Age of Myths (Age of Sigmar): Third Time the charm

The August Star of Heavens: part 4
Roll: 98
Alone among the gods of Azyr no altar ever burned for you and no incense was offered to your presence yet you don't feel shame for this. You were the Incarnate of Heavens for a brief time, holding the powers of the stars while the storm descended to dwell in Sigmar. When the world was consumed and you fell in unreality your power ever-expanding created Azyr itself. So even if you have no worshippers you rest content you have created this universe and all in it which didn't come from outside, refugees like you from lands defiled by the hand of Chaos. Hundreds of gracile hands thus rise and strike at Mikaboshi affirming that the stars are your dominion and he can't force them in directions you can't approve.

For a moment it works, and you see the sublime masked face frown in incomprehension till he raises his eyes to your manifold self and laughs bitterly. He fights you as well as he is able but his mighty pride doesn't change your difference in stature. He was the Pole Star which, while the axis the heavens turn around is still but a single star while you hold sway over the vastness of the universe itself and the portents of its messengers.

Mikaboshi: 130 Legend: Spend 30 to become the Crown: 100

Seeing his power wane, Mikaboshi resorts to Assumption, reminding the universe he is too a power of the heavens and a master of the starry expanse. He folds and unfolds across many dimension, his palace now bearing an ideogram your enhanced mind translate as "unmoving center" and your own powers begins to ebb as his silhouette grows to grotesque proportions till he can seize stars in his fist and pass them like rings at his fingers. The pull of gravity is felt even by your unsubstantial bodies and your pyramids of living stone are unmoored from their places, slowly falling towards him.

Well that certainly counts as an emergency.

Kroak: 144 Legend: Spend 30 to become the Wyrd: 114

You don't fight him in the lands of stars for you have other powers and call on the Assumption of Fate. What was still physical in you fades away, living stone broken to chips and melting in the air, robed figures burnt by their own inner flames. Each is now a star that flies and forms the shape you wear, made of light instead of bones. And each is many and one, a story melded with the others to tell your story. Your right eye is Mazdamundi who leveled mountains, your left eye Adoni-Tegha who stood alone as the continents broke. The Slaan who is your right index pursued the Dark Elves to bring back the riches they stole. And right in the middle of your brow, like a shining third eye is your namesake, Lord Kroak ever standing, ever watching.

And all say to Mikaboshi that you will not be moved.

Amaterasu: 130 Legend: Spend 15 to summon the dawn and the hope it brings to your side.
Roll: 33+47: 80: Great Success: +20 for Kroak

Amaterasu, sunlit queen of eastern lands, acts and do not stay idle. Her power flares from her, not against your common foe but to support you. It is warm as the light of the day and it comforts your old bones. Under that light your gests are surer, your steps more assured and your actions blessed. Perhaps it's there that pride enters your heart but you know better. Pride was already in your mind and you didn't need the warmth of the sun to understand it. For while you hold the mantle of master of fate you reach with your hands to Mikaboshi and feel his connection to his power.

Kroak: 97
Mikaboshi: 3

The August Star of Heavens, the Pole Star, the rogue kami who defied a pantheon, Mikaboshi screams and screams and screams for you feel the link between him and the strange light of the stars and the vault of heavens, and you tear it from him. He howls as the Crown is torn from his brow and with it all his influence over the Domains of Stars. All light deserts his face and his beauty shines for a last sublime moment before it shifts to ugliness so foul it makes your very heart miss one of its thunderous slow beat. After this, Amaterasu and the rest of her pantheon will tell you that you couldn't know but Mikaboshi is the Pole Star but in a world near their own he was identified as the darkness before creation and the ruler of the world before the gods. And to that state he reverts as you take from him what was light

Mikaboshi: 100 Legend: Spend 60 to Assume both the Abyss and Ultimate Appearance: 40 Legend remaining
Spend the 40 left to affirm his new position: 94+32: 126: Black Hole

It is not darkness as you know it. Darkness is the absence of light, and that, that is a thing in its own. It is mist which choke your lungs and ocean whose waves break your cohesion and lose your constituents parts in its whirlwind. You see stars falling from the heavens and drown, their light and beauty forgotten as they emerge as black asters who spread darkness rather than radiance. You seek to anchor yourself but finds you cannot, for in the spreading gloom you can only see masks of porcelain who break and reforms into shapes you cannot bear.

Hail the Slanns, they laugh, hail the Slanns! Captains foolhardy in battle, stewards who didn't understand or care for the world they protected! How you treated the other races, not as children but as nuisances. How you destroyed them when they intruded over your lands until none, even among the wise, would come at you in search of knowledge. Perhaps if they had you would have a chance but you have murdered the world and done so repeatedly. For you see your selves standing atop their pyramids, always watching and rarely acting and even more acting rightly. Following the dictates of plan made obsolete as the Polar Gates became ,portals to unreality, you have damned the world under your care as surely as the ratmen or the servants of Chaos. Before you stand what you were and still are, and you shudder for dead golden eyes look at you with your own pride, with your own contempt of what isn't you and your own unthinking obedience.

You are a tool and a poorly made one at that says the Shadow and your resolve falters and you are ready to surrender to the waves of darkness that are Mikaboshi ultimate attempt to destroy his foes.

Yet other eyes are fixed on the battlefield and the rumor of the fight has gone so great that the gods of Azyr, gods of sun, star and moon who look at the worlds from above can't ignore it no longer. In realms you haven't gazed upon yet, a winged snake and a woman with a girdle of running dogs folds space for themselves and others making other gods make haste. For Mikaboshi, the Domain of the Stars ripped from his essence claims the throne of the darkness between the stars, the darkness that swallows all. And others object strenuously for that would give him the crown of Azyr.

You will learn after that the Assumption of the Sun is named the Glory and you understand it. For at least twelve great gods of the Sun assume their most powerful form and light sears the darkness until you see again the spires of Mikaboshi's palace now charred and blackened by the fire coming down, or is it because his realignment to the power of darkness. You see a gate of jet at the center slowly opening, a portal to Ulgu where shadows roam alive and remain the powers of eternal night and trickery alike. A voice echo in your head as a mind as powerful as yours touches your thoughts. You process the contact as Coeus the titan son of Ouranous and Gaïa, prophet and master of the axis of heavens.

"The choice is simple here weaver of fate. Either give him back his power and let him remains the Pole Star, or decree his link to the darkness within and without. I would do it myself but we would risk losing large chunks of this place if I'm not holding it."

So what do you do?

[] Restore Mikaboshi connection to the Stars, enabling him to remains in Azyr.
[] Banish him to Ulgu to make him someone else problem.
[] Try to kill him, which will send him to Shysh.

Restoring his connection will enforce the status-quo and leaves him defeated and hating pretty much everyone in Azyr for his ignominious defeat. Banishing him to Ulgu risks him gaining new powers and allies as his nature shifts. Killing him will have the same risks as banishing him and even with your Ultimates you don't know how gods die and what happens to them afterwards.

Azyr
This post is there to explain how some things work in Azyr because shit gets seriously weird, notably because Azyr is the realm where space works strangely.

The main "sphere" if you can call it that of the Realm is the starry domains you are walking right now. There dwell gods associated primarily with the stars. If you land on a moon and concentrate enough, you arrive in another sphere where the great domains are enormous silver islands which well are the moons and the many gods who rule them. The eternal storm of people like Sigmar, Thor or Shango travels in all spheres as a sort of natural phenomenon who contains its own share of fiefdoms.

As an aside I'm not really a fan of putting storms in Azyr as they would be more at home in my Aqshy "realm of raging elements" but that was part of the Lore of Heavens even in battle. So I've decided with gods primarily associated lightning are in Azyr while gods mainly associated with rain are in Aqshy.

The sphere of the suns is complicated because light there doesn't really come from the stars, at least for the moment, but from the royal presence of the gods, keeping with the Azyr the realms of stars theme. That pisses off the sun gods really fierce because they were really fine with the whole "I'm the brightest and the ruler of the day" thing. Their consolation prizes is that their sphere is technically just above Hysh, making them the light of the Realm of the Light. Most have also palaces there.