Follow the cold-blooded lizardmen, servants of ancient lost beings known as the Old Ones, as they are forced to flee their home and find themselves under alien skies. In the grim darkness of the far future, all must learn to heed one rule, be they madmen or thirsting gods - Respect Your Elders. Relevant Discord here. Now with TVTropes!
Long ago, the enigmatic Old Ones descended to the Warhammer world to shape it in accordance with their mysterious Great Plan. To aid them in the monumental task of painstakingly reshaping an entire world in ways both physical and mystical, they created a race of undying servants that were unflinchingly loyal to their will - the coldblooded beings known to most as the lizardmen. Heirs to the might of the Old Ones, the lizardmen moulded the world as the Plan decreed, exterminating unwanted species, moving continents, constructing a mystical web of obelisks and cities to channel the geomantic power of the earth, and shifting the orbit of the planet itself.
All seemed to be well, until the powers of Chaos shattered the barriers of reality and engulfed the planet. The Old Ones vanished, and their children were left to face the wrath of the eternal gods of the Warp and their infinite daemons. They fought fiercely, and the lizardmen killed many times their number in warpspawn, for their power in those days was great indeed. But without the guidance of their creators they were helpless to stem the tide of daemons, and it was only through the courage and ingenuity of the elves on their continent of Ulthuan that the world was saved, for the time being. The lizardmen survived the catastrophe, but were forever diminished from the heights they had previously held. The world continued to grow and change outside of the confines of the Plan, and the lizardmen lurked in their last stronghold of Lustria, attempting to ascertain the proper course of action though they lacked any knowledge of the Plan's actual contents.
Now the shortsightedness of the mortal races and the eternal evil that is Chaos have combined into a storm most foul. Fate's corrupted strands have released the End Times upon the world, and the lizardmen realize with grim certainty that the Plan has failed. They can do naught but stare into the teeth of oblivion as it races towards them, and perhaps leave a scar on its face before they perish.
But an ignominious end is not what the Old Ones intended for their heirs. Ancient contingencies prepared in the case of the worst of eventualities have self-activated, and though the coming storm is thick and tempestuous, there are still gaps that light can shine through. The lizardmen have existed since before the Old Ones ever set foot on the world so many years ago, and they still have a lesson of importance to impart upon those younger than them...
Respect Your Elders
It is the End Times. Whatever the outcome of this conflict, the Plan the Old Ones decreed will have been shattered beyond repair - you will be their legacy, cast adrift in an unfamiliar world by the last gift of your makers. You stare the end of the world in the face. What form does it take?
[X] ??? - It is impossible to tell. Everywhere there is war of a scale never seen, as all the inhabitants of the world battle for not only their lives, but their very fates. Human, elf, dwarf, ogre, greenskin, undead, skaven, halfling, ancient monster, and daemon, all battle against the forces that seek to destroy their destinies. Ulthuan battles against Naagaroth as the Witch-King seeks to finally realize his ambitions, the Old World fights a desperate battle against the Everchosen and all the might of Chaos, undead legions clash in the Southlands, the Ogre Kingdoms scrap with ancient beasts awakened by the storm, the dawi zharr fight a grinding battle against one of the largest hordes of orks the world has ever seen, the skaven are everywhere looking for opportunities to exploit, and in the east, Cathay deals with all of these problems and the issue of their populace being increasingly corrupted by the Changer of Ways. Even as the saurus fight off hordes of daemons and daemongors cascading from the southern Chaos Wastes and the Cult of Pleasure of the druuchi, now given fully over to Slaanesh, from the north, the skaven clan Pestilens boils up from underground in its grotesque multitudes, the undead of the Vampire Coast commit to a serious offensive against the nearby temple-city of Huatl, the Scar of Xahutec vomits forth legions of warpspawn as it did in times past, and dozens of ork warbands blunder into the jungles, their primitive instincts drawn to the many raging battles. In the midst of this chaos, the slaan peer into the mists of fate and find them a nigh-incomprehensible storm, as multiple competing destinies fight for the fate of the world and all in it. It is impossible to say who will come out on top, and perhaps in that unmitigated chaos there is opportunity...
[Unknown casualties during evacuation. Unlocks additional options]
[] Chaos - The eternal enemy has arisen once again, and this time the foes that stopped it in ages past are feeble compared to their past might, undone by time and their own mortality. Archaon the Everchosen has smashed the Old World to flinders and beseiged Ulthuan with the ultimate goal of destroying the Vortex, allowing the raw stuff of Chaos to subsume the world. The lizardmen stand as one of the last bastions of order in the world, and are being assaulted near-constantly by endless armies of daemons and the mortal servants of the Ruinous Powers from both the north and south. The geomantic web still holds, but it is only a matter of time before the Everchosen undoes the work of the Asur and lets the Warp swallow the world.
[High casualties during evacuation, but the Chaos Gods are fickle and will likely ignore the world after they subsume it]
[] Undeath - The end of the world spawned from the cradle of humanity. Revived from his deathless stasis by his undying minions, Nagash the First Necromancer concluded his millennia-old schemes by crushing the Old World and all the nations of the east with the power of his undead legions, every battle a useless gesture in defiance that only adds more bodies to his army. Now his forces spread out over the world like a cancer, ruthlessly exterminating any hint of life in their territory while the Undying King himself goes to sack Ulthuan and Naagaroth. The asur war with their dark cousins, the dwarf karaks still stubbornly stand defiant, and the daemons of chaos war with the undead the world over, but it is too late to stop Nagash. He will turn his attentions to Lustria soon, and there will be nothing the lizardmen can do to prevent his ultimate victory.
[Moderate casualties during evacuation. Nagash will enslave the entirety of the world in undeath, and will present a threat in the future]
[] Skaven - The youngest race, but in many ways the most dangerous, the skaven were held back only by their inherent inability to unify or cooperate on most any large-scale venture. But their Horned God saw the End Times coming and acted as he had only twice before, placing a dread Underlord in command of his verminious children. Uneasily unified under Thanquol the Great, the Under-Empire rose up and crushed the surface world beneath their endless numbers, stealing the technology of those they defeated it and improving upon it with their dark ingenuity. Now their armies crash into the New World from three directions - the east, where terrible geoshaping weapons unleashed by the skaven have torn a rent in the sea between Cathay and Naagaroth, allowing their legions to assault the dark elf homeland, the west, where their insane navy battles the asur in a series of tooth-and-nail battles while a force led by the Underlord himself marches across Ulthuan, bringing ruin with every step, and from below, for the skaven have bored many tunnels into Lustria in addition to those already present and even now attempt to overwhelm the lizardmen with sheer numbers and spite. The lizardmen fight on tooth and claw, as they always have, but they are only so many, and the Vermintide hungers.
[Comparatively light casualties during evacuation. The skaven will hijack the mechanisms of the Old Ones for use in their own designs, and will pose a serious threat in the future]
These prologue votes will have both a short and long-term impact on the direction the quest takes - don't hesitate to ask if you have a question.
Lord of the Solar-City Hexoatl and eldest of the second spawning of slaan, Mazdamundi has set his will to revitalizing the rest of the Children of the Old Ones from the rut they have fallen into, until they are once again in a fit state to gaze upon their creators. He is an obstinate slaan, and not easily swayed from his self-determined course of action. Supplementing this is an inner restlessness and vigor that has not left him since his awakening - he spends little time at leisure, always thinking of the next thing that must be accomplished or checking up on a subordinate's task when he is not tackling projects of his own.
Traits: Second Generation Slaan: Eclipsed in might only by the now-dead ancients of the First Spawning, Mazdamundi's magical power is unparalleled by all save for the mightiest of divine avatars and the Ruinous Gods themselves.
Geomantic Master: Mazdamundi possesses an affinity for harnessing the Geomantic Web to perform rituals of great power. One Web Ritual performed by him each turn is cast at +1 Magnitude unless otherwise desired.
Eldest Living Slaan: Mazdamundi was instructed by Venerable Lord Kroak himself, and has a wealth of experience as the oldest slaan alive. He possesses mastery of every known style of magic, and assimilates new lore at a rapid pace.
Lord of the Lizardmen: The skinks may administrate the lizardmen empire, and the slann may guide its course, but none can doubt that it is Mazdamundi's will that directs the slann. When he is assigned to a research project with other slann, the total slannpower has 10 percent of the total added to it.
Equipment: Xili-Totl: Mazdamundi's long-faithful Eternity Warden, clad in armor of burnished, blackened gold and imbued with Chotec's fiery energy in a far more literal sense than his master. Wields the Northern Sunspear, a potent artifact capable of immolating almost anything it comes into contact with.
Cobra Mace: An artifact of power imbued with its own primitive awareness, this metallic scepter moves as though it were an actual snake, snapping and biting at foes who dare to approach within striking distance of Mazdamundi.
Sunburst Standard of Hexoatl: Affixed to Mazdamundi's palanquin, this standard bears the sunburst of Chotec, and imbues all near it with the vigor associated with the Old One.
Zlaaq: An ancient and ornery Stegadon Mazdamundi has broken to his will, Zlaaq serves as a combat mount for the Lord of Hexoatl should he deign to enter the battlefield.
Geomantic Web Level: Magnitude 3 (60% Warp Defense in Territory, 3 Total Spawnings/Year, Max 1 Mag 3 Ritual/Turn, +60% Lizardmen Combat Strength/Endurance in Territory, +60% Lizardmen Productivity in Territory, +60% Slann Magical Potency)
Progress to next Web Magnitude: 29/75 Cities
Reference guide to how many geomantic rituals can be cast per turn at each web magnitude. Each value listed is a potential total number of rituals; for instance, at Mag 3 you could cast one Mag 3 ritual, two Mag 2s, or four Mag 1s, not all of them. Various combinations can be made of this, ie one magnitude 2 and two magnitude 1 rituals. As always, consult GM if unsure.
Magnitude 1: One Magnitude 1.
Magnitude 2: One Magnitude 2 -> Two Magnitude 1. Magnitude 3: One Magnitude 3 -> Two Magnitude 2 -> Four Magnitude 1.
Magnitude 4: One Magnitude 4 -> Two Magnitude 3 -> Four Magnitude 2 -> Eight Magnitude 1.
Magnitude 5: One Magnitude 5 -> Two Magnitude 4 -> Four Magnitude 3 -> Eight Magnitude 2 -> Sixteen Magnitude 1.
The exact mechanics of geomantic rituals change somewhat once Magnitude 6 is reached, and will be addressed at that point.
Sotek: Formed during the first skaven incursion into Lustria, Sotek's arrival was prophecized on tablets of the Old Ones. He is an aggressive god, fond of bloodshed and war.
Symbols: Serpent, Twin-Tailed Comet Category: War Variety: Bloodshed Domain: Serpents Methods of Worship: Blood Sacrifice Favored Foes: Orkoids Blessing Thematics: Serpents, Venom, Blood Strength of Cult: Roughly 30% saurus population, 50% skink population, 30% kroxigor population
Ayotzl: Formed from the peeled-apart remains of the Mind Fog of Chaos, Ayotzl is a god of death engineered by the slann to allow for the souls of the lizardmen to be preserved in the Warp. He is a peaceful god, ghosting silently through the sea of souls with his afterlife contained within his shell of fog.
Symbols: Turtles, seen either from above or from the side. Fog over swampland. Category: Death Variety: Rest Domain: Fog Methods of Worship: Vow of Silence, Vigils Favored Foes: Chaos Blessing Thematics: The Dead, Numbness, Ethereal Strength of Cult: Roughly 20% saurus population, 10% skink population, 30% kroxigor population Ties: Seed of Fog - 3/3 Aspects
Godseeds are as the name makes them - concentrated nuggets of warp energy that can be used for a variety of tasks, most notably accelerating the creation of gods. Each is unique, and will be easier to shape in accordance with its listed concepts. They may be tied to multiple things at once.
Seed of Fog
Harmonic Concepts: Fog, Slumber, Numb
- Tied to Ayotzl (3/3)
If the image doesn't load for whatever reason, direct link here.
With thanks to @CuttleFish2.0 for the map
Oldest of the temple-cities, built when the Old Ones themselves walked the earth. It has never fallen in the history of the lizardmen, and is astoundingly well-defended. It is the First City, and if everything else falls, it will be the last.
Sacred Site: Emerald Pools - Any lizardman or dinosaur that dies in and around Itza is immediately respawned in an equivalent body.
Metropolis Preservation Barriers: Active
Geomantic Infrastructure: Level 5 - Receiving level 3 benefits due to web magnitude
Condition: Pristine - 5/5
Ayacmanik Presence: Tiny
City of the Sun and home of Mazdamundi, the eldest living slann, Hexoatl is a bastion of lizardmen industry. The sun always shines down on its flat stones, and the lizardmen there work as if infused with Chotec's energy.
Sacred Site: Chotec's Burning Eye - Obliterates intruders with focused rays of magical plasma. Allows for manipulation of sunlight within area of effect (i.e. extended days).
Metropolis Preservation Barriers: Active
City of Mists, Xlanhuapec was a vital node in the lizardmen's empire for millennia due to its strategic position and concealing mists that rendered it nigh-impossible to effectively assault the city. It now serves a similar role on Mochantia, warding the lizardmen heartlands from the threat of the orks.
Sacred Site: Nightmare Engine - Targets hostile entities in territory with temporary spirits crafted from their psychological weaknesses.
Metropolis Preservation Barriers: Active
City of the Moon, Tlaxtlan sees far and it sees clearly. Observatories and shrines that bathe in moonlight rise atop its pyramids, and its mages are notorious for calling down meteors upon their enemies.
First of the newly-established temple cities upon Mochantia, Yenehectua is a city of refracted light, a network of mirrors, crystals, and torches shining and glimmering day and night.
The center of Sotek's faith upon Mochantia, Qotlpetl holds many prominent altars and temples to the Serpent God, as well as marvels such as the Pools of Sacred Venom.
Sacred Site: Serpentine Idol of Qotlpetl - Allows lizardmen in Qotlpetl to acquire a variety of supernatural snake-like characteristics, most notably rapid regeneration from any injury by means of molting.
The Forge of Golden Ash, Chalkaro was a temple-city built to rectify the lizardmen's dearth in proper equipment. Where Hexoatl excels in sheer productivity, Chalkaro shines in industriousness - it is constantly churning out pieces of artifice from its many forge complexes.
Sacred Site: Forge Matrix - Allows the city to selectively reshape itself, such as forming weapons, raising barricades, and reshuffling its internal schematics. Also allows for a limited degree of self-repair by pulling unused material to where it's more urgently needed.
The Garden City is wrapped in a blanket of warm fog, a result of its numerous hothouses reacting with the cold air around it. The city itself pulses with vitality, with gardens growing on every usable surface. The scales of any who visit quickly grow stronger, any discoloration removed by its healing power.
Sacred Site: Breath-Stealing Spore - Suffuses the air with Shyish-laced spores that kill intruders. The spores then transfer their stolen life energy to the soil as they fall.
City of Bones, Kimilik was founded upon the geometry of death. Its streets are quiet and cold, and though its lizardmen are productive as any other, they are near-universally solemn or grim in demeanor, for they have known they will one day die since they were born. Because of this, their every move is with purpose, to ensure they have an impact in their time living. The city's surroundings are filled with a wide variety of (non-ork) fungi, which are organisms naturally in tune with the stuff of death.
Tekuanzi is the City of Pacts, a place where many dinosaurs and their riders are sent to learn the ancient ways of cooperation and coordination. Many warbeasts from other cities are trained here, and more than usual spawn here for a city of its size. Hunts of megapredators are common events in the area of the city, and it is customary for the skulls of the slain animals to be displayed upon the city walls.
Sacred Site: Discordant Archway - Actively degrades the thoughts and mental capacity of enemies within area of effect, starting with paranoia and disorganization and proceeding to catatonia and death.
Yagoqua is the City of War, built in recognition of the rising threat of the Uax. While every city is well-defended, Yagoqua is a hive of military activity - cadres of Saurus nigh-constantly patrol or test battle maneuvers against each other, skink strategists pore over tomes detailing past campaigns of the lizardmen, and kroxigor labor to build enough weapons for the city's legion to prevail against any foe.
A brine-encrusted city that is palpably infused with the power of the Old One who claims dominion over the waters, great Tzunki. Amamaniliztli's residents sport an assortment of fins on their limbs and webbing between their digits, allowing them greater mobility in the water. The air conducts electricity well, and it is not uncommon for storms to pop up overhead without warning, only to dissipate as quickly.
Sacred Site: Territorial Typhoon Totem of Tzunki - Summons a localized typhoon that cuts through mundane and supernatural foes with sharpened raindrops. Lizardmen are unaffected.
A city of serenity and tranquility, the very air of Tenqu'itzcal gently resists being disturbed. All who visit are granted a measure of calm and repose, the quietude imposed by the city's enchantments deepening their focus. Temples of Potec are common here.
Sacred Site: Imposed Aura of Potec - May temporarily paralyze enemy soldiers, spells, and projectiles across the entirety of Tenqu'itzcal. Lizardmen are unaffected, allowing for unopposed slaughter.
The City of Dusk, despite its name, is not actually wreathed in darkness. However, the magic spun into the bones of the metropolis makes it difficult to find should one not be granted passage - like the striped camouflage of a Mochantian Spring Jaguar, the city seems to blend into its surrounding foliage, its apparent location shifting without warning to those of hostile intent.
Founded under Tepok's principles and dedicated to the unravelling of the Great Plan, Illuxoni is a veritable archive of lore from every corner of the lizardmen empire. Records of every encountered Mochantian creature exist here, as well as diagrams of technological inventions, libraries of dictated slann writings on magical theories, and many copies of the history of older times, before the Evacuation Ritual.
Tletl'notec's full designation is Holder of the Hot Power Underneath the Earth, and it shows in its design. The streets are heated from below by piped lava which travels to its prominent forge districts. The city walls and many of its buildings seem to have been molded out of the natural rock, rising seamlessly from the ground and drawing on its strength. In times of peril, stores of magma are piped from chambers underneath the city, flooding its outskirts in a layer of molten rock.
Known as the City of Strength, Muukhexla is part of a new generation of temple-cities, where the lizardmen are no longer facing a millennia-long decline, but a fierce resurgence in power. The lizardmen spawned here are markedly strong, with both Chotec and Tlazcotl's sacred spawnings occurring more frequently than elsewhere. They look forward to a future where the quest of the lizardmen is finally fulfilled, and strive every day to make it so.
Sacred Site: Acceleration Capacitor - Siphons excess kinetic energy from within the surrounding area, increases attack, enhances workforce, provides kinetic force barriers to inhabitants.
A city built in the wake of the first Octarine Cabals forming, Chuq'xla is a city dedicated to the production of artifacts and the instruction of magical theory. It houses temples dedicated to each of the eight winds, where skink priests train their juniors and increase their proficiency with magic.
The City of Ice Rain is dedicated to observing weather patterns and the ways in which climate, biospheres, and geomantic energy correlate to each other. As a natural result of this, there are many temples dedicated to scrying upon the Quango, analyzing the changes it makes to the atmosphere and how this affects air currents across the planet.
As City of the Sky, Huilcatlan shares many characteristics with Tlaxtlan – many observatories tower above its skyline, some even floating, buoyed by geomantic power. It also houses many halls of study where calculations and theory are raised on the nature of the void between stars and planets and how it may eventually be traversed.
The City of Change is a metropolis where studies are undertaken into the physical and metaphysical makeup of the lizardmen, and how their physical and spiritual forms might be altered in ways that align with the designs of the Old Ones. Many wards specifically tuned to target daemons of Tzeentch have been emplaced here as a precaution.
Pahkypxi is a city of waterways and all that pertains to them, a center of trade and exchange between all the cities on the northern coast, and many further into the continent. Many of the streets are filled with seawater, and enchanted stone rafts are used for transport.
City of Growth, Chiz'chaq is a place dedicated to the study and examination of the Mochantian biosphere and its many creatures. The city's streets are lined with containment cells filled with specimens from across the continent, and numerous temples dedicated towards the study of Thunder Lizards.
A city-sized archive of preserved knowledge, Bucqxhalf contains copies of every word ever whispered by the Relic Priests, engraved in stone tablets. Also housed here are the memoirs and compiled musings of many slann, covering many topics ranging from magical lores to the correct manner in which to consume certain meals. They are uniformly of considerable length, with the shortest comprising some 26 volumes.
Many engineers, architects, and inventors reside in Mekhinyx'kal, a city dedicated to the pursuit of new forms of knowledge and the creation of new inventions to further support the lizardmen's eternal mission.
Glaz'vyaal is a city where the oft-overlooked discipline of alchemy is practiced. While it is an accepted truth that the physical world is but a shell for the truths bespoken by the Old Ones in the language of purest potential, it is still useful to categorize and understand how that world's components may interact with each other in certain manners. In Glaz'vyaal, vast forges of mercury and other purified elements are distilled by exacting processes of filtration, to be combined with each other in esoteric rituals of material science.
The City of Motors was founded to fulfil the relatively niche focus of tinkering with and improving the vehicular designs of the lizardmen. It conducts extensive trades and collaboration with Mekhinyx'kal, for both cities specialize in exploring and comprehending the rules and structures of the physical realm.
As the lizardmen rise to prosperity, their eyes turn to the future. The City of Farseeing is a hub of divination, filled with instruments that allow it to scry distant locations and vast halls of prophecy in which the slann attempt to divine the mysteries of the past and future.
Founded solely and utterly to serve as a means by which the remaining ork infestation on Mochantia's northern continent may be entirely crushed, That Which Reveals Itself In Sudden Proclamation That Kills/Conquers/Flattens Unruly Territory Until It Is Tame/Small, or the City of Triumph for short, is a city built for war in the evolved style of the lizardmen. Its legions march forth to crush anything in their path, be it unruly terrain or the bodies of their foes!
Lizardmen Trust of Isendral: 3/10 - "The Slann have not condemned this course of action."
Isendral's Trust of Lizardmen: 6/10 - "They have ... they will be of help."
The Geomantic Web is a mystical network of power running through every lizardmen city. Drawing upon the kinetic energies running through the planet and converting them into magical force through alignment with metaphysical leylines and specially attuned architecture, the temple cities of the lizardmen generate, channel, and sustain this power. The web grants a multitude of benefits within its reach, which grow stronger as the web itself does. The currently known benefits are listed below, all of which intensify as the Web grows in power:
- Passive defence against hostile Warp powers, daemon intrusions, and mundane attacks, strengthening with level of Web
- Additional spawnings per year, scaling to the level of the Web - ie level 4 will spawn 4 times per year
- Greater wells of mystic energy allowing for more complex and powerful geomantic rituals
- Increased strength and endurance of all lizardmen as the Web bolsters their stamina
- Increased productivity of all lizardmen as the Web removes their need for sustenance
- Decreased difficulty of research projects/unlocking of new research as the Web grows
- Increased power of slaan as the Web's reserves of power grow
Temple cities do not benefit from a tier of benefits until they have obtained the necessary infrastructure to harness the power of the Web, which tends to correspond with the size of the city itself. This means that a level 2 city can only receive level 2 effects until it increases its level. Additionally, the level of the Web is the maximum strength of its effects regardless of infrastructure; a level 5 city will only receive level 2 benefits if the Web itself is level 2. The strength of the Web is increased by encompassing more territory within it - in other words, the bigger the Web, the stronger the Web.
The Geomantic Web acts primarily as a stabilization system for geologic effects, halting unwanted continental movement and other processes that would disrupt the plans of the lizardmen and converting the resulting kinetic force into magical energy which feeds back into the system, creating a self-sustaining loop. The web of magic that is generated thusly is also able to be tapped into by the slaan for purposes ranging from bolstering their spells in battle to conducting cataclysmic geomantic rituals. A favored implement of the mage-priests to further their plans with, geomantic rituals function by harnessing the energy the Web produces as it works and using it to empower a spell, swelling it to a level where it can not only shape entire battlefields, but determine the outcome of entire wars. While any kind of enchantment can be thusly bolstered, it is most energy efficient to directly shape the earth since the Web already does this.
Rituals are sorted into various magnitudes which are tied to the strength of the Web - unless otherwise stated, the current level of the Web is the maximum strength of any geomantic ritual that can be enacted. As the Web grows, it also becomes capable of supporting multiple ritual efforts at once - at level 1 the Web can only support a single magnitude 1 ritual, but at level 4 it can support 10 of them simultaneously. Examples of use are below (CONTAINS QUEST SPOILERS):
- Magnitude 1 Chasm - Open a crack in the earth capable of splitting a battlefield in twain. Used to destroy a miles-long ork aircraft factory before it could transport a horde of millions to lizardmen shores (Turn 6).
- Magnitude 1 Star - Temporarily manifests a miniature star at the chosen location. Used to vaporize the ork city of Krushgrungle (Turn 10).
- Magnitude 1 Sunshear - Transforms rays of sunlight in the area into tangible blades that shear through everything in the vicinity. Used to obliterate a committed ork counterattack (Turn 11).
- Magnitude 2 Landshaping - Rearrange local terrain in order to deny positional advantages to the enemy or grant them to your troops by creating hills and cliffs, raising riverbeds, and other alterations to the landscape. Used by Mazdamundi to simultaneously bulldoze 2000 kilometers of pathway through the Mochantian jungle (Turn 1).
- Magnitude 2 Mountain - Raise one or several mountains from the earth. Used by Mazdamundi to block dark elf access into Lustria.
- Magnitude 2 Magmatic Canyon - Cracks the ground open down to the mantle for hundreds of kilometers, drawing gouts of magma upward like blood welling from a wound. Used to deny strategic mobility to multiple ork hordes in a crucial feat of maneuvering (Turn 10).
- Magnitude 2 Tornado Swarm - Manipulation of air currents produces dozens of F5+ tornadoes simultaneously. Used to devastate ork territory in the prelude to an invasion (Turn 11).
- Magnitude 2 Teleport - Teleports a city-sized mass across the length of a continent. Used to teleport an aquatic ork attack city on top of another ork army (Turn 12).
- Magnitude 3 Continental Alteration - Alter the shape of continents. Notable examples of use are Mazdamundi's ruination of the Karaz Ankor and (although not caused by the lizardmen) the Sundering of Ulthuan.
- Magnitude 3 Spiritual Kinetic Blast - A tidal wave of Warp energy, transformed into a destructive blast wave with the infusion of geomantic power. Used to temporarily discorporate the Fugue Megadaemon assailing the Sublime Communion at the height of the creature's strength (Turn 5).
- Magnitude 3 Tsunami - A kilometers-high mountain of water, with enough weight and power to temporarily submerge a large portion of a continent. Used to eradicate over 100 million orks from a distant continent (Turn 9).
Additional examples will be listed as the Web grows in strength.
The number of slann assigned to a ritual affect how quickly it 'fires', with the more slann assigned, the less of a charge-up time being a factor. This can be beneficial in situations where outside parties might seek to interrupt the ritual.
Differing from the Old Ones, gods are artificial warp constructs, masses of soul energy shaped by belief and given strength by the devotion of thought and action to their cause by mortal believers. They are capable of independent action within the Warp to a certain degree, and can act to aid their followers and further the propogation of the belief that sustains and empowers them. For mortal races they also serve the function of protecting the souls of their followers from the universal threat of corruption and consumption by the Ruinous Powers. For the lizardmen this is not a concern, but gods can still serve a variety of useful purposes such as bestowing blessings and interceding against hostile warp entities. Thus they are used not as the products and apexes of entire civilizations as with other species, but as specialized tools in their portfolio of warpcraft.
Gods can be mechanically defined by a collection of characteristics, listed here for convenience.
Name: The name of the god, and any titles it may possess. Representation: What symbols the god is represented by. Domains: Which aspects of the universe the god exerts influence upon. The first listed is their primary domain, an aspect of their being unique to their mythos. Their secondary domain is broader, often a method of how they apply their core themes to the actions they perform. Their tertiary domain is the broadest, and commonly denotes what general category of god they are, and what the actions they take can generally be expected to be. Category: What sort of god this is. Categories are extremely broad, often one-word descriptors, such as war, magic, life/death, or excess. Variety: What sort of god within their category this is. If it is a war god, what aspect of war does it focus on? What sort of death does a god within that category bring? Domain: What makes the god unique. This is an aspect of reality that the god claims as their own. It is usually a very specific thing, something that is central to the god's identity and imagery. Methods of Worship: The most ritually synergistic method of worship the god's followers conduct. While any thought, prayer or action taken under their portfolio counts towards empowering a god, the methods listed here are especially potent, and often favored in the god's holy texts. Favored Foes: Most gods have at least one sort of being they and their followers stringently oppose in a manner fitting to their faith. This can range from anything from thieves, the nobility, all the way to entire species. Blessing Thematics: Gods often empower their followers. The thematics listed here provide guidelines for what sort of blessings or miracles the god is capable of enacting. Strength of Cult: This is listed as percentage values for the entirety of the lizardmen subspecies it corresponds to. The higher the percentage, the more lizardmen of that particular subspecies worship that god, and thus the more powerful that god becomes.
The Old Ones are the long-lost creators of the lizardmen. Not even the venerable Mazdamundi ever beheld them in the flesh, and only speculation can say what their corporeal forms would have looked like. Though they have not had contact with them for many millennia, the lizardmen still revere the Old Ones with a fervent devotion that many would mistake for outright worship. While the skinks do occasionally begin legitimate cults devoted to praising the Old Ones as gods, the slaan mage-priests know better - their creators were not such paltry constructs as gods, but far greater beings that do not need or desire worship or adulation to feed themselves. Thus it is that no true cults of the Old Ones exist, and the only effects the long-lost creators of the lizardmen could lay claim to are the blessed spawnings - on occasion, a spawning of lizardmen will emerge from the pools marked by a specific Old One, and bearing talents related to the particular portfolio of that Old One.
Sacred Spawnings are ranked on a scale of 1 to 10 on their degree of rarity, from least to most common. This determines how likely new batches of that spawning are and allows the GM to use this scale as a measure to determine when one will show up in the narrative rather than calculating the exact number of blessed lizardmen for all the different spawn types.
1: Vanishingly Rare - In all likelyhood less than five lizardmen period have ever had this configuration
2: Very Rare
3: Rare
4: Very Uncommon
5: Uncommon
6:
7:
8:
9:
10: Common
Tepok - Associated with magic, lizardmen born blessed by Tepok possess a bright purple coloration, and invariably possess an innate talent for casting spells. Rarity: 1 Chotec - Associated with the sun, lizardmen blessed by Chotec bear orange hides and possess an abundance of energy, making them far more productive than their kin. Rarity: 4 Tlanxla - The uncontested warrior of the Old Ones, lizardmen of Tlanxla have deep red scales and an innate talent for all aspects of war, from combat to command. Rarity: 3 Itzl - Associated with wild beasts, lizardmen blessed by Itzl have great bony crests atop their heads and an inborn ability to command beasts of the jungle. Rarity: 4 Huanchi - An Old One so stealthy that even the Chaos Gods could not find where he hid, Huanchi gives those lizardmen bearing his midnight black color an innate instinct to sneak and ambush. Rarity: 2 Potec - The most serene being, Potec embodies magical protection and grounding. Those bearing his pale blue coloration invariably possess some resistance to hostile magic, and should they be capable of spellcasting, have a talent for defensive magery. Rarity: 2 Tzunki - The Old One associated with water, lizardmen with Tzunki's blessing are colored turquoise and possess numerous minor alterations to better suit them to moving and fighting in the water. Rarity: 3 Quetzl - Known for his protective bent, lizardmen blessed by Quetzl have unusually thick and bony skin and plating, and occasionally display resistance to hostile magic. Rarity: 3 - however, all Temple Guard are blessed by Quetzl. Tlazcotl - Embodying the cold-minded nature of the lizardmen, those blessed by Tlazcotl with his pure white coloration are intensely strong of mind, capable of rebuffing mental attacks by hostile psykers and daemons with nothing but sheer will. They also tend to be incredibly stubborn. Rarity: 2 Xhotl - Much like the city bearing his name, Xhotl is associated with destiny and fate. Those bearing his deep blue coloration are either skilled diviners or possessed of a destiny which will lead them to greatness. Rarity: 2
Each turn currently lasts 10 years, and is divided into relatively few phases: the main turn is essentially the same as most Warhammer CKII-type quests on this board, though structured a little differently - more on that below - and sub-turns are things that require a character's more personal attention - War Turns, Stealth Turns, Diplomacy Turns, etc. These take place from the viewpoint of a single character and last varying amounts of time, though always less than a main turn.
Actions taken within a turn work thusly: Each temple-city has a number of actions equal to its infrastructure level or the magnitude of the geomantic web, whichever is lower. If Hexoatl is level 4 and the Web is Mag 3, for instance, Hexoatl will have three actions. They don't have to take up to the max number of actions per turn - if a city with 5 actions only takes 1 in a turn, that action will be completed considerably faster/to a higher degree. There is no waste among the lizardmen.
Hero units are able to take one action a turn. They may boost an existing action or perform one independently; some actions are only performable by certain hero units. Not all hero units have to be assigned an action - if left unassigned, a hero unit will remain in their current city and defend it if attacked. They will not take action independently.
Research works like this: Every turn you will be presented with a list of projects and a varying number of slaan depending on how many resist the curse for the turn. You may assign however many slaan you wish to as many projects as you wish. However, more slaan working on the same project will complete it faster, and is likely more reliable given the inconsistent supply of them. Slaan of older generations will progress research 5 times faster than the generation below them. The ratio is as follows:
1 Fourth Gen = 5 Fifth Gen
1 Third Gen = 5 Fourth Gen = 25 Fifth Gen
1 Second Gen = 5 Third Gen = 25 Fourth Gen = 125 Fifth Gen
1 First Gen = 5 Second Gen = 25 Third Gen = 125 Fourth Gen = 625 Fifth Gen
Research projects are organized into abstracted levels of difficulty thusly, with the numbers representing the collective level of 5th generation slannpower needed to complete each one:
Very Easy - 5
Easy - 25
Moderate - 50
Hard - 150
Very Hard - 450
Absurd - 1000
Impossible - 2500
You may also assign slaan to conventional options, and some require the presence of a mage-priest. This will result in the slaan taking the lead of the project, except if a hero unit is there, and lending their immense magical might to the aid of their brethren. This can be very powerful in war actions.
[] Plan Xan
Itza: Pimp Out Slann Temples
Hexoatl: Build Giant Magnifying Glass
Tlaxtlan: Launch Telescope Into Orbit
Xlanhuapec: Enormous Fog Machine
Mazdamundi: This Continent Annoys Me
Kroq-Gar: Flatten Peons With Carnosaur
Tiktaq'to: Zoom Zoom Swoop Zoom
Teninhuan: Tablet of Sotek
Chakax: Train
Research:
Consult Relic Priests: 37 fifth gen
Examine Mind Fog: 4 third gen, 10 fourth gen, 26 fifth gen
Examine Tablet of Sotek: Teninhuan, 2 fifth gen
Enemy presence in the area of a city is noted in order of increasing concentration thusly:
The scale will be expanded if you somehow end up having more than a hundred million enemies hanging around a single city.
Higher enemy presence is generally a bad thing, since it usually means more frequent attacks or attempts to otherwise crew with your affairs by said enemy. This is only indicative of 'passive' enemy presence, and not active attacking forces.
The lizardmen are unlike most species in that they do not reproduce, not even in the fungoid manner of the Orks. Instead they are birthed from sacred spawning pools housed in the innermost catacombs of their cities. These pools periodically disgorge whole groups of lizardmen. On Mallus this process was subject to the mysterious timetable of the Old Ones; now it is governed by other principles, and the spawning of lizardmen is more regular. The base spawn rate for a level 1 city is as follows:
5,000 Saurus per turn
10,000 Skinks per turn
1,000 Kroxigor per turn
Slaan are no longer spawned
These numbers increase per increased city level - a level 2 city will spawn 10,000 Saurus per turn, a level three 15,000, and so on. This happens regardless of the level of the geomantic web, to represent additional spawning pools being created.
As the geomantic web increases in strength, so do the frequency of spawnings - a level 2 Web will cause all cities to spawn twice per year, effectively doubling the base spawn rate from 5k/10k/1k to 10k/20k/2k. This increases to three times per year at level 3, four times per year at level 4, and so on. Research into the nature of the spawning pools may unlock further enhancements.
Each level of city has a soft population cap that once hit will cause the pop growth in those cities to go to other cities that are empty, or until that city falls under the cap again. This is primarily for my aesthetic enjoyment of nice even numbers, but also has a fair amount of thematic connection to the lizardmen. The caps go like this:
Level 1 City: 50k Saurus, 100k Skinks, 10k Kroxigor
Level 2 City: 500k Saurus, 1m Skinks, 100k Kroxigor
Level 3 City: 2.5m Saurus, 5m Skinks, 500k Kroxigor
Level 4 City: 6.25m Saurus, 12.5m Skinks, 1.25m Kroxigor
Level 5 City: 12.5m Saurus, 25m Skinks, 2.5m Kroxigor
Slann may be dedicated to spawn lizardmen during a turn. The base amount of each type the differing generations of slann can spawn per turn are as follows:
5th Generation: 1,000 saurus, 2,000 skinks, and 200 kroxigor per slann
4th Generation: 5,000 saurus,10,000 skinks, and 1,000 kroxigor per slann
3rd Generation: 25,000 saurus, 50,000 skinks, and 5,000 kroxigor per slann
2nd Generation: 125,000 saurus, 250,000 skinks, and 25,000 kroxigor per slann
1st Generation: 625,000 saurus, 1,250,000 skinks, and 125,000 kroxigor per slann
However, this rate is affected by the Geomantic Web's multipliers to regular spawning - Magnitude 3 would multiply these figures by 3, for instance.
It is also possible to focus on a specific breed of lizardmen - consult this post for more information.
In addition, each slann passively spawns 1/100th of its capacity in lizardmen per turn - a 5th generation would thus spawn 10 saurus, 20 skinks, and 2 kroxigor per turn at Web Magnitude 1, 20/40/4 at Magnitude 2, and so on.
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The slaan are afflicted by a curse of the mind designed by the personal attention of the Ruinous Powers, a cloying mental fog that traps them in skeins of muddied thought without them ever realizing they have been trapped. It affects them in the following proportions.
Each turn a d100 is rolled for each generation of slaan with living members, save for the player character. The percentage of the generation is the minimum strength of the curse, and thus the minimum number of slaan within that generation that will be asleep for the turn. The d100 decides how many slaan will be able to shake off the curse for the turn. Example:
500 alive 5th gens x 0.4 = 200
1d100 = 20
200 x 0.2 = 40 active 5th generation slaan
Afflicted slaan are not capable of doing anything save for passively defending their minds from hostile intrusion.
The last surviving saurus from the lost temple-city of Xhotl, Kroq-Gar has been fighting against the enemies of the lizardmen for over 8000 years. Ever since Mazdamundi's awakening, Kroq-Gar has been the leader of his armies and the executor of his will, riding atop his fearsome carnosaur Grymloq. Saurus only grow more formidable as they age, and Kroq-Gar has been fighting against a large variety of foes for a very long time. His hard-won experience supplements his inborn instincts as a saurus, granting him great prowess at both commanding entire armies and riding down hapless foes from the back of a ten ton lizard.
Traits: Ancient Saurus: Kroq-Gar was spawned before the Great Catastrophe swamped Lustria in daemons, and has been fighting ever since. Over eight thousand years of combat and leadership experience has made Kroq-Gar into a military virtuoso, who excels in the role of command even compared to Saurus Oldbloods. Additionally, his ferocity in combat has only grown throughout the years, and has proven the end of many a foe, from Ork Warbosses to ancient Daemon Lords.
Carnosaur Rider: Born and bred to hold dominion over the beasts of the Lustrian jungle, Kroq-Gar has done his best work from the back of a carnosaur. He enjoys significant bonuses to personal and group combat when riding theropod beasts, and is highly adept at warfare suited to the ultraheavy cavalry they are. Even on an armywide scale, he is able to impart some of the speed of his chosen mount, moving entire hosts around incredibly quickly on the strategic and tactical levels.
Xhotl-Spawned: Xhotl was the City of Heroes, and Kroq-Gar is no exception. He is naturally more formidable than his younger kindred (accounting for age), and possesses a general bonus to all his actions, particularly regarding dueling enemy leaders and champions. The fact that he considers trampling a foe with a carnosaur a duel is merely a technicality.
Equipment: Revered Spear of Tlanxla: Supposedly wielded by the Old One Tlanxla as he went to battle aboard his sky chariot, this ancient spear hums with hidden power. Its attacks deal magical damage, and it has the special ability of striking a target with doom-laden visions, destroying their will to fight. This may be targeted at anything up to entire units of enemy infantry, making it an excellent tool for shattering morale in key spots on the battlefield.
Hand of the Gods: An ancient piece of magitek gifted to Kroq-Gar by Mazdamundi, the Hand of the Gods is a metallic gauntlet humming with searing magical energy. Kroq-Gar can use the gauntlet's energy to launch a bolt of incandescent energy at a target that explodes upon impact, or grasp onto an enemy and messily detonate whatever part of theirs is in his fist.
Grymloq: The twelfth carnosaur Kroq-Gar has claimed as a mount throughout his long life, Grymloq is a fearsome specimen even for a carnosaur, much like his master compared to other saurus.
Kroq-Gar is best suited for military actions, and cannot assist in actions that have to do with building things. Consult GM if unsure when assigning him.
Chakax, Eternity Warden of Xlanhuapec
Part of the elite pedigree of saurus known as the Temple Guard, Chakax has guarded the Mage Priests of the Lizardmen for over six thousand years. Spawned in Xlanhuapec, he rose to the position of Eternity Warden, charged with protecting the Slaan in their Eternity Chambers, during their most vulnerable moments where they block out the material realm in deepest contemplation. Eternity Wardens are rare, and Chakax has proved the greatest living example of them. Not a single Slaan under his vigil has fallen from the intrepid Fifth Generations to his supreme master in the Second Generation, Lord Chaacalot. Whether in the jungle or in the depths of the temples, alone or aided, Chakax has slaughtered thousands that dared to approach his charge with hostile intent, from Daemon Princes to Skaven Deathmasters to whole Ork bands. A quiet sort even for the Temple Guard, he kills and moves with a cold intensity, a near emotionless embodiment of the Lizardmen race's dedication to their Slaan masters.
Traits:
Ancient Guardian: Chakax is not the eldest of Saurus, but he is still a venerable Oldblood who has lived through the passing of whole civilizations. As a Saurus, time has been kind to him, and over six millennia of life and service have seen his warlike instinct focused to near unrivaled precision, and his scales hardened to rival the great primordial lizards of the land and sky, with skill bolstered by raw experience that surpasses many lifetimes of younger races.
Eternal Warden: Even among the small ranks of the Eternity Wardens, Chakax stands out. Temple Guard are among the greatest bodyguard units in existence, hyper-vigilant saurus with extremely keen senses and awareness, instinctive experts of defensive positioning and formations capable of mechanically precise movements and statuesque immobility that gives the impression of them being more machine than biological. Whole centuries and layers of dust can come and go without the Temple Guard stirring, but the very concept of distraction is unknown to them, be it mundane or arcane. Normal Saurus are frightening, Temple Guard mesh warlike ferocity and supreme guardianship to become terrifying in their single-minded vigilance. The Eternity Wardens are the greatest individuals of the Temple Guard, natural ability meshing with the necessity of fighting alone to produce individually supreme warriors. And Chakax, the Eternal Warden, is the greatest of them.
An Existence Defined by Vigilance: Temple Guard and Eternity Wardens are unusual in character for Saurus, born and living lives dedicated to guarding the lynchpins of their race. Chakax is unusual even for them, sheer age and focus leading to a reality where individuality is eschewed in favor of service. Every thought, every twitch, is based on how it might advance his cause of guardianship. His mind races between potential threats and possibilities that might affect the Slaan under his charge, every inch of movement is carried out in the interest of even a fractionally greater percentage of vigilance. This ridiculous focus has made him somewhat blind to more innovative methods and actions, even those that might better protect his masters as such actions would involve a present decrease in protective efficiency, but has turned him into perhaps the single greatest duelist and individual fighter among the living Saurus.
Equipment:
Star-Stone Mace: An enormous, double-handed mace older than the oldest Temple-City with lost magics and materials beyond earthly and spiritual understanding. Chakax has wielded it for most of his life, and all enchantments and psychic resonances are unmade at its touch. It has the special property of nullifying magical enchantments of items it strikes, and itself counts as dealing psychic damage when advantageous to do so.
Helm of the Prime Guardian: In the primordial times when the Saurus legions purged Mallus of monstrous races and creatures that are nightmarish even to the current age, the first of all Temple Guard, the Guardian of Origins, was spawned to guard the Slaan from these horrors. An individual that faced the worst of the Old World's terrors for the sake of protecting his masters, his spirit, though long dead, lingers and heightens Chakax's already phenomenal senses to outright supernatural capabilities. Beyond the increase in his regular senses and serving as excellent armor, even arcane shrouds and disguises are pierced by the exalted vigilance of the Guardian of Origin's successor, while regular stealth techniques even utilized by grandmasters are reduced to the fumbling of drunken oafs before the eyes and ears of the Eternal Warden.
Eternity Chamber Key: The Eternity Chamber of Xlanhuapec is not only guarded by the muscle of the Temple Guard, but also intricate wards and arcane defenses, all of which can be bypassed with a special key. Such a key is granted only to the one allowed to guard the Slaan at their most vulnerable as the last line of defense, and the mystical effects of the key are clear. Saurus are not innately specialized in agile movements, but the Key affects time itself around its wielder, allowing one to match lighting-swift foes through temporal distortion and dodge blows with effectively precognitive awareness from the distorted passage of time.
Chakax is best suited for protecting specific individuals or things, and may be assigned to any military-focused action, though he functions best with leadership to give him direction. Consult with GM if unsure when assigning him.
Skinks:
Teninhuan, Prophet of Sotek
Born in the lost Temple-City of Chaqua, Teninhuan was, like many of that city, a Skink with a red crest atop his head. When the plagues of Clan Pestilens spread virulently and laid low Chaqua, Teninhuan was afflicted with visions of a coming god and led the population, predominantly Skinks, in a great migration out of the city. For years Teninhuan and his followers preached of the coming god, Sotek, a god of serpents and war, and were at the forefront of the conflict against the rat plague. At last, as the plaques Teninhuan had taken foretold, the Serpent God was born after uncountable thousands of bloody Skaven sacrifices, instilling might in the battling Lizardmen and terror in the ratkin. The Prophet of Sotek, his dream realized at last, led the Red Host and their allies to drive the Skaven out of Lustria. A strong warrior for a Skink and a highly capable mage, Teninhuan predominatly favors harmony with the bestial side of life, and instilling savage and primal spirit unto himself and others. Despite the many centuries since the War of the Rat, Teninhuan persists, an enemy of chaotic and foul life and the supreme nemesis of the Skaven.
Traits:
The Prophet of Sotek: Supremely blessed by Sotek, the Prophet wields the savage miracles of the Serpent God in their arcane forms. Serpentkind flocks to him, to the point that in battle the ground appears to be alive with slithering, hissing life. Even higher intelligence and arcane creatures related to the snake pay homage to him and offer aid in battle and out. Bloody slaughter rejuvenates him and his followers, and instills the instinctive fear all creatures born of the wild have of the serpent in its deadly form. While rodents and other ratkin are those predominantly fearful of him and his deity and useful as sacrifices, the more bestial races and those aligned to Chaos are a close second. Sotek's protection hangs low on his scaly shoulders, and blows are often deflected by unseen forces or dodged with precognitive aid from divine visions. Poisons, even the terrible kind employed by Warp entities and the Daemons of Chaos, have no effect on him.
The Shed Skin: Teninhuan, or at least, the Prophet of Sotek that arose from Chaqua and ensured the birth of the Serpent God, may or may not have died long ago. But he still exists regardless. Just as a serpent sheds its skin and renewed, Sotek's Chosen emerges in the form of another red-crested Skink Priest appearing seemingly from nowhere. Death is no obstacle to the continued legend of the Prophet of Sotek. If there exists a way to sever this form of reincarnation, it has not been discovered in over twenty-five hundred years of brutal war.
Striking Serpent: Though Skinks and their Chieftains and Priests fulfill many of the leadership and administrative duties not requiring the direct attention of the Slaan most of the time, they are not predisposed towards war and commanding armies. Teninhuan however proved a very able leader from the beginning in the first century long war against the Skaven, and has honed his skill in successive reincarnations. Though there are many Oldbloods that can call themselves his equal or superior, Teninhuan is still quite capable and bolsters his command abilities with innovative and unorthodox tactics outside the prerogative of most, though not all, Saurus. He favors and excels at stealth attacks and warfare in dense battlefields like ruins and jungles, maneuvering whole armies out of sight and sound of the enemy, while perceiving and striking at critical points where devastating damage might be dealt to a whole enemy legion. The pincer assault is a favored maneuver, and one the Prophet has utilized many times to great success.
Beckoner of the Divine: Teninhuan counts as 10 slann for the purposes of researching any project that is related to Sotek or general divine interactions.
Equipment:
Blade of the Serpent's Tongue: A sacrificial dagger crafted and enchanted by the most skilled Skink artificers of Chaqua, it is blessed by Serpent God, perpetually dripping a terribly deadly poison said to come from Sotek's fangs themselves.
Plaque of Sotek: A direct sign of Sotek's favor, the Old One plaque retrieved from Chaqua is inscribed with the mysterious Prophecy of Sotek. Only Teninhuan and the most favored by Sotek may read it in its entirety, and it serves as a link between the Serpent God and his Prophet, allowing communion and understanding. To those who favor or serve Sotek, is as much a source of strength and inspiration as his Chosen.
Teninhuan is a talented general and may also research divine-oriented projects. Consult with GM if unsure when assigning him.
Tiktaq'to, Master of Skies
When Mazdamundi set forth to begin his attempts to restore the proper order to the world in the years before the End Times, he did so with several capable lieutenants. One of them was Kroq-Gar, greatest of all Saurus generals, and another was Tiktaq'to, Master of Skies. The Master of Skies is a preeminent position among Skink Chiefs, holding command over all aerial affairs, and Tiktaq'to was almost literally born for the position. Like Kroq-Gar he bonded with a species of bestial steeds quickly, in his case the Terradons. Unlike many of the leaders and generals of the Lizardmen Tiktaq'to is comparatively young, but his natural aptitude towards flying was apparent in the very first flight he took, where his ability to guide and control the particularly fierce Zwup outshone those centuries his senior.
Unusually given to martial matters in both ability and personality, the Skink spends much of his time in the air, maintaining a constant vigilance. His personal hand in the breeding and raising of Terradon and Razordon flocks has seen those of Hexoatl become increasingly able to work with their Skink riders, as well as physically more capable when it comes to endurance. When not in the air, he is often spending time among his subordinates or the flights of skybeasts under his command. He prefers high places, and often rests among in mountain caves and tall jungle canopies, or the pens of the Terradons and Razordons. He is a restless soul when active even for Skinks, but finds a sort of tranquility the higher up he is, or simply atop Zqup's back, even in the harsh midst of combat.
Traits:
Master of Skies: There are those who are born in circumstances they do not belong. Many would say that is true of Tiktaq'to, and that he should have been born one of the Terradons he so favors. The air is as much home to him as the ground, perhaps even moreso, and whether it beast or aircraft, his comprehension of aerial tactics and dogfighting is as natural as breathing. All aspects of the air, be it direct combat, formation maneuver, strategy, unit-tactics, even his instincts are understood, analyzed, and turned into a guided symphony of which he is the conductor. He has an instinctive level of skill in all levels of flight-based warfare regardless of the technology employed, from Terradon to spacecraft, though he is most talented at commanding strikecraft equivalents.
Equipment:
Blade of Ancient Skies: In the times before the Great Cataclysm, when the Lizardmen first appeared on Mallus, terrible and mighty creatures roamed every level of the planet. Among those were great monsters of the sky, and like many others they were exterminated or driven into hiding by the Saurus legions and their Slaan overlords. One of those creatures was later found dead and buried in Lustria thousands of years later, fossilized. Its dense jawbone was carved into a curved blade bristling with jagged-edged tips and enchanted, granting it enough sturdiness and cutting power to allow Tiktaq'to to use it in flyby attacks without fear of it breaking or being wrenched from his hand.
Mask of Heavens: With enough discipline, training, and honing of instincts and senses, units can maneuver and act together with near mechanical efficiency and precision. Though they are beasts, Terradons and Ripperdactyl find themselves reacting under their Skink riders' orders as if they were veteran soldiers when led by Tiktaq'to. The Mask of Heavens takes that even further. An heirloom from a time when the Old Ones still guided the Great Plan in person, the mask allows its wearer to meld his mind and consciousness with beings of the air. When utilized by Tiktaq'to, the aerial forces under his command are more like a single entity than a group, maneuvered as if by gods looking down on the battlefield from above, nudging and pushing them precisely where needed in feats of micromanaging capable of competing with advanced AIs and cogitators.
Zwup: A particularly fierce Terradon and the first met by Tiktaq'to when he took to the air, he has carried the Master of Skies for many decades, bolstered by innate vitality, especially good caretaking, and an arcane connection to his master. Capable of flying higher than any other Terradon or Ripperdactyl, he is as much a warrior as the Master of Skies, skilled in maneuvering and attacking even without Tiktaq'to's lead.
Tiktaq'to is best suited for military actions, and cannot assist in actions that have to do with building things. Consult GM if unsure when assigning him.
Awanabil'tat, Elder Architect
An ancient skink architect hailing from the lost city of Zlatlan, Awanabil'tat's story stretches over many thousands of years, all of which he has spent honing his inborn talent for construction. He has even ventured into realms thought inaccessible for his kind, gaining proficiency in geomantic construction though he lacks any magical talent save for the enchantment laid upon him by his slann master.
Traits:
Ancient Builder: Awanabil'tat is an engineer and builder of infrastructure with a natural talent that has only been honed over thousands of years. Such is his mastery of spatial reasoning and architectural principles that he has taken steps towards understanding the workings of geomancy, ordinarily the sole provenance of the slann. He will greatly aid any infastructural effort he is assigned to, and has an affinity towards researching topics in his areas of expertise.
Combat Engineer: Any lizardman as old as Awanabil'tat has made their way through their fair share of life-threatening situations, and the elder builder is no different. He is somewhat competent in a fight, and very skilled at setting up defensive fortifications and other related temporary structures on a very fast timescale.
Equipment:
Hissing Staff: A bronze-gold staff bearing alternating ventral patterns with a serpent's head and tongue at the end, this staff allows Awanabil'tat to examine the geomantic workings of any structure he embeds it in. Furthermore, it can store small amounts of ambient magic in the serpent's head, and can expel these as beams of energy out of the eye gems of the snake. It also lets him tap slightly into the geomantic energies present in the earth if firmly rooted in the ground, though this is a slow and taxing feat to enact.
Awanabil'tat is best suited for actions that have to do with building, and counts for 5 slannpower if researching infrastructure projects. He is also capable of leading military forces. Consult with GM if unsure when assigning him.
Kroxigor:
Krom'tli, Herald of Ayotzl
A massive kroxigor with bone-white scales and eyes the color of the void, Krom'tli presents a figure akin to a freshly-carved statue, his movements always calm and deliberate, and his demeanour more relaxed and observant than his ordinary kin. His scales are perpetually beaded with a thin coating of dew, a sign of the Mist-Swimmer's favor, and he is far more articulate than an ordinary kroxigor, able to hold a reasoned discussion with even the eldest of skink priests. No one save the slann who crafted his god are sure of his origin, but a common guess is that he was once a casualty of an Ayacmanik incursion, brought back to life by Ayotzl to serve as his messenger on the mortal plane.
Traits:
Herald of Ayotzl: Krom'tli is the voice of Ayotzl in the mortal realm, and speaks with the voice of his master. A cloak of fog and shroud of silence billow around him, and he is able to command the miracles of the Mist Swimmer with unparalleled potency. He can forestall death in mortally wounded allies or pronounce its inevitability in his foes, breaking their wills with existential revelation. With his touch he can take away pain, and he can cast forth clouds of mist that blind and paralyze his foes. In times of greatest need, he calls to the souls held within his god's shell, beseeching them to return to the mortal world for a time as spectral warriors immune to material weaponry.
Flesh of Mist: The being that was Krom'tli died a long time ago. His presence now is only a sojourn back to mortality, one he shall one day return from. Krom'tli's flesh is made of solidified mist taken from Ayotzl's realm, rendering him extremely difficult to damage with non-magical weaponry. If his bodily form is destroyed, he will simply reform elsewhere, stepping froth from the mists whole once more. Without directly attacking the realm of souls he hails from, he cannot be permanently destroyed.
World-Spanning Shelter: Krom'tli is not innately skilled in the art of warfare, but his powers do provide unique benefits. Ayotzl grants him visions of death that he may consider to determine which course of action is likely to lead to fewer fatalities. He and his priests may belay the death of severely injured lizardmen by wrapping them in a fog that induces a sort of stasis, allowing armies to reduce their casualty rates. Lastly, while he and his god are in no hurry to bring about the end, Krom'tli is an experienced hand at what causes it - at a glance he may size up an enemy force and discern the most probable way to slay them, if not necessarily the most effective.
Beckoner of the Divine: Krom'tli counts as 10 slann for the purposes of researching any project that is related to Ayotzl or general divine interactions.
Equipment:
Guiding Oar: Said to be crafted in the shape of Ayotzl's own flippers, this massive oar is a smooth, unbroken length of bone nearly twenty feet in length. Mist perpetually swirls about its edges, and Krom'tli can conjure up great walls of the stuff with a single sweep.
Shell of Slumber: A great shell of stone worked to resemble that of a turtle, it is Krom'tli's holy symbol even more than his oar, for it represents the world-shell that great Ayotzl shelters the souls of the lizardmen within. Aside from serving to protect the prophet's back with its bulk, it also functions as a focus for channeling Ayotzl's miracles, and it seems to radiate an aura of quiet.
[X] ??? - It is impossible to tell. Everywhere there is war of a scale never seen, as all the inhabitants of the world battle for not only their lives, but their very fates. Human, elf, dwarf, ogre, greenskin, undead, skaven, halfling, ancient monster, and daemon, all battle against the forces that seek to destroy their destinies. Ulthuan battles against Naagaroth as the Witch-King seeks to finally realize his ambitions, the Old World fights a desperate battle against the Everchosen and all the might of Chaos, undead legions clash in the Southlands, the Ogre Kingdoms scrap with ancient beasts awakened by the storm, the dawi zharr fight a grinding battle against one of the largest hordes of orks the world has ever seen, the skaven are everywhere looking for opportunities to exploit, and in the east, Cathay deals with all of these problems and the issue of their populace being increasingly corrupted by the Changer of Ways. Even as the saurus fight off hordes of daemons and daemongors cascading from the southern Chaos Wastes and the Cult of Pleasure of the druuchi, now given fully over to Slaanesh, from the north, the skaven clan Pestilens boils up from underground in its grotesque multitudes, the undead of the Vampire Coast commit to a serious offensive against the nearby temple-city of Huatl, the Scar of Xahutec vomits forth legions of warpspawn as it did in times past, and dozens of ork warbands blunder into the jungles, their primitive instincts drawn to the many raging battles. In the midst of this chaos, the slaan peer into the mists of fate and find them a nigh-incomprehensible storm, as multiple competing destinies fight for the fate of the world and all in it. It is impossible to tell who will come out on top, and perhaps in that unmitigated chaos there is opportunity...
[Unknown casualties during evacuation, unlocks additional options]
The Chaos Moon loomed large in the skies over Lustria, as it had for months now. Its evil radiance shone down into the jungles below, piercing through the dense canopy to illuminate the carnage below in primal green light, the corruptive magic given off by its presence seeping into all it touched, twisting and changing both flora and fauna at the most intimate level. Overnight beastmen troupes gestated, grown from the mutated forms of those few mammals that managed to survive within Lustria's jungles. As their musculature swelled and twisted horns sprouted from their foreheads, their souls were infused with a powerful, overriding hatred by the dark gods who owned them, and their baying forms, now a far cry from their original selves, stampeded into the night, hooting and hollering at the prospect of tearing down their ancient enemy. They were but one ingredient in the cauldron of strife that the continent had become in recent times.
The slaan had sensed the danger first. Lord Mazdamundi's keen ethereal senses detected something just south of the chaos wastes, on a mountain that straddled the gap between the mortal and divine. A great surge of dhar conglomerated around the slopes of the mountain, and hordes of neverborn gathered in its spiritual vicinity, cavorting with glee in the manner of their kind. Knowing such omens to be potentially disastrous, the Lord of Sunlight called a great many of his lesser kin to his side and soared to the mountain with them in tow, the concentrated force of their spirits unmaking lesser daemons that dared cross their path. There they struck great blows against the unsuspecting hosts of daemons, and after a great struggle, scattered them to the far corners of the aethyr. With the daemons banished they could see the subject of the neverborn's curiosity - a lone human, walking unsteadily up the mountainside. Corrupted strands of fate swam thick around his form, coiling around his limbs and throat with a binding grip. Knowing immediately that if the warmblood were allowed to reach the peak of the mountain, calamity would befall the world, Mazdamundi communed with his underlings and channeled their combined power into vast rays of invisible force that seared toward the human's vulnerable form. They were immediately met with opposition; the attention of the Ruinous Powers was focused on this moment and they beset the slaan with further hosts of daemons born from their ire, and the lesser slaan were forced to break off their effort in order to defend their elder. Mazdamundi alone perservered, blasting instead at the coils of fate binding the mortal's limbs with all the power he had at his disposal, causing his corporeal form to twitch and grimace in concentration. He was aided by other powers, conglomerations of the thoughts of mortals that had taken on the forms their followers thought of them. Golden hammer, frost-tipped claws, hundred-handed swords, a host of gods from across the world railed against the Powers of Chaos. After what seemed an aeon, the chains of fate had been struck from the mortal's form, and the slaan viewed their moment in exhausted satisfaction. The manipulation of the dark gods had been thwarted, and the world had been saved.
The mortal took a step forward, of his own free will, and Mazdamundi's heart was flooded with confusion and shock. His concentration wavered, and a great flood of primordial triumph flooded across the immaterium, throwing the exhasted slaan back to their bodies. Mazdamundi's ears were soon filled with the concerned chittering of his skink attendants, who fretted over his health even as the cries of the other slaan washed across his body and soul, asking for assistance as the Chaos Wastes bulged and swelled with dark power, and reporting the erratic presence of the Warpstone Moon growing disturbingly close to the planet. Mazdamundi could feel its foul aura crackling on his skin even then, and knew with a glum inevitability that the Ruinous Powers had won in that moment. The four gods had, for the moment, unity, and his own elders that had faced against the combined might of the gods in ages past were all dead. The End Times had come.
Soon afterwards the dark powers made their move. Even as the Sublime Communion attempted to hold off the encroaching presence of the Chaos Moon, which dampened their concentration and ability to work magic effectively, the Scar of Xahutec tore itself open, vomiting forth legions of daemons affiliated with both the Changer of Ways and the Blood God. Resources were diverted from nearby temple-cities to stem the incursion even as the daemons began parasitizing off of the geomantic web, draining its power to maintain their presence. They were soon met by the full fury of the lizardmen, great hosts of saurus, skinks, and kroxigor headed by Tetto'eko, the venerated skink priest of Tlaxtlan, who brought with him a great contingent of one hundred other skink priests, to supply magical support against the neverborn while the slaan held back the emerald moon.
Guttural roars were issued and echoed on both sides as battle was joined. The saurus fought under the protection of a great line of bastilodons bearing Engines of the Gods, which thrummed and glowed in eerie colors as they held back the tainted magic in the air. The khornate contingent of the daemonic host gladly charged such a target, and were met by the immortal fury of the saurus bolstered by the amber magic channeled by fifty skink priests. Midnight blades bit deep into scaled flesh only to be countered by obsinite axes and hulking jaws, which ripped and tore and ruined daemonic essence as they had been born to do. Here and there Bloodthirsters joined the fray as the lizardmen advanced upon the tainted temple-city, ripping through ordered battle lines with savage ease before becoming locked in combat with saurus oldbloods, gnarled beasts who had seen many such foes and lived to tell the tale. Tetto'eko and his brethren who wielded Azyr conducted a grand duel against the nine Lords of Change who stepped forth from the Scar, each individually more than a match for any skink priest but not against the combined efforts of fifty-one, who smote them with lightning and wind and stellar debris.
As the battle at Xahutec ground onward, neither side tiring nor wavering in morale, other threats made themselves known to the Children of the Old Ones. Great hosts of dragon ogres awoke in crackling storm across the length of the Spine of Sotek, and plunged into the jungle swollen with electricity, the storm seeming to follow them, and only growing more intense the more they fought. From the north came a great fleet of degenerate elves, sworn wholly to the Prince of Pleasure and swollen with the power of the Warp. Carrying a great many dark sorceresses in their ranks, headed by a monstrously powerful specimen calling herself Morathi, the dark elves struck at Hexoatl and the surrounding areas in a great wave of perfumed raids, headed by tides of daemons summoned from their Black Arks. They sought to corrupt and loot for themselves the manifold treasures the lizardmen protected, and Kroq-gar was hard-pressed to catch most of their forces, let alone bring them to battle, even as the druuchi sorceresses tore open more and more warp rifts at auspicious sites. In the south, a gargantuan bridge of moaning flesh stretched grotesquely from the southern chaos wastes to Lustria's southernmost tip, allowing an endless horde of daemongors, beastmen that had bred with the children of their gods, onto the continent. Available force to stop their advance was limited, and they spread north like a tide of bile, daemons of all four gods amongst their ranks. They warred not only against the lizardmen, but against Lustria itself, the jungle raging against their existence with every step they took. Vines ensnared their limbs, countless venomous creatures and biting insects assaulted their tainted flesh, and the deadly predators of Lustria reacted to their presence as they would an incessant itch: they tore it out, shining fangs and snapping jaws becoming the end of many a careless gor.
As their homes erupted in warfare, the slaan struggled mightily against the encroachment of the Chaos Moon, their concentration so intense that they were totally unaware of when their temples were forced to be evacuated, their servants carrying their heavy palanquins out by hand and guarding their mystic forms with their lives. But though the slaan threw their whole being into the fight, they were powerless to stop the Chaos Moon, for the curse the Ruinous Powers had placed upon their kind long ago had intensified, and nearly all of their number were trapped in a cloying slumber. Bolstered by the combined power of 99 Lords of Change summoned across the globe, the Chaos Moon loomed large over Lustria, surpressing the powers of the slaan and dampening the geomantic web with its corrosive aura. Despite all this, the lizardmen were holding. Wandering ork warbands washed ashore by the dozen, the undead inhabitants of the Vampire Coast beseiged Huatl, and the tides of the Enemy grew stronger by the day, but by the strength of scale and fang, the continent was being held.
And then the skaven erupted from below cursed Quetza, and everything changed.
The ratmen had been bitter foes of the lizardmen for many centuries, but their principal weakness had always been their inherent disunity. Each skaven thought of themselves as better than the others, and perpetually schemed to achieve power over the rest of their kin. They would betray each other at the first opportunity, and so though their loathsome numbers made them a threat, they could never achieve the horrors they were capable of if they cooperated. Not so now - the vermintide that rose from Quetza's underbelly was comprised of a mix of their horrid clans, hosting not only the plague-clad machinery the lizardmen had encountered before, but other vile things, different aspects of their wretched ingenuity: crackling machines filled with warp-lightning, legions of bloated monsters stiched and stapled together, cohorts of assassins that wove shadows around their fur to hide themselves, and above all, endless numbers of skaven footsoldiers, armed and armored uniformly and marching with discipline in their spines. This was no mere clan seizing an opportunity they had spied - this was the full might of the Skaven Under-Empire, a world power realized only by the intervention of the divine, the youngest race rising up to crush the oldest.
Itza was beseiged, as was Xlanhuapec, its coiling mists availing nothing against the sheer numbers of the Vermintide. The armies of the two cities, retaining bitter memories of fighting skaven from their last incursion centuries ago, surged against the legions of ratmen, tearing into their frenzied masses with inborn instinct. Nakai the Wanderer made an appearance at Itza, holding a vital chokepoint alone against fifty thousand stormvermin and coming out with merely scratches, while Chakax, Xlanhuapec's Eternity Warden, foiled the assassination attempts of more than a hundred master Eshin Assassins, his keen eye and brutal halberd quickly becoming the end of even the best of the skaven. But in attacking the centerpoint of the lizardmen defences, the skaven had created a weakness that all their other enemies did not hesitate to exploit. Ork Waaagh!!!s formed in the jungle, crashing against numerous sacred sites. More and more daemons were summoned as the forces of chaos crashed against Lustria from both north and south, and the storm that accompanied the dragon ogres grew intense enough to rip trees out of the ground, the beasts growing so empowered by lightning that they were able to triumph against an entire herd of Thunder Lizards. Little by little, the toll was taken upon the lizardmen, and they were pushed out of their less defensible sites, forced to retreat back to the four temple-cities that still possessed their full defensive capabilities - Itza, Hexoatl, Xlanhuapec, and Tlaxtlan. The power of the geomantic web grew weak as the forces of disorder looted and pillaged architecture that had stood for over ten thousand years, and as the storm of chaos raged ever more intensely, the slaan awoke from their meditations, now useless.
Mazdamundi and the other four remaining second generation slaan - Chaacalot of Xlanuapec, Zaqunda of Itza, Adohi-Tegha of Tlaxtlan and Huintenuchli whos city had been lost - surveyed Lustria with their astral forms and found no hope. Daemons cavorted over the continent as they had in the Great Catastrophe, the skaven horde grew larger by the day as more ratmen emerged from under Quetza, and the bulk of the daemongor horde was but a few days travel from the walls of Itza. The Great Plan had failed, Mazdamundi proclaimed, his heart heavy with despair. There was nothing left to do but take as many of the enemy with them as possible. His thoughts rippled throughout the Sublime Communion, and all agreed - offense was impossible, defence untenable. This was the end of their kind.
In the quiet that pervaded the linking of minds, one voice spoke. It was almost impossible to hear over the tumultuous roars of the winds of magic, withered as it was from immense age and disuse. At first it was thought to be the stray thoughts of a sleeping fifth generation, but as it continued to speak it gained volume, quickly becoming echoed by the younger slaan who had not succumbed to the curse of Chaos. As the slaan listened, it spoke in a voice of bone and dust of ancient contingencies prepared long ago, of ways to channel the power of the geomantic web in complexities none of them had ever considered before. It spoke of salvation, and hope beyond the stars. It spoke of escape.
As the forces of darkness encroached ever closer towards the last bastions of the lizardmen, the slaan bent what remained of their power towards this last hope, granted by a Relic Priest older than even Mazdamundi. They tapped deep into the earth, and the lines of power percieved by the Old Ones long ago thrummed in response, connecting the four cities together with paths of glowing light. The slaan put all their force, all their concentration, into this ritual, the air sparking around them as they channeled arcane power beyond the imaginings of lesser beings into the leylines that ran between their cities. As the accumulated power grew, the daemons of chaos attempted to corrupt and sabotage this working, but were incinerated the moment they laid even a pseudopod upon the lines of coruscating energy that sparked through the jungle. The ritual intensified, and the gods of chaos sent four great legions of daemons to assault the temple-cities, for although they did not know the purpose of the working, they wished it to fail. They were met by all the remaining might of the lizardmen, the forces of a continent-spanning empire condensed into four locations. The might of the daemons, the numbers of the skaven, the ferocity of the daemongors, the barbarity of the orks and the primeval weight of the dragon ogres were inviolate against the bastions of order the four cities had become, each throwing back multiple legions at once again and again and again.
Sent forth by Tzeentch himself, Kairos Fateweaver cast his psychic hold onto Morrslieb and drew it dangerously close to the world, aided by his 99 attendant Lords of Change. The Chaos Moon hung so low in the sky it obscured half the horizon, searing the air with mutagenic power. Drunk on victory, Kairos cawed a horrible laugh, for he had seen with his foresight that this would ensure the slaan's plan would fail, and unlike any other time, the Architect of Fate was disinclined to send him a false vision of the future.
Instead, defeat came from outside of Tzeentch's court. Be'lakor, the first daemon prince of Chaos Undivided, had long held bitterness towards his masters in his heart, and saw now an opportunity to both destroy the hated lizards and deny victory to his master's pets. Even as he emerged from the shadows behind Karios' manifested form and stabbed him in the back, his voice echoed in the ears of the skaven manning a terrible superweapon constructed by the Under-Empire's accumulated resources. Quickly becoming subsumed with rage at the percieved slights dealt to him by his fellows, the skaven activated the colossal warp cannon, wrenching it from its moorings and aiming it straight up into the sky. Cackling with insane glee, he slammed his fist down on the bright red activation button, and was promptly atomized as the cannon discharged a monstrous beam of searing energy that soared up into the upper atmosphere and impacted the warpstone moon. Initially there was no response from the celestial object, but soon its surface was rent by country-sized chasms as the energy injected into it by the Morskittar Gun grew to many times its initial dose, eventually exploding out of multiple hemispheres like a great green corona, cracking Morrslieb in two, leaving it to tumble down towards the planet.
The skink priests that looked skywards and saw this phenomenon were alarmed, to say the least.
The Chaos Moon has been cracked in half and is plummeting down onto the planet. If it is allowed to impact, it will not only wipe out all life on the planet, but also irreparably damage and destroy the works of the Old Ones. Something must be done. What do you choose?
[] Ignore It - The Ritual of Evacuation is almost complete, and diverting slaan attention to stop the moon carries the risk of delaying its completion. To preserve the lives of the slaan, and what infastructure remains, the ritual must proceed, even if the rest of the planet dies.
[Evacuation successful with no slaan casualties. Most of the planet's surface will be destroyed, and any hope of later recovering the plans of the Old Ones will be lost.]
[] Mitigate It - The evacuation must proceed, but the world the Old Ones so carefully shaped cannot be simply abandoned. The slaan will attempt to break up the falling moonshards into smaller pieces, and divert the larger pieces away from collision with the planet's surface. Such an effort will delay the ritual and some of the younger slaan will no doubt perish from the effort, but it is worth it to preserve what remains of the works of the Old Ones.
[Evacuation successful with moderate slaan casualties. The planet's surface will be damaged by the moonfall, but the works of the Old Ones will be preserved.]
[] Destroy It - The Chaos Moon cannot be allowed to impact - even if mostly diverted it will still irreversibly corrupt the world with shards of dhar, and ensure that the taint in the earth will never be purged. Even if it places the evacuation in danger, even though many of the slaan will die from the strain, the moon must be destroyed.
[Evacuation successful with high slaan casualties. Impact on the planet will be minimal, and perhaps the mortals still fighting against the forces of darkness will be able to eke out a victory.]
Unlocked by Previous Choice:
[] ??? - The same voice from before, echoing dimly from the darkest catacombs of Itza where hundreds of Relic Priests sit silently, speaks again in this hour of crisis. Its message is simple this time, comprised of only one word fraught with meaning. To put trust in it may be to doom the entirety of the lizardmen, but if fate falls in the correct pattern, it promises...
[Deliverance?]
[X] ??? - The same voice from before, echoing dimly from the darkest catacombs of Itza where hundreds of Relic Priests sit silently, speaks again in this hour of crisis. Its message is simple this time, comprised of only one word fraught with meaning. To put trust in it may be to doom the entirety of the lizardmen, but if fate falls in the correct pattern, it promises...
[Deliverance?]
The Sublime Communion listened to the voice in their midst and knew it to hold the wisdom of their elders. Thus did they turn their eyes to the heavens where Morrslieb burned downwards like a shattered god and depart their bodies to view it as it really was - not merely a planet-sized accumulation of warpstone, but a raw mass of magic with the mystical weight to overturn destiny itself. It was a lynchpin of the Ruinous Powers' scheme to consume the fabric of reality - as the weave of fate brought heroes to the forefront of history in the end of days, the Chaos Moon would loom large in the sky, congealing and muddling the strands of narrative that would give the mortals a chance of victory, allowing for sheer force to overwhelm them and their peoples.
Now it had been turned to a different, but no less evil, purpose, and the Slaan saw through their mystic vision what the outcome of the moon impacting the planet would be - a magically radioactive hellscape rent by scars and chasms hundreds of miles deep radiating from the point of impact, infested by twisted monsters birthed from the aura of the aethyric tumor the moon would become infusing what few surviving life forms with raw magic. Their forms would be terrible enough to kill on sight, and their soundless howls as they tore each other apart would be the only sounds uttered by material beings. They would mindlessly cavort thusly under gray-green skies backlit by crackling electric firestorms generated as the warpstone shards scattered over the planet by the moon's impact gradually deteriorated over thousands of years. Eventually these conflagrations would grow to such size and immensity that they would break what little remained of the world apart, and it would succumb to primal oblivion, dissolving into the Warp to become part of the endless sea of soul-stuff.
But such was not the fate the Old Ones had decreed for the world when they first beheld it in its entirety, and now, in this one moment, their children had the chance to avert the cataclysmic designs of the idiot powers of the Warp.
Their spirits soared up above their temple-cities, trusting in their underlings to hold bastions that had stood for longer than ten thousand years. They flocked to each other in sacred Itza, where their makers had first stepped foot upon the earth. Even the spirits of the Relic Priests emerged from their catacombs, drawn by the sheer intent in the air. There they ascended up above the clouds, rising over Lustria, over the world, up to the edges of the atmosphere, until the edges of their spirits recoiled at the approaching radiance of the Chaos Moon. But they knew their duty and had chosen their task, and so they began, the collective sum of their spirits shining like a beacon in the Aethyr that began to suffuse their physical location, becoming a star in the sky, pure white sillhouetted by Morrslieb's immensity.
Each lizardman had been birthed with a specific purpose in mind - they were not like the other races, fraught with discord, forced to find external reason for cooperation. Unity was in their blood, and though many of them had not communicated in thousands of years, the slaan still instinctively understood their role in things.
Mazdamundi stood with his brethren of the second and third generations, the majority of whom were long dead but whose spirits had still clung to their bones, and focused their immense power upon the toxicity of the Chaos Moon. Their minds examined it with cold logic and instinctive understanding, perceiving the way the chaotic sea of dark magic had been condensed into a self-sustaining form, a solidity that imposed itself on the dhar surrounding it, letting it persist in the material world as warpstone. Then they shattered it in exertions of power not seen since the world began, their sorcerous might unmaking the fragile bonds that held the planet-sized mass of warpstone together in physical form. As they did so, the slaan of the fourth and fifth generations took in their spiritual hands the colossal amounts of raw magic this process generated and moulded it with their collective power, turning the sea of dhar into eight streams of purified magic, one of each wind, and sent them up above their heads, where the silent ghosts of the first generation watched impassively.
In the skies above the world, a pyramid of multicolored light formed, and the radiance of the falling moon began to dim as the shining magical construct grew brighter and brighter. Awed mortals looked to the sky in wonderment, and the daemons of the gods became perturbed as they looked upon the slaan. Wizards across the globe began to hear something, an incantation not yet spoken that was so powerful its effects rippled back through time itself.
The slaan of the first generation had all died in the Great Catastrophe long ago, and those which had managed to cling to their bones had been diminished by the effort. They no longer had the sheer incarnate power of their younger siblings, but their insight was not diminished by a paltry ten millennia of preserving their spirits. With the lightest of touches they manipulated the great rivers of magic their youngest kin directed to them, spinning them into unfathomably complex designs that even the greatest wizards of the asur would be confounded by. Subtle constellations of power rose up around them, in webs that slowly orbited ever larger around their mystic vicinity, each piece in perfect harmony with the next. At their center sat one last spirit, who had not done anything save for remember since the days when daemons threatened to swallow the world. It did not move, but the air around it crackled with a slowly rising power, the expression of an ancient will as old as the earth.
The Warp howled in denial, and four legions of daemons hurled themselves into the heavens from the planet below, abandoning battlefronts where the mortal defenders had all but lost in favor of stopping the machinations of the Sublime Communion. The Exalted daemons of each god clawed their way towards the slaan - unbound An'ggrath of Khorne, sombre Ku'gath of Nurgle, dread Aetaos'rau'keres of Tzeentch, and villainous N'kari of Slaanesh, each followed by a host of greater daemons numbering in their patron god's sacred number multiplied by itself. Such was their power that they muddied the Warp itself in corruption as they passed, leaving a trail of spiritual mutation behind them that manifested in reality as a great claw of shadow reaching up to smother the shining pyramid.
But the powers of Chaos did not hold sole rulership over the warp. In the path of the daemonhosts did the gods of mortals interpose themselves, dieties of men, elves and dwarves standing side by side in order to save the world. Sigmar and Grungni, Asuryan and Shiva of Ind, the dead gods of Nekehara, Myrmidia and Shallaya, Ulric and Taal, the fair Lady of the Lake alongside poised Lileath, even the Cytharai, bloody-handed Khaine foremost amongst them, joined the fight. In the skies above the world, the shadowy claw was stopped in a manner that differed depending on the viewer. To the asur it was burned by the Phoenix's flames, to the dawi it was smote by a great axe or a hammer, to the masses of Cathay there appeared a great dragon that ripped and tore at the shadow until it bled rivers of darkness. It was a timeless battle that lasted but an instant, and in their rage the daemons of Chaos became so invested in the destruction of the gods that they lost sight of their initial goal, even as more and more of the Chaos Moon was dispelled and the aethyr itself began to pull inwards towards the center of the slaan's designs. Sages across the world began to be able to make out the word pulsing in their heads, their eyes shining with kaleidoscopes of light as they comprehended the barest fraction of what it meant.
At the center of the Communion was a Slaan who had not spoken in eight thousand years. His name had been forgotten by all but himself, replaced by a title that meant Venerated One. He had not touched the winds of magic since his death, though the echoes of his last spell still carried enough weight to wash over entire battlefields. It was of no import - the touch of the aethyr was within his very soul, and he could no more forget it than he could forget who he was.
Lord Kroak opened his eyes and a great wave of power cascaded over the world. The hosts of Chaos looked upwards and quailed in fear at what they saw - the amassed energy of all the dhar contained within Morrslieb, converted and channeled into a design that spelled certain and eternal death for their kind. It was a great sphere of coruscating magic, flawlessly engineered down to the finest detail by minds born for understanding the intricacies of the sea of souls. Its components turned and looped in multiple dimensions, forming a hyperdimensional orb of perfect alignment with the venerable first slaan at its exact centerpoint. Aware as he had not been for over eight thousand years, Lord Kroak looked down at the world, beset by the forces of Old Night in their last, greatest attempt to overthrow civilization and plunge the universe into eternal entropy.
And for the first time since he had saved Itza, Kroak spoke.
DELIVERANCE
His spell was inescapable. The daemons of the gods screamed in raw terror as a merciless wave of magic tore them apart to their base components, the spiritual cancer that made up their greater selves incinerated so thoroughly that they were permanently destroyed even as it left the gods of the mortals unscathed. The raw power they could bring to bear was inconsequential, for the wrath of the Old Ones left no room for error.
The Deliverance did not descend to the world so much as it simply became in that location, its higher-dimensional nature letting it make the intervening distance nonexistent. It targeted only those creatures that had been tainted by the powers of the Warp, destroying them on a fundamental level and leaving those untouched by Chaos alive. In some cases, it destroyed only an afflicting mutation - cancerous growths and mutated limbs evaporated in searing flashes of light, leaving their owners writhing in pain but otherwise whole.
Any daemons on the planet were destroyed, from the throngs of Slaaneshi dancers in Naagaroth to the hordes of Khorne riding on the Cathayan Steppe to the conclaves of Verminlords and other verminious daemons of the Horned Rat summoned forth by the skaven Grey Seers. No matter their power, no matter the manner in which they hid, they all died, from the mighty bloodthirsters clashing against dragons at the Great Bastion to the Lord of Change hiding inside the heart of an infant. All were unmade by the Deliverance's merciless power. Even Nagash, unaffiliated with the powers of Chaos, was stripped of his stolen magical might and much of his essence, his Black Pyramid atomizing itself in a silent explosion. He landed heavily on the ground as naught more than a smoking skeleton the size of a child, still faintly alive but in too much pain to do anything but faintly wheeze.
As their daemons evaporated into nothingness, the Chaos Gods made one last desperate attempt to stop the Deliverance, throwing all the power they could into the warp rifts at the world's poles. They ballooned in size and raced both south and north, growing stronger and stronger the more reality they ate. But they were still as nothing next to the Deliverance, and their corrupt influence was burned back, exposing ground that had been suffused in unreality for ten thousand years, now wholly untainted.
With one last quaking surge, the warp rifts slammed shut as the Deliverance's merciless radiance penetrated into the Realm of Chaos itself and scorched the infinite forms of the Gods, dealing each of them an infinitesimally small, but permanent wound. The Ruinous Powers shrieked in pain they had never even conceived could exist, and their influence retreated from the world like a child singed by a flame.
At the center of Ulthuan, a very weary elf breathed a sigh of relief and let go of the incantation he had been maintaining for so long. The Vortex was no longer needed.
As the Deliverance folded fully over the world, cleansed from the ancient enemy now and forever, the slaans' ritual was completed. The impossible radiance of the Deliverance grew to its peak, and the four temple-cities vanished along with a large area surrounding each of them, leaving miles-wide craters in the ground that marked where they once had stood. Then the Deliverance began to fade, the last of its functions activating. It shrunk down into a shining series of luminescent domes enclosing the rest of the lizardmen temple-cities, to ensure their safety for when the Children of the Old Ones returned.
The fate of the world was still in flux - the Vermintide still hungered though its leadership had been shattered, the dragon ogres had lost much of their ability to be empowered by and in turn empower lightning with the banishment of Chaos but still retained their numbers and immense physical might, and the greenskin populace of the world hungered for a Waaagh! to sate their monstrous appetite for battle. But the eternal enemy, who had insidiously schemed for timeless aeons to bring the mortal universe into their endless gullets, there would be no coming back. As the mortal empires of the world wearily turned to face their foes, they did so with a faint hope in their hearts.
The End Times didn't necessarily have to mean the end of the world.
The four functional temple-cities of the lizardmen materialized in a flash of iridescent light, displacing tons of earth as the ancient cities appeared along with the surrounding half-mile of Lustria surrounding each of them. The saurus at the gates of each city laboriously confirmed that no hint of the enemy had followed them, combing over every square inch of their territory before resuming their normal duties and patrols with grim satisfaction. Kroxigor dropped their weapons, as the need for them had gone, and began repairing damage the cities had sustained to their walls and infastructure. Skinks chittered as they conducted the movements of their kin and began to accomplish the million and one tasks needed to ascertain the status of their assets - teams were sent out to tally warbeast numbers, to check on the spawning pools, ensure all lizardmen were properly equipped, and most importantly to ascertain the health of their slaan masters.
Ensconced in their pyramidal chambers, the slaan were utterly exhausted from the effort of participating in the Deliverance and going through the transition between dimensions. Many of them fell back into the cloying slumber that had been gripping them for thousands of years, the subtle curse of Tzeentch holding strong even in this new place. But regardless of the bodily and spiritual exhaustion of the slaan, the Sublime Communion they all shared thrummed with the thoughts of those still awake - it pulsed with triumph, wonderment, and satisfaction, but most of all, confusion.
Something was different, and the slaan could feel it in their bones. The Ritual of Evacuation had been constructed to bring the lizardmen to a place mystically similar to their Lustrian home, but unaffected by the warp rifts and daemonic infestations that had plagued the world. It seemed to have done so - the more exciteable of the fifth generation were already reporting that their surroundings seemed to be thick jungle that went on for miles - but the aethyr itself felt different - bigger, somehow, but undeniably similar. The metaphysical weight of the Chaos Gods could be felt, but seemingly off in the distance in a way that they had not been previously, and one of them was seemingly missing. The sea of souls was calm, but from a great distance they could percieve ominous rumblings.
After taking several days to recover, the slaan convened in person to decide the proper course of action for their kin to take. The debate raged for many months, the air around the collected slaan crackling with the power of their thoughts. Some argued that their only goal could be to find the world the Old Ones had decreed they steward and ensure that the Great Plan was brought to completion. Others argued that their situation was such that ascertaining where and perhaps when they were was more important than their long-term strategy. A few outliers proposed that perhaps the Great Plan had failed and there was no recovering it, and the only course of action was simply to survive as the younger races did, experiencing the universe without minding an overarching goal. Lastly, a fair number of the slaan proposed that perhaps this new world was where their creators the Old Ones had fled, and they could thusly be sought out and a new Plan could be passed down to their servants.
While each position had its supporters and detractors, it was not any one that won the debate. Eventually Lord Mazdamundi and the remaining four living second generation slaan collated the opinions of their brethren and anncounced their decision, accompanied by Ten-zlati, the ancient skink that was mystically attuned to Lord Kroak himself.
There was much to be determined until it could be decided for certain whether searching for the world of the Old Ones was worthwhile, they proclaimed. But the spirit of Lord Kroak, who had retained enough energy from casting the Deliverance to occasionally muster the ability to converse, had confirmed their speculation - this was the universe the Old Ones had come from, and thus the search for them was a viable option. However, the first of all slaan had also sensed that an immense amount of time had passed since he had last been in this cosmos when he was first born, and if their creators were still existent, finding them would be an arduous and lengthy task, but a vital one that could potentially revitalise the lizardmen's entire existence. Therefore, one of the senior slaan would remain behind to guide the growth of the other breeds and the Geomantic Web, with the other five utilizing teleportation rituals akin to the Ritual of Evacuation to begin the search for their lost masters.
Who stayed to shepard the lizardmen in this strange new world?
[] Mazdamundi - The lord of Hexoatl, and the oldest of the second generation of slaan. Mazdamundi is the most active of his kin, and is incredibly skilled at manipulating the geomantic web to use in geomancy, and boasts a well-rounded mastery of every aspect of magic, as could be expected from the personal student of Lord Kroak. He commands the loyalty of the ancient saurus Kroq-Gar, and will take the oldblood with him if he does not remain.
[] Adohi-Tegha - The lord of Tlaxtlan, Adohi-Tegha is one of the best slaan at reading and interpreting the web of fate, and possesses a potent affinity at wielding magic related to manipulating the physical world - telekinesis, weather control, conjuring bolts of energy and teleportation are but examples of areas he holds a speciality in. In his service is the powerful skink priest Tetto'eko, who will accompany his master wherever his path takes him.
[] Chaacalot - Lord of Xlanhuapec, Chaacalot was the slaan responsible for summoning the city's mists, a task he kept up for thousands of years. Aiding him in this task is the fact that he is very skilled at magic relating to the mind - telepathy, mind control, and other forms of mental manipulation are his gift, which he frequently used to ensure that errant trespassers never found his city by erasing the ability to notice it from their minds. The mysterious Chameleon Skink Oxyotl resides primarily in Xlanhuapec, and immensely aids efforts to conceal the city.
[] Zaqunda - Steward of Itza, Zaqunda is one of the primary reasons Itza's walls were never breached in all the years since the Great Catastrophe. Spending much of his time amongst the Relic Priests has attuned his essence to theirs, and he is more easily able to elicit their aid, and perhaps even consider a way to restore their bodies. He was chosen to be the first city's steward for a reason - he is unparalleled in defensive magic of all kinds, capable of shielding against physical and psychic attacks on a large and small scale. The great albino saurus Gor-Rok is sworn to him, and will obey any command he gives.
[] Huintenuchli - Once lord of Chaqua, Huintenuchli was left without purpose when the skaven destroyed the city. On the rare occasions when he rose from his slumber, his thoughts were occupied by musings of technology and mechanical research, which is his passion. His magical speciality lends itself well to this line of thought, for he is talented in the construction of magitek devices, enhancing armor and weapons to be more effective, and destroying the devices of his enemies - breaking walls, crushing soldiers in their armor, and causing machines to behave however he wishes. On one occasion he was beset in his sleep by a Norscan Chaos Lord, and was saved by the intervention of the mythical kroxigor Nakai, who he has formed an affinity with in the time since.
[] Kroak - The spirit of the firstborn slaan was rejuvenated by the Deliverance - not enough to personally act on the scale of the other senior slaan, but his true strength lies in his knowledge. He retains a wealth of knowledge of the lost might the lizardmen possessed once, and will be able to restore this knowledge now that he is capable of communication once more. He is still bound to his corpse, however, and thus he relies much on his Oracle Ten-zlati, who wields potent powers through his mystical connection to the ancient slaan, as well as acting as Kroak's eyes and ears when need be. If a way to revive dead slaan is ever found, it is no doubt Kroak will be the first brought back, for his resurgent might would be a great boon to the lizardmen indeed.
GM NOTICE - THIS VOTE WILL BE OPEN FOR SEVERAL DAYS AT THE LEAST SINCE IT'S PRETTY IMPORTANT, FOR OBVIOUS REASONS - WHOEVER YOU PICK WILL BE WHO YOU PLAY AS. TAKE YOUR TIME, ASK QUESTIONS, DISCUSS THE MERITS OF THE OPTIONS.
I suppose now's as good a time as any to yap about this.
There are many beings native to the warp - spirits, beings of pure soul stuff, which coalesce from the thoughts, emotions, and beliefs of ensouled beings - beings that possess a soul. There are an infinite variety of these creatures, but they can be broadly grouped into a few classifications.
First is spirits, the dross of the immaterium. Formed from the emotions, superstitions, and thoughts of most mortals, most spirits are short-lived things, only existing for as long as the emotion that spawned them lasts. For the most part they have no agency - if a child fears a bogeyman under their bed, while their fear will generate one in the Warp, it will not be able to affect anything in the material world. Some of them can get stronger than this, tribal spirits and the like worshiped by small communities that can bestow minor blessings once in a proverbial blue moon, but never more than this.
Second are gods, which span a large range of power, from the gods of minor nations all the way to gods that hold dominion over entire species. Regardless of their power, the defining characteristic of a god is that they exist semi-independently of their believers, and can take action to further their own worship or protect and empower their base of followers. They tend to embody various concepts, ie a war god or a god of the harvest. They can change their concepts over time as mortal perception of them changes, and add or lose domains as their power fluctuates. Gods that manage to claim domain over an entire species tend to be very strong, since by definition they are empowered by anything that species does. They also tend to be multifaceted if they reach this stage, often existing as a collection of aspects or a central being tended to by a hierarchy of lesser spirits that are part of their being, as with the Horned Rat of the skaven.
Lastly, there are the Gods of Chaos. They differ from normal gods in that they embody such broad concepts that they do not merely claim dominion over one species, but aspects of the spirit that all ensouled beings share. Khorne both rules and embodies the hate, anger, and rage of every mortal in the galaxy, for instance. This broadness grants them great power, for any speck of emotion not claimed by an existent god will inevitably wind up in the gullet of a Chaos God. Additionally, they do not rely on external support to maintain their existence - a Chaos God is self-sustaining, and once one is formed it does not have to fear losing power if it stops being worshiped - instead it can reach out across the galaxy and foster the emotion it embodies in the hearts of mortals and grow in power without limit. They are timeless beings once birthed, retroactively existing eternally in the Warp once birthed. This has implications as to whether they could interfere in the material universe before the event that birthed them, but these questions remain unanswered. What is known without a doubt is that they are the enemy of every sapient being, desiring nothing more than to convert the rich tapestry of every soul in creation into yet more of their particular stripe of power, escalating yet further towards the impossible zenith of brute purity they represent. They are so broad as to have no real agency or intelligence of their own, however - their will is expressed through their infinite daemons, shards of their power broken down into essence small enough to meaningfully interact with the material world. It is these agents that they corrupt the species of the galaxy with, each an embodied thought of their patron Chaos God.
I have one additional topic I'm planning to talk about since it'll be important for how the game proceeds, but if you guys want me to give my interpretation on any other aspects of the universe, just ask.
I've seen a great deal of debate elsewhere on the internet over whether the lizardmen qualify as sapient or not. Some people think they're little more than malfunctioning biological robots, and while that isn't true for this quest, it does raise an interesting point - do the lizardmen have free will? Are they monsters or people?
Allow me to explain.
'Monster' and 'Person' here are used in the context of terms I originally saw in another quest over on SB called War of the Krork. Put simply, a person is a being that has free will, the ability to choose what path they take both literally and narratively, and a monster does not, and will only ever pursue their inbuilt goal. It's not a perfect system of categorization and is really only useful for clarifying the obvious in my view, but it's convenient, so I'll be using it here.
An argument can be made that lizardmen are monsters - they are born with an instinctive understanding of their place, pre-programmed loyalty to their masters and to the Great Plan, and their mental structure is such that they can't understand love, jealousy, and all the other various social wrinkles that exist in mortal minds. Heck, even their absolute incorruptibility could be pointed to as a sign of their monsterhood - they don't have the capacity for the thoughts that Chaos is capable of corrupting, so they will never be corrupted because they don't get the option.
An argument can also be made for them being people. Skinks have friends and will worship the Old Ones as gods if the slaan don't correct them, they can comprehend joy and wonder, anger and determination and longing. They venerate the Old Ones for creating them and follow their Plan not because it was their born purpose but because they choose to out of respect for their makers (so the argument goes at least).
You might be wondering what possible relevance this pseudo-philosophical stuff could have to the actual quest. Think of it like this: with the escape from Mallus, the lizardmen no longer strictly have to follow the Great Plan, since there's no feasible way to do that until they get back to Mallus. So they have a choice. You have a choice.
You can conduct yourselves like people - this doesn't necessarily mean making friends with everyone you meet or anything OOC like that, you're still a cold-blooded and strange race to everyone else. But act in such a way that makes it clear you desire that choice, and I will continue to grant it to you. The lizardmen will continue to get the level of characterization they've been getting, and you won't randomly become less powerful just for making those choices. You'll still retain what makes you lizardmen, but it'll be viewed through a lens of 'these people are strange and cold-blooded, but they are still understandable'. You can act according to whatever spectrum of morality feels appropriate to you, do kind or cruel things as you need to, but you will retain the choice to do so.
Or you can act like monsters, and you will be proven as such. This isn't something you'll need to be wary of making one wayward decision and suddenly you're biological automatons - the monstrous choices are always pretty obvious when you see them, and don't conform to any standard of morality at all. Act in such a way that makes it clear that only the will of the Old Ones has any relevance to you, and I will gradually remove the other choices. The lizardmen will lose their individual characterization such as the favorite flavor of your chosen slaan (which I have written down), and you will become the perfect, incorruptible tools of your masters, eternally striving to make the will of the Old Ones manifest. Being a monster will make you more powerful than if you were people, because purity of purpose and unity is never stronger than when there is no other choice. But you'll lose much of the choice in how to wield that power - you will be compelled to act in certain ways, to do certain things, and not have the option to refuse. You'll effectively give up a lot of control of your own narrative to me, and you'll have to go where I lead you. You will be great but terrible, and the galaxy will learn to fear the children of the Old Ones. But at what cost?
Basically, act according to what you want to be. It won't be an IC change really, just a fundamental alteration of the narrative and the way the game is played.
![Respect Your Elders v2 - Galactic Boogaloo [Warhammer Lizardmen Quest]](/data/threadmark-index-icons/l/45/45306.jpg?1629598830){kind=icon}
