Turn 4
The spirits of the field make their plans, unaware that the hidden one among them had made such as well. Sure, their plans would come to fruition too. Just not in the ways they had envisioned before.
The mountain rumbles. It shakes and roars, and from its head comes large plumes of ash and smoke. And in the dead of a cloudless night, it erupts. Violently. Vast stretches of forest is set ablaze by the coming rivers of the mountains fiery blood. Trees are shaken by the earthquakes and run over by the pyroclastic flows. Animals run and fly around, losing themselves in the chaos and terror. All across the island, the forests are illuminated by the faint orange of the smoke, refleting the light of flames.
The dust settles. The mountain calms from its fit of rage, and ceases its bleeding. One of the spirits, the mad one, caught off guard at this process of nature beyond their control, look at what is left of their home.
Yithr was to first one to wake in the day. Rushing to place of their beloved bush, they find a single stalk of green on the barren, charred ground. It would grow again. It would grow anew. Yithr seemed content, even at the small realisation that the bush now wore blood red leaves.
For the god of red, Cryax, this was a night of thrills. They were awake the whole time, awokenby the death around them. They spent the night relishing the screams of animals as they fled in each and every direction, and their panic as the fires consumed them.
In the mayhem of the fire, Cryax saw the bush of death ablaze, and in a sudden change in mood and intention, they saved from it a piece. They foolishly thought that the bush would get corrupted to be theirs after the magic spent in its near resurrection, yet the bush merely absorbed this new influence, synthesizing it with the essences of the two other spirits it already had to create something new.
For others, they hadn't been awake when the disaster struck. Even when the mountain roared, and aftermath of that calamity smelled of fire, they were kept asleep by the soothing, warm melody of the mountain blood, awakened late to only see the islands recovered state.
And Yithr did wanted to see it too. Even in their sadness at sight of the destruction of their home, The Mad One knew that this was an opportunity. A mostly clean slate was once again at hand as was 3000 years before. With this, more synthesis could be made. They wanted to be a part of it this time. They wished for a more intimate experience when observing the rejuvenation of life across the domain.
And just as they wished, in a moment later, there was no Yithr. In its place was a newly hatched beetleworm, a mere vermin which thought only to hide, breed and feed. This was the will of The Mad One enacted upon themselves. They would spend countless lifetimes, living, dying and reincarnating from one life to another in a millenia of time onward, with no memory or wisdom of their godliness in a bid to gain new experiences and knowledge otherwise out of reach.
And from then on, as The Blood God lingered, The Mad One traveled and the others slept, the island slowly recovered. A few cocotrees here and a surviving herd of gull chickens there, first the plants came back, then the fungi, and then the animals.
Fin awakes, and yawns. The strong breeze which then ensues rushes over an open plain dressed in dry yellow. It takes the Spirit Goddess of Balance a moment to process the situation. The realisation that the forest being gone hits her like stone to the head, the sensation foreign to her divine mind, usually clear and full of answers.
She spots The Blood Bush then, still alive, rustling in the wind in its amalgamted, giant, blood red form, sticking out in the dry fields like an open wound. It had become an even bigger force of chaos, enough so that Fin's scale of balance is tipped towards its sphere of being. And for Fin, that should not be allowed. Could not allowed.
To counteract such an force Fin bestows the animals of this new realm the gift of teamwork. Short furred, quick footed animals learn to seek company and distract their enemies in unison, fish swim in schools that swirl in the presence of danger, and birds which burrow and nest together do things in turns, all of which commanded by wise leaders that sport an indication of being touched by The Forward One, in the form of a frill of her divine color, pink. The world is balanced with the teamwork of these animals, and Fin's scale equalises, as it probably should.
A strand of her hair is carried away by the wind as she relaxes, all and all a very non-consequential event that the fireblood spirit watches with utter glee and anticipation, completely without her knowledge.
Fireblood has sung most its song, and as it starts it finish its lullaby, Ix rises from sleep, greeted by the new savanna where sunsheep frolick and moonhoove run after. The lullaby quickly exits their mind as they regain their mind of the spirit and it is left behind on a lower state of consciousness.
Ix sees this new form the domain has took as a place of unneeded scarcity, where the majority of the island is covered by the selfish growths of golden strands and trees only growing around small rivers and lakes, wet soils overtaken by the fungi.
The Dreaming One thinks of a way as they always do. If the surroundings would not provide, it can be modified, or used in other ways to be made to do such. Ix bestows a gift. The gift of the plenty, they call it. Birds which gain such learn to tend after beetleworms, farming their eggs and eatting their fattest. River tunish herd large copepods around fields of mossbits and smogs of algea like sheep, ecologically engineering the rivers and ponds to allow for more habitable environments.
These species, and their livestock experience immense population increases, and the gift spreads over the entire island. Soon, predators too learn to farm the farmers, attacking the most plentiful farms and feeding only upon the most well-fed. New niches and species of thieves subsist off of stealibg the work of the farmers, and the biodiversity grows as a result.
Ix, with their gift having cascaded everywhere along the island, earns a thanks from the fireblood spirit in the form of an earthquake that sounded like a giggle. The Dreaming One then gets on mentally cataloguing the new developments their gift had caused, unaware that the giggle of the mountain meant something more than just gratitude.
Urn awakens just as the melody of the fireblood ends. He stretches his ethereal form through the caverns underneath, bathing in the ice cold, crisp mineral water. With a motion he rises to greet the forest and its inhabitants, to find none such, instead greeted by an expanse of yellow and only a few alien trees in the distance. He questions it not, content to greet the alien field of flakey yellow instead, returning to the depths afterwards.
In the depths of the world, The Hidden One calls upon the rocks to slumber with him. With Urn's call, the boulders come to life, each turning into a creature slow in act and long in life. Troll sloths, squat beings with long necks and even longer arms, crawl out of the caverns in search of food under the moonlight, and sleep under shade or crevice as the sun crosses the sky.
Xorn is the last one to rise awake, to the sounds of their holy animals, or what they had become in the last 3800 years. The new environment of yellow weeds, thick covering of shrubbery and the new, sleeker deeralpacas do not faze them, instead the first thing they truly notice is the fact that their essence inside The Blood Bush was not as strong anymore. UNACCEPTABLE!!! They take some of the animals around themselves and contort them back into their original shape, dye their fur a dark brown, and hardwire them to seek The Blood Bush. So their essence inside the bush would never fade into the essences of others.
Xorn then come across what they recognise as a rather large tribe of helgak, but looking radically different than what they remember them looking like. They seem to have gotten smaller in strature, about as big as a bush alpaca, along with having evolved their back limbs to be three layered wings for propulsion in the absence of tree trunks to pull themselves towards. Some of them move around with rocks at hand and one has a pink line on its gas sack, which Xorn couldn't make sense of as to why.
The Weird One bestows these smart animals loyal pets. Their own creatures, which they could use the milk of, with cute spotted colors to go with it. The tribe of helgak are at first cautious of the weird looking prey which follow them around without fear. But they welcome the gift after they realise the true implications of it.
Xorn then realises that they are bothered by the fact that their holy animals are eaten by... Also their holy animals. Xorn is shocked when they realise that the hooved creatures which chase after their holy animals are derived alpaca also. They judge the situation blasphemous and give some of the prey the means of defense. More muscle, bigger and better herds and increased agression are among the the improvements. Their leaders have pink fleece, shades if brown and yellow being the normal colors. They come with a quirk though. A funny one at that.
When they encounter the endemic bush alpacas, they start biting and kicking eachother. Xorn looks twice before realising this was definitely not what they wanted at all. Volcano rumbles in a rapid rythm very similar to laugh, and does so for a few subsequent times after Xorn's realisation. Feeling mocked, Xorn pouts and slumbers once more.
Island is still alive and well. Changed but yet the same.
Holy crap this took loooong. Mostly because I had no idea how to make the volcano going out sit well with your actions.
Anyways this is good I hope. And probably full of typos. I am on mobile.
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Topic: Be the gods of an island! | (Turn 6) (Always open to new players) (Read 4517 times)