bitch! WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?!” The darkness on his mind and voice lifted.
Suspended in the black-clad fury of the Goddess, the Dreaming God remained placid as if within the eye of a great storm--untouched. The sensation of a smile pressed its way out into the black, followed swiftly by the miasma of his essence, spreading 'cross the surface of the Moon. Gone was the sorrow from the waters of her mind.
Deep beneath the rage, there was the agony of loss and the sorrow of her plight. "Lost in the dregs of your emotions, you fail to see," replied the Unnamed Presence, his voice bereft of fear or feeling.
"Drowned by sorrow, the imaginings of madness are writ upon your world."
With a gentle sternness, the Dreamer cast away the black curtain to reveal the truth of things.
The ice had fled, its chilling embrace gone, and with its absence life remained--singing with stasis song. Pausing, the Eldritch God pondered her many queries, considering its reply. For mere moments did the silence last, before the Thrice-Named God--the Unnamed Presence--deigned give the Goddess a singular response.
"Aicheil is gone," the Presence said, its utterance a curse.
"I am Mhaireann," the Presence said, its words a twisted blessing.
”Shitty last words,” spat the eyes. ”You even manage to make killing you seem like a chore.” Within seconds, the darkness dissipated. The grip on the Dreaming God disappeared, and as what little light there was on the Dark Side of the Moon returned, it revealed the small, plum-skinned woman with chalk-white eyes, sitting cross-legged on the floor in a corner of her home, one hand propping up her head and the other holding a bottle. ”Tell me what you want so you’ll leave.”
"Yet I remain," Mhaireann replied, dry amusement in its tone. Drifting lightly to the ground, the Dreaming God folded its legs and sat across from the blue-skinned goddess. With deliberate slowness its eyes opened to meet her pallid gaze. Where before his eyes had been golden-hued and filled to brimming a deluge of spiralling color, now they seemed drained of life. To meet his stare one was forced to stare into the empty pits where once his eyes had been. Within the darkness of his eyeless gaze something stirred, but the movement was filled with wrongness. It moved at impossible angles, defying all reason or common sense.
"I express to you the sentiment of the fragments whose souls I have replaced." The miasma frothed about him, writhing upwards like tendrils of sickly smoke. "In the age of our first meeting a gift was given unto your Firstborn child. In exchange was asked only that you forgive transgressions yet to pass."
He let the statement sit in silence between them. The silence said, Remember you, this thing?
”What, you’re checkin’ in that voucher now? For coming in here and making it look like you blew up my house just to get my attention? Alright, fine - I’m not mad anymore. In fact, I was never mad. Killing you and grinding you into itty-bitty pieces of ghostly cape or whatever you wear, did not cross my mind in the slightest. I forgive this stupid, heartless and outright unnecessary attack on my personal privacy, as a thanks for the lightshow and all that.” She had a swig of the bottle, its nut-brown content bubbling with every gulp. She dragged her fist across her jaw and stifled a hiccup. ”And now you -better- hurry up and say what you want, ‘cuz now your good boy-card is spent, ghost man.”
Though perhaps a solemn fragment of the Dreamer might have once felt amusement at the display of his sibling-god, Mhaireann seemed to grow cold instead, the air about them becoming utterly still. As its gaze lay then upon her, its emptiness seemed a deeper, darker, thing. Malicious, hungry and filled with unsung wrath.
In the still air, the sickly fog began to dance and weave. At first it was formless and indistinct, but as the seconds passed two figures resolved themselves within the curling eddies of the essence. They were each distinct in shape, one the shape of Love and War and Sin, the other of Night and Protection. The figures, though small and writ of sickly fog, swiftly recreated the scenes of conflict that had occurred not so long ago.
Mhaireann raised its empty eyes from the display and met Gibbou's baleful glare.
"Am I to fear your wrath, sister, when this is all it can dole out?"
Mhaireann lashed out then, its fingers like talons, cutting through the image of the fight. All at once he was standing, mere inches from her face, empty orbs piercing past her fury, a wreath of miasma splayed out behind his form.
"No," he whispered, but the essence of her realm it shuddered with the vibration of his voice. He drew back from her, looming as he stared out of the glassy dome. "I came, knowing of this failing, seeking to right this wrong."
His gaze drifted down and met hers once more. "Unless you would remain as you are. Pitiful and weak. Crushed by the weight upon your shoulders, would you deny my assistance?"
Though harsh, there was something to his words, his actions. As if he were chiding her, not because she was pathetic, but rather out of love though perhaps twisted was its shape. Nonetheless, the feeling in the air, it spoke of such a thing.
Gibbou’s eyes lost no animosity; in fact, they only seemed to redden with fury and blue with sorrow. ”Wow. You come into my home - the only place I feel truly safe and at peace - and you wake me up in the rudest possible manner and call me mean shit. And then you go out on a whim and say -I- need help.” Her head shook slowly from side to side. ”I don’t even know what to say to that. We don’t talk for two thousand years and then you show up here with that attitude. Not even Thaa was this mean - at least he didn’t attack me as a person (much). You’re closer to Neiya, really, you fucking asshole. No, you know what? I’m not going to take this.” She turned to face the wall and thumbed over her shoulder. ”The door’s that way. Do me a favour and slam your face against the portal frame when you leave so I know you’re gone - if your corporeal ass even works like that.” She then gave her bottle a sip and sighed deeply.
His response was a strange, deep, reverberating chuckle and a dancing haze of fog. It swayed and flowed in motion with the laugh, then slowly grew still and cold. There was silence for a time. It was long and without mercy or any sign of an emotion.
Yet, it was not the quiet of departure. It was not a sound of loneliness or loss. It was the stretched patience of an elder wishing only to impart an important lesson. In the miasma was writ his great disappointment, as it became as black as oil, or pitch, or a starless, moonless night that fire nor lightning dared to touch. Yet somehow it grew darker still, its haze seething gently where it had settled upon the surface of the floor.
Within the endless depths of emptiness of the Dreamer’s visage, which had once been made of starlight, angry crimson fractures formed. He took a step towards the goddess, but as his foot came down he went utterly and truly still.
White and blue cracks slowly formed over the surface of his cosmic flesh and they warred with the red clashing. The tension in the air grew about his form and it would feel almost as if a storm was threatening to break. However, with time the many fractures in his facade diminished until there was a flash of not-light. A psychic impression of sorts. The ground beneath him cracked with a sickening sound and the tension was released all at once.
“Very well,” the Unnamed Presence said, its voice devoid of all emotion. It turned from the Goddess of the Night and made its way out the door. However, upon the ground on which he’d stood was left behind a message.
From the cracks, written in desperation by the cracks, were these words.
“Hateful Malevolence.”
“Pain.”
“Help.”
The jet-black fog shied away from those words, replaced instead by the sensation of the Dreaming God’s essence. Perhaps if she paid attention, she might notice the difference between the Unnamed One and this familiar emanation.
But she didn’t - at least, not for the time it took Aicheil to leave. The moon goddess simply sat facing the corner like before, tapping her knee with an increasingly impatient finger as she waited for the presence to leave. Her blueberry hair, black as could ever be in the shadow of her moon, started to curl ever so slightly with stress for every second the Dreaming God took to exit. Eventually, there came an angry growl, followed by a sentence like a ball of nasty spit: “Are you gone yet?”
There was no reply except for the empty silence of her realm. The maddened essence of that Unnamed Presence had departed leaving behind only the message and the faint traces of Aicheil's more familiar aspects. Gibbou gave her bottle another slurp and noticed the letters on the floor. ”Pfft… If you wanted help, you should’ve opened with that… Dumbass…” With that, she continued what she had been doing before: sobbing into her bottle and making sloppy moon-clay models of stuff on Galbar. She had gotten quite good at it, all things considered, shaping walls to be quite nice - perhaps even nicer than they were in reality. She gave her bottle yet another sip, but found that it was empty. She sniffed and smacked her lips in disappointment.
At least she was good at building walls - just as good physically as… Interpersonally…
She had to chase away those thoughts somehow. Quickly, she took a handful of mud and shaped it into a tower in her hands, placing it down on the ground. Then, on its own, it suddenly started levitating, hovering over to a nearby rock and suddenly starting to patrol around it. Gibbou watched curiously as the clay tower then started chasing away curious moon bugs that came over to inspect the stone, as though the tower had declared the stone to be its treasure.
”Cool,” mumbled Gibbou.
Meanwhile, down in the Prairie...
“OH GODS, WHAT IS THAT?!” screamed Manjahi as a number of colossal, white towers came floating across the prairie, furiously blasting his community with beams of fire. Since forever had their people lived at the food of the Umbasi, the Great Red Rock of the Yellow Sea; now, out of nowhere, a pack of what appeared to be tall marble pillars topped with a singular, many-pupilled, golden eye were chasing them off with brutal magics. Terror swept the village as the floating towers leveled everything and burned anything they could see, turning the plains on which Manjahi’s family had lived for centuries, into a smoking wasteland. Manjahi himself had barely managed to evacuate his family and some more, and they watched with stinging eyes as the towers approached the Great Red Rock slowly and, as though protecting an enormous egg, began nuzzling and caring for it while others in their, for the lack of a better word, pack patrolled around the vicinity.
Manjahi swallowed. “Gods help us…” Gibbou, of course, didn’t notice any of this. She gave the tower a wet poke and recoiled as it zapped her hand with a small beam of light - or rather, the pain came more from the sudden flash than from the beam itself. The protective behaviour of the tower gave her an idea, however: She would create the perfect guardians - this time, it’d be someone who’d do guardian work as part of a contract! It’d be perfect!
The ultimate sentinel!
She got to work rolling up a ball of clay, then attaching limbs and eyes - a lot of limbs and a lot of eyes. The darkness around her intensified further as day turned to night (though it was always dark in her realm). Her creation would be amazing! She’d show them all. She put some eyes at the ends of the limbs, too - why not - a few extra mouths, too, to scare off any bad guys.
Boy, this was turning into quite a project! Meanwhile, down in the forests east of Solkra...
“Fuck, Amestrius… I’m actually getting scared now. Are we lost or not?”
“I’m telling you, Gaius! I have control! The checkpoint shouldn’t be too far up.” The two hunters were, in truth, utterly lost in the woods. Neither of them had ever been this far away from their village, and both were scared of the same thing: that they had entered Iskrill territory. They were running low on food, for the game they had been hunting had long since run off, and night had fallen for real, darkness swallowing up even the brightest shades of moonlight.
There came a snap of a twig. Gaius jumped. “Did you hear that?!”
“By Cadien, relax, Gaius,” Amestrius soothed. “It was probably just… Just something.”
“What something?” came a sharp retort.
“Not Iskrill nor wolves, at least… Probably. Now hurry up, or we might actually -get- some of those on our tail!” The two quickened their pace. There came another snap of twigs and they stopped, now both equally sweaty with fear.
“W-was that a wolf, you think?”
Amestrius gulped. “... A whole pack in that case.”
“... I… I think I just pissed myself.”
The snapping twigs grew louder… Then branches began to snap.
“Oh fuck… Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!”
Trees were run down like grasses of straw.
“RUN!” The two set off into a sprint. Behind them, the thunder of ravaging forest intensified, sending thousands of birds flying and hordes of forest critters fleeing alongside them.
“I-- I cah--!” panted Gaius and Amestrius stopped to help his brother. It was too late, however - the approaching shadow was right behind him.
“NO! GAIUS!”
The next few moments happened in a daze. Both Gaius and Amestrius could barely move as they witnessed the creature before them: It was enormous - larger than a building. It had eyes… Just… Eyes… Too many to count - half were of a blind, milky white, and it was hard to decide whether those were creepier than the other hundred or so with pupils of every colour, staring curiously down at the two brothers. Its three-four-five mouths opened and closed at different intervals, and its tens of limbs all did half-friendly attempts to wave, which through some eldritch power seemed possible even in the complete darkness.
“Heeeeeeeeeeey…” wheezed the the Beholder, and three of its mouths formed grins of varying creepiness. Amestrius took this chance to also piss himself. The creature paid it no mind and rubbed together two pairs of palms. “Saaaay… Are you two in the market for a bodyguard, by chance?”
The Dreaming God pays Gibbou a visit after over 2000 years, thinking to perhaps teach her a better way to confront Neiya, but alas there is something deeply wrong with his approach...and him as well. Things swiftly devolve into insulting one another back and forth--though perhaps one more dignified than the other, as is understandable given Gibbou’s current emotional condition.
The two do not part on good terms, but a mysterious message remains, with a more familiar essence attached to it. Unfortunately, in her anger and sorrow, Gibbou largely dismisses it and returns to her work. In the process of processing her own sadness and failure--as she sees it--she gains a new understanding and at once creates two new species upon Galbar: Beholders and Watchtowers. Two mortals far beyond any settlement and thoroughly lost in the darkness of the woods are accosted by a Beholder, who promptly propositions them to become a bodyguard. Who knows how that will turn out.
Start: 5MP, 2DP.
No Might Expended.
End: 5MP, 2DP.
Start: 5MP, 5DP.
-3MP: Claim portfolio - Walls: Walls are a settlement’s defense against danger, and a key structure in most larger towns and cities. Whether they be made of wood, stone or something harder, all serve the same purpose - to protect that which lies within. Gibbou is here given the power to more easily construct and maintain walls, as well as the deeper knowledge to teach mortals to do the same.
-2DP: Create extraordinary species - Watchtowers: Watchtowers are towers of living marble topped with a single, multi-pupilled golden eye that can blast beams of fire upon those the towers deem to intrude upon their communal territory or precious ward. They live off of protecting whatever they fancy, from fancy stones to small critters, and can, potentially, be conditioned to guard people, as well. They are incredibly hard to kill, their metallic eye being their only weak point that mortals have any hope of harming. They reproduce when they have protected their target until its death, at which point, the energy of that life will transfer into the eye and make the tower ”cough up” another tower. The smaller the soul, however, the less it contributes to a new tower, so towers guarding an anthill might see thousands of generations pass without being able to reproduce, while one guarding a dragon will be able to reproduce on the first death. 2 oudda 5 for Sentinel Port.
-3DP: Create extraordinary species: The Beholders: Class A bodyguards and protectors, there are truly no better species to hire whether that is to protect your loot, your castle, yourself - whatever. The Beholders neither eat nor sleep, subsisting entirely on the gratitude and appreciation of their contractors to do what they’ve been told, which usually is to protect. All they live for is to make sure you and your family are safe and sound. They murder everything that threatens you and your way of life with extreme brutality, positioning their corpses on the location of your choosing so you can watch them rot in the sun from the comfort of your own home. The Beholder is yours for hire - all you need to offer in exchange is your gratitude and appreciation, and keep in mind that to ignore your Beholder’s needs may result in a termination of your contract through termination of you. {5 oudda 5 for Sentinel port.}
-2MP: Confer special ability on species: Allow the Beholders to manipulate darkness and shadows to use as shields, weapons and projectiles.
Yamat knew not how to identify the sudden intrusion, that strange almost maddening fog and that summons by a long-forgotten voice and form. They did not know truly what had occurred, but several ideas had sprung up into their mind, it was most certainly not one of their other allies and no other god had such an impact that made even the Great Director intrigued. That's when it hit them, it had been so long since they had heard anything of the God of Dreams, now it looked like they had awoken and decided to stop by, perfect timing. The Director rose from their seat and with a flourishing bow spoke.
”A pleasure to meet you, it's been a while since I’ve had a visitor to my lovely domain, so tell me, God of Dreams, what brings you out of your silence? It's been long since I’ve heard from you, or your twin.” Their head turned in a curious manner as they rose from their bow, the one eye eagerly awaiting the response.
With lidded eyes the Dreamer regarded the bowed form of that Tragic Chaos God, finding its words each as empty as the last. Imperious and foreboding, the Thrice-Named God--the Unnamed Presence--gave not the slightest in obeisance, forgoing the illusion of politeness. Yet in the raucous cacophony of wind was revealed the intensity of his attention, for the words--as if solid things--were caught in their embrace and dashed across the endless wastes. Discarded.
"Your highest muse I summoned. Yet these are naught but empty platitudes and needless queries," replied the unnamed presence, its voice a thunder bereft of lightning's spark. The miasma of his essence whirled about them then, spreading far and wide, eclipsing the sky and stone and sand of Yamat's wasteland of a home. Remaining in the silence was a constant droning tune, the dread-wind's terror moan.
With an unseen tell, a gesture implying psychic might, the nameless presence let loose a flash of rage. In an instant the coiling streams of wind and dread took on a crimson tint, lashing upwards at the sky. Gashes of painful essence rent across the heavens of the realm of Tragedy, giving rise to a quiet knowledge. Beneath the placid mask of the Dreaming God's facade, there dwelled a sleeping beast whose wrath was barely kept at bay.
With his intent laid bare to see, the presence gestured idly with a hand and with swiftness the sky's blood drained away. What remained was naught but many rifts upon the torn flesh of that solemn empty sky. Withdrawing from his sibling-god the dread-wind cast itself outwards and away, banishing the miasma within which the Dreaming God had stayed.
With deliberate slowness, the lidded gaze of the Dreamer turned down and met Yamat's single glowing orb.
"Upon dream's tapestries I've seen the many threads of tragedy you've sown," he said as if no insult or barb had been prior laid. The presence gestured with a hand and the dread-wind obeyed, carrying in its embrace the miasmic currents of the Dreamer's might. That power it spiraled out and deepened, depicting swiftly a breed of mortal to which Yamat alone could lay claim.
"The Iskrill," he began, the words of that unknown presence entrapped by the dis-ease and fear of many mortal minds. "Unto them, I will bestow a boon."
Though he did not ask, there remained a question beneath those simple words. Still, the Dreamer spoke instead as if it was meant as a command.
The director nodded, the display shown by the dream god was interesting, to say the least, and not at all what they had expected. But, they could work with this. “A boon you say? Well, I’m sure they would appreciate the aid, especially with that whelp Cadien mucking about.” With a flourish they spun around, and with a wave of their hand brought the mighty canopy where they would spend their days closer. They came upon the great map that sat upon their table and spoke once more to their guest, though admittedly while still staring upon the board. “What is it you’re thinking of bestowing?”
The dread-wind calmed at the response of the Chaos God as if to imply a faint shift in the nameless one's demeanor. Approaching, the figure loomed high beside Yamat as it cast its attention upon the map. He laid a long-fingered hand across the surface of the board and the dread-wind's currents coiled about its shape, before writhing across the surface of the substance. Though filled to brimming with pigmentation, the churning wind did little to obscure the great map's surface, seeming only to add to the detail of its construction. "Know you of my creations?"
As if to clarify, the churning winds took form, depicting briefly a myriad of swiftly shifting shapes. Ever-growing, their formless eyes held within them a hunger unending in its bounds, each ruled by a singular emotion upon which they'd often sup.
A god, regarding them for any length of time, might come to know their dreaded name.
Chomhlíonadh. The Unfulfilled.
The director nodded, wiping some stray black sludge from their eye. “I know bits of your creations, I have heard of their, capabilities, though never truly seen them in action myself.” They slowly sat into their chair, with a wave of a hand creating a cup of tea and saucer, which they drank ever strangely, never taking off their mask. They looked up towards the god of dreams, silently encouraging them to explain further.
Attention shifting, the hidden gaze of that Dreaming God turned to meet Yamat's. His hand raised from the board and swept across its surface, splitting the miasma of his essence. Then, slowly the essence gathered into colored mounds, revealing Perfection's human brood. As seconds passed the colors changed, shifting to crimson hue.
"My creations, they feast upon the minds of mortals without direction or restraint," explained the Unnamed Presence as it gazed eyeless 'pon the map. "With this boon, your children, they may summon such a thing to aid their growing horde." Though expressionless, the presence seemed to smile, the air about them changing as if joyful at the thought.
Yamat too seemed to smile, though their mask hid any true emotion. “Now that, would be a beautiful boon.” They took another sip of their tea before continuing. “Oh to see the look on those Acadians...now, of course, I must ask, how safe would my children be? I understand your creations can rarely be controlled, but I’m sure you understand the need for safety, not that much of a boon if it could wipe out your own forces.”
Chuckling, a dark cast to the essence of his form, the Presence gathered the miasma 'bout his visage. That dark fog pushed out before him and writhed into the Dreamer's desired shape, forming a detailed depiction of an Iskrill horde, the Chomhlionachd looming large above them. "This gift, it will protect their essence from the intrusion of my creations."
"In exchange," the Nameless Presence said, its voice a soothing thrum, "...the Iskrill will not devour all the humans that they kill."
The director nodded ”I see,” They looked upon their own board, picking a specific piece, that of an iskrill, one hand aloft holding an axe, another holding a shield, emblazoned upon it a golden sun. ”And what would you have them do with those they do not devour?”
With a gesture, a diagram was drawn upon the map, showing Yamat the place to which the bodies must be moved. “Buried in the earth,” intoned the Dreaming God.
“They will guard an edifice of my making.”
”I see, a simple enough task, is this all you desire as compensation for this boon?” They took another sip of tea, placing the Iskrill piece back on its spot in the highlands of Toraan.
Thoughts turning inward, the Dreaming God pondered his Chaos-brother's query. The dread wind about his form spread out as he lost focus on its movements and it carried far the miasma that wreathed his form. Seconds passed, then minutes, before finally the Dreamer roused, his presence touching something far off in the realm of Yamat's making.
"Within the Wastelands of your realm there dwells a roiling sea. Of its parasitic waters I would take a brood to call my own." Faintly, a sense of content amusement washed over the God of Tragedy, the dread-wind stirring faintly as it gathered once more around the pair.
”Ah yes, the demon pit, feel free to take as many as you desire, there is an unlimited supply of them within that pit, they will fill the hole within seconds.” They gestured off into the distance of their realm, towards a great valley in between two mountains ”I believe it is over there.”
Turning to Yamat, the Dreamer laid a hand upon the shoulder of the smaller god. Opening its eyes, he revealed empty pits like pure emptiness staring back at the Divine Director. The moment did not last and the Unnamed Presence turned away, shutting fast its eyes against the world, its touch departing just as swiftly. In a flurry of sickly color, the Dreaming God then cast itself across that Wasteland-realm, the dread-wind swiftly scooping up the brood that to the Presence had been gifted.
Then, in a single blurring motion, the God of Dreams rose high into the sky, its form growing far vaster than the blackened sun. Essence shifting through the veil, the Dreamer delivered unto the Iskrill a most frightening boon.
Corruscating hues and vibrant emotions pressed themselves to-and-fro like many waves in an endless ocean of minds. Disorganized, but content, they were not prepared for the tremendous malevolence of their creator’s passing. So it was that the gentle swirling of that Endless Dream was churned into a maelstrom of terror and emotion.
A slipstream current carried the Presence through the mire that was created by its presence, carrying him to the many minds of Yamat’s chosen mortals.
Like a horrid pallid smile made with twisting lips, the eldritch god was pleased by how events had transpired with the God of Tragedy. So with this dark-borne pleasure, the Dreaming God lashed out and struck the countless minds of the Iskrill Horde. With a terrible confounding twisting motion of his will, the Presence gathered many ideas, forms, and things. These he bound unto their minds and wrought from them a power.
It was built from that which had been for some time prior. From the abstracted bond that made demons heed a conjurer’s callous call and from those infinite connections that within the Subtle Weave exist. With these parts drawn together into, the Nameless Presence crafted the Iskrill’s boon.
Satisfied, he pulled back--observing--leaving many of their ilk dazed, terrified, and confused. Scores fell in battle that day, but it was a pittance before the terror that they wrought to repay their enemy’s evil acts. With a frightening swiftness, the Presence noted, the Iskrill drew upon their gift and called forth what had once been Aicheil’s get. With a ferver, the Chomhlíonadh tore through the ranks of a menagerie of mortals, stripping them of their will. For without a mind, they could not act, survive, or kill.
Buoyed by their success, the Dread God, Mhaireann withdrew.
Then, with a flash of black and red and sickly green he vanished, departing the Black-sun Wastes.
The Dreaming God calls upon Yamat in his realm, the two converse briefly and form a pact of sorts. The Dreamer promises to bestow a boon unto the Iskrill, that they might summon and guide the Unfulfilled. In exchange, he requests that the Iskrill not devour all those they kill, instead burying some amount in a place of his choosing, their bodies meant to surround the holy ground of a monument yet to be made. Additionally, he asks to receive a brood of demons from the Pit of Yamashin.
Yamat, graciously, accepts the deal. Satisfied, the Dreamer bestows his gift, takes what he came for, and departs.
Yet...he does not seem as he was before and his actions reveal--in part--why.
Start: 5MP, 2DP.
-1DP (Discounted by Tessellation) -- Confer an Extraordinary Ability (The Iskrill) / Summon/Guide the Chomhlíonadh.
It all began with an aborted action. Twas evidence of turmoil within, a storm of heedless emotion within a being wrought of such, framed by little more than the remembered fragments of those it had come to know.
Time swept past, the door to a realm barred even to the allies of the Dreaming God, even to his twin. A silent, unseen struggle consumed him, devouring his attention and requiring the entirety of his intent. So turned inwards was the god, its very being inverted by the tumultuous force of its own endlessly vast emotions.
Crashing waves against a stone shore, the rocks of its face jagged and torn--ever-growing moreso over time. Glassine shards of prismatic power contained within a storm of pigment, writhing like angry stigmata upon the inverted skein of the Watcher Within.
Neo-Aicheil. Os-fhireach. Aicheil.
Beyond the shores of Galbar's material world, there was a calamity, a great conflagration of the immaterial. Many dreams, thoughts, and minds thrown into a terrible conflict with themselves, plagued by the unleashed agony and wrath of the Dreaming God. Like shattered glass, like twisting fatal currents, like lightning in its suddenness and lethality, the unhinged consciousness wrought eons of suffering and ecstasy in equal measure upon any foolish enough to walk within the Great Weave for too long.
Slowly, with the boundless patience of time, the currents and shifting fractals of the Endless Dream began to calm. However, left behind by the calamity was an indelible mark, a change in the Subtle Web of Galbar's Collective Unconscious. It would go mostly unnoticed, but in the Dreaming God, this change was reflected with great potency.
Reforged once again, the shroud of the Dreaming God had been tainted by the nightmare. It was a flowing cascade of billowing pearlescent black, a sheen of red and green upon its form. Like veins, those bloody, sickly colors, they cut jagged patterns into his cloak. They were as shattered glass or fractured stone, and as the Worldweave shifted, so too did the colors, writhing and churning with dis-ease and discontent. The eyes of that most eldritch twin remained shut and tightly lidded against the world.
A low hum emanated outwards then, suffusing the Roineagan with a trembling terror. It rattled free all thoughts of peace and set alight a frightful fervor. It spread unending through his realm and past it to Galbar, and then with ease, it teased at eaves and cleaved open the threshold of his realm. Unto Antiquity, it spilled, a churning miasma of frothing sickly power. All it touched warped and curled away as if trying to escape. A mere glance could tell that the essence was a dangerous horrid thing, filled to brimming with malice and endless savage mirth.
Wrath. Revulsion. Fury. Discontent.
In the mire tread a figure, his silhouette a rift in the world, as if emptiness could somehow be given form. He pressed forth until he reached the center of that stonework domain wherein deities did dance and dally.
Upon the confluence stood the figure, his eyeless gaze turning then to roving. His attention pushed the miasma further out to encompass more of the vast colosseum where it roiled, casting its sickly sensation upon everything it touched. A subsonic vibration passed from the not-throat of that Dreaming God and pressed through the stone of the enclosure unified intent had conjured into being. It cast out, and it touched the thresholds of several realms.
Yamat’s Endless Wastes, perhaps for the first time, came to know a devouring fog. Its drifting black soot and Umbral Star burned down upon that desolate place, yet they could not entirely banish that insidious incursion. Within the roiling fog, eddies of tumorous essence grew, then coalesced into a vast figure, its eyes closed, its cloak marred, its visage once a sea of stars. Now to look upon him would invoke only a sense of emptiness or warped vision, as if a vast lightless void had devoured the nebulae of his deific form.
“Deity of Tragedy I call upon your muse,” intoned the Eldritch Twin, his voice stirring the dead air of the place into frenetic motion. Winds swept out, carrying the murky mist that was his essence. The sudden storm invoked by his trespass at first seemed aimless in its vast and trackless dance, meaningless and empty, but as the seconds ticked, something began to resolve itself in that dead-wind movement. Where before there had merely been the absence of things, devoid of life or soul, there existed now a droning noise, a deep-wind rushing sound, which was most unnatural.
As if to punctuate the presence of the dread wind, he spoke.
“Pact.”
It said alliance.
Into the Realm of Truth, a divine essence pressed, its nature most familiar. It passed through many mirrors and split a thousand-thousand times, slithering through the empty air as it multiplied. With each reflection, it grew until finally, each thread drew inwards and formed the Dreamer's form anew.
“Twin.” The presence said.
Yet the word was empty.
In its search, the vast intractable intent of the Dreaming God fell upon the Realm Between and saw in it the remnants of a struggle. The marks of claws, flashes of heat, hatred, and sorrow. Rage and jealousy.
Deep within the mire, Aicheil shed tears.
Hidden inside, Os-fhireach clawed at his cage.
Just beneath the surface, Neo-Aicheil raved and raged.
Yet, within the mist, eyes closed shut, visage starless and black, a nameless presence ruled.
“Petty,” the presence said and its words cut swaths of hateful symbols in the stone. The air screamed and fled, slamming outwards, cracking pillars, and buffeting the walls with tremendous force. Any caught between the center where the presence stood, and the walls would be beset by a terrible pressure, though no violence would befall them.
The figure turned and strode forth, the realm of Moonlight his destination.
The Dreaming God moves to leave his realm, but the action is aborted by the inner turmoil of his warring emotions as he espouses a new power--though it is yet unknown to him. The storm of his emotions infect the Roineagan and spread beyond, riling up a storm within the Endless Dream, proliferating a maddening stream of nightmares. Eventually, the Dreamer emerges from his stupor, apparently stabilized, yet something has changed. Not all is well.
Departing his realm, his form changed and his visage surrounded by a swiftly spreading mire of miasmic essence, the Eldritch Twin enters Antiquity, searches, and locates those of his siblings which he desires to entreat--in one fashion or another. He leaves behind him only a deep sense of unease as he seeks out his twin, calls upon Yamat and heads into the realm of the Moonlit Goddess, his intentions unknown.
--】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【~ Life ~】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【--
To tell the story of Myrda is to speak of three tales entwined. The sense and culture of a people--the Taryne; to speak of the mortal--Myr; and to speak of the Sorcerer himself--Myrda Sciorene. So it is that you must know of the Taryne, a people whose only place in the world could be described as desolate. Vast ravines amid a stony wasteland of brittle flora and sparse, hidden fauna. It is in these lands which no other desired that the Taryne made their home, living in deep caves to escape the harsh winds and harsher shifts in temperature. Among these far-flung people carving a niche in the wastelands of Taryn, Myr was born to a pair whose names have long since been forgotten.
The boy who would become Myrda is said to have been born touched by the spirits and so--soon after he could fend for himself--he was released into the world. It is said that he wandered for eight days eight times over, barely subsisting on the little he could forage or trap. Like many of his people, death was a friend, always walking several steps behind, waiting to catch you when you fell.
Yet, though his prospects were bleak, he never failed to catch himself and carry on. Many times was he run out of settlements, for the sight of his spirit touched eyes--like glowing amber limned with silver--told his people more than he could ever explain away. Still, a fire was in those alien eyes, and a strange droning hum had entered him, pulling him like metal to a lodestone. With time he found a place somewhere near the center of those lands.
Through near-starvation and terrible thirst over craggy hills and deep within ravines, he trudged. Eventually, he became aware again. He knew not how long he had wandered, only that he could go no further than the deep chasm before him. With the last of his flagging strength, he descended.
No one knows how far he went, nor how long he remained in that abandoned place. As no one saw him emerge, it is a mystery whether it truly was the same lad who eventually clawed his way back up from those depths.
All that is known is that someone did emerge. Someone who resembled the young man who'd once begged at the mouths of many caves, asking only for what he needed for survival.
Yet it was no starving adolescent who passed the threshold of that first cave-home. It was someone else entirely. He was a man with quiet, piercing, haunted eyes, full with a deep knowing unheard of in those lands and a strength of presence utterly unknown to the Tarynean people.
He called himself Myrda Sciorene.
In those days, he was simply a man of great presence and wisdom. He taught. He worked, and he directed. With time he came to know each of the many tribes, and with each his rapport was unmatched. Slowly over a matter of many years, he drew their leaders closer to him, and the youth of those places closer still.
With these would-be outcast children, he built his own place, and therein life grew more abundantly than anywhere else. Yet the earth remained as desolate and unforgiving as before. Nonetheless, many plants came to grow upon his land, spreading slowly. Water too seemed to spill from that place, purer than anywhere else. Its life-nourishing essence pressed out from the city. Wherever the water touched in that desolate land, it brought--with the slow patience of time--new life.
So it was that the Taryne expanded from their former homes, their small hidden settlements becoming towns, and then--in lesser number--cities as trade was established between clans. All the while, Myrda’s power, and renown grew for the people who had been his knew from where the bounty had come, even if they could not understand its nature...or its price. So, as the Taryne grow and expand, remembering age-old grudges of those who had driven them from their ancestral lands, Myrda’s power changes him, with his people none the wiser.
Dwelling now in the great edifice of Anaryd Vhana, Myrda exerts his influence over the world, remaining in shadows--only his most trusted students and confidantes allowed to enter his presence. To his people, he is Sotyras, Lightbringer, He-Who-From-Nothing-Springs-All, Wiseman, leader, and perhaps sorcerer. However, as sects of his people take up arms, thinking to conquer foreign lands to avenge their long-gone kin--those many who died in the ravaged plains of their home--he comes to be known by others beyond his ilk. Reaver, Devourer, Writhe, and to those few who witness his power directly and live: He-Whose-Shadow-Eats-The-Soul. This reveals Myrda to be a sorcerer of two natures, one who desires the betterment of humanity, his people especially. A man who is not the least bit averse to sacrifice and long arduous work. Compassionate, driven, fierce, and wise. Yet...at once, a person with a hunger behind his kindhearted gaze, a darkness behind his ferocity. A shadow...hiding in plain sight, limned by light, hovering in the center of awareness, unseen. Perhaps the Taryne are wrong to idolize him so, after all, no one knows for sure if Myr and Myrda are one and the same...or if something other wore his skin when he left that long-forgotten place.
Myrda’s power is a force from beyond, pressed out into the world; the echoing consciousness of a dark memory of ages past. It is like a slithering, skittering horde of venomous insects, harmless if left alone, dangerous if disturbed. Infectious, this power impugns upon the sanctity of the world’s natural laws, manifesting a whispering resonance that shifts the nature of things closer to its own. It can change the laws that govern the properties or nature of any substance--living or inanimate--though at a great cost. With each alteration of the world, each manifestation of Chaos’ dying hold, the unseen contagion subsumes its host--or those chosen to hold its dread influence. With every display of sorcerous might, Myrda is subsumed further by this calamitous intelligence, its nature eroding at his humanity in both body and mind. Believing firmly in self-sacrifice, as many of his people are, he accepts this cost so that the Taryne might prosper in truth; so that others might never go hungry as he did...so long ago.
Though this eldritch essence slowly subsumes its host(s), it similarly gives boons of a fashion to them, in the form of additional limbs, augmented physiology, and exceptional longevity. For as they alter the world, those twisted rules warp them in kind, causing mutations to occur even as strange anomalous properties come to inhabit the host’s vessel. In this way, though his body is frail beneath the robes and inhuman viscera, he remains a danger if confronted physically. Beyond this Myrda is an adept survivalist and scholar, studying the world, its histories, and cultures, as well as knowing how to survive in it. He understands his people, both intuitively and on a more rational level, and a good thing too...for if logic had no hold in his mind, he might already be lost.
Myrda’s parasitic power is a constant plague upon his mind, always biting at the edges of his psyche. This can make him distracted, lethargic, or temperamental at times. Additionally, should the Presence ever subsume him entirely, it will become a plague upon the world, corrupting everything in its path. Those who choose to assist Myrda in staving off this likely inevitable fate take a fragment of his power into themselves. Often...it devours them like a slow sickness, hollowing them out until they are no more than a husk of a person. If left alone, these husks will die, leaving only the other to move their vessels. They must be killed before this occurs. While alive, these people gain the barest fraction of Myrda’s power, allowing them to warp the world around them, at the cost of drastically accelerating their own demise. The corruption of Sciorene’s power works much the same on almost any living thing unless he takes on the burden of these maladies himself--or gives them unto another, who will then be doomed to a slow agonizing death bereft of any benefit or solace.
The Other claws at the edges of reality, its echo heard only by the mad and dying, its touch only by those who have given themselves to its insidious embrace. Yet, there remains hope amidst the inevitability of consumption, it is for this that Myrda grasps. Every second of every day he pursues the betterment of humanity so that others--if not he--might one day cure the blight that he bore back into the world from a foregone age.
With the sweat of his brow and many sacrifices of both flesh and mind, Myrda is a man seeking redemption in hopes that his life’s works might absolve him of crimes committed in the future. He is a man of fierce passion, tempered by the sobering truth of immortality, his appetite sated by visions of worlds beyond their own, forces neither seen nor understood, terrible things better left in the far reaches--unseen, ignored, unnoticed. Having brought such a thing to the fore, Myrda Sciorene’s greatest desires are to exploit this power for the benefit of man and to understand this thing, so that he might conquer it--if not in this life, then perhaps through those who come after.
The doings of his people are another matter, as while many have accepted peace and wish only to live and love; others remain unsatisfied, carrying grudges, desiring ever more. Myrda’s life is an endless struggle to achieve his goals while sating the needs and wants of his people, his mind ever at war with itself...and perhaps something else as well….
--】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【】▼【~ Life ~】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【】▲【--
To tell the story of Myrda is to speak of three tales entwined. The sense and culture of a people--the Taryne; to speak of the mortal--Myr; and to speak of the Sorcerer himself--Myrda Sciorene. So it is that you must know of the Taryne, a people whose only place in the world could be described as desolate. Vast ravines amid a stony wasteland of brittle flora and sparse, hidden fauna. It is in these lands which no other desired that the Taryne made their home, living in deep caves to escape the harsh winds and harsher shifts in temperature. Among these far-flung people carving a niche in the wastelands of Taryn, Myr was born to a pair whose names have long since been forgotten.
The boy who would become Myrda is said to have been born touched by the spirits and so--soon after he could fend for himself--he was released into the world. It is said that he wandered for eight days eight times over, barely subsisting on the little he could forage or trap. Like many of his people, death was a friend, always walking several steps behind, waiting to catch you when you fell.
Yet, though his prospects were bleak, he never failed to catch himself and carry on. Many times was he run out of settlements, for the sight of his spirit touched eyes--like glowing amber limned with silver--told his people more than he could ever explain away. Still, a fire was in those alien eyes, and a strange droning hum had entered him, pulling him like metal to a lodestone. With time he found a place somewhere near the center of those lands.
Through near-starvation and terrible thirst over craggy hills and deep within ravines, he trudged. Eventually, he became aware again. He knew not how long he had wandered, only that he could go no further than the deep chasm before him. With the last of his flagging strength, he descended.
No one knows how far he went, nor how long he remained in that abandoned place. As no one saw him emerge, it is a mystery whether it truly was the same lad who eventually clawed his way back up from those depths.
All that is known is that someone did emerge. Someone who resembled the young man who'd once begged at the mouths of many caves, asking only for what he needed for survival.
Yet it was no starving adolescent who passed the threshold of that first cave-home. It was someone else entirely. He was a man with quiet, piercing, haunted eyes, full with a deep knowing unheard of in those lands and a strength of presence utterly unknown to the Tarynean people.
He called himself Myrda Sciorene.
In those days, he was simply a man of great presence and wisdom. He taught. He worked, and he directed. With time he came to know each of the many tribes, and with each his rapport was unmatched. Slowly over a matter of many years, he drew their leaders closer to him, and the youth of those places closer still.
With these would-be outcast children, he built his own place, and therein life grew more abundantly than anywhere else. Yet the earth remained as desolate and unforgiving as before. Nonetheless, many plants came to grow upon his land, spreading slowly. Water too seemed to spill from that place, purer than anywhere else. Its life-nourishing essence pressed out from the city. Wherever the water touched in that desolate land, it brought--with the slow patience of time--new life.
So it was that the Taryne expanded from their former homes, their small hidden settlements becoming towns, and then--in lesser number--cities as trade was established between clans. All the while, Myrda’s power, and renown grew for the people who had been his knew from where the bounty had come, even if they could not understand its nature...or its price. So, as the Taryne grow and expand, remembering age-old grudges of those who had driven them from their ancestral lands, Myrda’s power changes him, with his people none the wiser.
Dwelling now in the great edifice of Anaryd Vhana, Myrda exerts his influence over the world, remaining in shadows--only his most trusted students and confidantes allowed to enter his presence. To his people, he is Sotyras, Lightbringer, He-Who-From-Nothing-Springs-All, Wiseman, leader, and perhaps sorcerer. However, as sects of his people take up arms, thinking to conquer foreign lands to avenge their long-gone kin--those many who died in the ravaged plains of their home--he comes to be known by others beyond his ilk. Reaver, Devourer, Writhe, and to those few who witness his power directly and live: He-Whose-Shadow-Eats-The-Soul. This reveals Myrda to be a sorcerer of two natures, one who desires the betterment of humanity, his people especially. A man who is not the least bit averse to sacrifice and long arduous work. Compassionate, driven, fierce, and wise. Yet...at once, a person with a hunger behind his kindhearted gaze, a darkness behind his ferocity. A shadow...hiding in plain sight, limned by light, hovering in the center of awareness, unseen. Perhaps the Taryne are wrong to idolize him so, after all, no one knows for sure if Myr and Myrda are one and the same...or if something other wore his skin when he left that long-forgotten place.
Myrda’s power is a force from beyond, pressed out into the world; the echoing consciousness of a dark memory of ages past. It is like a slithering, skittering horde of venomous insects, harmless if left alone, dangerous if disturbed. Infectious, this power impugns upon the sanctity of the world’s natural laws, manifesting a whispering resonance that shifts the nature of things closer to its own. It can change the laws that govern the properties or nature of any substance--living or inanimate--though at a great cost. With each alteration of the world, each manifestation of Chaos’ dying hold, the unseen contagion subsumes its host--or those chosen to hold its dread influence. With every display of sorcerous might, Myrda is subsumed further by this calamitous intelligence, its nature eroding at his humanity in both body and mind. Believing firmly in self-sacrifice, as many of his people are, he accepts this cost so that the Taryne might prosper in truth; so that others might never go hungry as he did...so long ago.
Though this eldritch essence slowly subsumes its host(s), it similarly gives boons of a fashion to them, in the form of additional limbs, augmented physiology, and exceptional longevity. For as they alter the world, those twisted rules warp them in kind, causing mutations to occur even as strange anomalous properties come to inhabit the host’s vessel. In this way, though his body is frail beneath the robes and inhuman viscera, he remains a danger if confronted physically. Beyond this Myrda is an adept survivalist and scholar, studying the world, its histories, and cultures, as well as knowing how to survive in it. He understands his people, both intuitively and on a more rational level, and a good thing too...for if logic had no hold in his mind, he might already be lost.
Myrda’s parasitic power is a constant plague upon his mind, always biting at the edges of his psyche. This can make him distracted, lethargic, or temperamental at times. Additionally, should the Presence ever subsume him entirely, it will become a plague upon the world, corrupting everything in its path. Those who choose to assist Myrda in staving off this likely inevitable fate take a fragment of his power into themselves. Often...it devours them like a slow sickness, hollowing them out until they are no more than a husk of a person. If left alone, these husks will die, leaving only the other to move their vessels. They must be killed before this occurs. While alive, these people gain the barest fraction of Myrda’s power, allowing them to warp the world around them, at the cost of drastically accelerating their own demise. The corruption of Sciorene’s power works much the same on almost any living thing unless he takes on the burden of these maladies himself--or gives them unto another, who will then be doomed to a slow agonizing death bereft of any benefit or solace.
The Other claws at the edges of reality, its echo heard only by the mad and dying, its touch only by those who have given themselves to its insidious embrace. Yet, there remains hope amidst the inevitability of consumption, it is for this that Myrda grasps. Every second of every day he pursues the betterment of humanity so that others--if not he--might one day cure the blight that he bore back into the world from a foregone age.
With the sweat of his brow and many sacrifices of both flesh and mind, Myrda is a man seeking redemption in hopes that his life’s works might absolve him of crimes committed in the future. He is a man of fierce passion, tempered by the sobering truth of immortality, his appetite sated by visions of worlds beyond their own, forces neither seen nor understood, terrible things better left in the far reaches--unseen, ignored, unnoticed. Having brought such a thing to the fore, Myrda Sciorene’s greatest desires are to exploit this power for the benefit of man and to understand this thing, so that he might conquer it--if not in this life, then perhaps through those who come after.
The doings of his people are another matter, as while many have accepted peace and wish only to live and love; others remain unsatisfied, carrying grudges, desiring ever more. Myrda’s life is an endless struggle to achieve his goals while sating the needs and wants of his people, his mind ever at war with itself...and perhaps something else as well….
Member
HeMandaddy
Fallenreaper
Lord Zee
Force and Fury
King of Rats
Crimson Flame
DracoLunaris
Ti
YummyYummy
Crusader Lord
