Dawn Age 1 Second Period
The world has been shaped, nameless in the void watched by the sap of the divine and the rift to the impossible beyond. The unborn gods crawl themselves into a reality of their making and change from shifting masses of possibility to the named makers of this new world. And lo it was good. Of them, one speaks its words changing reality and sloughing off the impossibility for this new reality, and they were Vidal their voice declared their form and their new hands wrought a mote of potential, the other divines gather and whisper lending power lending aid as the new god shaped a green star. This was the lifestar for now at the beginning of this world the gods designed its end. The star grows large and grows in power, a mountain of living impossible fire whose light casts life upon the world. It would shepherd and aid this world, and in distant times beyond the memory of the unborn it would feast upon the slaughter as the world dies at its end. So sayeth Vidal.
Yet this first act was not in silence, for as the whispering mass of the unborn added Vidal in their craft others took to voice and cut off impossibility to take upon themselves a nature. Mnemosyne the goddess remembered reached hands into that spark of impossibility unmade by her naming and began to forge of it a greater pact the workings of a foundation for this world and all who live in it. She made a pact with that broken shattered remains of the nothing of everything that she had been and had rejected with a name. Regardless of the form of its changes and of its fate, this endless minuscule fragment was bound to her in memories. Each part of the fragment was granted to all that were, and Mnemosyne works upon a loom weaving each new soul out of the remnants. The lifestar took upon itself a soul and their self was codified by their memories and being bound into this nature. The lifestar could understand faith but it felt little need to worship the divines as it was their tool.
As Mnemosyne worked another god turned itself into a bound form, catching the offal from Mnemosyne they bound themselves in a shell of the unmade, the uncomplete and the unformed. They held back potential but shifted in nature. They were a god of the dead of death born before life. A corpse of the unliving, the god took the name Psol'bzaengoth and the worked with the endless whispers to define the magics they crafted their own form from. Souls were the source of life by Mnemosyne's will and so Psol'bzaengoth took that to its logical end. If souls bound life and memory, then why let them go to waste? The corpse god took the world and with the aid of the whispers of the unborn he carved channels so that the animus of the soul can be used after death. He made rituals into the fabric of the world so souls could be bound, can be made to speak. To a master of the art a soul is a fuel a currency to enact magic and to gain power. For it can be used to animate the dead and unliving, it can be used to extend one's life, it can be used in many ways by those who know how to work stuff of the soul.
The final magic of the new world forged into its first age is the magic of the wild lands, the magic of the untamed and nature. No god comes forth with its birth, no lord names themselves; rather the writhing mass of the newborn writes this magic from only the impossible whispers. They steal from the unmade beyond reality the boiling chaos of the unreality beyond this egg. This is an untamable magic and unbindable power that will squirm and writhe when one tries to predict or master it. To be a practitioner of the wild is to be mad, or to have power and density unrivaled in this world. In hindsight perhaps all should have expected the life star to gravitate towards this power. They are an aspect of the nature of this world, of growth and development and so they understood the wild and could take it in hand using their raw power to command this wild power.
An unmade comes and names itself __ the echoing sound of silence that stills the world when it is spoken. It takes its own essence and crafts a way memories can be anchored to the world as beings of their own power. The whispers aid as these are forged, the nature of necromancy provides an anchor allowing __ to let spirits to have great power increasing with the strength of their birthing thought and the will and power of their mortal maker. These spirits are made with no body but they are living things without substance but with mind, to interact with the world they must possess a living thing or object of the world.
Their are the ur-spirits those test subjects born of __ in essence and in mind, they were the prototype and examples made as __ carved this nature into the world. They are few and rare but they have great power being born of the thoughts and minds of a god. Though the ur-spirits are not the most powerful of their kind, for upon seeing the creatures and their pattern the corpse god dabbled in them seeing how they work and connect to his magic. These spirits born of unlife and the thoughts of the corpse god are often called the first ghosts, they are only three in number but they act to help teach other creatures of necromancy. In this beginning of the age the most prominent and common spirits are the green spirits.
They are the will and mind of the life star, no match in power to even the weakest of God's the life star has reason and need to make spirits with the power crafted by __, these in the later parts of the era are the gardeners as they work to aid the life star in its task to grow and expand the life of the world. The green spirits prepare to tend to the world as life is born of the acts of the other gods and whispers.
As __, Mnemosyne, and Psol'bzaengoth worked on their grand designs Shroomi took upon the world a simple task the crafting of mushrooms small white blobs of mycelian flesh that would fruit from the ground a simple food and creature that would eat at the dead world and create life. This mushroom called shrimp of the woods would be found quickly by the green spirits and spread as far along the peninsula as one can see. The whispers aiding Shroomi led to more and more of the fruiting bodies and fungi being made, until the fungus could be found in every inch of the region eating at the dead world.
One of the thief gods cast off their formless being to break apart into a mass of connected parts a shifting form of a thousand pieces, for they took a name The Panoply of Mayhem, and they carved a section of their form into a new creation aided by the whispers of the unmade the Panoply crafts a small golden worm its form a shining golden sheen hiding the vast intelligence of the creature. The worm is indomitable and domineering, a mind built to bewitch and deceive. A slithering master of lies and illusions, a schemer unparalleled. An agent of Mayhem, in this early world the Shining Sovereign as the worm is name has little to do but it begins to plot most of the spirits are too strong and the shrooms too weak, however the sovereign finds it can use its thoughts to give birth to spirits for its own end. However as these new spirits are made in the image of the Sovereign their creator tears them apart, unwilling and unable to stand seeing its own form.
One of the unborn cast their power out into flames dancing with the whispers of the others to form a forge as they take the name Demiourgos, and they take that fire to craft a forge that would impart the Demiourgos' skill allowing the crafting of magical arms, armor, and jewelry by even mortal smith should they have skills and imagination. This forge has a fire burning red from the life of the world itself and the Demigouros makes any tool the forge will ever need, and binds it's magics so it would always be stocked with the flesh of the world. Any mundane metal or other material available to the smith in these halls. For now the forge crackles merrily without the sound of hammer to metal beyond the wandering of its maker.
Nomod, that is what the god thing names itself as it took impossible hands to write spirits and non-existent mortal flesh together. Fur in many dazzling colors the foxes that they craft can be mistaken for simple animals. They are no beasts, a mind unbound to its own flesh; the Fox Spirits are creatures of spirit above all their minds cunning and devious, their nature that of the trickster, though they will help just as quickly as they bring misfortune. As the whispers and divine hands finish the fox spirits dash into the world tending to the mushrooms and aiding the green spirits in the crafting of future gardens for when more life is made by the gods.
A god is a fickle and a powerful creature hands able to create and destroy to craft and unmake. But a god's attention is not as infinite as their power, so one begins the craft of personal servants to maintain whatever the god needs done. Many whispers help as the god takes the name Ante and begins to craft life from stone and metal. A hard shell of the materials of the mountain forming a creature not unlike a lobster, powerful claws and a dull but obedient mind. They were to be his spades. The Rocacrustas. Each one he handcrafted scrubbing away as much of Mnemosyne as he could but the master of souls who dwells eternally unforgettable is beyond the power of Ante to completely suppress.
He then sent them down upon the sides of the mountain, where the Rocacrustas began to mind and develop but it isn't long before other divines begin to meddle. Another unborn sheds its impossibility to claim the name Ian Yor Tul and they took the form of a Rocacrustas teaching them to carve stone into blocks to stack them to make buildings. The teacher god even brought a handful of the brightest Rocacrustas to the forge of the eternal flame and showed those how to work simple metal picks so they can cut into the earth. Iam Your Tul did little but the Rocacrustas moved forward on a rocket pace already they were those who time to dabble in things whispered by the winds, the crafting of spirits, though the thoughts of the Rocacrustas are simple and most of their spirits have little use beyond messengers for their tribe.
One group powerful in their own mind ventured away from the mountains as Ante worked on more of their kin unaware of the rapidity of their growth. This group found a dead world with empty gardens with shifting shadows, of soft not quite rocks they could barely eat. It was a place barely hospital for the Rocacrustas so their group went to turn back. Their story would have been far happier if they had done so before that moment. For at that time their group had gathered the attention of the Ghosts who went and whispered in their minds the secrets of necromancy of prayers to an unliving god with the promises of more secrets to be had.
A festering cult returned to the mountains, they found their kinds blind worship of Ante with whispers of the Teacher and of Memories forgotten and remembered. Gods that only asked never offered. So they worked slowly to speak in hidden places of Psol'bzaengoth. The bravest showed off their magics creating golems of stone to help move the earth and make their homes, not speaking of the magics that power them.
Obscurity, the monsters in the dark. Perhaps the one that calls themself Locura finds humor in the way the mortals dance in fear as something shifts beyond their sight. For they take the weave of this thought and quilt it into a smothering blanket that they would cast into the world. For most this is a clinging feeling they can work past but some are hit by the weave of this fear and grow to worry. What is it the golem smiths do at night, what are the creatures working at the empty gardens, what is the desire of the quivering green star watching all, what happened when I was gone? Every change every moment their mind unravels leaving them broken husks unable to think beyond the fearful muttering and the furtive glances. Some dig deeper worried of what was outside coming in. Others turned on their fellows, for the Rocacrustas as a paranoid one finds the workshop of a necromancer and watches their craft, before speaking of the dark arts to others. A war, a fire, a mix of fear and desperation. Each moment feeding the next as the mountains burn and run red in the blood of the Rocacrustas.
The growing war is fed as the Shining Sovereign joins using illusions to break alliances to trick those in power and feed the growing tide of blood. The chaos only serves to feed Mayhem and Paranoia
As Ante turns back ready to get his worship he finds a race in turmoil, the necromancers have been driven far underground, but tension and fear has not died down anyone beyond a family group inspired worry as they take more and more guidance from those who are touched by Locura.
Far from the wars of the mountains another stolen god gives themselves a name. This one is Annatar the bringer of gifts, and their first work aided by the shifting muse of the whispers is the Staff of All Things. They forge it of pinkish metal though its form and qualities are fluid able to shift its size, mass, and shape. The staff is unbreakable by mortal hands and anything that does damage it will be undone by the passage of time as the metal heals itself. The staff will always be a stick of that pink metal, but it can be made into a staff, rod, wand, or cane as long as it remains the shape of a stick. The staff is given a basic spirit, the knowledge of its own use, so that it can bind itself to a user and share that information. Whenever the staff is held it begins the process of binding to a new user unless the old user has it in their grasp. The owner has more power than the just the shape and appearance as they can make the staff float or move in an area around themselves, it is not ideal for a combat but if one needs the staff and to have both hands free it can be of use.
However, these functions are not the main feature of the staff. Instead, it has an empty "slot" by default. The owner of the staff can place a piece of material or an object into this slot. Once this is done, the Staff of All Things will develop an orb or another simple shape attached to it, representing whatever was placed in the slot, including its texture or some symbolic representation on the developed shape. Depending on the item placed in the empty slot, the Staff of All Things will produce various effects for the owner to exploit. For instance, if you place a piece of basalt in the empty slot, the artifact will grant its owner the ability to create, break, erase, move, and shape basalt and all substances similar to this type of rock while in contact with the staff and within a certain radius. The slot can be emptied and refilled at any time the owner desires, but it takes a few seconds at most. They just need to touch the staff, so they can retrieve the object - the slot will become empty again, ready to receive another item. Only one thing can occupy the slot at a time.
Although there are some caveats, such as the abilities granted by the staff not always being straightforward. For example, putting a material into an empty slot does not guarantee that you will receive the same type of manipulation as with the basalt option. You could insert lead into the slot and gain the ability to temporarily increase the weight of any object struck by the staff or hit by the produced wave/beam. The Staff of All Things offers a unique ability for each physical object in existence, some of which may be more esoteric than others.
Also, merely possessing ownership of the staff and get instinctive understanding of how to use it does not equate to mastery over the effects created by the staff or to having knowledge about ability limits and potential dangers. One must explore and learn to wield each power skillfully, applying their existing skills, experiences and knowledge to the staff's abilities. For instance, if the owner of the staff is a master mason, they would be able to learn how to create more complex shapes from basalt more quickly, leveraging their existing skills and mindset for working with stone.
Therefore, if you insert something extremely powerful into the staff's empty slot, it does not guarantee that learning how to use the ability derived from that item will be easy. It can be extremely hard or complicated. Sometimes so much, it probably isn't worth it. Annatar finishes their work and walks the land quickly running across a fox spirit, and leaving the staff with them before vanishing. The fox finds the staff as a pleasant walking stick and keeps a mushroom in the slot allowing the fox spirit to grow and guide the fungi faster than even the green spirits.
Livinni is the next to take a name, the whispers gathering around them as they form a blade of green light woven into a physical creation. The grass as it is called is able to consume the energy from the sun above and the green star when it nears. Turning the energy into more of itself weaving new grass in a net under the soil so new green blades can push up into the light they consume. Endlessly repeating as long as they can find the sun and star to draw from. This new creation is quickly found by the green spirits and the fox spirits. This leads to them spreading the grass as far and wide as they roam. The gardening foxes take to planting grass on the entrances to Rocacrustas caves using the aid of green spirits to rapidly grow the plant over the opening and causing consternation to the inhabitants.
A new god gave herself a name Tiana, she entered the ocean to see its beauty. As the others work she stays in the sea. On the bottom of the ocean the Foamgowned lady was lonely. And thus the births creatures with cells both crystal and organic. And tells them to go up onto land gave them strong jaws so that they may eat anything and return to the ocean to lay their pearly eggs so that the lady wouldn't be lonely anymore.
But the creatures sank and died. The Gorgeous Lady came up with the idea she grabbed most beautiful stones and taught them how to carve these into shells. She knew that this would slow them down on land, but it would allow her children to carry air and float in the water and carry water, allowing them to breathe.
After her children were done with carving Tiania inspected the shells of her children to praised those who made works of art out of their shells and shame the slackers. At the end she decreed that each turtle should be a judge and strive to make pearly eggs with a turtle whose shell they like most. And teach their children to do the same.
The artistic turtles are left alone for the most part after their creation working to slowly create more and more beautiful shells with those with the most beautiful often trying to be as close as possible to the lady while those who slack off and do not make beautiful shells pushed out of their little society and as far away from their lady as the turtles can keep them. They find the grass on the land and when they bring the grass back they find it is just as able to grow and thrive in shallow waters as in air.
The new god father's parts of the divinity to cloak themselves in a name, the feathered fox tailed weaver. A beautiful Kimono woven by the loving hands of thr god. Dyed with the dark colours of the night, all kinds of birds fly in the fabrics desappearing and reapearing. If you stay still in silence Its possible for you to hear their songs in harmony. The Kimono is gifted to the Fox Spirits so they can guard it.
The wearer of the Kimono, is able to summon the visible birds in the fabric and command them. The stronger the wearer, the better is the effect. Aka duration of summons, number of birds, type of birds, how smart they are. Given the relic by a god and told to guard it a shrine of fox spirits leave their garden homes to consult with a Rocacrustas who are the premier builders in this age. The old necromancer asked for payment in one of their souls. The fox spirits spoke long to each other about it before deciding that they must get a place to guard the Kimono and it was more valuable than any of their lives.
So for a year and a day the necromancer worked building a fortress temple from the stones of the earth, the darkest granite to match the black and deep blues of the night and the relic. A stepped pyramid four layers tall is crafted and on top is a shrine of elegant stone. One of the fox spirits left with the necromancer once he completed his work going to find a place and study the difference in the souls of the Rocacrustas and the Fox Spirits. The other two fox spirits remain at the shrine and watch over the kimono wearing pale imitations that they weave of grass and dye with inks of fungi. Yet this was not a simple story of a deal finished as made for when the necromancer made to gather her soul the spirit danced away from any attack or declaration of obligation. She had promised him her soul and not her life, he did not have the right to take the latter as such so must wait for her passing to collect the former.
A Mortal in appearance, Prentis was designed and created by the god that takes the name of Skii as his first Disciple, to learn to seek Glory in His name, and as such is a tall man, to better see opportunities, with hair the Golden colour of Glory, to show his allegiance to Skii, a handsome face, with which to charm many women to propagate his lineage to serve Skii, and a powerful physique, enough to place him well beyond the peak of what a Mortal is capable of, in order to better earn Glory in Skii's name.
Through his personal hand in his creation, Prentis's Soul is bound directly to Skii and rather than returning to the cycle of Reincarnation like other Souls, to have his deeds washed away, Prentis instead returns to Skii upon death, where a new incarnation is prepared for him for his next life, his memories blurry and distant as they are stored only in his soul, rather than in both soul and flesh, but enough to provide him an advantage in his new life, and the knowledge of his previous selves. In the event there is no race bearing similar traits to Prentis to be reborn into, Skii simply remakes his body wholly, birthing him into the world as a young man. As a side effect of its exposure to Divinity, Prentis's Soul is resistant to tampering from beings other than Skii.
Skill is born to a barren world with few places that are vibrant. The golden haired man and the agent of Skii quickly makes his way to one of the gardens. There he finds the fox spirits who were tending the garden, by his charm he convinces them to the worship of Skii. The green spirits are unwilling to break their covenant with the Vidal so they leave the garden in the hands of Prentis. Yet Prentis is not an idle sort and once the garden is set to task he takes a handful of his closest friends among the Fox Spirits to go into the mountains and determine the nature of the folk that lives there.
Another new god by the name of Aoes works on their own creation alongside the whispering chorus. A golden, almost ephemeral, seed smaller than a grain of sand. It will float on the winds until it lands upon someone with the strength of will to stand up for what they think is right. When it does, the seed will enter their body and come to rest in their heart where it will begin to germinate. As the seed matures, thin, almost invisible, metaphysical golden roots will spread throughout the bearer's body, granting increasing strength and vitality as the seed grows.
The rate at which the seed grows is dependent on how strongly the bearer is fighting for their beliefs to the point that compromising their beliefs can even reverse the seed's growth. The seed of a bearer whose beliefs are never challenged will barely grow beyond being a seed while a bearer who regularly fights against far superior threats for their beliefs would find their seed growing so fast it would be visible to the naked eye. Consequently, the former would be barely any different from a normal person while the latter would be a legendary hero.
If a bearer ever truly betrays their own beliefs, the seed will immediately abandon them, floating off and leaving the roots but taking most of its power with it. It's possible for people who have lost their seed to slowly recover their power by sticking to their beliefs again and training but it's a long process and they will never reach heights they touched before much less surpass them.
When the bearer dies, the seed will detach from its roots and the body before floating away to find a new host. The seed first finds root in Stone Mover a skilled miner of the Rocacrustas who had been turned from his passion of earth work to the arts of war. He was a direct fellow who only wished to guard what he held dear from the shifting chaos of the many wars that sprung up around his village. When the seed planted itself at first there was no way to note its presence, then the first battle was fought and when he drove off golems with his pick in one hand and a shield, simple wood in the other he began to grow. The first battle he was only as strong as another of his kind, but by the time he began to determine the only way to protect his village from the frightened warlords, and the necromancers of the deep was to take the fight to them he had the power of three of his kin and his simple tools had the power of crafts worthy of the sage smiths of the era.
It was at that time a strange creature escorted by foxes arrived at the village. He had heard from other Rocacrustas in the lowlands of powerful warriors and dangerous armies this way and in the name of a foreign God the golden haired man called Skii he wished to challenge himself against them. So as the time of these changes draws to a close the avatar of glory and the seed of heroism come together to overthrow a land of tyrants.
The Yellow Gardener is born of Insomnia, a creature of yellow, corn-colored grass that derives its nourishment from the sun and water, similar to other plants. However, unlike other plants, this dizzy gardener undergoes asexual reproduction after finding a "satisfactory" spot (meaning a high concentration of water, light, but most importantly, things that can dream and worry), it roots down in the earth and transforms into grass. This grass passively absorbs worries and nightmares from those nearby, even luring them to sleep on it, communicating with the souls and consciousness using necromancy. However, it can only do so effectively as it matures and grows larger. Animals with larger souls, such as elephants, require more Sleepy Grass to be affected compared to those with smaller souls, like rats. It can reproduce with regular grass.
The gardener finds that the best places for it to sleep is taken by the gardens and the fox spirits and green spirits are willing to take it in, so the gardens end the age a mix of yellow and green grass with a thousand varieties of mushrooms within them tended to by unseen spirits and playful trickster foxes.
The Dead Mother is born with a creature in mind, their creation is a creature and a disease that would plague the land but the whispers are distracted and do not craft with the Dead Mother leaving her creation unformed and boiling away into the either she was crafting it from.
Two gods take names though they do not act in this time they are Tergum and Plesydomira perhaps we shall see what they craft in the time to come.
The world moves and the green sun tends to a multitude of gardens life growing rapidly both in the peninsula and perhaps some beyond the eyes of the gods. The turtles tend to themselves, the Rocacrustas are collapsed into endless paranoid wars, and the fox spirits aid the lifestar in tending to its gardens. Mushrooms sprout both small and larger twice over than the Rocacrustas deep in their mountain homes. The relics of the God's are rare and powerful but not yet have been brought to violent means. There are a number of craftsmen learning the arts in seclusion as necromancers build armies of golems and soul bound contraptions to defend their lands and ply deeper into the mysteries of the world. Now a new period of this age has past and the gods begin their work again, the sap of the divine flowing through them.
Yet this first act was not in silence, for as the whispering mass of the unborn added Vidal in their craft others took to voice and cut off impossibility to take upon themselves a nature. Mnemosyne the goddess remembered reached hands into that spark of impossibility unmade by her naming and began to forge of it a greater pact the workings of a foundation for this world and all who live in it. She made a pact with that broken shattered remains of the nothing of everything that she had been and had rejected with a name. Regardless of the form of its changes and of its fate, this endless minuscule fragment was bound to her in memories. Each part of the fragment was granted to all that were, and Mnemosyne works upon a loom weaving each new soul out of the remnants. The lifestar took upon itself a soul and their self was codified by their memories and being bound into this nature. The lifestar could understand faith but it felt little need to worship the divines as it was their tool.
As Mnemosyne worked another god turned itself into a bound form, catching the offal from Mnemosyne they bound themselves in a shell of the unmade, the uncomplete and the unformed. They held back potential but shifted in nature. They were a god of the dead of death born before life. A corpse of the unliving, the god took the name Psol'bzaengoth and the worked with the endless whispers to define the magics they crafted their own form from. Souls were the source of life by Mnemosyne's will and so Psol'bzaengoth took that to its logical end. If souls bound life and memory, then why let them go to waste? The corpse god took the world and with the aid of the whispers of the unborn he carved channels so that the animus of the soul can be used after death. He made rituals into the fabric of the world so souls could be bound, can be made to speak. To a master of the art a soul is a fuel a currency to enact magic and to gain power. For it can be used to animate the dead and unliving, it can be used to extend one's life, it can be used in many ways by those who know how to work stuff of the soul.
The final magic of the new world forged into its first age is the magic of the wild lands, the magic of the untamed and nature. No god comes forth with its birth, no lord names themselves; rather the writhing mass of the newborn writes this magic from only the impossible whispers. They steal from the unmade beyond reality the boiling chaos of the unreality beyond this egg. This is an untamable magic and unbindable power that will squirm and writhe when one tries to predict or master it. To be a practitioner of the wild is to be mad, or to have power and density unrivaled in this world. In hindsight perhaps all should have expected the life star to gravitate towards this power. They are an aspect of the nature of this world, of growth and development and so they understood the wild and could take it in hand using their raw power to command this wild power.
An unmade comes and names itself __ the echoing sound of silence that stills the world when it is spoken. It takes its own essence and crafts a way memories can be anchored to the world as beings of their own power. The whispers aid as these are forged, the nature of necromancy provides an anchor allowing __ to let spirits to have great power increasing with the strength of their birthing thought and the will and power of their mortal maker. These spirits are made with no body but they are living things without substance but with mind, to interact with the world they must possess a living thing or object of the world.
Their are the ur-spirits those test subjects born of __ in essence and in mind, they were the prototype and examples made as __ carved this nature into the world. They are few and rare but they have great power being born of the thoughts and minds of a god. Though the ur-spirits are not the most powerful of their kind, for upon seeing the creatures and their pattern the corpse god dabbled in them seeing how they work and connect to his magic. These spirits born of unlife and the thoughts of the corpse god are often called the first ghosts, they are only three in number but they act to help teach other creatures of necromancy. In this beginning of the age the most prominent and common spirits are the green spirits.
They are the will and mind of the life star, no match in power to even the weakest of God's the life star has reason and need to make spirits with the power crafted by __, these in the later parts of the era are the gardeners as they work to aid the life star in its task to grow and expand the life of the world. The green spirits prepare to tend to the world as life is born of the acts of the other gods and whispers.
As __, Mnemosyne, and Psol'bzaengoth worked on their grand designs Shroomi took upon the world a simple task the crafting of mushrooms small white blobs of mycelian flesh that would fruit from the ground a simple food and creature that would eat at the dead world and create life. This mushroom called shrimp of the woods would be found quickly by the green spirits and spread as far along the peninsula as one can see. The whispers aiding Shroomi led to more and more of the fruiting bodies and fungi being made, until the fungus could be found in every inch of the region eating at the dead world.
One of the thief gods cast off their formless being to break apart into a mass of connected parts a shifting form of a thousand pieces, for they took a name The Panoply of Mayhem, and they carved a section of their form into a new creation aided by the whispers of the unmade the Panoply crafts a small golden worm its form a shining golden sheen hiding the vast intelligence of the creature. The worm is indomitable and domineering, a mind built to bewitch and deceive. A slithering master of lies and illusions, a schemer unparalleled. An agent of Mayhem, in this early world the Shining Sovereign as the worm is name has little to do but it begins to plot most of the spirits are too strong and the shrooms too weak, however the sovereign finds it can use its thoughts to give birth to spirits for its own end. However as these new spirits are made in the image of the Sovereign their creator tears them apart, unwilling and unable to stand seeing its own form.
One of the unborn cast their power out into flames dancing with the whispers of the others to form a forge as they take the name Demiourgos, and they take that fire to craft a forge that would impart the Demiourgos' skill allowing the crafting of magical arms, armor, and jewelry by even mortal smith should they have skills and imagination. This forge has a fire burning red from the life of the world itself and the Demigouros makes any tool the forge will ever need, and binds it's magics so it would always be stocked with the flesh of the world. Any mundane metal or other material available to the smith in these halls. For now the forge crackles merrily without the sound of hammer to metal beyond the wandering of its maker.
Nomod, that is what the god thing names itself as it took impossible hands to write spirits and non-existent mortal flesh together. Fur in many dazzling colors the foxes that they craft can be mistaken for simple animals. They are no beasts, a mind unbound to its own flesh; the Fox Spirits are creatures of spirit above all their minds cunning and devious, their nature that of the trickster, though they will help just as quickly as they bring misfortune. As the whispers and divine hands finish the fox spirits dash into the world tending to the mushrooms and aiding the green spirits in the crafting of future gardens for when more life is made by the gods.
A god is a fickle and a powerful creature hands able to create and destroy to craft and unmake. But a god's attention is not as infinite as their power, so one begins the craft of personal servants to maintain whatever the god needs done. Many whispers help as the god takes the name Ante and begins to craft life from stone and metal. A hard shell of the materials of the mountain forming a creature not unlike a lobster, powerful claws and a dull but obedient mind. They were to be his spades. The Rocacrustas. Each one he handcrafted scrubbing away as much of Mnemosyne as he could but the master of souls who dwells eternally unforgettable is beyond the power of Ante to completely suppress.
He then sent them down upon the sides of the mountain, where the Rocacrustas began to mind and develop but it isn't long before other divines begin to meddle. Another unborn sheds its impossibility to claim the name Ian Yor Tul and they took the form of a Rocacrustas teaching them to carve stone into blocks to stack them to make buildings. The teacher god even brought a handful of the brightest Rocacrustas to the forge of the eternal flame and showed those how to work simple metal picks so they can cut into the earth. Iam Your Tul did little but the Rocacrustas moved forward on a rocket pace already they were those who time to dabble in things whispered by the winds, the crafting of spirits, though the thoughts of the Rocacrustas are simple and most of their spirits have little use beyond messengers for their tribe.
One group powerful in their own mind ventured away from the mountains as Ante worked on more of their kin unaware of the rapidity of their growth. This group found a dead world with empty gardens with shifting shadows, of soft not quite rocks they could barely eat. It was a place barely hospital for the Rocacrustas so their group went to turn back. Their story would have been far happier if they had done so before that moment. For at that time their group had gathered the attention of the Ghosts who went and whispered in their minds the secrets of necromancy of prayers to an unliving god with the promises of more secrets to be had.
A festering cult returned to the mountains, they found their kinds blind worship of Ante with whispers of the Teacher and of Memories forgotten and remembered. Gods that only asked never offered. So they worked slowly to speak in hidden places of Psol'bzaengoth. The bravest showed off their magics creating golems of stone to help move the earth and make their homes, not speaking of the magics that power them.
Obscurity, the monsters in the dark. Perhaps the one that calls themself Locura finds humor in the way the mortals dance in fear as something shifts beyond their sight. For they take the weave of this thought and quilt it into a smothering blanket that they would cast into the world. For most this is a clinging feeling they can work past but some are hit by the weave of this fear and grow to worry. What is it the golem smiths do at night, what are the creatures working at the empty gardens, what is the desire of the quivering green star watching all, what happened when I was gone? Every change every moment their mind unravels leaving them broken husks unable to think beyond the fearful muttering and the furtive glances. Some dig deeper worried of what was outside coming in. Others turned on their fellows, for the Rocacrustas as a paranoid one finds the workshop of a necromancer and watches their craft, before speaking of the dark arts to others. A war, a fire, a mix of fear and desperation. Each moment feeding the next as the mountains burn and run red in the blood of the Rocacrustas.
The growing war is fed as the Shining Sovereign joins using illusions to break alliances to trick those in power and feed the growing tide of blood. The chaos only serves to feed Mayhem and Paranoia
As Ante turns back ready to get his worship he finds a race in turmoil, the necromancers have been driven far underground, but tension and fear has not died down anyone beyond a family group inspired worry as they take more and more guidance from those who are touched by Locura.
Far from the wars of the mountains another stolen god gives themselves a name. This one is Annatar the bringer of gifts, and their first work aided by the shifting muse of the whispers is the Staff of All Things. They forge it of pinkish metal though its form and qualities are fluid able to shift its size, mass, and shape. The staff is unbreakable by mortal hands and anything that does damage it will be undone by the passage of time as the metal heals itself. The staff will always be a stick of that pink metal, but it can be made into a staff, rod, wand, or cane as long as it remains the shape of a stick. The staff is given a basic spirit, the knowledge of its own use, so that it can bind itself to a user and share that information. Whenever the staff is held it begins the process of binding to a new user unless the old user has it in their grasp. The owner has more power than the just the shape and appearance as they can make the staff float or move in an area around themselves, it is not ideal for a combat but if one needs the staff and to have both hands free it can be of use.
However, these functions are not the main feature of the staff. Instead, it has an empty "slot" by default. The owner of the staff can place a piece of material or an object into this slot. Once this is done, the Staff of All Things will develop an orb or another simple shape attached to it, representing whatever was placed in the slot, including its texture or some symbolic representation on the developed shape. Depending on the item placed in the empty slot, the Staff of All Things will produce various effects for the owner to exploit. For instance, if you place a piece of basalt in the empty slot, the artifact will grant its owner the ability to create, break, erase, move, and shape basalt and all substances similar to this type of rock while in contact with the staff and within a certain radius. The slot can be emptied and refilled at any time the owner desires, but it takes a few seconds at most. They just need to touch the staff, so they can retrieve the object - the slot will become empty again, ready to receive another item. Only one thing can occupy the slot at a time.
Although there are some caveats, such as the abilities granted by the staff not always being straightforward. For example, putting a material into an empty slot does not guarantee that you will receive the same type of manipulation as with the basalt option. You could insert lead into the slot and gain the ability to temporarily increase the weight of any object struck by the staff or hit by the produced wave/beam. The Staff of All Things offers a unique ability for each physical object in existence, some of which may be more esoteric than others.
Also, merely possessing ownership of the staff and get instinctive understanding of how to use it does not equate to mastery over the effects created by the staff or to having knowledge about ability limits and potential dangers. One must explore and learn to wield each power skillfully, applying their existing skills, experiences and knowledge to the staff's abilities. For instance, if the owner of the staff is a master mason, they would be able to learn how to create more complex shapes from basalt more quickly, leveraging their existing skills and mindset for working with stone.
Therefore, if you insert something extremely powerful into the staff's empty slot, it does not guarantee that learning how to use the ability derived from that item will be easy. It can be extremely hard or complicated. Sometimes so much, it probably isn't worth it. Annatar finishes their work and walks the land quickly running across a fox spirit, and leaving the staff with them before vanishing. The fox finds the staff as a pleasant walking stick and keeps a mushroom in the slot allowing the fox spirit to grow and guide the fungi faster than even the green spirits.
Livinni is the next to take a name, the whispers gathering around them as they form a blade of green light woven into a physical creation. The grass as it is called is able to consume the energy from the sun above and the green star when it nears. Turning the energy into more of itself weaving new grass in a net under the soil so new green blades can push up into the light they consume. Endlessly repeating as long as they can find the sun and star to draw from. This new creation is quickly found by the green spirits and the fox spirits. This leads to them spreading the grass as far and wide as they roam. The gardening foxes take to planting grass on the entrances to Rocacrustas caves using the aid of green spirits to rapidly grow the plant over the opening and causing consternation to the inhabitants.
A new god gave herself a name Tiana, she entered the ocean to see its beauty. As the others work she stays in the sea. On the bottom of the ocean the Foamgowned lady was lonely. And thus the births creatures with cells both crystal and organic. And tells them to go up onto land gave them strong jaws so that they may eat anything and return to the ocean to lay their pearly eggs so that the lady wouldn't be lonely anymore.
But the creatures sank and died. The Gorgeous Lady came up with the idea she grabbed most beautiful stones and taught them how to carve these into shells. She knew that this would slow them down on land, but it would allow her children to carry air and float in the water and carry water, allowing them to breathe.
After her children were done with carving Tiania inspected the shells of her children to praised those who made works of art out of their shells and shame the slackers. At the end she decreed that each turtle should be a judge and strive to make pearly eggs with a turtle whose shell they like most. And teach their children to do the same.
The artistic turtles are left alone for the most part after their creation working to slowly create more and more beautiful shells with those with the most beautiful often trying to be as close as possible to the lady while those who slack off and do not make beautiful shells pushed out of their little society and as far away from their lady as the turtles can keep them. They find the grass on the land and when they bring the grass back they find it is just as able to grow and thrive in shallow waters as in air.
The new god father's parts of the divinity to cloak themselves in a name, the feathered fox tailed weaver. A beautiful Kimono woven by the loving hands of thr god. Dyed with the dark colours of the night, all kinds of birds fly in the fabrics desappearing and reapearing. If you stay still in silence Its possible for you to hear their songs in harmony. The Kimono is gifted to the Fox Spirits so they can guard it.
The wearer of the Kimono, is able to summon the visible birds in the fabric and command them. The stronger the wearer, the better is the effect. Aka duration of summons, number of birds, type of birds, how smart they are. Given the relic by a god and told to guard it a shrine of fox spirits leave their garden homes to consult with a Rocacrustas who are the premier builders in this age. The old necromancer asked for payment in one of their souls. The fox spirits spoke long to each other about it before deciding that they must get a place to guard the Kimono and it was more valuable than any of their lives.
So for a year and a day the necromancer worked building a fortress temple from the stones of the earth, the darkest granite to match the black and deep blues of the night and the relic. A stepped pyramid four layers tall is crafted and on top is a shrine of elegant stone. One of the fox spirits left with the necromancer once he completed his work going to find a place and study the difference in the souls of the Rocacrustas and the Fox Spirits. The other two fox spirits remain at the shrine and watch over the kimono wearing pale imitations that they weave of grass and dye with inks of fungi. Yet this was not a simple story of a deal finished as made for when the necromancer made to gather her soul the spirit danced away from any attack or declaration of obligation. She had promised him her soul and not her life, he did not have the right to take the latter as such so must wait for her passing to collect the former.
A Mortal in appearance, Prentis was designed and created by the god that takes the name of Skii as his first Disciple, to learn to seek Glory in His name, and as such is a tall man, to better see opportunities, with hair the Golden colour of Glory, to show his allegiance to Skii, a handsome face, with which to charm many women to propagate his lineage to serve Skii, and a powerful physique, enough to place him well beyond the peak of what a Mortal is capable of, in order to better earn Glory in Skii's name.
Through his personal hand in his creation, Prentis's Soul is bound directly to Skii and rather than returning to the cycle of Reincarnation like other Souls, to have his deeds washed away, Prentis instead returns to Skii upon death, where a new incarnation is prepared for him for his next life, his memories blurry and distant as they are stored only in his soul, rather than in both soul and flesh, but enough to provide him an advantage in his new life, and the knowledge of his previous selves. In the event there is no race bearing similar traits to Prentis to be reborn into, Skii simply remakes his body wholly, birthing him into the world as a young man. As a side effect of its exposure to Divinity, Prentis's Soul is resistant to tampering from beings other than Skii.
Skill is born to a barren world with few places that are vibrant. The golden haired man and the agent of Skii quickly makes his way to one of the gardens. There he finds the fox spirits who were tending the garden, by his charm he convinces them to the worship of Skii. The green spirits are unwilling to break their covenant with the Vidal so they leave the garden in the hands of Prentis. Yet Prentis is not an idle sort and once the garden is set to task he takes a handful of his closest friends among the Fox Spirits to go into the mountains and determine the nature of the folk that lives there.
Another new god by the name of Aoes works on their own creation alongside the whispering chorus. A golden, almost ephemeral, seed smaller than a grain of sand. It will float on the winds until it lands upon someone with the strength of will to stand up for what they think is right. When it does, the seed will enter their body and come to rest in their heart where it will begin to germinate. As the seed matures, thin, almost invisible, metaphysical golden roots will spread throughout the bearer's body, granting increasing strength and vitality as the seed grows.
The rate at which the seed grows is dependent on how strongly the bearer is fighting for their beliefs to the point that compromising their beliefs can even reverse the seed's growth. The seed of a bearer whose beliefs are never challenged will barely grow beyond being a seed while a bearer who regularly fights against far superior threats for their beliefs would find their seed growing so fast it would be visible to the naked eye. Consequently, the former would be barely any different from a normal person while the latter would be a legendary hero.
If a bearer ever truly betrays their own beliefs, the seed will immediately abandon them, floating off and leaving the roots but taking most of its power with it. It's possible for people who have lost their seed to slowly recover their power by sticking to their beliefs again and training but it's a long process and they will never reach heights they touched before much less surpass them.
When the bearer dies, the seed will detach from its roots and the body before floating away to find a new host. The seed first finds root in Stone Mover a skilled miner of the Rocacrustas who had been turned from his passion of earth work to the arts of war. He was a direct fellow who only wished to guard what he held dear from the shifting chaos of the many wars that sprung up around his village. When the seed planted itself at first there was no way to note its presence, then the first battle was fought and when he drove off golems with his pick in one hand and a shield, simple wood in the other he began to grow. The first battle he was only as strong as another of his kind, but by the time he began to determine the only way to protect his village from the frightened warlords, and the necromancers of the deep was to take the fight to them he had the power of three of his kin and his simple tools had the power of crafts worthy of the sage smiths of the era.
It was at that time a strange creature escorted by foxes arrived at the village. He had heard from other Rocacrustas in the lowlands of powerful warriors and dangerous armies this way and in the name of a foreign God the golden haired man called Skii he wished to challenge himself against them. So as the time of these changes draws to a close the avatar of glory and the seed of heroism come together to overthrow a land of tyrants.
The Yellow Gardener is born of Insomnia, a creature of yellow, corn-colored grass that derives its nourishment from the sun and water, similar to other plants. However, unlike other plants, this dizzy gardener undergoes asexual reproduction after finding a "satisfactory" spot (meaning a high concentration of water, light, but most importantly, things that can dream and worry), it roots down in the earth and transforms into grass. This grass passively absorbs worries and nightmares from those nearby, even luring them to sleep on it, communicating with the souls and consciousness using necromancy. However, it can only do so effectively as it matures and grows larger. Animals with larger souls, such as elephants, require more Sleepy Grass to be affected compared to those with smaller souls, like rats. It can reproduce with regular grass.
The gardener finds that the best places for it to sleep is taken by the gardens and the fox spirits and green spirits are willing to take it in, so the gardens end the age a mix of yellow and green grass with a thousand varieties of mushrooms within them tended to by unseen spirits and playful trickster foxes.
The Dead Mother is born with a creature in mind, their creation is a creature and a disease that would plague the land but the whispers are distracted and do not craft with the Dead Mother leaving her creation unformed and boiling away into the either she was crafting it from.
Two gods take names though they do not act in this time they are Tergum and Plesydomira perhaps we shall see what they craft in the time to come.
The world moves and the green sun tends to a multitude of gardens life growing rapidly both in the peninsula and perhaps some beyond the eyes of the gods. The turtles tend to themselves, the Rocacrustas are collapsed into endless paranoid wars, and the fox spirits aid the lifestar in tending to its gardens. Mushrooms sprout both small and larger twice over than the Rocacrustas deep in their mountain homes. The relics of the God's are rare and powerful but not yet have been brought to violent means. There are a number of craftsmen learning the arts in seclusion as necromancers build armies of golems and soul bound contraptions to defend their lands and ply deeper into the mysteries of the world. Now a new period of this age has past and the gods begin their work again, the sap of the divine flowing through them.
