Turn 3
Two gives way to three. Another thousand years pass in the gods' domain, and their influence courses along the alien lands, marking it as clearly of the divine.
Blood. Blood spills. It signifies chaos. It soaks the dirt, smears the fur and reddens sharp teeth. It pleases Cryax. Blood is prayer for them. So they give blessing to those select few beasts which give the most prayer.
These simple animals become sharper, larger, stronger, and more violent in both body and mind with Cryax's gift. They prowl the land, unimpeded by the wet jungle of giant, branchiating palms which have evolved in the meantime, in the presence of more rain.
Why, one may ask. Fin is the one responsible. They had gained a new hobby in the past couple of centuries, it seems. That being bringing rain.
Island now sees periodic monsoon, making it a much wetter place, prompting the evolution of the branchiating fractal palms and a couple of lake systems. Within these lakes, life flourish in the forms of tiny floating marbles of moss that mimic duckweed that feed riverine gulls, and river penguins which chase after river adapted, dwarfed tuna.
The rain is not a kind benefactor, though. Storms are deadly with the wind and floods they bring. Certain birds, such as the numerous kinds of arboreal, songbird-esque descendants of pigeons have learned to nest together in small villages, where they build their enclosed twig basket abodes in a pyramid formation to create a layered attic against the rain and the predatorial gulls of prey. Large, elephan bird-like browser gulls now make themselves crude storm shelters out of the tough trunk fibers and dry leaves of the branch palms, working together to pile them upon eachother.
The volcano rumbles for a bit, and a small stream of lava briefly exists the volcanoes mouth, only to be extinguished by a bout of heavy rain. The small earthquake from the eruption makes a coconut fall, and crushes an unlucky, chicken-like ground gull to death. From this death a group creatures spring up from out of nowhere. These quadropedal, furry animals quickly profilterate and reproduce, soon covering the entire island and causing the extinction of the larger ground gulls, taking their role of tree browsers. All in a days work for Xorn.
Somewhere deep within the forest, watching a yet another gull chicken die to a trap bush, Yithr wonders about the wonders of immortality. Never will Yithr themselves experience death. Why not give this as a gift?
They quickly find out that such a thing can't be made a reality. Something refuses such a being existing, which they sense is stemming from the blood of the mountain, where hides someone they can't quite see. This source of obstruction seemes to be a reasonable person though, as when Yithr instead makes the bush merely live as long as it can, the fireblood spirit gives no resistance.
A trap bush ends up getting the gift of The Mad One. And with no need to worry about age, along with increased vitality from the gift, the bush quickly grows into sizes unnatural to its species, feeding plenty of the now several species of the furry quadrupeds who come to take a bite of it to get its gift. It has absorbed their essence through their consumption as well- the essence of Xorn.
At the opposite side of the island, far away from the reach of the accursed, immortal bush of death, Ix sought to create a being which would inherit all the gifts of theirs. So comes a being as strange as its creator. A heglak, an animal which flies by its sack of light air, grasps by four limbs of flesh that end in three flaps of skin, which sing and speak in chippy tunes and whistles. and carry their young on their bellies. Initially created in numbers as few as a couple of dozen, they soon manage to spread all over the islands forests, invading and taking the niche of tree browsers from the large quadrupeds as just as quickly as they did with the gullstriches, driving them to extinction as well.
One may have noticed the absence of Urn. Because they did notice their self-absence too, awakening themselves from their supposed slumber. In the pleasant haze of their sleepyness and the clarity of a damp, cloudy morning, Urn notices the small specks of dust in the air, all around the island. One particular dot grabs their attention. A seed- no no, an embryo? "...a spore..." says something in the corner of their kind, source coming from deep within the mountains fiery heart.
Urn puts this 'spore' onto soil, watching it germinate into neither a plant nor an animal, but instead a squishy stalk of living thing that grew incredibly fast, only to become a pile of stinking mush that flies lapped at with great pleasure. Urn finds it quite gross pointless. What even was this? "...a stinkhorn...", replies the voice.
This new name gives Urn no real answers. But it also makes them quite curious. By the time they had stopped wondering, these 'stinkhorns' were everywhere on the island, flies and small birds which ate them seemed to be as common as them.
By a whisk of Urn's influence, these weird lifeforms rapidly grow larger, longer lasting varieties, some of which grew as large as trees, that still seeped that sludge, only as small droplets. They grow where trees cannot, in the swamp and and marsh along with the moss. Flies speciate to follow the tasty sludge, and a beetle hunts them in these biomes as the birds cannot.
The island grows in its strangeness by the millenia. The volcano rumbles periodically just before the thousand years pass. Seemingly content to see the island as it is.
How was this? Proceed. The grace period is about to end.
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Topic: Be the gods of an island! | (Turn 6) (Always open to new players) (Read 4294 times)