TURN FOURArmies gather,
Forces converge,
Whenst the first,
battle emerge? - Amon -FATE'S DECISION - GAZELING EVOLUTION - 1d10 - 4 (Lack of stimuli) + 2 (Chaotic Nature) =
1FATE'S DECISION - IMBUING POWER - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
4FATE'S DECISION - IMBUING CONTROL - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
3FATE'S DECISION - IMBUING ADAPTATION - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
6The sea breeze has picked up as the Beast of Basalt beings to work double-time to move your isle through the sea. So much so that it draws your attention, looking onward, the creature of stone's back legs seemed to have twisted in on themselves, and continuously untwist to paddle forward like some form of propeller. Amusing indeed, it won't be long now before you're before the Cosmic Throne again, should you continue to ride this island. Meanwhile it seems your command of evolution falls upon deaf ears, the little orbs of flesh and eyeball remain mostly inert, almost depressed as your voice washes across them, now they can barely even look upon you, their creator. It's undoubtable that they require food for thought.
Still, you might as well toy with their genome as you enjoy this little ride, right? So you heft the nearest Gazeling and bend your will upon it once more! Power. . . A concept that feels as distant as possible for these seemingly useless little abominations, the word doesn't quite seem to stick. It's the same for Control, anathema to the chaos imbued therein. However. . . When you speak the word Adaptation, they seem to perk up. It's a concept already within the Gazelings, but you empower it, even if just a little. Not long after, a few more of the chaotic little fleshballs fall into the sea, only these left behind seem to immediately elongate and disappear in the waters. You're uncertain of their precise fate, but it seems that at least as made a change amongst them.
- Maria 'Habitat' Violet -FATE'S DESCISION - SCRYING - 1d10 + 2 (Willpower) - 1 (Target's Willpower) =
9Chitin crunches around you, digestive juices flow, bodies fall to decay feeding the long grasses, in turn the grasses feed the cycle. It's a simple biome, but one that you're rather confident in, the stability is there, even were it to take over the entirety of this island. Unless something drastic were to happen of course. You look to the smallest puddle extend in the mud, clear as it is. Bending your mind upon, you drop a single leaf therein, it twirls, it dances, moving about the water casting an image within it.
The miniscule pool darkens, yet no shade has been cast upon it. A figure you see emerges from the infinite nothing, they stand looking out across a sea of murk. Brilliant locks of pure white nearly reach the earth from their head. Upon their castle; bricks of dark matter, mortar of the void, they weave magicks beyond the veil of this world, anathema to both creation and destruction. You are not certain what precisely to make of it, yet then two images more appear to you. Upon the shore where a man wreathed in spirits climbs, the sea churns wildly full of splothches, no telling what lurks below. Then to the northwest, just across from the isle you stand upon is an unending burrow. A hole from which pestilence festers forth. . .
Those images subside, it would seem deep in the great continent of fossils, amidst a labyrinth 'neath the earth an army swells. The seemingly humble words of Clesydros, that timekeeper, rest in your mind. You accept his offer, but knowing this Cosmic Game's ultimate goal, there's an air of worry about it. Even if your ecncounter goes well, who's to say you won't slit one another's throats a day or two hereon?
- Clesydros -FATE'S DESCISION - TIME CRYSTALS - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) + 1 (The First Slate) =
13!The dryad, or wyld woman, or whatever designations she answers to, her voice is genuine as it reaches you. Or so it sounds. Perhaps when it comes down to it, you'll wield spatial powers empowered by the Tablet and send her away from this place rather than having to destroy her. . . Perhaps not. That consideration brings the thought forward; how intensely unlikely an event it is that eight different Mystics from disparate realities have come to this Nameless World seeking all the same thing. Surely there must be an arbiter of some kind toying with the lot of you? A powerful one at that.
You cast such aspersions aside and refocus. There on the well-striped land you bring the First Slate forward, as it channels your very being Clesydros, it crackles, the air itself distorts around it. Those sunken eyes of yours glimspe into the aeons past where all is this dry nothingness, and through that gaze your plan is made whole. Each of a thousand, of a hundred thousand passings of the red sun above more and more of that dusty land accumulates upon itself. To your waking eyes, a strange shifting of the earth here and there about yourself first piles of nothing but dirt, no, they were always a glistening stone. But. . . That can't be true, sharp crystalline structures had always peaked out across this island like little bushes frozen in time.
Having sent such powerful magicks into the exponentially distant past, you shake yourself, steady yourself, center yourself in this time, in this place. Shedding false memeories you gaze upon the structures with intent as their shapes remain unstable. More opaque, than the glorious Kruovios, yet seemingly just as perfect. They are most definitely inert, at least no active arcane signature emenates from them scattered about. These Time Crystals however grow continuosly at a noticable rate in-fact, and may just take over this island in its entirety. It seems that with the power of creation that the slate holds, the echoes of your spell have continued reverberating into the ancient past, and even more so. If it continues unceasingly. . . There's no way of telling what effects the spell might have in the future. Still, you are satisfied, a field of materials with which to work with, crops of luminous stone that they are.
- Hood -FATE'S DESCISION - THIRTEEN SPEARS - 1d10 + 1 (Secondary Aspect) =
6You've no time to waste gawking at this place, having just reclaimed some semblance of a life from the infinite void between worlds. Ever the pragmatic one that you are, the first thought that crosses your mind is protection, coming in the form of wailing spirits now wrapping and rounding your body. The second is the power to destroy any foe that crosses your path. To that end you extend your hand above the timeworn shore, certain to find the fossils of life long, long ago. With a single push of mystic energy, a radar's pulse, detects that which you seek. In moments after a short rumble below, an elongated spine of a once great beast juts from the loose rock and sand. Then another, and eleven yet more, each built with countless parts of beasts and men damned hundred, or thousands of life times ago. You care little of the stories they carry, seeking only the most grave of implements.
It makes itself known to you, one built of two parts, two blade-like prongs dulled by aeons in the earth, and nearly a foot taller than yourself. To this you extend one finger, that erupts with a crimson shadow, enveloping your chosen tool. Satisfied, you heft the twin spear of bone upward, its touch stings at your hands, and set it upon the land. Its mere graze blasts apart the loose rubble of the shore. It is then that you feel eyes upon you, glittering topazes just beneath the dark swelling sea, all gazing upon you.
- Dr. Unpleasant -FATE'S DESCISION - RAISING THE DEAD - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
10!More than the mere common dead dwell here beneath the soot and ash, of this you are most certain. Indeed you intend to find out exactly what the feeling is that tingles your bones walking across this desecrated place. As your idols of ash stoically surround you as a vanguard upon their stone steeds, you allow your gaze to set upon the land much as the red giant above is. This is a wasteland awash in decay, rather in the decay of decay. You bring both hands forward and are determined to harness this energy. And so you do.
Focusing your magick about the husks buried deep in the earth, you force both hands upward, splitting the ground and thrusting these ashen coffins forth. The dust settles, revealing the calcified statue-like bodies of those who dwelt here in times long gone. Little, stout men who stand no greater than your stomach in height, each and all their faces are twisted into shapes of agony, terror, and surprise. Yet more interesting still is that their gray dusty bodies still crackle like embers, like the forlorn children of a great blaze. They're hot to the touch, in-fact the simply act of raising their bodies forth seems to have heated up the land considerably.
With a number well-exceeding your vanguard, your army is beginning to truly swell. With a single, swift movement, you strip the false life given to an Ashen Idol and split it into each of the stout figures. They burn to life with only the purpose of serving you Dr. Unpleasant.Population - Many
Stature - Half the size of an average man, yet broad.
Notes: On Turn Four, Dr Unpleasant raised the perfectly perserved ashen bodies of small men whom perished in a great blaze long ago. They still crackle with heat, like embers, and act little more than like zombies now.
Wounds - 2/2
Might - 2
Skill - 0
Hardiness - 2
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.
EMBER BODIES: These creatures emenate a permenant heat below their soot-skin, just enough to set tinder alight and cause burns to those who come in contact with them for long enough. Heat continuously pours from their skin.
- The Shapeless Apparition -FATE'S DESCISION - MINI-ME - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
8Here and there, as your strange form burrows it absorbs more than mere mass and earth, knowledge is just as powerful, if not moreso. But this alien creature does not do it through sight persay, rather, your form envelopes relics of olde, canvassing for all that you can glean. Fine masonry eroded by the march of time, marble pillars nigh on crumbled to dust, tins and plates of copper; all telling the tale of a civilization buried beneath the earth. It isn't too long after your body comes across scattered and eaten away bones of the creatures that once called this land their home. . . Perhaps once a great and thriving monument to the Creator of Creators, laid low long before you and the mystics arrived to this world.
You succeed in 'splitting' as it were. Maintaining a thin line of matter to your sac-like node that continues to grow into the empty space it creates. Perhaps it is not as prodigious as if your main body were to feast on the land, but it remains a constant form os sustenance pumped to you, giving your formless body more freedom to roam beneath the crust of this Nameless World. Patiently waiting its turn to cease everything. Regardless of your findings, your total mass most definitely increases as the land below this barren west is methodically hollowed out.
- ? -FATE'S DESCISION - SOLDIER RALLYING SUPPORT - 1d10 + 4 (Willpower) + 1 (Leader) =
13!FATE'S DESCISION - ABYSSAL FOUNDATIONS - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
11!Pests; gnats of pure malice, serpents that ooze a sickly toxin, shadowy rats that gnaw through the earth. . . Woe's Den is not a pleasant dungeon to say the absolute least. And it is the Lone Soldier whom delves its squalid burrows at the behest of ?. Not out of fear, not out of obligation, but a true heart's desire to please the onyx skinned Mystic. And so, gaining the life that was once vibrant in her flush skin, the soldier braves the depths. But she is not wholly alone on her mission, the powers that brought her from the brink of despair are extent here too, in the walls, through the air, motes of the void coaelesced into invisible form by her dear ?. It only emboldens her further. Snaking through infinite pits, she finds beings who may just share her devotion.
In one great chamber there lurked a tribe of blind beastmen, furred slick bodies that battered away the dank waters of stagnant pools below, weaved tools of hide and bone. They were no 'great' civilization, but as the Lone Soldier stood before them, glimmering in dark light, they needed no exchange of words to realize their truest calling. They enshrouded her worn armour in fetishes and idols of gods long discarded to the abyss, and followed her bravely to the surface, where the dull red light of the setting sun stung their wide cloudy eyes. Yet the little tribe did not falter, crossing the fields of petrified grass to return to their saviour.
? Could feel them, with each discordant marching step behind their stoic once-human leader. Following the regal woman back toward the keep. Ley tendrils had been coerced from the depths of the pit just below the Keep of Black Apathy, they were neither forced nor demanded, simply drawn into the dark halls up that inky waterfall. They slipped their way through every crevice and about every spire of the void castle, then gently about the lord of this place, whom caressed the magick so. She pleaded with it silently, to reach across every inch of the land, to blanket it in the void. . . Letting one day all creation return to that nothingness, rather than this still life. With her wordless thoughts imbued, the pit stretches its reach across the entirety of the Continent of Monsters, conduits for ?'s power.Void Leylines: These are invisible to the naked eye. Tendril like warps in the fabric of this world that enenated from the abyssal pit to the east. So long as one weaves their magick from the Keep of Black Apathy, they can cast spells anywhere that these tendrils reach as if they themselves were there. Just as well, if one attunes to these lines like ?, they may have a sense of vision through the leylines as well, much like a spider's web.[/b]
Population - Numerous
Stature - Slightly shorter than the average human.
Notes: Beings that were dredged from the void of loss and reconstructed by Woe's Den. On Turn Four, the Lone Soldier recruited a tribe of these creatures to aid their 'saviour' ? in anyway they could muster. These creatures are thin furred humanoids adapted to low-light and wet enviornments.
Wounds - 1/1
Might - 1
Skill - 2
Hardiness - 2
Willpower - 1
EQUIPMENT: These creatures bear tools of bone and hide, as well as the knowledge to create them.
POISON RESISTANT: These creatures are specially adapted to ward off many forms of toxins, venoms, and poisons. Whenever resisting such effects, they gain a +3 to their hardiness rolls.
- Yellow Pixel -FATE'S DESCISION - BANANA CASTLE - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
7You feel more than a simple omnious magick on the horizon, even your .squirrels begin to shudder and find shelter among the trees, something quite dark indeed is mustering strength just over to the west. So, you crack your proverbial knuckles and get to work! Using yourself like an oversized stamping tool, you hop to and fro, leaving pixel bricks behind with each motion. Your adorable little creations seem to help, gathering these blocks alongside you, stacking one on another, the work helping all of you forget your woes and sing a tune as you do. It's not long before your job is complete! A great 2-D wall, glimmering yellow, a gate, a tower, a keep! The Banana Castle has sprung up from nothing thanks to your magick. Though it is by no means impregnable, the flashy sight should surely keep an army at bay, at least for now. . .
In the meantime of all this hard labour, it seems the special sprout you'd made earlier begins to wobble and grow! One could hardly call it the massive tree you had in mind, but the seed is trying its very best to get there. No doubt in time, it will be the largest and most fruitful tree in all of creation.