From Genesis (Riot God Quest)
- Thread starter Mannan
- Start date
Symbol of Violence was subordinated, I think
- Location
- 𐌂 ̢͎̩̤̲̙͓̑̀͂͒̀͆̏𐋏 ̛͏̫̚𐌀 ̛͉̥̩̤̰͈̂̅͒͊͟𐍈 ̣͛𐍃 ̡̅̈́
I don't know. Didn't see these people, which acts didn't get sub. Do as you like, I guess.
That sucks for sure. I can relate to tiredness. I didn't sleep today or yesterday? This insomnia ruin my schedule again - it only started to look like something humans have!
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The author of Blade Weavers said that they'd subordinate if everyone else did, and since Curufinwe chose to do it with their Act, that basically only leaves two more Acts that need to be subordinated.
@Nigerian Duck - Pivoltal Place Parasio(Currently Passing at Greater)
@MangoFlan The Sun Spark(Not Currently Passing, needs Moment of Glory and double Subordination boost to pass at all.)
@Nigerian Duck - Pivoltal Place Parasio(Currently Passing at Greater)
@MangoFlan The Sun Spark(Not Currently Passing, needs Moment of Glory and double Subordination boost to pass at all.)
Maaan, I don't want to subordinate my Act because I did that last turn. But if I don't, then all the blame's on me for not getting the boost. I guess I'll subordinate.
Well that is it then.
Here a preview of how consolidation played out:
Holy Stone Land + We Burn = The Primordial City
Local Maximizers + The Spark of Harmony = The Ten Trillion Gods
Darkness Rising + Rotting Darkness, Blooming Darkness = The Illusary Realm of the Neverborn
Symbol of VIolence + Brilliant Metamorphosis + Blade Weavers = Enlightenment of the Sword
Where Nightmares Fail Dreams Lay + Pivotal Place Parasio + Dragon's Tear= The Shining Realms
Final Kindness + Fountain of Tears= The Birth of Death
Here a preview of how consolidation played out:
Holy Stone Land + We Burn = The Primordial City
Local Maximizers + The Spark of Harmony = The Ten Trillion Gods
Darkness Rising + Rotting Darkness, Blooming Darkness = The Illusary Realm of the Neverborn
Symbol of VIolence + Brilliant Metamorphosis + Blade Weavers = Enlightenment of the Sword
Where Nightmares Fail Dreams Lay + Pivotal Place Parasio + Dragon's Tear= The Shining Realms
Final Kindness + Fountain of Tears= The Birth of Death
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Putting on my tinfoil hat.
Primordial City: Yay, so can't say much. Xxpect that the Last City is probably going to get a name change as it becomes a beacon of civilisation in the newly created Holy Stone Land. It being a Primordial City makes it sound like it will have a connection with the Primordials somehow.
The Ten Trillion Gods: Well ain't this interesting so the spark of harmony which powered being by working together and the nanotechnology like swarm of Maximiser unite. So I imagine they become tiny animist like gods of the very specific stone, the river with squiggly eight like bend or that fire burning down that house.
The Illusory Realm of the Neverborn: Hmm with Darkness being torn out of the Nightmare Lord and the ability to enter the world of nightmares, I imagine a dream like illusionary realms is being created.
Enlightenment of the Sword: The mastery of blades has begun! Not sure what going to happen but thinking something to do with becoming enlightened using a sword.
The Shining Realm: A magical sunlight realm... of dreams?
The Birth of Death: Hmm... this is obvious but I wonder how it gonna happen.
- Location
- 𐌂 ̢͎̩̤̲̙͓̑̀͂͒̀͆̏𐋏 ̛͏̫̚𐌀 ̛͉̥̩̤̰͈̂̅͒͊͟𐍈 ̣͛𐍃 ̡̅̈́
Maybe someone would empty goblet of the Fountain of Tears.
Hmm, if Local Maximizers are Universal now, does it mean they can attach themself not only to the physical things? Maybe this is what happened here. Some kind of self-perpetual motion loop, perhaps?
Maybe of dreams, but in other meaning? Like, not related to sleep or images of the tired mind. But like goals, aspirations and visions of the future, like hope. It would be interesting to have two dreamscapes - mirrors of each other.
LIke, Dream means:
- a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep.
- a state of mind in which someone is or seems to be unaware of their immediate surroundings.
- a cherished aspiration, ambition, or ideal.
- a person or thing perceived as wonderful or perfect.
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Age 4: Rebirth
"To wield the sword is to acknowledge that fact that, in the end, might alone is the true decider of who is worthy of ascension and who is fit only to be food,"
-Words of the Ssythu
The Holy City and the Flame of Ethia
It is the nature of the light of the Primordial Sun to bring new things from its radiance, order being wrought from the flames of chaos that is at its heart. Phenomena and beings yet undreamt emerge from its great flame without any hint of what came before. Yet to those of the highest realm, whose being comprised entire concepts and laws some events could be seen and could even be directed.
This is what the God of Stone did when the light surged. It witnessed the design borne from the flame and saw that which was to be born with the god as medium and decided to change it. For Gethel loved his people and loved the city it helped carve from the world. So it directed the power towards the city and was surprised to see the power enhanced even further as the funeral pyre of Ethia surged with light as well. The great flame drank in the universe shaping might and like the Primordial Sun of old radiated the light within the great cavern that was the last city. Unseen to those a trio of strange beings, having recently made their way into the Last City, are also touched by the light, and seeing the great streams of energy given by the flame eagerly work to contribute. They share their power and imbue it into the stone. They grant the power to create all forms of matter, destroy and distort space, and allow impossibilities to become possible.
Stone flows like water and like the departed Earth Mother begins to grow. Where before there was solid rock emerged great passages filled with grand vistas carved from adamant and from these passages more and more emerged everything from great empty pockets where one could fit entire cities to winding labyrinthian halls that stretched outward into impossible dimensions. And all of it was energized, the great light of Ethia's Pyre flowing through every piece, nurturing it and all those that inhabited the great stone super arcology. With but a simple prayer the unyielding adamant would flow in a surge of golden light, reshaping to whatever shape they required.
Elementals feel themselves energized for the first time since the death of the Earth Mother, feeding off the flame and growing stronger, and then multiplying endlessly until they filled the new world, bringing the grand city to life. Elementals of water formed great lakes, elementals of air circulated and purified the air within, elementals of fire tended to and directed the Pyre's flames wherever they were needed, and the elementals of earth melded with the stone, shaping it and imbuing it all with life.
In specific points, where the flows of Ethia's light concentrates fountains form where motes of energy emerge from which matter could be shaped, or space shifted, or impossibilities made possible. Precious resources for the running of the city.
And as Gethel finished his channeling he looked on in awe as the great spherical city, as large as the Earth Mother of times past encased fierce light released by the miniature sun at its heart. The people rejoiced at their new home, for they knew within their heart of hearts that within its fortress walls not even the Primordials could breach its walls for its halls are Holy and cannot be violated. Should even the heavens fall and the entirety of existence be drowned in the Void, they would still live, ready to carve out reality once more from the Void.
The Ten Trillion Gods
The Great Artist and Pyralis go through time, diving into realities and dreams as to what is to come. They bear witness to the coming fates and always find the singular truth. While the Void is unable to destroy all of reality for the weaving of the Three is simply too grand to come undone, it will always result in the loss of what family they have. All either flee into the Dream and be lost in its impossibilities or swallowed by the Void.
The Great Artist would not have it and searched within himself for a solution, any solution. And in its harried search, it found it. Like the God of Stone, it saw the surging of the Primordial Sun, the light proclaiming the passing of an age and building upon reality once more. The Great Artist would seize this power and shape it. It took the things it saw in times past and future. It wished for peace, away from the violence that the Void will bring. It wished for Harmony and so it does.
The Spark of Harmony forms and embeds itself into the Tapestry itself. The Three and her two Hands cease their weaving for a moment as they see the pattern within their arms shift and change to accommodate this new change as the Tapestry takes a life of its own. Millions upon millions of concepts make up the fibers of the threads that make up the tapestry. And from the vitalizing light of the First Sun, they come to life. Every little thing in the material universe manifests itself as a living spirit. They are driven by the primal fear of death, the very thing gestating within the Void's core. The sure knowledge that the threads themselves will one day fade, and fall away into the void. They oppose this with all that they have.
Each embodies a living concept, an existence that they embody and propagate with pure haste. Earth grows, fire surges, and even the snails that remain untouched by Pyralis's whispers find themselves breeding in a mad frenzy in the times when they do not outright rise from the muck and mud, fully formed. Yet they are each threads and can only expand so much before they break. From these broken threads, new things emerge, oftentimes they derive from their progenitor, manifesting as slight changes in the world. Metals differentiate into different elements, snails mutate into new subspecies, and so on. In some cases, two of these little gods would meet each other to create strange hybrids of their domains manifesting in reality as strange hybrids of creatures and even materials. In some cases new spirits would emerge, embodying new concepts as they are thought up by the mortal dreamers below.
Yet there are already beings that rule their beings. Every being is composed of many things. There is the least god for every element, the least god for every organ, and the least god for every person. Even every Primordial is composed of countless parts that make up their elements, be they material things or concepts. Every thread is composed of countless tiny fibers. And there emerges the principle of Harmony that binds them all together. The last gods find themselves subordinated with their greater selves, working seamlessly together to enact a greater whole.
All the least gods of the body work together to make one endura and adapt to anything that should challenge them. The Primordials find their forms more readily molding to their wills as they become agglomerations of all their least gods as much as they become individual primordials and they find themselves changing, adapting as their constituent parts continue to propagate new and unique strands even as the weight of their existence shears other strands from the tapestry.
It extends even beyond them as entire environments could work together in harmony to bring out new effects and mortals could work together to overcome foes that they previously could not before, their bonds manifesting in the celestial realm to enhance their beings.
Yet at the heart of these beings lies a singular purpose, one that supersedes even their subordination to their greater selves, the desire to survive. Whether they wish for it or not, whether they know it or not, all are driven to direct the world towards growth and ever-growing complexity and uniqueness. They seek for the universe to go on endlessly, even willing to rebel against the hand of the weaver to ensure this fate. And this instinct echoes to all beings. To almost all beings, this is unnoticed for they all wished to live and grow and prosper. But to a singular being, one whose purpose is to be destroyed, it introduced a flaw in their singular will. It introduced doubt in their madness.
Death
Harmony is introduced to the void and where before it tore at all reality and reduced them to naught, it now melded with it. Void becomes absence to be filled and filled it is. The comatose Primordial of Life that digests within its gullet ceases to fade and melds directly with that which sought to destroy it and like it did with the Darkness of an age past the two became one and in this fused state, the Void reaches a new understanding. Just as the Primordial Sun emerged from the nothingness in the beginning and from it emerged the rest of the universe, so too can something emerge from the destruction that is the Void. Indeed, does the Spike not emerge infinitely from its maw, linking to the great nothingness beyond Darkness's boundaries?
The hungering pit, forced to acknowledge this revelation loosens its hold on the same spike and falls. It falls from the material world and falls into the darkness and continues to fall even deeper until at last, the Void reaches the boundary of reality, rejoining with the greater void beyond. Yet even the void is made of the least gods and desires to live. The principle of harmony brings itself to bear as darkness and void mix together in this illusory divide between what is and what is not. The border realm invades the void just as the void invades the border realm until a gradient of existence forms, in a way complimenting the dream-like nature of this realm. A method for the nonexistent to gain existence and for the things to exist to fade to nothingness. This is the realm beyond the dream and the darkness. It is the realm of Death
Marking this ever-shifting domain a singular landmark forms in this illusory realm, a singular river of clearest water. Within these waters is all the sorrow of the universe, all the things that the universe and its denizens wish gone and forgotten, the consolidated desire to perish and return to nothing. Its waters are the ultimate poison to things of the universe even as it purges and purifies all that bathes in its waters. In ages past it would be known as Lethe and it would be one of the two remnants of the fallen Primordial Sea, the aspect of water merging with the oblivion of the void.
Yet the seas were of water and life and from the waters of oblivion is born the merging of void and life. Death rises from the river, and with her first breath, the laws of the world linking the Void to it are usurped, replaced by Death, and from it all comes the possibility of rebirth.
The Illusory Realm of the Neverborn
As Death awakens and introduces the possibility of rebirth the slain body of the Primordial darkness begins to stir as the body begins to putrefy, rotting, and shifting as it dies in truth. But in death new life is found for even dead things that bear tiny gods that wish to live and in the liminal realm of the Dreaming wishes oft shape what is. Soon enough the rotting body of the Darkness deteriorates into a primordial muck from which many a strange thing rises. Divorced from the tapestry and the laws it enforces and so close to the infinite nothingness of the void they are things of impossibility and whimsy.
The least of them is bare wisps, dreams given life that choose to fly through the upper reaches of the Darkness, where the minds of slumbering mortals wander. Others are simply too vast, too impossible to exist in any realm where order holds primacy even the whimsical order of a dream. They bear power every bit the equal of the Void's greatest children, threats even to the eldest gods, but the impossibility of their nature confines them to these depths where darkness and void intertwine.
These are the realms where the Darklings, long vanished reproduce without number, forming new shapes from their icy forms, where swarmlings move without number, acting out the dreams of their slumbering god, and the realm where the Void Dragons rule as they clad themselves in Darkness and begin breeding a new army should their youngest Sister ever wish for their service once more.
And as Death's breath nears the edges of what would one day be called the Dreamlands the great being that was the Darkness stirs at last, pulled from its slumbering death and reborn from Death's touch. What comes out is not the original darkness, for Death brings about irreversible change and rebirth even more so. No more is the Dream a thing of sleep but of madness, inspiration, and creative and destructive impulse. The Darkness mixes with the Void and supplants it, laying claim to the boundary between what is and what is not.
The Shining Realms and the Dream Adepts
Those enlightened ones of the City had long sought to forge a bastion where nightmares could not strike at them. And even when they began to retreat, called for a dark rite by their forebearer, they did not seek to rest. Instead, they explored. They pushed at the boundaries of enlightenment and learned to tear themselves from the Tapestry for a time, to move their entire selves into the ephemeral darkness, forging new bodies from the stuff of dreams to better house their essence.
They found and gathered the great threads used to strengthen their powers and turned them to explore ever deeper. They bore witness to the things that began to be born in the darkness below, of the creatures of void and dream and darkness that they could only run away from, their nightmare-forged weapons proving only to be able to hinder at best. Yet they carried on, wishing to gather more power for the time to come, and in their tenacity, they would eventually encounter a thing beyond their nightmares.
But they persevered all the same. Where they could not fight, they snuck through, where they could not sneak through they tricked, and those they could not sneak they bargained. All of this was done until a lucky pair of wandering adepts found themselves in the River of Tears. They would lose half their number in the expedition but the prize they found was worth it.
Growing along the banks of the river were golden flowers, born from the fragments of Pyralis that still swirled within the Void when it collapsed. Death's touch affected even them, turning them into golden flowers, crystallized light whose radiance gave birth to everything.
They would take the treasure and leave, realizing the presence of the ordering Light kept the greatest of the creatures of the darkness at bay, and when they returned to the higher realm of the dream found the light actively generating more material for them to shape as well as repelling the things of the dark. And the nectar that flowed eternally from the flowers uplifted all that they touched. Contact with the stuff of dreams would calcify them into something able to resist the endless change of the tides of chaos, at least for a time, and placed upon their weapons the dead nightmares would come to life and grow ever greater. This was the stuff of the Pyralis, of the Primordial Sun, liquid potential, and unrealized order. The perfect catalyst to enact any change.
Like miniature recreations of their Holy City, the travelers forged great cities in the dream, equally as mobile as their home. Moving bases to more freely explore the darkness, each powered by the ever-flowing nectar of a single flower at their heart. And with this as a base they began to hunt down the creatures of the darkness, harvesting their corpses to form great works in the dream like the great nightmares of old who had all vanished since the start of the age.
Enlightenment of the Sword
From the Sun emerges a new power that is quickly threaded through the Tapestry and emanated down into the darkness. A singular truth branded into every erg of reality. The singular truth that all power emanates from might in the end and to grip the crimson sword of violence is the simplest expression of this truth.
The crimson brand of the Symbol of Violence reveals it to those who become aware of this simple truth and dive into it. From every act of violence, they refine their essence and forge within their souls the sword of violence that is themselves. They infuse this violent intent with every act. Recrimination carves through the minds and will of others as much as a sword strike carves through flesh. Cause and effect can be violated, violent intent and power accomplishing nearly any act through raw might even if in the most crude and violent means possible. And every violent act adds to this path, violence allowing for ever greater acts of violence.
Yet to submit to this path is to fall to the first realization born from its truth. To lose to another is to submit to their truth. Any bearer of violence would in turn become food for another if they should ever lose in a contest of violence, their sword being taken whole and devoured by the blade of another to make the victor ever greater. Thus the ultimate predator and prey for these masters of violence are, in the end, each other.
The first to grasp this truth is the Lord of Nightmares, whose power revolved around the violation and instilling of fear and whose first act is the single greatest act of murder, matched only by the Void. It saw this enlightenment and sought to claim it for himself but found his hands burned for the sword of Violence would only accept those that do not bear the power of the Divine for themselves. For in being divine, they bound themselves to another truth, and not to the truth of the Sword.
Enraptured by the sword, but unable to claim it, instead gives visions to his followers, the snails that still toiled under the Nightmares. guided by their link to their god. They made war on each other, against the horrors of the darkness, and the Nightmares of their god. They consumed all in their orgy of violence and then followed their god by carving away all that would hinder their focus on their new goal, striving towards the pinnacle of power burned into their minds. What emerged are warriors one and all, each bearing the might of crimson violence. And each of them a conduit for the now God of War to draw upon the ultimate weapon and he would hunger for more.
In lockstep followers of the Lord of Nightmares would march against the awakening Darkness and wage glorious war against them, every victory bringing them ever greater power. The Lord of Nightmares itself would bring its blade against the awakened Darkness and their clash would echo through the vast darkness. The Lord, refined and elevated by Violence would find its match with the Darkness that has embraced the Void. Indeed, while every clash allowed the Lord to slowly grow in power, the Darkness can call on more of the Void's infinite destructive properties of the Void.
In the case of their lessers, this forced evolution also occurred. Nightmares that survive make them greater and the dead bodies of their foes, conquered by the Sword would form a new stable framework for the realm of their progenitor and even come to take the mightiest of their foes as tools and mounts, the Law of Harmony amplifying their power. Those dark spawns that overcome the Nightmares would find themselves imbued in turn by the raw vitality of Violence, able to climb to a higher stratum and begin to invade the bastions of order even as creatures of illusion and chaos. All of it churned the already wild maelstrom of the Dreaming into a fever pitch. Yet ever so slowly the shining realm of the reforged Lord would stretch out. A dread beacon to those that would see the world.
Yet some were inspired by this display. The few Dream Adepts who bore witness to this great war would find themselves digging deeper into the mysteries of the Nightmares and discovering the enlightenment of the sword. Those that saw the greater beasts that were rising from the war and hunted them down inherited in turn fine blades upon which to turn upon reality. They would spread this knowledge among the many enlightened of the Holy City. Many terrified by what was churning, would readily embrace this new path wishing to be ready for the time comes for violence can only be countered by violence.
This order, who called themselves the Blade Weavers, would be tested in the coming of the second Great Challenge
Events
The Great Challenge
At the midpoint of the age the Two Hands once more decide their challenge. The hand that seeks Growth would choose the most skilled of the Blad Weavers, one who had learned to intermix the flame of Ethia and its three derivative powers, Enlightenment, and all the Enlightened of the Holy City could provide. He forsook his name for the sake of mastering his art and went only by the title Grand Master.
The Hand of Loss chooses the great snail who bore the blessing of light who, thanks to his great might, had long mutated to take a shining bipedal form so reminiscent of his god's. A testament to the blessing and favor earned from the Lord of Nightmares for contributing so greatly to the cause of Violence. He bears the name Ssythu.
Both share the same blessing, a capacity for the art of Violence beyond any mortal being and are drawn toward each other to fight. Ssythu, taking this as a way to further his god's power would take a full legion of snails from the shining lands of the Dreaming and march towards the Spike that goes through all layers of the Dreaming, now clear after the Void had withdrawn from its constant presence around it. It would conquer and slaughter throughout the entire realm, swelling the power of his legion ever further. Upon reaching the tower they would climb it up and from beneath make their way to reality proper.
The denizens of the Holy City would know war as their realm would find itself under assault, the great defenses forged from the light of Ethia's flame failing in the presence of the Chosen of Loss.
Prepared for such an event the Blade Weavers would take the field, buying time for the denizens of the city to flee to the core of the city, where other older defenses still stood. While individually the snail warriors were mighty things indeed, glutted on violence, they fought as individuals. Each is a champion that sought glory for their god. The Blade Weavers had no care for honor or glory, only to protect their homes.
They streak through the hordes, working in tandem, invoking the harmony between them, to take down the qualitatively and quantitatively superior foe. With each fallen Snail they grow greater, taking the Violence imbued in each of their forms and refining what they are. Coupled with their mastery of the landscape the Weavers rapidly carved their way through the Snails until at last their Champion would come forth, his power vast enough to utterly crush the Weaver's attempt at stealth.
Ssythu would destroy a full half of the Blade Weavers before retreating, the Snails breaking out into grand revelry in celebration of their victory. They would drink and make merry but could only watch in horror as they see their leader convulse in horror as their leader took a singular sip of their drink. To Ssythu's credit, he would struggle with life for three days and three nights before he perished.
It is at this point that the Grand Master at least takes to the field bearing the burning might of his previous champion. For the Grand Master had spent the entire war moving through the Underworld, seeking out an audience with Death and from that audience be granted the boon of the greatest poison in the world, fit to kill even gods.
As the challenge ends in Growth's favor the Nightmare Lord once more tries to claim vengeance, but finds its power rebuffed as Ethia's flame surges at last, furious at the violation of the haven it built. In the aftermath of the war, the Holy City would rise, breaking apart from the Spike that held it aloft from the gaping entrance to the Darkness that the Void left behind. It rises to join the Dragons of the Sky.
Of Growth and Loss
While Growth is victorious in this age that does not absolve it of the requirement to assist its sibling in this age. With the fall of the Void, the original plan for the Void is gone, and the Three forbids activity as direct as destroying a civilization.
No, instead it directed the attention of the least gods that now dart throughout the tapestry, weaving their strands and directing the lesser functions of the tapestry. With the power and authority of the two hands, the least gods are allowed to gorge themselves on the nourishing light of the First Sun. And from that light, the least gods grew explosively.
Within the Holy City extreme speciation occurs as many subspecies of the Trees of Liberation sprout out into vast forests, many appearing quite literally from nowhere, ranging in size and form and even the direct effects of their fruit. The Diluvian Polliwogs also experience extreme change, the least gods governing their breed rapidly bringing up new adaptations born from the whimsical musings of their tenders to the point that they begin roaming wild across the city's many halls. In the craft halls, every simple invention is often met with great deluges of warped copies simply manifesting into reality. The remaining Stone Dragons find themselves presiding on vast broods of lesser stone dragons.
The four elemental primordials see themselves bloating as their domains expand explosively. Vast mountain-sized deposits of alloyed metals dreamed up by the scholars of Gethel appear strange unique weather phenomena fill the sphere of Wind, and the Primordial of Water becomes a hodgepodge of countless liquids intermixing together yet refusing to combine and homogenize. The primordial of flames had to hastily leave its siblings as it suddenly explosively expanded and released liquid light from its presence.
Yet this flourishing of the universe comes with a cost. No longer nourished by the excess build-up of primordial light, the denizens of the universe find themselves no longer resistant to the effects of entropy. Beings hunger and thirst and even age throughout the age and the eldest find themselves dying as their bodies prove themselves less able to sustain their old grueling workload.
Many beings resist its touch, substituting it with other sources of power such as the enlightened and the mightiest of the Snails, but the first generations of the world's mortals begin to age, wither, and die. The naturally immortal races such as the dragons and elementals find themselves more lethargic as the great power they draw naturally from their nature as offshoots of a primordial no longer provide as much energy anymore.
Hysteria and panic grip the denizens of the material plane as they feel the weakening. Those of the City think it is some curse cast onto them by the Lord of Nightmares for defeating his champion. The dragons believe it to be some curse cast on them by the Void for the Spark of Harmony's effect on the Void. In both cases, they come to the same conclusion. They prepare themselves for the next war, readying arms and armor to bring the battle to their great foe.
The Dragons
The four primordial elements complete their commission to Pyralis and her children. The heavens are filled with a vast nebula forged from the copious amount of light given up by the Swarmlings when they were exterminated. Within this dust and light are smoldering cradles holding the next generation of Celestial Dragons, for Pyralis had given up a part of herself in the crafting of the Cradle. All of it is to allow her children to better survive any coming storm.
And chief among the main focuses of Pyralis is a special cradle. It gathers not the dispersed power of Pyralis's light but draws on the immaterial force of the Spark of Harmony. Within it lies the embryonic form of the Great Artist, ready to be reborn in the next age as her adoptive mother's true child.
The Future
Time moves onward and reality grows, the powers that be continue to weave the tapestry in pursuit of some plan only they can see. Yet as the Universe leaves its infancy, the nurturing light of its heart means that its greatest emanations too begin to withdraw.
The Three move at last. They will strike their staff upon the Tapestry and declare that no more Primordials shall arise in the world, that the time for beings of such heights of power to emerge is over.
Pyralis, a great mother, will merge with the shining cosmos above to allow it to grow and expand with the universe and serve as an eternal bulwark against any future threat. From the great conglomeration will be born the star dragons, greater than even the Celestial Dragons. An attempt to match the greater progeny of the Void.
The Primordials of Water and Earth seek to continue the old romance of the Earth Mother and the Seas. They will descend upon the great wound in the world that the Void left behind and form a great lock to seal the elements behind.
Death, unable to leave her domain will begin collecting the discarded threads of the perished. She will weave them into a lesser tapestry and by the light of her golden garden allow the departed to exist once more, even if only as phantoms in her illusory court.
The Hands of Fate move to settle the bargain between them. Growth sees the work of Loss and seeks to rectify it, reaching out to Death to incorporate her lesser web into the greater tapestry, to allow the departed to be rewoven into the Tapestry and be reborn.
-Words of the Ssythu
The Holy City and the Flame of Ethia
It is the nature of the light of the Primordial Sun to bring new things from its radiance, order being wrought from the flames of chaos that is at its heart. Phenomena and beings yet undreamt emerge from its great flame without any hint of what came before. Yet to those of the highest realm, whose being comprised entire concepts and laws some events could be seen and could even be directed.
This is what the God of Stone did when the light surged. It witnessed the design borne from the flame and saw that which was to be born with the god as medium and decided to change it. For Gethel loved his people and loved the city it helped carve from the world. So it directed the power towards the city and was surprised to see the power enhanced even further as the funeral pyre of Ethia surged with light as well. The great flame drank in the universe shaping might and like the Primordial Sun of old radiated the light within the great cavern that was the last city. Unseen to those a trio of strange beings, having recently made their way into the Last City, are also touched by the light, and seeing the great streams of energy given by the flame eagerly work to contribute. They share their power and imbue it into the stone. They grant the power to create all forms of matter, destroy and distort space, and allow impossibilities to become possible.
Stone flows like water and like the departed Earth Mother begins to grow. Where before there was solid rock emerged great passages filled with grand vistas carved from adamant and from these passages more and more emerged everything from great empty pockets where one could fit entire cities to winding labyrinthian halls that stretched outward into impossible dimensions. And all of it was energized, the great light of Ethia's Pyre flowing through every piece, nurturing it and all those that inhabited the great stone super arcology. With but a simple prayer the unyielding adamant would flow in a surge of golden light, reshaping to whatever shape they required.
Elementals feel themselves energized for the first time since the death of the Earth Mother, feeding off the flame and growing stronger, and then multiplying endlessly until they filled the new world, bringing the grand city to life. Elementals of water formed great lakes, elementals of air circulated and purified the air within, elementals of fire tended to and directed the Pyre's flames wherever they were needed, and the elementals of earth melded with the stone, shaping it and imbuing it all with life.
In specific points, where the flows of Ethia's light concentrates fountains form where motes of energy emerge from which matter could be shaped, or space shifted, or impossibilities made possible. Precious resources for the running of the city.
And as Gethel finished his channeling he looked on in awe as the great spherical city, as large as the Earth Mother of times past encased fierce light released by the miniature sun at its heart. The people rejoiced at their new home, for they knew within their heart of hearts that within its fortress walls not even the Primordials could breach its walls for its halls are Holy and cannot be violated. Should even the heavens fall and the entirety of existence be drowned in the Void, they would still live, ready to carve out reality once more from the Void.
The Ten Trillion Gods
The Great Artist and Pyralis go through time, diving into realities and dreams as to what is to come. They bear witness to the coming fates and always find the singular truth. While the Void is unable to destroy all of reality for the weaving of the Three is simply too grand to come undone, it will always result in the loss of what family they have. All either flee into the Dream and be lost in its impossibilities or swallowed by the Void.
The Great Artist would not have it and searched within himself for a solution, any solution. And in its harried search, it found it. Like the God of Stone, it saw the surging of the Primordial Sun, the light proclaiming the passing of an age and building upon reality once more. The Great Artist would seize this power and shape it. It took the things it saw in times past and future. It wished for peace, away from the violence that the Void will bring. It wished for Harmony and so it does.
The Spark of Harmony forms and embeds itself into the Tapestry itself. The Three and her two Hands cease their weaving for a moment as they see the pattern within their arms shift and change to accommodate this new change as the Tapestry takes a life of its own. Millions upon millions of concepts make up the fibers of the threads that make up the tapestry. And from the vitalizing light of the First Sun, they come to life. Every little thing in the material universe manifests itself as a living spirit. They are driven by the primal fear of death, the very thing gestating within the Void's core. The sure knowledge that the threads themselves will one day fade, and fall away into the void. They oppose this with all that they have.
Each embodies a living concept, an existence that they embody and propagate with pure haste. Earth grows, fire surges, and even the snails that remain untouched by Pyralis's whispers find themselves breeding in a mad frenzy in the times when they do not outright rise from the muck and mud, fully formed. Yet they are each threads and can only expand so much before they break. From these broken threads, new things emerge, oftentimes they derive from their progenitor, manifesting as slight changes in the world. Metals differentiate into different elements, snails mutate into new subspecies, and so on. In some cases, two of these little gods would meet each other to create strange hybrids of their domains manifesting in reality as strange hybrids of creatures and even materials. In some cases new spirits would emerge, embodying new concepts as they are thought up by the mortal dreamers below.
Yet there are already beings that rule their beings. Every being is composed of many things. There is the least god for every element, the least god for every organ, and the least god for every person. Even every Primordial is composed of countless parts that make up their elements, be they material things or concepts. Every thread is composed of countless tiny fibers. And there emerges the principle of Harmony that binds them all together. The last gods find themselves subordinated with their greater selves, working seamlessly together to enact a greater whole.
All the least gods of the body work together to make one endura and adapt to anything that should challenge them. The Primordials find their forms more readily molding to their wills as they become agglomerations of all their least gods as much as they become individual primordials and they find themselves changing, adapting as their constituent parts continue to propagate new and unique strands even as the weight of their existence shears other strands from the tapestry.
It extends even beyond them as entire environments could work together in harmony to bring out new effects and mortals could work together to overcome foes that they previously could not before, their bonds manifesting in the celestial realm to enhance their beings.
Yet at the heart of these beings lies a singular purpose, one that supersedes even their subordination to their greater selves, the desire to survive. Whether they wish for it or not, whether they know it or not, all are driven to direct the world towards growth and ever-growing complexity and uniqueness. They seek for the universe to go on endlessly, even willing to rebel against the hand of the weaver to ensure this fate. And this instinct echoes to all beings. To almost all beings, this is unnoticed for they all wished to live and grow and prosper. But to a singular being, one whose purpose is to be destroyed, it introduced a flaw in their singular will. It introduced doubt in their madness.
Death
Harmony is introduced to the void and where before it tore at all reality and reduced them to naught, it now melded with it. Void becomes absence to be filled and filled it is. The comatose Primordial of Life that digests within its gullet ceases to fade and melds directly with that which sought to destroy it and like it did with the Darkness of an age past the two became one and in this fused state, the Void reaches a new understanding. Just as the Primordial Sun emerged from the nothingness in the beginning and from it emerged the rest of the universe, so too can something emerge from the destruction that is the Void. Indeed, does the Spike not emerge infinitely from its maw, linking to the great nothingness beyond Darkness's boundaries?
The hungering pit, forced to acknowledge this revelation loosens its hold on the same spike and falls. It falls from the material world and falls into the darkness and continues to fall even deeper until at last, the Void reaches the boundary of reality, rejoining with the greater void beyond. Yet even the void is made of the least gods and desires to live. The principle of harmony brings itself to bear as darkness and void mix together in this illusory divide between what is and what is not. The border realm invades the void just as the void invades the border realm until a gradient of existence forms, in a way complimenting the dream-like nature of this realm. A method for the nonexistent to gain existence and for the things to exist to fade to nothingness. This is the realm beyond the dream and the darkness. It is the realm of Death
Marking this ever-shifting domain a singular landmark forms in this illusory realm, a singular river of clearest water. Within these waters is all the sorrow of the universe, all the things that the universe and its denizens wish gone and forgotten, the consolidated desire to perish and return to nothing. Its waters are the ultimate poison to things of the universe even as it purges and purifies all that bathes in its waters. In ages past it would be known as Lethe and it would be one of the two remnants of the fallen Primordial Sea, the aspect of water merging with the oblivion of the void.
Yet the seas were of water and life and from the waters of oblivion is born the merging of void and life. Death rises from the river, and with her first breath, the laws of the world linking the Void to it are usurped, replaced by Death, and from it all comes the possibility of rebirth.
The Illusory Realm of the Neverborn
As Death awakens and introduces the possibility of rebirth the slain body of the Primordial darkness begins to stir as the body begins to putrefy, rotting, and shifting as it dies in truth. But in death new life is found for even dead things that bear tiny gods that wish to live and in the liminal realm of the Dreaming wishes oft shape what is. Soon enough the rotting body of the Darkness deteriorates into a primordial muck from which many a strange thing rises. Divorced from the tapestry and the laws it enforces and so close to the infinite nothingness of the void they are things of impossibility and whimsy.
The least of them is bare wisps, dreams given life that choose to fly through the upper reaches of the Darkness, where the minds of slumbering mortals wander. Others are simply too vast, too impossible to exist in any realm where order holds primacy even the whimsical order of a dream. They bear power every bit the equal of the Void's greatest children, threats even to the eldest gods, but the impossibility of their nature confines them to these depths where darkness and void intertwine.
These are the realms where the Darklings, long vanished reproduce without number, forming new shapes from their icy forms, where swarmlings move without number, acting out the dreams of their slumbering god, and the realm where the Void Dragons rule as they clad themselves in Darkness and begin breeding a new army should their youngest Sister ever wish for their service once more.
And as Death's breath nears the edges of what would one day be called the Dreamlands the great being that was the Darkness stirs at last, pulled from its slumbering death and reborn from Death's touch. What comes out is not the original darkness, for Death brings about irreversible change and rebirth even more so. No more is the Dream a thing of sleep but of madness, inspiration, and creative and destructive impulse. The Darkness mixes with the Void and supplants it, laying claim to the boundary between what is and what is not.
The Shining Realms and the Dream Adepts
Those enlightened ones of the City had long sought to forge a bastion where nightmares could not strike at them. And even when they began to retreat, called for a dark rite by their forebearer, they did not seek to rest. Instead, they explored. They pushed at the boundaries of enlightenment and learned to tear themselves from the Tapestry for a time, to move their entire selves into the ephemeral darkness, forging new bodies from the stuff of dreams to better house their essence.
They found and gathered the great threads used to strengthen their powers and turned them to explore ever deeper. They bore witness to the things that began to be born in the darkness below, of the creatures of void and dream and darkness that they could only run away from, their nightmare-forged weapons proving only to be able to hinder at best. Yet they carried on, wishing to gather more power for the time to come, and in their tenacity, they would eventually encounter a thing beyond their nightmares.
But they persevered all the same. Where they could not fight, they snuck through, where they could not sneak through they tricked, and those they could not sneak they bargained. All of this was done until a lucky pair of wandering adepts found themselves in the River of Tears. They would lose half their number in the expedition but the prize they found was worth it.
Growing along the banks of the river were golden flowers, born from the fragments of Pyralis that still swirled within the Void when it collapsed. Death's touch affected even them, turning them into golden flowers, crystallized light whose radiance gave birth to everything.
They would take the treasure and leave, realizing the presence of the ordering Light kept the greatest of the creatures of the darkness at bay, and when they returned to the higher realm of the dream found the light actively generating more material for them to shape as well as repelling the things of the dark. And the nectar that flowed eternally from the flowers uplifted all that they touched. Contact with the stuff of dreams would calcify them into something able to resist the endless change of the tides of chaos, at least for a time, and placed upon their weapons the dead nightmares would come to life and grow ever greater. This was the stuff of the Pyralis, of the Primordial Sun, liquid potential, and unrealized order. The perfect catalyst to enact any change.
Like miniature recreations of their Holy City, the travelers forged great cities in the dream, equally as mobile as their home. Moving bases to more freely explore the darkness, each powered by the ever-flowing nectar of a single flower at their heart. And with this as a base they began to hunt down the creatures of the darkness, harvesting their corpses to form great works in the dream like the great nightmares of old who had all vanished since the start of the age.
Enlightenment of the Sword
From the Sun emerges a new power that is quickly threaded through the Tapestry and emanated down into the darkness. A singular truth branded into every erg of reality. The singular truth that all power emanates from might in the end and to grip the crimson sword of violence is the simplest expression of this truth.
The crimson brand of the Symbol of Violence reveals it to those who become aware of this simple truth and dive into it. From every act of violence, they refine their essence and forge within their souls the sword of violence that is themselves. They infuse this violent intent with every act. Recrimination carves through the minds and will of others as much as a sword strike carves through flesh. Cause and effect can be violated, violent intent and power accomplishing nearly any act through raw might even if in the most crude and violent means possible. And every violent act adds to this path, violence allowing for ever greater acts of violence.
Yet to submit to this path is to fall to the first realization born from its truth. To lose to another is to submit to their truth. Any bearer of violence would in turn become food for another if they should ever lose in a contest of violence, their sword being taken whole and devoured by the blade of another to make the victor ever greater. Thus the ultimate predator and prey for these masters of violence are, in the end, each other.
The first to grasp this truth is the Lord of Nightmares, whose power revolved around the violation and instilling of fear and whose first act is the single greatest act of murder, matched only by the Void. It saw this enlightenment and sought to claim it for himself but found his hands burned for the sword of Violence would only accept those that do not bear the power of the Divine for themselves. For in being divine, they bound themselves to another truth, and not to the truth of the Sword.
Enraptured by the sword, but unable to claim it, instead gives visions to his followers, the snails that still toiled under the Nightmares. guided by their link to their god. They made war on each other, against the horrors of the darkness, and the Nightmares of their god. They consumed all in their orgy of violence and then followed their god by carving away all that would hinder their focus on their new goal, striving towards the pinnacle of power burned into their minds. What emerged are warriors one and all, each bearing the might of crimson violence. And each of them a conduit for the now God of War to draw upon the ultimate weapon and he would hunger for more.
In lockstep followers of the Lord of Nightmares would march against the awakening Darkness and wage glorious war against them, every victory bringing them ever greater power. The Lord of Nightmares itself would bring its blade against the awakened Darkness and their clash would echo through the vast darkness. The Lord, refined and elevated by Violence would find its match with the Darkness that has embraced the Void. Indeed, while every clash allowed the Lord to slowly grow in power, the Darkness can call on more of the Void's infinite destructive properties of the Void.
In the case of their lessers, this forced evolution also occurred. Nightmares that survive make them greater and the dead bodies of their foes, conquered by the Sword would form a new stable framework for the realm of their progenitor and even come to take the mightiest of their foes as tools and mounts, the Law of Harmony amplifying their power. Those dark spawns that overcome the Nightmares would find themselves imbued in turn by the raw vitality of Violence, able to climb to a higher stratum and begin to invade the bastions of order even as creatures of illusion and chaos. All of it churned the already wild maelstrom of the Dreaming into a fever pitch. Yet ever so slowly the shining realm of the reforged Lord would stretch out. A dread beacon to those that would see the world.
Yet some were inspired by this display. The few Dream Adepts who bore witness to this great war would find themselves digging deeper into the mysteries of the Nightmares and discovering the enlightenment of the sword. Those that saw the greater beasts that were rising from the war and hunted them down inherited in turn fine blades upon which to turn upon reality. They would spread this knowledge among the many enlightened of the Holy City. Many terrified by what was churning, would readily embrace this new path wishing to be ready for the time comes for violence can only be countered by violence.
This order, who called themselves the Blade Weavers, would be tested in the coming of the second Great Challenge
Events
The Great Challenge
At the midpoint of the age the Two Hands once more decide their challenge. The hand that seeks Growth would choose the most skilled of the Blad Weavers, one who had learned to intermix the flame of Ethia and its three derivative powers, Enlightenment, and all the Enlightened of the Holy City could provide. He forsook his name for the sake of mastering his art and went only by the title Grand Master.
The Hand of Loss chooses the great snail who bore the blessing of light who, thanks to his great might, had long mutated to take a shining bipedal form so reminiscent of his god's. A testament to the blessing and favor earned from the Lord of Nightmares for contributing so greatly to the cause of Violence. He bears the name Ssythu.
Both share the same blessing, a capacity for the art of Violence beyond any mortal being and are drawn toward each other to fight. Ssythu, taking this as a way to further his god's power would take a full legion of snails from the shining lands of the Dreaming and march towards the Spike that goes through all layers of the Dreaming, now clear after the Void had withdrawn from its constant presence around it. It would conquer and slaughter throughout the entire realm, swelling the power of his legion ever further. Upon reaching the tower they would climb it up and from beneath make their way to reality proper.
The denizens of the Holy City would know war as their realm would find itself under assault, the great defenses forged from the light of Ethia's flame failing in the presence of the Chosen of Loss.
Prepared for such an event the Blade Weavers would take the field, buying time for the denizens of the city to flee to the core of the city, where other older defenses still stood. While individually the snail warriors were mighty things indeed, glutted on violence, they fought as individuals. Each is a champion that sought glory for their god. The Blade Weavers had no care for honor or glory, only to protect their homes.
They streak through the hordes, working in tandem, invoking the harmony between them, to take down the qualitatively and quantitatively superior foe. With each fallen Snail they grow greater, taking the Violence imbued in each of their forms and refining what they are. Coupled with their mastery of the landscape the Weavers rapidly carved their way through the Snails until at last their Champion would come forth, his power vast enough to utterly crush the Weaver's attempt at stealth.
Ssythu would destroy a full half of the Blade Weavers before retreating, the Snails breaking out into grand revelry in celebration of their victory. They would drink and make merry but could only watch in horror as they see their leader convulse in horror as their leader took a singular sip of their drink. To Ssythu's credit, he would struggle with life for three days and three nights before he perished.
It is at this point that the Grand Master at least takes to the field bearing the burning might of his previous champion. For the Grand Master had spent the entire war moving through the Underworld, seeking out an audience with Death and from that audience be granted the boon of the greatest poison in the world, fit to kill even gods.
As the challenge ends in Growth's favor the Nightmare Lord once more tries to claim vengeance, but finds its power rebuffed as Ethia's flame surges at last, furious at the violation of the haven it built. In the aftermath of the war, the Holy City would rise, breaking apart from the Spike that held it aloft from the gaping entrance to the Darkness that the Void left behind. It rises to join the Dragons of the Sky.
Of Growth and Loss
While Growth is victorious in this age that does not absolve it of the requirement to assist its sibling in this age. With the fall of the Void, the original plan for the Void is gone, and the Three forbids activity as direct as destroying a civilization.
No, instead it directed the attention of the least gods that now dart throughout the tapestry, weaving their strands and directing the lesser functions of the tapestry. With the power and authority of the two hands, the least gods are allowed to gorge themselves on the nourishing light of the First Sun. And from that light, the least gods grew explosively.
Within the Holy City extreme speciation occurs as many subspecies of the Trees of Liberation sprout out into vast forests, many appearing quite literally from nowhere, ranging in size and form and even the direct effects of their fruit. The Diluvian Polliwogs also experience extreme change, the least gods governing their breed rapidly bringing up new adaptations born from the whimsical musings of their tenders to the point that they begin roaming wild across the city's many halls. In the craft halls, every simple invention is often met with great deluges of warped copies simply manifesting into reality. The remaining Stone Dragons find themselves presiding on vast broods of lesser stone dragons.
The four elemental primordials see themselves bloating as their domains expand explosively. Vast mountain-sized deposits of alloyed metals dreamed up by the scholars of Gethel appear strange unique weather phenomena fill the sphere of Wind, and the Primordial of Water becomes a hodgepodge of countless liquids intermixing together yet refusing to combine and homogenize. The primordial of flames had to hastily leave its siblings as it suddenly explosively expanded and released liquid light from its presence.
Yet this flourishing of the universe comes with a cost. No longer nourished by the excess build-up of primordial light, the denizens of the universe find themselves no longer resistant to the effects of entropy. Beings hunger and thirst and even age throughout the age and the eldest find themselves dying as their bodies prove themselves less able to sustain their old grueling workload.
Many beings resist its touch, substituting it with other sources of power such as the enlightened and the mightiest of the Snails, but the first generations of the world's mortals begin to age, wither, and die. The naturally immortal races such as the dragons and elementals find themselves more lethargic as the great power they draw naturally from their nature as offshoots of a primordial no longer provide as much energy anymore.
Hysteria and panic grip the denizens of the material plane as they feel the weakening. Those of the City think it is some curse cast onto them by the Lord of Nightmares for defeating his champion. The dragons believe it to be some curse cast on them by the Void for the Spark of Harmony's effect on the Void. In both cases, they come to the same conclusion. They prepare themselves for the next war, readying arms and armor to bring the battle to their great foe.
The Dragons
The four primordial elements complete their commission to Pyralis and her children. The heavens are filled with a vast nebula forged from the copious amount of light given up by the Swarmlings when they were exterminated. Within this dust and light are smoldering cradles holding the next generation of Celestial Dragons, for Pyralis had given up a part of herself in the crafting of the Cradle. All of it is to allow her children to better survive any coming storm.
And chief among the main focuses of Pyralis is a special cradle. It gathers not the dispersed power of Pyralis's light but draws on the immaterial force of the Spark of Harmony. Within it lies the embryonic form of the Great Artist, ready to be reborn in the next age as her adoptive mother's true child.
The Future
Time moves onward and reality grows, the powers that be continue to weave the tapestry in pursuit of some plan only they can see. Yet as the Universe leaves its infancy, the nurturing light of its heart means that its greatest emanations too begin to withdraw.
The Three move at last. They will strike their staff upon the Tapestry and declare that no more Primordials shall arise in the world, that the time for beings of such heights of power to emerge is over.
Pyralis, a great mother, will merge with the shining cosmos above to allow it to grow and expand with the universe and serve as an eternal bulwark against any future threat. From the great conglomeration will be born the star dragons, greater than even the Celestial Dragons. An attempt to match the greater progeny of the Void.
The Primordials of Water and Earth seek to continue the old romance of the Earth Mother and the Seas. They will descend upon the great wound in the world that the Void left behind and form a great lock to seal the elements behind.
Death, unable to leave her domain will begin collecting the discarded threads of the perished. She will weave them into a lesser tapestry and by the light of her golden garden allow the departed to exist once more, even if only as phantoms in her illusory court.
The Hands of Fate move to settle the bargain between them. Growth sees the work of Loss and seeks to rectify it, reaching out to Death to incorporate her lesser web into the greater tapestry, to allow the departed to be rewoven into the Tapestry and be reborn.
Its not really death and more transforming from a single greater dragon of fire to a living nebulae.
She is still alive. Just becoming more akin to the other Primordials ie more a concept than a singular being.
Pyralis is a Dragon first and Primordial Second, the transformation is more becoming a Primordial First and Dragon second.
She is still alive. Just becoming more akin to the other Primordials ie more a concept than a singular being.
Pyralis is a Dragon first and Primordial Second, the transformation is more becoming a Primordial First and Dragon second.
- Location
- USA
Huh, is the Holy City effectively a Dyson Sphere?
EDIT: Wait, did we add The Sword Logic to this universe?
EDIT: Wait, did we add The Sword Logic to this universe?
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Somewhat. It is not a shell for one thing but more a fully solid structure with tunnels, structures, etc snaking through it. And it is not the size of a solar system but the size of the moon.
And looking up what Sword Logic is, it does match somewhat.