TURN EIGHTConsumed by blaze,
Consumed in hate,
Let Creation raze,
'Tis it's fate.
- Clesydros - FATES DESCISION - TRANSLOCATION - 1d10 + 1 (Secondary Aspect) + 1 (The First Slate) =
9FATES DESCISION - BEACON - 1d10 + 1 (Secondary Aspect) + 1 (The First Slate) =
9The Kruvious stand, a loose trifecta of crystalline pillars, all focusing the light of the moon above down into the sharp field. The crest stamped surface of that lunar object had risen near directly on high to loom with an unknown ancient intent. Maria gently steps through the mineral laden ground, the calluses on her bare feet saing her from any scuffs. Clesydros, you gather a single handful of the minty green crystal and set your will upon it. A small spell, one that shapes it into a rough prism, and to it you set the magicks of it's mutable position. A signature you could pick out across realities. Into Maria's possession it goes, along with the knowledge of The Metamorph, a creature you'd think would be certain to thrive here in all its glory. But no matter, there's work to attend to, now that your domain is seeded. Again you transfix on the verdant isle now overgrown with life, both you and the other mystic clasp eyes shut as the fabric of space warps about her. As you gaze about, a hefty chunk of land seems to have transposed itself, swapped the crystalline field with living grass between the Kruvios. FATES DESCISION - EXCAVATION - 1d10 + 2 (Might) =
5For a time, a morbid thought crosses your mind. Hoping perhaps that one of you should die, your blood drained by another's hand before the two of you ever cross paths again. But then. . . Maybe there are ways to subvert these Cosmic Rules that have been burned into your minds having arrived in the Nameless World? Setting such quandries aside for now, the lithe Kosmites stand to attention at your words. Without the slightest hesitation, they descend in full force unto the east, where untouched peaks of ruinous stone sit, buried much like the rest of the still world in a coating of dust and ash. Utilizing their pick-like arms, the Kosmites begin their work, but the breadth of what lays below is unknown, and thanks to the sand-like covering, the exacavation is slow-going. What you do make out however, is text, much like the language of the First Slate carven at the top of a marble archway, just barely uncovered. Though, unlike the starlight imbued slate, there's seemingly no intrinsic understanding of the language, it's no more than discordant symbols to your eyes.
- Maria 'Habitat' Violet - FATES DESCISION - GROWING A DISTANT FLOWER - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
6You shake the oddness of translocation away, your eyes open to the verdant groves of tall grasses shimmering with dew under the moonlight. A number of Great Hoppers scatter at your sudden prescense, their leaps and hulking bodies sending a gust of air through you, rife with the scent of life. To your surprise, beneath your feet is a small patch of the time crystals, having been swapped with a gathering of grasses. Curious how they may interact, for now however you step off, into the tall blades, glad for a moment no Mantids are about, may they mistake you for prey. . . This night you consider is no better a time than to test your abilities, and to that you take a firm stance, letting seedlings and dirt spread between your toes. Magicks of life flow through your body, a cconduit much like a blade of grass asway, the spell travels down your legs into the earth, into the twisting thin roots of the lush beds of green. You send it far as you can manage, as far as where the newest sprouts have begun, but no father. There, to your knoweldge, the magick takes hold and condenses into a seed from which an unknown form of flower will bloom. Or so you hope. Regardless, from what you can tell, so long as you've a enlivened connection, your magicks of life could be sent along like static on neurons.
- Amon - FATES DESCISION - IMBUING ELDRITCH - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) + 1 (Luck) =
6FATES DESCISION - IMBUING KNOWLEDGE - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) + 1 (Luck) =
12!FATES DESCISION - IMBUING POWER - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) + 1 (Luck) =
4Never the one to give in, Amon, you again begin to channel the magicks from the ephermeral Sea of Chaos to this Nameless World. As you gather strength in the small rock hovel, you treat with the Beast of Basalt, though unsurprisingly, your words fall on deaf stony ears. As Gazey. . . Gazes up at you, witnessing the brief frustration still emenate from those cold blue orbs of yours, you at last unleash your spell! A haze of nebulic dust not unlike the kind that swirls about the massive pillar you're ascending, enraptures the three of you. The shape of Gazey warps strangely, from ball to oblong and then back to ball shape, their eye swirls as you look upon it, and find that you must look away. Then your gaze falls upon the earth below you, the octagonal basalt seems to swirl about in strange fractal patterns. When you raise your hands, the palms you stare upon do something much the same. Each crese between your fingertips seems to snake across your hands. . .
"My aim is clear. . ." The voice booms within your head and out across the rushing wind. The earth below you and Gazey shifts and molds, the Beast of Basalt takes on a new shape as it glides effortless up the pillar of ancient marble. Arms and two legs, a body of a collossus. BoB transfigures their inefficient boulder shape into that of a giant man, the size of an island. Stone twists upward from the ground where you stand, a half-featureless face of the volcanic rock morphs thereof, a strange reflection of yourself. ". . . If this Throne is the goal of your game. Should you not secure it before anyone else?" So asks the Beast of Basalt, rippling with new found knowledge. Just the same, the gazeling by your side hops up onto your shoulder and speaks much the same, "I dunno boss. Should ya really take advice from a big rock?" Gazey asks, just getting used to the strange clattering of its new jaw, and evolving vocal cords.Amon, Gazey, and BoB gain the MYSTIFYING trait; Any direct action taken against these creatures that includes looking upon them recieves a -1 to the roll thanks to their warping and inexplicable forms.
Gazey and BoB both lose the ANIMALISTIC trait, and gain the INTELLIGENT trait instead!
- Dr. Unpleasant -FATES DESCISION - RAISING THE ENTOMBED - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
7You need not even the slightest brains like the Pixel mystic over to the east to determine the artefact is most definitely aspected towards flames. You can't help but reach out and touch it, enthused perhaps by what power it could grant you. Of course even careful as you are, the surface of the ruby eye singes the tip of your finger in an instant. The pain only shocks you briefly, despite your touch being as momentary as possible, it seems to have destroyed the nerve endings it came across. And so you and your servants plumb the depths of this forgotten temple in search of something that might aid you. And while you come across the dregs of decayed gauntlets and the like, you are no more eager to try lifting the gem stone, should the glowing hot shackles about it be any indicator.
It seems in all their infinite wisdom, the Enkindled Ones that follow you now couldn't so much as leave a method to handle the artefact here. Maybe this has something to do with their ever burned out bodies? They're fools whatever the case. As distant rain still echoes across the mountain side, you spend a while yet longer looking upon the gem, like staring into the eye of some forlorn demon. It gazes back at you, almost following your movements about it. Flames aren't quite your fortay, yet as you blow a small ember of magick through it, a gout of gire bellows out the otherside, roasting one of your already roasted servents. In the time studying the artefact you come to the conclusion that should you wield the Ruby Eye, fire magicks cast through it as a locus will be empowered as if it were your primary aspect. However you also posit that perhaps this magick can be drained, and might need to recharge for a turn after use. Still that doesn't perfectly answer the question of how to make use of it. Perhaps one of your servants can hold it? Or maybe you can focus on telekentic magick and float the red-hot gem alongside you?
Regardless, before proceeding further, you channel the powers of death, a crackle of black-light erupting through the tombs and striking into each and every sealed casket. Again the caldera temple grows hotter and hotter still as new Enkindled swell the ranks of the old, these armed and armored with long greened bronze. The stout ash-zombies salute as they arrive in the central chamber.Enkindled Ones - Population: Many -> Abundant
- Shapeless Apparition -FATES DESCISION - DOWNWARD THEY EAT - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
7Many hearts constantly pump a fluid nutrient, the sounds tremor a constant dirge above the land. A cocophony of the earth, weeping as it's sucked dry. There beneath the surface a great engorged parasite lurks, continually burying itself into the flesh of the world. There the Shapeless Apparition's teeth of bone gnash again and again, threshing the soil and the rock and the olde forgotten trinkets all into its amorphos body. Eventually, the thick ground gives way to it's immense girth, sinking, falling with a great thud into a massive open ampitheatre. The structure rivals the Apparition's size, a collesseum of sorts, no doubt unparralled in this Nameless World's long lost civilizations. There, photons agitate the blob-like creature. For indeed eight glowing braziers of glimmering iron stand at all corners of this place of ancient games, still burning just as hot as the day they were brought into being, even as a swell of earth pours in from above. More inexplicable perhaps, are the small, eyeball shaped creatures, whom stare intently at the everburning blue flames. It's not long after that they burst into flames themselves and soon after notice your ungulating body. The creatures roll and scurry about the grand structure! The Shapeless Apparition's Wounds become 9/7 from their expanding growth.
How did the Gazelings get here?
Population - Many
Statue - Basketball Sized
Notes: Created by Amon on Turn One, the Gazelings are handpicked stones from the back of the Beast of Basalt. Granted a mockery of life in the forms of Flesh, Mind, and Assimilation, though the later two concepts did not take as strongly. Their main form of locomotion is quickly rolling about, and anything they focus upon they'll alter their being towards, like that of chamelons.
Wounds 1/1
Might - 0
Skill - 0
Hardiness - 3
Willpower - 2
CHAOTIC: There's no telling when this creature might do the unexpected. It's loyalty is difficult to maintain.
ANIMALISTIC: This creature bears the intelligence of a common beast, and often acts on instinct. However, it may learn to obey a master.
CHAMELEONIC STARE: Should this creature focus its gaze upon a certain image long enough, it begins to mimic the concepts therein. Though perhaps on a simpler side that the original.
EVERBURNING: This creature is constantly immolated in blue fire. Nothing can seem to quench the blaze!
- ? -FATES DESCISION - SEEP DOTH THE ABYSS - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
12!Your servants continue toiling in the fossil-fields, quarrying stones for the future, yet you pay no mind to them, all your thought is bent upon the infinite nothingness that it the void. From atop your keep, those pupiless eyes are cast into the black well below, picturing all that could be, and perhaps all that will not. You came to this place, adrift on that cold, dark sea. Alone, abandoned by the pious. By their oh-so-gracious words of heathenry did their world drink of the void, and be subsumed thereby. One wonders what a god you may have been, o' nameless one, should reality not have been sp callous, so cruel.
But then perhaps, you would not have been given this chance to sink it all into the bleak and the black. . . Veins ripple across your onyxian arms, like the leylines pulsing about the east. With all your focus your body shudders, the land splits and heaves, the inky waters of the abyss rise and flow with haste across the land, consuming the long dead earth beneath your spires and stones. Void lines empower, unfurling their infinite fractals further and further out into the world, casting images of all that they reach into the black lake beneath you. The rippling magicks of the void cascade, gripping further hold of the spells you'd already cast, each and all supping of the same dark substance.
The first of the spores blast open, vermin cought in their wake rot at the touch, seeding their bodies for pitch woods soon to come. Serpents descend from the swirling Inkfields deeper into the sea, absorbed by some unspeakable ongoings below. . . First this domain will be brought low, the Throne, then all else.
- Hood -FATES DESCISION - SAILING EAST - 1d10 - 2 (Minimal Crew) =
6FATES DESCISION - ENLIVEN THE SHIP - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
11!For now it seems the stirring of the waters just below the Galleon subside, the Lurking Serpents, having their numbers culled by your destructive magicks have fled. Or so you like to believe, unbeknownst to what plots the beasts might have deep in the abyss below. For now, you command your few remaining Forgotten to row the great ship around to the shore again, hoping to land beyond the Inkfields and escape the great monsters whom seek to send you to a watery grave, just after you'd washed up in this world no less. With a great heave and a great ho, the skeletons manage to just barely land the ship on a rocky outcropping at the eastern side of the land. It's enough.
You set your magicks upon the galleon, reconfiguring its shape as your small group gathers whats left of themselves. Creaks and cracks echo across the land as your multi-jointed ship of bone slides across itself gratingly, shifting into the form of a collossal statue of whalebone and ancient sailors. It stands menacingly, a monument upon the shore, looking out as your gaurdian. To it you muster all the spirits that still linger here in their agony, in their sorrow, in their utter despair of this lifeless place. You flood the skeleton giant with all manner of these woeful souls and wrest it under your command as it crackles to life. Torment vibrant in it's makeshift skull. The spell has taken more out of you than you expected, not to mention you are nearly half-way across a continent from the source of the magick you feel to the west. You decide that firing off energy that way would do nothing more than give away your position and waste your reserves of strength as you hobble forward alongside your small crew. Even more notably, you do not even know whom, or what lurks beyond the horizon, nor what lies in store for you. . .Population - Solitary
Stature - The size of great galleon in human shape.
Notes: Hood transfigured his Barrowhold Galleon into the form a collosal skeleton. This giant is imbued with suffering spirits and towers over the land.
Wounds - 5/5
Might - 5
Skill - 2
Hardiness - 3
Willpower - 0
MINDLESS: These creatures bear no mind, nor will of their own. They cannot think for themselves and respond only to their creators rudimentary commands. Magicks affecting the mind will automatically fail against them.
LONGSTRIDER: Traverses land at a quick pace.
LIFELESS FORM: This creature cannot regenerate lost wounds without great magicks set to do so, even then the process is tricky.
- Yellow Pixel -FATES COLLIDE! - HATEFUL DEAD VS. PIXEL TRAPS - Traping the Castle! - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
6Avoiding the Traps! - 1d10 + 1 (Skill) =
2You think and act quickly! You can't possibly let your happy-go-lucky creations come to harm from all manner of these rotting monsters! And so that boxy body of yours flits throughout the castle, just over the heads of the undead, oozing out of the cracks and crevices in the bottom floor. As you go, your magicks leave beyond artful renditions of lovely implements of death, fitting only the most gloomy and harrowing of torture dungeons. Spinning blades just one pixel wide rend flesh like a scalpel, swinging axe heads invisible to the naked eye from head one obliterate their heads, while false bricks fall out from under the dead ones, sending them hurdling into spikes and deep pits! For now it's enough to stem the tide, and to keep the monsters from tearing apart your frightened .squirrels. However, it's clear, these undead will stop at nothing to unmake the Banana Castle, naught but hate flowing through their decayed skeletal bodies.The Banana castle now has a number of average quality traps!The Hateful Dead -- Population: Numerous -> Some
Population - Numerous
Stature - Varies from humanoids to beasts.
Notes: In retaliation for Yellow Pixel raining on their parade, Dr. Unpleasant raised all manner of skeletal and perserved corpses from deep below the earth to dig into the Banana Castle and destroy it. These creatures are various undead with destruction as their sole purpose.
Wounds - 1/1
Might - 2
Skill - 1
Hardiness - 3
Willpower - 0
MINDLESS: These creatures bear no mind, nor will of their own. They cannot think for themselves and respond only to their creators rudimentary commands. Magicks affecting the mind will automatically fail against them.
(( As an aside I wanted to solidify population as a concept. There are eight stages of population as below: ))
Solitary
Few -- (This was previously 'Small' I'm changing the wording to 'Few' because it just flows better.)
Some
Numerous
Many
Abundant
Countless
Unrivalled
(( Generally population is used to aid in determining direct combat between two groups of creatures. In most circumstances, unless traits declare otherwise, a group of creatures that outnumber another group engaged in combat generally grants a -1 to the outnumbered group's rolls for each stage lower than the other. So this 'Outnumbered' malus in a case of 'Countless' versus a 'Some' would be a whopping negative 4! This may seem like a lot, but don't forget most cases a smaller unit makes up for this with higher statistics. Also, Mystics don't always play by this rule, their magicks tend to go beyond the outnumbered dichotomy. ))
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Topic: The Cosmic Throne: A Magic Battle Royale -- TURN 14 (Read 25786 times)