Turn 5
Somewhere and somewhen, a hapless quickfooted ranguin of the savannah meets its grisly end at the jaws of a mesonychid-like, mesocarnivorous alpaca. And in that moment, a journey of many lifetimes end for the God of Synthesis as they return into existence from their millenia-long absence, with a stretch and yawn that takes the weeds and trees in a breeze.
It takes a moment for such a vast being as Yithr to come back wholly. And as they do, their memories flow back; memories of who and what they are, and the things they've been and did. They had been a bug, which died by being encased in amber. They had been a river gull, which succesfully bore many young. They had been a fish, which preyed upon invertebrate quarry, yet looked after that very same animals as well? What an interesting lifetime, that was.
This anomalous experience doesn't escapes the attention of The Mad One. Yithr takes interest in the workings of the birds that tend to grubs and fish that goad the waterbugs. Using their unique perspective and knowledge they inherited from those lifetimes, they understand what it truly is; a precious gift from The Dreaming One, a sibling-spirit.
As always Yithr sees potential. They decide on synthesizing all these co-dependancies together, and create a system grander than the sum of its parts. But such a system requires a mind as large as itself. Where could Yithr find such a mind? Ah, yes. The helgak. They seemed to cultivate as well. And their minds were sharp and large, and their understanding great. So Yithr decided on them, to give their gift. So they approached a tribe which took their route of migration up and down a system of small ponds and streams. And in an indiscrete mirage of a yellow-green helgak, they revealed themselves to them at the other side of the stream they were about to cross.
"Shimm'braak", they named their tribe to The Mad One. And when offered this new gift of the plenty, in exchange of a warden role for The Mad One's divine order of codependencies, they accepted it. Tribe of Shimm'braak took to fulfill their role as the caregivers to a large farm of dozens of different livestock which took care of eachother as well, and their efforts paid back with all the food they could eat.
A maggot fed a beetle, a beetle fed a bird, and that birds eggs and meat became the food of the helgak. Shimm'braak quickly became the largest tribe upon the island, preferring to keep to themselves in their patch of land, close to where the water system met the sea, where many of their young survived and frolicked, flying above the sea.
After the eruption, the forests of vine covered branchpalms which once covered the island were reduced into small and thin gallery forests around weakly streams and shallow ponds. For Fin what balance there was, was no longer present, and must be restored.
The Forward One took the shape of a tree, exuding a holy aura of pink that once touched the ground and the sky, had the forest regrow. Existing sreams turned back to rivers, and dried streams got renewed. Ponds turned to lakes. Trees spread across the dry savanna. It went as Fin saw fit. For a while. Just into the second quarter of the restoration, the islands soil began to resist. At the thirty percent mark, the regrowth had pretty much halted.
Rains came and the trees gave seeds as ever, even more so with the influence of the Goddess of Balance. Yet something pushed back against her efforts. Fin saw it coming from the blood of the mountain, just out of reach. It heated up the ground beneath even the caverns of The Hidden One, in a deliberate attempt to counter her efforts.
Even as other spirits went through their actions, the struggle continued between the spirit which meant to saw her vision of her shared domain come true, and the mountain, who uttered no words, and gave no explanations as to why it did what it did. Their struggle lasted for a century and a half.
And in this century and half, Fin 's vision came truer, in sense. She continued to bring rain and in the process, created a large zone which was still too dry for the branchpalm but just right for the savanna dwelling raspberry descendants, and some of these hardy savanna trees and bushes colonised and turned this large zone into a dry tropical forest, with it fading into the wet tropical forest of branchpalms in the south and open savannah of hyperthropied moss in the north. The animals from both adjacent habitats made this new place their home, quickly speciating into forms endemic to this dry forest alone.
Forest and savannah covered eigthy percent of the island by then, marshes and swamps completing the count to its entirety. Balanced, as all things should be.
Oh, and of course, that entire thing Fin did with the pinkly glowing tree that grew forests and brought rain created multiple helgak religions around it, prompting their adherents to develop technologically to cope with the forest environment. They now create better cutting surfaces by differentiating between kinds of rocks. That's it.
Blood is good. Blood is what covers a helgaks club and the leaves of the Murder Bush. It is what gives life to things, as Cryax had observed. Things that move, have blood. And plants are alive, without blood. Which makes Cryax sad. They figure that is the reason why they cannot move.
They plan to remedy this, for a select few as an experiment. The Blood God grabs and decapitates a gull chicken in the open savanna, then sprinkles its blood down the moss grass. The droplets, infused with Cryax's essence, changed the moss which absorbed them, giving them the gift of blood..
And so the slogsacks were born. A slogsack is a mass of blood surrounded by a layer of tightly knit, highly derived, muscle-like moss which while still photosynthesizes through its outmost layer, gets most of its nutrients hunting. This plant can move as it wishes through its gift of blood, and during the day is usually in the shape of an upward protrusion not unlike cacti to catch sunlight, and maybe a sloshing blob move to a different location, or split in mitosis style if it is too large to move after the last nights feast.
In the night, it crouches down onto the ground to grab unsuspecting prey, ensnaring them and sucking them dry of blood using a thousand tiny straws, before digesting them.
A tribe of helgak exploits these plants, specifically, their ability to store blood and keep it alive and fresh. They use them to store liquid food in the form of blood by deliberately offering captive colonies of slogsacks their alpacas, then using very long straws they attach to the plants from afar with hooks and barbs to siphon blood from them at will like a macabre wine barrel.
Their slogsacks already lost their ability to move at all, and the helgak which use them are starting to adapt to a full diet of blood.
Xorn awakens. From the wrong side of his non-existent bed, that is. The volcano rumbles as The Weird One grunts and silently tantrums in the grasp of a bad mood. Xorn wishes the forest back. Not the dry, scraggly excuses of them, made of overgrown bushes. They want the ones that they are familiar with; where the breeze runs cool and humid and the soaked fibers of branchpalms sog down and drip water like the overgrown hairs of alpacas caught in rain. The mountain grants this wish, by teleporting them to the south side where the wet forest has fully recovered through the relic populations of the gallery forests. Xorn thinks they could live with this.
Troll sloths, people of The Hidden One, find that they have all been bestowed one piece of clothing overnight. A left sock. They are unbothered by this development, and continue lazing around as their namesake.
On the expane of the savanna, just residing on that indistinct boundary where the dryness of the flats starts overtaken by the wetness of the shrubbery and eventual forest down south, there is a tree as rare as a cyan diamond where it stands due to its very distinct conditions of growth and the attitude some have against its existence.
It's bark is as unblemished and smooth as the puffy clouds, its branches and feather like leaves flow in the wind like fabric. Unlike its simpler brethern, it has a consciousness, that thinks and dreams without an accord of its own, and a means to communicate and learn from others through an airborne seed that infuses itself to others and their minds.
It is an Ico Tree, the work of Ix, The Dreaming One. And through their work, these trees become the centers of worship and targets for extermination, either of which has allowed thought processes among helgak to improve and gain new dimensions of philosphical nuance.
Ico trees contain the essence of the God of Laziness, and that alone, meaning that they may only succesfully germinate if they can supply their first bout of growth into a sapling with a steady supply of Ix's essence. Such an occurance is rare, and so are the Ico Trees.
Once an Ico Tree opens its first leaf, animals are helpless against the pull of its connection. They do not understand what it is, what it does, and they do not acknowledge anything different about themselves of they indeed become a participant of its symbiosis. They do see the memories and knowledge of others flowing onto them, but they simply fall all the way past their simple minds. All they care is the bliss which it grants them and its continued wellbeing, which they will feel compelled to ensure.
But for helgak, this is not the case. They are very aware of what they are. And they become very aware in case they are infected. For some, it is a granted wish; they feel happy and content through the trees influence, getting a sense of belonging, knowledge and purpose. But for others the process of the symbiosis synchronising its host with the tree is utterly horrific. Helgaks have a sense of self. The helgak are sapient. Sapience is selfserving. It hates being touched.
Shortly after the creation of the Ico trees, two opposing cultural attitudes form. One greatly values the trees and the togetherness they provide and the experiences they can give to those who did not have them. And the other vehemently denounces The Dreaming One's gift, refusing to let such a tree live its life, invading and changing the minds of others.
The tribe of Shimm'braak lead the tree collective, having taken the other, smaller tree friendly tribes under their belt and absorbing them into their way of life, culture and language. Trees have adapted to their needs as well, assisting their ecological farming efforts using their ability to influence thougts to streamline livestock movements, and reproductive cycles. Forest is their home, and they protect the Ico trees within their territory.
Others stay the same, as ever, living in separate tribes, each of which speak in different tounges, have different cultures, and lead their own fates. They are loosely lead under and culturally influenced by the slogsack tribe which live on the northern edge of the island, furthest place away from the forest. These helgak kill the Ico trees on contact, using fire that they recently discovered. If they see anybody infected, they is killed with fire as well.
A speciation event is soon to occur within the helgak species. The forest helgak evolve along with the Ico trees and their ecology of livestock. And the savannah helgak are selectively breeding themselves to be more and more resistant to the Ico Trees symbiosis, along with adapting into a more liquvorous diet.
Urn awakes late. In their haste to create, they pull aether, yet forget to give it shape. The aether in their grasp falls onto the island as soon it is turned into matter in one giant glob. This glob is torn as it plummets, and rains the ground in a shower of slime which dissolves back into abstract aether in moments.
One glob however, survives. It is a transparent mass of gelatinous matter that rolls along the shrubbery, picking at berries and unearthing tubers. It soon grows and splits in two. And that two becomes four, four becomes eight, eight becomes sixteen.
They spread all over the island and forces of evolution shape them in ways Urn was probably responsible with. They especially find success in the fungus infested swamps and marshes where no large animals make their home. They evolve to be arboreal predators which squish their way up trunks of trees like snakes and grazers which mow down moss grass as they mindlessly roll along the savannah. There is even one species which inhabits the coastal waters of the island, filterfeeding algea and photosynthesizing with it.
One species of the algea slime is even domesticated by the slogsack tribe. They use the slimes for filtering seawater, exploiting their ability to suck in seawater and keep the salts out, resulting in the harvest of an algea rich, freshwater slushy rich in plant nutrients that can be gathered in a similar fashion to the slogsack plants.
Goodness this took FAR TOO LONG.
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Topic: Be the gods of an island! | (Turn 6) (Always open to new players) (Read 4267 times)