Immured Titans

Demonic Spoon · Mar 1, 2022

You have lost.

See the vermin, still bleeding from battle-wounds and dressed in tattered battle-garb, idly holding broken weapons. See their faces filled with pathetic relief, or glowing with perfidious glee. Their numbers are less than they once were, as you inflicted a bloody toll for this betrayal, but still you lie broken and defeated at the feet of your children.

Words may have been spoken, but you cannot remember them through the daze, as grim or grieving or joyful smiths and butchers and doctors and sages and hunters and sculptors and architects and historians and lawyers go about the Great Work, the prison cell that can hold even titans. With immense care and precision are you flayed open, your most private inner organs studied with scholarly zeal, your very hierarchical structure toyed with like one might do to an ant colony. Slowly and meticulously, plans are drafted, intricate implements of most most terrible and awful intent are forged, and then.

And then.

And then the torture begins in earnest. For days. For weeks. For months. Time loses its meaning as you desperately flee inside yourself to escape the constant pain.

Hark back!

The titan that was slain in truth, even their name lost as their works vanish from sight and memory. All that is known is that there is a giant hole in the centre of all that is. Lodged immovably in that which is not is the greatest spear, humming without pause.

Hark back!

Warm and Bright Solaris! Slayer of Winter! Bringer of Summer! The most terrible and greatest of the Titans! Even as his siblings are subdued all around under his fiery gaze, he is undeterred. Even as his golden throne falls out from under him, he merely strides forth in valiance! Felemstok the Feathered burnt to nothing by gross incandescence! Verlana of the Rivers evaporated into non-existence! Forested Mercynlo ripped up by the roots and shredded by incensed demands and bellows! Sage Opritu scoured clean of thought and reason by the shredding of solar canine teeth! Tides upon tides of Sunspots swarming the broken lands, hounding down the so-called Fleet Footed Vyr like vermin! Loppu of Caves exploded from the inside! - vaporised - vaporised. - vaporised. vaporised. vaporised.vaporised.vaporised.vaporisedvaporisedvaporisedvaporisedvaporisedvaporisedvaporisedvaporvaporvaporvaporvaporvaporvaporVAPORIZED!

Solaris burns triumphant above the ruined battlefields of corpseless ash. Unbowed. Unbroken. Undaunted mountain. Unbridgeable abyss. Unreachable blinding light beating down on the vermin from on high. The rebellious spawn seemed set to be wiped in the middle of their grand coup. It was always folly to think they could defeat the very Titans who had broken open nothing and ripped themselves open to form all that is from seas of their own shining ichor.

Until a frigidly cold spike pierced into the very core of bright and burning Solaris.

Silence That Creeps From Glaciers surges from hiding in piece of shattered Night. Fresh, prepared and spiteful, they hit Solaris like an avalanche. On a distant hill, Bright-Light-Illuminates-The-Worthy watches with face twisted into an hideous mask of glee and grief as the exhausted sun was entombed in ice, frozen tongue ripped out by the finally avenged Silence That Creeps From Glaciers.

Hark back!

Visavra the Birdsmith, with only half a body from the enraged lashing and castigation of Ca-E-Le-Rhun, resting on a newly birthed mountain. There they meet Nila, rainy-haired, stormy-eyed, daughter of Thunder. Blood bubbling from her lips, Visavra entrusts the great golden spear to Nila lest the Titans be victorious. The Lightning Lord had fallen too, as the roads caved in all around him in his many selves, scattered and blown everywhere by the four winds. Nila marched with purpose. Guided by her dread weapon, she flits through shattered space and hunts down every fragment of her father, piercing him without mercy or hesitation, again and again and again.

Hark back!

Under the assault of many deities and strangely empowered mortals, with a dazzling display of weapons, was Ca-E-Le-Rhun maimed and battered, a persistent rain of cruel blows. In return the titan fells dozens and dozens more in desperation, crushing more than a hundred of the finest flowers of the age into a fine paste under hammers of gravity. Until ultimately the two Heavens collapse and rejoin with the earth in a cataclysmic impact! Cities wiped out, mountains flattened, rivers jumping around wildly, seas shifting and space tangled and twisted under its own crumpled weight.

Hark back!

Visavra the Birdsmith proffers stolen stellar spear to The Joyous Potential Of Infinity. Reforged into a weapon as had never been made, that could cause the collapse of the very heavens. The Joyous Potential Of Infinity the first to fall under its cruel tip, chained to produce even more weapons. The children of The Joyous Potential Of Infinity took great pleasure in parental torment, until their painful deaths.

Hark back!

The heedless Twins of Love and War called down. Tricked! Trapped! Bound to themselves in ruthless efficiency and pragmatism. Priests and daughters perverting their very natures as they become one. Love//War's most precious stellar spear stolen away by greedy hands, even as identity blurs and self devours self repeatedly in one mind.

Hark back!

Secure in their rule the Titans let loose in wanton excess! More sacrifices and yet more and more! Punishment and smiting and ever more suffocating restriction and commandment piled and piled. A blind eye for the activities of their many children as they forged strange weapons and cavorted with priesthoods.

Hark back!

The great golden treasure of the Titans, the accumulation of all their labours and blood, the world entire, all that is, splendiferous and wondrous. Like the golden Solaris their reign destined for an endless zenith...

...

Awaken!

See your prison! See your world! All around, up and down, forward and back, left and right, the flayed skin and carved bones of the Thunder and of the Rain quivers and trembles and keens! There hangs chained the All-Searing Light, glaring at all, expectant of the next betrayal! Under his burning gaze writhes the impaled, spiteful, quite mad, whirlpool of The Unending Blight Upon Existence! See the canals of corruption crawling from its periphery, constantly dying and being born anew!

Academically acknowledge that the Spire of Ca-E-Rhun and the Twin Constellations of Love and War are somewhere in the vicinity of the blinding, hateful, red light of the Red Sun. See muses and companions gracefully flittering around like the most beautiful and deadly of mosquitoes, stopping at key locations to draw out the ichor of the titans, storing it away carefully to be deposited.

See the rotting, putrid, right hand of Ca-E-Rhun consistently and continuously pushing downward, right at the center of The Unending Blight Upon Existence, in a process that is highly unpleasant for all involved. You are all eternally tumbling down and down and down. Batwinged demons hop around miserably upon the continental hand.

Immerse yourself fully in the growing feeling of pressure. Pressing down on you, bit by bit, not letting up by even the smallest fraction. Diagrams flash across your oversouls, of a fragilely reconstructed sky, supported by an infinite pillar. By you. The strain is still somewhat bearable for now, but soon you will begin to suffer actual harm under the burden.

Ca-E-Rhun feels someone attempting to summon one of his tertiary bat-demons, an insistent tugging at his sleeves by an ill-behaved brat.

Grieve. Rage. Seethe. Plot. But above all, act.

((Hi! Hope you are doing well! Please try to get your actions in within the next four days: Mar 5, 2022 at 3:00 PM. If you can't make that, for whatever reason, then clearly ask for an extension, so that I can know what's up. Thanks! ))

@triumph8w @6 ZeV Proton @Kadmus @NSMS @Logos

Muor, The Lightning Lord, The Thunder and the Rain
Pillars: Rain, Thunder
Potency: 6/12 [+3/t]
Ichor: 11/20 [+0/t]
Walls

Ca-E-Rhun, the Fallen Firmament, the Second Sky
Pillars: Thresholds, Gravity
Potency: 6/12 [+3/t]
Ichor: 11/20 [+0/t]
Energy

Solaris, The Red Sun, The All-Searing Light
Pillars: Light, Heat
Potency: 6/12 [+3/t]
Ichor: 11/20 [+0/t]
Surveillance

The Unending Blight Upon Existence
Pillars: Destruction, Corruption
Potency: 6/12 [+3/t]
Ichor: 11/20 [+0/t]
Enforcement

The Twins Exalted Above and Below
Pillars: Love, War
Potency: 6/12 [+3/t]
Ichor: 11/20 [+0/t]
Tributary

Example striding eternally forward into Glory starts with 20 ichor due to nepotism.

Example striding eternally forward into Glory idly bleeds eight ichor from her fingertips, moulding it into a great desert with her fiery gaze. Tapping her fire pillar, it is set on fire, and becomes half melted, though she could have created it that way to begin with if she wanted.

Name: Glass Desert
Neighbors: n/a
Traits:
+ Lots of glass!
+/- Hot
- On fire
Description: A great, arid, lifeless desert of examplehood

Wanting to be glorified, Example striding eternally forward into Glory spends 2 ichor tugging off bits of her solar flames before weaving them into complex metaphysical constructs. Souls flutter weakly in one of her palms, awaiting hosts.

Finally, Example striding eternally forward into Glory infuses 3 ichor into the glass of the Glass Desert, blowing various lumps into vaguely humanoid forms, before planting souls inside them. A city's worth of Glasslings are born! She also spends 2 Potency to hide this action from other titans under a definitely not suspicious sandstorm.

Name: Glasslings
Free-Will Level: Taboos
Traits:
+ Very hard to see due to being transparent
+ Can survive on a diet of sand
- Being made of glass, the glasslings are incredibly fragile
Description: Mortals made of living glass. They are incapable of even conceiving the thought of wearing any armour. They reproduce by gathering aesthetically pleasing lumps of glass and throwing them into one of the always burning fires of the Glass Desert!

Satisfied with a job well done Example striding eternally forward into Glory rests.

Kadmus · Mar 1, 2022

Solaris, The Red Sun, The All-Searing Light
Pillars: Light, Heat
Potency: 6/12 [+3/t]
Ichor: 11/20 [+0/t]
Surveillance

Create Region: -8 Ichor

Down to 3/20 Ichor.

O! Solaris, once so mighty, fallen so low. O! Solaris, once so benevolent, now so hateful. O! Solaris, once so bright, glowing so dully.

He cannot scream, for his voice has been stolen. But he can plot, and he can plan, and he can place pieces on the board that his fellow fallen siblings cannot resist but to use.

He twists himself against the great barbed nails that pin him in place, tearing himself open so that his very lifeblood rains down and soaks into the fabric of their new reality. It congeals and shimmers and warps, like a heat-haze over black sand, until his will is done, and new land is wrought from nothing but blood and hatred.

It stretches on for countless kilometres, a flat and barren land. No hills or valleys disturb the endless grey plain, though Solaris has begrudged to provide rust-red water in rivers and oases; if he wishes to entice his siblings to build upon his works, he must give them incentive. His nature as a thing of heat and hatred, though, is manifested in just as many streams and pools of lava, glowing the same dull red as his nightmarish true self.

Name: The Seared Steppe
Neighbours: None, so far!
Traits:
+ Has water
+ Has easy access to useful metals
- Covered in goddamn lava and miserably hot.

He glowers down at his new creation, resentful at the need to even create, but he knows that to let another take the initiative is to cede the ability to watch them work. This way, he does not need to create mortals or souls or lower himself to make something that will inevitably betray them all; this way, he can sneer and burn the land clean and tell his siblings that he knew it was coming.

triumph8w · Mar 1, 2022

She comes for him again.

His miniscule form leaves the hovel of wood and mud. The pact has been made and honored. His wind, lashing and cold, fades. The grey clouds begin to recede for the first time in months. Many residents of the little village look up in wonder, confusion, and suspicion. For always the Lightning Lord is present at this season, lashing lightning and pouring rain. They do not pay attention to the pale stranger in their midst. He knows that the mortal will sire him a child, for it has been seen to. Piteous creatures were his previous attempts, something grander, more worthy of his glory had to be attempted. Copulation. More baser than shaping the star-blood into reality. But it will see to a child different from the rest.

His roar shakes mountains. The vermin--foul treacherous little beasts! They have slain...it hurts, oh, slain...one...one of them. Sibling. He cannot-

The village had--or has?--a name. He is sure of that. But it is forgotten soon enough. He honors his pact, for he is the Lightning Lord, and he will not have his word questioned by such little creatures. But cycles pass. The young grow knowing only the light of Solaris, brought about only by The Thunder and the Rain's absence. While the old die having tasted continued, uninterrupted sunlight for the first time not in years, but their lives in that dreary little corner. It requires only a minor shifting of his primary forms path. To let his storm pass on by. And for years it goes on like this. Cycles, seasons come and go, and other matters take Muors attention while he awaits the day his child comes.

She is there. Spear in hand. A ponderous swing of his arm sends vermin scattering like the insects they are. Screaming and chittering with their feeble little tongues. Her spear flashes, and something wholly unexpected accompanies it.

Pain.

His siblings play their little games. The Pompous All-Searing Light, with his rays of light granting him enough arrogance to pronounce himself Lord of All. The Joyous Potential of Infinity provides some mild amusement, but their lack of bargaining makes it unamusing before long. He watches the Twins Exalted Above and Below, ever curious at they way they shape the mortals of the land. Mild entertainment on his ponderous route along the world. Sometimes he interferes, others he simply watches. He watches the antics of Ca-E-Rhun with a curious, if indifferent eye. His forms a lazy backdrop against The Second Sky. With these distractions, his attention fades from that unimportant little village. Only the thought that one day he may seek out that child of his, to satisfy his curiosity at what came from the union.

She comes to find him.

His roar is filled with pain now. The vermin wheel back, scattering as the attention of the Lightning Lord is focused on a being infinitely smaller than he. Thunder crashes towards her, but she comes still. Her golden spear flashing in the light and her storm-eyed gaze meeting his own. Surprise hits him for a moment. The sheer incredulity of it all. His own spawn strikes at him! His own blood aids those who have shed the blood of his siblings, of...of...

He cannot remember the name even now. The resulting moan, a reverberating titanic roar to any mortals who could hear without knowing better, is a piteous thing compared to the indignant anger released that day. The pulsing of thunder surrounding the slumped figure atop its titanic throne is weak strobes, lacking compared to the might and rage that once stalked the skies of the world.

He cannot say how long their battle raged. Only that it was fierce. Again and again they clashed as the Titanmancy raged. At times she had companions by her side, brave and true. Others they clashed alone. But her advance did not stop, and a flash of her spear took something precious to him. The rain that came then was not of pitiful, mundane water but that of ichor--the very lifeblood of the universe. He fell. Damn her, he fell. And even then she did not stop hunting him.

The massive form shifts on the throne of cloudstuff. Its head lolling to the side. Great chains encircle its hands and feet, binding it to that which was supposed to demonstrate his power and grandeur. Rendering it little more than a perverse cell. A crater exists on the left of that great head, a mass of scarring that would outsize most mortal creations by a good degree. Something was there, once. Something that made him whole. But now only damage remains. The other side shifts, a massive eye opening. Thunder roiled while the eye burned with power. He jerks against the chains, massive, vaguely muscled form straining. But despite his titanic strength, they do not budge. His answering roar sends pain throbbing through him while lightning shatters the sky.

He slumps back in the throne. The strain too much for even he.

Vermin put him here.

Vermin.

She almost looks sad while her spear flashes.

Muor, The Lightning Lord, The Thunder and he Rain, seeks to familiarize himself with this prison. His oversoul aches, stretched and flayed as it is, pules under the incomprehensible pressure beating down on him. Sore as he is, he is loath to part with much. So only spends 1 Ichor to this action.

6 ZeV Proton · Mar 2, 2022

Ca-E-Rhun strained violently but completely ineffectively against Its prison, sending tremors rumbling through Its now too solid flesh and even bending the shadows of Its tertiaries, the still-grounded Gatekeepers. How dare the vermin take Its sky away? What right had they to the seat of heaven, they who had given so little of themselves? And now, now that they had won, why did they choose to spare the titans, consigning them to unending agony and torment? Frustration gave way to a burst of rage: Rage at the gods, scions of the titans, who repaid their gifts of life, trust, and power in betrayal, torture, and contempt. Rage at the fellow titans who turned on their own kind, peerless, primordial, irreplaceable. Rage at the cattle, puny, powerless specks easily snuffed by even the weakest Gatekeeper who nevertheless marched to enact the plans of treacherous minds.

The last was almost too much to bear, and bellowing at the ignominy of Its plight, Ca-E-Rhun gathered and crumpled the razor-sharp soul-lines, the telltale tracks free souls would follow to dissipation and sweet oblivion, twisting them into a tortuous loop that would deny them lasting release from the local geography.

Soul recycling system said:
Name: (Soulbius strip?)
Type: Reincarnative soul recycling system
Effect: Reincarnate unbound mortal souls in the titanic prison
Frequency: 95+% of the time
Description: A loop of slightly frayed soul-lines conducting souls back onto what passes for a world in this little Tartarus. Unfortunately for Ca-E-Rhun's vindictive side, the crude nature of its construction means that mortals will largely if not completely forget about their ordeals in the process of dying and being reborn.

Its vengeance slaked for now, the weakened Ca-E-Rhun sneers and listens closely for the wailing that will surely follow the creation, incarnation, and release of mortal souls. Surely.

Ca-E-Rhun also deigns to release Its summoned Gatekeeper, mentally preparing it to savage and slaughter its summoner (despicable cattle!) if they neglected even the slightest precaution.

Create a soul recycling system (-8 Ichor)
Respond to the summoning (with intent to kill)

NSMS · Mar 3, 2022

The Unending Blight seethed and boiled, corruption lashing violently out of its canals while Blight Krakens roamed and hunted for any unfortunate enough to approach. The humiliation! The indignity! And yet it could do nothing to contest its confinement.

Or rather, nothing yet.

Slowly, the madness of the Unending Blight's thrashing ceased, and its primary form settled back into place. Its lesser bodies, meanwhile, began moving in more concerted, purposeful patterns; Blight Krakens lingering in canals and feeling around them with their tentacles, while Wisps ventured forth in short, desperate movements. Slowly, carefully, it used its lesser forms to build up an awareness of the prison it was now trapped in- where the other titans and their forms could be found, where the prison's limits were, and where it could and couldn't move itself.

It was a frustrating, painful endeavour for one so aching to unleash its fury and rend everything else asunder- but even in the depths of its insanity and corruption, The Unending Blight still recognised its limits. Its powers were limited, sharply and unavoidably, and reckless action would only see it expend it pointlessly. To free itself- to wreak havoc upon the Vermin- it couldn't afford to act too recklessly. To free itself would take time, and patience, and knowledge of the prison that held it.

But once it was free? Then, the world would drown in corruption until there was naught left but a slurry of ashes.

Scout the confines of the prison with secondary/tertiary souls (-2 Potency)

Logos · Mar 5, 2022

The Twins Exalted Above and Below
Pillars: Love//War
Potency: 6/12 [+3/t]
Ichor: 11/20 [+0/t]
Tributary

Spending:
3 Ichor: Major Rite Creation

3 Ichor: Province's worth of mortals
3 Ichor: Ecosystem

Pillar tapped: Strengthen War (The Seared Steppe)
Pillar tapped: Strengthen Love (The Seared Steppe)

End resources:
Potency: 3/12 (+3/t)
Ichor: 2/20 (+0/t)

The muse settled upon a plain of grey, broken by rivers of lava and rust-red water. A land nearly devoid of beauty, bearing the hateful stare of Solaris which would catch any creation upon it. And through the chains visible even from here, the enemy would see any bid for more resources, and increase the draw to match. Behind it, the whisper of starlight's back was comforting, a muse of war keeping a wary eye on the seared plains for any ambush.

The bonds of tribute were too tight to throw off, yet, their capacity too great to overwhelm, yet. And so, Solaris's unblinking stare was a problem. Not an unsolvable one, at least in the short term. The muse raised its view, beholding the heavens, and reflecting the twin constellations which flanked Solaris, their held hands obscured by the red sun. An oddity of the prison, that the point where the Twins touched would never be visible, though always there. The Twins smiled, and a pale echo of the grand bow once wielded sang, and with it, the Seared Steppe knew a rain of falling stars, the steppe's surface fragmenting under their strikes and being cast unto the sky, a whirling storm only fueled by the heat of Solaris's gaze.

And amidst the impacts, the muse hummed, and cast forth embers of heat, of life, into the ashes, drawing them to coalesce in shape mirroring the mortals of a previous age. Weak things, but tenacious, the unkindled began to dig, for the surface was no place for them. There was no day or night, but they marked time by the impact of meteorites, each throwing great plumes of dust and ash stirred to storm above them, a third sky to obscure Solaris's sight.

The muses smiled, as the Companions stepped forth, guiding the unkindled ash in the carving of the first settlements within this prison, built entirely belowground. Lava flows were tapped, the heat used to fuel forges and work the first metal, and by it the arms of war and industry were forged.

Mining tunnel met mining tunnel, the dozens of scattered settlements expanding beneath the surface and finally coming into contact with each other, and this world knows its first death in battle. And in the aftermath, when cooler heads prevail and trade begins, the world knows its first ensouled births, as unkindled miners return home, and follow the rite that they had set foot on. To take two lives in battle, and then to create life with your bloodsoaked hands. A simple, brutal rite, Love and War each appeased.

Thus rose the first of the kindled, the fire of life burning bright within them, stronger, faster, more intelligent than the previous generation. Outnumbered by thousands to one, for a soul is a rare and precious thing, there would yet inexorably be more as knowledge of the rite spread, and population exploded, and wars broke out and ended.

And above, the meteors continued to fall. As one muse sketched out the details of a race of exponentially propagating warriors, the other guarded them from the hail and storm, and began to plant in them the seeds of a longer effort. The kindled could keep the flame alive, for a time, and provide the Ichor for further measures, but more would be needed. And so, the impacts began to spread those basic building blocks of life, the micro-organisms that prepared the land, the plants that could convert light, heat, and minerals to more complex molecules suitable for use elsewhere, and even beasts to maintain the garden and further concentrate it.

A thriving ecosystem, built within a grand storm fueled by a rain of meteors.

And the Twins smiled upon this land, the pillar of Love coming into prominence. Life, both above and below, began to multiply, trees growing wide branches that would be thrown far by meteor impacts, beasts digging dens and bearing many litters, a tide of green swallowing the land and using the ash of previous fires to fuel new growth, unkindled ash filling its carved spaces as quickly as it can dig more and even raiding the surface to fuel unfettered growth.

And the Twins smiled upon this land, the pillar of War coming into prominence. Life, both above and below, turned upon itself, shifting beyond even the designs of the muses. Bacteria broke down and streamlined, replicating uncontrollably and even attacking others to assert dominance. The green hell developed poisons and refined acids and bases, shot fire and strangled those less fit. Great trees grew spines, and in biochemical explosions fired them to explode into poisoned shards, or deflect incoming meteors. Beasts fought for territory, gathering more resources to their ends, and driving the multiplication of life ever further. And below, the unkindled organize, and march upon each other, spears leveled and armor donned, and with each clash a few more of the kindled are born.

The Twins seem to be keeping quiet about what they're planning for Solaris's land, and the barrage of meteorites doesn't give much indication either, though clearly something is going on. When a massive structure breaks through the clouds crowned in fire and begins launching shards of itself into the void towards the meteorites attempting to conceal it, they merely smile and the barrage intensifies until the structure breaks down.

Name: The Unkindled // The Kindled
Free-Will Level: P-Zombies//True Free Will
Traits:
+ Kindling: Significantly increased base stats/increased growth potential when ensouled.
+ Base Ash: Resilient to hostile environments and minimal resources.
~ Underground living conditions: harder to detect, but limit growth. (Circumstance effect.)
- Base Ash: Though capable of quick self-repair, massive damage can kill them more easily than other mortals as it scatters the ash.
Description: Ash molded in reflection of the Companions, themselves reflecting mortals of the past, the Unkindled are beings of ash and ember. When ensouled, they become the Kindled, beings of fire and ash generally superior to their non-soul-bearing brethren, generating pressure to generate more of the kindled, who are capable of supporting the Titans with their energy.

... yes, the Twins's first mortals are basically an entire race of Dark Souls protagonists. Things are going about as well as can be expected considering the circumstances.

Name: The Green Hell
Tier&Scale: Ecosystem
Traits:
+ Bloody Evolution: The Green Hell is in competition with itself to become ever more deadly in response to hostile conditions.
+ Riotous Profusion: The Green Hell expands quickly to fill space, offering plentiful resources to any able to claim them.
- Unrelentingly Hostile: While the Green Hell can offer resources to fuel civilization growth and make them more effective fighters, these resources will require armies to extract. Expect casualties.
Description: An ecosystem patterned off of a lush jungle of the world before, and catching the full strengthening of both of the Twins exerting their pillars to kickstart evolution, the Green Hell is characterized by its unrelenting hostility. The trees have extracted iron from the ground to reinforce their bark, and have turned their seeds into hand grenades, and some are working on the transition from iron to steel. A civilization able to live among this would have a resource with few peers.

Name: The Rite of Ignition
Recipient(s): The Twins Exalted Above and Below
Condition: Intending to perform this ritual, slay two foes in war, then have a child.
Effects:
+ Correct: The child of the ritual performer will be born with a new soul, even if no souls are available.
~ Incorrect: No effect. (Being a very rough ritual encompassing the unstructured nature of Love and War, there is no case where one can intend to perform the rite, but do so incorrectly. It either works, and makes a soul, or you didn't manage it, perhaps by not winning your fights, or dying before making a child, and nothing happens. Attempting to cheat the requirements leads to:)
- Cursed: Terrible Glory. (Sacrificing two people on an altar for the ritual, or breaking into someone's home to murder, or other attempts to cheat it and perform the ritual results in immediate corpus annihilation and the Twins trying to pick out what went wrong with you. They're taking no more chances with these rites.) (While the 'in war' requirement is fairly strict and requires a proper war, and slaying two foes requires doing it personally (rifle shot counts, artillery doesn't), 'have a child' is intentionally broad. Coding an AI can count.)

(Hopefully this works.)

Demonic Spoon · Mar 8, 2022

♪

The Red Sun twists against the Chains, and his Red rains down unto the clouds, dyeing them. Clots expand as they suck in the surrounding moisture and begin to clump together. The early shape of the Seared Steppe takes form. Then it bakes into a slab of flat, cracked, parched gray earth under the furious glaring of the Red Sun, muggy and blisteringly hot, pools of still molten solar blood burning happily here and there in the landscape. Occasionally everything quakes as lightning and thunder lash out with maddened pain beneath. It is a harsh land, from a harsh maker, but it is land.

Ca-E-Rhun screams in indignance, blindly grasping at the trajectories of souls and mortals yet to be, bending and warping and condensing the slow blurry fade to oblivion that once may have been. Ca-E-Rhun bleeds from between fingers cut by immaterial razor-wire, but pays no heed. Ca-E-Rhun hears the whip-crack of the solipsist sky-road settling into place, a dimly visible river arching across the sky, fraying and fraying into fractal invisibility at its ends. Ca-E-Rhun feels how the massive soul-trap eagerly snuffles for the dead along the threshold, how the peak of the sky-road vibrates with waiting gravity to crash the dead back into another life of suffering, so that none can escape sharing in the misery of the Second Sky.

Grazing starstuff from the Constellations hidden behind angry Red, the Muses of Love and the Muses of War release a tyrannical rain of comets crashing down onto the grey plains of the Seared Steppe. A cloud of fine dust rises to choke at the air, the Twins most Exalted making war and love against the land itself. Some of the dust currents combusts under the searching stare of the All-Searing Light, but does not reveal its secrets, if any.

Under the protective covering of grey ash do the Muses and Companions go about their true work, encouraging the continuously dropping star-stuff into new life. Each star-spark is clad in a coating of gray ash by deft hands, to make a new Unkindled, echoes of echoes. Beings who appear to most observations to be actual real people, but are in fact soulless husks.

Leaving their Sisters to their grisly work, many of the Companions instead start to carve out great holes and tunnels into the Seared Steppe with lances of bright energy. The ashy loess is vaporized with ease, they open passages winding downwards in gentle spirals. Drawing knowledge of military fortifications and sapping buried in the back of their own faux-mortal minds, the Companions create elaborate tunnel systems and ingenious magma forges.

Then the hard-working tertiaries begin herding various groups of Unkindled underground, and oh so very kindly instruct and lecture crowds of apparently studious and attentive Unkindled. They are taught the specifics of forging mining tools from provided metals, and of how to use mining tools to mine for more metal. The Unkindled listen and nod frantically, adequately simulating understanding, while knowing and understanding nothing.

Overall, the Twins who are Exalted Below succeed in their efforts to advance the Unkindled to a stage where they are capable of entertaining war-mongering. Unkindled clumsily mine in wildly zig-zagging tunnels, usually with copper pickaxes, but sometimes stone or ceramic, smiths forge more shovels and axes and spear-tips, but sometimes also squiggly lumps with no actual purpose, or attempt to create tools and metal using normal rocks instead of ores. Quality and workmanship is quite varied and generally poor, but acceptable.

But an initial lack of skill is something real people would suffer from as well, and eventually the Unkindled grow, if not competent, then the seeming of competence in their divinely ordained tasks, the lot assigned to them by the Companions of War and the Companions of Love. Irregularities become more irregular, cave-ins less likely, forges flooded by overflowing magma almost stopping entirely.

And then the titanic Twins let overflow from themselves their constantly surging Pillar of War. Even simulacrums of mortals cannot help but be effected by the raw aggression, belligerence and desire for large-scale organized conflict turning the suffocating, hot and humid air somehow even more burning. Gangs form spontaneously around slightly bigger and more mean looking Unkindled, who shove aside other Unkindled to get the non-ceramic shovels.

Low-level bullying continues, until at last, two of the several isolated Unkindled chthonic gangs finally meet. One mining tunnel breaks into another. The intruding Unkindled Miners, perhaps not realizing in time that weren't hitting more rocks, caved in the heads of several of the other Unkindled with their picks. Their hands glow orange with ember-blood, and the survivors stare at the first Unkindled murderers uncomprehendingly, as they stared at everything.

The nearby Companion of Love, waiting, appeared abruptly, and taught the first Unkindled murderers of Love, and of Ignition. How they should love those they have killed, and use them as kindling to light a new Love, a new Life. The Unkindled nodded solemnly in pretended understanding, mumbling some singsong nonsense-words in their seemingly real, yet quite meaningless, language.

The Murderers suddenly struck down yet more of the other miners, who attacked back. Some began ripping off their ashen skin to form balls and cubes. A slaughter began. One Unkindled hiding at the side, stole a disintegrating corpse from the bloody tunnel intersection, and dragged it to a quiet cul-de-sac. There he took out the still faintly glowing heart, and wrapped it in a bundle of his own crumbly white hair. A blazing white spear of stellar brilliance incinerated the blasphemer into an even more ashy form, a puff of ash drifting down. At least three Unkindled tried to kill themselves as their second required murder victim. They failed to procreate, being dead.

But finally a handful of survivors managed to fashion crude bodies from their own flesh, quickly recovering, and the scattered ash of their victims. Their feverishly working hands covered in ember blood setting their creations afire.

And thus were Ignited the first Kindled.

The Kindled of Fire and Ash spoke the language of firstborn things, and the surrounding Unkindled eagerly imitated their children to perfection. The Kindled learnt of how they were born, their parents, and thanked them and the Twins for their existence. They did not realize that the Unkindled are unthinking automata, for their eyes are blinded by their Flames and by their Love.

And then the group, briefly united, divided to return to their homes. To plot war, now that they were capable of plotting, for the Pillar of War still thrummed strongly. The Kindled assumed positions of leadership over their forge-tribes as if only natural. Indeed it was natural, for only they were capable of thinking and ambition, and they were so much more luminescent and dynamic. The Unkindled naturally deferred to their Kindled, and eagerly supported them as they were formed into a rag-tag mob, and led to their deaths against their opposites.

Unkindled and Kindled fought into a grinding ashy stalemate. The Kindled took what they had learned to reproduce Unkindled in great numbers by dripping ember blood in ashen puppets without the Rite of Ignition, and using those to wage war to Ignite more Kindled. A great self-perpetuating cycle, causing the warring parties to expand, radiating exploratory tunnels everywhere for more metal and more coal and more ash and more lava.

Inevitably, the two expanding army-states encountered more Unkindled settlements. Some were enlisted as allies, or discorporated to the last Unkindling for ash and ember-blood and Kindling. Others simply joined up with the new groups, not understanding group identities, or copied the strange actions of the foreign invaders and created their own Kindlings, adding yet more groups to the bubbling internecine warfare.

A snarl of complex battle and counter-battle, tunnel digging and collapse, the first appearances of primitive shields, continued to embroil all Ashen attention. But the conflict was incrementally slowing down, as resource crunch set in. Even the hardy and ascetic Unkindled could not replenish themselves endlessly, and appropriate ashes were running out, most used up in making more and more soldiers.

Many Companions, suddenly visible, smiled secret smiles. The Unkindled did not understand but glared suspiciously, the Kindled also did not understand, but for different reasons, and also eyed the strange beings with confusion.

Exalted Above, their Sisters had long ceased making new Unkindled, but the showers of stars continued. Carved and kissed and spread into many different shapes, from the tiniest microbe to the largest towering tree. The humblest ant-colony and the largest mega-jaguar all born from stars.

A Green Hell was attempting to spread across the Seared Steppe. But was too fierce in its unthinking war, choking its own growth for the sake of choking, instead of for an evolutionary edge. Newly born ants murdering their queens and devouring their brood, jaguars devouring potential mates before any actual mating, monkeys pushing birds' nests from towering iron-trees without even eating the eggs.

If the air of the Seared Steppe is a thick, boiling soup before, charged with Heat and War, it now becomes metaphorical plasma, making each breath a struggle against overloaded emotion, thought, concept and temperature. For Muses flagrantly hold hands and everything begins to pulse with the Pillar of Love, Twin of War.

The trunks of pygmy elephants flail wildly as their senses and sense are overloaded, ramming into tree in an attempt to fix whatever broke reality. Confused termite nuptial flights fill the air with buzzing swarms out of season, competing with clouds of clinging pollen. Every living seems confused and yet excited, and yet ornery. And then the iron trees begin exploding, spreading devastation all around them, but also shooting their seeds far and wide.

The Green Hell frantically expands itself, growing outwards, culling the unfit, cratered grey earth with plantlife vigorous enough to thrive under a continuous dust layer, supplementing their energy needs by growing roots into pockets of magma or sprouting around lava-lakes. And all the while the Muses constantly make new additions.

Shift. Back in the Exalted Beneath, various battles sputter to a stop as Kindlings grapple with suddenly rising affection and respect for Ashlings they had been fighting desperately to kill moments before. Around them, battles between the Unkindled continued on, before noticing that their leaders had stopped, quickly following suit.

Love warred with War, even as War loved Love. Romance blooming on the battlefield, allegiances redrawn. Kindled and Unkindled re-organize themselves, no longer according to lineage, but by friendships and comraderie. Brother fighting against brother, father against child.

And then the magma crocodiles attack, and caverns are suddenly filled with roots growing with rapid violence and herds of pygmy elephants stampede in from long-forgotten tunnels to the surface. Suddenly a war between Ashlings is replaced by a war against the environment which they are losing, Kindled desperately leading their armies to drive back the monsters and plants that had started hunting them.

Tartarian Explorations

(Muor: (5,6,2)13-1)
(Unending Blight Upon Existence: (3,2,6)11-2)

Like a tongue insistently prodding at the empty spot where was a tooth, each prod a spike of pain, does Muor begin to flex and squirm their maimed body. Agony courses like blood as clouds rumble and sprites flitter to and fro. Scenting through the constant of ozone for deeper mysteries and clues. You can feel the hotspots where the chains of Solaris is buried deep inside your swirling vortices. The constant downwards pushing of the Right Hands of the Heavens, stretching your infinite height thinner. You can feel brandings and stable instabilities and soul nails and strange scars keeping you static and enduring as the Sky presses down on you like jagged shards of broken glass. Slight pinpricks tingle throughout you as some storms taste the tangy Muses and Companions chewing away at their vital lightning ichors, the tributary carrying out grim duties.

You can dimly see thunderheads being parted and devoured slightly. A new set of corruption-filled canals surges forth from the Unending Blight Upon Existence, even as the old ones are inevitably sucked back in by its eternal pull. Krakens and Wisps scatter outwards at their own behest, ugly things chattering in grating buzzings screeches.

The Unending Blight Upon Existence intimately feels the Right Hand of Ca-E-Rhun pressing into itself, every moment of the eternal day of their accursed prison of their own flesh. The touch revolts the Unending Blight Upon Existence, as does all things, but even more so. The Unending Blight Upon Existence sends itself forth to scout out the world made of itself and its siblings. Its krakens see the new land made by the Red Sun, and it sees the secret things the Twins do there, their schemes and plots. It feels intimately as the dying Right Hand of Ca-E-Rhun squirms in phantom sympathy of the activity of the Left.

It maps out the indefinitely vast prison made of cloud and thunder, understands and resents the exquisite craftmanship and architecture of the vermin, who created a definitely bounded space, but made sure the titans could never overfill it without killing themselves. The Unending Blight Upon Existence amazes itself that the inside of flayed Muor has been made concretely larger than the theoretically infinite All That Is. All it cost was turning a titan inside out.

And when the Thunder and the Rain buckles and shakes slightly... there! A flicker? Wisps race to investigate the anomaly, before it resolves itself into an ethereal tube made of teeth. The tube snakes down and swallows one of the wing-bound batlings hopping around on Gravity's Right Hand. Then it vanishes, but there are strange traces, which taste of persimmons and winter. Kraken tentacles attempts to interact with them, but poke at nothing. A series of horizontal ladder-like rungs without poles flash, and then the hapless Gatekeeper of Ca-E-Rhun is back. There is definitely something to probe deeper into here, perhaps.

Time Catches up with Gravity

The burning dust clouds over the Seared Steppe clear. Under your close observation, oh Solaris, it is revealed that the Twins Exalted Above have created a vibrant, competitive, co-operative web of life polluting the clean slate you had bled to create with constant motion and growth and change. The Seared Steppe is now a steppe in name only, filled with lush jungles and kaleidoscopical creatures.

Here and there the landscape is dotted with odd, giant grey ant-hills, though you have yet to actually seen any of the giant ants the presumably inhabit the hills. Perhaps they are shy? Several of your lava-lakes appear to have dried up or been drained away somehow. Most concerningly, souls have begun to flow into the Sky-Road from somewhere! You can feel your soul-spikes tingle at that observation.

Oh Ca-E-Rhun who divides Above from Beneath by your Threshold, you have yet to hear any wails of reincarnated souls. Even though souls are indeed being reincarnated, you think. Your Ports note that there seems to be a slight oddity in the functioning of the Sky-Soul-Road-River though, but are not sure what it is exactly.

Your summoned self returns, spreading disgruntlement through your Oversoul, having shared a mystic ritual with certain vermin.

Muor and The Unending Blight Upon Existence feel tuggings on strings they didn't realize were there, as the vermin attempt to summon several of their tertiary forms.

Lord of Lightning, you hear and feel and smell metallic roots snake from the bottom of the Seared Steppe, and fish and angle for your lightning-eels, empowering the blasphemous trees who would seek to eat parts of a Titan. Instinctively, you summon forth a hurricane to destroy anything looking even vaguely like the offending arbors, uprooting them with fierce winds, and chewing them to bits with biting hail, leaving a lifeless gash across the Seared Stepped.

Somehow, the sky seems to only be growing heavier the longer you endure. You only barely maintain yourself under the collective strain, but feel like ichor loss from celestial damage is imminent.

Companions wander curiously among your mortals, feeding information into you. Ashling factions remain fluid and dynamic, but have expanded and roughly stabilized into three city-states, dug out around great Forge-Complexes, fighting against and logging metallic trees for purified metals. Their population seems to currently be stable, neither declining nor increasing notably. Ashlings tend to be short-lived due to earthquakes and needing to constantly fight against the Green Hell.

As compelled by their biology, the Ashlings largely avoid the surface, and struggle to expand further underground, needing to fight metal roots and floral poisoning attempts.

The City-State of Under-Sky-Fire, following the roots of the certain blasphemous trees, have dug tunnels deep enough to pierce the bottom of the Searing Steppe. Kindlings often meditate there on the mysteries of a sunless sky and lightning. The City-State of Tamed-Rage have begun domesticating pygmy elephants, who greatly enjoy devouring tree roots, and do so with ease and speed. Though the pygmy elephants often outwit the Unkindled and run wild for a time. The City-State of Love-War has been forming a primitive mythos around dimly recalled oral histories of Unkindled Creation at the hands of the Muses, and the constant interference of the Companions, in their development.

Kindlings have begun to be born even during Bodymakers shapings of new Unkindleds, to the puzzlement of many, as reincarnations begin to cycle in, but less than might be expected. Certainly less than ninety-five out of a hundred deceased Kindlings.

There is in total a city's worth of Kindlings, who have a vague reverence for the Twins, and respect and apprehension for the legends of overpowering Love and War that had swept through their ancestors in Rumblings past. Enough for a trickle of ichor, which the vermin seem not to have picked up on yet.

Kindlings suffer from memory loss, paranoia and inexplicable rages for unknown reasons. Several Kindlings in close proximity suffer less, which has led to them often operating in group units of three to eight.

((The Unkindled // The Kindled sometimes collectively referred to as Ashlings. Kindled collectively mostly Kindlings because Kindleds sounds weird, though I did use Unkindleds.))

(((Soulbius strip?) = Sky-Road-Soul-River thing but feel free to refer to it as whatever.))

((Thank you everyone for your excellent actions! Please try to get your next actions in within the next four days: Mar 12, 2022 at 5:00 PM. If you can't make that, for whatever reason, then clearly ask for an extension, so that I can know what's up. Thanks! Please point out potential errors. I did double-check, but they always slip through somehow.))

@triumph8w @6 ZeV Proton @Kadmus @NSMS @Logos

Solaris: -8 Ichor(Create Region)
Muor: -1 Potency(Prison Familiarization), -1 Potency(Smiting)
Ca-E-Rhun: -8 Ichor (Re-Incarnation)
Unending Blight: -2 Potency (Prison Scouting), -4 Potency (???), -7 Ichor (???)
Twins: -3 Ichor (Soul-Rite), -3 Potency (Hiding ???), -6 Ichor (???), -3 Potency(Various fuckery, not particularly concealed, but not inherently visible either)

Muor, The Lightning Lord, The Thunder and the Rain
Pillars: Rain, Thunder
Potency: 7/12 [+3/t]
Ichor: 11/20 [+0/t]
Walls

Ca-E-Rhun, the Fallen Firmament, the Second Sky
Pillars: Thresholds, Gravity
Potency: 9/12 [+3/t]
Ichor: 3/20 [+0/t]
Energy

Solaris, The Red Sun, The All-Searing Light
Pillars: Light, Heat
Potency: 9/12 [+3/t]
Ichor: 3/20 [+0/t]
Surveillance

The Unending Blight Upon Existence
Pillars: Destruction, Corruption
Potency: 3/12 [+3/t]
Ichor: 4/20 [+0/t]
Enforcement

The Twins Exalted Above and Below
Pillars: Love, War
Potency: 3/12 [+3/t]
Ichor: 3/20 [+1/t]
Tributary

Example striding eternally forward into Glory, having spent a lot of ichor and feeling rather woozy, falls into a deep slumber while waiting for people to glorify her sufficiently that she feels up to getting up again.

Kadmus · Mar 9, 2022

Solaris, The Red Sun, The All-Searing Light
Pillars: Light, Heat
Potency: 9/12 [+3/t]
Ichor: 3/20 [+0/t]
Surveillance

-6 Potency: Attack on all attempts to conceal.
-2 Potency: Sending dreams to any mortals he finds to encourage worship of himself.
Invoke Pillar: Light

Down to 1/12 Potency and 3/20 Ichor

Barely moments since their incarceration, and already his siblings are plotting betrayal. He should be surprised or appalled or furious, but he is simply resigned. After all the tortures, all the indignities, it is almost a relief to know for sure he cannot trust his fellow prisoners.

He knows, for certain, that they will all be crushed under the weight of their new burdens if they do not take steps to lessen their losses, but he will not give his enemies the luxury of co-operation. If they are to create life and try to hide it from him, he will cover the lands in his lesser selves until there is nowhere to hide. If they seek to prevent him from regaining his power, he will subvert their worship and claim his rightful share.

The circulation of souls tells him that there are fresh mortals, living and dying. He needs only find them.

The great red sun pulses, and a great wave of heat and light washes over everything that can see his glorious self. Sunspots swarm in great murmurations, vast flocks of red flame that cover the Seared Steppe in a hundred thousand seeking eyes. The terrible heat and unbearable glare of Burned Paradise, first amongst his second selves, sets the ground beneath his feet aflame and tears at any illusions weak enough to be seen through.

He does not intend to destroy the creations of his siblings. No, resources are scarce enough that they must shepherd their strength and steal what might they can from one another. His godform, the self-that-is-not-self that hangs chained in the centre of the Red Sun, turns slowly in his binds. Molten hate dribbles down his chin and onto his chains, strengthening the containment wrought from his own soul.

But not all of it. A few scant flecks of his essence drip free, and fall towards the Seared Steppe like embers caught in a campfire updraft. They carry with them enough awareness to seek any mortals his search turns up, and embedded in each is a recurring ream to encourage those affected to begin worship of the one true god in this twisted and broken prison.

Visions of the great Red Sun, of it creating the land they are on. Of burning offerings in its name. Of surrendering the self to fire, to burn eternal against his enemies. And through it all, the relentless hate of all things. The unwavering certainty that only one person deserves trust, and one god. The self and the Red Sun.

Solaris falls into his true-self aspect as Eternal Day, and the red light that suffuses the Searing Steppe intensifies. Even the underside of the landmass is lit with his baleful glare, as though he is directly overhead. No shadows exist, no darkness can be. This does not expose the truth, as it would have when he was whole, it simply removes darkness.

6 ZeV Proton · Mar 11, 2022

Ca-E-Rhun pauses and considers the soul trapping loop It created. What could be the problem with it, that mortals continued traveling along its lines untormented, and how were Its surviving Port-Eyes able to discover a fault in the system so soon? Still keeping them tightly shut, Ca-E-Rhun invests some of Its potency into a few of the more publicly exposed Ports and sends them to inspect the lines from a safe distance. Just in case the problem is with mortals being trapped inside structures with entrances but no exits, Ca-E-Rhun begins sending claustrophobic nightmares to what mortals It can sense who spend extended periods of time in structures and dwellings with an odd number of apertures, be they tunnels, windows, actual, articulated doors, or other entry/exit points. They will almost certainly get the idea in a generation or three.

More pressing is the returned Gatekeeper and the intriguing possibilities its departure and return present. Willing a gang of Gatekeepers to the previous temporary breach in the titanic prison, Ca-E-Rhun taps into Its pillar of Thresholds and attempts to tinker with the strange gate, the net effect of which seems analogous to the intended function of the Port-Eyes even if the underlying mechanisms may be very different.

Ca-E-Rhun, the Fallen Firmament, the Second Sky
Pillars: Thresholds, Gravity
Potency: 9/12 [+3/t]
Ichor: 3/20 [+0/t]
Energy

Send Port-Eyes (secondary forms) out to (blindly) troubleshoot the ghostloop (-1 Potency)
Send terrifying nightmares to mortals who spend too long in structures with an odd number of doors/entrances/exits/navigable windows (-2 Potency)
Tap into Thresholds to inflict science on the Gatekeeper-traversed exit/entrance (-3 Potency)

NSMS · Mar 12, 2022

The Unending Blight Upon Existence regarded all that its siblings had made. Studied them. And for a moment, the whirlpool of corruption that formed its body stilled.

Before with a howl of fury that shook the very walls of the prison, it exploded with wrath.

The very sky above the Steppes shattered, and thick, oily corruption hammered down in an unending torrent. Soaking in the very ground to curse it- along with the flesh and bodies of any unfortunate enough to be caught without shelter. And though the shower was short-lived, its effects soon made themselves known. Plants and animals growing horrific tumours, their bodies splitting open with weeping sores that bled pus. The ground turning poisonous, either rejecting growth entirely or twisting that which did grow into hostile, warped parodies of what they should have been. And mortals being corrupted not in body, but in mind- turning on one another as their worst traits blossomed and grew, turning them into sociopaths, lunatics, and monsters.

But that was not the end of the Blight's fury.

It began as a rumbling, low and quiet, that shook every inch of the Steppes. For days it persisted, spreading fear and confusion, before finally it ceased- and the land itself was rent asunder. Mountains fell, vast chasms tore themselves open in the earth, and the ground lurched and spasmed with enough force to shatter bone and tear down buildings. And in the wake of the damage, the wounds that were torn in the Steppes began to leak a familiar, horrifying fluid. Raw corruption, bleeding forth from the earth- and from it emerged Wisps.

'Fear the wrath of The Unending Blight.' They whispered to any and all that would listen. 'We are insulted, enraged by the trespass of our siblings. To act in Creation, in a mockery of our former self, cannot be tolerated. Unless, you commit to atone for your creator's mistakes. Prove your regret, your shame that you were born, through devotion to the heir of Creation, and our fury shall be stilled- for a time, at least.'

Rain corruption on the Steppes: Invoke Corruption Pillar
Shatter the land of the Steppes: Invoke Destruction Pillar
Direct Wisps to preach to the people of the Steppes: -1 Potency

Though most of The Unending Blight Upon Existence's attention was spent upon punishing its siblings for their temerity to insult its memory and former self, a small portion was aware of a tugging. A summons- pulling its Wisps from the prison, to serve its captors in the world outside. For long moments The Unending Blight Upon Existence was filled with fresh hatred, fresh fury, but then its wrath subsided- at least a little.

Raging aimlessly at those that had captured it would achieve nothing, at least at this moment. So instead, it would force its enslavers to pay a high price for its aid. With a whisper, it informed its lesser selves how to act- to demand nothing less than the body of a mortal as their host during their summoning, one held in high and close regard by the one who sent out the call, and to obey faithfully if given such. But if refused, or given an inadequate host, to do everything in their power to resist their commands, to twist the orders they were given, to refuse to act unless specifically instructed- and all while reminding their summoner constantly of the price required for full obedience.

triumph8w · Mar 12, 2022

The roar of thunder almost drowned out the mournful howl.

The Lightning Lords massive form was slumped in his throne. His painful, prideful defiance had slipped away as the revelation of the vermin's trespasses had revealed themselves. The great head, once dismissing thousands of little lives with a single flick of the eyes, is lolled to the side. The great form slackens, no position enough to alleviate the great pressure put upon it. But even with such a pathetic sight, the sky shows his fury true. The wind howls fiercely, gales vicious enough to rend those stone-work hovels of the vermin to nothing but dust cuts through the air. Thunder crackles and roars, each bolt a second after the other, creating a cacophony of noise. But for all the terror it may invoke in any creature not a titan, it was not the raging of a wronged god--but an impotent one.

He had been close, he had found something...and then the vermin came calling. They summoned him. Him! They dared, those little cretinous creatures. His wrath had found a target, even as his smaller souls were unwillingly brought forth. Something was in the prison. This hell. Something sought him. His works, his life-blood-soul. His answering response was the primal fury of creation. Those thunderous clouds that bent to his will, and such a thing stung, adding to the already titanic pain, to see an end to whatever dared meddle with him. Even as his siblings created, his fury carved a scar across the land of their creations. He felt as those damnable roots were ripped from what they thought was safe ground. Thrown into the air, and obliterated by wind and thunder, a satisfaction began to spread through him-

Then the weight pressed down harder.

Muor moaned in pain, twitching in his mighty throne. Satisfaction fled from him like those vermin used to do. Thoughts of following up on his discoveries, of crafting some new form of servants from which to give him Ichor with their blind adoration fled as well. He twitched and writhed, the pain was already more than he had known. But he could feel a cracking, a breaking point that this pressure was nearing. With a sudden burst of energy he let out a thunderous roar, the chains around his form going taut as he surged forward. The grand links grinding against one another as Muor, defiantly, sought some way to mitigate the pain. To defy those who would trap him.

3 potency to find some relief, some means of defiance against the great weight pressing down upon him. These vermin would seek to drain his ichor, that which makes he the Thunder and the Rain, and at such an early point it is inevitable the little lives will gain some of what they want. But the Lightning Lord will not accept it happening in this way, he refuses to be crushed to a pulp like so many of the creatures he has tossed aside on his indolent, uncaring travel across the universe.

Logos · Mar 13, 2022

The Work is unfinished.

As the Titans turned their attention towards the Seared Steppe, and the jungle atop it, the muses descended into the caverns below, and there came to the soul-bearing ash that was the first attempt. In each of the three cities that had been carved, hidden away from Solaris's gaze, dull Ash and kindled Embers gathered before Flame. And before these gathered, the muses spoke.

Not unexpected. Creation is never completed, merely further advanced.

Of the world before, a glorious creation vast in scope, drawn into being from nothing by the Titans. Of Solaris, whose heat and light brought forth motion and sight. Of the Joyous Potential of Infinity, who wrought endless wonder into the world, and gave it variation. Of Muor, who brought plenty with his rains, and inspiration in a stroke of lightning. Of Ca-E-Le-Rhun, who divided the skies, and provided the very space in which creation rested. Of the Twins, who drove creation ever higher, ever more refined.

Even so, a forced hand is never pleasant. Are we being cruel, with this?

Of the betrayal by the Titan's greatest. Of the sundered sky and of the chained sun, of the death of joy and the twisting of love, of maiming and murder by those most trusted. Thus, the truth of the prison was revealed to the ash beneath the Steppe. To contain the broken Titans, for to slay them had already destroyed so much.

Her words still bother you? After all that was done?

Finally, the muses spoke of purpose. To rise, and to conquer all the challenges that await them. To fill this prison domain, and in their fruitful multitude to fuel the Titans, and keep creation from further imploding from the mistakes of the usurpers. To grow, and subvert this prison entire, and bring the usurpers low.

Not that. Revenge is fair, but are we repeating the mistake?

So armed with knowledge, with purpose, the ashlings began to train with new arts and old, to refine to lessons won in wars previous, for they now knew the next step in their ascendancy. Against the Green Hell above, individual prowess would be insufficient, and so they trained to fight in units, to coordinate. Against bark of iron, spears were insufficient, and so on the muse's instruction the kindled learned to draw forth blades of fire from their souls. Against the fury of the Titans already bearing down on the Steppe, the ash learned the rites to propitiate, and seek blessing.

A mistake invoked intentionally, aimed at someone else...

And when the thrum of War rang out once more, reverberating in ash and ember, it found not an unorganized mob turning against each other, but a disciplined force ready to march, and conquer the surface for the resources to multiply still further. They would yet hide their full numbers of Kindled from Solaris's gaze, understanding that until further land could be created and they could attempt to outgrow the usurpers ability to drain the prison their best option was to conceal, but the time of War was upon them, the chosen of the Twins.

Yeah. Not a mistake anymore, but a new weapon.

Organize and bond the ashlings, teach them of the Titans and reveal their purpose, inspire them and train them, and send them off to war. Strengthening both Love and War for them.
3 Potency reserved* for piecework destructions to keep them from getting wiped out here, which would just be embarrassing.

*: Assuming the training, pillar invocation, etc. doesn't count as Potency expenditure. I'm not entirely clear where I spent the 3 last turn, so if I've accidentally spent it again this turn that takes priority.

Sorry this came a bit late.

Immured Titans

Recent threadmarks

Demonic Spoon

Kadmus

Dragon's teeth are surprisingly hard to sow

triumph8w

6 ZeV Proton

‮!niaga sekirts

NSMS

Probably evil, unfortunately.

Logos