Lords of Creation

[Razade]

In the darkness before Creation, which stretched out as a tapestry from the end of time to the start of time, there dwelt The Creator. What manner of thing it was, if it was a thing at all, is locked away beyond the gulf between the darkness and what followed. From The Creator came Creation, everything, all at once, all the time, distinct from that fathomless darkness in which the Creator dwelt.

Where there had been nothing but the endless dark there was now The Void, an endless stretch of nothing, illuminated by nothing yet not of the dark that came before for in that darkness there was but a mote of something. This mote, this speck, was The First World, and it was the greatest of all Creation. Simple, yet pristine. A world of earth and flame, ensconced in water and air. Upon its features, nothing, no light to warm it, no stars to fill its skies. In its perfection however came disparity. Heat and cold, the shadows of cast by bright flames, and in this disparity came the Gods. Beings of Creation, Lords each, to walk upon that which the Creator created, apart from that thing that dwelt before time and after time, yet wholly unlike it, never to touch.

[Razade]

Hyakku: The Huaihong Waterways

Disparity bred the Gods, live and non-life and it was Hyakku that governed over this dichotomy. Arising as the energies of Creation pulsed, The Waterways flowed and the first Breath was taken, and from the Waterways to Creation, it all breathed back in a single collective sigh. That which animated, that which breathed was born and Hyakku could hear the very Breath of Stone and Steel, the Breath of Storm and even Silence.

But it was not the work of Hyakku to simply listen to the Breathing of things. For with Breath, came motion, and motion, further disparity. Further dirt upon the collective energies of Creation and so Hyakku quietly shambled to the riverside, to the river Hauihong, and dipped weathered hands into the cool waters of the river and fished free a simple Breath already mucked with grim and stains. With another sigh it took the battered thing and laid it out upon the rocks that lined the riverbanks and with calloused hands beat the stains away. Dipped the Breath back into the waters, and repeated its task until the Breath was clean once and for good and then like a kite sent it high into the air. It was not alone in this, for shadows moved from the forests and hills to the great Waterway, and dipped their hands in the waters like the Washer itself. Hyakku Breathed, they Breathed. Hyakku washed. They washed.

Into the air where puffy white clouds spiraled up and away, growing darker as they reached The Void, and darker still where they once more touched the First World where they rained down upon Creation once more. Two things, Breathing in harmony.

It was this ebb, this flow, that Hyakku did its work. Creation would Breath and it would Breath back. Life. Death. Life. Death. Each a Breath. In time, mortals would come and add their Breaths. Life. Death. Life. Death and those among the many might understand that this too was a Breath of its own. That Creation and all its things Breathed together, and that to know ones Breath was to know Life and Death, and how to move that which might have otherwise been immovable.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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AP: 16

Create Mythical Concept - The Breath (4AP): The Breath is the animating energies, or energies that allow for animation in the inanimate. The Breath is in all things, in the grass, in the stone and in all [/B]living things that walk upon Creation. [Magic (Mana) 4/10]

Create Mythical Subconcept - Sagecraft (2AP): Sagecraft is the manipulation of The Breath, in simple terms, it is the method in which to animate the inanimate and to utilize the animation of the animate. To many, it is simply called magic, but to Sages it is something far more primal for it uses the very Breath of Creation. [Magic (Mana) 6/10]

Weave Plane - The Huaihong Waterways (3AP): The Breath moves like rivers, vast and unseen and the Hauihong Waterways are where these tributaries meet. Appearing as a vast river meandering through pristine hills, the Waterway is where The Breath is washed and sent back to the world. Not all Breath flows into the Waterway, other Gods able to bend these rivers to their own domains. [Magic (Mana) 9/10]

Create Monstrous Life - Washers (1AP): Appearing as raccoon-like creatures, these beings populate The Huaihong Waterways and wash The Breath they find. They’re simple things, capable of rudimentary Sagecraft. [Magic (Mana) 10/10]

Bridge Plane - The Rains of Haung Di (2AP): The Rains of Haung Di is an eternal storm that flows from The Waterways back to the First World. The accumulated Breath that is washed flows back into the first World, and the salts and minerals that are washed from the Breath return as well in the form of these rains. [Weather (The Rains) 2/10]

4-2-3-1-2 = 4AP

[Zelphas]

Deyna: Reflection Before Form

In the mostly-formless Void after Creation took place, a formless white shape lounges upon nonexistence, observing the world through blue-and-red eyes peering from a smiling black iron mask. At first, there is an air of patience around the form, but this quickly erodes into agitation, the white, oddly plush body twisting and bubbling in restless turns. Finally, the shape darts towards the First World, taking a many-limbed shape of nothing that currently lives.

"Aaaaah, this is taking too long! someone do something!" The shape bellows from behind its mask, dancing about upon the non-surface of the World. It stops suddenly, tiliting its head. "Oh, my mistake, I do apologize. Someone is doing something.... water, and... rain? Washing?" The figure considers, multiple arm-like growths waving, before its agitation returns. "Not enough, not enough! How can I play if the Rules aren't in place yet? How do I--"

A thought strikes the being, and it shivers into a blob, iron mask bobbing gently atop the white cloth. "Reflections. A mirror, before an image?" Shooting up into a tall, spindly spire, the iron mask laughs. "Sounds fun!" Turning sideways, the figure disappears.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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16/16 AP

Weave Plane - Parody (3 AP): A twisted, off-kilter reflection of the First World, laying like a metaphysical second skin atop the original. Things that come into being in the First World will be reflected and warped here, though they will lack true life and meaning unless invested with such by godly power. At the moment, it is almost an exact reflection of the First World, since their is so little present; rain falls upwards. (Life (Mimicry) 3/10)

Create Legends - True Fae (5 AP): formless beings that inhabit Parody, these creatures are possessed of near-immortal life, excessive strength and intelligence, and the driving urge to mimic and mock other forms of life as they discover it. Their tendency is capricious rather than cruel, and there is currently little to twist; a few have become racoon-like creatures, spindly and disjointed, but most are still formless in a formless world. (Life (Mimicry) 8/10)

Create Bridge - Reflection (2 AP): True reflections are powerful and dangerous. Pristine mirrors, still lakes, and other things that cast perfect or near-perfect images of their surroundings are occasional pathways to Parody... and paths can go both ways. Right now, there are almost none such paths, but who knows what the future will hold? (Life (Mimicry) 10/10)

16 - 3 - 5 - 2 = 6 AP Remaining.

[bc56]

A Light in the Darkness


The First World was dark and formless, containing fire but not light. Yet a small light, barely a pinprick, hovered over the waters.
Gods do not need to be large. Kytik prefers to be very small indeed. He found it very cold and dark and lonely, hardly a suitable place for him or anyone else to live.
But the world was shrouded and Kytik's little light would not be enough, so Kytik increased his light to burning bright. This, however, boiled the waters and seared the lands, far more harm than was needed. He dimmed his light and thought of a new solution.
If he went out a great distance from the world, the light would not burn so intensely. But he would be forever cut off from the world, unable to touch it.
He needed something else to aid him. He flew out into the depths of the void, a tiny light amid the infinite darkness, and he breathed life into the void and shaped it into his image.
And a light blazed forth.
It was in his image, a single firefly of immense proportions, its light shining all the way to the First World and bathing its shadowed seas in light for the first time.
And Kytik spoke to the newborn sun and told it of the glorious duty it had to spread light to the First World, and that he would be back to see it soon.
And it flew across the heavens as it waited for him to return.

It would spawn children. Many would make the long flight to the First World where they would love and have children of their own, but some remain with her and keep her company. These little lights are but shadows of their great mother, with none of the intellect and drive, but a good measure of the compassion which spawned her.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Start: 16/16
Create Legends: The Sun [Fire (hearth) 5/10]: The sun is an immortal firefly of massive proportions. She flies around the First World, completing a full cycle each day. She is quite intelligent, and reputed to be very wise and very lonely, although contacting her is very difficult.
Create Monstrous Life: Fireflies [Fire (hearth) 6/10]: The offspring of the Sun migrate across the void to breed on the First World. The tiny glowing insects need neither air, nor sleep, nor food and drink, subsisting only on their mother's light, and reproducing it themselves. It is said their lights guide travelers to safety in the dark. Some fireflies can also be found near the Sun.
End: 10/16
Domains:
Light (sun)
Life (insects)
Fire (hearth) [6/10]

[Mechalich]

Pantian, Precipitated

Formation
In the heart of the First World heat and cold shifted slowly in an ancient and eternal dance. As heat gave way to cold, the fabric of the First World, initially molten, slowed and solidified. Distortion saw it buckle, twist, crack, and pocket. Further cycles poured new hot into the surrounding caverns of cold, and then flowed out against as cracks pressed through the walls. Left behind was a residue, still precipitate, organized by the channeled progression of entropy through space; crystallized. One such crystal, perhaps the first of them all, was Pantian, formed at the heart of the First World, a topaz endowed with such immense energy by the primordial energetic disparity that he awakened to the divine spark. The eternal crystal at the heart of stone.

Uplift
Long Pantian watched the world as it cooled and shifted, as its waters took shape and the great fires receded down into the deep realms. He studied, observing all things with great care, examined from every angle. He saw the birth of life, simple tiny things in smoky shadows at the bottom of the basins where fire and water mingled amid strange solutions and curious precipitates. Though barely more than specks, there was a profound wonder to these earliest forms, able to build and grow in a fashion no other form possessed, and Pantian found them fascinating. These too he observed carefully as the eons unspooled and the world firmed in its passage through the void.

Engrossed by this, Pantian came to the slow decision to foster new environments for life. The still and flattened basins offered only endless repeating sameness; the sea unstirred. He found this drab and introduced cyclical permutations to the mixture. Rupturing the core of the ocean, he allowed the fires below to bubble upwards in the dark deep. Great columns, towering hexagonal basalt, rose from the sea floor across vast rifts. So high did they flow upwards that they could not support themselves, then they collapsed atop each other into great piles. Over and over again this process progressed, countless times. It forged great mountains, rifts, and trenches. In time the undersea mountains rose high enough that the towers of basalt broke through the surface of the waves, and land emerged onto the face of the First World.

Pantian called this First Continent Tessel. It was vast, and mostly empty. Great ridged mountains prevented rain from reaching deep into its interior, and much was dry and arid there, with only narrow strips upon the coast welcoming to life. Life came quickly enough, arisen from the oceans to claim the coast and encouraged by divine iteration to take upon vast and varied forms. Forests of gymnosperms and ferns covered the coastal ranges and myriad and strange animals walked among the scrub and conifers, browsing, hunting, and digging. They were scaled or clean-skinned, though some few possessed fur, but all were grounded or amphibious creatures. Only insects filled the skies.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Create Land - Tessel (2AP): A vast, roughly Africa-sized continent, Tessel lies in the southern hemisphere of the First World. Mountains in its northwest and southeastern regions create large rain shadow impacts against the prevailing winds. Much of the land is therefore arid desert, though the coastal regions and the southernmost third of the continent which lies in antarctic regions are lush. Tessel does not have a modern biota, but instead reflects the Earth during the Triassic (Carnian) Period. [Earth (Volcanism) 2/10]
Starting AP: 16 Spent: 2 Remaining: 14

[Elemental]

Aszamanarak: Contemplations on Entropy and Poorly Thought Out Decisions

In the mind of Aszamanarak the moment of creation passed without incident, a mere blip in Its perceptions even if there were no perceptions before that moment to compare. It simply was and the fact that It previously wasn't was of no concern and for what seemed a vast eternity It merely floated in the void and thought about nothing.

And then It heard a tick.

And in that moment It knew time. This was a far more pressing a concern than existence! Existence meant nothing! But time? Time! Time limited existence and gave it meaning solely by that limit. Aszamanarak filled with an eternity of panic as the crushing weight of realisation filled every gear and mechanism of the form It was rapidly becoming aware of.

And then It heard another tick.

And another.

It would need to learn how to tune these out so It could think. Entire milliseconds had passed and the constant ticking was driving It mad! Wait, time could be measured? Of course! And with that measurement It thought and calculated and by the next tick It began to regret. There were only several dozen quintillion ticks of Its mechanisms left and then the motive force that drove them would diminish and Aszamanarak would die. The ruby sand of Its central glass ran out and it flipped. That was enough time for thinking, now to act.


Aszamanarak streaked through the sky like a comet, heading straight for the great luminous beetle that some uncaring and shortsighted individual had left floating in space. So much energy, spent warming up nothing. Surely no one would mind if It borrowed some? As It flew light began to coalesce around It. Gold, copper, silver, bronze, brass, tin, platinum, the light took on the colours of these metals and many more besides as it solidified and took shape as a vast clockwork mechanism.

The mechanism started off small and compact, but it soon opened up. It spread wide, hundreds of thousands of miles across at the greatest extent, forming a great lattice of pure silver shaped like an enormous clockwork flower with Aszamanarak at its heart. The multi-layered petals slowly danced as they moved back and forth, rotating around the heart. Perhaps it was mesmerising to the Great Solar Mother of the Fireflies, but Aszamanarak was unconcerned by that as It continued moving closer and closer.

The unmelting silver of the flower lattice burned with white hot radiance as it reflected the light of the Sun and once Azsamanarak was confident It was close enough, but not so close as to offend the unusually large beetle, the final stage of the construction began. The empty spaces of the petal lattices filled with white light that faded into perfectly clear crystal that absorbed the solar radiance and sent it flowing down the silver of the lattice towards the heart where Aszamanarak waited to receive it.

The Great Lotus Mantle of Aszamanarak was complete, a siphon to sap solar energy and put it towards the more useful task of denying entropy.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Start: 16/16

Create Greater Utility Artifact - The Great Lotus Mantle of Aszamanarak. (5AP) Reduces the cost of curse actions once per week.
This 'mantle' is an enormous construction several hundred thousand miles across, though it can fold up surprisingly small. It is made of millions of intricate moving parts at the centre as well as an enormous silver and crystal multi-layered flower that absorbs radiant energies and siphons them right to whomever or whatever sits at the heart of the Mantle. What is done with that energy is up to them, but it's raw and pure and when unleashed always causes mayhem of some sort. [Craft (Metalworking) 5/10]

End: 11/16

[NCat]

Saga: The First Page, Legends

When the nothing was once nothing, everything was still, unmoving. But the nothing was no longer nothing, it was something. And anything, if it is something, moves. Whether slow like the erosion of rock beneath a river, or hasty like a lightning bolt, movement and change had become fact. And of these now moving things, a cloud hung in the sky, idly wandering over the world. But then the cloud had a thought:

All that I see lives so quietly. This world would do with a bit more excitement. Indeed, there should be something to remember, people to talk to, and great things to speak stories of.

And so the cloud condensed, and from it with a burst, a swarm of small birds flew into the distant landmass.

On a barren stretch of dirt, the birds wondered as to what to create. She knew that a story needs a grand start, it must start with an exciting flame!

Ah!

Of the flock, five birds stepped aside. With a surge of magic, there was the birth of an idea, written into history.

"In the beginning of the world, there were dragons."

The five grew and grew, their feathers falling, scales filling their place. No longer were their voices filled with song, but instead, filled with fire. They were no longer part of the flock, but they were now part of something grand of their own: A legend, a beast with iron skin and flaming tongue. Tyrants, lords of underground keeps, scholars of ancient magic...

Whatever those terms may truly mean, she decided she would work out later...


The Second Page: Those that look up

Saga watched as these beasts of legends flew off to explore this new world they found themselves in. But then she realized: A legend with none to speak of it is no legend at all. So with a flapping of wings, a bed of feathers rest upon the dirt, and she wrote again,

"And then, there were those who told the tale of dragons"

And the feathers grew, a group of creatures standing taller than the small birds before them, creatures grasping arms and strong legs. Colorful feathers lined their arms, and avian eyes looked from their faces. With a bird's song, Saga lifted herself into the air.

"And these who told tales lived in a great forest, so they could look up towards dragons, while safe beneath the cover of trees.

And from the world below, trees sprouted, then exploded into a mass of jungle, chirping with the song of birds, with the buzzing of insects, and the running of water.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Starting AP: 16/16

Create Legends - Dragons (5AP)(Conflict (Monsters): Dragons are giant beasts, with the flight of a bird, scales of iron, and breath of fire. With age growing them ever more powerful and wise, their lives not so easily taken by the clutches of time, an ancient dragon being a terrifying foe to behold. Dragons each trace their lineage to the first 5 dragons, each with their own color and element: The white dragons of cold, the blue dragons of lightning, the black dragons of plague, the red dragons of fire and the green dragons of wild nature. While to many a dragon is a dragon, from birth, these 5 families have always held conflict with one another.

Create Race - Avenfolk (2AP)(Nature (Birds): Avenfolk hold humanlike forms, with the exception of colourful feathers that line their arms and their bird like eyes that show their origin from their creator god. Unable to fly themselves but still gripped by a birds desire to wander, they live in nomadic groups exploring and taking note of the world around them. To their culture, the recording of everything they see is purpose, and when groups of Avenfolk meet, they delight in sharing their discoveries, as well as pointing a path to where they found it, so others may take a chance to look themselves.

Create Mundane Concept (1AP): Stories and legends, the recording of information and the sharing of knowledge, whether to teach, entertain or strike other emotion.

Teach Mundane Concept (1AP): To the Avenfolk, the concept of stories is a foundational wisdom they were given.

Alter land - The Primal Jungles: (1AP) In the great deserts of the Tessel continent, a small spot can be found in which the dry sands suddenly explode into towering life. Trees reaching towards the sky, growing from the earth and over top of each other, creating a deep jungle floor in which all manner of life can be found. However, the deserts around it mean that very little can reach these jungles without the heat getting to them first.


Final AP: 16-(5+2+2+1+1) = 5.
Domain Progress:

• Animals (Birds): 2
• Conflict (Monsters): 5

[zzzzzzzz414]

An ancient Yeti legend, telling of the origin of the one called Corda, the land of Umbyral, and the ones who dwell there. It may or may not contain truth.

In the beginning of the beginning, when the world was yet new and untouched, a spark was thrown up from the great fires of Creation. The spark sought to illuminate all that was; and as it did, it cast a shadow behind, upon all that was hidden and was not. No matter how the spark moved, the shadow moved in turn; and it was then that the spark and the shadow knew that they were one, and knew themselves as Corda.

Corda burned with the desire to see all that was, to explore and unravel the infinite mystery of Creation. And yet, with but one glance, her work was done: for Creation consisted of nothing but the empty waters below, and the empty heaven above, containing only the great Beacon on its journey from horizon to horizon. The goddess found herself agitated; the perfect stagnation of perfect knowledge did not suit her. She resolved then, that if nothing of Creation remained to explore, then she would make more of Creation. Corda reached far below the waves to the primal stone, and pulled it up into the light; she shaped and molded it as clay, sculpting its mountains, hills and lakes. She heaved the great trees from the soil, and let loose every manner of bird and beast and crawling thing. She whispered secret arts into the stone, stirring it to shift and roam.

But when she had finished her work, she immediately saw her folly. For she had made this land; she already knew every stone and stick and blade of grass. There was nothing left to explore - she had not escaped the perfect stagnation. In frustration, she buried that land far beneath the waves and the stone, bitter with failure - and then, she had an idea. She began her work again, but this time, she covered her left eye with a strip of hide. With only her right eye to see by, she used the old land as her base for the new, once again sculpting the mountains, raising up the trees, and making all manner of bird and beast and crawling thing. Then, once she had surveyed the completion of her work, and was satisfied, Corda reached up and plucked out her right eye - taking with it all that the eye had seen - and threw it far away from her in a random direction, calling up the four winds to scatter it to someplace even she did not know, letting all its unwanted knowledge become truly lost. Then, she uncovered her left eye - and was filled with the wonder of a child, as the blinded eye drank in all that it had not witnessed. And so did Corda descend into this land of unknown shadows, the land of Umbyral. But she had not blinded or plucked out the eye of her shadow, which had stood at her side as she shaped this land - and so it writhed with depths of hidden knowledge, but said nothing.

Corda wandered the land for many ages, drinking in its sights and its secrets - sometimes as a bird, sometimes as a bear, sometimes as an elk, sometimes as a saber-tooth. Beasts of the land would often stalk her, mistaking her for prey, or flee from her, mistaking her for predator - and she would sometimes reciporocate these hunts, a way to test her knowledge of the land, and theirs. None could match her - no prey could escape her fangs, no predator could catch her hooves. But there was one beast that stood above the rest - one that could test her in strength, cunning and knowledge, one that could make simple tools of the trees and stones, one that the storms themselves followed. These, were the first of the Yeti; and they, she rewarded with knowledge. Not through speech or dream, but through signs and markings in small and hidden places, little hints and seeds of greater things.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Start: +16AP

Create Land: Umbyral [2AP]

Umbyral is a roughly circular, dramatically mountainous continent the size of North America, centered on the First World's northern pole. Shifts in climate, currents and wind have led to a colder climate at the north pole than at the south (though not quite as cold as earth's modern-day arctic circle, yet), leading to a continent dominated by taiga, tundra, glaciers, and boreal forests, with thicker, more temperate coniferous forests and other temperate biomes near Umbyral's coasts. Overhead and especially near the many mountain ranges are a great number of floating rocks and islands, some with vegetation; underneath, far below the stone, there is a massive and extensive system of caverns, some of them hundreds of miles wide - said to be the remains of a divinely-abandoned first continent, full of age-old bones, dead seas and calcified forests. Umbyral's flora and fauna are roughly equivalent to those of the Neogene, dominated by woody trees, emerging grasses, birds and mammals (such as bears, mammoths, elk, sabertooth tigers, human precursors, etc.)

Nature (Forests) 2/10

Curse: The Wandering-Land [1AP]

The geography of Umbyral is not exactly consistent. The shape and location of the continent and its islands remains largely the same, and major landmarks always remain roughly the same in relation to each other. (Two great mountains in the east and west will always stay east and west of each other, etc.) But distances and exact relations shift and squirm in non-euclidean ways; forest paths change when nobody looks at them, and caverns may change shape and direction; navigation becomes more difficult. This would even extend to mazelike city streets, if they were built. The only way to stop it from changing is to fix it firmly in place mentally-either through direct memory, or through tools such as maps. The wider understood and remembered this geography is among those who live in it, the less it will shift. This is not necessarily limited to sapient understanding; old migration paths of herd animals will often remain fixed through collective herd instinct.

Exploration (Navigation) 1/10

Create Legendary Life: Yeti [5AP]

A carnivorous species native to Umbyral's tundras and boreal forests that stands 15-20 feet tall, with features somewhere between those of a bear, a yak, and a great ape, covered in thick white fur and with a pair of massive, curly horns. Yeti are both clever, capable of making tools and possessed of deep intellect and self-awareness, and incredibly strong, able to singlehandedly uproot entire trees, as well as possessing incredibly keen senses. Breath flows through and around them such that fog, snows and storms follow them wherever they go; though they have no control over this, they have learned to leverage this fact for advantage in hunting, and mitigate its disadvantages. Yeti are solitary hunters, following the migrational paths of elk and mammoths, though they do occasionally meet by happenstance; sometimes fighting, sometimes sharing stories or knowledge. Most Yeti have exceptionally long and clear memories; this, along with their incredibly long lifespans (a Yeti is biologically immortal unless killed) and the fact that they reproduce quite rarely, makes them rare but incredible repositories of knowledge, retaining memories even from the very dawn and creation of Umbyral; knowledge that even their creator Corda no longer has.

Nature (Forests) 7/10

Create Greater Utility Artifact (Create Mundane Concept): The Eye of Corda [5AP]

The archetypical lost treasure; the object hidden from even the gods, containing perfect omniscient knowledge of the whole of Umbyral, or even (depending on the version of the myth one hears) the whole of the world and creation. The eye has not been found; it may never be. But stories of it, the possiblity of its recovery from some hidden place of the First World, has inspired and will inspire many ideas and pursuits. It is whispered by some that this inspiration is in fact the Eye itself, calling out to someday be found.

Exploration (Navigation) 6/10

Mundane Concept (Hunting) (Given to: Yeti of Umbyral) [1-1 (Eye of Corda) = 0AP]

Most sapient species can hunt with primitive tools and methods; this covers the use of slightly more advanced tools and weapons, such as use of simple bows or slings, creation of traps and snares, creation of blinds, use of stealth, pathfinding, and the ability to follow an animal's trail and search for its' signs and tracks, to a better and more skillful degree.

16-2-1-5-5 = 3AP remaining

[Razade]

Hyakku: The First World

Other Things had come upon the First World and their Breath joined with all the rest, the slow march only alerting Hyakku of its changes. Still, Hyakku busied itself with weaving hats for the Washers, teaching them how to beat the grim and change from the Breath before returning it back to the First World, sang them songs as they worked. The sun fly burned, and even from the Waterway Hyakku knew that more change would come.

With others to tend to its work, Hyakku slipped into the First World, ragged and worn. It washed itself in the tumultuous seas as lands heaved from the ocean floors and the dirt from its form fell to create land as well. Life teemed from the frozen wastes of the north down to the sweltering jungles of the south where rain and storms wracked its seas.

Yet Hyakku was not interested in what came after it had washed, instead simply exploring this new place and the Breath the land gave forth. All was in motion and as the great rains of the Haung Di moved across the surface of the lands, rivers unseen pooled and where they touched, life flourished.

Soon its travels returned to where it had first landed, the rains having formed a sea with the taste of salt and iron. Here life propagated greatly, and the simple beasts of the forests and mountains that ringed the sea had come down to drink of the bitter waters. These in time would be the Elves, their own lives born from the Breath of Hyakku and the accumulated dirt of its work. Elegant like shaped glass, the Elves moved about this realm with vigor, and took it upon themselves to band together across the central lands they discovered.

Spoiler

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AP: 4

Create Land - The Unnamed Lands (2AP): As it says, the continent equal in mass to the real world continent of Asia has no name. Geographically diverse, the continent is roughly potato in shape with a fairly uneven coastline. Peninsulas are common in its southern portion and along its northern edge and the continent is divided by several large inland seas, freshwater lakes at least as large as lake superior and four distinct mountain ranges that crawl like raised spines which divide the continent into various climactic zones. The unnamed lands sit in the northern hemisphere and create a vast cold ocean between it and Umbyral. The bulk of it sits above the equator. Monsoons are common in the South across almost the entire continent, while hurricanes buffet the northern coastlines. [Nature (Purity) 2/10]

Create Sapient Race - Elves (2AP): The Elves are a slender, short people with sharp pointed ears, large eyes and a naturally athletic form suited more for speed and agility rather than brute labor. The Elves, at least to start, dwell in the Southern parts of the unnamed lands, central and near the coast. [Nature (Purity) 4/10]

2 + 2 = 4 - 4 = 0AP

[NamazuSamurai]

Our'nllathosh, The Sleeper Stirs

Before the Breath, before the First World, a patch of inky, silvery Void squirmed restlessly in the nothingness. Dreams were its blessing and its curse, and before it sprawled endless horrors and wonders that it could shape at a whim. Yet, there was nothing, nothing for it to enact its dreams upon, nothing for it to sculpt or to shatter. Nothing but itself. Its dreams began to shape it, giving it a form more wretched than any other, a pulsating, pallid thing of gnashing teeth, snapping claws, writhing tentacles, and insightful eyes. Just as its shape had been fully realized, the First World appeared...and without knowing, it began to drift towards this primal sphere. Closer and closer it drew, fascinated, but unknowing, wondering if at last its dreams could be realized, if its hungers could be satiated.

As the Breath took hold of the First World, the horror came crashing down. Like a falling star, white-hot and yet as cold as the space betwixt them, it plunged into the primordial seas of the First World, searing steam and frigid rains swirling around the maelstrom it had created upon its entry. Down it went, deeper and ever deeper, thrashing through the waters as its sleep was so very close to being broken, yet still uninterrupted. Great tidal waves heralded its struggle, but with only empty shores to crash upon, it was but noise and emptiness upon the unshaped creation. Yet, as it settled upon the benthic depths, the scar of its entry remained, an eternal violent storm of clashing elements pulled from the Void and intermixed with the Breath of the First World. Evermore would its first dreams of the Sea be marked upon the First World, and in a tongue only it knew, it gave name to this.

And that name was Our'nllathosh...and his dreams were not to yet be disturbed.

Horrors took shape, myriad in form, but little more than simple animals. The true horrors were far more brilliant, deadly, and foul. They bore the shapes of great, primeval, deep-sea fish, but with two pairs of eyes on either sides of their heads. Their fins, like their progenitor, were adorned with grasping tentacles whose ichor could choke the life out of all other creatures with just the merest contact. Their size and strength were immense, their minds grasped Sagecraft, but manipulated in in ways that were intended to harm and torture and dominate, all to safeguard the dreaming of their Father. They were known only as the Thosh to themselves, but a fragment of that which created them, and they were made knowing of the dreams of their Creator. For now, they waited, guarding his sleeping form, destroying all that were foolish enough to approach the maelstrom, and exploring the world in hopes of being the one who could receive favor from their Father with new discoveries. Yet it was fruitless, for Our'nllathosh knew what they did and more...but he was content to let them be consumed by their squabbles and ambition, so long as they served their purpose...

A Dream Disturbed, First World

As Our'nllathosh dreamed, many creations were shaped. A great vermin shone its searing light upon the world. An even greater flower of metal and mechanisms hovered about it like a vulture, waiting for devour its stray power for its own use. Lands rose, planes were shaped, and now, the thoughts of more and more foul beasts whispered into his dreams, crawling through it like worms in rotting flesh. This brightness did not reach him, nor did it penetrate his Maelstrom, but he found it foul all the same. The incessant whine of these creatures' thoughts as they scrambled about for meaning and purpose caused his great eyes to crack open ever so slightly, then widen to a half-lidded gaze as he sensed that these were the works of others like him, others left behind in the Void. Did they seek to torment him with all of this color and noise? Or were these merely the works of their own dreams, if they did indeed dream at all? Still, he wished for quiet, for his dreams were not yet complete, and he had yet to truly foresee what his purpose was.

With a mighty stroke of his tail upon the frigid black sand, his power rippled forth, creating a vast tidal wave whose color and shape was unnatural compared to the mundane disasters that had occurred upon the world before. Waters as black as those in the depths composed their form, and the waters themselves seemed to turn and grasp, seeking to harm and destroy as much as they could before their power was expended. The waves billowed forth, destroying rudimentary ships that had been made to explore the mysterious seas, destroying coastal towns and trying to writhe as far inland as they could before they lost all shape and motion. Even the sand that was touched was blackened and writhed with deep sea life, most of which could not survive being thrust into this air-breathing, light-filled world...nor could other creatures long survive contact with its life-draining grains. The first Disaster was visited upon the lands, and although its magnitude was not quite apocalyptic in scale, it was the sign to all living, thinking creatures that there dwelt something in the sea's depths. Something that despised them, something that wished to choke the life from them, something that wished only for their silence...

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Destruction (Disasters): 2/10

Create Land [2 AP]: The Black Maelstrom

The Black Maelstrom is a permanent storm about the size of Australia where Our'nllathosh entered the sea, and consists of pitch-black clouds that fire off sickly green lightning, deep blue hail, and acidic, boiling rain. The whirlpool at the center pulls all things into the crushing depths, killing most land-adapted creatures instantly, and even creatures not adapted to deeper depths are pulled deep enough to either die or suffer great injury. Its only purpose is to make certain the dreams of Our'nllathosh are undisturbed, and is incapable of meaningfully supporting any life or structures. Any creature capable of even seeing the maelstrom knows either logically or instinctively that approaching it will only have dire and lethal consequences, and thus it is rare for thinking creatures to meet their end at its hand. Yet, at times, the storms will seemingly spread outward with malicious intent, causing creatures to become lost and end up in the middle of the maelstrom, and thus give it an even wider berth than necessary.

Monsters (Eldritch Horrors): 5/10

Create Legends [5 AP]: The Thosh

The Thosh are beings possessed of a vast intellect and unnatural strength, even for their size, being roughly the equivalent of a cachalot whale bull on average. There is no male and female between Thosh, although most identify in a masculine sense like their 'Father'. They have inherent psionic power that allows them to dominate lesser races and break their minds, five throats that make it impossible for most other creatures to meaningfully speak their language, and a vast hunger that means their inevitable contact with any life always ends in destruction. Their intense hatred extends even to each other, constantly scheming to gain the upper hand, making slaves of creatures to use as pawns against their brethren, and otherwise making a cohesive society very difficult to form, at the present, at least. The only time the Thosh work together is to take on a threat that individual Thosh are somehow incapable of on their own, or to fulfill the wishes of Our'nllathosh. They reproduce extremely slowly, and asexually, with their spawn inheriting the memories and dreams of their progenitor, and are more or less a clone of their 'father'. Despite their intense cruelty towards all other living things, the Thosh are doting and intensely protective parents. Until their spawn is strong enough to survive on its own, it is the only thing a Thosh is willing to die for aside from Our'nllathosh himself, perhaps out of a twisted sense of seeing their spawn as their legacy. Even when the spawn is old enough to be a threat to them, this strange connection persists, creating the rare exception of Thosh working together willingly. However, only a few of the Thosh that exist currently have created spawn at all, a mercy for the rest of the world at large.

Destruction (Disasters): 3/10

Curse [1 AP]: Tide of the Sleeper

Our'nllathosh's thrashing has created a massive black tidal wave that kills most living things on contact, even if the crushing force of the wave doesn't do so on its own. While short-lived, the wave pushed its way across the entirety of the First World before it was sucked by into the Maelstrom once it made its round. Coastal settlements are destroyed and the land is infected by rotting flesh and fetid salt water. Creatures at least 50 miles inland are unharmed and unaffected (aside from the stink of rotting sea life that the winds carry), but the continents' coasts are now facing some difficulties. The black sand is lethal to stay in contact with for prolonged periods of time, and the air is acrid and difficult to breathe for beings that rely on such things.

(And just to make certain it is clarified, this Tide affects the most recent state of the First World, taking into account all current life/societies that could possibly be affected)

16-2-5-1=8AP remaining

[Volthawk]

Adzet, the Caged Flame

As the First World took shape, and other gods laid down lands upon it, Adzet also took shape among the desert sands. First came the flame, searing and melting the land upon which it first touched the surface of the world, raging for some time before the armour took shape and sealed it, and Adzet was made whole. He didn't remain in the desert for long, and soon set off to see the works of the other gods, the sight of the golden giant striding across the world being not uncommon in this early period.

As Adzet travelled, he still felt the flame raging inside, threatening to overcome his discipline and affect his judgement of the new world. To quieten it, he spent much of his time busied with martial training, finding creating and practising the stances, strikes and manuevers that came to mind a good way to focus himself and bolster his self-discipline. As he moved, he felt the Breath of the world and the life within, and how it moved, and the power he had has a god over it, and intertwined that growing understanding with his movements. By the end of his journeying, he'd understood what it was he had created, and the use it might have to the mortals of the world as they went forward and took their first steps into the world. However, as he looked upon them and thought over what he had seen, one thing was clear - they were not yet ready.

Adzet's understanding of strength was the unity of emotion and discipline, and as things stood the mortal races had little need for both. Their discipline was as you'd expect from the very young, and they hadn't yet experienced enough trials to truly dig into the wellspring of wrath and other emotions they had within them - survival was a struggle, yes, but against a vague and uncaring foe. In order to dig deep and reach their true potential, for truly great warriors and heroes to take shape, they needed a true enemy. Something they could struggle against, learn and grow from, and feel the raw emotion of having a hated foe. Adzet would simply provide that for them.

Some time later, a robed figure appears out of the overgrowth of the Primal Jungle, flanked by a pair of grey-coloured beasts. It silently watches a passing group of avenfolk, nodding to itself. There were its pupils. Its prey. There was much for them to learn. Likewise, other figures watch over the other new races, planning how to test them.

Spoiler

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AP: 16 -> 7
Domain Progress: Fire (Conflagration) 1/10, Conflict (Adversity) 6/10, War (Personal Combat) 2/10

Alter Land - The Burned Lands [1 AP, Fire (Conflagration) 1/10]
The part of Tessel that Adzet first arrived in is forever changed by its exposure to his flames, with much of the sands here turned into glass. Even more so than most of Tessel's deserts, it is a lifeless and desolate place.

Create Legends - The Nemeses [5 AP, Conflict (Adversity) 5/10]
A Nemesis appears as a robed and hooded humanoid, taller than an elf or avenfolk but much smaller than a yeti, wearing a mask over its face, the pattern on it varying from Nemesis to Nemesis depending on their nature and current focus, and covering its body in strips of some kind of black cloth. They're physically gifted compared to the mortal races, but not overwhelmingly so, although their main edge is a sharp mind adept at planning and improvising. They also have an inherent command over Iron Hounds (see below), and can create more from their bodies with time - a draining process, but one most do semi-regularly to ensure they have a good number around them. Every so often, another Nemesis is created instead of a Hound, who usually quickly sets off to find a role for themselves in the world with some Hounds, although some do end up working with their 'parent'.

Their intended role (although naturally with time they may decide otherwise) is to guide the newly created races to new levels of strength, and in the process grow themselves, through providing an enemy - an opposing force that they will have to struggle against to survive and grow, and in the process become stronger as a people. How a particular Nemesis goes about their work is left up to their own judgement - Adzet naturally has his preferences to how the races should grow, but a Nemesis is a free-willed creature with its own inclinations, and so the nature of the foe they present will vary depending on their nature, that of the people they are 'helping', and the situation around them. They often become somewhat attached to their chosen community, and as time goes on some may intercede on the behalf of their 'pupils' against any other threats that may emerge.

Create Monsters - Iron Hounds [1 AP, Conflict (Adversity) 6/10]
While a Nemesis may eventually surround itself with a more varied array of minions, allies and other helpers in its plans, their basic agents are the Iron Hounds. An Iron Hound, as the name suggests, has a canine body plan and a metallic sheen to their hairless bodies - they're not actually made of metal, but their hides are tough and resilient - and jaws capable of powerful crushing bites. They allow a Nemesis to always have a somewhat dangerous minion to threaten a group of people - killable by a skilled warrior or an organised team, but dangerous enough to warrant action to stop - and to protect themselves.

Create Mythical Subconcept of The Breath - The Divine Forms [2 AP, War (Personal Combat) 2/10]
The Divine Forms are an alternative way to tap into the potential of the Breath. Through training in the martial stances and techniques of the Forms, refinement of the body and self, and understanding how the Breath fuels and shapes life, one can manipulate their Breath to enhance their body and perform physical feats otherwise impossible for their race.

[Zelphas]

Deyna: Parody (The Value of Patience)

The blob of white cotton-like substance uncurls from its vaguely draconic form atop a faux-glacier of glittering black glass, observing the mirror-world of parody from the incongruous black iron mask at the end of its long, sinuous neck. The red right eye of the mask dances with glee at the many shapes and forms that have come into being; icy wastes instead of burning desert, deep holes for high mountains, orderly rows of trees instead of deep jungle. The True Fae have begun taking many forms, blending them, creating draconic beasts with shaggy white fur and feathered arms, tall, thin humanoids with dexterous fingers and long snouts, tiny, squat creatures with feathered forms and a love of storytelling. "Aaah, finally! So much, so much to change and shape!" They purr contentedly.

"So much, yes; but so little of order, of true wit," they disagree with themselves, the blue eye critical and cold. Too late, Deyna sees their error; by making reflections, even twisted reflections, they cannot truly comment on the actions of the others. They can only ape them, a shallow joke at best, lacking true substance, true style. "The game must have Rules to be played; let the others make the rules," Deyna intones, unaware that True Fae are near enough to hear them. "Yes, let them make their Rules; much better to play the joke on them with their own powers," they giggle.

Speaking of which... there are a few little 'jokes' that can be made even now. With a slight pop, the white shape vanishes, leaving a glowing blue and glowing red eye. The blue eye flies north, while the red eye sweeps out to the sea.

The True Origin of Lies

Given what it is describing and what came from it, every tale about the origin of Lying (the capitalization is important) among the Yeti is suspect. The truest-seeming tales tell it like this:

One day, an unknown, unnamed Yeti was going about her business: hunting, traveling the changing trails of Umbryal, when she chanced upon another of her species. Some say that this other member had too-white fur, some claimed that their face was wrong, some that their eyes glowed a terrible blue, but all say it was a Yeti. By simple chance (as far as the unnamed Yeti knew), both Yeti were in no mood to fight, or to ignore one another, and so they settled down to share stories of the past and the sights they had seen.

For every tale the unnamed Yeti told, the other Yeti told a taller one. The unnamed Yeti had climbed a great glacier, but the other Yeti had gone to a glacier's heart and drank of the unmelting water within the ice. The unnamed Yeti had fought saber-tooth for meals, but the other Yeti had killed saber-tooth and great bear both, combining them into a meal beyond compare. The unnamed Yeti had seen the signs of Corda's favor and teachings, but the other Yeti claimed to meet Corda herself, and had learned the secret paths of the land from her.

This last was too far. Enraged, the unnamed Yeti sprung to her feet, declaring that what the other Yeti told her was not true, could not be true. Instead of meeting her in rage and battle, the other Yeti began to laugh, congratulating the unnamed Yeti for winning their game. The unnamed Yeti was confused, until the other Yeti explained. They had found a stream of sweet water next to a great glacier, as though the glacier was somehow weeping unmelting water. They had come across a battle between a bear and a saber-tooth where the two had killed each other, and had set aside their meat for a later feast. And they had not met Corda, of course, but hadn't she made them, and taught them of the secrets around them by her signs and actions? The truth was in the tale, they explained, even if the truth was not the tale itself. For discovering their falsehood, the other Yeti told the unnamed Yeti where the meat and the sweet water was, giving it to them as "reward" for seeing through the tales. As the two parted, the unnamed Yeti confused but intrigued, the other Yeti said a curious thing: "Remember: you won the game this time around, so now you must play my part next time!" And so she did.

The unnamed Yeti was sometimes named, sometimes still angry afterwards, sometimes completely tricked by the exaggerated tales of the other, but the story remained (mostly) consistent. And thus, the Yeti learned how to lie.

Sparks in the Maelstrom

The Black Maelstrom swirled, firing out its sickly lightning, pouring its acid rains, pelting its hail at the sea below it, utterly inimical to all forms of life...

...until suddenly, it wasn't.

They began as shimmers of pink-red light, peeking out from the roiling storm in flashes of oddly pleasant color. Steadily, these lights coalesced, forming globes of pink luminescence with tiny, fragile white wings. Flashes of brighter and darker color within them formed facsimiles of a face at times, with various expressions, but this is not how they spoke. Instead, the globes of light spoke to one another directly, mind to mind, with brushes of telepathic connection that could not, could never strengthen into any sort of control. Any attempt to seize the minds of these creatures slid off of them, promoting bursts of telepathic laughter as though such an attack was ticklish rather than dangerous.

The Storm Sparks flitted through the Black Maelstrom, lighting up its darkness with color and life. They showered in the acid rain, using it to clean themselves of any impurity without any personal harm. They guzzled down the green lightning, finding its power their greatest source of sustenance. The deep blue hail was a special treat to them; they made a game of chasing it to the sea, sweeping it up, gifting it to one another in shy, innocent shows of affection. In the midst of the darkness around and below them, they were light and peace, always chattering to one another in their minds, filled with happiness and simple glee in living.

Do not dream so seriously, cousin, a thought passed through their minds, not from them or directed to them. It makes you far too easy to mock.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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6 AP

Create Mundane Concept - Ritual Lies (1 AP): The concept of embellishing stories for the sake of self-aggrandizement, with certain tells being built-in to let a savvy listener realize that the tale is untrue. Among the Yeti, Ritual Lies are something of a game; the liar "wins" by tricking the listener or sending them off on a wild goose chase, and the listener "wins" by accurately perceiving the lie and discovering the reward hidden within it.

Create Monstrous Life - Storm Sparks (1 AP): Storm Sparks are pinkish-red globes about a foot in diameter, with small white wings of light about six inches long poking out from their sides. Naturally sweet, excitable, and innocent, Storm Sparks are born whenever lightning strikes, and feed off of lightning as their main source of food. They can form rudimentary faces, but they speak telepathically; in fact, they broadcast their thoughts indiscriminately, meaning that anyone within a 10-mile radius can 'hear' Storm Sparks 'speaking'. They are immune to any sort of mental or psychic attack, acid, heat, and cold, and absorb electricity as food, but have no way of attacking themselves. Without a source of electricity to eat, Storm Sparks fade away and die within three days.

6 - 1 - 1 = 4 AP Remaining

[Elemental]

Aszamanarak: An End to Contemplation

For an untold period of time Aszamanarak sat hovering in space, staring at a gargantuan beetle that burned with radiance so bright that almost nothing could withstand it. It contemplated the Great Solar Mother, calculated and extrapolated, learned everything there was to learn about her. After all, soon she would die and with it the great beacon would fade. To memorialise her in Its memory seemed only fair given It had benefitted so much from her mere presence, plus part of It felt sad that she would be gone. There was no sense mourning over what could not be undone however.

Though loathe to do so, Aszamanarak carefully detached Itself from the heart of the Lotus Mantle in order to more thoroughly catalogue the creations of Its more short-sighted brethren. Leaving the Lotus Mantle unattended, however, would be foolish in the extreme and before Aszamanarak departed It sent a surge of Its own power through the structure. Glittering light appeared in the internal chambers and corridors that coalesced into the forms of shining clockwork constructs clothed in robes of silk. In form they somewhat resemble an Elf or a Yeti, but with an extra set of arms, shining jewels for eyes, four clockwork wings with delicate metal feathers and hands capable of shaping themselves into whatever tools necessary. They can be of any height, from a few inches to over ten feet, but most are between six and seven feet. They were the Maintainers and they would work tirelessly to keep the works of Aszamanarak running.

Satisfied they'd do this task well, Aszamanarak set out to see what It could see.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Start: 11/16

Create Legends - The Maintainers. (5AP)
Maintainers, as described above, a Maintainer is a clockwork entity created for the purposes of maintaining things, usually machinery but they're adaptable. It's all in the name really. At this time they serve Aszamanarak and keep the Great Lotus Mantle running smoothly. Despite being machines themselves, they are not mass produced. Each one is a unique and physically flawless creation of divine artifice.
They do not eat, drink, sleep or dream, never tire and are sustained by the divine power of Aszmanarak or whatever energy source is available, from solar radiance to the simple mechanical act of winding. Though their "eyes" are on the front of their heads they in fact see in all directions. These are in fact used for more esoteric forms of sight, the left is capable of magnification and the right sees through illusions. Their wings do enable to fly through space.
As machine entities, most forms of magical deceptions and mental powers have no effect on them, but the concept of lying is alien to their nature. Each one has a perfect memory, but these memories are not shared between them as they communicate only when working on a common goal. One would be forgiven for thinking they possess some sort of foreknowledge or second sight as they never seem surprised by anything that happens, no matter how startling. This is in fact because they lack the ability to flinch.
When it comes to combat they simply don't. They are incapable of malice or aggression and will fight only to preserve their own existence when unable to escape. [Life (Automata) 5/10]

End: 6/16

[moossabi]

The Rotted Shore
A faceless grey man washed ashore upon the beaches of Umbryal, bearing in its arms a great purple silkworm. Its ashen flesh was pulled taut across its bones and even torn in some places, evidently a form which would not be sustained for long. This assessment rang doubly true as the black sands of Our'nllathosh's tainted tide began to eat away at its flesh, unguarded in its sullen state, but the figure rose and began its march north regardless. Its charge, the young Lunbyx in her larval state, cast her gaze ever skywards, insulated from the corruption by the wretched form she had woven for this purpose.

The goddess had come north seeking a roost from which to begin her work, a height so grand that it would scrape the cosmos itself, yet in this time too much had gone awry. The great torchbug had already taken flight amidst her empty canvas, dominating her plan for a beautiful tapestry. She had yet to truly verify whether the mirage of a blue sky it created would interfere with her plans, but judging by the giant mechanical abomination next to it the sky would soon be blotted out by several objects of varying aesthetic value no matter what. As the beast seemed to orbit around the center of the First World's latitude (and the clockwork lotus followed suit like some cosmic stalker), the north pole would be the ideal location from which to begin her work with as little hinderance as possible.

Meditating upon her jealousy of faster gods, she didn't even notice her carrier's feet withering away as the pair marched inland. Day after day passed as the faceless being's inland march across the desolation of Our'nllathosh continued without complaint. When its feet shriveled and died the corruption began to seep up its legs, which gave way in turn. When the end of the rot was in site the being was reduced to dragging its torso along with one hand, as the other held his mistress aloft. Its torso broke just as it crossed into the pure taiga, Lunbyx's writhing form falling from her protector's outstretched arm.

"O silent one, why have you stopped?" The goddess' words were but a whisper, her gaze brought low for the first time in weeks. The being was not dead, for it was a shard of its master, and yet it did not live, succumbed to the decay wrought by the Deep One's hatred. The arm which it used to claw its way through the soil was long gone, leaving behind only a chest with one limp arm outstretched and a grey faceless head. Reaching out into the blackened marks wrought by the scourge, Lunbyx began to understand. "The follies of jealousy, both the Sleeper's and mine own..." Her invertebrate form nuzzled its way under the being's limp arm. "The sun is no threat, for the cosmos have room enough to breathe. I shall rise above these petty contests, lest I follow dear cousin into the depraved depths."

She gazed backwards across the miles they had passed, a fetid mire stretching all the way to the blackened coast. The land was wounded, yet the goddess felt only foolishness for placing her caretaker at risk. "Your sacrifice will not be forgotten, kin of mine. Your memory will be affixed to the stars as I weave them into being." With the promise made, she set off northwards on her own, her mind still among the heavens even as she surveyed the frigid landscape.

The Roof of the World
Eventually Lunbyx wormed her way to the north pole, aided along the path by friendly yetis. At this most frostbitten of places, cradled by grand mountaintops and swirling with snow, she felt not the cold or loneliness; only disappointment. The highest peak would not be nearly high enough to complete her task, and the north pole itself was simply a glacial valley of little remarkability. Scouring her mind for a solution to the problem, she recalled the cold nature of the void in its primal state, the rigid calm brought about by the absence of heat. If she could not rise to the heavens upon this glacier, it would rise beneath her.

Channeling the waters of the First World upward through Umbryal's frozen aquifers, Lunbyx built a great pressure beneath the glacial cauldron. All at once, when the very mountains threatened to crumble, the pressure was released, thrusting the glacier up into the sky at an unprecedented rate. The accumulated waters froze into place beneath the ascending tower, each new layer of solid ice being pushed upward in turn, until the new peak reached so far into the heavens that it scraped the void itself. Gravity whittled away at the pillar's sides, turning it into a conical mount, but Lunbyx ensured that the peak would remain as high as ever.

From this new height she would immediately set to work, spinning six great cocoons of silk. Each was enhanced by utilizing the primal Breath of creation to give it form and function, but something was lacking. The great silkworm set about delving into ancient energies from when the world was formed, settling upon a pale light which would burn without consuming its fuel. With this Cold Light she finally had a way to imbue her cocoons with the power to bathe the universe in her stars.

Upon completion, each was sent to a key direction: one directly upwards to mark the north sky, one to the farthest reaches of the First World from her isolated peak to mark the southern sky, and the remaining four to the planet's equator, to mark the cosmos in four more distinct directions. Each was carried by a frigid northern wind, momentarily ushering a boreal cold into the far reaches of the planet before the cocoons could take their position. Once in place, each would propel itself far into the void before exploding into silken shreds.

These shreds, imbued with the Breath of creation, glow as bright as the sun, but with a cooler, white light. Their sheer distance and small size mean that they appear only as pinpricks in the night sky. Lunbyx had no great plan in mind for what shapes they would arrange themselves into, leaving each detonation to scatter the new stars in every direction. At first this produces a great deal of movement, but slowly the pinpricks of light begin to slow down and settle into a more rigid order ripe for manipulation.

At last, with her canvas complete, Lunbyx begins the process of weaving her stars into a tapestry worthy of her splendor. She begins with two humble designs. The first, a proof of concept, has been arranged into the shape of a rose compass and hovers directly over the north pole. The second, a more personal design, takes the shape of the bust of a humanoid with one outstretched arm. Fulfilling her promise, the goddess finally breathes a sigh of relief, marveling at the new beauty she has brought to her beloved void, unaware of what it means to the people below.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Starting AP: 16/16

Alter Land: Starweaver's Eyrie (1AP)
A colossal glacial peak at the heart of Umbryal at the First World's north pole, cast in rigid ice. Currently stands as the highest point on the first world, stretching into heights which would prove inhospitable to most life. Its icy slopes are treacherous to climb, but at the peak Lunbyx uses this vantage point to spin the cocoons of silk which shall eventually become the stars. The resulting waste material falls down the mountain, ironically giving the slippery heights a stickily-supportive superstructure that prevents the loss of most ice around the peak. The sheer radiative cold does spell ill for what little life was able to call the north pole home, however.
Climate (Frost): 1/10

Create Mythical Concept: Cold Light (4AP)
Lunbyx's stars are not powered by great engines of fire perpetually stuck in a loop of creation and destruction, but rather by a primal white light which will shine without providing heat or consuming fuel. The light produced is a pale imitation of that provided by the sun, and it will never be enough to support life on other worlds, but it serves a strong aesthetic function and handily illuminates the night sky.
Light (Cold Light): 4/10

Curse: Boreal Winds (1AP)
To carry her cocoons to the far reaches of the First World, ensuring the presence of stars throughout the entirety of the cosmos, Lunbyx called upon the icy winds of the north pole to serve her bidding. This had unintended consequences, however, as these winds carried a biting cold into the rest of the known world for a short period. Deserts became passable, even livable, for a time, but many temperate climes were reduced to wastelands of snow for weeks on end. Though the initial wave was but a brief flash, a cold wind will still blow down from the north forevermore.
Climate (Frost): 2/10

Blessing: Silken Stars (1AP)
Stars have proliferated across the cosmos, appearing most clearly in the night sky and offering distant lights for those below who may be out and about. In contrast to the sun, these are gentle lights, inviting observation rather than aiding the observation of other objects.
Light (Cold Light): 5/10

Blessing: The Northern Rose (1AP)
First of the constellations is a rose compass situated directly above the north pole. This beacon in the sky stands as a monolith from which all beings of the northern hemisphere might gauge their position; provided, of course, they have the knowledge to do so.
Knowledge (Astronomy): 1/10

Blessing: The Faceless Cradler (1AP)
Second of the constellations, this memorial to Lunbyx's faceless carrier can take on many meanings to the people of the first world who are unaware of the goddess' personal tragedy. This kind of interpretation marks a watershed for the analysis of the cosmos, as stargazers now search the other stars for similar meaning.
Knowledge (Astronomy): 2/10

Ending AP: 7/16

[bc56]

A Light amidst Terror
It was the Black Tide that brought Kytik back to the First World. It was the elves in a coastal village that attracted his attention. The tide surged mere hours from their huts, but they knew nothing of it.
A bright light appeared in the hills above their humble homes, calling them to follow. Some few did, trailing the light to a high place, from which they watched, as everything they had was washed away. He dried their tears and breathed healing onto their sick and their injured. Then he said to them, "Do to others as I have shown to you. I go now to bring life back to your lands which were devastated."

The elves would, eventually, build a monastery dedicated to the Sunfly on that site, offering healing and rest to all weary travelers, but that is a story for another time.

Kytik descended to the edge of the lands blighted by the tide and shed a tear for the lives destroyed by its wrath. But there was work to do. Descending to the ground, he found a nest of ants, untouched by the deadly corruption, and he whispered to them what they must do, and breathed new power into them.
It would take centuries, but eventually life would return to these lands.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Start: 10/16
Create Mythical Subconcept (of Sagecraft): Hearthcraft [Fire (hearth) 8/10]: It is one thing to be aware of the Breath flowing in all things, but if one has peace with oneself, one can use their own Breath to restore the Breath of others. Hearthcraft is a draining, tiring craft to practice, and most practitioners swear an oath to harm no person and to grant hospitality to all who seek it. In places where they gather to teach and heal, they are often called Hearthkeepers. Their powers include healing wounds, curing disease, and cleansing corruption from objects.
Create Monstrous Life: Cleanser Ants: [Society (eusociality) 1/10]: Seemingly ordinary ants that have been imbued with a divine purpose, Cleanser Ants appear anywhere where the land has been tainted by a great darkness, such as the Black Tide. They work very slowly, grain of sand by grain of sand, purging the taint from the land using very simple Hearthcraft and building the resulting soil into their towering mounds. Their progress is slow, it takes lifetimes for a colony to make an appreciable dent in a region of poisoned terrain.
End: 7/16

[Buufreak]

Kreshgnaw, and so it was

The world was taking form. Lands being pulled from the firmament of endless seas, for where there could be more possibility to live, life would find its way to begin. Gods, benevolent, kind, and creative in nature, dotted the world, bringing about their own will.

But there was another. A will deep below, already a naturality of existence. Far beyond where any light could possibly reach, there was, perhaps seemingly always, a whirling. It pulled waters in many directions, forcing them. All according to will. It swirled, it guzzled, it took in endlessly, with no regard for anything caught in the drift. It was hunger incarnate, and it intends to consume all.

This monstrosity, with countless teeth and a maw that stretched near endlessly, began to perceive as it could. Without eyes, it could not see, and without limbs, it could not reach out and touch. But it could feel. It could taste. And it wished to taste more.

From its might round mouth, it began to spew back what it took in. Torrents of water poured, and with it the tides shifted. The constant back and forth flow started to create currents. Cycles. Natural patterns of flowing waters that surrounded the newly formed continents. This wasn't enough.

Through the primordial force that compelled this beast to consume and seek more, it belched forth creatures of the ocean. The simplicity of the ichthios would not sate its hunger very long, but the clever maw spat them back, new, reformed, refined. They began to think, and with their first thoughts, they had fear and wished to swim away. And swim, they did, those able to master such an instinctual, life saving task, while others fell pray to the great gnashing maw as their protolifes once did. This, too, wasn't enough.

But the beast, in its own way, seemed mildly sated. Complexity, as it would seem, was delicious. It yearned for more. It began to think, a strange happening this, being the first. Then another, and another, each beginning to become more and more complex. How delicious, these thoughts were. How each one fueled into another, exciting and scintillating every fiber. Perhaps, in time, it could consume all that was thought, and that would be the greatest meal to have ever existed.

These creatures, it had belched forth, quickly began to seem like an afterthought to the ceaseless hunger inside. They must be better. They must become more complex, but here in the vast depths of a seemingly bottomless ocean, how could they possibly achieve progress. This thought, above all else, rang as most exciting as the beast began to wriggle and move from the great hole it was somehow always within. Its body, a disgusting mass of stone like flesh, inched further and further upward, until the near endless mass was completely free, leaving behind a deep dark pit. Here. Here they will find greatness, and with the gifts of its own flesh and fang, they will become more complex still.

As it turned to see what it had left behind, it only could darkness, for it still had no eyes. No matter. With another gulching motion, it left behind, at the deepest of the dark depths, some of its endless teeth. It then began to crawl away, a cataclysmic slug, across the sea floors.

Thought, however, seemed the perfect gift for the creatures of the deep, as they explored their new colossal cavern, taking foliage and the great teeth left behind to create shelters and rudimentary weapons, as if knowing this is what they are meant to do. They looked to the trail of destruction left from the great leach of life itself, and they gave it a name.

And so it was, as these creatures began to call themselves the Thrines, that they bid farewell to their creator and worst enemy, in hopes that it would never return.

Spoiler: actions

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Alter Land, 1AP: The Great Crevasse
A seemingly bottomless pit at the beds of the ocean, with its walls littered with the scrapings and left behind particles of stone like flesh.

1/10 Creation (Alteration)

Create Mundane Concept 1AP: Water Currents

2/10 Creation (Alteration)

Create Sentient Life 2AP: The Thrine
Aquatic lifeforms that take much from their predecessor fish-life. Cunning, swift like the currents, and very astute with the knowledge that life can quickly come to an end. They are deep dwellers, having never seen the light of the world above, and rely on other senses to perceive the world around them.

4/10 Creation (Alteration)

Create Mundane Concept 1AP: Gathering & Teach Mundane Concept 1AP: Gathering
By leaving behind its great stony scales and razor sharp teeth, Kreshgnaw bestowed onto the Thrine the concept of taking from the world what is there for the taking, be it plants, animals, or the remains of something much greater.

6/10 Creation (Alteration)

Remaining AP 10/16

[NCat]

Pushing aside the leaves of vast trees, He Who Remembers came upon the sight of an empty stretch of sand. Not a large one, probably only at best 20 meters from one side to the other, yet in the overgrowth of the Primal Jungles, a spot in which the sky could clearly be seen was a mystery.

Feet touching the sand, he was surprised at how cool it felt. His mentor before him, who he gained his name from, told him that sand was a deadly thing found at the great edge of the trees, whos painful touch warned one that wandering beyond into it was a path none returned from. But here, this sand, was not made to warn them. *He who remembers* sat there trying to find himself comfortable, waiting in the middle of the sand, the great glow of the great firebug above his head turning to dissapear behind the trees, when his silence was broken by the landing of a bird by his side.

Then another.

Then a third.

As He Who Remembers stood up, each turn of his head revealed to him more birds. Each time he looked back to a spot there was twice as many. And then with a spin, there she was.

The One With Birds For Voices, The One Who Tells All Tales, or The Weird Old Lady as some kids called her. Their community hadn't seen her in his lifetime, though kids who wandered too far would tell of tales of being guided home by strange creatures, who spoke in song and stories, with bodies soft and made of feathers. And the lady herself? He Who Remembers had only heard of her from his master, who in turn only remembered hearing of her from his master.






Saga listened as the young Avenfolk told her his tale. Hunters injured by some new creature, who's skin was hard as the metals of earth, commanded by a large figure, with a body like theirs but too tall to be one of them. It had felt to them that their warriors were now but prey.

While the young one spoke in fear, admittedly, Saga could was very excited. She was beginning to grow tired, stories of hunting the beasts of the forest were beginning to grow a little less unique by the day. But for something to have wandered in from the desert?

She asked the Avenfolk, "You are the one who remembers? Tell me, how far can you remember?"

The Avenfolk thought for a moment. "I can remember my life, and the stories of my master, and from my masters master, I remember hearing of you."

"But of the one who taught that master?"

The Avenfolk shook his head.

"Then I wonder, should the beasts be fought, or a way to slay them learnt, will we have to learn again in four masters time?"

The Avenfolk, already worried at the thought of fighting these beasts, only grew more worried now with the apparent meaningless of victory now brought before him.

Then, the lady pointed to the sky, in which there stood a figure of a man and of a rose.

"Those, young one, are how you will proceed!"

The boy was confused, and sensing this, Saga elaborated.

"When I saw those first appear in the sky, I learnt there were others like I. And to them, they wished to fill the sky with their own stories."

And then, with the commanding powers that came easily to a god, she pulled a great stone disc out of the earth.


"If you cannot live forever to tell your stories, you must do as the one who painted the sky did." she said, scratching an image onto the disc.

"As, when even you grow old, stone will not yet. And if your story is marked in stone, then all who come forth can see it. And should you find a weakness in the beasts, each trick and technique can all be remembered by those who come next."

Spoiler: AP actions

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Create Mundane Concept - Story Circles / Recording information(1AP) The avenfolk know that with time, each story they've remembered and told eventually fades away. But, Avenfolk communities deal with this by means of story spheres, great discs carved from stone that rest near communities, or left scattered wherever they may be needed. From names of great hunters, to tricks to ensure a better hunt, by carving it into stone, it can be ensured that those who come after will not forget what has been learnt.

Current AP: 5-1=4

[Mechalich]

Pantian, Condensing

Encirclement
The eruption of jungle in the center of Tessel disturbed Pantian. He could not initially fathom how such a thing could be, for surely there was not sufficient water to sustain these plants and animals, especially strange and thirsty as they were compared to the other life of the continent. Searching carefully, he observed in time that divine power coursed beneath the surface and had carved a great subterranean basin with countless channels bringing water upwards to sustain the verdant mass. This action made clear the intervention of another deity.

Loathe to directly intercede in the workings of one of his yet unseen kindred, but at the same time unwilling to allow this anomaly to compromise the design of Tessel as it inevitably must, he considered for a while what various options he might utilize. He decided, in the end, upon containment. Grasping the great flows beneath the earth once more, he channeled them upward. A ring of volcanoes, stout and towering, burst free from the desert sands surrounding the jungle. Higher and higher they piled their lava flows, forming great shields thousands of meters upwards. When at last they were silent a great ring of mountains, formidable cones sufficiently vertical that snow clung year-round to their upper slopes, surrounded the jungles.

Endowment
Crystalline in form, Pantian saw in all directions, and the actions of others throughout the First World did not go unnoticed. Though he recoiled from some moves, and found others stunningly short-sighted, some portion of the divine ministrations acquired his respect. In the northern lands, strangely lacking any title, he uncovered the existence of the elves. Their insightfulness and interaction with the world were pleasing, as was their slow-metered metabolism.

He gathered up some number of their kind and placed them within crystalline chambers that primal energies might flow through them, altering them according to the essence of Tessel, so that these beings would be changed in a manner enabling them to survive there. A careful transformation, one run through endless iterations in the cells beneath the land, unseen. Only the final function retained, a new variant of elf Pantian named Araulves.

These were humanoids with gray-tinted, almost ashen skin, turquoise-shaded hair and eyes, and able to consume the fruit of ginko and seed of cycad that flourished in their lands. They loved much the symmetry of life, and the shapes of leaves formed the patterns of their expression. Their bands flocked to the tropical forests of Tessel’s coasts, though they shunned the lands tainted by black sand.

Inducement
The arrival of the great dragons did not go unnoticed by the Enduring God. These creatures were not unsuited to the realms of Tessel, and he accepted their presence. Yet he soon saw their inclination to war upon each other. This too was acceptable, conflict was a part of the cycle of existence, but he would not have it pass unrestrained. Seeing this, he conceived of restraints that might be applied, but the dragons were neither gods to be treated as peers nor simple mortals to overawe. Instead, Pantian chose the path of dictation.

It would not serve, however, that the divine crystal interacts directly with such beings. Instead, Pantian projected a portion of his being into the first world for this purpose, and any other future need that might arise. This form was fashioned of eternally fluid lava, capable of taking many forms, though most often as a great wingless saurian, flying upon torrents of superheated air.

This formed fragment, named Olos, voyaged through the skies of Tessel, and brought word to the dragons of the divine crystal’s will. “Your five families may dwell here, and compete amongst each other as you will, but Tessel is not yours to possess nor destroy. Others of your class you may oppose freely, and your own homes you may defend, but you must leave the mortals theirs or find yours torn asunder. Do this and your own eyries and lairs shall remain inviolate eternally.”

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Alter Land - The Ring of Cones (1AP) - The Primal Jungles are surrounded by a great ring of silent volcanoes, thousands of meters in height. With no pass to the rest of Tessel below 2500 meters, the Jungles are effectively sealed away inside this alpine province. [Earth (Volcanism) 3/10]

Create Sapient Sub-Species - Araulves (1AP) - Araulves are altered elves that dwell in Tessel's primordial forests. Their primary difference from base elves is digestive, allowing them to effectively survive on gymnosperm-based vegetative products. [Plant (Gymnosperms) 1/10]

Create Avatar - Olos (3AP) - a creation of living magma, this fragment of Pantian serves as the deity's voice and, should it be necessary, wrath. [Earth (Volcanism) 6/10]

Starting AP: 14 Spent: 5 Remaining: 9

[zzzzzzzz414]

Starweaver's Eyrie

It is not known how many or how few ages passed as the one called Lunbyx sat atop her great peak. It is not known when she would have noticed the figure approaching from far below. But however long it took, the creature appeared on the ridge of ice not far below the peak much sooner than any would expect.

They resembled a Yeti; but this was not a Yeti like those that dwelled on the surface far below. This one was larger, with fur of black and silver; her left eye was a dark and churning gray, and there was nothing but pitted scars where her right would be; and, most baffling at all, she held no climbing-tools; she had somehow ascended the side of the sheer ice peak through strength alone. A long, pitch-black shadow stretched behind her.

The Yeti, who was the god called Corda, simply sat and observed for some time, taking in the gleaming tapestry of new-made stars above.

"They are beautiful," she said, simply. She turned to look at the silk-goddess perched above. "They are yours, yes? A magnificent sight. I am glad to have seen it."

Corda turned and watched for some time more, considering the softly gleaming lights. "I am only disappointed," she said, "that there are many who will not. Many of my own creations among them. What you have done has not been kind to the earth below. Frost has claimed many. Hunger and competition will claim many more. Many will survive. Others will not. Others I would have liked to meet, to know. There is a great and intricate complexity within living things, I have found. A many-layered tapestry of lights and intriguing shadows to explore. So in one way, I have gained a grand and beautiful vista. In another, I have lost ten thousand."There was no anger or malice in her words. It was a simple observation, the same as a comment on the shape of the mountains below.

Corda returned her one-eyed gaze to Lunbyx. "Perhaps that was your intention, star-weaver. Or perhaps not. I do not know. You are a stranger to me, as are most beyond this land. But I have seen the black waves. I know that great and terrible hungers exist beyond this place. Perhaps you are one of them. I am curious to know." The swirling gray in her eye glinted with an inscrutable hunger of her own.

[moossabi]

Spoiler

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Starweaver's Eyrie

It is not known how many or how few ages passed as the one called Lunbyx sat atop her great peak. It is not known when she would have noticed the figure approaching from far below. But however long it took, the creature appeared on the ridge of ice not far below the peak much sooner than any would expect.

They resembled a Yeti; but this was not a Yeti like those that dwelled on the surface far below. This one was larger, with fur of black and silver; her left eye was a dark and churning gray, and there was nothing but pitted scars where her right would be; and, most baffling at all, she held no climbing-tools; she had somehow ascended the side of the sheer ice peak through strength alone. A long, pitch-black shadow stretched behind her.

The Yeti, who was the god called Corda, simply sat and observed for some time, taking in the gleaming tapestry of new-made stars above.

"They are beautiful," she said, simply. She turned to look at the silk-goddess perched above. "They are yours, yes? A magnificent sight. I am glad to have seen it."

Corda turned and watched for some time more, considering the softly gleaming lights. "I am only disappointed," she said, "that there are many who will not. Many of my own creations among them. What you have done has not been kind to the earth below. Frost has claimed many. Hunger and competition will claim many more. Many will survive. Others will not. Others I would have liked to meet, to know. There is a great and intricate complexity within living things, I have found. A many-layered tapestry of lights and intriguing shadows to explore. So in one way, I have gained a grand and beautiful vista. In another, I have lost ten thousand."There was no anger or malice in her words. It was a simple observation, the same as a comment on the shape of the mountains below.

Corda returned her one-eyed gaze to Lunbyx. "Perhaps that was your intention, star-weaver. Or perhaps not. I do not know. You are a stranger to me, as are most beyond this land. But I have seen the black waves. I know that great and terrible hungers exist beyond this place. Perhaps you are one of them. I am curious to know." The swirling gray in her eye glinted with an inscrutable hunger of her own.

The apex of the peak is a disheveled mess of loose threads, increading in density until they form a veritable carpet under the waiting Lunbyx. The violet silkworm, lounging in her nest, allows her cousin to conclude each of her thoughts in turn, attentive yet courteous of the unspoken desires which permeated each pause. Upon Corda's concluding query, the other goddess speaks. "I am acquainted with your lesser kin; they helped deliver me unto this place once mine own had fallen, from whence I have bestown beauty upon the untouched void." Bereft of any ways to gesture, the purple worm inches closer to the other goddess in a friendly manner. "This improves the lives of all who look up into the darkened sky, a beautiful tapestry which enriches all those who would derive from it."

Upon reaching the feet of the towering beast, Lunbyx spins a tiny model of the Eyrie amidst its mountainous cauldron. "This spire granted me purchase against the heavens, a vantage from which to direct my creation," she caps it off with some snow from the ground next to them, "and I called upon the winds to disperse my gifts to every corner of this world. The formless void has been granted form, we are no longer adrift because we have a place amidst the cosmos. All this, I have done for this world, not to harm it." Her tone is perpetually soft, nearly eclipsed by the whirlwind brought about by the high altitude, but it carries with it a truly genuine insistence.

[zzzzzzzz414]

Spoiler: Lunbyx

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The apex of the peak is a disheveled mess of loose threads, increading in density until they form a veritable carpet under the waiting Lunbyx. The violet silkworm, lounging in her nest, allows her cousin to conclude each of her thoughts in turn, attentive yet courteous of the unspoken desires which permeated each pause. Upon Corda's concluding query, the other goddess speaks. "I am acquainted with your lesser kin; they helped deliver me unto this place once mine own had fallen, from whence I have bestown beauty upon the untouched void." Bereft of any ways to gesture, the purple worm inches closer to the other goddess in a friendly manner. "This improves the lives of all who look up into the darkened sky, a beautiful tapestry which enriches all those who would derive from it."

Upon reaching the feet of the towering beast, Lunbyx spins a tiny model of the Eyrie amidst its mountainous cauldron. "This spire granted me purchase against the heavens, a vantage from which to direct my creation," she caps it off with some snow from the ground next to them, "and I called upon the winds to disperse my gifts to every corner of this world. The formless void has been granted form, we are no longer adrift because we have a place amidst the cosmos. All this, I have done for this world, not to harm it." Her tone is perpetually soft, nearly eclipsed by the whirlwind brought about by the high altitude, but it carries with it a truly genuine insistence.

Corda cocked her head, slowly absorbing the goddess' words, then nodded. "Very well. I have no reason to doubt what you say. They are beautiful, it is true. And there is something to be said, too, of a sense of place, of position in the great emptiness of being. A map, where there was once bare stone. Still, though this world has been made richer, it has been made smaller as well. Harsher. Limited, in certain ways." She shrugged. "It is as it is. Every pass that opens closes another. The dwellers of this land will survive, and appreciate the wonder you have given them. But, hm..." She paused, struck by some idea. "I wonder, stranger, what you would make of a chance to expand the world in turn?"

The yeti reached a massive hand downwards towards the star-weaver, and as she did, invisible maelstroms built around it, flows and convergences of wind unseen, gusts of power both quieter and louder than the cold howling all around. "Think of this as a request. Or an opportunity. Or a gift of thanks. Or a burden. I do not know. But it is yours to do with as you will, if you want it." Corda's eyes shone in the starlight, eager and hungry for the answer to the question the outstretched hand offered.

Spoiler: AP Action

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Starting AP: 3

Create Land (??) [2-1 (Split with Lunbyx) = 1AP]

An offer from Corda to cooperate on a Create Land action, if Lunbyx wants it. Corda is giving herself no input; the only restriction is that it be a solid landmass/landmasses of some kind, on, above or around the First World.

3-1 = 2AP Remaining

[Elemental]

Aszamanarak: Explorations of an Primal World

Zipped, though shockingly informal, was the exact word to describe how Aszamanarak moved. It zipped to the World of Creation and zipped down through its atmosphere, only causing a minor sonic boom, and began zipping about its continents and oceans. Its movements seemed random, often staying nowhere for more than a few moments, other times following an animal or one of the mortal races for many years. On occasion It would latch onto a mortal and follow them from birth to death, whether they were mighty like a dragon or Thosh or humble like an Aven or Thrine. Sometimes It helped and gave advice, but usually It did nothing but observe, hovering and watching them, a tiny orb of shiny metal and crystal. Doubtless they were unnerved by Its presence, but after a few years they usually got used to its presence, especially once Aszamanarak entered the stories and legends of the world.

What took much less time to adjust to were the flowers. Everywhere that Aszamanarak went he trailed tiny sparks of light. Wherever these sparks fell they sunk deep into the soil and after many years they germinated. Roots went down, tapping deep into the minerals, metals and heat of the insides of the world and shoots went up and took shape. They unfurled clockwork leaves of metal and crystal that reached for the Sun's radiance and grew tall whether they got it or not. Over a period of a ten to one hundred years they reached a height of two or three metres before their growth slowed to a crawl. They then covered themselves in clockwork buds that opened into delicate flowers several inches across, each one a masterpiece of metal that gave the sound of tiny bells and released puffs of fine metallic dust whenever the wind jostled them. The dust acted as seeds and the clockwork flowers propagated across the world. Over time they reached all landscapes and all the depths of the seas as their progenitors tarnished and slowly broke down. Those among their kind made of more resilient metals would, however, endure eternal...

Of course, many of the peoples of the world immediately began collecting them as beautiful novelties. It would only be a matter of time before they figure out how to use them for more than that.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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Start: 6/16

Bless - Clockwork Flowers. (1AP)
The Clockwork Flowers are metallic plants that grow by extracting metals from the minerals in the ground. They have crystalline leaves and can use sunlight to fuel their growth, but they are also capable of tapping into geothermal energies as their roots grow very very deep. Their rate of growth is loosely based on the abundance of metals in the ground in which they grow. They can be made of any metals or allows in almost any combination. Some are pure, but most are mixed with some being so mixed that their flowers have petals of multiple metals. Theoretically they never die and their growth never stops, but the air is full of pesky oxygen and moisture.
A note, despite the fact that they release puffs of ultra-fine metallic dust this dust somehow never gets inhaled. These flowers are a blessing, not a curse. Just don't eat ones made of lead, okay? [Life (Automata) 6/10]

End: 5/16

[mystic1110]

Late to the Party

It is important to know that being first is simply not cool. Everyone knows that everyone’s favorite cousin arrives fashionably late. Oh, they are apologetic, and yes, they bring gifts, but really they have carefully planned the moment to come in such that everyone already in attendance has to stop what they are doing to greet them. Not that those present aren’t happy to greet them – who wouldn’t be happy – but really would it kill them to be on time for once?

Being late in this instance, is second nature. Of course Dust wasn’t first. People will say “oh we are all made of stardust” or whatever will function as stars around here, but what they forget is that stardust still comes from stars. Dust is, was, and always will be, arriving after someone else. Dust is the bits of everything that has come off in the friction of existence. That which is rubbed off by the simple fact of being. It comes after things are.

Cousin Dust walks through the Waterways. Not walks exactly, their form certainly had legs, but when you are floating left over particles you have to embrace a certain metaphorical fiction to make life easier to get through. Helps, if no one asks too many questions. A couple of Washers stare as they pass them. Oh, why not, they are wearing a hat – so they tip it at the Washers in greeting. How do you do Washers? Swell! A friendly, exchange, without breaking a figurative step. Ah, rains. Good. Needed some water to slick back this hair. Apparently they had hair now, and the hat was gone. Dust in the wind, and hats were rude indoors anyway. Needed to look good when meeting family.

A mirror in the raindrop, the Cousin grabs it and holds it in place to take a good look at Parody. Hmm, no, now the hair was too slick. They muss it up, achieving that rakish look between just waking up and dying. Their reflection winks at them. They wink back. Looking good killer.

Light bursts through the reflection. Someone made light. That’s nice. Every family needs someone responsible. Peering through the droplet they see land and where there’s land there’s Dust. It gets everywhere. Creatures, monsters. Family was busy. Too busy to talk to each apparently. Oh, wait – perhaps not. Someone was being social. Cousin even heard their name. Ah, but as quickly as it came, it passed. Back to doing.

Hmm, ah yes. Someone was finally talking – an actual conversation. Not a party exactly, but three is a crowd. Dust drops the raindrop mirror and reflections splatter onto the what passed as ground in the Waterways and they begin to fall, as motes only visible by firefly, as swirling allergens, and they float gently down to gather in a pile next to Lunbyx and Corda. These motes picked themselves up into the form of the silk worm and the yeti. Eh, a middle is hard to find, so let’s say they became a woman or what we call the liminal state of being between beauty and strength.

Cousins! So great that you are finally talking to each other.

Familiarity being the providence of Dust

How’ve you been? Where’s the rest of the Family? Eh, no use waiting about.

Dust sometimes appears as a Storm after all. The cousin shouts into the void as a maelstrom.

Hey all, we’re having a reunion here. Where’s the rest of ya!

[moossabi]

Spoiler

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Corda cocked her head, slowly absorbing the goddess' words, then nodded. "Very well. I have no reason to doubt what you say. They are beautiful, it is true. And there is something to be said, too, of a sense of place, of position in the great emptiness of being. A map, where there was once bare stone. Still, though this world has been made richer, it has been made smaller as well. Harsher. Limited, in certain ways." She shrugged. "It is as it is. Every pass that opens closes another. The dwellers of this land will survive, and appreciate the wonder you have given them. But, hm..." She paused, struck by some idea. "I wonder, stranger, what you would make of a chance to expand the world in turn?"

The yeti reached a massive hand downwards towards the star-weaver, and as she did, invisible maelstroms built around it, flows and convergences of wind unseen, gusts of power both quieter and louder than the cold howling all around. "Think of this as a request. Or an opportunity. Or a gift of thanks. Or a burden. I do not know. But it is yours to do with as you will, if you want it." Corda's eyes shone in the starlight, eager and hungry for the answer to the question the outstretched hand offered.

Spoiler: AP Action

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Starting AP: 3

Create Land (??) [2-1 (Split with Lunbyx) = 1AP]

An offer from Corda to cooperate on a Create Land action, if Lunbyx wants it. Corda is giving herself no input; the only restriction is that it be a solid landmass/landmasses of some kind, on, above or around the First World.

3-1 = 2AP Remaining

The worm shakes its nub of a head. "It is not my place to reshape the land below. My calling is to rise above such matters, to take the highest road possible in contrast to the depravity of the deep ones. My only rival is the sun, for it obstructs the upward path, and I see no reason to spark other conflicts with our kin by laying claim to both the heavens and earth." The refusal is not rude or unkind, yet the vaguery of the abstention hints at some form of ulterior motive lurks behind the abstention from terrestrial designs. Before this can be interrogated, however, the third deity arrives.

Spoiler

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Late to the Party

It is important to know that being first is simply not cool. Everyone knows that everyone’s favorite cousin arrives fashionably late. Oh, they are apologetic, and yes, they bring gifts, but really they have carefully planned the moment to come in such that everyone already in attendance has to stop what they are doing to greet them. Not that those present aren’t happy to greet them – who wouldn’t be happy – but really would it kill them to be on time for once?

Being late in this instance, is second nature. Of course Dust wasn’t first. People will say “oh we are all made of stardust” or whatever will function as stars around here, but what they forget is that stardust still comes from stars. Dust is, was, and always will be, arriving after someone else. Dust is the bits of everything that has come off in the friction of existence. That which is rubbed off by the simple fact of being. It comes after things are.

Cousin Dust walks through the Waterways. Not walks exactly, their form certainly had legs, but when you are floating left over particles you have to embrace a certain metaphorical fiction to make life easier to get through. Helps, if no one asks too many questions. A couple of Washers stare as they pass them. Oh, why not, they are wearing a hat – so they tip it at the Washers in greeting. How do you do Washers? Swell! A friendly, exchange, without breaking a figurative step. Ah, rains. Good. Needed some water to slick back this hair. Apparently they had hair now, and the hat was gone. Dust in the wind, and hats were rude indoors anyway. Needed to look good when meeting family.

A mirror in the raindrop, the Cousin grabs it and holds it in place to take a good look at Parody. Hmm, no, now the hair was too slick. They muss it up, achieving that rakish look between just waking up and dying. Their reflection winks at them. They wink back. Looking good killer.

Light bursts through the reflection. Someone made light. That’s nice. Every family needs someone responsible. Peering through the droplet they see land and where there’s land there’s Dust. It gets everywhere. Creatures, monsters. Family was busy. Too busy to talk to each apparently. Oh, wait – perhaps not. Someone was being social. Cousin even heard their name. Ah, but as quickly as it came, it passed. Back to doing.

Hmm, ah yes. Someone was finally talking – an actual conversation. Not a party exactly, but three is a crowd. Dust drops the raindrop mirror and reflections splatter onto the what passed as ground in the Waterways and they begin to fall, as motes only visible by firefly, as swirling allergens, and they float gently down to gather in a pile next to Lunbyx and Corda. These motes picked themselves up into the form of the silk worm and the yeti. Eh, a middle is hard to find, so let’s say they became a woman or what we call the liminal state of being between beauty and strength.

Cousins! So great that you are finally talking to each other.

Familiarity being the providence of Dust

How’ve you been? Where’s the rest of the Family? Eh, no use waiting about.

Dust sometimes appears as a Storm after all. The cousin shouts into the void as a maelstrom.

Hey all, we’re having a reunion here. Where’s the rest of ya!

The sudden appearance of the other goddess catches the silkworm offguard, prompting her to cautiously slink back into the center of her nest as the dust pile takes its shape. Lunbyx had assumed there were others from the start, obviously someone planted the sun upon the heavens, but this one seemed far more esoteric than anything else she had observed or encountered. As such, her reply is cautiously restrained, uneasy about the prospect of a grand invitation to her simple loft. "I would not consider this a REunion personally, as this is the first time I am meeting with-" She catches herself, noticing the social faux pas. "Dark-furred cousin, I don't believe you offered your name. Of course, I was also remiss in this matter. Lunbyx, weaver of the stars..." She passes another glance over the new arrival, coming to a decision. "...Tis a pleasure to meet you, both."

[Zelphas]

Deyna: Ruining the Party

"Well, you seem fun." shreds of fluffy white cloth boil under a black iron mask, stepping out from Dust's shadow to regard him. "But words are nothing with nothing behind them. Actions, dear cousin, actions! What will you make with your oh-so-serious dreams and desires?!"

"Speaking of which..." Before Corda can withdraw her Maelstrom-filled hand, a white fluffy blob slaps it, sucking away the storms with a whoosh. "Expanding the world, hmm... A request, an opportunity, a gift, a burden..." The white motes spins shreds of cloud and lightning between them like threads cotton candy, watched over by the ever-smiling iron mask. The red eye is blazing with a secret joke, but the blue eye is thoughtful. "How to tie those together. After all, it's hardly a game if you don't use all the Rules. Request is simple: make land. Opportunity--well, let's say this is a chance to learn. A gift... I know! A gift to those who walk upon it. And a burden." The threads shatter with discordant twangs, and far to the east there is a low rumble. "To you or me, who knows? Let's find out." The mask pops, taking the white fluff with it.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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4 AP

Create Land - Anukriti (1 AP (+1 AP from Corda)): Anukriti is a roughly banana-shaped continent south and east of Umbryal, nearly due east of the unnamed land, and north and east of Tessel. It is roughly the size of Europe, consisting of a series of high plateaus and rolling hills, with deep fjords poking in from all sides, complicated caverns, and very few natural bays or ports for easy entry. The horizon line is nearly always obscured by coniferous forests, rocky cliffsides, or deep valleys, with the only true vistas being on the cliffs at the edge of the continent. The forests teem with wildlife, the fjords and rivers with fish, and the caverns with bats and other sightless creatures.

Bless - Know the Land (1 AP): Every living creature that is within, above, or on top of Anukriti is given full knowledge of every bit of the continent at the moment of its formation, though the interpretation of this knowledge varies depending on the mind of the being.

4 - 1 - 1 = 2 AP Remaining

[mystic1110]

That's the thing about having a large family - people are always coming and going. Barging in to borrow some sugar, create a new race in your bedroom, stir up an apocalypse in the atrium. One simply loses track.

Dust swirls slightly, becoming masculine. If Parody wanted them to be less effeminate, who were they to say no. It's not like these concepts actually pertained to them. And, gender is like close personal boundaries, obviously family will confuse them. Forgiveness was a necessity in close quarters, especially when they all lived forever and the closed doors were less than suggestions.

The rakish and handsome Duststorm raises a just formed penciled brow, addressing Corda with a light and insubstantial air:

Ha, well - they were in a hurry. Did you mean to give that to them?

[Elemental]

Aszamanarak: The Impossible Reunion

No one and nothing had ever spoken to Aszamanarak before. Not the Maintainers, not Itself, not Her Radiant Insectoid Majesty, the Giver of Light and Life. Well, numerous mortals had attempted to speak to It, but for the purposes of the thought currently running through Its unfathomable clockwork mind they did not count. No, only now had an entity spoken to Aszamanarak as what Aszamanarak was, a being endowed with an indivisible and undeniable Spark of Divinity.

And Aszamanarak found it grating.

A reunion? They had never met, there could be no reunion. All indivisible, undeniable Sparks of Divinity originated from the same source, the correct familial connection if one sought to use such a crude approximation would be sibling. But It should not allow Itself to become rude over technicalities, there was after all no guarantee that Its 'siblings' were as perfectly logical as It.

So It zipped to the great ice mountain at the northern pole.


Upon arrival It zipped around each of the deities assembled as a form of greeting, acknowledging them all politely. It was not, after all, possible for It to bow, curtsey, shake hands or salute. In comparison to them all Aszamanarak was physically insignificant, a tiny floating ball of shiny metals and crystal, but no doubt they recognised within Itself a divinity that transcended silly things like physical dimensions and material considerations. It made a mental note not to underestimate simply due to how silly they all looked. Once again it zipped around each of them and addressed them in order of how long they'd been there on the mountain.

"You are the Grand Weaver of the Heavens and your name is not known to me. You are Corda, a name recorded in the legends of the Yetis of Umbyral of whom you are the divine progenitor. You are Late and Noisy and have no deeds of note and your name is not known to me. You are the Forger of the Faulty Mirror and your name is not known to me," Aszamanarak's voice echoes in the minds of every creature within a hundred miles, but only the divine can understand Its chosen means of communication. It also only says the last bit if Deyna is still there, this guy named Elemental is unsure if they left or not. (I think they did but I don't want to be rude in case I'm wrong.)
"I am Eternal. I am Inevitable. I am Aszamanarak."

"Now, with the formalities out of the way, it's a pleasure to properly make your acquaintances. Big fan of your work, these mortals have a great capacity to temporarily defy time which I find fascinating. It's a shame you can't put them back together when they fall apart. I tried a few times, but I must be using the wrong adhesive."

[mystic1110]

Deeds and actions. Family was always wondering what you were doing. As if occupation was the purpose of being. But while one didn't have to dream of labor, relatives did have to be nosy - it was their right and duty. Like dust, the grime of unsolicited advice covered the household. It was what should be.

Dust billowed into vast see-through gears of a mechanism wrought of soot and smut.

Come Asza don't you recognize me? I'm your Cousin.

Dust wasn't hurt, the feeling of having an aunt come over and kiss you on the cheek while not knowing her name was the very essence of their being. Kinship had a grain of presumed knowledge, that annoying vein of blood that coursed through such familial relationship as, well, familiar. Cousin, you might ask, but how many times removed, and on which side?

[Elemental]

Aszamanarak: Genealogy is Hard

Aszamanarak zipped around Cousin Dust a few times, just to be sure. The new mechanical form the strange loud one took was certainly admirable, much healthier looking than the previous, but just as ephemeral and Aszamanarak knew better than to let it cloud Its judgement.

"Though the exact nature of our familial connection is vague and uncertain its existence is undeniable. Cousin shall serve as an acceptable approximation. However, while I feel our connection, I still don't know your name. What am I to call you? Do you have a name dear cousin? We can look for it if you've lost it."

[zzzzzzzz414]

Starweaver's Eyrie

Spoiler: Lunbyx

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The worm shakes its nub of a head. "It is not my place to reshape the land below. My calling is to rise above such matters, to take the highest road possible in contrast to the depravity of the deep ones. My only rival is the sun, for it obstructs the upward path, and I see no reason to spark other conflicts with our kin by laying claim to both the heavens and earth." The refusal is not rude or unkind, yet the vaguery of the abstention hints at some form of ulterior motive lurks behind the abstention from terrestrial designs.

"...I see. So it is, then." Something in Corda's expression hardened, ever so slightly.

Before anything else could be said of it, though, many things happened in close succession.

Spoiler: Cousin Dust

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Cousins! So great that you are finally talking to each other.

Familiarity being the providence of Dust

How’ve you been? Where’s the rest of the Family? Eh, no use waiting about.

Dust sometimes appears as a Storm after all. The cousin shouts into the void as a maelstrom.

Hey all, we’re having a reunion here. Where’s the rest of ya!

Spoiler: Deyna

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"Well, you seem fun." shreds of fluffy white cloth boil under a black iron mask, stepping out from Dust's shadow to regard him. "But words are nothing with nothing behind them. Actions, dear cousin, actions! What will you make with your oh-so-serious dreams and desires?!"

"Speaking of which..." Before Corda can withdraw her Maelstrom-filled hand, a white fluffy blob slaps it, sucking away the storms with a whoosh. "Expanding the world, hmm... A request, an opportunity, a gift, a burden..." The white motes spins shreds of cloud and lightning between them like threads cotton candy, watched over by the ever-smiling iron mask. The red eye is blazing with a secret joke, but the blue eye is thoughtful. "How to tie those together. After all, it's hardly a game if you don't use all the Rules. Request is simple: make land. Opportunity--well, let's say this is a chance to learn. A gift... I know! A gift to those who walk upon it. And a burden." The threads shatter with discordant twangs, and far to the east there is a low rumble. "To you or me, who knows? Let's find out." The mask pops, taking the white fluff with it.

Spoiler: Cousin Dust

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Dust swirls slightly, becoming masculine. If Parody wanted them to be less effeminate, who were they to say no. It's not like these concepts actually pertained to them. And, gender is like close personal boundaries, obviously family will confuse them. Forgiveness was a necessity in close quarters, especially when they all lived forever and the closed doors were less than suggestions.

The rakish and handsome Duststorm raises a just formed penciled brow, addressing Corda with a light and insubstantial air:

Ha, well - they were in a hurry. Did you mean to give that to them?

Corda had not, precisely, spent the eons since her creation in isolation. The land of Umbyral, the mountains and valleys and beasts, had a character of its own, and one she knew well. But it was a very different sort of character than the expansive personality before her now, or the inexplicable figure that had just appeared and vanished before her. It took a moment for her to recover.

"That...was not intended for them, no. But I am intrigued by what they have done with it, regardless." Already she could feel the urge of wanderlust, the desire to go and see what this curious being had brought into the world. But then there was the matter of this stranger, and these..others?...he had called as well. Many paths, many possibilities. Look - here was another, now. Her eye gleamed with anticipation.

Spoiler: Aszamanarak

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Upon arrival It zipped around each of the deities assembled as a form of greeting, acknowledging them all politely. It was not, after all, possible for It to bow, curtsey, shake hands or salute. In comparison to them all Aszamanarak was physically insignificant, a tiny floating ball of shiny metals and crystal, but no doubt they recognised within Itself a divinity that transcended silly things like physical dimensions and material considerations. It made a mental note not to underestimate simply due to how silly they all looked. Once again it zipped around each of them and addressed them in order of how long they'd been there on the mountain.

"You are the Grand Weaver of the Heavens and your name is not known to me. You are Corda, a name recorded in the legends of the Yetis of Umbyral of whom you are the divine progenitor. You are Late and Noisy and have no deeds of note and your name is not known to me. You are the Forger of the Faulty Mirror and your name is not known to me," Aszamanarak's voice echoes in the minds of every creature within a hundred miles, but only the divine can understand Its chosen means of communication. It also only says the last bit if Deyna is still there, this guy named Elemental is unsure if they left or not. (I think they did but I don't want to be rude in case I'm wrong.)
"I am Eternal. I am Inevitable. I am Aszamanarak."

"Now, with the formalities out of the way, it's a pleasure to properly make your acquaintances. Big fan of your work, these mortals have a great capacity to temporarily defy time which I find fascinating. It's a shame you can't put them back together when they fall apart. I tried a few times, but I must be using the wrong adhesive."

Spoiler: Cousin Dust

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Dust billowed into vast see-through gears of a mechanism wrought of soot and smut.

Come Asza don't you recognize me? I'm your Cousin.

"Hm. Well, it would seem you two know of me in some way, though I know nothing of you." She turned to the ever-shifting dusty one first. "So you are the one named...Cousin, then?" No, that wasn't correct, exactly. Corda had not heard of the word, but she could sense the meaning and intent behind it. "Or you are saying we are...connected? In what way? I do not know you, stranger. Though I would be interested in doing so. Who are you, truly? Who are the others of which you spoke? Do you bring tales of other lands and sights, of creations beyond this place?" Corda's expression gleamed with an undisguised eagerness - an explorer contemplating a cave mouth, a hunter closely watching its isolated prey.

Spoiler: AP Actions

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1AP shared with Lunbyx retroactively changed to 1AP shared with Deyna

Nature (Forests) 8/10