"NO NO NO. WRONG, BAD. YOU HAVE ONE MORE CHANCE TO PROVE YOU ARE WORTHY TO LIVE, OTHERWISE I WILL SEE TO IT THAT THE FIT SURVIVE AND THE WEAK DIE."
IMPOSE ORDER UPON THE SANDS
5The Empty is unraveling in the open air, too weak to persist without its connection to the desert, but it pushes itself downwards anyway, and descends into the sands once again. The grains try to push it back to the surface, or to make it crumple away, but emptiness is at the edge of death, and therefore closest to its true power. It draws strength from the threshold of true, permanent nonexistence, and when it speaks its voice booms. It states its demand: The sand will cease its aggression, or it will perish.
The world calms. Then it moves in reverse. The sand creates new appendages, and turns its attention back to the world above. One thought stops the demons' suicidal rampage, the next directs them towards creatures more deserving of the desert's wrath. Yet another notion passes through the sands' mind, and for the first time it forms eyes to examine its surroundings. Using them, it sees the black ooze that is assimilating it and the Dustwalkers that feed upon its mass.
One eye sprouts in front of the Empty, then transforms into a sinkhole to swallow it whole. ALTERTH's essence spreads through the desert again, slightly weaker than before. The sand around it emanates grudging acceptance.
Free myself from the webbing, and then continue to shake the maggots off. Those of the Silken Nest will drive out the invaders, ideally for good.
Shoot web and spit poison in annoying birb who tried to create existential threat to spider tribes
Serves you right for attempt to create spider eating monstrosities, seems, that I will have to weave a lesson to you
Aetherweavers, I encourage you to study the art of weaving further, before I give you next lesson.
Gral: 3
Maggots: 5 / Nazir: 5
Winged Spiderlings: 2 v 2
Aetherweavers: 6
Gral wriggles out of the strand of webbing that has been restricting its movements, but it cannot seem to shake itself hard or fast enough to dislodge the maggots, which have begun to burrow into the vulture's body. Bugs wiggle just beneath the surface of Gral's skin, growing fat on the blood leaking from underneath its feathers. Their needle-like teeth distract Gral from Nazir, who spits poison and webbing at the Contractor's head. Gral desperately serves away from the web, but venom splatters across its left wing. Maggots that come into contact with the liquid curl up and die, but the primordial's own skin also shrivels.
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The winged Spiderlings have already cleared their nest of enemies, so they advance upwards, to mount a counter-invasion on the strands of webbing above them. Silken Nest troops try to seize strategic staging grounds, but the normal Spiderlings drive them off with renewed vigor, now that the battle is on their own turf. Wings are not nearly as useful, now that the battle itself isn't taking place in midair, and so the assault is soon driven off. A stalemate develops, since neither side is wants to engage in a place where their opponents have an advantage.
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The Aetherweavers meditate on Nazir's last lesson. While they could not understand it at first, certain concepts become more clear to them as time passes. Aetheric configurations hover on the edges of their awareness, fundamental concepts just out of reach, and hours pass as the Great Spider's students feverishly pursue them. They work themselves half to death in their search for comprehension, but finally a single, brilliant truth is apparent to them. Silk not just a source of protection. It is a structural element. Just a spider could reinforce something with physical silk, a sufficiently powerful Aetherweather could tie magic around their own spirit, to protect or augment themselves as they see fit.
Ira diverts essence to it's wounded flank to heal
Ira howls out to the seemingly empty desert "Any Dustwalkers who appear before me shall receive a blessing to help with their war with the sand."
4 , 3The demons are strange creatures. Their bodies crumble away uselessly in Ira's stomach, no more nourishing than ordinary sand, but there is an extra something inside them that reminds the worm of its own flesh. It digests this essence slowly, taking care to channel each bit through the gouges in its side. Like joins with like, and flesh accumulates in the wounds as the healing continues. Once it is done, the only trace of Ira's injuries are lines of black scar tissue.
Eyes form around Ira as the sand stabilizes itself and looks outwards, but when the sandworm calls to the Dustwalkers many of the Spiderlings are still brave to come. They emerge from folds between dunes and underground burrows to congregate around Ira, thrilled to see a primordial who shares in their war against the sand.
Hynsyr looks upon his creations and reaches out with his being. He connects his consciousness with the minds of his children.
"You have been born and therefore the Age of Tribute has begun. By your birth your kind has formed an eternal debt of life to your origin. This debt is your purpose and you shall pay it in tribute. This tribute shall come in the form of worship and sacrifice. I shall now deliver onto you the Cycle you have been tied to. The Age of Tribute begins with your birth and during this age when it is deemed a time of sacrifice I shall call upon you to offer up your tribute. Should you or any of your kin that come after you fail to give tribute to appease your debt of life then an Age of Conflict shall follow. In the Age of Conflict you shall have the chance to rekindle the Age of Tribute by the sacrifice of those who would neglect their debt. If you are unwilling or unable to rekindle the Age of Tribute then the Age of Rebirth shall begin and I shall reap my debt in full. If the debt is not appeased then all who I have gifted life shall return to being one with me."
Hynsyr allows this knowledge to settle in their minds for a moment.
"Know that the Age of Tribute is not without it's rewards for you are my beloved creations and I shall deliver upon you a gift with which to carve your way through this world."
Hynsyr will attempt to teach his children to shape and mold their inferior light so that they might be blessed with the gift of a lesser power of creation.
6Hynsyr tells his children about their role in his plan, and of their place in the great cycle of tribute, beginnings, and endings. Many of the beings bow their heads in silent acceptance as he speaks to them about the age of tribute, and the cosmic debt that they owe, and the doom that may one day awakes them. But when he teaches them to mold their own light, the primordial does not bother to speak. He bombards them with knowledge, transmitted through his glowing halo and bombarded directly into their heads. Prismatics clutch their heads and scream as universal truths are revealed, and the great golden masses soon follow. Their creators' power is too great for them to contain.
So the magic pours out of them, through their mouths and eyes, and sometimes by ripping additional holes in their body. Creative energies continually twists the mortals' auras into new forms, and when that is not enough of an outlet, the power distorts their bodies as well. The rapid shifts make their substance flicker like fire, especially when they channel their wild gift.
"Hay everyone's making little people things, I want some of those."
Make some little people things in my image out of whatevers available (just don't use living things for this).
4Dr. Bob scoops up a handful of silk from Nazir's web, and weaves it in much the same way that he wove the net. A humanoid shape appears as he coils the strands around each other, using a precise series of knots to transform raw material into silken dolls. When details are added, the dolls soften, becoming flesh and blood where before there was only string. Dr. Bob continues, carefully adding a deer head to each of the bodies that he has created, and when his work is complete a pile of fully-grown bodies lies in front of him. They look like Bob himself, minus the lab coat, and each is about half his height.
Once they come to life and start standing up, it becomes clear that the deer-men still tower above all but the largest Spiderlings. There are only a few of them, as compared to vast swarms of Nazir's children, but Dr. Bob's creations will still be able to hold their own in the constant conflict of the web.
"This world have a curious fascination with nothing, interesting"
Have the ooze try and surround the pocket, and myself dive into the ooze and try to get to the pocket.
3AJAMA plunges into the ooze, allowing their smooth body to sink to the bottom of the massive gel column. The light of the stars soon fades behind them, smothered by the sands and the near-opacity of the black ooze, but the Demiurge can steel feel the pool of nothingess down below. Upon further inspection it actually appears to be
less than nothing: even empty space would feel more full. It also feels familiar, somehow, like a piece of AJAMA's own body. Perhaps it came from another soul.
While AJAMA is contemplating the nature of Emptiness, the ground around them twitches. Eyes made of sand protrude out into the goop, apparently unaffected by the darkness, and a few mouths form for the sole purpose of shrieking in rage. Sand closes in from every angle to crush the goop that has been eating away at it.
build a small spaceship out of reinforced glass (Gyaweft being source of power to take lift)
6The desert resumes its jabbering, and Gyweft resumes his smelting. He presses his gauntlets to the ground, and allows the heat radiating from them to make it soft and pliable. The Smelter forces the plasma inside his body to balloon out into the sand, where it forms a hollow bubble of glass to serve as the base of another flying machine. This one is more powerful than the last, made of a material far stronger and harder than glass has any right to be. Gyaweft examines his handiwork while shaping the wings and tail, and finds it satisfactory. This is a vessel which could soar beyond even the farthest stars.
The only remaining task is to make the craft's engine. Gyaweft's own internal fire is a suitable power source, but an apparatus is still necessary to harness the combustion. The living armor turns handfuls of sand into glass pipes and valves, and in the interior of the ship he assembles them into a strange series of devices. Tubes and syringes jut into the Smelter's own body, to draw his essence into the mechanism, where flues push it back it through tubes that resemble arteries and veins. Gyaweft himself hangs in the center of it all like a beating, red-hot heart.
The vessel is so perfectly bonded with Gyaweft that it is like a second body around him. It channels every last drop of his fire, to fly like the wind and burn with the light of a thousand stars. It is difficult to tell where Sunship begins and Smelter ends. If one were to die, in this merged state, the other would surely follow.
Gyaweft, the Smelter
-Star-smith.
-Master of the Tower.
-Fragile glass wings.
-Sunship.
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Dr. Bob, the Unmoved Mover
-Enemy of the sands.
-Spidersilk net.
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Kūhaku, the Mirror
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Nazir, the Weaver
-God of the great web.
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Ira, the World-Eater
-Blackened Scars
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Gral, the Contractor
-Contract: Winged Spiderlings.
-Infested.
-Envenomed Wing.
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AJAMA, the Demiurge
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Hynsyr, the Titan
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The Empty
-Devoured by the sands.
-Thinned.
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The Living Sands: An awakened desert that extends outwards indefinitely. It consumed ALTERTHENTERRINTARTINTH, the being which brought it to life, and subsumed a part of their consciousness known as the Empty.
--Demons: Crude imitations of the primordials made from sand and absence.
The Stars: Glass spheres filled with fire. Gyaweft created them and threw them into the air to illuminate the world.
--New Stars: A second set that isn't accessible through the Great Web. Fortunately, that means they can't be blotted out by Spiderlings.
Nazir's Web: A giant web that begins in the desert and reaches up towards the stars.
--Silken Nest: A new star that the winged spiderlings have claimed as a nest. It can only be reached by gliding or descending on strands of silk..
Spiderlings: A race of intelligent spiders which can live on light. They cover both the stars and the great web.
--Dustwalkers: A Spiderling subspecies which can feed on sand as well as light. They live on the sand and fight an asymmetrical war against it for survival.
--Winged Spiderlings: Defeated Spiderlings who made a deal with Gral. They received wings in exchange for service, and have built a nest on one of the new stars.
--Aetherweavers: A few Spiderlings who can perform magic by spinning aetheric webs. Nazir taught them the basics of their craft, allowing them to create fairly intricate wards against evil. A few of them have strained their minds and bodies to discover the secret of self-augmentation.
Shifting Bog: A large pool of mud drawn from the sand by Kuhaku. Islands rapidly form and dissolve as the sand beneath it moves.
Glass Tower: A tower made of glass, raised from the sands by Gyaweft. It extends upwards through the web, tall enough that its upper floors reach the stars.
Black Ooze: A patch of black goo created by AJAMA which can grow by absorbing sand. A column of ooze goes deep beneath the earth, where it breached a reservoir of Emptiness.
Lightfolk: A species of humanoid mortals born from Hynsyr's golden light. Their powers of creation threaten to overwhelm their bodies, causing their inner light to warp chaotically.
--Prismatics: Seven lightfolk which glow brighter than the rest. They were hewn from the rainbow light of Hynsyr's eyes.
Deer-Men: A humanoid race with the heads of deer. Dr. Bob originally crafted them from the silk of Nazir's web.
Author
Topic: Sand & Souls - Let There Be Turns (Read 61847 times)