I think that would require Proud Waters to have picked up the Healing Domain first.
Still, having it do something like naturally gathering fish so there's plenty of food for our people is basically pseudo-healing anyways. A well-nourished body is one that regenerates much better.
I am not against having another spirit handle the aspects of death for our followers. This devourer though needs to go one way or another.
I can see how our god may not be ready yet though. I do like the idea of somehow preventing our followers dead from feeding the devourer. I will change my vote.
[X] Plan: home improvements
Next lets get the healing domain and speak with the wind spirit to make a coordinated strike the following turn.
Adhoc vote count started by Azel on Nov 7, 2021 at 2:11 PM, finished with 106 posts and 34 votes.
[X] Plan: home improvements
-[X] Bless a shrine with 2 power
--[X] Bay Shrine
-[X] Bless the river with 2 power
-[X] Bless the fishers
--[x] herald action
-[x] Protect the dead with 1 power
-[x] Investigate the burial rite once more with 1 power
-[x] Explore the sea with 1 power
[X] Plan: home healing
-[X] Bless a shrine with 2 power
--[X] Bay Shrine
-[X] Bless the river with 2 power
-[X] Bless the fishers
--[x] herald action
-[x] Protect the dead with 1 power
-[x] heal the people with 1 power
-[x] Explore the sea with 1 power
For long had you not spent much thought on the nature of your shrines. They made sacrifices more potent and you suspected that they made it easier for you to exist in their vicinity, but there had always been more pressing concerns to address than investigating your connection to them. Now though, with your realm under constant attack by the Devourer, it felt prudent to see if you could strengthen your hold on it. Memories welled up in your mind of the beast breathing ice and death over those nameless islands to make them more pleasing to its nature. Once you had done something not all that different with the bay, though time had eroded much of your work. Maybe your shrine was the key to make such a work more lasting.
The next few times that sacrifices were made to the Bay Shrine, you did not draw all the power from it that you could, instead investing it into the structure. At first, nothing seemed to happen. All that you noticed was that you could feel its presence more clearly than before. But as you invested more and more of your power, this changed. Soon enough you knew whatever happened near your shrine, even without being present and if you focused enough, you could just will your presence to it. Other things became drawn to your shrine too, with crabs and mussels taking a renewed interest in the small island. All of this seemed nice enough, but given the power you had invested, you were not sure if it was worth the effort. That was until you noticed the strange blessings.
Every time you expended your power, expended a part of yourself, you knew precisely when and how. It was a conscious effort. But sometimes, when a particularly potent sacrifice was made at your shrine, the power seemed to act on its own. Part of it came to you as normal, but some shards and strings began to shape themselves on your own. At first you were worried what this might mean, but when you compared it to your own acts and those of your Herald, the pattern was most familiar. The blessings made themselves, from the desires of the mortals and the lingering intent left in what you imbued the shrine with. It was not a perfect process. The blessings were weak and stilted, needing your Heralds aid to become fully manifest, and the imbued power wore down with time, but you felt that you could do better, now that you knew what could be achieved.
Learned to Imbue Shrines.
When imbuing power into a shrine, it becomes capable of providing the benefits of bestowing a blessing / answering a prayer / bestowing a curse on its own. This does not consume a point of Power each turn, but is weaker than doing the action directly.
Gained 1 Re-Roll for a Sea Domain action this turn.
5 3 = 8
Buoyed by your success, you turned your attention to the River Village. The people there had often prayed for safe passage through the currents and richer fish grounds, and it was time to answer those calls. You still remembered remolding the bay and while the river proved a challenge, it was not an insurmountable one. With the tides you shifted the sandbanks around, smoothing out the flow of the currents through their new positions. Sea grass bloomed along the sea side of the island to protect it from springtides and give shelter to the sea life, while hardy reeds took root in the banks of the river proper. However, you power had some unintended effects too. As you slowly moved your attention to the river, the water in it turned saltier. Before, the people could drink the water right around the place where it split, but now they had to gather it in large clay pots from further upstream.
You quickly looked into the matter, lest the village would die of thirst, but the effect passed soon enough as the power you had invested in the waters was washed away. In the end, you were the spirit of the sea, not the spirit of rivers, and by acting upon it you had turned the river more akin to the sea. Certainly something useful could be done with this new ability you had discovered, but for now, you were content to leave your work near the River Village as it was. An unfortunate thing you noticed though was that the strain on your powers. The more you invested into this project, the harder it had become and for the first time you felt the sea resist your efforts. Maybe there was a way to increase your control, but it rankled to feel that your control of your own realm was limited in such a way.
Learned to Imbue Land.
When imbuing power into the world itself, you can align its nature closer to one of your domains. Some areas are naturally attuned to some domains, such as the sea being attuned to the Sea domain, and imbuing can have significant side-effects on an area, depending on the domain in question.
3 2 = 5
Meanwhile your Herald did its best to bless the fishers, which became rather important for the Bay Village once the first waves of explorers set out and depleted their numbers somewhat. His efforts were valiant and with the aid of the half-formed blessings of the Bay Shrine, the remaining fishers brought in large enough catches to keep the people fed. The giant carp even returned to the rivers of its birth a few times, the waters having to bulge to keep his form submerged in the smaller streams, leading to a small surge in offerings from the people dwelling alongside the waterways.
1
using re-roll 4
Unfortunately, the Devourer was not idle either and despite your attempts to keep it away from the dead, your efforts remained fruitless. The beast could come and go with impunity, and it grew bolder and bolder in its incursions. Once it seemed as if it would attack you while you were distracted by examining the dead once more and only the timely arrival of your Herald chased it off again. As for the sacrifices and the dead, you could now tell at least why you could not draw much potential from them. What they had was aligned with death just as that of the other sacrifices made to you were with the sea and healing. But while you could slowly draw the power of healing inside yourself despite it not resonating with your essence, there was no way to do the same here.
Your claim on the domain of death was not strong enough to overcome the Devourers affinity, and so the power stubbornly refused your calls. With time, you might have been able to break it down, but that was the one thing you did not have. Long before your efforts could have rendered it down enough to consume, some other matter would draw your attention. And then the Devourer would strike, undoing all your progress. You even went to the Sky Child with your conundrum, but they could not offer any other insight either. Their only suggestion was to gather the dead in one place that could be defended, but other than stacking them into the bay, they had no idea how to accomplish that feat either.
1
3
There was one thing though that you remembered from recent travels. You had put some of your power aside to explore the sea some more. While it gave you a better sense of your realm and more familiarity with the creatures that lived farther from the shores settled by the Sea People, such as seals, sharks, whales and other great creatures, it at first seemed to have yielded not much of immediate use. You at least had not found any land to settle or the islands that hosted the Devourer. But the sea was vast and so it was by pure chance, while you were diving with some sea lions, that you found a place unlike any that you saw before.
Deep beneath the sea, so far down that even the midday sun was no more than a faint shimmer from above, was a set of hills. They were not made from sand and earth, but the remnants of corals and mussels living there. Plenty of fish lived among them, some of which glowed with their own faint light. Squids and eels with dagger like teeth preyed on them, while giant crabs, isopods and starfish feasted on whatever was left of their meals. It was a strange and wonderous place, and yet the greatest surprise was invisible to all the mortal creatures living there. There was power in these waters. Power that resonated to your essence, though your time exploring was cut too short to examine it any more in depth. It was the first time you found a source of power that seemed to not have any connection to a human and you wondered how such a thing could be possible. Or if there were more places like this.
3
Before you could act on your curiosity though, there had been some upheaval in the Bay Village. In recent times, a rift between the Forest People and the Sea People had been growing. It had began with accusations of cheating each other in trades, followed by ever harsher accusations of theft and violence commit by one side or another. Now though, they even accused each other of godlessness. Some of the Forest People had begun to attend festivals of the Sea People and their kin and peers hated them for it, claiming they had rejected the old ways of their people. The greatest controversy was over the burial rites, as the Forest People insisted that all dead needed to be brought to certain cites in the deep forest, or the animals would turn wild and angry and take from the people until they showed proper reverence to the forest again. However, it was another rite that caused the final escalation.
During the last healing rite in fall, the matter had escalated, and a few Forest People had come to the Bay Village and forcefully hindered any of their own from participating. The Sea People were furious at this affront, and many wished to exact revenge on the elders of the Forest People that had ordered this attack. The shamans had barely managed to calm down the situation, pointing out how it might invite your wrath if the healing rite was turned into bloodshed, but the rage and hatred that followed from that day ultimately overwhelmed them. One day, one of the shamans was murdered in the dead of night and while no one knew what had happened, the people were certain that it was a group of Forest People who had come to trade and left the village in the same night as the murder.
For the people of the Bay Village, it was certain that they were guilty of the murder and now their rage would not be calmed by any words. A large group of herders and fishers had armed themselves with bows, spears and hastily made hide shields. The shamans did not impede them this time as even among their diminished number, there were plenty who no longer saw peace as an option. So, the leaders of the group soon found themselves before your shrine and making a great offering. Their prayers were simple. They wished for your blessings when they would raid the Forest People.
How did you respond?
[] Manifest your body again and join their attack. You will not tolerate the murder of your shamans.
[] Accept their offerings and bless their efforts. The Forest People deserve this punishment.
[] Stay quiet. You will neither bless nor hinder their efforts.
[] Reject their offerings and send them a sign to stand down. The shamans shall attempt to make peace with the Forest People.
AN: As the updates grow, I might have to cut down the update speed to every other day. I'll have to see how the workload develops from here on out.
[X] Reject their offerings and send them a sign to stand down. The shamans shall attempt to make peace with the Forest People.
Make Peace, not War.
We are a Goddess of Healing (to be) and of the Sea. Bloodshed is not our domain,
We must Heal the severed ties between the Forest and the Sea.
or Something like that .
[X] Accept their offerings and bless their efforts. The Forest People deserve this punishment. [X] Manifest your body again and join their attack. You will not tolerate the murder of your shamans.
We have to show a bit of pride here, this whole debacle started because the forest people don't recognise us as a god nor accept our rituals as valid. Time to show what happens when people don't accept the existence of a god.
[X] Accept their offerings and bless their efforts. The Forest People deserve this punishment. [X] Manifest your body again and join their attack. You will not tolerate the murder of your shamans.
Don't screw with our rituals. I don't care if they murdered the shaman or not interfering with our rituals is more than enough reason for punitive action in my mind.
The shamans had barely managed to calm down the situation, pointing out how it might invite your wrath if the healing rite was turned into bloodshed, but the rage and hatred that followed from that day ultimately overwhelmed them. One day, one of the shamans was murdered in the dead of night and while no one knew what had happened, the people were certain that it was a group of Forest People who had come to trade and left the village in the same night as the murder.
This bolded part here is really giving me pause. They say a shaman was murdered and blame the Forest People, but they have no proof at all. @Azel was the murder gruesome? Are there stab wounds/bruises or anything that we're aware of?
*puts tinfoil hat on and hot take mic*
It was the Sky Child, he is trying to enflame our followers and the forest people to war so that he can usurp some influence and worship his way as he has been pretty irrelevant and unmentioned.
At this point in time we need every scrap of power we can get our hands on, and this type of incident can really put a dent in our growth if our own people perceive us as weak.
This bolded part here is really giving me pause. They say a shaman was murdered and blame the Forest People, but they have no proof at all.
@Azel was the murder gruesome? Are there stab wounds/bruises or anything that we're aware of?
At this point in time we need every scrap of power we can get our hands on, and this type of incident can really put a dent in our growth if our own people perceive us as weak.
The fact that the forest people felt it was permissible to persecute our faith at all by blocking people from participating in our rituals tells me that we're already perceived as weak even if not by our own people which is a good enough reason to make an example out of someone to get the point across for me.
[X] Accept their offerings and bless their efforts. The Forest People deserve this punishment.
[X] Manifest your body again and join their attack. You will not tolerate the murder of your shamans.
The sea can be gentle and calm, but the sea is a wild force and its wrath should be shown.
.
