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The Empty Throne: An Original Fantasy Quest

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[X] In a white desert under a merciless sun, a slave digs a grave. He has killed his overseer. It was a sharp thing, a quick thing. Violent. Such violence. The moment plays again and again in his mind, hard rock on flesh and bone. So quick, so soft, so perfect. He pauses in his digging, just for a moment, to remember the feeling of it, and you come to him.
 
[X] In a white desert under a merciless sun, a slave digs a grave. He has killed his overseer. It was a sharp thing, a quick thing -- but violent. Such violence. The moment plays again and again in his mind, hard rock on flesh and bone. So quick, so soft, so perfect. He pauses in his digging, just for a moment, to remember the feeling of it, and you come to him.
[X] In a high plain split by rivers, a people walk. They take with them all they can carry, and sleep where the land is good. They know no masters, and no foes. If their journey had a beginning or a purpose, they do not remember it — they merely walk, onwards and onwards, to the next horizon. You come to them.
 
[X] In a white desert under a merciless sun, a slave digs a grave. He has killed his overseer. It was a sharp thing, a quick thing. Violent. Such violence. The moment plays again and again in his mind, hard rock on flesh and bone. So quick, so soft, so perfect. He pauses in his digging, just for a moment, to remember the feeling of it, and you come to him.
 
[X] In a city in the sky, many cats prowl the alleys. They are clever. They know to avoid the ones with many arms, and to walk between the legs of the ones in chains. At night, they nuzzle shaking slaves in the dark. Seeing them run free gives the hopeless something they did not remember: hope. You come to them.
 
[X] In a high plain split by rivers, a people walk. They take with them all they can carry, and sleep where the land is good. They know no masters, and no foes. If their journey had a beginning or a purpose, they do not remember it — they merely walk, onwards and onwards, to the next horizon. You come to them.
 
[X] In a high plain split by rivers, a people walk. They take with them all they can carry, and sleep where the land is good. They know no masters, and no foes. If their journey had a beginning or a purpose, they do not remember it — they merely walk, onwards and onwards, to the next horizon. You come to them.
 
[X] In a white desert under a merciless sun, a slave digs a grave. He has killed his overseer. It was a sharp thing, a quick thing. Violent. Such violence. The moment plays again and again in his mind, hard rock on flesh and bone. So quick, so soft, so perfect. He pauses in his digging, just for a moment, to remember the feeling of it, and you come to him.
 
[X] In a city in the sky, many cats prowl the alleys. They are clever. They know to avoid the ones with many arms, and to walk between the legs of the ones in chains. At night, they nuzzle shaking slaves in the dark. Seeing them run free gives the hopeless something they did not remember: hope. You come to them.
 
Gotta love that the clear Lucifer analogue; prideful snake who is cast down during the early days of Creation, has to deal with what's shaping up with us as a figure of Rebellion, a potentially omnipresent Adversary who hears all who contemplate taking up arms against the status quo.

This shit basically writes itself.
 
[X] In a high plain split by rivers, a people walk. They take with them all they can carry, and sleep where the land is good. They know no masters, and no foes. If their journey had a beginning or a purpose, they do not remember it — they merely walk, onwards and onwards, to the next horizon. You come to them.
 
[X] On a sun-blasted plateau, there is an embattled city of thin, brown men. They are farmers and keepers of cattle, but war is now upon them. They are not used to violence, to the harshness of it or the glinting of it, and they fear for their lives. They have no gods, but in each and every home there is a cat, and they bring comfort. You come to them.
 
[X] In a high plain split by rivers, a people walk. They take with them all they can carry, and sleep where the land is good. They know no masters, and no foes. If their journey had a beginning or a purpose, they do not remember it — they merely walk, onwards and onwards, to the next horizon. You come to them.
 
[X] In a city in the sky, many cats prowl the alleys. They are clever. They know to avoid the ones with many arms, and to walk between the legs of the ones in chains. At night, they nuzzle shaking slaves in the dark. Seeing them run free gives the hopeless something they did not remember: hope. You come to them.
 
[X] In a city in the sky, many cats prowl the alleys. They are clever. They know to avoid the ones with many arms, and to walk between the legs of the ones in chains. At night, they nuzzle shaking slaves in the dark. Seeing them run free gives the hopeless something they did not remember: hope. You come to them.
 
[X] On a sun-blasted plateau, there is an embattled city of thin, brown men. They are farmers and keepers of cattle, but war is now upon them. They are not used to violence, to the harshness of it or the glinting of it, and they fear for their lives. They have no gods, but in each and every home there is a cat, and they bring comfort. You come to them.

Leveraging as many and much of our concepts as we can at a given time seems like it will most effectively magnify the potency of those concepts. Strife is incredibly useful, since we don't have a ton of it but what we have can draw power from virtually anywhere and everywhere; especially in conjunction with being the Lord of Far Horizons, since anything distant is in our domain. So what that leaves us is leveraging cats.

And with the sun-blasted plain, we're able to leverage cats in both a presence of comfort and reassurance, as well as the creatures of fickle violence such as cats are, and such as the brown folk that keep them need. That, in conjunction with the strife of bloodletting that the plateau's warred on people are subjected to and need subject their foes to, should let us take on quite a nice mantle of godhood, and spread that faith.
 
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Picking this because it seems like these peace-loving nerds could use our help the most, and they're into cats like us. Mostly because of that last part.

[X] On a sun-blasted plateau, there is an embattled city of thin, brown men. They are farmers and keepers of cattle, but war is now upon them. They are not used to violence, to the harshness of it or the glinting of it, and they fear for their lives. They have no gods, but in each and every home there is a cat, and they bring comfort. You come to them.
 
[] In a high plain split by rivers, a people walk. They take with them all they can carry, and sleep where the land is good. They know no masters, and no foes. If their journey had a beginning or a purpose, they do not remember it — they merely walk, onwards and onwards, to the next horizon. You come to them.

I chose it because these people seem to embody the greatest of our names, the one that made us a recognized power among the Balthazim.
I think it would be better to start with those who are closest to our Name, then mold them into a worthy and glorious nation. Any other name may come up over time.
 
Personally, i would prefer to start doing God things initially far from the flying cities of the Firstborn. Let the MC get used to the world.

On the other, getting straight into thick of things to potentially cause some serious damage might be fun in its own way.
 
DemiurgeMal said:
[] In a high plain split by rivers, a people walk. They take with them all they can carry, and sleep where the land is good. They know no masters, and no foes. If their journey had a beginning or a purpose, they do not remember it — they merely walk, onwards and onwards, to the next horizon. You come to them.

I chose it because these people seem to embody the greatest of our names, the one that made us a recognized power among the Balthazim.
I think it would be better to start with those who are closest to our Name, then mold them into a worthy and glorious nation. Any other name may come up over time.
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You have chosen nothing, until you put an "x" between the brackets.
 
Zimmerwald1915 said:
You have chosen nothing, until you put an "x" between the brackets.
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DemiurgeMal said:
[X] In a high plain split by rivers, a people walk. They take with them all they can carry, and sleep where the land is good. They know no masters, and no foes. If their journey had a beginning or a purpose, they do not remember it — they merely walk, onwards and onwards, to the next horizon. You come to them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It was done a few posts before the one you quoted.
 
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3: The City in the Middle Air
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    • The first thing which caught my attention were her wings. There were four of them, two under two, white as unbroken snow. A dozen men might have stood in that hall shoulder to shoulder without discomfort, but the tips of those formidable wings brushed the walls on either side. It was apparent that she had once had six arms, but two of them now terminated in dark stumps. The ones which remained were taut and leathery, and ended in taloned hands around which were clasped chains of cold iron, each alone the size of a grown man's chest. A mighty crest of feathers towered from her neck, each plume one of the many colors of frozen fire. When she moved, they shimmered in the light, a million dancing shades of red and gold, and other colors still, which no longer have names among men. Her eyes above all I will never forget -- they blazed like coals plucked from the sun. They regarded myself, and her jailors, with a cold stillness that was beyond all hatred, beyond all loathing.

    In that moment I knew why she raised no hand against her captors for their insolence. She might as well hate us for her captivity as one might hate a worm for feeding on their carcass.
    She was iridescent and splendid and terrible -- and she understood as well as we that she was the very last.

    Such was my first audience with the Old Master.

    -- The Travels of Ben-Ghailam​


    The world breathes in.

    It holds the breath.

    For a moment, you are nowhere and everywhere.

    And then, you are there -- in a high, high place, with red walls and sharp towers, built by human hands for no human shape. The first mortals are clever, and diligent. They were taught long ago how to spurn the earth, and so their cities sit in the air, sparkling chandeliers of ruby which burn in the sun like torches.

    The first ones have many names in the tongues of Heaven and Earth -- the Yearling Lords, the Old Masters, the Lords of Creation. To your kind, they are the Ghalbazim, the Dwellers in the Middle Air, but their proper name in their own language is Yan-Yaboth. Yan is their name for the sun, which they hold holy. Yaboth is their word for the whole world, over which they claim mastery. In their theology, they are the children of the sun, the mightiest of all living beasts, and all which lives falls beneath the shadow of their wings.

    It is a long, long shadow.

    Beneath it labors every living thing. From the cub in his den to the grasses growing on the plains, every mortal thing has been engineered by their magics to grow faster or slower, taller or shorter, all according to their design. They have altered the colors of the leaves and the shapes of the waters to please their eyes. They have leveled mountains and raised up jungles, and populated them with creatures great and small, fashioned in their cold red cities by many-taloned hands.

    Many are their creations, and many their servants, but the most populous and industrious by far has been a wretched little ape which the Yabothi plucked from his trees long ago. They increased his skull size tenfold, gave him arms and legs capable of building their temples and towers, and flesh weak enough that he might never challenge them.

    For the six and a half million years since, the human race has labored under the hand of the First Ones. Everywhere the Masters of Creation go, there too are their small servants -- two-limbed, two-eyed, and always on bent knee. When their wonders of brass are raised to challenge high Heaven, they are raised on human bones, and the bricks are set with human sweat.

    They are here too, in this high red city. They shake in their pens and their chains. They file through titanic hallways in the dark, silent and weeping. They see nothing of the wonders in the sunlit halls above, but they have the two eternal refuges of every slave: their dreams, and their spite.

    And you are there with them -- small, silent, warm. You curl against slaves in the darkness. You dart through massive gates. You sun yourself on ruby walls far above the mountains, where for a moment you are closer to the sun than any living thing.

    Cats. In the city of the Yan-Yaboth, who are iridescent and winged and deathless, who have mastered all creation, who have set the tides to run...there are cats.

    And they cannot get rid of them.

    It takes some time to pattern yourself properly, to feel out the lines you may follow and the holes you may inhabit. There are situations and minds better suited for your aspects than others. Often, the shape is simply not right. Some see cats too fondly, as almost family, as a hope, and in those pens you glimpse flashes of dark purple.

    There are names it is wise not to speak, even in Heaven.

    No, better to find just the right fit -- either here, or in the sunlit halls above. You decide that you shall walk...

    [] In Dreams: No, the dreams of men are not necessarily your purview. But these slaves dream so strongly of cats, of nimbleness and liberty and warm cold pride that you cannot help but be drawn in. The Dreaming Host, you are almost certain, rides elsewhere. The dreams of these slaves bleed together, and they are mottled and black and streaked with despair. Where you walk, you take the shape of a cat, and their sleeping minds light up like stars. In the flesh, they are chained -- but in their sleep, they follow cats to places far away, beyond the horizon, where even the beating of mighty wings might not follow.

    [] In Spite: You know something of spite. It is a red seed, a cutting seed. Revenge and its' concepts are the purview of others, who (for clear reason) are not lightly crossed. But spite need not always grow to vengeance. At least that will be your defense should it come to it. There are things which can be shaped from the malice of the slave: knife-things, flensing and cold and wholly pitiless -- not unlike the talons of a cat as it slices it's prey from belly to tail. Spite is a crucible in which may be born many things without mercy.

    [] In Freedom: You decide that you shall trespass. The line is not so terribly close after all -- and did you really steal from Heaven itself to be scared away by any of your kin? You shall dance among their minds with dreams of things which are neither here nor there, but far far away. There is not a slave born in these dark halls who does not think daily in their heart of distant horizons, of places undreamt and unseen. It is beyond easy to slide in, to wrap yourself in their desires, to become everything they have ever wanted. Yes, of course, it is a perversion of their hope, but...well, perhaps his eyes are turned elsewhere.

    [] In Sunlit Halls: Slaves in the darkness. Rats in the walls. Must you trifle yourself with these things? The Ghalbazim are mighty, yes, but they are mortals still. Some of their hearts lie uneasy. Some among them see the tiny felines which dance among their legs with something like amusement, or affection. Others yet stir themselves and dream of wind under their wings, of great worlds yet untamed beyond the horizon. And of course, there are many in a race of slavers who smile to see cruel and red and senseless things done with sharp tools in the dark. Though they will not admit it, many of them chafe under the cloying perfection to which they have been born. You arise to the sunlit halls of the Red City, and seek purchase among the Dwellers in the Middle Air. Of course, (as you already know) every one of the Old Masters is sworn, bone and blood and claw, to another, until all the endings of the world. But you are a thief already, are you not?
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • [X] In Sunlit Halls: Slaves in the darkness. Rats in the walls. Must you trifle yourself with these things? The Ghalbazim are mighty, yes, but they are mortals still. Some of their hearts lie uneasy. Some among them see the tiny felines which dance among their legs with something like amusement, or affection. Others yet stir themselves and dream of wind under their wings, of great worlds yet untamed beyond the horizon. Though they will not admit it, they chafe under the cloying perfection to which they have been born. You arise to the sunlit halls of the Red City, and seek purchase among the Dwellers in the Middle Air. Of course, (as you already know) every one of the Old Masters is sworn, bone and blood and claw, to another, until all the endings of the world. But you are a thief already, are you not?
     
    [X] In Dreams: No, the dreams of men are not necessarily your purview. But these slaves dream so strongly of cats, of nimbleness and liberty and warm cold pride that you cannot help but be drawn in. The Dreaming Host, you are almost certain, rides elsewhere. The dreams of these slaves bleed together, and they are mottled and black and streaked with despair. Where you walk, you take the shape of a cat, and their sleeping minds light up like stars. In the flesh, they are chained -- but in their sleep, they follow cats to places far away, beyond the horizon, where even the beating of mighty wings might not follow.

    [X] In Spite: You know something of spite. It is a red seed, a cutting seed. Revenge and its' concepts are the purview of others, who (for clear reason) are not lightly crossed. But spite need not always grow to vengeance. At least that will be your defense should it come to it. There are things which can be shaped from the malice of the slave: knife-things, flensing and cold and wholly without mercy -- not unlike the talons of a cat as it slices it's prey from belly to tail. Spite is a crucible in which may be born things without mercy.
     
    [X] In Freedom: You decide that you shall trespass. The line is not so terribly close after all -- and did you really steal from Heaven itself to be scared away by any of your kin? You shall dance among their minds with dreams of things which are neither here nor there, but far far away. There is not a slave born in these dark halls who does not think in their heart of distant horizons far, far away, of places undreamt and unseen. It is beyond easy to slide in, to wrap yourself in their desires, to become everything they have ever wanted. Yes, of course, it is a perversion of their hope, but...well, perhaps his eyes are turned elsewhere.

    Perhaps we can become their hope.
     
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