I was really busy over the weekend, so I thought I'd make this turn a bit longer to compensate.
I may have gone overboard.
Let the goo to grow for enough time so all the Fragments can step on it, investigate the diffrence between the nothingness ooze and mine.
2AJAMA lowers the modified blob of ooze to the ground so that it can absorb more sand. It takes longer than usual for it to grow to a larger size, primarily because more sand is required to account for the increased density of the solid layer. Eventually the Demiurge gets it to speed up by pushing it deeper into the sand, so that it can feed from every part of its surface area at once. When it is large enough to hold the entirety of the Fragment army, AJAMA raises it back out of the earth and allows them to climb on.
When a few embodied Fragments boards the platform, it takes the opportunity to compare and contrast Black Ooze and Not-Ooze while they are in close proximity. The Demiurge's own creation is the same as ever, so it spends most of its time focusing on the structure of the Nothingness. The sphere is absorbed enough in its task that it barely even notices when fighting breaks out nearby.
Not-Ooze is similar to Black ooze superficially, in that it has the same material properties, but the underlying mechanisms it works by are entirely different. Being derived from ALTERTH's essence it isn't even matter, just an approximation of it made from the pure absence of substance or space. Considering it in more detail is nearly impossible, since a conspicuous lack of sensation is the only real reason that it can seen or felt at all. It also has a different self-replication mechanism. Whereas Black Ooze merely digests sand, in a way conceptually similar to a mortal digesting meat, Absent Ooze makes use of some residual link between the desert and Nothingness to parasitically absorb mass.
Now that he is away from the eyes and senses of his siblings and their children Hynsyr begins to work on creating a technique. He attempts to condense his light around and shape it into the form of a gigantic, three faced, hundred armed humanoid. Hynsyr would be located in the Humanoid body's head and control the larger form from there.
5Hynsyr bends the light of his aura, forcing it to circle in upon itself rather than radiating out into the desert. He holds his arms out to either side, so that additional rays can be made to loop around them as well, and waits until the power within his aura builds up to a critical level. His aura becomes brighter and brighter, until even the tiny fraction of light that escapes is powerful enough to illuminate the desert for miles around. Hynsyr reels the dregs in to prevent them from reaching the eyes of his siblings, then solidifies the whole of his aura with a final effort of will. It stops moving, so still that the Titan could have frozen it in crystal.
It towers over him, like a tree with twelve massive branches, but despite its stillness the light is still blurry. Hynsyr reaches upwards and transforms it again, this time by moulding it into a new shape. He defines each part of its body, from its legs to its upper torso, then separates the twelve impressions made by his arms into a hundred independent limbs. When each organ, each luminous femur and finger-tendon has been carved carved from the light, Hynsyr ascends through the interior of the body and takes his rightful place within the head. It is from there that he reaches outwards to define the construct's three faces, each pointed in a different direction. They rotate through different expressions, snarling in anger or smiling with glee, until settling into a demeanor that matches Hynsyr's own. He looks outwards from their eyes, and his gaze stretches across the sand in every direction.
They dive downwards, towards a group of incorporeal black wisps and oozes-creatures that look more like holes in existence than real matter. Some jet directly past Ashe, coming so close that they nearly cut her with their talons.
Ashe panics and runs away!
If I escape then I want to look for shiny things near water so that I have somewhere to escape to.
4 , 3Ashe turns to run, but for a moment time seems to accelerate faster than her body can move. She sees the Fragments joined by a primordial in the shape of a black sphere, which helps raise a wall to seperate from the rest of the desert. The Buzzards and Dustwalkers seem to retreat from battle at three times their actual speed, as if Ashe were watching them on a film reel that had been fast-forwarded. Spiderlings wearing metal armor gather around the Bone Fortress in enormous numbers, followed by a sandworm and a metal vulture even larger than the one she saw directing Buzzards. Only then does her perception of time stabilize.
She isn't in danger anymore, but there's a sense of tension that makes the nymph feel like another fight could break out at any moment. She runs away, back towards the Wetlands, until she arrives at a tower made from a single continuous piece of grass. Rain falls from up above, forming puddles of water on the ground and nourishing dense masses of crop plants that grow near the base of the Tower. Ashe can see a moat through gaps in the vegetation.
It seems safe, so Ashe scours the area for shiny objects. There still aren't any rocks, but she does find little bits of glass scattered across the ground. They're particularly dense near the tower itself, where she also stumbles across a series of elaborate sandcastles. The sight is a little puzzling, given that there doesn't seem to be anyone else here, but she's preoccupied by her new collection of glass odds and ends. They look very shiny if she holds them at the right angle.
"I knew we never should have trusted that bird. Okay everyone on the bus we're going to try to find the others."
Drive the bus into the storm and try to find the lost deer men, if they can't get into the bus on their own I will try to grab them while holding on to the bus, no one else is to try to do this.
3 v 5Dr. Bob stops the bus and opens the door, allowing the Deer-Men to pile in. Now that he is seeing them up close, he notices that many have minor injuries that he didn't see from his spot in the bus. The vast majority are just bruised, but there are others who have had patches of skin flayed from their bodies, or even broken limbs. One Deer-Man limps into the bus on a makeshift metallic crutch, while another is trying to put his broken arm in a sling. Even worse are the missing faces. Dr. Bob knows that he'll see some empty seats, but is still struck by the number of mortals who are conspicuously absent.
When everyone is safely buckled in, he starts up the engine and sends his bus flying at the sand with as much velocity as it can muster. It meets physical resistance as it crashes into the sandstorm, as if the sand it pushing back against the front of the vehicle. It almost succeeds in turning the bus aside, but something buckles at the last moment. Sand splatters across the windshield as every tendril, eye, and sand-bullet within sight suddenly collapses. Bob drives through it, and then into clouds of airborne dust which have yet to settle.
The visibility is so bad that he nearly runs over the first of the missing Deer-Men. He is lying on the ground, buried up to his head in grit and sediment, so Dr. Bob needs to climb out of the bus to dig him free. He does it with one hand, keeping the other firmly on the doorframe, then carries the comatose mortal back inside. The others clear a row of seats so that they can lay him out.
The bus winds through the sandstorm until everyone else is accounted for. Most of the survivors just bedraggled, but there are a few in worse shape. One is bleeding profusely from a stab wound that goes straight through his shoulder, presumably inflicted by one of the flying clumps of sand. Another was hit so hard by a tendril that it broke all of her ribs.
Afterwards, join the fight.
As all parts are set, and seven sentinels and their legions are in place with brilliant tactical plan of Sekhmet, initiate the battle. Assist dustwalkers, sentinel legions and whatever is there in defeating the sand once and for all( there are vulture mercenaries, merchant of the West, dustwalkers and three headed giant worm, according to previous turns, lots of stuff)
Ira hears of the war from a passing spiderling and decides to help against the sands
"I know me and spider-kind have had our differences, but I will always help in a war with the sands."
Ironwinged: 2
Buzzards: 3
Merchant: 4
Sekhmet: 6
Ekhor: 1
Primelings: 5
Sentinels: 4
Scarred: 2
Order: 3
Spiderlings: 4
Dustwalkers: 5
Three-Headed-Worm: 5
Sand: ̸ ͢ ͏ ͠ ͠ ̧ ̛ ͝ ҉ ̵ ̛ ̛ ̛ ͢ ̡ ̧ ͟ ̸ ͠ ̵ ͞ ͘
?: 2
?: 4
Mortals from every corner of the world have rallied around the Bone Fortress. There are creatures here from every corner of the world, from the Great Web to the Wetlands, and all have come to rally around the Dustwalkers in their battle with the sand. At the head of the armies are three primordials. First are Gral and Nazir, with all the power of the Bargain and the Web behind them. They come accompanied by their children, both mortal and demigods. Last is Ira. The creator of the Fortress has no servants, but this is her battle as much as it is the Dustwalkers'. They share an old, elemental enemy.
Beneath them, the sand stirs. At first it merely scouts, by carpeting the dunes with its many eyes. Then it acts. The earth twists, and a massive sinkhole forms opposite the bone fortress. Streams of sand rise into the air, apparently unbound by gravity, and swirl into its depths. They writhe, join together in some place deep beneath the earth, and when they return to the surface they have been changed. A pseudopod larger than any made before rises from beneath the dunes. More follow it, reaching outwards to sweep the gathered forces out of the way, apparently impervious to the acid and spells raining down on them. They tense, and a massive body pulls itself free. The Avatar is like a humanoid giant, formed directly from the sand itself, but it has no hands or face. Instead thousands of tendrils extend from its head and limbs.
It is a tide that sweeps across the battlefield, but it is not unstoppable. The seven legions of Sentinels engage it, using the telekinetic powers of their armor to drive it back. Ekhor is at the center of the swarm, and he is the most powerful of all. He charges the Avatar directly, allowing its pseudopods to rebound against his armor. The metal absorbs the strength of the blows until Ekhor releases all of his gathered energy at once, as a force spear that pierces the abomination's head. It explodes. Blobs of sand fly in all directions.
Then the head reforms.
Before the Sentinels realize that their enemy is still alive, its tendrils lash out at them again. Sekhmet repositions the other Primelings to keep the Avatar from pressing its advantage, but Ekhor's last attack brought him too far out of the formation. An entire limb's worth of pseudopods coil around him, smothering him completely. They force him to the ground, where a sinkhole forms to pull him into the sand. When the dunes close back over him, there is no sign of his existence.
While Nazir's army pushes back the giant, the rest of the sand is still twisting the terrain to its advantage. Squadrons of Ironwinged stationed at key points on the battlefield work to keep it from attacking with appendages or turning hills into valleys at a critical moment. Most activity can be suppressed by regular sweeps, which the winged Spiderlings are suited to. Their steel weapons aren't quite enough to disable the sand completely, so more intense flare-ups are dealt with by the Merchant of the West and its detachment of Buzzard martial artists. Whenever a sandstorm rises or one of the dunes completes its transformation into a fist, they use the Bargain and the eight-talon-way to devastating effect.
At a carefully-timed moment in the battle, when the Avatar has been temporarily disabled and the sand itself is contained, the gates of the Bone Fortress finally open. The Dustwalkers emerge, lead by the Primordials and the Three-Headed-Worm. The Buzzards' students are positioned on the front line, where they are most able to unleash their techniques on the sand. Behind them are platoons of ordinary Spiderlings clad in equipment from the Silken Nest and the Order of Strands. They march across the war zone and towards the Glass Crater, the exact point where Gyaweft once crashed his Sunship.
The Smelter died in his struggle to partition the sands, but he left fissures somewhere underneath the crater. While most of the army fends off attacks from the sand, Ira and the Three-Headed Worm will burrow downwards until they find the cracks. Unsealing them will force the sand to spend all of its strength holding itself together, so that one of the other Primordials can finish it off.
When this plan was charted out, the Dustwalkers thought that they would need to lay down their lives in order to clear the way. The sand brings forth every weapon at its disposal, transforming its normal appendages into strange beasts and obsidian-tipped spears, but it already stretched itself thin battling the other two armies. With their superior equipment and aid from the Primordials, the Bone Fortress is more than capable of beating it down. The only major casualty is Gral, who takes a spear through the wing while trying to plug a gap in the lines. A team of martial arts disciples leaps in to drag it back to safety.
Below the surface, two sandworms tunnel through the depths of the sand. There is barely any resistance as they search for the epicenter of the fissures. The Three-Headed worm digs straight through a fault line, which Ira follows to a point just beneath the center of the crater. The heat there is so intense that it blisters her flesh, but there is enough time to lever the cracks open before retreating back to safety. They gape open, and in the world up above she knows that the tendrils, the monsters, and even the avatar will all have turned to dust. Her Purpose fills her with resolve.
Someone must strike the killing blow. Then all will be complete.
Dr. Bob, the Unmoved Mover
-Regent of the Tower
-Spidersilk net.
-Glass chunks
-Improvised glass tools.
-Glass automaton
-Perpetual-motion bus
-Vial of Einyar
--------------------------------
Kūhaku, the Mirror
-Catatonia
-Rain-Maker
--------------------------------
Nazir, the Weaver
-God of the great web.
--------------------------------
Ira, the World-Eater
-Empty
-Woven together
-Debt: Gral: Three Favors Owed
--------------------------------
Gral, the Contractor
-Contract: Winged Spiderlings
-Contract: Deer-Men: One Favor
-Contract: Ira: Three Favors
-Pinion Blades
--------------------------------
AJAMA, the Demiurge
-Ooze-born Body
-Ooze-born Spheres
-Sphere of Darkness
--------------------------------
Hynsyr, the Titan
-Yig, the Golden Flower
-Twelve spears of light
--------------------------------
Awake
-Echoes of ALTERTH
-Smelter's Armor
-Dawn Axehead
-Slightly lopsided
-Bound in silk and aether
-Stomach wound
--------------------------------
Ashe, the Collector
-Brass Feathers
Bestiary:
Demons: Crude imitations of the primordials made from sand and absence.
--Obsidian Archdemon: An obsidian dragon crafted by the Empty itself. It was granted the power to manipulate nothingness.
Fragments of Emptiness: ?
Shardforms: Obsidian creatures which absorbed the Empty's already-incomplete consciousness. The broken pieces of ALTERTH's identity they possess give them animalistic intelligence.
Steel Maggots: Metallic larvae which Gral accidentally created while trying to make avian Emissaries. After they were pulled off of the vulture, few escaped into the desert, where they accepted Gral's peace terms and moved into the shifting bog.
Steel Grubs: Steel maggots that have been bound with Pact-collars and transformed into livestock. They have grown larger than their sapient kin, but are unintelligent and largely peaceful.
Brass Buzzards: Brass birds crafted from Gral's feathers. They are infused with the pain it felt while creating them.
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.
--Ironwinged: 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. They were later granted the ability to weave metal.
--Ancestors: Aetherweavers who have achieved immortality by becoming spirits bound to the great web. They are incorporeal, and their astral bodies make it easier for them to manipulate aether.
--Scarred Spiderlings: Spiderlings who have gained great strength and endurance because of their mistreatment by the Brass Buzzards. They built a market but have mixed feelings about Gral and his servants.
--Sentinels: A army of biologically and magically augmented Spiderlings, created by elite Aetherweavers with Nazir's guidance. They serve the Spider Demigods, and stand ready to protect the Web alongside them.
Primelings: Ten entities created by Nazir and a group of the most powerful Aetherweavers. They watch over the Web in Nazir's stead, but are weakened by flaws in their weaving.
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. Many have begun to train so that they can gain more control over this ability.
--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. They were granted superior dexterity through a contract with Gral.
Three-Headed Worm: A juvenile sandworm created by Ira to serve the Dustwalkers.
Crops: Hemp, potato, corn, and bean plants created by Dr. Bob.
Atlas:
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.
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.
--Negative Star: A black sphere which radiates darkness, created by AJAMA after Gyaweft's death.
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.
--Tapestries: Libraries of spells and other knotwork which have been woven together and hung from the great web. Some have begun to collect aetheric cobwebs.
--Market of Scars: A grand market built by the Scarred Spiderlings in exchange for their resilience. The Ironwinged sell metal equipment there.
Shifting Bog: A large pool of mud drawn from the sand by Kuhaku. Islands rapidly form and dissolve as the sand beneath it moves. It has been tainted with Nazir's venom.
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.
--Moat: The Tower is surrounded by a lake. Only one thin bridge connects it to the rest of the sand.
--Sandcastles: A series of elaborate sandcastles built around the moat. They were crafted so masterfully that they won’t dissolve in rain.
--Garden: Several different crops which Dr. Bob planted outside the tower.
--Laboratory: A room furnished with chemistry equipment and various glass containers.
Light Spires: A glowing city made by the Lightfolk using their creation magic.
--Temple of Yig: A golden temple which houses Yig, the First Tribute. It is an intricately-carved cathedral with walls made from an aurora.
Einyar: A sea of golden light drawn from Hynsyr's aura. It preserves the spirits of the Lightfolk after death, so that the cycle may advance.
Bone Fortress: A giant tree grown from one of Ira's teeth, and given to the Dustwalkers as a gift. It has become a large fortress.
Glass Crater: When Gyaweft flew his Sunship into the ground, it melted a wide swathe of the sand into glass. Fiery essence spilled from the ship still burns here, and sealed fault lines radiate from the impact site.
--Smelter's Grave: The center of the crater. Gyaweft's corpse lies here, alongside the molten remains of his Sunship.
Wetlands: Areas of the sand and the Great Web which Kuhaku continuously showers with water. The rain is heavy enough to form rivers and lakes.
--Abandoned Nests: A nesting ground that was briefly occupied by the Brass Buzzards. It is strewn with metal feathers and bloody talon-prints.
Knowledge:
Knot-Writing: A written language Nazir formulated so that Aetherweavers could record their spells. It involves weaving complex knots into silk, and therefore comes intuitively to Spiderlings but is almost impossible for anyone else to comprehend.
Bargainer's Tongue: A simplified version of knot-script which can be etched into a flat surface rather than woven into silk. It is comprehensible to non-Spiderlings, but not as intuitive.
English: A written script based on twenty-six letters and a few punctuation symbols. It was introduced by Dr. Bob and is primarily used by the Deer-Men.
Metalworking: Blacksmithing techniques that are typically available to the Ironwinged. They can be used to weave metal objects.
Aetherweaving: A magical discipline which involves spinning spiritual webs. It was taught to the Spiderlings by Nazir and is available to the Tribes, the Primelings, and any other arachnid capable of making silk.
Lightforging: Creation magic unique to the Lightfolk. It is a powerful but chaotic ability which can be used to make solid-light constructs out of one's own aura. More advanced techniques allow practitioners to create complex materials such as metal or wood.
Eight-Talon Way: A powerful martial art created by the Brass Buzzards. It is purely offensive in nature, but consists of strikes so lethal that defense isn’t usually necessary.
Agriculture: Farming is only feasible in the wetlands, but plants watered by Kuhaku’s rain grow quickly. The Deer-Men have been taught to cultivate and use several kinds of crops.
Items:
Seven Rainbow Spears: Weapons Hynsyr forged from a rogue splinter of his soul and gave to the Prismatics. They amplify their wielders' magic immensely, and provide slightly more control over their powers of creation.
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.
--Chaos Ooze: Blobs of ooze which have accidentally been made to assimilate a variety of substances and concepts. They were later sealed away.
--Silence Ooze: A strain of chaos ooze that can feed on silence. AJAMA transplanted some of it to the empty desert, where it has grown rapidly.
Pact-Arms: Metal weapons, armor, and tools which can compel their wielders to carry out tasks for the Winged Spiderlings. Most are in the possession of Spiderlings on the Web.
Tribute Tokens: A currency minted by the Ironwinged and infused with the power of the Bargain. They see light use in the Great Web but are not considered especially valuable, so most of the economy still relies upon bartering.
Sentinel Plate: Magical armor developed for use by the Sentinels. It can drain the force of attacks and release it in the form of telekinetic blasts.
Factions:
Spiderling Tribes: Prominent groups of Spiderlings, mostly organized by subspecies. The are scattered across the Web, the stars, and the sand.
--Order of Strands: The first Spiderlings to learn the art of Aetherweaving. Many have strained their minds and bodies to hone their abilities, making them feeble despite their mystical strength.
High Council of the Web: The governing body of the Great Web. It consists of delegates from each of the tribes, as well as one Primeling. Most meetings take place in Nazir's nest at the top of the Web.
Lifeweavers: A group of Ancestors who helped Nazir create the Primelings and Sentinels.
Author
Topic: Sand & Souls - Let There Be Turns (Read 60552 times)