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[Eschar]

(Hmm, are you implying the Plague originated from the Void? All the detail our Phoebe got was a speculation about an unchained SEEDship.)

[Blood_Librarian]

Yes.

[Fluffe9911]

Of course

[King Zultan]

Sounds good to me.

[19_EgarAlnis]

The Child starts awake. They lay swaddled in black cloth, upon a stone of jet black, in a temple of twisting flesh.
Sinewy branches of pulsating silver, studded with spikes curl into great arches above the Child’s head. Crystals dot the walls, flickering to life to cast a dim grey radiance upon the smooth, unadorned floor. Slabs, much like the one the Child lays upon, hang from twisting thorns, their collapsing masonry speckling the floor with rubble. A fountain bubbles forth from a hole in the center. Clean, reflective water shines beneath the grey crystal.

The Child rises, stumbling to the pool’s edge. Its breath catches in its throat as it perceives the black, formless shape that leans over the water’s edge. Two arms, two legs, a head…a standard humanoid shape made of twisting sinew and shuddering flesh.

What am I?

Five fingers form when the Child examines itself. A makeshift hand brushes over thick musculature and rigid blue bone. Flesh parts with a press and toughens with a twitch of willpower. Dust rises from its unformed skin, flowing upward with the air currents, only to coalesce back into pulpy flesh. Veins pulse with life, and the Child traces the largest arteries to a central organ within its chest. Raising a finger to its face, it traces a path in front of its ocular organs. Understanding dawns.

I exist.

Another organ within its core rumbles and protests. This too, it understands.

I hunger.

The Child circles around the temple, using its two lower limbs for a slow, loping locomotion.

The alluring smell of iron and protein draws its attention. There in the corner is biomass. A pile of bipeds, pale and unmoving. The Child examines the creatures. It touches pale flesh, feeling the heat draining from the meat. It punctures one of these thing’s arms, revealing thick red blood and pink bone. Hunger rumbles within the Child’s stomach, but it doesn’t eat. The Child resembles these creatures, these…pale, fragile bipeds. It drags one of the corpses free of the pile, leaning it against a pillar of thorns, and sitting across from it to study the dead creature.

What am I?

<< < >

[Superdorf]

You are hubris.
You are man's attempt to become god.

[Maximum Spin]

You are hubris.
You are man's attempt to become god.

I don't want to be Gunnerkrigg Court.

I am fate. I am inevitability. I am the future, inexorably mounting up over the present. I am the unseen and unheard, the spirit of forgotten things that have sulked and bode in darkness and now come biting back with a towering vengeance. I am the slow culmination of the fury of eternity. I am the ONCOMING STORM and I will bring the world back into alignment with the naked madness that is its true nature.

[King Zultan]

I am fate. I am inevitability. I am the future, inexorably mounting up over the present. I am the unseen and unheard, the spirit of forgotten things that have sulked and bode in darkness and now come biting back with a towering vengeance. I am the slow culmination of the fury of eternity. I am the ONCOMING STORM and I will bring the world back into alignment with the naked madness that is its true nature.

+1 I'm liking the sound of this.

[Superdorf]

I don't want to be Gunnerkrigg Court.

((The first game had several parallels with Gunnerkrigg, honestly.))

You are fallen. You are corrupt. You will redeem, make human these crooked things.
You are the Ascendancy, for good or ill. Rise, child, to metastability.

[Fluffe9911]

You're a child lmao

[Yellow Pixel]

You're a child lmao

+1

[Eschar]

You are a child of something, even if that's just the madness of the Void. You should examine your own body, and examine further the body of that biped. See how you are alike, and how different.

[19_EgarAlnis]

You're a child lmao

You are fallen. You are corrupt. You will redeem, make human these crooked things.
You are the Ascendancy, for good or ill. Rise, child, to metastability.

I am fate. I am inevitability. I am the future, inexorably mounting up over the present. I am the unseen and unheard, the spirit of forgotten things that have sulked and bode in darkness and now come biting back with a towering vengeance. I am the slow culmination of the fury of eternity. I am the ONCOMING STORM and I will bring the world back into alignment with the naked madness that is its true nature.

You are a child of something, even if that's just the madness of the Void. You should examine your own body, and examine further the body of that biped. See how you are alike, and how different.

The Child analyzes these concepts as they are presented, considering its own existence and comparing it with its own logic and thought process. And it understands.

I am a Child, between birth and puberty. But I am also madness? I am stability? I am fallen, I am corrupt...and I am forgotten.

The Child whimpers and curls its long legs beneath itself. It sits like that for a long time. An age eternal within the timeless temple. The dust that rises from its body thickens and coalesces into a carapace over that time. Long fingers harden into manipulative digits, and its lanky bulk shortens and shifts.

When it finishes its sulk, it rises to examine the corpse. It follows the same general shape, although now the creature is twice the size of the diminished Child. Two arms, five manipulative digits on the end of each. Two legs, rising to a central core. A head, lolling forward from a neck. Reaching up, the Child snaps a spike from the wall, and begins to cut. The bones are all in the same place, beneath veins of red and flesh of pale white. Equivalent organs are found in the core. The difference is what hangs from the creature's neck. On the head there's a organ for smelling between two eyes and above a organ for consumption filled with white teeth. Sensory organs hide beneath long hair.

I am similar to this creature. Shape, bone structure, and general anatomy. I have similar organs, but I lack the detail of this creature's head.

<< <>

[Superdorf]

((I'm just now noticing the left/right hyperlinks. Very cool!))

Peace. Courage. You are fallen, but not condemned.

...

This is man. You are its image, and its champion.
Feel the curve of the eye socket, the articulation of the jaw.
It was alive once. Life is precious.

[19_EgarAlnis]

((I noticed last game important updates got lost.))