- Location
- california
[X] Nantli'atl, the White Crocodile, the Fog of Death and its Guardian
Respect Your Elders v2 - Galactic Boogaloo [Warhammer Lizardmen Quest]
- Thread starter Xantalos
- Start date
- Sci-Fi Fantasy
-
- Tags
- warhammer warhammer 40k fantasy sci-fi science fantasy science-fantasy kitchen sink space fantasy isha kroak (warhammer fantasy) mazdamundi (warhammer fantasy) magic empire quest actions have consequences dinosaurs ia ia kroak fhtagn lasers lizardmen qm likes speculation and questions slann what could possibly go wrong?
Ekzentric Lohner
I miss Wildstar...
Okay, this seems to be the second time people have overlooked the "Reverse-psychopomp" part of "Protector/Psychopomp/Reverse-psychopomp" in Nantli'atl's entry. Croc-Mom carrying her babies to the waters of birth is one of the themes in mine, or at least I tried to make that one of the themes.Finally we have Pactli, something I've immediately taken a liking to because the name's easy to spellKidding aside, Pactli seems to be a mix of Tlanalotl's reincarnation focus and Nantli'atl's 'fog crocodile' dealio. This isn't an afterlife that perpetually guards its soldiers, instead it allows them to recover from the ordeal of death before recycling their souls through the spawning pools (or perhaps, like with all death gods, through direct resurrection given time and research). 3/3 on the Fog Seed connection, nice and neat stealth focus that compliments the lizardmen's reptilian patience, overall a pretty well-crafted god right here.
Am I just being too subtle? Do I need to come out and say "this is reincarnation" or something? I'm not angry, I'm just confused and want to know how to fix what appears to be a flaw in my writing.
CuttleFish2.0
Friendly neighborhood cuttlefish
- Location
- Seattle, Washington.
Here's why you should vote for Micqeuctli.
Why I chose Construction as her Variety. The link may not be obvious to start - I've seen some in the thread call on us not to stretch the god too thin by having it do too much - but Death and Construction are well linked. In any civilization one of the first things we do is start to care for the bodies of our deceased, a lot of the oldest artifacts found in Archeology are from graves, and a fair number of the longest lasting and oldest structures in the world are burial places. Doing so is part of how we show honor and respect for deceased leaders and heroes, by putting effort into the care
Barrows, kurgans, the pyramids, cairns, Greek hypogeum, the Catacombs of Paris, and ancient megalithic tombs.
We have been building places to hold our dead since before recorded history. Construction and Death go hand in hand and there's a lot of fruitful connection to be had there - maybe in the future skink and kroxigor laborers will inscribe the names of the honored dead on Temple walls, dead scar-veterans might be invoked when building carnosaur pens, or fallen a kroxigor when carving out the space for a new forge - if we grasp it.Then of course there's actual tombs and crypts to be built, the protections reinforced in the very act of building.
From there it was nothing more than a quick turn to Bee - there are few animals as well associated with the act of construction that Bees. But beyond that, there's a… liveliness and vitality to bees that provides a striking contrast to Death that I thought could lead to a very powerful sort of dichotomy. Death not as the absence of life but as another manners of it.
A warm buzzing hive of activity where the Dead find their rest, cared and protected by attentive minders on the Honey of Life. Because that's another thing about Bees, they're very much communal things; creatures which react to threats and cling together in ways which are very powerfully evocative. No one is unmoved by a swarm of angry Bees. And yet for all the threat they can pose and all the fear they can elicit, few would argue that Bees are not good. To emulate. To keep.
Imagine fields of flowers or orchards full of fruit trees buzzing with the sound of tiny gold and black bodies, hives scattered about tended to by skinks waving smoking bundles of grass - they harvest, oh so gently, the honeycomb from each hive and ferry it beneath those very same orchards where the walls and floors spread out. Countless thousands of Lizardmen carefully entombed in hexagonal cells.
Imagine temples in which the buzz of prayers intermingles with the buzz of hives hanging over head, their stupendous weight held up by towering edifices of carven wax sculpted by skink acolytes. Jar upon jar of sacred honey stored in the vaults beneath. And when the priests need to call upon their god? They dance, whole cohorts of skinks winding in and out between each other under the buzzing hive or out in the temple squares, their lizard voices seeking to imitate that omnipresent buzz. Whole cohorts of skinks twisting and turning and looping amongst each other! Kroxigors spinning and whirling like enormous ballerinas! Saurus shaking to and fro, their tails waggling like the stingers of a bee! All before crowds of rapt worshipers.
Micqeuctli. A god not of waters and fog and resurrection, not of numbness and ambush, not of languid illusion. But of community and the walls tall and strong, wax as their mortar. Of the sweet reward that awaits all. Of the power of the many as one. Of the Dead.
Why I chose Construction as her Variety. The link may not be obvious to start - I've seen some in the thread call on us not to stretch the god too thin by having it do too much - but Death and Construction are well linked. In any civilization one of the first things we do is start to care for the bodies of our deceased, a lot of the oldest artifacts found in Archeology are from graves, and a fair number of the longest lasting and oldest structures in the world are burial places. Doing so is part of how we show honor and respect for deceased leaders and heroes, by putting effort into the care
Barrows, kurgans, the pyramids, cairns, Greek hypogeum, the Catacombs of Paris, and ancient megalithic tombs.
We have been building places to hold our dead since before recorded history. Construction and Death go hand in hand and there's a lot of fruitful connection to be had there - maybe in the future skink and kroxigor laborers will inscribe the names of the honored dead on Temple walls, dead scar-veterans might be invoked when building carnosaur pens, or fallen a kroxigor when carving out the space for a new forge - if we grasp it.Then of course there's actual tombs and crypts to be built, the protections reinforced in the very act of building.
From there it was nothing more than a quick turn to Bee - there are few animals as well associated with the act of construction that Bees. But beyond that, there's a… liveliness and vitality to bees that provides a striking contrast to Death that I thought could lead to a very powerful sort of dichotomy. Death not as the absence of life but as another manners of it.
A warm buzzing hive of activity where the Dead find their rest, cared and protected by attentive minders on the Honey of Life. Because that's another thing about Bees, they're very much communal things; creatures which react to threats and cling together in ways which are very powerfully evocative. No one is unmoved by a swarm of angry Bees. And yet for all the threat they can pose and all the fear they can elicit, few would argue that Bees are not good. To emulate. To keep.
Imagine fields of flowers or orchards full of fruit trees buzzing with the sound of tiny gold and black bodies, hives scattered about tended to by skinks waving smoking bundles of grass - they harvest, oh so gently, the honeycomb from each hive and ferry it beneath those very same orchards where the walls and floors spread out. Countless thousands of Lizardmen carefully entombed in hexagonal cells.
Imagine temples in which the buzz of prayers intermingles with the buzz of hives hanging over head, their stupendous weight held up by towering edifices of carven wax sculpted by skink acolytes. Jar upon jar of sacred honey stored in the vaults beneath. And when the priests need to call upon their god? They dance, whole cohorts of skinks winding in and out between each other under the buzzing hive or out in the temple squares, their lizard voices seeking to imitate that omnipresent buzz. Whole cohorts of skinks twisting and turning and looping amongst each other! Kroxigors spinning and whirling like enormous ballerinas! Saurus shaking to and fro, their tails waggling like the stingers of a bee! All before crowds of rapt worshipers.
Micqeuctli. A god not of waters and fog and resurrection, not of numbness and ambush, not of languid illusion. But of community and the walls tall and strong, wax as their mortar. Of the sweet reward that awaits all. Of the power of the many as one. Of the Dead.
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- Location
- Right behind you
[X] Calquetzqui, the Great Architect, the Builder-in-Shadow
[x] Ayotlek, the city-turtle of lost souls
[x] Ayotlek, the city-turtle of lost souls
CuttleFish2.0
Friendly neighborhood cuttlefish
- Location
- Seattle, Washington.
I think the reason it didn't jump out at me, is that it's almost too... direct? Or rather it's a very abstract concept. No one in prehistory talked about their gods being 'psychopomps,' that's a modern invention to link multiple deities across a wide range of times and places (unless you're talking about ancient Greeks). To the people who first imagined those gods they were... Guides, Judges, etc. So something like Guide/Reincarnation for Variety would make it more succinct. All that said, you're description doesn't lean into the idea much. You say she carries away the souls of the dead, and then you talk a lot about them resting and stuff.
So her 'psychopompness' get's a single sentence. Meanwhile the protecting quality and resting parts get's a lot of focus. Gods are narratives made real, so if the narrative you use to demonstrate the god doesn't focus much on something... it kinda fades. At least that's why I didn't pick up on it I think.
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Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
Nah, I'm just liable to miss stuff since I'm often doing many different things at once - I constructed that evaluation post while simultaneously searching the internet for a Mass Effect fanfic that I sort of helped inspire several years ago (which I still haven't found).
(Help me I've open 53 tabs)
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- Location
- Springfield
[X] Calquetzqui, the Great Architect, the Builder-in-Shadow
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
This is part of why I (working off Nix's concept but adding my own twists) didn't really try to connect Calquetzqui to the Seed of Fog at all.
Firstly, because I suspect it's not for nothing that we're warned that our gods can be weakened by breaking their connections to those seeds. It means someone or something can get at those seeds.
Secondly, because it gives me more freedom to depict him.
Thirdly, because Calquetzqui's "progress bar" is already likely to be filled by building things, which we do all the time, so I figure we're not going to need to work as hard to ensure the bar fills up actively.
Here's why you should vote for Calquetzqui, the Builder-in-Shadow.
Because Calquetzqui's message in the afterlife is "So, you're dead? Sucks, huh. Sorry to hear that. Now walk it off and join us. We've got shit to build."
Because lizardmen do not die. They merely regroup in the Warp. And build forts.
Because Calquetzqui doesn't beat daemons by biting them or stinging them or ripping them to pieces. No. He doesn't bother. He beats them by doing a geometric proof that concludes with "Therefore, get off my property in screaming fragments. Q. E. D." And it works.
Because having a saurus fight a bunch of orks who have machine guns and flamethrowers, until reduced to basically a charred skeleton, and then continue fighting anyway, is fucking badass.
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Ozymandias
I HATE
[X] Calquetzqui, the Great Architect, the Builder-in-Shadow
- Location
- Not here. Maybe on SB.
Yes on both.
Like as @CuttleFish2.0 said, Nantli'atl don't looks like a god(dess) of reincarnation. "Reverse-psychopomp" is part of the mechanic, not something you can find when read their description.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
@Xantalos
Just to be clear, Calquetzqui isn't specifically about reincarnation but is totally on board with it. From his perspective it just means he has to empty out a few labor barracks and get some of the turtle-servitors-with-styluses-in-mouths to file some paperwork or something.
CuttleFish2.0
Friendly neighborhood cuttlefish
- Location
- Seattle, Washington.
Xan has already said it'll be available to all Death gods, just at different times (and with research).
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yeah, I know, it's just that Calquetzqui isn't specced for it. I wanted to be candid about that.
- Pronouns
- Exist
For the "Builder in Shadow" to be specced for it, he probably just has to commission an "out" building. Be interesting if the "In" and "Out" buildings were like spawning pools. Only one was distinctly green and the other was distinctly purple.
Name: Ayauitokatyl, Guide to Unseen Paths, Patron of mysteries
Representation: Misty trails and stars obscured by clouds
Category: The unknown
Variety: Guiding
Domain: Uncertain paths/mists
Method of worship: Exploration (physical or in the warp), priests of Ayauitokatyl seek out the thickest of mists in the depths of the jungle or earth to construct shrines and waystations in the hidden places of the world. The construction and crewing of temples are the other major method of worship. Unlike the temples to the old ones, which are used for massive events and the housing of relics, or the temples to Sotek, which are built around sacrificial altars, Ayauitokatyl's temples serve as a geomantic array that helps power the god to compensate for its small niche of worshippers. Each temple is small (by Lizardmen temple standards) and floats above the jungle, navigated by blind skinks near the edges of Lizardmen territory. The skink navigators are only interrupted if the temple is approaching a city or the southern continent, and so the temples weave a pattern of unpredictability and unidentifiable paths into the warp.
Favoured foes: Demons of Tzeentch and spies
Blessing thematics: Worshippers of Ayauitokatyl are blessed with greater luck at tracking prey and enemies, and in finding that which they were not seeking. Revealing and concealing locations both fall within the scope of its domain, and it can confuse isolated groups of enemies and ensure they walk into ambushes at the most inopportune moments. The most potent blessing of Ayauitokatyl is the web of equivalence, which weakens the reflection of the blessed in the warp, making them almost unnoticeable by warp entities.
Ayauitokatyl only really fits 1/3 for the god seed, and isn't as immediately useful as some of the other options, but I felt that once the world is secured, a god of discovery and defensive shrouding would come in handy. It's gender and species are obscured by mist, and even in the warp the Slaan have barely been able to discern an exoskeleton. It could potentially also grant a boon to research, but only if the Slaan are willing to dedicate themselves to a god that they cannot directly control or predict.
The name comes from mashing together the Aztec words for mist and spider... so I'm sure it would be right at home in the webway.
Representation: Misty trails and stars obscured by clouds
Category: The unknown
Variety: Guiding
Domain: Uncertain paths/mists
Method of worship: Exploration (physical or in the warp), priests of Ayauitokatyl seek out the thickest of mists in the depths of the jungle or earth to construct shrines and waystations in the hidden places of the world. The construction and crewing of temples are the other major method of worship. Unlike the temples to the old ones, which are used for massive events and the housing of relics, or the temples to Sotek, which are built around sacrificial altars, Ayauitokatyl's temples serve as a geomantic array that helps power the god to compensate for its small niche of worshippers. Each temple is small (by Lizardmen temple standards) and floats above the jungle, navigated by blind skinks near the edges of Lizardmen territory. The skink navigators are only interrupted if the temple is approaching a city or the southern continent, and so the temples weave a pattern of unpredictability and unidentifiable paths into the warp.
Favoured foes: Demons of Tzeentch and spies
Blessing thematics: Worshippers of Ayauitokatyl are blessed with greater luck at tracking prey and enemies, and in finding that which they were not seeking. Revealing and concealing locations both fall within the scope of its domain, and it can confuse isolated groups of enemies and ensure they walk into ambushes at the most inopportune moments. The most potent blessing of Ayauitokatyl is the web of equivalence, which weakens the reflection of the blessed in the warp, making them almost unnoticeable by warp entities.
Ayauitokatyl only really fits 1/3 for the god seed, and isn't as immediately useful as some of the other options, but I felt that once the world is secured, a god of discovery and defensive shrouding would come in handy. It's gender and species are obscured by mist, and even in the warp the Slaan have barely been able to discern an exoskeleton. It could potentially also grant a boon to research, but only if the Slaan are willing to dedicate themselves to a god that they cannot directly control or predict.
The name comes from mashing together the Aztec words for mist and spider... so I'm sure it would be right at home in the webway.
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Strunkriidiisk
THE LEGEND
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
My main issue with the reasoning "we shouldn't use the Godseed because it can be attacked and destroyed" is, well, then what's the point of even having bothered to get the Godseed in the first place?
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
1) We can use the godseed at a later time when we're operating on the interstellar level and have a better sense for how to ensure that it's protected.
2) We can find other uses for the godseed besides, well, creating gods. The 'monstrous enslavement' option for the Ayacmanik is one such, though obviously not one we're collectively planning to take.
- Location
- Closer than you think
[x] Ayotzl, the Mist Swimmer
