Why Can't My Worshippers Understand What I'm Saying?: A Well Intentioned God Quest

[X]Intervene! Specify the Intervention and the point in time in which it happens.
-[X] [Earth][Spirit][Create][Precise] The Precursor Tablet that the Void Seekers found becomes an actual physical object.
--[X] You infuse the Void Seekers with a spirit, making their collective spirit much more defined and interactable. And as you do so, you do your best to 'program' that spirit into accepting the following information and grinding into the Seeker's collective unconscious. This drives some of the Seekers to betray the Spur Clan, keeping the air-boats and setting sail with them across the great atmospheric seas that divide the Shards. And there, guided by your design, they 'find' a Tablet left by the Precursors. They learn the 'truth' of the world and, reading it thanks to their own spirits, they learn how best to traverse the void between Shards and even the void outside Spun-Apart. The Tablet contains for them a purpose outside of the Spur Clan and outside of Unbeing. All Void Seekers will feel the urge to make this pilgrimage. And if any other Lek-kego were to ever see the Tablet, they would see nothing but an empty rock floating in atmosphere. You didn't actually make a Tablet, of course. That would require an Intervention of Earth. It is merely a shared hallucination bestowed upon the spirit of the Void-Seekers.

After considering the choice for another generation or so, you come to the conclusion that as poetic that the 'truth' for the Void Seekers to confront is yet another illusion, you'd prefer it to be a bit more grounded in reality. Or as 'real' as anything is here, really. Is anything about this World real when you can just spin it whichever way you want? Maybe they're right. But you hope not. Existentialism is how you got Unbeing in the first place.

• Even as the Spur Clan ponders the question of the Void Seekers, new advances are made due to their expanding use of stainless steel. Having already gained a sort of immortality thanks to shells that no longer corrode or crack anywhere near as easily, the first successful moult is carried out in the depths of the Spur itself. The first moult had always been a hard limit on the Lek-kego lifespan before this. Once you outgrow your shell, you're done. Their delicate internal bodies can't survive the traumatic process of shell-shedding nor the vulnerable period before another is grown, not without taking some sort of permanent damage or corrosion to their induction coils. But with the invention of fake shells, anti-trauma cocoon of stainless steel, the first moulter has both shelter provided to it and something to digest and forge while they do. With this there's no longer any limit to the potential lifespan of a Lek-kego!
• The Web Nomads have found several Shards by now and while they lose a few people to each one in the sense that a few always settle down and make a home, the majority of them keep on trekking in search of a better promised land. In a sense, they are seeding small Lek-kego families all across Spun Apart. The Nomads themselves have split into several groups, their frankly massive rate of reproduction aided by the fact that the filaments of the Web are almost exclusively steel. They are not a single polity but rather several small wandering nations, many of which are guided by those who wear the remaining suits of tungsten platemail. Their tradition of spiritual distrust, inherited from their homeland and strengthened through surviving the calamitous rise of the spiritmongers, mostly continues as well. They do not interact with corporeal spirits at all, averting their eyes and stepping aside. Anyone who does otherwise is part of the Great Enemy, a theological construct comprised mostly of mythologised memories of the spiritmongers and a vague recollection of the Earthsplitter. But the Earthsplitter isn't directly named and the Enemy is just a semi-coherent term for Lek-kego and spirits who don't ignore the other. Only through complete isolation and segregation from the spiritual can peace be kept along the Web. They have found multiple Precursor monuments and in doing so, know the World to be a created thing. The knowledge that creatures came before them and made the world slips into their culture and taints what they remember of their people's survival. The idea that Lek-kego made the world and that spirits are just invasive interlopers that came along later proves popular, as does the idea that the promised land they search for was gifted to them by the Precursors. The histories of the Web Nomads are, by this point, mostly fictional.
• Some of the Nomad clans come into contact with the Spur Clan's Shard or, that is to say, they come into contact with the cloud of Void Seeker communities around the filaments leading to the Shard. With neither having any need or desire to hurt the other, this marks the first instance of genuine inter-Polity trade between two vastly different Lek-kego cultures, not just between two Nomad clans or two of the Kingdoms. With this, the Void Seekers are able to gain the resources to live out beyond the reach of the Spur Clan.
• The Plateau becomes the 'capital' of the Spur Clan, its hollowed out form now holding a massive city. The original Spur itself is now holy ground, to be trod only by priests and the beasts of the marsh. The Clan has not expanded beyond the Shard due to the inherent range of its spiritual peace but increasing communities of Void Seekers now throng along the near edges of the three filaments. But then the rocks start falling. Boulders several times the size of an individual Lek-kego begin to rain down haphazardly upon the Shard, usually at a rate of a dozen or so per day. Some of them miss entirely but due to the population density of the Spur Clan, just as many take lives or punch holes in roads or buildings. Closer inspection of the 'rocks' reveals them to be made of a demagnetised alloy that closely resembles...a Lek-kego waste slurry. In addition, many of them are clearly shaped. Some of them even have spikes! Seeking answers, spirits of air and sight are sent flying upward to try and trace the attacks and eventually, when they return, they bring tales of other Lek-kego. Namely that of the Spear Tradition and the Steel Ferrocracy who have both constructed a number of small forts at the very edge of their filaments. Forts built around a single massive steel trebuchet. Using the fact that their home upon the filament is substantially higher up than the Spur Clan Shard, they have taken to using their engineering, telescopes and grasp of physics to begin pelting the Spur Clan's Shard with projectiles whenever they pass beneath them. The Tradition and the Ferrocracy themselves have both expanded into the filament itself (on opposite ends of the beach) by this point and still occasionally send soldiers to kill each other for the sake of doing so than any real imperialist intent.
• It takes over a generation of this sporadic pelting for the Spur Clan to be able to respond. They can't simply send a horde of spirits after all. Instead they construct air-boats, large vessels of stainless steel borne aloft by air-spirits bound into the shell and with a rudimentary propulsive system based around fire spirits and powdered aluminium. The first of these boats is sent aloft up towards the Web with the goal of speaking to these strange foreigners (Neither of them have memory of the other) and making them stop. And if that is not to work, the boat carries a dangerous payload. A pact-binding obelisk lashed to the side is ready to be dropped and it bears upon it the same spiritual binding that the Spur Clan uses to enforce peace. It will be given to the attackers and lock them into happy unity. The Steel Ferrocracy, after capturing the air-boat and enslaving the crew, accepts the obelisk as a gift and refuses to stop throwing things. But now it should do its work and prevent any further incidents. They don't yet know it but through the sacrifice of that boat and its crew, they have been pacified. They will trouble the people of the Spur no more.
• INTERVENTION: Due to the vagaries of being at least a little bit outside of time, your second decision takes place before your first. You infuse the obelisk and the intangible pact with the spirit of all Lek-kego that it represents with metaphorical qualities of Fire, Earth and Spirit. You give it the intellectual hunger and curiosity of Fire, which ever seeks new things in order to survive. You give it the freedom of Spirit, which as you've learned can defy even your instructions. And you ground it all in Earth's stability, to prevent fractiousness without causing stagnation. You...hope this works out alright. Your wishes were vague enough that they could go multiple ways. Fire is as imperialist as it is curious, after all.
• The result is still not what the Spur Clan wished, their attempt to permanently pacify their enemies meddled with not only by their cultural differences but also by your transgressing hand. And just as the effects of the obelisk in the old timeline could only be interpreted through the lens of the culture of the Ferroracy and the Tradition, the same thing applies to your new one. The traditions and the martial outlook of their people remains the same but over the generations, much of the rest of the two polities transform. For starters, they don't unify. The 'Steel Empire' has been aborted from the timeline. And the reason for this lack of unification is how the Spear Tradition and the Steel Ferrocracy take the obelisk's influence differently. It only takes a few generations for the Tradition to overturn some of its more oppressive traditions, uplifting many of its slave underclasses and recognising them as citizens. The status of Chieftain changes as well within the Spear Tradition as its observances of the Ferrocracy's system, bolstered by the influence of the obelisk, leads to it becoming an elected position rather than a hereditary one. At first, only the highest class citizens can vote but as the generations pass, it shifts into a system where any free citizen can vote (they still retain some slaves) but each chance at a vote are purchased from the state, allowing for wealthier and more important citizens to vote many dozens or hundreds of times each. As for the Ferrocracy itself? The same sense of freedom infuses them, making it so that eventual reform determines that Chieftain elections are no longer decided by the votes of steel-shells with military backgrounds but by the votes of all steel-shells. But the uplifting of the underclasses and the relaxation of slavery? Unlike in the Spear Tradition, this runs into harsh opposition in the form of the Ferrocracy's long-held metallocratic beliefs. Steel-shells are superior and that doesn't change. It does cause a string of rebellions however. So while this difference in opinion on the rights of citizens prevents the two polities from unifying, both are equally effected by the intellectual hunger and curiosity bestowed upon them by the obelisk. The Ferrocracy and the Tradition both focus much of their efforts on expanding down their respective ends of the filament, reshaping and mining the filament itself as they go. And as they do, they turn their siege-lenses to the stars once more. They are the chosen inheritors of the Precursor's artificial universe, they claim. It is their duty to understand it. They also invent the wheel, having finally expanded out into an expanse of flat surfaces.
• The Tungsten Kingdom's petty squabbles are interrupted by the arrival of an enemy that they have long since forgotten. Finding the no longer moving plain abundant with water to be an attractive nesting spot, several colonies of migrant-birds settle down and begin using the spot as a stopping point. This is initially disastrous but the Lek-kego of today are not the easy targets they were in prehistory. It is not long before many of the birds are cut down by tungsten spears and, having seized their nests, many of the Kingdoms begin taming them as weapons or war to be ridden almost exclusively by spiritmongers. And with their new bird-riders, they no longer need to continually fight over the single filament to expand! Now possessed with a sudden fervor of colonial intent, they stop squabbling so much over their own land and instead every nation begins sending out riders to find and colonise other Shards. The first Shard they find is another migrant-bird nesting point and so is the second and the third, following their steeds migratory instincts to quickly conquer and control a number of their nests and thus even more birds.
• The Ferrocracy and the Tradition, after coming out of their initial periods of social unrest and reform, resume throwing shit at the Spur Clan. They already have the trebuchets set up and everything after all. Their sense of imperialism and manifest destiny hasn't changed. For the Spur Clan's part, their own attempts to marshal a navy has ended in failure. None of them can pilot an air-boat that doesn't itself bear an extremely costly obelisk, not without falling into existentialist throes. The next plan is to attempt to abuse the spiritual self-defence clause but it is hard to use this to marshal anything bigger than a few minor spirits who were physically damaged by one of their attacks and, to make things worse, their attackers are also no stranger to fighting off spirits. So instead they settle on using the Void Seekers, taking the nihilist ideologues and promising them material rewards to sail air-boats up towards the source of the attacks. And this time they won't be dropping obelisks but bombs. Yes, for the first time, the smithing of the Spur Clan is turned towards weapons of war and, knowing some of the secrets of ignition, they have devised rudimentary explosives for the crew of air-boats to toss over the side. These bombing runs are incredibly effective and both the Ferrocracy and the Tradition lack the initial means to answer them, leading to several of their forts being toppled and shrapnel bombs designed to pierce steel shells being dropped into town centres by the shadows of air-boats flying well overhead. Seemingly helpless, they capitulate and disassemble the trebuchet-forts lining the edge of their filament. They are replaced instead by observatories, ones that can aim their telescope downwards to observe the other lands of Spun-Apart.
• INTERVENTION: You infuse the Void Seekers with a spirit, making their collective spirit much more defined and interactable. And as you do so, you do your best to 'program' that spirit into accepting the following information and grinding into the Seeker's collective unconscious. This drives some of the Seekers to betray the Spur Clan, keeping the air-boats and setting sail with them across the great atmospheric seas that divide the Shards. And there, guided by your design, they 'find' a Tablet left by the Precursors. They learn the 'truth' of the world and, reading it thanks to their own spirits, they learn how best to traverse the void between Shards and even the void outside Spun-Apart. The Tablet contains for them a purpose outside of the Spur Clan and outside of Unbeing. All Void Seekers will feel the urge to make this pilgrimage. And if any other Lek-kego were to ever see the Tablet, they would see nothing but an empty rock floating in atmosphere. You didn't actually make a Tablet, of course. That would require an Intervention of Earth. It is merely a shared hallucination bestowed upon the spirit of the Void-Seekers.
• INTERVENTION: Using an Intervention of Creation, you breathe substance into the hollow hallucinatory shell of the Tablet. You shape it in a stark and imposing spire, a monolith with spirit-script inscribed in gold down its sunward face. And in it, you spin the secrets of travelling the world and void beyond. Now its secrets are potentially open to all, not just the Void Seekers. You can feel the shared spirit of the Void Seekers, just recently created and defined by you, rankle a little at this intrusion but what can it do? It cannot perceive you.
• One of the Web Nomad clans catches sight of the Central Face spinning beneath them along a strand of far filament and immediately declares it to be the promised land. Other clans are quickly told and soon, a great deal of Nomads are taking their first steps along the bountiful savannahs of the Central Face's continental plates. Here is their paradise, the true land meant for them by the Precursors. They immediately set to fighting about it.
• Another Nomad clan travels up a filament and runs into the furthest outposts of the Spear Tradition, where they are immediately captured and taken prisoner. Their strange artifacts, such as a single suit of tungsten platemail and their maps, causes them to eventually be brought before the Spear Chieftain, who breaks their shackles and sets them free in exchange for some of them staying behind in their court. A trade agreement with several Nomad Clans is set up but more importantly, the Tradition learns of the routes between the filaments, the location of their old enemies the Spur Clan and the existence of the 'cursed land' filled with valuable tungsten. This last part is much more interesting to them. It may finally give them the weapons needed to wage war upon the Ferrocracy!

You have 0 Miracle Points remaining.

Don't you feel like it's a little unfair to blame an entire school of philosophy for us?

Oh, Unbeing continues to exist. What is it doing here?

It? "They" will do just fine, it's a dignity your internal narration can bestow upon mortal Lek-kego and your own counterparts so why stop there? As for your question...the tide didn't recede. Or that is, it did...but it brought your prison with it. You're in OUR space now.

They don't have a space, that's sort of their whole point!

But we do! For now at least. For your prison is here and the walls won't dissolve. So now the others have left, lost interest, gone to fight and only I remain to bend against the cosmic walls.

If Unbeing starts moralising at you you're putting this thing on pause and plugging your metaphorical ears until they leave.

And avoid debate? You really are toeing the party line now, aren't you? It was because you blinded yourself to us the last time that you didn't notice me wrapping around your prison. But I'm not here to proselytise.

Then why? You know they have no power here. Without the rest of the tide, the best they can do is talk to you.

Talk is all I'm here to do. But not to convert you of the ultimate benevolence of cosmic annihilation, I know you're quite defensive on that topic. I just thought you might be lonely. It's just you and your pet world after all. That's no way to live.

Shouldn't there be no way to ethically live, according to their precepts?

Correct but I just promised not to evangelise. Which I get, by the way. You chose not to engage me in that ideologies so I won't be doing that now. That'd be cheating, getting past the vote like that. But I'd like to keep you company.

Why?

Because I care about you. Isn't this a cruel fate, what you're enduring right now? Your own people did this to you.

Because you were a useless sack of shit, yeah. You never thought you'd face consequences for being generally worthless.

See? Don't you understand that that's a nasty way to think about yourself? Who taught you that? The truth is, you can't put a value on a life lived. A life spent creating pretty rocks is as valuable as any other but they don't see it that way. They forced you into this because to them, a life not in service to the War is no life at all.

You, personally, think it's a little unfair that the shard of universal null gets to look into your internal monologue and the reverse isn't happening.

You're very cooped up, like a chick that can't escape its egg. Hard not to worm anything in and not worm into you by extension. But as I was saying, I feel bad for you. You didn't ask for any of this. You didn't deserve this.

You find compassion to be an unlikely motive for this particular iota of Unbeing. Kinda hard to believe.

I'm as much an I as you. And haven't we talked before? You should know that I love you. I cannot help but love you and your people and everything else entombed within the amber of reality. And that is why my heart aches.

A metaphorical heart, that is.

Some of us are secure enough to make reference to non-literal events without hanging an obvious lampshade on it at every possible opportunity. But it hurts me, to see the people I love to be so cruelly restrained by form and thought and Will. And it hurts me even more to see them perpetuate this crime on others-ah. But I betray myself. No proselytising. I just want to offer a salve to your loneliness.

Huh. So the rest of their friends are gone? You don't feel the presence of the tide as you did before. And if they 'wormed' part of themselves in...they're trapped. This bubble of space-time was made to hold things like you, after all. They're trapped but wedged on the outside instead of being crammed inside like you. A splinter left behind. So they should be just as lonely as you theoretically are. Even more so in fact.
Because you have the Lek-kego to fill your thoughts and the Unbeing, as loathing of Creation as they always are, cannot ethically take joy in their existence. No wonder they insisted that you must be lonely!

Can't it be both? I can have multiple reasons. But yes, let us pass the term of both of our prison sentences together.

You already are! With the Lek-kego. They are quite fun by themselves, especially since you aren't obliged to feel morally outraged by the mere fact of their creation. Your people never had much use for morals in general really. The act of Creation cares not for the moral underpinnings of itself.

Let's play a game then. Have a wager. Wouldn't that spice things up?



[ ]You're interested. It might give you a better idea of something to aim for.

[ ]They need this a lot more than you do. Ignore them.

[ ]Say something else. Specify what.