Leliel
2013-02-09, 02:08 PM
Anyway, I've been trying to rekindle my old love for ye olde Dungeons and Dragons, and going through the articles of Dragon Magazine, I stumbled upon the rules for intrusion by the Far Realm (for those of you who don't know, it's a hostile alien universe that is the source for no small measure of aberrations), turning various locals into Discount R'lyeh.
More importantly, I found the amoebic sea that is recurrent throughout Far Realm imagery is fairly important to intrusions, even to the point of raining down from the twisted sky in the heart of so-called cerebrotic blots. And given how all Far Realm based powers tie back into certain thematics...
Well, it isn't a Yozi, but the Amoebic Sea certainly has their touch upon it. Which is why I'm now thinking of making "it" a "he"-a powerful and abstract behemoth tasked by his imprisoned masters to remake the world in their eldritch image and bring their wisdom to all. More "alien" and less "horrifying" then either D&D or the 2E Yozis, since I want this guy...amoeba...ocean...thing to be the ultimate antagonist of an Exalted 3E game, and that means someone for whom the reasonably sane would think is an okay object of devotion. I was thinking that since mortal sorcerers are Not A Thing In 3E, his ability is to thumb his metaphorical nose at restrictions and provide a path to for mortals to learn sorcery anyway. Which results in them having cosigned their immortal souls over to him and by extension Malfeas, but hey, at least it's an honest trade, isn't it?
So, here's the idea-the Amoebic Sea, who I am calling Thuum Ngatha for now, was sealed along with his parents Qaf, Kimbery, and Hegra (don't ask) in Malfeas, but being an amoeba, he's capable of mitosis-large enough snarls in Fate or powerful rituals can allow him to bud off bits into the world, creating independent instances of himself. Over time, a bud, sometimes called an Umibozu, begins to leech off Essence from Creation and inspire mortals to worship it, causing it to grow. As it does so, the Umibozu begins to reshape a convenient lair into a pit-like temple to Ngatha, as hidden and out of the way as possible-even underground or underwater, if need be, though this is not an ideal position. When the temple is complete, the Umibozu pricks a hole between Creation and the true Amoebic Sea, allowing Ngatha to rewrite the physical laws of the local area into a self-contained spatial pocket that exists both within and outside of Elsewhere-the core, or Plateau of a new cerebrotic blot.
Besides creating a little bit of Creation where Ngatha can use as a playground and idea summoning point for demons, the formation of a Plateau releases the Sea's living Essence into the ley lines, subtly twisting the world around the Plateau to form the periphery of the blot. This is not a nice, clean sphere-the periphery grows around the Plateau like a lichen, organically and randomly. Within the periphery, those who sleep contact the always-dreaming mind of the Amoebic Sea, sharing in his dreams of alien yet beautiful vistas and nigh-infinite knowledge, wonderful and terrible to behold. Most ignore these, but there's also going to be a few, and the patron Umibozu inevitably finds them and leads them across the threshold into its strange domain. And once there...oh, the things they they see.
Leaving aside the cerebrotic blot's ability to attract converts to a once-removed Yozi cult, however, the Plateau of a blot is its own threat to the gods. As one might imagine for a pocket dimension created by a link to Malfeas, demons manifest freely and without end-mostly First Circle attendants of Ngatha, but more than a few scholarly Second Circles like to visit Plateaus in order to gather the vast amounts of arcane lore that Ngatha collects there, and even Orabilis is known to visit them on his own time on rare occasion (to say nothing of booting the occasional scholar who understands something known only to the Yozis into the skies, which are both Creation's and the strange constellations of Malfeas). These demons normally cannot leave due to the Umibozu forbidding them from using the foci without explicit permission (and quite happily signaling out for sacrifice those who don't listen), but like their father-template, Umibozu are fairly lenient with their decrees, especially when it suits their agenda. As a result, cerebrotic blots often become the beacheads of demonic infiltration, with an almost-endless supply of reserves to spread the word of the Amoebic Sea across Creation.
Even worse, a Plateau is often much larger than the area it was spun out of, or what the periphery suggests-Ngatha thinks of the real cosmos as simply an abnormally stable collective dream, and his power makes this reality. Spatial relationships become less concrete truth and more narrative suggestion, but unlike the waypoints and transitional paths of the Wyld, the interior of a Plateau is a vast, phatasmagoric landscape of non-Elucidian geography, crystalline plants and moss, and demonic cities and villages with towers that twist like snakes into the surreal skies. No area, not even the metaphorical variety, is unreachable, and both demons and their allies take great advantage of this-more than one cerebral circle of akuma have make a Plateau their home and domain over the years, and true Infernal Exalted already look to these places as areas where they can inhabit both of their home realms at once.
One might expect, given all this, that cerebrotic blots attract angry divinities like heavily-armed flies to honey, but here's where the true genius of Thuum Ngatha shows itself-from the outside, a cerebrotic blot looks perfectly normal. Yes, on the ground the periphery tends to have small bits reshaped into strange geometries and designs sacred to the Amoebic Sea over time, but that is very small-you'll only find a couple if you specifically look for them over the course of a week. More than that, the dream of the Plateau as it once was is overlaid over its location, appearing to be perfectly normal, even to the point of creating illusive inhabitants and animals to maintain the illusion of normalcy. The only way one can detect that something is terribly wrong is if some tries to reach it-space bends so that none who have not used one of the Plateau's foci can actually reach it, always somehow managing to get lost on the way, or even unintentionally circumnavigating it altogether.
Speaking of foci, they are usually the few things in the periphery of a blot that seem truly odd, and even that doesn't seem all that out of the ordinary-who is to quarrel with a freestanding altar, or miniature obelisk, or standing stones? Not anyone who wants to offend a god, that's for certain. And yet, nobody builds a focus-they simply appear to mark passages in and out of the Plateau, and destroying one simply causes it to reform somewhere nearby out of sight. The one common element they share is a phosphorescent growth concealed from obvious perception. Anyone who touches this (and is not immediately set upon by the hidden demonic guards) and rubs it on their skin (servants and worshipers of Ngatha tend to smear it on their faces like paint) may travel past (or through, in the case of foci that take the form of arches) the focus towards the Plateau, and space lets them. To a traveler, they don't notice anything strange until it is too late to turn back (a focus never leads a pilgrim to the direct location of another focus), but to observers, they seem to slowly fade out of being as they dive beneath the dream.
And even if a god or their allies were to destroy the core temple and collapse the pocket-what then? Thuum Ngatha is a creature of ideas and dreams, however mad-and you can't disinfect a dream.
Row, row, row your boat, down the Amoebic Sea,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, the world's but a dream.
Any other ideas? Such as a writeup of a typical Plateau?
(also, there's that whole "patron of mortal sorcerers" thing. I'll get to that)
More importantly, I found the amoebic sea that is recurrent throughout Far Realm imagery is fairly important to intrusions, even to the point of raining down from the twisted sky in the heart of so-called cerebrotic blots. And given how all Far Realm based powers tie back into certain thematics...
Well, it isn't a Yozi, but the Amoebic Sea certainly has their touch upon it. Which is why I'm now thinking of making "it" a "he"-a powerful and abstract behemoth tasked by his imprisoned masters to remake the world in their eldritch image and bring their wisdom to all. More "alien" and less "horrifying" then either D&D or the 2E Yozis, since I want this guy...amoeba...ocean...thing to be the ultimate antagonist of an Exalted 3E game, and that means someone for whom the reasonably sane would think is an okay object of devotion. I was thinking that since mortal sorcerers are Not A Thing In 3E, his ability is to thumb his metaphorical nose at restrictions and provide a path to for mortals to learn sorcery anyway. Which results in them having cosigned their immortal souls over to him and by extension Malfeas, but hey, at least it's an honest trade, isn't it?
So, here's the idea-the Amoebic Sea, who I am calling Thuum Ngatha for now, was sealed along with his parents Qaf, Kimbery, and Hegra (don't ask) in Malfeas, but being an amoeba, he's capable of mitosis-large enough snarls in Fate or powerful rituals can allow him to bud off bits into the world, creating independent instances of himself. Over time, a bud, sometimes called an Umibozu, begins to leech off Essence from Creation and inspire mortals to worship it, causing it to grow. As it does so, the Umibozu begins to reshape a convenient lair into a pit-like temple to Ngatha, as hidden and out of the way as possible-even underground or underwater, if need be, though this is not an ideal position. When the temple is complete, the Umibozu pricks a hole between Creation and the true Amoebic Sea, allowing Ngatha to rewrite the physical laws of the local area into a self-contained spatial pocket that exists both within and outside of Elsewhere-the core, or Plateau of a new cerebrotic blot.
Besides creating a little bit of Creation where Ngatha can use as a playground and idea summoning point for demons, the formation of a Plateau releases the Sea's living Essence into the ley lines, subtly twisting the world around the Plateau to form the periphery of the blot. This is not a nice, clean sphere-the periphery grows around the Plateau like a lichen, organically and randomly. Within the periphery, those who sleep contact the always-dreaming mind of the Amoebic Sea, sharing in his dreams of alien yet beautiful vistas and nigh-infinite knowledge, wonderful and terrible to behold. Most ignore these, but there's also going to be a few, and the patron Umibozu inevitably finds them and leads them across the threshold into its strange domain. And once there...oh, the things they they see.
Leaving aside the cerebrotic blot's ability to attract converts to a once-removed Yozi cult, however, the Plateau of a blot is its own threat to the gods. As one might imagine for a pocket dimension created by a link to Malfeas, demons manifest freely and without end-mostly First Circle attendants of Ngatha, but more than a few scholarly Second Circles like to visit Plateaus in order to gather the vast amounts of arcane lore that Ngatha collects there, and even Orabilis is known to visit them on his own time on rare occasion (to say nothing of booting the occasional scholar who understands something known only to the Yozis into the skies, which are both Creation's and the strange constellations of Malfeas). These demons normally cannot leave due to the Umibozu forbidding them from using the foci without explicit permission (and quite happily signaling out for sacrifice those who don't listen), but like their father-template, Umibozu are fairly lenient with their decrees, especially when it suits their agenda. As a result, cerebrotic blots often become the beacheads of demonic infiltration, with an almost-endless supply of reserves to spread the word of the Amoebic Sea across Creation.
Even worse, a Plateau is often much larger than the area it was spun out of, or what the periphery suggests-Ngatha thinks of the real cosmos as simply an abnormally stable collective dream, and his power makes this reality. Spatial relationships become less concrete truth and more narrative suggestion, but unlike the waypoints and transitional paths of the Wyld, the interior of a Plateau is a vast, phatasmagoric landscape of non-Elucidian geography, crystalline plants and moss, and demonic cities and villages with towers that twist like snakes into the surreal skies. No area, not even the metaphorical variety, is unreachable, and both demons and their allies take great advantage of this-more than one cerebral circle of akuma have make a Plateau their home and domain over the years, and true Infernal Exalted already look to these places as areas where they can inhabit both of their home realms at once.
One might expect, given all this, that cerebrotic blots attract angry divinities like heavily-armed flies to honey, but here's where the true genius of Thuum Ngatha shows itself-from the outside, a cerebrotic blot looks perfectly normal. Yes, on the ground the periphery tends to have small bits reshaped into strange geometries and designs sacred to the Amoebic Sea over time, but that is very small-you'll only find a couple if you specifically look for them over the course of a week. More than that, the dream of the Plateau as it once was is overlaid over its location, appearing to be perfectly normal, even to the point of creating illusive inhabitants and animals to maintain the illusion of normalcy. The only way one can detect that something is terribly wrong is if some tries to reach it-space bends so that none who have not used one of the Plateau's foci can actually reach it, always somehow managing to get lost on the way, or even unintentionally circumnavigating it altogether.
Speaking of foci, they are usually the few things in the periphery of a blot that seem truly odd, and even that doesn't seem all that out of the ordinary-who is to quarrel with a freestanding altar, or miniature obelisk, or standing stones? Not anyone who wants to offend a god, that's for certain. And yet, nobody builds a focus-they simply appear to mark passages in and out of the Plateau, and destroying one simply causes it to reform somewhere nearby out of sight. The one common element they share is a phosphorescent growth concealed from obvious perception. Anyone who touches this (and is not immediately set upon by the hidden demonic guards) and rubs it on their skin (servants and worshipers of Ngatha tend to smear it on their faces like paint) may travel past (or through, in the case of foci that take the form of arches) the focus towards the Plateau, and space lets them. To a traveler, they don't notice anything strange until it is too late to turn back (a focus never leads a pilgrim to the direct location of another focus), but to observers, they seem to slowly fade out of being as they dive beneath the dream.
And even if a god or their allies were to destroy the core temple and collapse the pocket-what then? Thuum Ngatha is a creature of ideas and dreams, however mad-and you can't disinfect a dream.
Row, row, row your boat, down the Amoebic Sea,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, the world's but a dream.
Any other ideas? Such as a writeup of a typical Plateau?
(also, there's that whole "patron of mortal sorcerers" thing. I'll get to that)