Chapter I, Turn 2: In Which Gods Walk, For Appropriate Definitions Of Walk
A wispy force quickly gains prominence as the only lesser force actually paying attention; Felidae whimsically decides to use the power of the 6 of Cats to strengthen the wisps' attachment to the creative flux, anchoring it firmly to the universe as the level three force of Secrets. Secrets immediately plays its new Knave to enact the law that some part of the universe will always be undetectable to outsiders of lesser power than forces — since no particular part of the universe was suggested, the universe takes the lazy way to resolve this action by rendering the entire universe undetectable from the outside. Of course, any power higher than a Knave would still be able to detect it, so don't rule out invading void monsters just yet. In any case, not all the forces seem as happy about the newcomer, as Improvement spends an entire 2 to guarantee that no secrets will ever escape its omniscient gaze. At this point nobody has actually tried to hide anything from Improvement yet.
Improvement continues by spending the 3 and 5 of Gains to achieve yet other ends. First, with the 3, Improvement seizes the Glum Law and overturns it; through the ineffable nature of words, this means that Improvement literally turns the law upside-down in conceptual space, transforming it to the Wal Mulg which guarantees that everything in existence must feel good about itself. The little coral cubes are suddenly much more cheerful as they go about the business of existing. Improvement may choose to rename the new law if for some reason backwards words aren't good enough for it or something. Once the change has been accomplished, though, the 5 of Gains attempts something much more ambitious: taming the roiling chaos of the spherescubes into a state suitable for the emergence of life. Since this only matches the power of the law of the Chaotic Progression of Matter, the two must work together to seek an equilibrium; the force of Chaos ultimately decides the path this process will take, though, by spending the 9 of Bedlam to build a divine mechanism called the Siriusly System.
The Siriusly System is centred on Catstar Siriusly, a tiny icosahedron of pure Chaos which continually acts as both a source and sink of all the energy a 9 suffices to coördinate. This object accretes the matter around it into a cube 32 miles (an arbitrary unit Chaos made up for the purpose) on edge, which is heated by the icosahedron's energy so that it forms a giant flaming (cubic) cat. Sometimes the cat tries to move, but whenever part of it leaves the region of the icosahedron's influence, that part erupts into gouts of flame that soon melt into liquid and flow back down, re-accreting on the opposite side of the cat. Don't worry, I'm pretty sure the cat can't feel pain, although I'm sure Sadism will try. Around that chaotic centre, eight Planet Builders slowly orbit at a safe distance, accreting their own much larger congeries of matter which they cool instead of heating, so that the planet-sized globes around the Planet Builders form actual mostly-solid planets, though with a gaseous core. These eight planets, as yet unnamed, each carry an atmosphere and liquid cubefluid, fulfilling Improvement's earlier law guaranteeing an eventual planet as well as the newer one promising a space where life can take root. As such, the Gardener also comes into being, and immediately feels that he's a really great guy who can't possibly screw things up somehow. The Gardener begins shaping rudimentary life from the available material; his power is limited, but more than adequate to cover the surface of the chosen planet in short order. This form of life is ultimately another arrangement of little cubes, the autotrophs among which harvest the energy pouring off of Catstar Siriusly to fix ambient gaseous matter into solid and liquid form. As very little currently differentiates one arrangement of cubes from any other, these are all very much nondescript blobs which simply eat, grow, and occasionally break into smaller blobs.
But these planets are not the only part of the universe newly made habitable! For some reason, the force of Order has spent the 5 of its power on cementing the legitimacy of Chivalry's ascendant status; the metaphorical gears of the universe grind, and an accumulated power greater than the total spent on Chivalry's status (14) must now be spent before Chivalry can be unseated, and the bonus associated with that status will no longer decline until Chivalry is no longer Ascendant. With this sudden boost in status, Chivalry declares the force of Chaos the Descendant for next turn, then uses the 4(+1) of Valours to seed life around the Fortress of Gods. Part of that power goes to making the region habitable in the first place, and pushing back the encroaches of the laws of boring physics trying to dismantle the Fortress from without, but primitive life is tenacious and takes root both in and immediately around the Fortress quickly enough. This life, unlike the life on the chosen planet but like its immediate surroundings, is made directly out of pure Chivalry and does not need to obey the laws of boring physics. With no particular constraints of form, then, the life found here simply looks and acts how Chivalry 'thinks' it should, which apparently results in a very Earth-like ecosystem.
Not to be outdone, other forces immediately jump into the Fortress project, with Sadism in particular helping attenuate the aforementioned cost of making the Fortress habitable by adding its own 5 just to make a mystical atmosphere, providing the burgeoning life with a source of energy more palatable than the raw creative flux. If any of the microbes and simple plants take issue with surviving off of pure Sadism, none of them complain, possibly because they are all obligated to feel really good about their existence anyway. Sadism then makes the most powerful servant to date, burning the Queen of Pains to create Incentive, a female being of the class known as charges, two steps higher than works like the Gardener. As a charge, Incentive is much more powerful and much more independent than any other being created so far, even having her own set of cards from 1 to 6 and the ability to create beings of the two lower tiers to serve her, though at considerable cost. Still, despite a high level of autonomy, she still fundamentally answers to the force of Sadism. Her role, it seems, will be to push life to strive forward eternally, and needless to say she feels good about this.
Felidae also decides to create a charge, this one called Lioness; an outside observer might infer that the forces think Queen cards, due to their name, are only used for making female entities instead of being a specific level of power, but this is surely a coincidence. Lioness' job is inordinately simple: she sits on the throne in the centre of the universe. That's it. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. I mean, nothing will happen if nobody does it, but somebody is going to do it, which is what matters. Felidae follows up this questionable choice by spending the Knave of Cats to give the space cats independent minds. The assumption that they will inevitably end up being able to feel pain seems to be bearing out so far! The hottest parts of the universe now contain angry, flaming cats with high self-esteem; however, everything is still cooling off quickly as it expands, so there are ever fewer of these as they melt into fire and eventually liquid, though some collide and merge into larger cats instead. This is the universe you created.
For a Knave, Procrastination makes a couch in the Fortress, and sleeps on it. Inspired by this act of creativity, Caprice spends the exact opposite card, the King of Play, to top all the other forces with the universe's first true power, a massive worm-thing called Wormden who exists exclusively to consume the universe while maintaining and expanding the warren of tunnels protecting its outer limits. As a power, Wormden has full autonomy and a full set of cards, and may create lesser beings just like a charge. Wormden immediately begins eating away at the nyan shield, the only matter within reach, converting the consumed essence into more purple foam using its own Knave. Meanwhile, Incentive tries to convince some bacteria about how much cooler multicellular existence would be, the Gardener makes more blobs, and Lioness sits. Great set of gods you've got there, right?
With so many beings now drawing from the creative flux, all the forces notice it waning slightly, though it is still quite strong. Similarly, the universe itself continues to expand and cool, thinning the foam layer and nyan shield (though the effect on the former is compensated at the expense of the latter, thanks to Wormden's efforts); between this and the meddling various forces have done to it, the matter-soup within the volume of the Octolith has cooled to roughly the state it was in before the Octolith compressed it, though some gravitational hotspots have now collapsed into Black Cats so dense that light cannot escape their pull. Even the veins of Felidae, subject to the speed of light limit like everything else not exceeding the power of the laws of boring physics, are unable to disperse the energy from these behemoths, though quantum cat radiation enforced by the Law of Entropy very slowly drains them. The swirling disks of matter pouring into these Black Cats are among the hottest places left in the universe, still frequently experiencing bursts of fire and cat; immediately infalling matter is so strongly accelerated that it always takes the form of cat by the time it reaches the event horizon, the energy pouring off of it enough to agitate nearby matter still in the disk into long tongues of fire stretching out into space from which liquid rains on the rest of the universe. These fire jets, along with the smaller flames that emanate from lesser cats, provide energy that prevents the cooler regions from fully reaching equilibrium.
Thanks to the tireless work of gravity, many planets are forming in orbit around various cats, though they do have a tendency to lose angular momentum to the ever-equalising veins of Felidae and slowly spiral into their cat-stars. It is still possible that something interesting could be done with those.
Power Status:
sadism 1 2 3 4 - - 7 8 9 X P N - K
improvement 1 - - 4 - 6 7 8 9 - - N Q K
procrastination 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 X P N Q K
cats 1 2 3 4 - - - 8 9 X P N - K
chivalry 1 2 3 - 5 - 7 8 - - P N Q K
caprice 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 - X P N Q -
asininity 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 X P N Q K
chaos 1 2 3 4 - 6 7 8 - X P N Q K
nature 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 - X P N Q K
order 1 2 3 4 - - 7 8 - X P N Q K
secrets 1 2 3 - - - - - - - - - - -
Creative Flux: Flagging?
Author
Topic: Stage Zero Turn 2 (YES REALLY) (OPEN TO APPLICATIONS BTW) (Read 6919 times)