Animus Ex Nihilo - A God Quest

When you had first discovered the deep reef, it was amazing to behold. A place wholly infused by the power of the sea, where the waters were almost eager to obey your whims, and every moment you spent there made you feel stronger than before. Now though, when you were also attuned to the aspect of death that hung over the mounds of dead corals and sea life, it was an even more exhilarating feeling. Now you could appreciate the quiet and stillness of this place too. A place that had grown not for the things that lived, but for the things that had died in it, far away from the hustle of the mortal villages or the light of the sun. Would you even fade, if you were to rest here? For so long had you known and accepted that without the mortals, you too could die, but as you floated through the still and cold waters so deep beneath the waves, it felt as if you could become truly eternal in this place.

It had to be yours. That much was certain. Whatever strange confluence of events had shaped this place, you did not want to part from it again, and so you would make it yours. Resting among the corals, you cast out your essence just like you had in the burial pits. This time though, there was no resistance, just a slow and sturdy flow of power. At first you thought that this would make it easier, but the opposite was the case. Where the pits had been struggling to keep you away, the reef took your essence readily and then ground it down to become just another part of itself. You poured more and more into it, making corals grow larger and the fish fatter for the raw potential you gave to this place, and yet soon enough, all traces of your work had been eroded.

For a while, it seemed your efforts were fruitless. This place truly was eternal in its nature, and you were just another interloper it would outlast. But then you reconsidered. You had coveted this place for what it was, and yet you had tried to change it. So, you once more listened and felt to its ebb and flow. This time though, you took in a part of its essence for every bit you gave it. Dominance had shown no success, so instead you would mingle with it. It would become part of you, and in return you would become part of it. For long seasons you continued this. Watching the mounds grow bit by bit as things lived and died on it. Seeing the fishes and crabs live by the rhythm of the currents alone. And one day, you felt for the reef with all your senses and could only find yourself in it.

Gained Place of Power: Deep Reef (Sea and Death Infused)

You emerged changed from the waters and the affairs of mortals seemed ever so slightly more distant to your thoughts as you beheld the villages once more. They had not fared well in your absence. An unusually harsh winter had made the waters more dangerous than usual and many fishers of the River Village and Bay Village had lost their lives when they ventured out into the ice filled sea anyway. Soon hunger set in as the remaining fishers could not haul in large enough catches, even when the ice cleared. This had already happened some seasons ago and the villages were still struggling with hunger and the sicknesses caused by them. As the Sky Child had kept up their efforts to aid the settlers in the forests and inland near the rivers, quite a few of the Sea People had left for those places, leaving the great villages diminished. You did your best to ease the suffering of the sick, yet this could not undo the damage that had already been done. It would take a while for the mortals to grow in number once more.


During this, your herald had dutifully fulfilled the last order you had given him and he had kept to it even during the peoples troubles. If the Sea People had better boats, he reasoned, it would help the remaining fishers more than if he helped them to fill their nets even faster than they already could, and indeed, their new boats had helped alleviate the losses. Right after the fishers had been lost, the Sea People had tried to fish from rafts instead as it allowed them to gather more fish before having to return to the shore, but they had trouble to steer the unwieldy crafts against the currents and only some aid by your herald prevented even more dead. After some time, the boatmakers came up with a solution. They lashed two canoes together and placed a platform in between them, allowing much more cargo to be hauled than just with the canoes themselves. The craft remained easy to steer and row, yet also become much more resistant to capsizing and thus more capable of moving on the open seas. It would have boded well for the explorers, though the Sea Peoples troubles had squashed any desire to explore the world for now.


With all this death occurring, you were pleased to see that most had observed your burial rites as good as they were able. When hunger and sickness claimed too many people in a short time, they had begun to send off more than one body per boat and cremation followed by sending you the ashes of the deceased had likewise been more common under such circumstances. To you, it mattered not much though. The offerings, even though diminished in quantity and quality, were all the more potent for some reason and so you gave plentiful blessings to all, calming their sorrows and strengthening their bodies to endure their losses. A few other rites had been adopted by the Sea People to fill the void left by the old rites, such as burying the dead in marked graves near the village or burning them with special herbs and asking for the Sky Child to guide them, though in the wake of your blessings, they all vanished rapidly, leaving sea burial the only rite accepted by the Sea People.


To uphold the other part of the people's requests made during the rites, you also kept guarding the dead from the Devourers hunger. With the reef now yours, there was no reason to leave them just anywhere on the seafloor and instead you began to guide their bodies there. If the Devourer were to come and claim them, it would have to come to a place where the sea would crush him for its transgression. And if not, then the dead would nourish the starfish and corals, the human dead becoming one more part of the mounds. However, for the first time in many lifetimes, the Devourer did not trouble you or the dead. Did it fear you? Were the remnants of power you could draw from the dead immediately not enough for it anymore? Had it maybe moved elsewhere, where carrion was easier to find for it? Briefly, you were hopeful that the monster would be gone for good, but you were not so lucky.


A few seasons after, the Sky Child approached you with an air of worry. The Harsh Mountain was in a rage as one of the Mountain People's villages had been razed to the ground. Their northernmost settlement had spotted a great winged shape on the horizon a few times and the mountain spirit had asked, or more likely ordered, the Sky Child to look into the matter for him. Even though knowing full well what it had to be, the wind spirit had flown over there to make sure and it was indeed the Devourer. Having been denied its easy prey in the sea, it had taken to snatching up lone people wandering far away from the greater settlements and the spirits protecting them. When told the story of the Devourer, the Harsh Mountain had resolved to drive off the beast, though the other spirit was too slow.

Before the Wandering Mountain, its servant, could reach the northern village to attack the Devourer, the beast had descended on it. The few survivors told how the monsters wings blotted out the skies as its breath of frost and bloated flies came over them. Every person who was hit by it turned to ice and when the swarms of flies touched your flesh, it would become black and putrid within moments. Half the village was dead after the creature had made its first pass over it and the survivors swore that it took a sick joy in slowly whittling down those that remained. What was concerning to you though was that as far as the stories went, the Devourer had not actually done what its name implied and feasted on the dead. It had always done so given the slightest chance before, so you wondered why it would suddenly stop to indulge itself.

Now the Harsh Mountain was demanding the Sky Childs aid in battling the Devourer, which the Mountain People had begun to call Skerhogis after one of the bynames that the Sea People had given the creature. The wind spirit was not very keen on fighting beside the acerbic mountain spirit, but had come to you none the less to share the story if nothing else.

How do you react?

[] Offer aid to the Harsh Mountain. The Devourer is the enemy of all of you.

[] Leave the matter be. You have no obligation to aid the Harsh Mountain and this gives you more time to prepare yourself to slay the Devourer yourself.