Paths of Heroes

[X] [Terr] Scavengers of the Titans' Bones
[X] [Tech] Beast Binding
[X] [Cha] Ferocious Beasts
[X] [Adv] Essence Spring (+Essence, +Food)

Once this place had been alive. Once it had been place and person in one. Once it had been a god, a world unto itself.

Now it was a corpse of mind boggling size. Ribs made of black iron and grey granite shot up into the sky so high that clouds snagged upon their tips. Yet if one climbed the interior lattice where there had once been marrow and blood vessels and gazed out upon the landscape, one could not see the edge of the body.

What one could see from such a lofty vantage point was the rotted, exploded meat of a dead Titan. Much of it was a spongy, grey-green, sort of stone folded like a tiny mountain range that wept acrid black oil as it putrefied, the rotten effluent gathering in places into rivers and lakes of corrosive slime. In other places the remnants of divine organs poked through ruined meat, but their forms were always strange and their functions unnameable. What purpose had an array of shattered crystal octahedrons once served? Had the slick, meaty material that ran throughout the corpse in mad patterns and lines once been like veins and arteries, or was that reading into it?

The Boneyard was a thousand such mysteries, and ten thousand dangers.

Of the dangers, some were passive. They were sudden floods of rotten tar. They were cave-ins. They were uncovering some cache of toxic energy that had once fuelled a god. Others however were active, hunting things. What was a scavenger, what was a living piece of the god that had not yet realized it was dead, and what was a haunted memory was never clear, and this place had a habit of blending them together.

Among the scavengers were the people of Goldsprings. Located within one of the great ribs high enough to avoid tar floods and all but the worst of the miasma storms, but not so high as to make scavenging impossible. They clustered about some quirk of the remains that caused pure and clean water to bubble forth, providing enough water to support dozens of families and their gardens. The other half of the name came from what sat atop the springs.

Rising from the almost completely still pool was a tremendous pile of gold tokens, and lying upon that pile was a great dragon, a creature from the Time Before Time. Her skin and scales had burned away, leaving charred black bone to fuse with wet, chitinous muscle. Her wings were useless spars of bone and sinew, and her legs were twisted and shattered. A hundred different fluids leaked from her wounds, only to purify upon contact with the water of the spring. She had spent centuries sleeping, only occasionally flickering to consciousness as she healed from her wounds. The humans that clustered about her called her the Springmother.

Around her sat dozens of fist sized rubies that gleamed with inner fire, their value more incalculable than any gem. These were the eggs of the Springmother, the future of her kind, and they were either the salvation or doom of all in Goldsprings.

Once the Springmother had forbidden humans from touching her eggs, and they had complied. Only when the first egg hatched, the creature within had been devoid of the spark of intelligence. The Springmother's lineage had ended with her, her children doomed to either become stillbirths or mindless beasts. At great cost the people of Goldsprings had returned one of her children to her, and she had rejected them as being unworthy of her concern. Unfortunately by the time this task had been achieved there were already descendents of that ill-fortuned birth, and a population of predatory drakes had established themselves in the region. Twisted by the scars of their mother and mutated by their environment, they were even more bestial than their progenitors, and threatened Goldsprings with their attacks.

With the Springmother's direction, the humans learned to bind her lost descendents to their wills. She also taught them to attune to the nascent spirits of her still developing eggs, allowing her young to gain human intelligence while the humans gained some of their strength. A scavenger with an egg could dive deeper into the ruins below and find more exotic goods and scraps of information.

This had come at a cost though. Thus far only one egg had hatched and produced an intelligent creature, while three had been permanently lost to the ruins, adding new horrors to the already myriad forms of monsters the Boneyard vomited forth. And that one true dragon, young as he was, was sent away once judged strong enough so that something might continue if everything went wrong.

So it was in Goldsprings. Most days were spent tending to the gardens, shaping metal, and guarding against dangerous creatures that tested their defences. When ready they would strike out, pushing and the monsters at their doorsteps back. They would then send delvers into the depths to pick bones of green copper and harvest flowers of tin and lead. They would haul up tar to distill into oil to feed their fires. They would raid the nests of monsters to bind a new generation to service. They would send runners out to other villages not too distant to share information and trade rare goods. And finally, with the turning of the seasons they would fall back to their defences before the monsters got too used to their tactics and their losses became too great.

And one day, a young man was summoned before the Springmother with a special task.

He was a…
[] [Hero] Hunter
[] [Hero] Delver
[] [Hero] Runner
[] [Hero] Ritualist

Hunter

One of those heavily trained in the arts of stealth, stalking, and combat, these warriors spend the most time outside the relative safety of Goldsprings, but also tend to be in the center of all the best parties. +Combat, +Charm

Delver

Equipped with heavy gear to better withstand the environmental hazards of the deeper layers of the Boneyard, these men and women willingly place themselves in danger to better the village, and often out of simple curiosity. +Survival, +Investigate

Runner

Considered perhaps the maddest people around, the Runners serve as vital communication between settlements. They are the messengers and traders of the Boneyard, which makes them fast and sneaky by default. +Stealth, +Diplomacy

Ritualist

Part priest and part smith, these are the people who forge bronze, weave together chitin, and tend to bound beasts. While not the most glamorous role, they still have an important place in society. +Craft, +Charm Animal

...bound to a…
[] [Bind] Drake
[] [Bind] Husker
[] [Bind] Lost Soul
[] [Bind] Doomteller

Drake

One of the more stable of the Springmother's unfortunate descendents, the drakes are one of the more preferred beasts to bind as they are powerful, have relatively simple minds, and can be ridden in flight once large enough. They unfortunately also are hungry beasts that require plenty of food, and the bond tends to make their riders proud and easy to anger.

Husker

A particularly hideous breed, these eyeless monsters that see too much reproduce by implanting their young in other creatures, eating them from the inside out before leaving behind an empty husk once matured. Obtaining one is typically an accident when another beast is implanted and a human capable of mastering it while it grows is present. Those born from humans are especially dangerous, and thus far no one has been allowed to even make the attempt. While ill appreciated in the village, these stealthy killers are especially useful on long expeditions.

Lost Soul

There are ghosts in the Boneyards, but the Lost Souls are not of that type, not truly. What these ethereal specters are are fragments of memory and dream from the dead god rotting away. While most simply drift about, caught in loops of life and death, it is possible although dangerous to bind them by entering into their patterns to break them out, at the risk of becoming caught and losing one's sanity. While immaterial, they have numerous strange abilities.

Doomteller

A peculiar crab sort of creature the size of a large dog, these beasts glue all sorts of detritus to their shells, including dreams and futures. A bound doomteller allows its master to follow into its expeditions, allowing for dreams to be interacted with and scraps of divination made. In the village a doomteller can cause havoc and restless nights if unsupervised, but they are often essential to allowing restful sleep by cutting away bad memories in nightmares. Their most perilous but profitable use is to harvest from the dreams and severed possibilities of the dead Titan.