Microupdate.
A great beast arrives on the continent of Carociber. Another one. The presence of the great Minotaur Calyvaro could be felt long before the rising cloud of steam could be seen on the horizon. Denizens of Carociber were on edge for days before the steaming beast swam ashore in a tidal wave of steam and boiling water. His presence causes tensions to rise and the violence to become more common. Predators hunted more than they needed, and even peaceful creatures were prone to fits of rage. These effects die down a few days after the arrival of Calyvaro. However, death increases dramatically due to the ensuring rampage of the monster. His flaming hooves sinking deep into the burning screaming fleshscape, causing more burning and more screaming. He subsequently begins killing everything, from the smallest flesh lily, to one unfortunate tribe of Klixzinox. Some which look the most like the monster are spared the rampage, and a subspecies quickly develops, the minoklix are particularly minotuar like in their appearance, the great monstrocity acting as a form of natural selection.
The mythos of the Klix as a whole is a particularly diverse religion. The Klix see themselves as the fourth incarnation of something they call "Karinoose" though when they say it, it has significantly less syllables. They believe that Karinoos is the essence of everything, a cyclic force of reincarnation which is not exactly a person or deity, but more like a sentient driving force. The first iteration of Karinoos was cold and dead, a thing composed of bone and stillness. The First could not die and lived in a dead still nothingness. Then a being of great power arrived and was angered by the stillness and unchanging nature of the First. This being fought with the First and was injured. The first karinoose bit through the neck of Xikyra, eating the neck. With its head cut off and its shining blood spattering across the sky. The attacker turned to flee, but the first would not let it go until it had struck the final blow, yet the first could not slay the attacker without breaking her stillness eternally, and thus entrapped the being in a cycle, so that it would never be able to escape. This attacker, was the sun, and its decapitated head the moon. Even removed from the body of the glowing creature, the head still glows with an echo of its former power, while the running body throws blood across the sky as it attempts to run away from the First. Content, the First returned to stillness, but it too had been wounded, and began to bleed. From it's blood, the second arose. A great sea of blood and flesh that spilled forth from the marrow of the First, sapping her of her power. This flesh spread across the entirety of the damaged first. Yet the first had eaten the flesh of the sun, and this caused terrible indigestion. The sunblood, what the Klix call the lava, eternally tries to burn its way out of the first and return to the sky. This is thought to be painful, and the Klix mourn the pain of the first. Much later, the flesh itself was thought to evolve and change. The Klix point to the fleshlings, bits that break off the meatland and try to live as individual beings in a horrifying Cronenberg fashion. These were the third iteration of Karinoos, and are considered omens by the Klix. Their formation, appearance, and behavior are thought to contain messages from the first translated through the second. As for themselves, they are the forth. The first enacted the karinoos the fourth time for it was dying, returning to the stillness of which it came. It thus sent its soul forth, to be reborn as a new being, as is the nature of karinoos. However, the sunblood which runs through the earth in great underground rivers broke the soul into many pieces. Its from these scattered pieces the Klix were born, each one a representation of what the fourth could have been. When they die, their soul returns to the first, where it came from, its bled into the second, manifested in the third, and if its lucky, comes to inhabit the body of one of its descendants. Thus the cycle of karinoos continues forever. It is action and change, locked within a constant unchanging cycle.
The minoklix believe the minotaur to be the fifth incarnation of karinoos, or perhaps a particularly large chunk of the first soul. Many point to the massive death caused by the appearance of the darklands as justification for this. If there was massive death all at once, much of the first soul would return to its dead body at once and would then return as a large creation if it encountered no sunblood. Some say that the minotaur was a chunk of soul that instead of being split by the sunblood, drank it and stole its power. Much speculation is had, but those which is spares find it difficult to argue against its divinity, and those it does not spare, well, they find it much harder to argue.
Meanwhile on Pangea, dark forces are at work. The Ishagi had spread wide across the continent, stopped to the north by a druid and hordes of winged tree living mortals. To the south they were stopped by magic resistant mortals who beat them with their own bodies. If the Ishagi were upset by being attacked with the limbs of their fallen. Their advance had always been silent, for the Ishagi have no language and do not communicate with eachother. Yet their expansion pushed them into a specific section of jungle that the mortals of this realm knew better to avoid. A terribly dark jungle of webs, legs, and death. Unfearing, the Ishagi continued onwards, their march stirring forces which had been satisfied to sit and wait. Yet as they pushed in, they found themselves ensnared in webs, and their writhing drew out the spider to which those webs belonged. Eurythia found the Ishagi tearing into her home and was pleased. She had yet to encounter mortals, and these strange things had a strange mentality she found alluring. Dozens of Ishagi disappear into the Jungle of Webs. Eurythia becomes more active in the world.
The Annelidians had gone without direction for a long time now. The prophet of the god Tauron had risen to power in the twisting tunnels, and established a nomadic theocracy. Large sections of the underworld belonged to the twisting tunnels, about a third of the total area. This was the domain of the Cult Far Walkers, a massive tribe of Annelidians which roamed the twisting tunnels. Led by the great navigator Anno. The far walkers were one people organized into a theocracy which espoused Tauron as the creator and the molder of earth. Anno led hundreds, if not thousands, of annelidians through the tunnels, and they roamed between the caverns that had a great deal of food. As a result they would travel, forage, and then move on. To some degree, minor agriculture was discovered. The annelidians would spread spores of mushrooms across caverns before they left them, they basically did this everywhere they went. This is a holdover from their previous mythology, and was thought to encourage the growth of more wormapes, however in reality it just seeded caverns that the annelidians had collected food from. As a result, the annelidians under Anno began a great cyclical migration, moving to the same caverns year after year, always guided by Anno. If the tunnels were generous, and they could reach all the caverns, they praised and thanked Tauron. But if they could not, which was occasionally the case, they would pray to Tauron and ask themselves why Tauron was punishing them. Societal order was born out of this, and actions which were seen as evil or heretical were punished heavily so as not to offend Tauron. Strict societal norms developed among the nomadic people. Some of taurons influence spread tot he more stable areas, but those areas were still disinclinded to change. They had food, water, and stability. There was no reason for them to change, and thus, they lived simple hunter gatherer lifestyles for generation after generation, each one less likely to change than the last. Some dissidents would travel to the tunnels seeking intrigue and adventure, but they either found impossible to navigate mazes, or the even more rigid social structure of the cult.
(These numbers represent the act inventories at the start of the turn and do not reflect changes since then)
Typheus (Nakeen): 1 minor act, 1 eldritch act
Minor act per turn income (Duro)
Rexilium (Crazyabe): 1 Eldritch act, 2 minor act
1 Minor act per turn income (Klix and Sciro)
Tauron (ShadowClaw777): 1 act, 1 minor act, 1 earth act
1 act and 1 minor act per turn income (Boroi and wormapes)
Acter ( Glass): 1 act, 1 analysis act, 1 eldritch act
1 act per turn income (sciro)
Kyazir (Taricus): 1 act, one minor act
1 minor act and 1 act per turn income (Tasatha and boroi)
Julius (Doubloon-Seven): 1 act, 2 minor acts
1 act per turn income (Incilatro)
Aedanusuirillystiphosidarap (Maximum Spin) 3 eldritch acts, 1 normal act,
1 act per turn from the Aedans
Soolien (NRDL): 1 act, 1 minor act
minor act per turn from city residents
Author
Topic: Gods of Creation III (IC) (Read 30990 times)