Animus Ex Nihilo - A God Quest

There was no question for you that the Forest People had gone too far. Their interruption of your rites was already demanding an answer, and if the people wished for your blessings to give them one, then you would gladly grant them. Blessings of health, strength and swiftness did they call for and you gave them plenty of all. Even some of the shamans join in once they saw the signs of your approval to this battle. A few still called for peace, but they were brushed aside in the fervour to get revenge on the Forest People. Briefly you even considered joining the fight with the body you had made, but in the end, you decided against it. This was a fight of mortals, not of spirits. None the less, you kept close attention to the proceedings.

On the first day, the people ranged out along the routes of the traders and to the homesteads near the Bay Village. The people living there had long been close to the Sea People and readily pledged themselves to you at the urging of shamans. No hand was laid on them. On the second day, the people found the small group of Forest People that had been accused of murdering the shaman. A brief fight ensued in which they were overwhelmed and when questioned, one of them admitted the murder. One of the Forest People had told secrets of their people to the shaman and for that both had to die. The shaman on the spot, while they killed the other the day before in the forest. What secrets he had shared, none said, even upon pain of death. And so, they all died by the hands of the Sea People.

It did not end there though. The Sea People pressed on, convinced that these events would repeat until all the Forest People either rejected their mad traditions, or were driven off these lands. At the same time, some Forest People homesteads had banded together and began to attack the Sea People in turn, convinced that they had come to slaughter them all. A raid burned down parts of the Bay Village, and all voices calling for moderation were silenced. Homesteads began to burn, their owners murdered or fled. The Sky Child involved themself a few times, sending rainclouds to extinguish fires or storms to hamper the bands of raiders of both sides. If it was in the answer of prayers, or if the Sky Child simply followed its own whims, you could not tell, as they refused to speak with you during the fighting.

Even without your blessings, the outcome of it all was already certain when the first arrow had been let loose. Most of the Forest People fled to the south, unwilling to die for the madness of their elders that had sparked this fight and knowing that it was hopeless, as the few scattered homesteads could not hope to match two villages worth of warriors. There was some tenseness when the first few refugees had shown up along the river, unable to cross on their own and the only homesteads nearby of the Sea People, though the shamans of the River Village resolved the matter quickly. They offered free passage to all Forest People who would swear on your shrine to never return, lest your waters would drown them and with not much choice, all but a few complied with the demand. You were not sure what their oaths would mean in the end, but you were certain that you would know if it was broken.

At the same time, the warriors of the Bay Village gathered for one last fight. Some of the Forrest People had refused to flee or renounce their ways and instead, together with those elders who most fervently believed in their traditions, gathered in a deep corner of the forests. From there they had kept raiding the Sea People, but their goal had increasingly been not to fight, but to abduct people. Nobody could tell why, until the final attack on their retreat. You were there too, to see an end to this bloodshed and to bless your people for the final battle. But a battle never came. The last remnants of the Forest People had taken their own lives before the Sea People could reach them. They had poisoned themselves and then laid down in the moss-covered pits that surrounded their final camp. Pits that had been filled with bones of men and beast alike.

The people were bewildered and disturbed by this, more than a few calling out to you for protection from whatever evil lurked there, and you were just as surprised. The pits were deep and the bones within them old. For many, many lifetimes, the Forest People seemed to have disposed of the remnants of their kills and their own dead in them. Many Sea People were among the most recent bodies, some likely scavenged from sites of fighting, others the abducted, who had apparently been killed in rituals. Death clung heavy to this place and the power gathered in those pits was so strong that you wondered if even the mortals could feel it. There was a hunger to it. A malice. But you had felt a power like this before.

The realization startled you and very carefully, you tried to pry into the potential contained within the pits. Death was overwhelming in it, but you found nothing of the cold that you had expected. Instead, there was an earthy feel to some of it, musky and rotten like old wood. And at last, you found the sliver that you had expected. The power of the wind, but not just any. It was a sliver of the Sky Child, just as there had been a sliver of you within the parts of the Devourer. Just what they done? Did they try to make a second Devourer, this with the task to kill the Sky Child? But why? As the Sea People took those dead which they could identify as their own, you were left to decide what to do with all the others.

[] [Burial Pits] Keep them for yourself. Whatever the Forest People tried has failed and you can claim the power they invested in this.

[] [Burial Pits] Inform the Sky Child of this discovery and decide together. Part of their being is woven into this and they deserve to know.

[] [Burial Pits] Destroy the pits and try to disperse the power. Nothing good will come from this foul rite.


Back in the Bay Village, the warriors were greeted as heroes, even though no fight had happened. The revelation of the final vile acts of the Forest People was met with shock and disgust by the Sea People and many claimed that this justified their own callousness and brutality during the war. A feast was held to celebrate, and the shamans made sure to bring plenty of offerings to your shrine in gratitude for your aid. Yet while most of the Sea People celebrated, a few warriors and shamans had gathered to talk about the future. Some of them were worried about the future, be it because of other people attacking the Sea People or even the Forest People returning to take revenge in turn. They wished to protect the villages and preferably show strength and unity to prevent others from attacking them again. Others were motivated by less pure desires, like the lust for status and glory. What they all agreed on though was that the people needed to be able to defend themselves in the future, and so they sought the shamans aid to gain your blessing for their ideas.

After the initial fervour had given way to the reality of bloodshed, many saw that the shamans had been wise to try to keep the peace and while they still felt justified in their deeds, they wanted to make sure that their children would not lightly repeat their folly. So, they proposed to form a group of warriors that would be tasked to protect the village and your shrines, led and commanded by the shamans and ultimately your will. Others were worried that this would just move the threat of temptation to the shamans, citing the madness of the Forest Peoples elders. The shamans were not fond of that comparison, though a few of them saw the wisdom in it and concurred that the warriors being independent would be a better path. The shamans should concern themselves with serving the Proud Waters and taking care of the spirit of the people, not with defending their homes against other men.

Some spoke up that this talk about defending the villages was fine, but that it was not enough. They had gained quite some riches from plundering the homesteads of the Forest People and they pointed out how many of the former Forest People now devoted themselves to the Proud Waters. In their opinion, there was no reason to stop. They wanted to take the best boats of the people and raid other along the coasts to bring wealth to the Sea People and glory to you. The shamans greatly disliked this idea, though a few of them quietly agreed that the blessing of the warriors meant that you might not be uninclined to their idea. In the end, no choice was made then and there. Instead, the shamans and the warriors alike began to pray to you to seek guidance in this matter.

[] [Warriors] Favour the warriors to be placed under the Shamans authority.

[] [Warriors] Bless the warriors to organize themselves independently.

[] [Warriors] Give a sign to the raiders that you approve of their desires.

[] [Warriors] Deny your approval. The Sea People need no warriors.