Name: Pif-Ria
Role: God
Sphere: Joy
Appearance: When communing with mortals, Pif-Ria usually takes the form of a young (pre-adolescent, unless romance is on her mind) female of whichever race she is dealing with. Her clothes and body are often decorated with confections, ribbons, flowers, and other objects likely to elicit positive thoughts. If her form has fur or hair it is always a bright neon shade between red and pink. If her form has flesh, it is always a soft yellow in color with purple splotches. If her form has scales, they are sky blue and specked with white. When dealing with a race that has knowledge of baking, her body might instead be made of cake or cookie instead of conventional bio-material.
Personality: Pif-Ria's mood is almost always positive, but her personality behavior is rather nebulous and based on what she believes would make those around her most happy. Pif-Ria can be an innocent impressionable daughter, loving mother, passionate lover, or a fun best friend, and can switch between these personas seamlessly to suit her audience.
Description: Pif-Ria was got her start as a sentient cake made by a master baker who was trying to develop the ultimate treat in the previous Kapla. It was said that her personality was so sweet and agreeable, that no mortal could bring himself to eat her. Eventually the baker began to offer her as a gift to the gods, but, one by one, each deity found happiness in conversing with Pif-Ria, refused to eat her, and left her with a gift: Animation and mobility from the god of artifice, an appreciation for beauty from the goddess of nature, a hatred of misery from the justice deity, and deep wisdom from the goddess of magic.
It is said that in the last days of Pif-Ria's original Kapla, the Ancient, having heard of the masterfully baked confection that nobody could bring him or herself to eat, traveled to the bakery to test its will against her. Pif-Ria and the bringer of the end talked for days, some say even weeks or years, but in the Ancient's result was the same as all those who came before it; It could not bring itself to eat the cake. The gift the Ancient gave Pif-Ria was the greatest of all; The promise of goodhood in the next Kapla.
As a goddess, Pif-Ria is as benevolent as she is irresponsible; She waits listening to the prayers of mortals, and picks suffering wretches to make happy with her power seemingly at random. She shows little foresight or regard for those she is not actively trying to make happy; Pif-Ria will gladly make thousands miserable to bring joy and bliss to the few people who presently have her attention. When dealing with her fellow deities, Pif-Ria will often side with the most frustrated or angry, and aim to make that god or goddess happy. This behavior may seem treacherous and unpredictable to those who don't know her, as she will glad stick a knife in the back of an ally to bring happiness to the god she has just finished beating down. Pif-Ria's moral code may also be found dubious by other gods, she values joy above all else, and feels it better to allow (or force) somebody to die happy than live in misery.
Name: Saint Meoboroje of the Aegis
Role: God
Sphere: Protection from the Divine
Appearance: Saint Meoboroje is humanoid in appearance, and indeed looks almost human, save for the occasional plate of natural armor along the body: the sides of his heads, for example, contain not ears but are instead covered by semi-metallic demi-spheres sunken into his head, and the fronts of his legs and arms have similar plates on them. Most of these plates have a crack or cracks spread throughout them, though they are no less sturdy for it. Saint Meoboroje almost always appears in chainmail, with a longsword strapped by his hip. The most important thing he has is his Aegis: a large shield, it appears to be cracked into many, many pieces... though each piece remains in the shield and the shield remains whole.
Personality: Saint Meoboroje possesses a few key traits that are the reason he is in the form he is, the reason he ever became more than a simple guard: The urge to protect those under danger from the more powerful runs in like him like blood. While this does lead to perseverance, bravery, and selflessness, Meoboroje is far from perfect. He is frequently stubborn to the point of outright ignorance, insisting that his way is the only way and outright acting as if alternate solutions do not exist. He is also very impatient and prone to getting angry, and probably would have engaged in many feuds in his former universe if not for the fact that the ascendants of Emotion and Intelligence typically would rein him in... how he does without them is yet to be seen.
Description: Saint Meoboroje of the Aegis was a mortal once, a simple mortal guard living in one of the larger mortal cities in the universe. His race had been created by a trio of Gods (Emotion, Honor, and Intelligence), and lived mostly unmolested except for their own mortal problems. Living as a guard, Meoboroje had been surprised along with the rest of the guard by one of these mortal problems: Bandits. They'd come upon the group in patrol, and when a fellow guardsman was wounded, Meoboroje threw himself into the path of the weapons, guarding the man with his life and his body.
The God of Honor was impressed by the actions of Saint Meoboroje, and decided him a worthy recipient of something he had been working on: The Aegis. This divine shield made Meoboroje an Ascendant, a defender of the people, and this role he served for about two centuries, helping shepherd the people (along with the fellow Ascendants from Emotion and Intelligence) into a beautiful golden age, the height of their prosperity.
It wasn't destined to last. His world was peaceful, but elsewhere war raged, cosmic beings fought and strived and eventually... cosmic beings died. The end of the Kalpa approached, and the Ancient appeared. Emotion, Honor, and Intelligence worked together to allow their species to escape, which culminated in a grand vessel built, which was to sail outside of the universe, to a shielded part of the Abyss. Saint Meoboroje was on this vessel like the other Ascendants... and when the vessel was nearly escaped, the Ancient finally gave chase, rearing back to strike down the ship with a single, mighty physical blow.
Saint Meoboroje leaped off of the vessel. He channeled every single bit of his meager divine power, the power he had been saving, into the Aegis. He blocked the blow with his body. And though the power of an Ascendant is pitiful compared to the power of an Ancient, it was enough to prevent the blow from striking down the vessel, which escaped unharmed. Meoboroje himself was somewhat less lucky, initially: His Aegis was shattered, he was shattered, and he was sent flying out unprotected and at high speeds into the Void.
The nature of the Void and the nature of his own semi-divinity caused a strange reaction... Meoboroje awoke after countless eons to find the shield whole, if not undamaged... much like himself. But more importantly, he awoke as something more than an Ascendant: a God, in a newly reborn universe.
Name: Vodoth
Role: God
Sphere: Life
Appearance: A monstrous, vaguely dragon like beast reflected in natural forms. Clouds in the form of teeth in the sky, snaking cracks in a cliff face, knotted eyes forming a glare from a tree. The forms are always slightly different and could be mistaken for natural patterns. If you see him in a real, animal form then he is deadly serious.
Personality: Views all life as worthy of protecting and advancing, for it is all so interesting, though he takes a long view of preserving the group over individuals and ecosystems over species. He sees himself and nature as superior over intelligent mortals and that they should be thankful if he decides to act in their favor. He tends to be cooperative with equals, treating them as family and honoring agreements, although he will hold a grudge.
Description: Vodoth forms naturally out of the complexity of living things and the ecosystems and areas they live in. He seeks to expand the complexity and scale of these things to create many unusual and entertaining things to watch from a distance, preferring to act on large scale changes that trickle down to other areas. He would prefer to adapt life forms to fit an environment over altering the landscape directly.
Name: Kerikavae.
Role: God.
Sphere: Death/Undeath/Mind (Sorta all blurred into one, More along the lines of thinking undead rather then mindless undead.)
Appearance: Kerikavae, as a god of death and thought, usually appears as a corpse or an amalgamation of corpses. Said corpse can vary in level of decay, anywhere from the bleached bones of a long dead skeletal husk, to the recently dead, of a time not even an hour past. Rarely, Kerikavae will appear in a dark red scholar's robe, nearly always holding a black unlabled book, a dark hood shadowing the face, none know what lies beneath, although many speculate it's corpselike.
Personality: Kerikavae could be described as a neutral, it doesn't appreciate the loss of minds through death, considers it wrong actually and he/it considers itself the father of thinking undead, and often even partly devote followers with unfinished business or simply not wishing to go to the void will find their lives don't quite end when their hearts grow cold. Sometimes this is seen as a curse, sometimes as a blessing, the extra time is simply what the follower makes of it. Kerikavae dislikes mindless undead, occasionally going so far as to bless them with thought. Although he is not against using them when needed. He considers himself a shepherd of souls, simply doing his best to ensure they don't linger too long and ensuring they proceed on to whatever destination lies in wait. Although on occasion he'll allow one to stay longer. He could be called kind on occasion, yet he could also be dubbed cruel, eternity is an awful thing to behold alone afterall.
Description: Directives on undead: Roaming mindless undead are to be removed, subjegated, or granted thought. The souls of the departed not tethered to their bodies are to be given gentle pushes towards passing on or tethered to their bodies for a prolonged stay should they so wish. Incorporeal Spirits overstaying their welcome are to be roughly shoved towards the door of the afterlife if they refuse to leave after their final business is complete or should it be deemed implausible by whichever attendant is dealing with it. A thinking undead who's body withers away to dust or is destroyed is to move on to the next stage of existence, their extension to mortality only lasts till their body is shattered or dust, at that point they are treated as Incorporeal Spirits. Kerikavae has an interest in creating a haven for the undead, both with thought and without, those who dabble in the magicks of life and death, and anything that simply has unfinished business in the mortal realms. He/it supports magic of all kinds, especially those that can revitalize the body or prolong one's mortal existence, becoming undead is not something to seek out without proper thought. Alternative ways to live longer are of interest to him. As for other deities, so long as they do not bother him, he will not bother them. No need to interact normally. No reason.
Name: The Feral Artist
Role: Ascendant
Appearance:
There is beauty in the horrid. The vines, the branches, the roots, they all seamlessly and peacefully wrap around the crystalline form, though some would say it twists and gnaws and crushes the being it once was. The light enters through it and exits as a ray of brilliant color, but deep inside the crystal is cracked and deformed, warped by change. It is colossal, yet puny compared to all that matters in this universe. The crystal rumbles rhythmically, pulsating with a plethora of colors. It never makes a sound, yet deep inside its feral instincts begs its crystal body to scream.
Personality:
Love and loathing to the Feral Artist are what roots and branches are to trees. One cannot exist without the other. One needsthe other. When Pif-Ria, the most beautiful and perfect being that the Artist first knew, created it from a Wallowing, a creature of change and feeling, and a Mind, a being of stasis and single-mindedness, an internal war ensued.
It is fueled by self-loathing and self-pity, viewing itself as the ugliest thing in Creation, unworthy of attention, misplaced and lost. But what Pif-Ria gave to it was joy, and for that it was eternally grateful. It felt joy when it created. It felt joy when others acknowledged its creations. But that joy was passing, and for that reason the Artist always creates. Always strives to reach new highs, masking its hideousness with beauty.
Description:
Its one goal is to make the most beautiful artwork in existence, its Masterpiece, and indirectly give itself true joy.
Name: Raalmana, Scholar of Hubris
Role: Ascendant
Appearance: A six-legged winged lizard creature like the rest, but different. Its body is hard and translucent like glass, its scales sharp. Within are visible its nerves and blood, scintillating and coursing with cyan, liquid fire. Its claws are more dextrous than its siblings, the better to manipulate its surroundings.
Personality: Raalmana is externally very inscrutable, not given to showings its feelings or motives, but internally driven by insatiable curiosity, continually questioning the nature of everything. Raalmana will satisfy its curiosity at any cost.
Description: Upon the words of its divine parents before its hatching, the power of the gods to create and change things filled Raalmana with both wonder and envy. Posessing this new power of the Arcane, as-yet untapped by anyone else, Raalmana will seek to grow its power in imitation of the divine, while also using it to probe the mysteries of existence. Raalmana will search for the how and why of everything, both to know and to reproduce the effects once their causes are discovered. To find what makes the various forms of life tick, and if such processes can be replicated, altered, suspended, or restarted. To understand the mysteries of matter, time, light, darkness, and the very mechanism by which the gods exercise their power and write the physical laws. Most likely, Raalmana's researches will start out with simple questions in mind but delve ever more complex as the increasingly intricate workings of nature are discovered.
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Topic: Kalpa Reboot: A Gods' Game [Kalpa 1/Turn 5] (Read 16060 times)