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Fa - Omixil to Heart's Ease Sort of sums up why she didn’t care for hanging around gods so much. A mad bomber and a radical transformationalist, and more rubble than they started with. She runs her hand through her hair and huffs. Fa takes one last look over the soul engine she’s left in place. She said something about demons. Well, maybe. Back to work. Her form drift up to the air, then ignites like a torch, bursting away from Omixil, a shooting star streaking through space toward Heart’s Ease. Upon arriving, Fa’s form shatters into nine motes of silver light. The motes bounce from rock to rock, sorting through the debris. Every impact, each mote emits a note, a different hum, until the pace of their search forms a peculiar kind of almost-song that reverberates through the former prison. So I’m an understimulated self-absorbed pyromaniac, and the universe cracks open including my holding cell… and then what? The motes pulse in a little bit of irritation, sifting through the rubble. If Chrys had made it here, something else may have survived, right? Hadn't this been some big... complex for divine bureaucracy or something, right? Fa didn't know much about that, most of her petty crimes tended to be handled at mortal level. So maybe... Just feel about. Strike the right resonance, and make these ruins sing. The motes oscillate and whirr, broadening their search, color-shifting to a pale ruby tone. Action 1: Using Senses 1 + Forcing the Action to scrutinize Heart’s Ease and see if Fa can find anything untoward in the rubble of Heart’s Ease that might be out of place with the other places ravaged by the Crash. Action 2: And will be using Passions to give Heart's Ease one last comb, make sure there's nothing still useful. Ambivalent fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Jul 22, 2018 |
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Jul 21, 2018 13:13
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Ivadora 5/10 Hubris "..." Dearie, why is it everytime we meet you're either about to, or already have called the fuzz down on you? The attempted detonation of stars and screaming and whatever the hell." It doesn't make too much sense Iva's caught on, but years of knowing her had given an instinctual advantage of where such bullshit was about to occur. She nods to Siderous, "There, what he said!" Meanwhile: "Oh, a cloaca here, put the pneumatic press over there, such fun." The blob of mental effluvia applies his engineering in a Pollock style, things scattered all about, but if you're crazy enough, they all fit a pattern. ****** Action 1: Trying talk Chrys down and to negotiate with the other PCs so they don't kill, maim, or permanently incarcerate her and basically get her released on probation. Prowess+2? Action 2: Don't know what follows, but if there are any mourners to be wrapped up, trying to get them to settle down with Madness and Melancholy+2 Action 3: Hello Darkness tries to keep working on the temple with Industry+1 . Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Jul 21, 2018 |
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Jul 21, 2018 13:45
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 VOTH - The Edge of All Things Hubris: 4 As Siderous completed his monologue, the myriad Pillars of VOTH swooped in from all around at Chrys. "Such is the PRIZE for your FREEDOM", VOTH spoke, having stood silent during Siderous' speech, "To LEARN as our disciple, to CREATE rather than DESTROY, for CREATION naught needs one who shows such contemptuous DISRESPECT for the works of others. So if you wish to be FREE of PRISONS, must you DON the CHAINS of OATH instead, and VOW to REBUILD instead of DEMOLISH, VOW to HELP instead of HINDER." VOTH glared at the divinity. "Thus do two options PRESENT, villain." "You can either say YES to me." "Or NO to him." "CHOOSE."
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Jul 21, 2018 15:49
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Turn 5 - ...In All The Empty Places You Must Walk Pictured: Fa standing on the surface of Heart’s Ease Cat and Hello Darkness - The Bowels of the Scrapball There are so many. An endless tide of velvet, screaming, blood, and tears, each shoving handfuls of reality in their mouths so more of them can bloom. That just makes it more fun. Cat is a barely more than a shadow of claws, flashing eyes, and swirling gore. Hallways stuffed with mourners are soon pure again. Well as pure as a literal ball of garbage can ever be. But the stench lingers. Even Darkness chokes on it, complaining loudly to Cat while he finishes assembling Iva’s temple. He lights a few piles of greasy rags on fire. It does not help with the situation. Cat is forced to retreat into the bowels of the scrapball to avoid the smell. It is dark, but that doesn’t bother them at all. A half broken soda machine spits bottles across an empty room, and they shatter against a hollowed out dump truck, spreading glass shards in water that would team with microbes if there was any life left in it. And in the dark, one thing catches their eyes. A shining disc that catches sparks reflecting in the shattered glass. A hard drive platter. Strange, those things were very rare. Didn’t someone say something about a hard drive earlier? Cat grabs it from the pile. It’s so large not even Horse could carry it, maybe Elephant could. But it would be a hard haul. But Hello Darkness drags them out for Cat without complaint, surprisingly. They simply puke up a steel chain, tie it around, and drag them up to Ivadora’s temple before having a looksy. The internals are bad, real bad, - some sort of mold infested the circuit boards back when there was still a universe - but the platters themselves seem intact. OOC: Cat successfully repelled the Mourners and found a 1GB hard drive. Given the tech level of the universe you would normally need a flatbed truck to haul it. The internals are hosed, but the platters seem salvageable. ---------------------------- Trespasser - Keeling Mountain; In The Wine-Dark Ocean There are figures in the water. Down here they’re mostly piscine. Fish with too many eyes, all mad with grief. Frogs whose throats bulge with dirges. Even a few water-borne birds or stranger things - jellyfish with streamers in grieving colors. All of them explode into something like salt - dyed soft pink, like a few drops of blood got into it. It falls to the bottom of the seas, where Trespasser harvests it with an ever-expanding beak. They swallow it all for safekeeping, just in case. And there, in the glittering depths, there is a trail. Cast in steel. It says “Եկեք մի թռչուն” Far above, Trespasser can almost swear they can feel the outline of wings in dim light. Impossible, all the mourners were dead. Reduced to salt. No. Impossible. They follow the trail through a ruined city, down drowned boulevards full of floating corpses. Parks whose trees whose leaves move in the ocean currents. And all around there is stillness, the stillness of a graveyard that has not been touched in a very long time. But the message somehow repeats, again and again. In the shape of bodies, piles of mannequins in shattered storefront windows, The message finally reaches its zenith in a twisted sculpture that was once a skyscraper. Inside, in the deepest pressures your body cannot penetrate, it repeats itself. “Եկեք մի թռչուն” OOC: You have discovered how to turn Mourners into something called Bloodied Salt. It has energy related to pain and anguish, but can oddly also be pounded into blocks if you so desire. In addition you found a coded message in թռչուն that leads to a collapsed structure you lack the skills to safely enter on your own. ----------------------------- Fa - Heart’s Ease; In The Maelstrom Once, there were sprawling, palatial estates. Hidden vipers under an open blue sky. They were supposed to be an ‘incentive’ for the prisoners to get better. Now there are explosions. Endless explosions. Purple and violent sandstorms, carrying thunderbolts that could scar a star. Fa covers her mouth through it all, telling herself it’s only a really wild party. The flying buses are just part of the mosh pit experience, yeah. Mosh pit experience. She repeats it again. Mosh pit experience. One of them slams into smooth egg-white wall. The ruins scream stories of loss and senescence. Funny, none of the other ones sing like that. They’re boring stories of medication and guided painting. This, this has depth. Fa dives in, and finds herself in a wide room, its ceilings so high they could carry rainstorms, in better days. Great pillars fill it - carved of obsidian and covered in runes of Ambrosia. They weep, and their weeping is lost in the storms above. In the tearing metal and distant explosions and the smell of gas and a dying planet. Something lost was remembered here, Fa knows it. And soon this place will be lost too. The planet’s shards have begun their final collapse, and soon this will all be an asteroid belt, forever uncoiling, until there is only dust and regret. The wind howls above, and the ceiling cracks. Fa does her best to memorize the runes before touching them with a long, ephemeral finger. They dissolve and run into her body. OOC: Thanks to Fa all PCs take Two Ambrosia. Fa has found another forgotten moment from the Age of Creation, buried under the crust of Heart’s Ease long ago for unknown reasons. It speaks of a great loss, long mourned. What is that loss? ---------------------------- Siderous, Ivadora and VOTH - Racing to the Edge Stars cry out in instinctual fear of the speeding bullet heading towards them, whose position seems to stop and start and warp as the speed of light changes in different pockets of space. Chrysie is singularly focused on taking back her ‘playground’, and if her excitement at Trespasser’s suggestion about someone “detonating stars” is any indication, there is only a short window of time to save them. But she doesn’t realize the home field advantage that you enjoy in this region. Siderous’s closed spacelike curve wraps around her, creating a pocket of nearly impenetrable space that mirrors in on itself. Chrysie sees the stars vanish in front of her, and spins around to see who is playing tricks on her. She pulls a belt of grenades taped together out of her jacket and readies herself for a fight. But she loses her grip and pulls back, driven by some unseen force. VOTH’s gravity pillars enter the enclosed pocket and pull on her in all directions. And then all three of you arrive. And it is time to talk. --- She doesn’t look Siderous or VOTH in the eyes, but she does look at Ivadora all while the other two are talking and lecturing her. All of VOTH’s demands for answers awaken a fire in her eyes. She lets Siderous talk, through pained attempts to overpower the gravity well. “What is there to rebuild? Why does loving any of it need to be rebuilt? When you make it back the way it was, are you going to send me back to where I was?!” “Here’s my deal. Get the hell away from me and you can have your lovely stars!” She gasps for breath. “You stole my things. But it’s whatever! I can deal!” “Maybe you come and find me when you want to do this Death of Stars thing. Your friend sounds like a dweeb but maybe you got something. Just… just let me go!” The gravity pillars start to lose strength against the young goddess, who even as her physical form seems to struggle lightly against the trap, is putting all of her divine energy into breaking free. Better to let her go softly and slowly, and keep your guard up. --- Chrysie shakes out her jacket and turns to Ivadora. Her voice is uncharacteristically sober. “Take care of yourself. We still have a score to settle.” Before you can respond, she is already flying away on a jet of flame. She left the grenade bundle behind, now floating in space. OOC: Chrysie is speeding away in some direction that doesn’t correspond to your known mapping. The crisis is averted, at least for now. She’s not the type to submit under duress, but she may have been truthful about having a talk later. The grenades she left behind are similar to the ones she used against Trespasser and Fa. Something about them could temporarily prevent faster than light travel.  Summary: VOTH meditates and Hubris is reduced by 6 All players receive +2 Ambrosia each Trespasser may turn Mourners into the building resource Bloodied Salt (Trespasser only) Chrys has left the known universe with no damage done to stars at the Edge Heart’s Ease will soon break apart Iva’s temple on the Scrapball is finished. New mysteries: 1GB hard drive, Trespasser’s coded message to a collapsed structure, Chrys’s grenades Current Mysteries: The Sensor Logs of the Microcosm, The Disappearance of Marvak, The Status Of The Orrery, What Did Majakazumi Know?, the Six-Fingered Beings Language, Gogoth’s Machine in the Temple, Who Was Listening To You In The Orrery? Special Thanks to 9IronSwingersClub for writing the Sid/Iva/VOTH section, writing the summary, providing the map, and finding the music and art in this update. The Unlife Aquatic fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Jul 23, 2018 |
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Jul 23, 2018 01:07
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Siderous The Star-Heart, Oximil After the chat with Chrys Siderous will breath a sigh of relief and ask leave of the other divinities that remained. He had a task to accomplish - building. He was always at home building something. And he had certainly go through a time to get the materials needed. But first he stops by the divine hospital and begins to gently unbind Vela's life sustaining magics and technologies for a bit of travel. It wouldn't do for her to be stuck in this place forever - he was sure that despite herself, she too wanted to see what had become of the universe. And besides, he could use another's input on the device he was about to be making. He greets Starkin, who he is pleased to see fully healed of their injuries. He tells them to do as they would - it has been stressful and they all likely needed time to settle down and come to grips with what was going on. He was going to take Vela and his materials to Oximil, to begin the process of relighting the universe. He takes her, and the assembled materials to Oximil, the city of dust and regrets. The work is gentle, serene - to those that watched his motions conveyed more a musical conductor than anything else as he subtly manipulated the parts into place. The souls of the dead stars - those that he could save, and hadn't been pilfered by the other gods. An object of regret, to bind the structure to the city. And a piece of himself, that might bind it all together. The form doesn't take a traditional temple shape, but instead is a trio of spires that seem to grow from underneath the city and spiral around it. They will collect the dust on the wind and gather it... for the next step. But he is not working quickly. He is too tired, too injured. The movements are almost lazy, as he attempts to process everything that has happened. "I am sorry... Sorry that you are so injured. For some reason it feels like it is my fault," Siderous says, almost... unknowingly. The regrets, guilt and remorse trying to find any way out of his psyche, "I saved them, the Starkin, I reached for them. That was my instinct, and then I looked for you and the other stars. I feel regret for not reaching out in those moments for you, and also feel guilt for that regret. The worst part of it is I'm not even sure where this regret is coming from. We've been reduced to scavenging the bits of divine detritus left from the world that was. I've looked into the deepest regrets of a goddess that still lives, trapped in time. A journal of their innermost thoughts echoing in my head, which if I'm honest hasn't been in the greatest state through all of this anyway. I should feel joy. My closest friend and my children survived this calamity, while everyone else lost... everything. Yet even that is being swallowed by this guilt." He doesn't have a point when he talks. Even when he finishes it isn't an end of a thought, just a trailing into silence of someone looking for guidance, absolution. Action 1: Meditate with 1 dice. Action 2: Begin construction of the Temple of Dust using Gravity +2, but with a Level 2 Lung Injury. Corhort Action: Starkin will probably go off on the specific action with the Trespasser whenever we work out that. Hubris: 9 Injuries [X] [X] [ ] [ ] ---Level 2 Liver Injury (Immaculate Designer) ---Level 2 Lung Injury (Immaculate Designer) Starkin Injuries [] [] [ ] [ ] Items/Artifacts ---Ambrosia [3] ---The Cosmic Lasso: Assists in moving objects across great distances in non-combat situations. ---Divina Hospitium [Free]: User can spend 1 action to reduce their injuries by one level. It must recharge for a full turn before it can be used again. If a PC doesn't take an injury during a turn they get 1 segment of their healing clock filled from hereon out.
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Jul 24, 2018 00:40
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 The Trespasser Գրողը տանի. The Tresspasser snorted, struggling to convey the extent of their indignation that the crude shell of their body could simply not hold. The gravest of all sins had been committed yet again: loving with us. And this time, someone was having a victory lap, what with this mockery of our fine avian fo- Wait. Calm down. Don't show weakness. Be still. Think. Win. Win. This was the opening. The flaunting, which inevitably breeds carelessness, as taught by Omixil. Yeah, it's good. It's manageable. Fairly transparent, really. Our opponent was either admirably overprepared, a troublesome meddler from տուն or, worst of all, ourselves. Doesn't matter, as the course of action had already been set. There was a lesson to be taught. Enjoy your first move advantage. But don't forget we all play with the same pawns. ---- Trespasser perched on twisted piece of lamplight civilized enough to remain on the debris-infested orbit of Heart's Ease. There's no need to bother with the storms when a little bit of patience will do. The bird calmly waited, until they saw Fa emerging from the shattered planet. "Ah, here you are, fair lady," they said, casually gliding closer. "I've given a lot of thought to our exciting little encounter down at Omixil and came to some very important conclusions. Namely, that you happen to be a particularly kind soul. And a real people's person at that. Therefore I regret to burden you with this, but... Well, I believe you might be the only person I might entrust with a delicate predicament." "See, there's... A friend I was tending to when I was gone. She's... Hurt and in great pain, slowly regenerating from great burns - it's really ugly. Just, just try not to touch her, okay? Anyway, there is this sick friend I have been keeping company and helping around, you know, so she could truly stand on her feet and help our reconstruction efforts, perhaps. Regrettably, I have some very pressing matters to attend to and so I thought you could fill in for me just once? I really don't want her to have to be alone, but... Well, I thought you could maybe find a way to make her happier while she reconvalesces - she's really passionate about... Certain... Liberal arts. It could be fun for you too, you know? Have a girls' night out, talk about your feelings or what- oh, that's another thing, she doesn't exactly speak. I- I can explain on the way, okay?" "Ah, but I'm forgetting myself. After all, I've only come here to ensure your well-being. That you haven't run into any of these... Demons, or another one of their puppets. You wouldn't find anything troubling down there, yes?" --- Time is such a fickle thing. Measurable, yet . So often it's so hard to truly judge it - just how much of it is enough. Well, this time it was easy. Long enough for Voth to go away to do whatever pillar men tend to do. The Trespasser needed Siderous and they needed him alone. "And so we meet again, good doctor," bird said, nearly ambushing the sun god. "I must admit I'm pleasantly surprised to see you're a maestro of numerous arts, not just the celestial kind. Truly the right man for our little triangular venture - which I hope you've duly considered. If so, I'm afraid there has been a slight wrinkle in the... Well, the offer still stands, but I might require a minor gesture of goodwill to truly kick off our fruitful partnership." "Well, there's no need to beat around the bush - when I was gone, I have been following the trail of our... Antagonist is the word, I believe. The forces behind the attack on the Orrery. Back then we've found out not only had we been spied upon, but also... Ridiculed, for daring to notice that - it's all true, man, just ask the pillar man. Then- well, long story short, I've been following some loose threads and I finally stumbled onto that very unmistakable brand of overconfident mockery." "Suffice to say, I do believe I can keep poking our shared enemy until they either run out of tricks or slip that one crucial careless brag. And this is where you could come in. See, I sniffed the perps down in the darkest depths of the Keeling Mountain. Regrettably, the near-endless oceans proved a bit more of a crushing deathtrap I could handle myself. So then I thought that with your mastery of gravity, it would be fairly easy to ease the pressure, yes? Just have the water hover and chill, rather than cumulate in a downward force. It would be a minor endeavor on your part, compared to saving the known galaxies, but a great effort to serve and protect. We could make great partners, you know? Like Starsky and Hutch. Randall and Հոպկիրկ. Sinclair and Wilde." "Oh, and please don't talk too much about it, yes? These are delicate matters and best brought to some semblance of completion before divulging." --- Well, thankfully the star dudes did not know exactly what was needed of them, so it would be a terrible waste not to have them help haul some bricks. For it might be a menial task, yet one in service of eternal beauty. The overnight ruins of Keeling's Mountain were so... Perfect. Pristine. Their form in perfect harmony with their idea. Just imagine the loss of having them glazed over by those of lesser understanding. No. That could not stand. Imagine: this, forever. The very second reconstruction is about to begin. One last look at the empire that was and the stories it sang on its deathbed. Shop-windows hiding excess under thick layers of dust. Serpentine line of footprints, ending where kneeprints begin. A thick, pristine wall, that could not protect anyone. A trolley left behind. Or picture this; one last look at the empire that was and the stories it sang on its deathbed. Broken windowsills, bereft of pride. Twisting fractals of cracked pavements. A ray of sunshine piercing the skewered carcass of the clocktower. Not a fingerprint in sight. Every time you come, different. Every time you blink, subtly shifting. Ever changing. Ever teaching. Eternally glorious. It wasn't easy though. Things had to be carefully arranged. The streets and stones and rubble had to be caressed and taught to remember, to hope, to regret, to soldier on and learn, to sorrow, to burn with the need to express. The collected spirits had to be cautiously inserted into the system so they never break away from the clockwork. Alas, wasn't feasible to preserve all of Keeling, so a selection had to be made. Perhaps this small square by the pillar? Should make for a good contrast. Still, there was so long the Trespasser could push the star kind for frivolities. There were priorities, after all. ------ Action 1: I begin construction of the Ruins temple, happily burning away a brick of bloodied salt and one snuffbox of souls. I'll worry about the third ingredient once I reach the last third of the clock. Action 2: I invoke the Key to brave the depths again - the Starkin may handle the pressure, but the way has to be shown and the skyscraper won't wallhack itself.
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Jul 25, 2018 00:19
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 Cat Cat was actually doing pretty well. His wound from the Microcosm had finally healed (not that it could slow down someone like him all that much), the vermin had been successfully clawed up and spit out, and he'd even found a giant...something deep in the scrapball. Sure, Cat wasn't stupid. He understood what a hard drive was and even basically how it worked, though he'd never admit that. It was just hard for him to take anything he hadn't picked up by instinct seriously. He didn't read; he watched, he waited, and he learned. Well, at least that's what he did when he had something important to do. Right now, the universe seemed unlikely to implode in the immediate future, a state of affairs that did not seem likely to last. Therefore, he wanted to take advantage while it lasted and have a bit of a catnap. He grabbed a hunk of planetary debris, and poked it into a nice, stable orbit around one of Siderous' more professional-grade suns. Then he flopped onto the impromptu bed, and sunned himself as the chunk of rock lazily orbited the star. Eventually, though, all the peace and contentment started to bore Cat. The universe had gotten all messed up, which meant there was probably more than Mourners out there. It reminded him of his early days of divinity, where the animal gods and the humans hadn't quite established a stable pecking order. Lots of unknowns, lots of danger, lots of surprises. And worst of all, he'd found himself teaming up with Dog on a number of occasions to protect the human gods. Just to be completely safe, Cat snuck out of the stable routes and stalked about the darker ends of the universe, just to get a lay of the land. **** Action 1: Meditate! Action 2: Cat's gonna re-explore some of the old universe, the bits we couldn't really save. Maybe he'll find loot, maybe he'll get advance warning of a new threat. Using Cat +2. Hubris: 4
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Jul 25, 2018 03:16
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 Starkin Children-Child of the Sun That Was As the Trespasser approaches the pair of Vela and Siderous, a distortion in space seems to turn him around. Floating through space before him in a humanoid figure, wearing a gleaming armored suit with a rounded, blank mask covering the face. As light from Siderous and the nearby stars of the Orrery glint off the mask the face beneath is visible - but with every passing moment the face seems to have changed. When Starkin speaks its voice resonates with a hundred billion smaller voices - but altogether it seems to average out to something that perhaps wasn't expected. "I'm just gonna stop ya right there birdie, I'm afraid The Sun That Was isn't takin any visitahs. Now if you need somethin of a celestial nature I am sure that I could oblige, providin o'course you aren't trying to play a trick on us. Ya see we're more than old enough to spot snake oil for what it is, but I do admit y'alls got us mighty curious about what it is you're really up to. I'm hopin to be pleasantly surprised." The Starkin will help The Trespasser with Gravity +2
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Jul 25, 2018 03:56
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VOTH - Microcosm of Genesis Hubris: 0 Ambrosia: 5 VOTH stood still like a statue, glowing and resplendent in the middle of the Microcosm's bridge, a stark juxtaposition against the teetering shadows of the mantis creatures that had gathered. They crawled and skittered near the walls and the consoles, at the edge of the God's radiance, close enough to have their creeping silhouettes drawn against the dark, but still staying far enough to avoid being truly illuminated. Such wretches were they. "HEED", VOTH finally stated, causing a rolling wave of recoil within their ranks. "For VOTH has a STORY to impart." "It is a STORY of OLD CREATION. It is a STORY meant for you. So LISTEN well." "To APPRECIATE this STORY, you must first KNOW that as the PILLAR OF JUSTICE, I created a MYRIAD of ORDERS among mortalkind, or of celestial servitors to watch over them. Some PEACEFUL, others not. Of the MARTIAL bent were my KNIGHTS and CRUSADERS, ever ready to purge filth wherever found, to remind CREATION that JUSTICE was not weak. To all of them was granted PRESTIGE and DIVINE MIGHT so that they could perform, yet they were not made EQUAL." "Then, a RIDDLE for you. Which ORDER was the most RIGHTEOUS? Which ORDER would I rely upon when all others proved LACKING or INCAPABLE? Was it the CELESTIAL DAWNGUARD, of LIGHT forged and FIRE born? Was it the KEEPERS OF THE COURT, assigned to every local Cycle-Master to remind them of their DUTY? Was it the MERCYKILLERS of the Dungeon Worlds, tasked to guard the DIVINE itself? Angels all, or demons, or other celestial servant, all of them, created SUBLIME. As clear of FLAW as one could one make, as GEARED towards a purpose as one might be." "If you are CURIOUS for an ANSWER, then one can you HAVE." "It was NONE of them." "No. The one I most trusted was the KNIGHTS TENEBRAE. Not of any God's Court, of no DIVINE HAND fashioned for any purpose but MISERY. WRETCHES and DREGS, all of them, the MONSTERS that shied away from the eyes of others. Your vampires, beholders, other BEASTS that hid away in the dark, only surfacing to inflict their MALICE and RAVENOUS IMPULSE upon all." "EVIL by birth. VILE by nature. Or so SOME would say." "But it is NOT so. Not for THEM, or for ANYONE. For CORRUPTION is not a matter of BIRTH, it is not a matter of MAKE. It is a matter of CHOICE. The KNIGHTS TENEBREA understood this better than ANYONE. They KNEW there was no DARKNESS the LIGHT could not pierce, they KNEW there was no creature beyond SALVATION. And this they KNEW, because alone among my ORDERS they had all experienced it FIRSTHAND." "A more RIGHTEOUS lot you would not find." VOTH kept a silence. But not for long. "They are GONE, now." "But PERHAPS their LEGACY can still live." The glow grew stronger, more forceful. "So I STAND before you now, like I STOOD before them then. And I shall BESEECH you just like I BESEECHED them then." "Step FORTH into a BAPTISM of LIGHT, or FLEE and cover in DARKNESS and IGNOMINY." "CHOOSE." OOC: Action 1: ORDER +3 to organize these strange mantis creatures into the Order of Knights Tenebrae (a City at the Microcosm) Action 2: LIGHT +2 and hubris to imbue the Knights with VOTH'S RADIANCE for the most RIGHTEOUS of SMITINGS Theantero fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jul 25, 2018 |
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Jul 25, 2018 18:44
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Of the first dreamers, those beings who first created, one carefully tended a garden world and shaped it into a cradle - and when he was finished, he lay to rest and surrendered his life - and of his body arose a golden people, ageless and beautiful, born into splendor, who called themselves iolani, as it had the sound of the name of their maker. Neither divine nor mortal - who can say if such distinctions even existed in this age - and never wanting, they dwelt in the garden of their birth for millenia, joyfully pursuing curiosities. Other peoples eventually dotted the cosmos, younger gods brought about their new kinds of Order, but none trespassed in the shadow cast by the Iolani’s maker. Kailehua, one who peered over the garden wall, saw the benighted worlds beyond, and these young gods, many no mightier than she herself. She saw no trace of her maker’s siblings, of the first to create, and at last she believed her cradle had at last grown too small. Kahukoa, of great foresight, who stood at the garden wall, knew Kailehua’s heart, for the Iolani were of one body. He saw Kailehua’s ambition, and in her heart, he saw the seed of riotous discord and a terrible hubris, and what dark shapes the Iolani may take. Kailehua saw what was reflected in Kahukoa’s eyes and knew him to be right but could not deny her heart. So Kahukoa lay himself to rest in their garden, and he cut open his belly, and as the Iolani were of one body, and but one life, they perished there - and of their people arose a new people, ageless and graceful, born into the golden city of the Iolani, heirs to their works and wonders. They called themselves ‘kahukoa’, as it had the sound of the name of their maker. But there was a longing in them, and they were of one body with a fractured heart. And Manoaumakua who was of no people, and born of no one, and was neither divine nor mortal, it found these children, and swam into that fissure with its grinning mouth full of razor teeth. In time, the Kahukoa were riven with riotous discord and came to the same conclusion as their namesake, and they lay themselves to rest in their Garden of Iolani, and surrendered their lives - and of their blood arose a new people, somewhat distant from the Iolani but still carrying the soul of the Creator. But as they arose, Manoaumakua stole away bits of the wondrous works of the Iolani, hid them from Knowing. The predator was ready for these people - who called themselves Ke’kaumaha, for the grief which birthed them. As the Kahukoa, they did not see their tormentor, who dragged them to ruin - nor did the next generation, and the one after that. In ten generations, the light of the Iolani was gone, and the blood of the last people had born a new people, with still eyes and ghastly grins of jagged teeth, and they called themselves Mano, for they knew indeed their maker, who was of no people and born of no one, and their maker had left them no legacy, and their garden was of nothing, and they had no history.  No one knows what became of the Mano, and few knew the Iolani, but now and again, one may find a bauble or trinket, a trace of those golden people born in that Ancient Age, in a place where Manoaumaku stole it away and hid it so its children would not know of their lineage. And these things may carry with them some of that old power, but doleful air and a taste of sorrow for that golden garden which was lost. Fa - Heart’s Ease The wretched alien bird finds Fa shrouded in the dust of the collapsing planet, seated atop a seat-shaped stone, turning over a crystalline and gold jewelry box in her hand. It seems old - but then, most things must to the Trespasser, though this seems older than most - old to Fa even, for sure. She ponders it for a moment, and the story told in the crumbling script she'd read, while listening to the proposal. She clicks her tongue, “To know me so briefly, and yet know me so well.” Fa whisks the small box away to whatever place she keeps her things, then nods, “Fine, whatever. Anything for a fan, right?” The parts that were Te, Passion of the theatrical arts, grumble at being used for such low cunning. ~ Temple of Prism Fa whips about the bends and turns of the temple, appearing in her mortal guise for only an instant or two before dispersing as a sound, a musical note that echoes down one corridor and reforms at the end. She follows the light, now genuinely curious in her own right as to just what the bird had dug up. Action 1 & 2: Will be indulging in the Trespasser’s plan. Fa is far too literate and far too familiar with storytelling conventions to trust that goofy act of course, but she's more interested maybe in keeping an eye on them, maybe. Both actions I guess will be put into working on those clocks - using Passion and Senses. Fa isn't some sort of NERD but music and math share all sorts of things. Ambivalent fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Jul 26, 2018 |
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Jul 26, 2018 12:49
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Ivadora 5/10 Hubris - The Scrapball With that little family dispute taken care of for now (Iva was a big believer in social problems being solved by one or more parties loving off for an indeterminate amount of time.), she now had business back "home". Darkness had earned his keep for now, and it appeared the temple was now up and running, and she had a particular piece of scrap she wanted to look at. But how would she access a computer part when all such devices are dead? Using the concept that the simplest choice is the best, one giant biomechanical horror of meat and scrap metal later, Iva smiles as it bursts forth from its larvael skin, takes the plate in hand, inserts it into its maw, and with scritchy, scratching noises, begins to decipher the plate. She awaits the dot-matrix printer embedded in its "neck" to begin spitting out a result any time now. Regardless of the result, Iva decides to take a very, very, careful poke at Chrys' grenades. Darkness, meanwhile, goes somewhere to get his injury looked at. "HEY, I HEARD THIS WAS A HOSPITAL. HAVE WE REINVENTED SEXY NURSE LADIES YET CONFIRM/DENY?" ****** Action 1: Building a biomonster to read the hd plate with Metal and Meat +3 Action 2: Investigating the grenades with Insight+2 Action 3: Hello Darkness will crash at the hospital if possible. If the beds are occupied he'll just kinda investigate the place. (Recovery for the liver injury)
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Jul 26, 2018 13:38
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Turn 6 - The Complexity of Light Fa[ (1/10H) - The Temple of The Prism When she steps into the temple, into the beams of light and the dust, she expects a burn victim. That is not what she finds.  They smile tightly without moving their eyes, as if the sides of their mouth were being pulled apart by hooks. There’s no feeling in it, no happiness. Then they spread their six-fingered hands in a greeting gesture. “Xha!nm?” They say, curling one hands fingers inward and pulling towards themselves. A seat is offered, Fa takes it.. It takes time to weave her way through the being’s language. For time is the center matter in all this. That’s what opens doors. Every sentence is a network of hand signs (to demarcate tenses, subjects and pronouns) and spoken words (objects and actions) “I am….” The being looks around the room, bites their lip. “I am….Mhaith’s Ascent. Yes, Mhaith’s Ascent.” Clear strings manifest between their fingers, they use them to carve a picture into a nearby wall by bending it, and then snapping it back into place. The handsign for (universe/dimension/timeline? Still not entirely clear) and then the word for… motion? Another handsign. “Here.” They point to “Universe” again. What comes next to garbled, their mind is so unlike Fa’s. It is a thing of chains and logic, control and discipline. Each and every neuron is locked up tight. It doesn’t help the situation. All Fa can understand is: “No Mhaith in (timeline?)” Mhaith’s Ascent lets out a frustrated sigh, the first emotion Fa has seen on their otherwise placid face. The conversation turns to more banal things, they take some pleasure in learning the names of various colors, what different cultures associated with each. “So much brighter here.” OOC: Basic communication is now possible with this being. Some words are still difficult, and complex concepts are beyond this level of communication. You will need to finish another clock (now at 3/8 ) in order to master this language. ------------------ Trespasser and Starkin - Keeling Mountain; Beneath The Waves Dim light penetrates the ocean, but not deep enough to reach the both of you. Starkin must light the way herself. Trespasser leads her down, into the ruined cities, past broken windows, floating corpses, the remnants of a million lives. Starkin is quiet now, mind churning over the broken bodies. They were like this, for a terrible moment. Caught between life and eternity. Now they are...this. She does not even notice when they reach their destination - a skyscraper deep under the ocean, with an arcane field that interferes with Trespasser’s abilities to aid the pressure and the dark in keeping their secrets. It is still here, so still. Starkin reaches out, pulling and pushing water to open up crevices, a dirty path that leads through wounded rebar and shattered concrete. Glowing powder smears mark your path, as if you were expected. As if this was planned. As they move deeper, Tresspaser can feel it behind their eyes, Starkin, all in their hearts. Electricity that bleeds, tears that smell like sage. Why it almost reminds Trespasser of… There is a flash of light, the smell of sage rises to choke both. And then it’s gone. But Trespasser and Starkin understand, everything is perfectly clear. The images are like blast shadows, burned into their souls. But there is no time to speak of what they saw. The steel begins to crack and cry. Darkness. Silence. Pain. It takes the both of you several months to dig yourselves out. The field that interferes with Trespasser’s power still remains, even in the dark. When they finally return to the surface they exchange glances, a secret, their secret. OOC: Trespasser and Starkin may determine a popular myth about the age of creation is a lie. What is the myth? Why is it a lie? In addition, both take a Level 1 Stomach Wound. ------------------ VOTH (2/10H) - The Microcosm Millitus Your story holds them rapt, and they explode into a frenzy the moment you’re done speaking. Weapons are forged, oaths are taken, duties given. They take them all with grim pride. And when you offer to bless them with power, more than you can count line up for your blessing. As you bend down and mutter prayers, inky tears fill their eyes. Each walks away full of prayers and joy. Until tomorrow. A mantid finds you, drags you back to the Microcosm. Each and every being you have blessed is dying. And yet they will not relent. They will be blessed, they will carry it in their hearts. Even if it should kill them. Only one out of twenty that become sick survive. Your City is 3/4, but your blessing backfired quite seriously. It seems it didn’t quite agree with their bizarre biology. More research is required to bless them properly. ------------------ Siderous (6/10H) and Vela - Omixil Vela laughs, a weak thing. “Darling, it was a disaster. You did what you could.” Her voice is still crisp and aristocratic. She chuckles at the mention of Majakazumi. “She was always an odd one. I remember having tea with her once or twice, in my human mask, of course. Quite charming in her own way.” She sighs. “You did what you could.” She speaks of the old days, scandals from her days as a different sort of star, rumors from stellar courtiers. It’s enough to convince Sid he’s home, just for a little while. The work on the temple is slow, his body is racked with pain. He ignores it by listening to the sound of Vela’s voice. “And then, Lady Answorth said….darling? Are you quite alright?” Her radio emissions are low again as she watches the blood drip from his body. “Siderous, you need to rest.” You lost 3 Hubris and managed to finish 1/4 of the temple building clock. ------------------ Ivadora - Ivadora’s Infernal Bar And Temple Complex; The Scrapball Ivadora works for days, or what she thinks are days. It’s hard to tell here. Hello Darkness scampers off to the hospital, just as ordered, leaving her alone with the sound of creaking metal and the smell of battery acid and rust. She summons meat, iron, steel, neurons and eyes, weaves it together, or sometimes welds it, welding is always fun. The smell of melting flesh reminds Ivadora of better days. When she’s done, a great bullfrog of steel and skin sits before her. Why does it always turn out to be toads? Gotta look into that. “Feed.” It says, in a booming voice. Ivadora shoves hard drive platters in it’s mouth. It loudly chews them, thousands of eyes blinking and twitching. “Will take time to process.” It burps, sprawing bits of metal on Iva. “Come back later.” Eyes all shut, and it begins to emit a number of strange smells. She grumbles, but doesn’t have time to kick it around. Instead she retreats to her workshop and studies the grenades. They’re based on a combination of arcanery, the divine, and technology that Iva has never seen before. A complicated engine to one simple goal - root the divine in place. All the circuits are easy enough to understand, the runes too, even the spark of the divine they need to function. The problem is she has none of the materials on hand to reproduce them. ---- Hello Darkness scampers down the halls, screaming about nurses in short skirts. They are dim, boring places. Maybe he could add some lights, surely they wouldn- He runs face first into the ankles of something much bigger than him. “Why are you here?” It booms into his mind. “HEYA, I WAS JUST WANTIN TO SEE IF YOU HAD ANY DAMES WITH GREAT GA-” ---- At first, Ivadora thinks it’s a shooting star. She’s so disappointed when she realizes what it is. “I JUST WANTED A HOT NURRR-” Hello Darkness screams as he flies through the void. He slams into a concrete pillar at .02c, then falls into a dumpster full of hypodermic needles. The dumpster bottom creaks and screams for a moment, then gives way. He falls, covered in needles, into a pile of mourner bodies. It takes him a full hour to dig his way out, gore and needles hanging off his body. He looks a little bit like the time Ivadora tried to make a porcupine. “Boss, they told me I was fine and then said something about ‘sexual harassment’! The prudes! Non’a them are comfortable in their own skins, buncha stiffs!” OOC: The data-toad will have your information ready next turn, and you know how to make chrono-static grenades now, but the recipe calls for materials you don’t even know where to find yet. Hello Darkness was actually just finished healing passively when you sent him there, so the hospital has not gone on CD. ------------------ Cat (1/10H) - Unexplored Space The trek outward is dreary - so much of the universe is now empty space. What little has been out here, you and the others have been calling to join the other surviving planets at the Edge. There’s no place for sun naps or prowling around. While in the middle of nowhere, your direction starts to veer off to one side, and you aren’t sure why. It doesn’t feel like gravity - at least not in the way you’ve sensed, and gravity is rarely a problem for divine beings. This is something else. Like the threading of light in the temple you and Trespasser explored. You see a planet-sized black sphere in that direction, partially hidden behind some nebulae. You didn’t notice it until now, and you think you know why - its position is warping around as you get closer, like trying to find an object in a hall of mirrors. Light is working differently here. The pull becomes stronger even as you swim away from the planet, and as you get closer, its position seem to warp less. You begin falling to the surface, faster and faster. Somewhere That Wasn’t Meant To Be  The atmosphere singes your fur as you shoot across the horizon. Through the fire, you see the ground below - vast blue and black veins of pulsating and writhing slime adorn most of the surface of the rock. Your descent slows and the fire of your entry dies down, allowing your ears to open. The roaring sound of the flame has been replaced with what you can only discern as orgasmic screams of hundreds of humanoids and the squishy, sloshy squirts of unrecognizable bodily functions. Loud and repeated for as far as Cat can tell. You are still unable to control your movement as the ground approaches at an angle. When it looks as though the sudden stop into the ground is fast approaching, you realize you are beginning to slow down. Blue and black and hairy six-fingered hands manifest out of the slime and seem to anticipate your fall. You’ve been noticed. Summoning as much grace as a cat can have at a moment like this, and because there seems to be nothing else to do, you resign to allowing them to cushion your fall. Maybe they know they’re supposed to greet a perfect being like you. You wonder if the weirdo at the temple told them about you - they seem to be related. What a fortuitous turn of events it would be if they also enjoyed respecting and worshipping felines! Their screaming is dying down as more hands raise up, and some begin to meet your body, now only inching towards them. You shake yourself up from their weak grasps and walk across. What a wonder it must be for them to finally get to meet you! The hands reach out as you surf along them, each wanting to pet you, apparently. But one gets too grabby. It starts extending its slimy tentacle-fingers around your neck, and starts whispering something to you. It doesn’t make any sense. Then it pulls back, takes in mass from the slime, and sends you upward. You are flung away, hurtling straight up towards the atmosphere. The same feeling of force that pulled you into the planet is pushing you away, faster and faster. Looking back, you see the planet shifting behind the hall of mirrors again, and eventually disappearing. You aren’t able to come to a stop until hours later. OOC: Cat recovered 3 Hubris. You found something out there, and it seems to be connected to the six-fingered being. But they don’t seem to like you very much yet. You aren’t sure of the exact location of the planet, but you remember the general direction. ------------------ Everyone - Eternium Reclamation Station  Another planet has slowly fallen into a locked orbit near the Edge. An industrial world that none of you are familiar with. It has signs of Gogoth’s presence and engineering all over it. Several wide-mouth openings in the surface go deep inside the planet, into geothermal-heated forges and reactors. Small spider robots, less than a meter high, pull the wrecks of larger ones around and into the mouths of the facility. It seems there was a battle here recently, but whatever enemy has fled and left no trace of their presence.   The machines, whether still functioning or full of holes, carry only the most rudimentary imagining devices and very little stored memory. Most will be gone soon, dragged into the mouths of the planet. While they would normally be recycled into new machines, that part of the facility seems to have disappeared. The production lines are melted together in a pit of slag that raises slightly for every metal corpse dropped in it. Each adds its divinity back to the source where it came from, with nowhere for it to go. The slag pit is a powerful thing, radiating energy that none of you have felt before except when traveling to the farthest edges of space: the energy of creation and conversion. It is not pure, having already seeded itself with patterns. It is a Sacred Place, and it echoes the Domains of Fire, Engineering and Metal. ------------------  Summary: Siderous and Cat recover 3 Hubris. Trespasser and Starkin have a Level 1 Stomach Wound (Resistable). Hospital was not used and so is not recharging. Siderous is 1/4th done with building. VOTH is 3/4ths done with building. Trespasser determines that a certain myth about Creation is a lie. Everyone may speak to the Six-Fingered Being in basic question-statement format. New mysteries: The Six-Fingered Planet, Gogoth’s Robots. Current Mysteries: The Sensor Logs of the Microcosm, The Disappearance of Marvak, The Status Of The Orrery, What Did Majakazumi Know?, the Six-Fingered Beings Advanced Language, Gogoth’s Machine in the Temple, 1GB Hard Drive, Chrys’s Grenades
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Jul 27, 2018 22:26
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Livescene 5: Siderous Dialogue with Mhaith https://saroleplays420.wordpress.com/2018/08/06/livescene-5-dialogue-with-mhaith/
9IronSwingersClub fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Aug 6, 2018 |
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Jul 28, 2018 02:07
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Siderous The Star-Heart, Oximil Siderous quakes with the effort of what he is doing, before Vela's words make him stop. He looks and sees how his construction was slow, sloppy - his every movement, his every breath a distraction from the task at hand. He finally relents and begins to move them both to the hospital. "You're right.." Suddenly gravity waves begin to wash over them from the direction of the strange temple, sounding faintly like... music? To their stellar ears. It makes Siderous sigh and furrow a brow. He reconnects the life support systems to the hospital's construction, "Well, it seems like we have guests. No rest for the weary on this day." ------------------ CONVERSATION HAPPENS HERE ------------------ He lays in the hospital "bed" across from Vela. As he listens to the increasingly intense and competitive music coming from the strange temple. He idly thinks that if they didn't keep it down Aldeberan and and Antares would surely be by to complain. But the thought doesn't send him into a dark spiral this time - instead a simple sadness as he fades into a restful sleep. ---------------------- Starkin Children of the Sun That Was, Temple of Prism --------------------- "Y'all ain't to bad. But I think it's time we got serious, don't you?" The armored form of Starkin rises to the center of the large space, gathering energy around herself as she motions for Mhaith to start this bout.. Action 1: Meditate with 1 dice. Action 2: Utilize the Hospital to heal 1 level of injuries. Corhort Action: Use Insight +2 to continue the language learning process as they cut heads and duel gravjos at each other. Hubris: 6 Injuries [X] [X] [X] [ ] ---Level 1 Liver Injury (Immaculate Designer) ---Level 1 Lung Injury (Immaculate Designer) Starkin Injuries [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] ---Level 1 Stomach Injury (Explorationn) Items/Artifacts ---Ambrosia [3] ---The Cosmic Lasso: Assists in moving objects across great distances in non-combat situations. ---Divina Hospitium [USED]: User can spend 1 action to reduce their injuries by one level. It must recharge for a full turn before it can be used again. If a PC doesn't take an injury during a turn they get 1 segment of their healing clock filled from hereon out.[/i]
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Jul 28, 2018 18:03
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VOTH - Microcosm of Genesis Hubris: 2 Ambrosia: 5 Aversion to The Light was not... unheard of within the creatures of Creation. In fact, it was something VOTH was used to. So was he also used to these words: "HEED." "FALTER NOT. For whatever THE LIGHT takes, THE LIGHT can SUPPLANT. And you shall be STRONGER for it." "SO SAYS VOTH." Though, even then, it would be wrong to draw direct parallel between these things and what he had encountered in the past. The aversion of these... mantis creatures seemed more fundamental, somehow. So VOTH took, surprisingly gently, the nearest of the sputtering wretches onto his palm, and raised it up, near his covered face. He gazed at it and spoke, not to the creature itself, but something deeper. To its makeup and base Structure was his question meant. "WHAT are you?" "SPEAK." OOC: Action 1: ORDER +3 to peer into the nature of these mantises and their Structure. Why the adverse reaction? (It is a research action) Action 2: LIGHT +2 and hubris to replace the bits The Light destroys from these mantises with MORE Light. (an action to finish building this City)
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Jul 30, 2018 15:38
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Cat "A cat may, on the surface, seem to be a whimsical and self-contradictory creature, but this could not be further from the truth. Each cat is a singular entity, a universe unto itself, not changed by outside stimulus but revealed by it. Each cat is its own truth, and as their god Cat simultaneously embodies all of these truths and none but its own individuality. And in containing its own truth, a cat cannot choose to be anything but itself, because 'itself' is simply an element of the choice that has already been made. This phenomenon, which I have named the Categorical Imperative, is still barely understood, but..." - A Treatise on Species and Divinity by Lydalia, Goddess of Digestion and Philosophy, Planet 2E-374328F-04 Cat moved through the vacuum of space, hackles up as he loped along in the divine fashion that gobbled up light-years as easily as metres. Cat knew he was a generous god - he had generously bestowed the privilege of petting him on those strange creatures, had he not? And then, to be hurled him back into orbit!? Truly, this was a sad and fallen planet, and Cat promised himself not to return there until he found it in his heart to forgive them for that indignity! Fortunately, he drifted past a handy distraction in his travels, a strange new planet that had some odd creatures made out of metal! These creatures reminded him a little of Spider, but not nearly as entertaining or creative. Cat didn't know much about machinery, but when he saw the molten slag pile of the deactivated production lines and could almost smell the wasted potential! Surely these miniature spiders could do more interesting things than simply moving the wreckage around! As he explored deeper into the planet, the sludge-creatures' rudeness already forgotten, little sparks of Grace arced from his whiskers to the robots he passed by, and slowly the creative energies started to spread... *** Action 1: Insight (or Cat as appropriate) to explore the Eternium Reclamation Station. Action 2: Grace to spark some creativity in those spider robots - surely they've got better ideas than converting wreckage into slag! Pushing for an extra die. Hubris: 3 Ambrosia: 4 (+2 up for grabs)
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Jul 30, 2018 23:36
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Ivadora 5/10 Hubris - The Ancient Castle, Hello Darkness - Reclamation Station Iva, somehow, manages to both skip and skitter through the halls of the Ancient Castle. Tales of the Imperial Lady still wrung in her ears, and she excitedly yet cautiously decides to see what there is to learn about the woman who invented catgut* instruments. *humanoid god gut, actually, none of Iva's heroes would ever hurt a kitty. *MEANWHILE* "WOO, SHINY STUFF WE GOT THERE. SPIDER DUDES? ALRIGHT THEN." Hello Darkness is a kid in a candy shop, his corrosive touch causing ancient machines that have functioned for untold aeons to go haywire in an instant. "I'M A GOOD PERSON WHO HELPS." Molten metal breaks free from its container, spilling everywhere and consuming everything it touches. ****** Action 1: Investigating Ancient Castle for rumors of the Imperial Lady with Insight+2 Action 2: Investigating the facilities within either Insight+2, or Metal and Meat+2 Action 3: Hello Darkness is going to gently caress around on Reclamation station trying to see what he can do with Industry+1 Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Jul 31, 2018 |
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Jul 31, 2018 07:46
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Fa - Temple of Prism Fa continues to visit with the Outsider, sitting in on the other gods’ visitations, lingering quietly as they carry out their godly business. When the others depart, she finally says her farewell to Mhaith’s Ascent. The Outsiders concern her. Everything concerns her these days, and that’s the loving problem. Before all this, ‘concern’ was a relative thing that happened to other people. The others are feeling about, planting roots in rocky soil. She’d like that, like that a lot. But every time she starts to think about pulling something more together, there it is again. That memory of falling into nothing, of everything around her being torn away, then awaking to find herself hurtling through the void at great velocity. The Crash - the Outsider had chosen - in their new, fumbling vocabulary, to call it this, and that suits her. It happened once. It could happen again. Or maybe someone made it happen, and they’re still out there. Between the Orrery and the encounter in Omixil, she couldn’t shake the idea that there’s something with a will out there, something deliberate, pressing in on them. Maybe it was more of these Outsiders, maybe not. But she wanted another look at something in particular. ~ A humming ray of silver starlight strikes the ground outside the Orrery, an echoing chord ringing through the facility that reverberates and reassembles into ‘Fa.’ There now. No obnoxious bird plying their infantile wiles, no overly-litigious little brother shouting. It’s just Fa and the clocks and the Orrery. Marvak, Marvak, Marvak. You knew. And yet... Fa pours over the clock collection a little closer, eyeing a tacky neon orange plastic timepiece she recognizes in spite of the corrosion. Plucking it from the wall, she holds it up. From Liscotheque. Another planet, civilization, people and song all gone. Fa bites her lip and moves on. Marvak’s parting missive. Had she wanted the Crash? Or merely accepted it? And Gogoth, what had he been doing here, what exactly had befallen him? She clicks her tongue as she paces the Orrery, wrinkling her nose, running her fingers along the walls, “Talk to me, talk to me, tell me something.” ’When you see me again, it won’t be me.’ So she will become something else and return to her brother? Or something else will return in her guise? gently caress. She isn’t going to begrudge anyone a poetic turn of phrase but maybe a little more clarity? Fa proceeds into the interior of the Orrery, where they’d found Marvak. The Trespasser had been there, and Voth had been here. And that wiggly, suspicious little vermin got away from the bird, and then… What had happened? Fa frowns and rubs at her brow. Something. It was here, then it was gone, and Marvak too. She leans over and scrutinizes the ground. She sniffs a little, then peers around. The passion puts her hand on a wall, then knocks on the wall, letting the sound probe through the structure of the Orrery itself. Marvak knew. The Orrery survived the Crash, and so did she. Until… Until something else happened? There has to be a trace, a tell, a whiff, some emotional resonance. Gogoth was here. Marvak was here. And something else. There may be no physical trace of what transpired, but maybe she could sniff out the passion in those moments around the Crash - Marvak’s, Gogoth’s, and this possible third party. And if that crawler they’d pulled out of her had vanished with her remains, then maybe there’d be some way to suss out something there. I dunno if this is okay, but Fa’s circling back around to The Disappearance of Marvak and the Status of the Orrery mysteries and going to try and give them a fresh look. Action 1: Was going to use Passions +3 and take 2 Hubris to Force to try and pick up an emotional trace of anything at the Orrery. Action 2: Senses +1 and another 2 Hubris to Force to double down on the same effort.
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Jul 31, 2018 15:26
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The Trespasser My, my. What a find. Good thing the Starkin came along, for if Trespasser ever needed this to be believed... Truth be told, they would laugh this very notion off themselves, if this ancient proof wasn't so... Indisputable. Perhaps even the Original Sin of this place, if one would entertain the silly notion of them having some sort of generations. But, like many unwelcome truths, it all seemed so obvious when finally unveiled. It sure made the maths easier. Just think for a moment - there were three Pillars, we were clearly the fifth, Mhaith probably the sixth. And now, the single piece that makes it whole. The three pillars of creation. Here since time immemorial. Countless masks after masks shaping, keeping, protecting this entire creation. Yet, all this time no one bothered to ask... Why does one of them reign over the fourth dimension? There were four lights in the chaos and four pillars that held the house. And, more importantly, there aren't anymore. Alas, this was only a pitiful scrap of truth torn from the grandest, most intricate lie in all of creation. Second best Trespasser ever believed. And so it was truly impossible to even guess what really had brought the downfall of the fourth pillar. Was it a rebellion? A lovers' quarrel or a power struggle? A crime or a tragedy? Which ancient masks were they - were they even really what we'd call masks, so long ago? Does that even matter? One thing was certain, though: whichever sanctity they trespassed on, their sin was so grave the pillar had not only been torn down, but banished into eternal obscurity. Every single trace of them even existing meticulously purged from ever being remembered or found. Apart, of course, from this one. There was a lot to process here. A lot schemes to be hatched and a lot of safeguards to be set. Moves to consider and pieces to castle. Good. It's make the remaining construction work so less boring. But first, there was one friendly visit the Trespasser had to make. --- "Hello there, Մհաիտհ," they said with a voice resembling real fondness. The pyramid being had seemed to make real progress during Trespasser's little excursion. "Hope you weren't too inconvenienced by this onrush of guests, I might have quite underestimated their curiosity. Still, it's probably for the better. For quite some time I've felt some... Contact with differing perspectives might do good here." "See... Deep down, they're good people. They're just not used... To otherness. But that's no reason to feel angry or hurt. They just... Need to be taught. Outgrow their familiar comfort zones and..." "Aaaaaanyway, I've been wondering what was the deal with that robosnake hacking thing?" The god was greeted by the familiar stern look. They sighed. Guess it's back to the simple words. ----- In spite of pretty much the entirety of this post I've had a lot of fun writing, my actual, boring actions are: Action 1: Continue the construction of the temple at Keeling, using ambrosia to substitute for the last ingredient. Action 2: If the temple is still unfinished, I persevere with the construction effort. If not, I
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Jul 31, 2018 19:28
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Turn 7 - Between The Mountain And The Sea Ivadora (5/10H) - In The Imperial Lady’s Private Armory Ivadora’s fingers follow the walls. She can feel the history. The mists of blood. The taste of copper and iron. Such works were made in here. The Imperial Lady understood the joy of the blood spray, whether it be on the battlefield or in the workshop. She focuses on the memori- You march between great meat hooks, from each dangles an incomplete body. Spiders of fingerbones and spare eyes scurry around your feet, pieces of flesh hanging from their chelicerae. “Excuse us, Enlightened Mistress.” They scurry up the bodies and stitch parts together with slik from their spinnerets. These are the newest creations, perfect in every way. Ready to battle Ew- Warmth under Ivadora’s fingertips. And then light. The most brilliant, richest blood red Ivadora has ever seen. A shade forgotten in the aeons since the beginning. It forms the sigil of the Imperial Lady - a mailed fist raised upwards ;surrounded by her four blades of legend. She’s in the armory now, she realizes. Empty racks once containing assault rifles and pikes and blades. The wall behind the sigil gives way with a meaty squelch, revealing a new chamber. “Mistress, is that you?” A voice says. It is old, so old. It reaches into Ivadora’s mind, plucks the threads of her soul. “It is...it has been...so long. Where are the others?” She takes a step forward, the walls close behind her. More empty racks, an ancient banner of the Lady - all red and silver. And on one wall, set high...is that….is that?!  It has to be. IT HAS TO BE. Ivadora can barely stifle the scream. “Is everything alright mistress?” The blade says. Its eye is glazed over, but still burns with fury. Gangrene’s Touch. One of the Imperial Lady’s Four Great Blades. Ivadora takes it from its mount. “So good to see you again, my Lady.” It says, echoing in her mind. “Shall we get to work?” OOC: You have rolled a Critical Success! and for your efforts have received a truly powerful reward. In addition, you may tell a story of the Imperial Lady’s exploits in battle. Gangrene’s Touch: Choose one of four options per turn - War +1, Disease +1, increase Effect as a result of an action using it, or +1 Dice in a combat action. It must believe that you are the Imperial Lady when interacted with or it will rebel. ---------------------- Fa (5/10H) - In The Light Of The Orrery Fa breathes in. Fa breathes out. There’s a smell in the air. Rot, musty incense...tears? She follows it. Marvak’s perfume, mingled with the tears. She follows the scent, the emotions, the light of the Orrery - orange and gold. Brass atoms whirl past her head, and one leans low to whi- There was pain here. Argument. The voice of grief. She loved her. She didn’t love her back. Not really. No. Darkness. Screaming, an argument. A wet thump. Another. And another. And another. Silence. Sharp and clear. Crying again. Apologies, so many apologies. A panel opens. Muttering, whispering. Wires crossed, pulled, tapes reprogrammed. Salvation, and a change of plans. They had it wrong. They always had it wrong. We can fix this. I’m so sorry. I’M SO SORRY. The brass atoms are gone. Now only a ruin spins in it’s orbit. The runes that shine on the side tell you it’s a prison. The shattered doors tell you it has failed. Little claws on metal. Fa is not alone. OOC: Success without complications, you have received an emotional imprint of what happened during the Crash inside the Orrery. There were at least two entities present. One very anxious, and one filled with grief. ---------------------- Trespasser - Keeling Mountain Trespasser swallows Ambrosia. It is rich and wild and pure. Whispers fill his mind, the shadows grow and bloom. They stare out. It comes out again, a spray of threads in a million colors this universe doesn’t quite have the words for. The shadows retreat. That suits them fine. Mystery is always a reliable companion in times like these. Trespasser’s empties their mind as they work, threading the the temple together. A city that never was, loss never felt, a kiss never given. Every piece strengthens the whole. It gives them time to think, ponder, consider. Who left that surprise for them? The options are certainly limited. Not many understood their tongue, and fewer still spoke it. It requires a certain frame of reference, a casual understanding of the truth, and most importantly, a great deal of wit. All things Trespasser possessed, but their compatriots sadly lacked. They sigh, the temple is finished. It is perfect. It flickers between stories, between injuries and wounds and losses. It leaves Trespasser feeling a little lighter, but not less confused. OOC: Your temple is done and you’ve burned off Three hubris. ---------------------- Starkin and Mhaith - Temple of Prism Mhaith returns the gesture with their own instrument - they raise one hand up and with their fingers pointing to the ground at an angle, and streams of light come out of the fingers that they can vibrate with the other hand. They have made a harp. They use it to tell a story about a gardener/parent raising their eggs and thinking of them contently. Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRuQmguEOS4 OOC: Advanced Language clock is at 6/8 ---------------------- Cat (3/10H) and Hello Darkness - Eternium Reclamation Station  You gather up a few spiderbots inside the facility and place them in a circle, immobilizing each by placing rocks on top of them. They are going to sit and watch and learn instead of running off, like good little kittens. Today they are going to learn how to catch prey! You bat at a few of them to make sure their eye cameras are facing you, and then you show them how to pounce. You get low to the ground, launch up in the air, and come down claws first. A most graceful display and one they should want to emulate just for the sake of appearing more graceful too. *KrrrrOWW* The passageway you’re in starts to shift on its side, sending you and the spiderbots flying across it. Either something hit the planet or something is trying to uproot the facility. Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKmwRle-FVQ Sloshing, squirting sounds seem to confirm that it was both. Peering out a window, you see a giant snake of blue and black goo worming its way around the facility and digging at it with fractal patterns of hands - one six-fingered hand emerges from the mass and each finger becomes a six-fingered hand, making giant web of goo and writhing hairs, each attaching to part of the exterior and straining itself. Part of the mass reaches up into the sky, like it’s a connection somewhere. Looking up it as hard as you can, it seems to come from the direction of the planet where they said ‘Hi’ before throwing you out. There are no orgasmic screams this time. A choir of deep and high voices sing a simple chant - “For-a-lo-walo-for-a-lo-walo-for.” You remember one of the other deities saying the sound was one of the words for anger. Or maybe it was for hunger. There were at least three words that were for both and it’s hard to keep up with that kind of stuff. Some parts of the walls of the facility rotate open, revealing new machines in their full, undamaged glory. You hide away in a recess and watch. An 8 meter tall walking tank with a multi-barreled machine gun walks out of its recess in the wall and faces a gaggle of spiderbots doing the pouncing dance you taught them. How cute!  “CORRUPTION DETECTED. UNAUTHORIZED BEHAVIOR DETECTED.” Metal legs separate from globed bodies as both bounce around the hallway when bullets hit them. The walker doesn’t notice you, and continues on its path shooting everything that moves in sight. Before you can mourn the loss of your metal kittens, you take a fast - but graceful - run down another corridor, and right in front of another opening door.  The machine twists its lens back and forth, staring you up and down. “IDENTIFY YOURSELF.” It has a loud, mousey voice. The kind that makes you feel good when you hear it die. When you respond that you are its superior and it should worship you if it doesn’t want to die, the machine doesn’t respond accordingly. "EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS DAMAGED; TRANSMISSION VALIDITY CANNOT BE ENSURED. PLEASE INPUT COMMAND CODES DIRECTLY TO MOTHERSHIP SUBSTATION A." “THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING. WAIT HERE.” It turns around and walks away without giving you the proper respect you are owed. There is no more shaking, but the gunfire and sloshing sounds and “for-a-lo-walo-for” continue outside. They are interrupted for a moment by Hello Darkness running through the hallway with two spiderbots wrapped around a leg, yelling that the “CRABBIES GOT ME SHANKS,” and passing you by in a frantic hurry. They are two of the ones you taught earlier and they don’t seem to mean any harm, but they want to come with you now. It’s not safe here. But how are any of you going to leave? OOC: The outsiders are preventing any outgoing faster than light travel from the planet while their biomass is on the surface. The battle outside will continue for at least the next turn. Both Hello Darkness and Cat receive one spiderbot pet each. They have so little divinity they are unable to serve as Cohorts, but maybe they can serve other uses with some creativity. ---------------------- Siderous and Vela - Slipping In And Out Of Consciousness Siderous’s mind wanders, the drugs in his veins take thought from him. Painkillers, the doctors say. They wear smooth ivory masks, pieced together from the bodies of angels and celestial servants, over empty shells - held together by gravity and shadow. It leaks from the pieces of their faces, especially as they frown or smile. Some make small talk while they do their rounds, changing bags of fluid, humming to themselves - it is a music of radio waves and rumbling. He falls asleep. When he awakes the lights are no different. The concept of time is gone here. So is his pain. Isn’t there something he should be mourning? The concept brushes against his fingers, then disappears back into the long shadows here. They congregate on the edge of his vision, watching, waiting in the high domed eggshell-white ceilings. He falls asleep once more. His sleep is dreamless and deep, but he can feel something in the corner of his mind. A weight, and then a smell fills his nose. The smell of musty halls and dried tears, crumpled paper and the ozone of spent candles. His eyes snap open, as if yanked. The smell is still trapped in his nose. He scans the room, bottles of antiseptic with white and pink labels over amber, an extra needle, still in its packaging. There is a soft chuckle. His eyes move over the steel and slate table. Next to it, there is a chair. In it sits Marvak. Her curly hair still charcoal-gray with streaks of dirty-snow white. It tumbles down to a long, flowing black and gold dress. She smiles. Siderous blinks, he looks up at his IV drip. As if it should have an answer. There is none. He blinks again. She is sitting next to him. “Hey there Sid. Good to see you again.” She says with a smile. The smell chokes him now. Dies in his sinuses and the bottom of his throat. He tries to cough, and then to shout. There is no sound. “Oh, sorry. I wanted us to have a...private little moment. Everyone’s fine, I promise.” Her voice is soft, gentle, barely above a whisper. A hand takes his. Cold and clammy. He can feel something against the skin, for a moment. “There’s something I wanted to tell you, it’s very important.” She leans in close. There is a skittering sound, just behind her lips. “I’ve seen you hurt yourself so many times already. You just give and give and give.” A squelching sound. Something brushes his body. The pressure on his hand grows. “You just need to relax, trust us. We’re fixing everything. All we need is a little more time.” She squeezes tighter. “It’s all being taken care of. I promise.” Tighter. His hand screams in pain, but he cannot move. Marvak looks into his eyes, hers are still that same icy-blue - flecked with gold now. “Relax, and tell my brother I love him. Will you?” All he can see is blue and gold. Blue and gold. Blue and gold. He blinks again. No one is here. His hand is fine. He raises it up, dust and ash fall on his blanket. OOC: All of your injuries are healed due to clocks syncing up, and you have lost Six hubris. You have the option to hide this incident. ---------------------- VOTH (4/10H) - The Ivory Fortress The still able mantid crusaders eagerly listen to VOTH’s commands. The wreck of the Microcosm is almost entirely unrecognizable now. It is a citadel, floating in the long night. They work to add the final touches, recycling facilities for their resources, emplaced weapon batteries, watchtowers. And even a cathedral in VOTH’s name. He moves his work there, opening up the mantids who could not contain his grace and light. Their bodies are a complex arrangement of black ink in various viscosities. It blooms and forms a pattern like neurons, transmitting music and energy across the oil that fills them. It eagerly grows to fill every wound, every empty space in their carapace. It strikes him that their lives must be quite painful. In almost every way, it is the opposite of his ethos - ever-shifting, disorderly, scattered. They don’t even have brains. Their thoughts strewn across their bodies like crumbs on the floor. It will take a great effort to marry their bodies to your power safely. Knowledge of fleshworking, and the right ingredients. OOC: The City is finished. And rebuilding the mantids in your image will require a great deal of effort. You will need the help of an expert on flesh, along with either a large amount of Ambrosia or some sort of way to bridge the distance between their nature and yours - a way to balance order and chaos temporarily, so you can take it the rest of the way. ---------------------- Everyone - In orbit above the Eternium Reclamation Station  Out of a massive pile of clumped metal debris and asteroids, a spaceship’s rocket engines come to life and set a course for the Reclamation Station. Presumably an automated machine, as no divinity can be detected onboard except for the inherent power of the ship and its contents. Another one of Gogoth’s creations. The mothership of the machines does battle with the blue and black snake, firing kinetic cannons and rockets at it, seemingly to little effect.  Summary: Siderous recovers 6 Hubris and Trespasser recovers 3 Hubris. Siderous used the hospital and his injuries have been decreased in level by 1. Hospital must recharge. His passive heal also kicked in, reducing his injuries to zero as well. VOTH has finished construction of the city. Trespasser determines that a certain myth about Creation is a lie. There were four Pillars instead of Three. Everyone may speak to the Six-Fingered Being in basic question-statement format. New mysteries: Mothership Carrier Current Mysteries: The Six-Fingered Planet, Gogoth’s Robots, The Sensor Logs of the Microcosm, The Disappearance of Marvak, The Status Of The Orrery, What Did Majakazumi Know?, the Six-Fingered Beings Advanced Language, Gogoth’s Machine in the Temple, 1GB Hard Drive, Chrys’s Grenades
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Aug 1, 2018 04:15
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Siderous The Star-Heart, Orrery Siderous wakes with a start, eyes opening and looking around the room. After a moment he calms himself, smiling at the familiar form of the body that had been forged by his children so long ago. A strange dream... Then he notices the ash on his hand. He looks around the room for other signs of damage, but his fist begins to clench as the dream runs through his mind again. His sanctuary had been violated by something. Something wearing Marvak as a mask, and had left a mark to let him know it. But now his mind was clear, his rest having healed his wounds and given him time to come to grips with the new reality in which he found himself. There were two Stargods left. He was now the First Consul of the Court of Constellations. Speaker of the Celestial Senate. The Guide Light. But more than all of that, he was the Star-Forge, the Sun that Was and this thing had made a mistake revealing itself to him. He leaves the Hospital and begins to scour the Orrery. The gold in the Newvak's eyes - they were the light of the Orrery. Something was here. It was connected somehow. He appears and disappears with small booms as space compresses and snaps back as he searches the Orrery for any sign of the thing that might still be there, eyes burning blue with purpose and determination. Eventually he finds Fa, to whom he gives a small nod, toning down his powers a bit. "Forgive the sudden appearance. Something just appeared to me while I was resting in the hospital," he raises his hand and the ash that stained it, "It left a mark so I would know it was no mere dream. It wore the countenance of Marvak, and spoke in her voice, but behind its eyes glowed the golden light of the Orrery. Have you found something here?" As he talks he reaches out and tries to connect to the Light of the Orrery. The creature that visited him seemed to have a connection to here. If he could follow that light back to its source, perhaps he could find another clue about what had transpired here at the moment of the Crash. ---------------------- Starkin Children of the Sun That Was, Temple of Prism --------------------- Starkin continues learning and teaching Mhaith, trying to find that breakthrough of communication so they could get a better idea of what was actually going on with these Outsiders. It helped that the "hard time" was somewhat trippy and interesting to a being/species that was known for its mastery of gravity. However in the back of her mind Starkin is also doing calculations. To what extend did this "hard time" overlap and override their own rules of reality? How far could it go? When would it break? They may have brought devices to time-form this reality into their own, but this was still the home turf. And although Starkin was enjoying the time playing music with Mhaith, if it came down to it a being's universe was its castle, and although accepting of these uninvited guests for now there was only so much stellar hospitality was willing to tolerate. They moved on to math. Their base-6 math was interesting, a natural progression of a six-fingered species. Starkin began to teach them the Base-60 math of the Stars and their kin, noting the interesting similarities in form, function and significance. Action 1: Assuming Fa agrees we will compare emotional impressions between what she just saw and what Siderous experienced when he read Kazumi's notebook. I will roll +2 Insight and will be Pushing for an extra dice. Action 2: I will use Light +2 and Push for an extra dice to investigate the Light of the Orrery, its source and purpose. If the light in the Newvak's eyes was the color of the orrery, maybe there is something else there? Corhort Action: Use Insight +2 to continue the language learning process as we progress to Math, the universal language. Hubris: 4 Injuries [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Starkin Injuries [X] [ ] [ ] [ ] ---Level 1 Stomach Injury (Explorationn) Items/Artifacts ---Ambrosia [3] ---The Cosmic Lasso: Assists in moving objects across great distances in non-combat situations. ---Divina Hospitium [CHARGING]: User can spend 1 action to reduce their injuries by one level. It must recharge for a full turn before it can be used again. If a PC doesn't take an injury during a turn they get 1 segment of their healing clock filled from hereon out.[/i] [/quote] professor_curly fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Aug 1, 2018 |
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Aug 1, 2018 17:51
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Cat Cat didn't like machines. They were loud, they made odd noises at inopportune times, they moved unexpectedly when you thought you'd found a warm place for a nice nap, and they showed very little patience for anyone who might want scritches or a bit of food. But it was a dislike tempered by understanding, and knowledge of the broader ecosystem in which they both existed. Machines did their thing, cats did their separate thing, and on the rare occasions when a cat needed a machine, they found a human to operate the machine for them. But that didn't mean Cat didn't understand them. He was a god, after all, and a god of Grace, which was all about unearned, undeserved blessings. And one of Cat's many blessings (aside from the most important one, which was being Cat), was being able to look at a thing, and generally understand how it worked. He seldom used that particular ability of his, for much the same reasons that he didn't usually make crops grow or push the moon across the sky. While he knew with certainty he would accomplish any of those tasks with feline finesse and skill that would leave even divine observers awestruck, it wasn't his job to do those things! And if you did it once, they'd start expecting it from you, and then before you knew it, you ended up like Dog, bred to do a million different things that the other gods couldn't be bothered with. But, just like he'd never concerned himself with the reviving of stars until recently, sometimes the situation called for a feline touch and there was no other option. He turned to Hello Darkness. "Little garbage creature - keep these kittens safe, or it's your head. Now follow along, and don't speak of this." He glanced around the chamber they'd found themselves in, and immediately grokked the approximate layout. These robotic creatures were networked (ugh, he knew what a network was now - before long he'd be fetching sticks), and that meant there had to be some sort of central control. He could hear the signals, taste them in the air, and with feline grace and stealth, he snuck deep into the facility until he found what he was looking for. It looked important, and it looked fragile (well, fragile to a god with claws that could cut through mountains). He saw a flat panel with a bunch of brightly coloured squares, so he hopped up and batted at them a few times, trusting in his own instincts that he was doing a good thing that demonstrated that the other gods didn't deserve a divinity as amazing as him. A few idle swats from his hind paws snipped some unimportant looking wires, and as he leapt off the keyboard to get a look, it sent a rolling chair skittering into a server, which started rocking. The movement attracted Cat's eye, and he blithely jumped on top of it, and then immediately away as the server rack tipped over. Oops. *** Action 1: Insight or Prowess as needed to stealthily explore the Eternium Reclamation Station. Action 2: Using Cat to mess with the guardians is some sort of advantageous way, whether that be disabling them or somehow accidentally fixing them. Pushing for +1 dice. Hubris: 5 Ambrosia: 4 (+2 up for grabs)
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Aug 3, 2018 23:20
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Fa - The Orrery She stands amidst Marvak’s sanctum, toes tapping the floor to a song only she can hear. She’s being watched here. But not by the elder god who has just arrived. The Passion does not yet turn to face Siderous. “Of course it left a mark, Sun that Was.” She turns and looks up to the other god, lifting her fingers from her lips and exhaling a wisp of prismatic, glinting smoke, “There’s no such thing as ‘mere’ dreams, after all.” Lazily, she wipes her gold-dust stained fingers on her pant leg then smirks, leaning in closer to Sid, “As much as I’d like to… treasure this intimacy, we’re not alone.” Her eyes drift toward the direction her senses are tugged, “But they’re a bit shy.” ~ As Siderous scries and scrutinizes the lights of the orrery, Fa has laid on her back, splayed sloppily in the floor, flipping through the journal, yawning a little, “Makes sense, I guess. As much as crimes of Passion ever do.” She chews on the inside of her lip, turning the notebook sideways to try and make sense of some doodle, “So… I’m figuring Marvak had something big scheduled, some project or…” Fa frowns a little, “Something, not sure. But… what, the girl winding her clock wanted exclusive rights or something and bashed her head in, and everything got hosed during a delicate moment. Sound about right?” “So then what of that many-legged passenger the Trespasser dug out of her, the thing from your dream, and whoever’s watching us right this moment? All the same being, I’d guess. But after that?” She sits up, chin on her wrists, wrists on her knee, watching Siderous work, “And where do those Outsiders fit into all this. I dunno if I buy that whole ‘we went looking for a new universe and conveniently found a freshly-vacated one.’” The Passion stands up, stretching her limbs and yawning, “That’s as far as my investigation’s gotten, I think.” She rubs the back of her neck, looking a little sheepish - embarrassed? - guilty? Her voice dips a little into uncertainty, “Um… How about you? Fixed up the night sky? I know I need to put some foundation down - pitch in with rebuilding or whatever. It’s just hard when it’s still falling apart.” She clicks her tongue, looking away during the uncomfortably serious talk, “My sisters and I were always more of like… Ideas people anyway.” If this is a bit too much, lemme know, I know it’s weird interacting in pbp between updates like that. Action 1: Was going to Meditate while pouring over stuff with Sid, since I accrued a bit of Hubris there. Action 2: Will use Senses +1 to assist Sid’s Lights action!
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Aug 4, 2018 09:31
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VOTH - Mothership Carrier Hubris: 4 Ambrosia: 5 So there was a fourth. A momentous discovery if true, of course. One of the greatest uncovered mysteries of the past, to be certain. But until they knew the why of its disappearance, or if it had any significance to the now, that's all it was to VOTH: a mystery of old Creation, among many. To him, three had always sufficed. One day he would likely try and learn more. But not today, for he had other tasks to perform. ~~~~ A vessel in the darkness of the void, almost still if not for the various weaponry it kept shooting at the distant Outsider. Still there was a tranquility to it, to the silence in which the beams flickered and missiles took to their quiet flight. But the silence nor the darkness was to last, for then there was also VOTH and his resplendent aura. The Mothership claimed it knew him not. To VOTH, this mattered not. "HEED." "And KNOW my words, MALFUNCTIONING AUTOMATON. I am VOTH, the LAST of THE THREE PILLARS. You may not BELIEVE this, but in so stating you merely REVEAL your confused NATURE." "For THE PILLARS are no mere court." "For THE MASKS are no mere title." "NO. They are MONUMENTS that UNDERPIN the very FABRIC OF CREATION ITSELF. It is not a MATTER of anyone's OPINION." "So you WILL STAND ASIDE, and let me PASS. Not because of COMPULSION. Not because of THREAT, or SUBVERSION." "NO. You WILL STAND ASIDE because I am VOTH, the LAST OF THE THREE PILLARS, and you standing aside by my WILL is the only way CREATION will ALLOW things to be." OOC: Action 1: ORDER +3 and Hubris to command these robits to stand down on the face of their rightful commanding authority Action 2: LIGHT +2 to search for hidden Secrets as I stride, for the location of the Palaca of Structure in particular
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Aug 4, 2018 14:32
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Action shot taken while writing this post. The Trespasser A blip in the cold, vast void. A battleship launched. Bad, so very bad. This was no longer a mishap, no longer some passing border tensions. This was a mistake waiting to spiral out of control. Perhaps we ourselves were at fault. We have grown complacent, lost in our thoughts and pursuits of beauty, leaving the immediate troubles for the uninitiated to deal with. Guess we haven't earned our rest yet. Trespasser turned around and swooped down towards the planet they had left just moments ago. They turned the Key and ripped through through space unceremonially, tearing through the Temple of Prism with nearly ostentatious disregard for its network of walls, corridors and staircases, stopping only in Mhaith's quarters they always kept away from. "Hello, Մհաիտհ," they said with a cold stare. "We're not done today, after all. We have little time and you have important lessons to learn, quick." "Have they taught you the word insanity? It's doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Another word, tragedy. Was in the books Fa gave you, yes? It's when you try something so hard you crush your own dreams. When you strive only to defeat yourself, leaving but misery and death." "This is what your kind is doing right now. You came to this place to seek joy, yes? But do you think you can act like in home and it will just appear? It exists here, because this place works differently, yes? You learn the new rules, you adapt, you reap the fruit. Your kind, they try to take it by force. Right now. Survivors are scared, think they might be fighting for their lives. They may kill each other. Destroy all. Return to the very misery you ran from." "You've read all these stories. Heard all the songs. A prince stole his love, bethroted to another man. Ignited the greatest war that the world had seen, and was consumed by its flames soon after. Another prince, ouldn't wait for the crown to pass and took it by his own hand. He hid in a forest of murder and lies, until the forest came for his head. Another prince, forced the truth to mold to his whims. Now he reigns over but a dead city, forgotten voices his onfly serfs. You know how it ends in this place." "You know how it always ended back home. Just different kinds of misery." "But we can speak now. Means we can talk. Find a solution, one with both joy and hard time for all. But we must find it together, not turn this place into another home. Another joyless home." "Մհաիտհ, we must stop this insanity. You must go and get your kind to stop, so I may get my kind" - well, some fine details might wait for a more opportune time - "to stop. Show them it's possible. Or this becomes another tragedy. Or we become yet another cautionary tale." ---- Action 1: I give the language lessons with Mhaith one last push. Key/Insight, doesn't really matter. Action 2: I invoke Regret to guilt trip her into getting the rest of her kind to chill and work out some peaceful resolution to the tensions. I turbocharge the actions with a hubris-free push by burning one bundle of Omixil's real-life parables about war and destruction. No fleeting dream though. This is an angry bird going for an honest-to-god serious talk, drawing upon the domain only to ensure their rhetorical punches hit hard.
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Aug 4, 2018 15:02
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Ivadora 5/10 Hubris - Mothership Carrier, Hello Darkness - Reclamation Station "Dude, don't ask, just do." Iva slinks in alongside of Voth and helps out with whatever that needs working with. A disturbing mass of metalicized flesh oozes from her wrist into the nearest control panel. "Let's see what we got in here." *MEANWHILE* "WHOA ROBODUDES YO OW NOT COOL. DON'T PUSH ME BRO, I KNOW THE SEVEN SWAN BACKHAND SLAP, THE ONE THE SAPPHIC NINJA SQUAD USES IN KUNIOCHI gently caress-TEMPLE VI? I FELT THE FILM HELPED ME GET IN TOUCH WITH MY FEMININE SIDE, THAT KUNG FU YOGA poo poo THEY DO LET'S THEM BEND IN ALL SORTS OF AMAZING WAYS AND-OW, gently caress OW, that HURT. OK SHITPEELS HERE IT COMES GET READY TO GET FUKKKKK'D HULAGULAGULAGULAGH." ****** Action 1: Investigating Mothership for what things do Insight+2 Action 2: Interfacing with the controls with Metal and Meat+3 Action 3: Hello Darkness is gonna WRASSLE' with Prowess+2 Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Aug 4, 2018 |
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Aug 4, 2018 15:24
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 Pictured: The Palace of Structure Turn 8 - Red Sun Over Paradise Fa (2/10) and Siderous (4/10H) - In The Light of the Orrery Fa’s fingertips fall across the pages, coffee-stained and smelling of tobacco and motor oil. They also fall across Siderous forehead, swirling with stars light. There is a room. They can almost see the outlines. The emotions carried in steel and brass, the dull green keys of the terminals. They play out again, in lines. Drawn from the mind. Marvak is blue and white, glittering hair falling across her dress. And then there is something in the room. Not Majakazumi. A shape their minds cannot perceive in this darkness, it is the darkness. It is all the shapes, unified into one. It sparks and crackles with black lightning, hollow eye sockets burning through yours. There is a scream, the hollow sound of eternity and loss. Limbs that can never regrow, kisses that meant so much and so little. It is not Majakazumi’s pain. It never could be. It is so much older. The connection snaps shut, as if it was snuffed out. Siderous shakes his head, the sound still ringing in his deaf ears. He turns to the machine. Fa sits against a pillar - processing the sound and the violence. His conversation with Mhaith plays in his head again, the way the the laws of physics like strings. Could he do that? He summons a string of light, the closest thing to an ironclad law in this universe. It wraps around one of his fingers, warm and soft like a promise. For a moment, it makes him think of Vela’s smile. Another string. He thinks of Starkin’s joy. Together, they map out a universe in motion - time can be reduced, refined, understood. The system is full of little changes, entropy has been reshaped. It is a hungry hound, lording over the rest of creation from a thousand little modifiers. It is the work of an expert on this system, Siderous can only barely begin to grasp it. And then he hears skittering, hissing. His mind is closed again, small. Fa stands up, looks around. There is more hissing, in time with the machines in the room. The shadows grow and twist, blooming into new tapedes. They form a mass, each shines in the brass-light of the Orrery. Like scales. Pieces fall together in Siderous’s mind. These are the smallest drops of a much greater whole. And they are crawling towards them, fangs dripping with clear venom that whispers with malice. OOC: Fa has lost 3 Hubris. Majakazumi’s regrets do not match the emotional imprint left by the incident, at all. Siderous has also discovered that someone has changed the calculations for time and entropy. Rot and decay are going to set in much more quickly for mortal life. The quality of the work is beyond anything Marvak was capable of. Oh, and you’re under attack by a mass of tapedes. ---------------- Cat (5/10H) and Hello Darkness - On the Battlefield Again making use of the catwalks - why not? - you make your way further into the facility. There’s a lot of boring stuff, machines that don’t make sense, or machines that have been turned into solid masses of metal. It’s getting quite boring even with all the excitement going on outside. But then you see too late a giant slimy hand reaching out, darkening the light through the window and grabbing a large chunk off the facility - you included. A tumble a hundred feet down still has you land on all fours, but in the middle of the conflict. Robots and hands alike take notice of you, and there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to run. “STEP. THE. gently caress. AWAY. FROM. THE. FURBALL.” Something roars. Its voice is a million saws cutting through a million slabs of steel. A shadowy four-legged monster leaps out from an opening in the facility to run circles around you and smash through both the robot and the outgrowth of hands.  The whirlwind of claws and fangs allows you to make a discrete escape again. Dog could only have wished to be so noble as this strange and strange-smelling oil monster. And may this strange oil monster rest in peace if he doesn’t make it out, because it’s time for you to abscond. Hiding inside the wreck of a machine far away from the battle, you look to the sky. The Outsider mass has wrapped itself around a ship - where did that come from? - and seems to be winning. On the ground, one robot tells another robot to halt and shoots it. A silent flash of light and a distortion in the sky gives way to more ships like the other one. Things are about to get more confusing and you’re afraid of never being pampered and worshipped again. “WOOOOO gently caress YEAH,” the oil monster yells off the distance. At least someone is having the time of their life. Not that it matters when it isn’t you. OOC: Cat failed both actions but Hello Darkness’s wrassling saved him from injury. The Outsider colony is still preventing both of you from warping far away, but Cat and HD have an opening to travel up to one connection away. ---------------- Ivadora and VOTH (6/10H) - Aboard the Mothership; Secondary Bridge VOTH bellows at the command carrier, blades of light cutting into the night, and his words rattling in the void. The command carrier’s own lights blink, and VOTH wonders if it is speaking for a moment. The pattern is mathematical, so p- A salvo of rockets rips itself from its launcher arrays. VOTH braces himself, for one of his might doesn’t stand down in the face of fury. Cutting metal, debris floats past his face. “Such primitive weapons, mistress.” VOTH opens his eyes again to see a field of debris around him. Rocket motors and warheads hanging in the night. And Ivadora at the center of them, wielding a massive blade of flesh and teeth. But he has no time to comment, the great dragon winds around the ship, hollow strings wrapping around its rocket barrages and tearing them to pieces. Ivadora nods, VOTH does not understand. She rockets towards the hull. Her body makes a thud against it. The blade carves steel, sending chunks into the long night. VOTH dives in, landing in a nameless corridor, one of a million in his perfect mental map of the ship. The smaller servitors onboard cry and flee at his light. GOGOTH poured his soul into each of these ships, they were almost like his children. VOTH can still feel his pride and care for every bolt and weld as he follows the twisting corridors towards a secondary bridge. It is bathed in pinkish-red light when he reaches it, a shade of stomach medicine and candy. He still remembers a few tricks GOGOTH taught him, little shortcuts for emergencies. It is a machine of law, of order, of structure at its core. He chains together emergencies, like pearls in a necklace. Each gives him a little more access. Ivadora’s power roars just behind him, tearing through systems and cutting them off from the whole. The first to fall is the manufacturing systems, always more lightly guarded. Then the engines, Ivadora’s flesh grows to choke their valves and cut off their lines. Finally, the guns fail. It is as far as they can go, the C&C system is hardened beyond VOTH’s ability to tamper. It keeps sending orders into the void. He can hear it sing to a dozen other ships. A distress call. Sensor blips. They’re here. A whole fleet of Guardian attack vessels, heavy steel and iron warmachines. Boxes Some begin to engage the Dragon, others break off when they hear a mechanical croak in the void - from Ivadora’s creation, trying to get her attention. Six ships materialize above the Scrapball. Their cannons light up, and explosions spread across the surface of the Scrapball. VOTH curses. His anger rises, just for a moment, then revelation sets in. He cannot stop the orders, but he can see them. He can see them. That makes all the difference. He traces the commands, back through the relays and switches and gates. It is a long and tedious trail, GOGOTH was always fond of backups. Another step, another verification. It takes minutes for him to find what he’s looking for. But he does. The coordinates for the Palace of Structure. OOC: The command ship itself can no longer fight itself or provide reinforcements to the ground troops on the Station, but it has summoned a fleet that is bombarding the Station and the Scrapball. Ivadora’s toad has processed the data and is ready to tell her, and VOTH has discovered the location of the Palace of Structure. ---------------- Trespasser and Starkin - The Temple Of Prism Mhaith’s sterile expression doesn’t change as they speak matter-of-factly, but you know you’ve touched a nerve. Their hands shake a little while frantically moving in waves along with their mouth. “I have not seen my branches (family/people/species) since Beryllium-six-and-one was half-full.” They seem to measure time by the half-life of radioactive elements. “When this planet was moved, I was so scared. I thought only to finish my function and wait. And then you came and I was so relieved that I had been found, only to be hurt. I know you didn’t intend to do it and I trust your words now. I ask you to trust mine - I do not know what you have known.” “If your friends have seen us, then home must be nearby. I will go find them. I shall speak with Vision of Meidhbhín as their Hand Reached Out from the Grave. You must make your case with them. I cannot answer for them. If you seek me out there, we will speak more.” “It has made me content to spar words with you, Starkin. You have honored me with your craft. May we never dance in anger.” They walk to somewhere deep in the temple and you cannot find them again, nor the strange mechanical prism they had. ---------------- Everyone - The Palace of Structure VOTH’s mind moves along a path, an angle, a vector. It begins on the Station.. It leads him through a thousand asteroid belts, past dead stars hanging in the night. All the ones they couldn’t save from Chrys, or that died in silence. There are a dozen fallen civilizations. A world of androids, a city of corvid-descended creatures that moved through the night sky. Now it is hollow, empty, meaningless. Past all that carnage it sits, still barely attached to a hunk of rock floating in the night. The Palace of Structure. Once it blazed with regal silver, a sign of purity and strength, now a pus-yellow drips from its high windows. It reflects GOGOTH’s taste, his urge to rise above petty concerns and keep the universe running. His cold, imperial manner cast in steel. Now it leans, floating alone on a desolate hunk of rock.  OOC: The Palace of Structure has been added to the map. It is a massive well of corruption, you are clearly not the first to reach it. You can detect no Outsiders anywhere near it, however. The Palace of Structure is an involved livescene for three players and the end of Act 1. As a result we are moving to a weekly update schedule. Turns will be due Every Sunday At 4 PM PST (-7 GMT). Summary: Fa lost 3 Hubris. Cat and HD remain locked on Eternium but may travel up to one connection away. Sid and Fa are surrounded by tapepedes. And the Guardians are bombarding the Scrapball. Everyone may speak the Outsider language at an advanced level. Sid has discovered the Orrey has been massively tampered with, and Majakazumi was not present at anytime during the Crash. There is a ceasefire with the Outsiders for the moment, but as the Guardians continue to attack them they will defend themselves. Current Mysteries: The Six-Fingered Planet, Gogoth’s Robots, The Sensor Logs of the Microcosm, The Disappearance of Marvak, Who Altered The Orrery?, What Did Majakazumi Know?,, Gogoth’s Machine in the Temple, Chrys’s Grenades Thanks to my co-GM NineIronSwingersClub for finding art and music in this update, and for writing the Cat/Hello Darkness and Trespasser/Starkin sections The Unlife Aquatic fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Aug 5, 2018 |
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Aug 5, 2018 03:26
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Livescene 6: No One Listens to the Damned - VOTH, Cat, Siderous and Ivadora in the Place of Structure https://saroleplays420.wordpress.com/livescene-6-no-one-listens-to-the-damned/ (Takes place after Siderous's actions) 9IronSwingersClub fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Aug 6, 2018 |
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Aug 5, 2018 23:14
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Siderous The Star-Heart, Orrery Siderous motioned for Fa to get behind him, "Go, I will handle these things. We must be close to some truth they don't want us to know!" He spreads his hands wide and then claps them together, forming a gravity well in the center of the mass of Tapede creatures. Then he slides his hands away from each other like he was spinning a top, setting the gravity well into a vortex that started to pull the creatures to it as an accretion disk. The cosmic tornado slides around the room, scooping up the creatures and crushing them until they began to glow with the pressure and begin fusion, burning the rest of them and hopefully setting the infestation to flight. He doesn't want to kill them all. He wants them to lead him to whatever is pulling their strings. Contacts Starkin, telling them to go to the Scrapball and find a way to wake Majakazumi, to see what she knew about this disaster. ---------------------- Starkin Children of the Sun That Was, Majakazumi's Scrapball --------------------- Starkin has just finished searching the Temple, trying to divine how Mhaith had simply vanished when the message came. She gave an assent then began to warp her way to the scrapball. What she found made her sigh, heavily. Of course the Guardians were here and attacking the Scrapball. Why wouldn't they be? It wouldn't do to simply destroy them, but the Scrapball couldn't take this punishment forever. So Starkin reached out with her hands in opposite directions and squeezed her hands tight. She created massive points of gravity, one behind the Guardians and one behind the Scrapball, stretching out space between them so that the Guardian ships were constantly being pulled out of range, while she tried to think of a more permanent solution to the problem. Action 1: I will use Gravity +2 and Push to destroy the Tapedes creatures here and crush them into a ball. Action 2: I will use Light +2 and scour them from the darkness and attempt to purge the Orrery of their presence - will also fluff this as being how I find my way to the scene later. Corhort Action: Use Gravity +2 create gravity wells in opposite directions of the Guardians and the Scrapball, to streeeeeetch out space between them so that they go into their separate corners. After the Scene I look like, before any other complications: Hubris: 10 Injuries [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] ---Level 2 Heart Injury (Live Scene) ---Level 2 Liver Injury (Live Scene) Starkin Injuries [X] [X] [ ] [ ] ---Level 1 Stomach Injury (Explorationn) Items/Artifacts ---Ambrosia [0] ---The Cosmic Lasso: Assists in moving objects across great distances in non-combat situations. ---The Crescent Singularity: +1D to Gravity rolls against Servants of the Lady of the Left Hand / the Quartered Goddess ---Divina Hospitium [CHARGED]: User can spend 1 action to reduce their injuries by one level. It must recharge for a full turn before it can be used again. If a PC doesn't take an injury during a turn they get 1 segment of their healing clock filled from hereon out.
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Aug 6, 2018 00:25
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Ivadora (8/10H) and Marvak - A Broken Dimension All Ivadora can remember is bright. An infinite well of light that scoured her. She remembers, it found her lacking. It is all she can dream of. An endless brightness, curdling to dark, to silence. It only ends when someone’s fingers move across her face. A gentle slap. “I was worried you were really gone for a second. I thought I was going to die alone here." Marvak says dourly. A tapepede hangs out the corner of her mouth, antenna wiggling. She offers a hand, her arm now rebuilt. Ivadora doesn’t take it, and rises on her own. Marvak shrugs. “Suit yourself.” Ivadora’s body is a network of aches and pains. Her back does not hurt half as much as she expects. Fingers reach around and find a chitin plate sewn over the wound. “Sorry, had clean that up or you would have leaked out really quickly. There’s almost nothing left here, every drop counts.” She cracks her neck, then spreads an arm theatrically. “Welcome, to my home.” Ivadora looks out, and in the dimmest light, sees the outline of the Grand Orrery. Except it is somehow, so much shabbier. There is no sound, the light of only one star left to shine upon it. “I’m not your Marvak. She’s dead. She’s really dead.” She gestures over her shoulder, towards the light. “Here, the Lady of the Left Hand died in her prison. Unloved and alone.” Marvak sighs, bites her lip. Something skitters under her black dress. She turns around and starts walking towards the light, hands behind her back. They flutter like dying birds. “The universe never reboots without her help. Not once. Everyone dies. Just as alone and afraid as she was.” Over the lip of a small hill, the light is brighter. Ivadora looks over. In a great crater, someone she would recognize as Siderous in another dimension writhes, a star in its last throes of life.  "And so it ends." A tear forms in the corner of her eye. "With a whimper." The light reflects off her features, casting long, ghastly shadows. They seem to almost laugh and dance, taunting you from their vantage point. “So I stepped into yours. Still had just a little time, and I knew enough about her prison to get it open, just a crack.” She smiles sadly. “That was all she needed.” A tapepede squirms under her neck. “Look, I know you don’t trust me. I barely trust me anymore.” She laughs, a nervous soundtrack to the last minutes of a star-god’s life. “I’m sure you know how that feels.” Marvak starts to pace, grabs a metal bar from the edge of the crater. She throws it up in the air, it hangs there - swirling in the empty firelight. “But we both still have a role to play in your dimension. No matter what you might think of me, all I want to do is save the universe. I just…” She sighs, kicks rocks. The spray barely moves, also hanging in the light. “We all do what we have to.” Marvak pulls a something from her pocket. A picture of Majakazumi, but not quite the one you know. She kisses it, then folds it back up. Her eyes move up to Ivadora’s, still blue and gold. “Truce, at least until we can get back to your dimension? I give you my word as a Pillar, we can go back together.” OOC: You are trapped in a dead timeline/dimension with its Marvak. She seems to be offering you a truce. You have the opportunity to explore the destroyed Orrery and it surroundings. You may ask questions about your new surroundings. Marvak's medical care has also increased your injury healing clock to 2/4 The Unlife Aquatic fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Aug 6, 2018 |
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Aug 6, 2018 04:06
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The Trespasser At last, something went right for a change. With one side of the conflict dealt with, it was time to ensure the other gods and their warmachines respect the truce. All Trespasser needed of them was not to do something rash before all the pieces are set in place. Yet it wasn't that easy to find the others - not near the ravaged battlefield, nor elsewhere. Eventually, they managed to find the battered group trudging back through the expanse of dead space. "Ah, here you are, my good doctor," they cheerfully greeted Siderous, the coolest head in the group. "I'd love to go back to negotiating the fine details of our little triangular venture, but so much has changed, my friend!" "And believe it or not, it is a good thing this time! Once again, I have humbly taken it upon myself to save this sorry universe from meddling of hotter heads. And seeing the unnecessary animosity springing up in our little paradise, I've excused myself to parley with a very special lady who might have an idea how to fix this. So rest assured, for she's already quite busy dealing with the Outsider business-" Uh. It's not the kind of look Trespasser expected to see. Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Aug 6, 2018 |
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Aug 6, 2018 15:01
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 Siderous The Star-Heart, BIRD One arm hangs limp, his already nebulous form seeming to shimmer and fade as he looks up at the Trespasser with dull, red eyes barely luminous at all. Even as he moves bright, glowing dust and molecules leak from the numerous wounds that still drip with the godslaying venom, both fading into the ether as they leave him. He reaches up slowly, before with a sudden vortex of gravity drags Trespasser forward with a ferocity unlike the composed, meticulous precision that Siderous usually employed. Siderous stares at the Trespasser for a long moment, bringing the bird close to the glowing red embers that form his eyes as though he is having trouble seeing. Then just as suddenly he lets Trespasser go, continuing forward to the hospital without a word.
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Aug 7, 2018 19:36
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Fa - The Orrery There’s no poetry in squashing bugs - and the only part of conflict that interests her is the drama. If the Star-Heart can handle the vermin, she’ll leave him to it - the Passion herself dissipates from the Orrery. ~ There was a heavy sigh. What are you doing, sister? Ce, passion of crafts, prodded. What? Ev, the historian, chimed in, She’s listening, Ev. Give her space. Yeah. Space, she says. Sis, if you haven’t noticed, we’re drowning in it. Di was right of course. I know, I know, I’m tryin- She’s right - without them, there’s no content, Sa scoffs impatiently, and I’m bored. I can’t just make people, they’ll just... I know, dear. Wo commiserates, comforting Fa, What could we make that won’t just be broken again? Maybe it’s for the best. No, we can still- Di bursts out in laughter. Who’re you trying to convince, you, or you? What? We were always close, Fa, Vi giggles. Especially the three of us, Te adds, Hard to be much closer now, right? But… you’re not here. Un, ever on point, No, we aren’t, of course. But if it helps to talk to us… It doesn’t. It’s loving awful. And stupid. I miss you guys so much. I miss… everyone. I’m trying to put it back but I’m just… Fa. Un, Sa, Wo, Vi, Te, Di, Ce and Ev all seem to agree with that, at least. ‘Yes. We are.’ She feels cold. ~ Later, at the Palace of Structure... “Why does it smell like wet dog?” Fa wrinkles her nose, bare feet alighting upon the crumbling superstructure of the pillar. The erosion and wear of the Crash is layered with scars of the more recent battle. The parts that were Ev won’t stop chattering about the historical importance of the palace here, of the meaning of the pillars and their guardians. The parts that were Ce appreciate Gogoth’s dedication to austerity and the brutal minimalism of his angles, while the parts that were Vi and Te chafe and beg for some color and curves. She rubs at the back of her neck. Wo’s - no, her own - thoughts echoing, What could we make that won’t just be broken again? This is a start, isn’t it? It’s all falling apart - the structure of the palace, the structure of… everything. The underpinnings of creation. But it doesn’t have to. (Music) Fa breathes deep, and fishes through her denim pockets, even as they waver and wobble, their tangibility uncertain. Her human guise trembles, and out of her pocket, she pulls… light, liquid light - heat, and power, and dreams, the stuff of creation. She holds it in one hand cautiously, then looks about to make sure no one is watching. In one swift motion, she swallows the ambrosia, her godhead swelling with it - until Fa follows up with a violent, swift motion of tearing out the flesh of her wrist with her nails. There’s a small spray of pale rose red and soft champagne-silver, her passion’s blood, that becomes a gushing, dribbling faucet, the sparkling substance splattering on the smooth stone of Gogoth’s welcoming hall, until that too becomes streaked with golden light, the ambrosia and passion’s blood swirling and then running across the Palace’s architecture. Feeling weaker, dizzier, Fa trudges forward, entering the palace proper, leaving a messy trail in her wake as her seemingly boundless spring wets the ground. The parts that were Ce swell most, eager to take to the task. The solution of fluids quiver and animate, spreading and rushing about the structure. They heat and glow with divinity, seeking out the rubble and ruin of Gogoth’s work, becoming mortar, cement, then marble veins that do not restore the Palace to its original form, but instead… twist. The bloody renovation continues as she climbs the winding steps of the palace, in a slow, labored march, her mind diffuse and lost somewhere behind her, out of body, lost in ambrosia, chasing aesthetics, as Gogoth’s creation looks less and less like it did, and acquires… curves, color. Sweeping flourishes along the archways, richly embellished windows, grey stone now riddled with blossoming purple marble veins. The mathematically precise geometric patterns twist in arcs that retain the precision but gain needless complexity - needless but for an auteur’s preference. The master of this place is dead and gone - it can’t be repaired without him. But something new can be built. As Fa’s ambrosia-laced blood continues it’s work, her form shudders again. As she leaves her mark, so too does the palace on her - the vagrant chic look of her mortal guise is cleaned up at the edges, restructured into something less disheveled (more heveled?). The physics around the palace flush with new life, equations that had been frayed hold true again, and reality - Creation - seems a hair more solid as the Palace regains its vitality. But it is yet different than before - there is some give in those rules, some softness and flexibility, befitting an artist’s re-imagining. Physics, remembered through the eyes of Fa. All her parts, all her sisters thrum in harmony, dancing to Fa’s song for once, moving with purpose to exorcise the Left-handed stain, the stench of the oily coyote, and all that Ruin that had been visited on the Palace of Structure. And yet, it all hurts. Every step pains her more than the last. This isn't her. This isn't true to her nature. Fa shudders. ♪ I don’t want this. ♪ But it is needed. She climbs another step. I want to forget all of this. And another, up the dais. The gushing of blood and ambrosia trickles to a stop, the wound closing. Her guise solidifies. She reflexively straightens the cuff of her new coat, then raises a hand to try to restore some order to her hair - it resists. You can’t be just Fa any longer. Too much is at stake. Fa places her hand on the throne, Of course.  Exhausted and drained in all senses of the words, Fa sits in Gogoth’s seat - still far too big for her mortal guise, even in the reshaped Palace. She didn’t seek to claim it but… well, it’s the only seat here at the top, and he won’t be needing it, and she's just so drat tired.  I didn’t proofread poo poo here, so have fun with that mess. Action 1: Passions 3 + Pushing. Eat the Ambrosia and rebuild the palace using Fa’s vitality in place of Gogoth’s… pillarness. Action 2: Rituals 1 + PUSHING to help reinstate the maths and restore the palace even further. I should be starting with 2 Hubris (unless it ticked down in the turns where I didn't accrue any?), and have 1 Ambrosia remaining. Ambivalent fucked around with this message at 13:59 on Aug 11, 2018 |
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Aug 11, 2018 13:25
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VOTH - Palace of Structure Hubris: 8 Ambrosia: 5 The others were gone, it was just VOTH and the Pillar of Structure now. Somewhere on the back of his mind he could feel the presence of Fa as well, he could feel threads of change emanating from her, wrapping themselves upon this most venerable of structures. But sensing no malice from them, he swept them aside for now. All he could focus on now was the Pillar. His brother's ward, his legacy. The thing he dedicated his entire divine existence to keep safe and maintain, now on the brink of immediate failure. Sparing thought to anything else right now would be a direct insult to all that work and dedication. And VOTH cared far too deeply about his siblings to do such a thing to either of them. VOTH imbibed his Ambrosia gingerly, almost ritualistically, closed his eyes and placed his palm against the Pillar. He felt it, allowed his essence and its to mingle in the familiar trance-like state he found himself in, the tightly, far too tightly knit jumble of Divine responsibility set upon him by the Crash being allowed to open up, diffuse and breathe in this metaphysical space. Indeed, VOTH could almost differentiate them now, the rigid patterns of GOGOTH, the strange fractals of MARVAK, and his own golden glow, all drifting around the massive shadow that was the Pillar's domineering presence. But it was a presence sullied, for from various places it was bleeding, dark purple clouds emanating and causing the giant structure to increasingly flicker and weave as if it were nothing but an illusory mirage. Structure itself was bleeding away from the Universe right before his eyes. This VOTH could not allow. So he set to work. His presence drifted in the mindscape, gathering the diffuse bits of STRUCTURE from the ambrosia-dissolved gestalt of his Domain, and working them into weave and thread and mesh, and with a golden hook he affixed them to whatever leaks he could find. Wherever reality was fading, a patch, wherever the veil was cut, a stitch, and so he worked, minutes stretching to what seemed like years and decades in his vision while he fixed what was broken. VOTH worked in silent diligence the whole time, never stopping, never taking a break, until the task was done. His brother deserved that much, at least. He worked harder than he could remember, though in a trance almost serene in nature, as he saw himself perform this tribute to his brother's work and their shared duty. The outside observer saw nothing but a silent God standing still for a few minutes. OOC: Action 1: ORDER +3 and Pushing and Ambrosia to start fixing up the Pillar of Structure Action 2: Meditating Theantero fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Aug 11, 2018 |
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Aug 11, 2018 20:03
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Cat Cat scooted back to the factory, skittering out of one of the rather numerous holes in the Palace of Structure and simply climbing down the side. It wasn't like there was a 'down' in space, plus Cat was literally a god so gravity was just a suggestion in general. The journey back wasn't that far, but the Outsider colony was doing weird things to spacetime in the general area, so he was forced to slow down and look before he leapt. Still, his senses were keen, even for a god, and it was kitten's play to worm his way through the distortion. It was almost meditative - as he wound his way back to the factory, it gave him a chance to actually think about his recent encounter with Coyote. Coyote had seemed different, but Cat wasn't fooled. Back in their old pantheon, he'd stood apart from the other animal gods. But unlike Cat (and to a lesser extent, Dog), he hadn't done it by becoming a part of the human pantheon. Admittedly, most of it was him being kicked out of both divine realms after a few too many pranks. But Cat was fairly certain there was a deeper difference as well. After one of Coyote's more...irritating pranks on Tiger, where he'd pretended to be the corpse of Snake, on a whim Cat had followed him afterwards, wanting to watch him change back. Any healthy god could change their shape, and any trickster could disguise themselves almost perfectly, but Cat knew the moment of changing always revealed something about a god's true nature. But what he'd witnessed just gave him more questions... Cat was a cat. It was a plain fact, verging on a cosmological truism. Likewise, Dog was a dog, Wolf was a wolf, and Tiger was a number of different predatory felines but also specifically a tiger. But since that day, Cat wasn't entirely certain Coyote was a coyote. Because in that moment of change, Cat had seen nothing. Nothing tangible, at least; nothing of fur or teeth or paws. He'd seen...a thought. An odd thought, an unmistakably Coyote-ish thought, but just a thought. No body, no true form. Coyote hadn't changed his shape; he'd thought himself to be the corpse of Snake and then he'd simply changed his mind. Because that's all Coyote was underneath. An idea. And no matter how loyally Coyote pledged his soul and service to some strange primordial creator, no matter how irrevocably his body and soul changed, Cat wondered if one day soon Coyote would simply decide to change his mind once again. And then Cat might have to eat him. Suddenly, Cat realised he'd arrived at the factory. It was unusual for him to be this introspective about things in the past, and he wondered if this was these less...elemental gods he was spending time with rubbing off on him. Oh well, Cat knew regardless of what sort of habits he picked up, they would only make him more perfect. His reverie was broken by a burst of chain gun fire as a squad of robots noticed him and started shooting. He scampered behind cover and into the factory, but his keen senses picked up that they were following after him. Now that was irritating - Cat wasn't used to being the prey! The thought gave him pause, and he sniffed the air - not with his regular senses, but the divine ones attuned to the higher order Domains that composed the universe. He hadn't noticed it at first, not being used to mechanical life, but this was a hunt! And now Cat could feel the Hunt in the air, trace it back to the robots, see where in themselves they stored their quarry. Cat would keep the Hunt alive, but change it at little. Make it a little more useful! *** Action 1: Meditate to reduce Hubris! Action 2: Using Hunt to mess with the robots' targeting! Pushing for an extra die. Hubris: 7-1d6 Ambrosia: 4 (+2 up for grabs)
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Aug 12, 2018 00:06
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Ivadora 8/10 Hubris, lvl 1 heart injury (2/4 healing) - Scrapball, Hello Darkness - Reclamation Station "That...was a long strange trip." Iva absolutely refused to be a mother or a mother figure. Any creating life would be in the context of a weird, semi-neglectful aunt. But first things first, there were ASSHOLES loving with HER NEW LAIR. *MEANWHILE* "AWWOOOOO TRAIN KEEPS A ROLLIN' ALL NIGHT LONG" ****** Action 1: Stomping on the Guardians around the scrapball with Gangrene for Metal and Meat+4 Action 2: If that is insufficient, THIS TRAIN DON'T STOP, and I do it again, otherwise, I consult the frog for the HD readout. Action 3: Hello Darkness will continue to tussle with everything that gets in his way in the vicinity of the Station Prowess+2 Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Aug 12, 2018 |
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Aug 12, 2018 22:45
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The Trespasser The encounter with the good doctor had somewhat ruffled Trespasser's feathers. This could be expected from Voth, or... Well, Voth, but the good doctor? The troubling events must have surely had unfolded even quicker than expected, with the god a step behind yet again. This called for some rather rapid catching up. It wasn't hard to figure out where Siderous emerged from, as even in its sorry state, the Pillar of Structure shined with pride. The bird slinked through the building, steering clear of the reconstruction work at hand. It seemed the palace has turned into a battlefield, scarred by swords and bites and... Explosions? Fire? Given Siderous recent state, this was knowledge better left alone. Far too pressured to slowly reconstruct the events - the victors were clear and this sufficed - the bird closed its eyes and peered. There, on a single cracked column. A blue-black feather, glistening with gold on its other side. Well, well, well. Trespasser hadn't seen this place before, and so it became increasingly clear that they weren't the only one to cheat by coming here. Were they to remain in the game, decisive action was necessary. Trespasser turned the Key with all their might, piercing the reality far beyond the confines of their protective corporeal shell. Bird's body cracked and the god silently coughed blood as their gaze relentlessly soared far away, past the tattered veil of perception. So Ոտհերպասսեր was here. That churlish philistine. Apparently, the vulgar mocking of our splendid Design proved insufficient to satiate their primal cravings. Of course it was them that had to come here and try prove their prowess, no matter how deeply unsatisfying their vision would be, if brougt to life. Ah well. Their downfall shall make our triumph so much more indisputable, and for the time being... Perhaps even that is for the best. To have at least one rival who can understand. Still, one thing was certain. Matters could no longer be left to resolve on their own. The plans put in motion had to be brought to their fruitful ends. And so the god blinked through the void towards the far reaches of known space. Towards that other major breach in time, space, structure and continuity - the main colony of the six-fingered beings. They have entered their deeply distorted space and stopped just short of anxious glances. "I come in peace to seek my dear friend," Trespasser began their well-rehearsed speech, perfected down to the slender, needle-like fingers they've grown just for the occasion. "Mhaith's Ascent. I had warned her of great danger before, yet I fear even greater risks that were left unspoken. Please lead me to her, for I only wish to ensure her safety." - - - - - Peering into the well: does Otherpasser have an analogous skillset to mine? I've already gotten my answer, but it's only fair to pay the blood debt now - the Lung 2 injury Action 1: I invoke the Key 2 and push to reach the Outsider colony and look for hidden truths in there. As I consort with the distrustful Outsiders, I strain to break free from the shackles of three dimensions and linear time to act within the hard time to the best of my ability. Fluency isn't necessary: rather the base capability to act and a visible good faith effort to play by their rules. Action 2: once there, my sharp Insight 2 helps me take some detours for a few courteous conversations, masking sharp investigations. The above actions are kind of difficult to strictly define due to "let's see what's happening around" nature, while also not worth playing out in detail. In general, this is meant to be ambassadorial visit of sorts: walking around and talking, making a good impression and relentlessly spying around for things both obvious and unspoken. There's a whole bunch of threads to follow, based on opportunities that arise: - keeping tabs on Mhaith's talks with Meidhbhín, participating if possible and/or necessary; - warning about Leftie and her minions, as both a goodwill gesture and making sure we're not taking the blame for her actions; - figuring out how Leftie is affecting the Outsiders. Is it some form of open aggression, or a more insidious scheme? - figuring out what's going on in their society, internally. Social structure, prevailing attitudes, notable values and habits, stuff like that; - figuring out what's the deal with - shameless, self-appointed setting myself as a Trustworthy Dude and a Friendly Ambassador of this universe; - making drat sure nobody mistakes me for that uncouth Otherpasser brute. The key would likely be responsible for the hard time + legit mysteries at play, while Insight would go for your mundane legwork and consorting. But really, whatever makes most sense for you. PS: I probably gotta recalculate the healing clock. I think it will go off now, but somehow I keep forgetting to make sure I've been counting it right. PPS: If it's not clear, I'm going with the "birds as managers of competing projects" we've mused about on discord before.
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Aug 13, 2018 00:30
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Livescene 7: Time Shall Heal No Wounds - Ivadora and Marvak in the Broken Universe https://saroleplays420.wordpress.com/livescene-7-time-shall-heal-no-wounds/ Turn 9 - The Sound Of Us VOTH (5/10 H) and FA (6/10H) Fa’s fingertips glide over steel, steel that twists into marble, arches, cornices. Ev sings from a corner of her mind. She pours her memories into each and every swirl, every corner and curve. Fountains rise, mechanical hummingbirds sing - with feathers of glass shard and tears and salt. Ce reaches into each of them, a different song, a different voice. Vi tunes them to sing in harmony, borrowing Fa’s vocal cords for a moment to check. She laughs, bright and clear and pure. Maybe she’s alone, but she’s never forgotten. And the Pillar listens, still afraid and sick and confused. This whole structure, not just the machinery, is the Pillar. It is every curve, every angle, and now, every song. Reality bends towards memories, towards sensations Fa can pour into it. It is not quite the reality VOTH remembers, and perhaps he does not entirely approve, but it slows the fires spreading through its body. He could fight, or he could listen. The choice is easy. The sounds carry comfort to him too. It reminds him of better days, when he and Marvak and GOGOTH would face the problems of the universe together. Nothing was beyond the will of the Pillars. A place for everything; everything in its place. He can smell salt and tears, the songs of the hummingbirds in the gardens and alcoves carry it. When his eyes open again he sees an exhausted Fa, sleeping in his brother’s throne. He begins to say something, but decides against. He is so tired himself, and together they had stabilized the Pillar. It would need more repairs, a serious overhaul, but there was just enough for time. A brief rest. Yes. A brief rest. He takes a seat beside Fa, cross-legged. His eyes close, and he drifts off. Fa cannot believe what she sees. Her eyes snap open. Around her is a wide, palatial garden. Plants born of titanium and steel shine iridescent. Mechanical hummingbirds fly between them, sparks on their wings in every color. Some sit on branches and stems, and sing. When they see Fa has awakened, they turn to her and sing her name. The sound stirs VOTH. He already understands what has happened. Fa needs another moment. She only realizes when she sees the instrument lain beside her, on what is now a very soft couch. All the universe will listen to FA the Custodian, the Melody of Creation. The Pillar itself has chosen, and there is nothing left to say. OOC: FA has accidentally become the new Custodian, responsible for the Structure of Universe, which now bends to Passion as much as Law. Her instrument is her mask, and manifests however she sees fit. It has no power of its own at this point, it merely a symbol of her station as a Pillar. VOTH has lost three Hubris, and FA takes a Level 1 Stomach Injury due to exhausting herself. The Pillar of Structure is now in serious, but temporarily stable condition. Siderous's sword is still locked in the side. ---------------- Siderous (10/10H) - The Orrery Siderous breathes. In. Out. He feels the Orrery turn before him. It’s altered light blazes on his skin. The tapepedes hiss. And then there is light. Real light. Blazing light. Hot and clean and sharp and terrible. A moment passes. He is cool again. The only sound is crackling. He opens his eyes. There are no tapepedes left, only fine ash. The Orrery shudders in the wake of his anger, and the scene therein flickers. He sees Xela, represented in brass and copper. She dances in the night, happy. The way he remembers her. Not trapped in a hospital bed, surrounded by beeping machines. And then, a shudder. Pain. She’s in pain. A wound opens, and her essence begins to drip into the universe. The moment she nearly died. It plays out, again and again. He is trapped between pain and furious notes, a complete breakdown of her injury. It is not a solution, only a beginning. But well-begun is half done. OOC: Two successful rolls, one of them a crit roll. You’ve got the Palayon-touch! The Orrery is purged of tapepedes entirely, and you’ve made a breakthrough on Xela’s condition. You don’t understand how to fix it yet, but you understand the pathology of her injury in extreme detail. ---------------- Cat and Hello Darkness - Eternium Reclamation Station Hiding in a recess in one of the tunnels, you wait for one of machine gun bots to pass by you. It does so without noticing you.  All it takes is reaching out with a little metaphysical paw and you can feel the insides of the machine. You work your way into their circuitry - full of copper threads that entangle and veer off like a particularly interesting piece of string - and try to make sense of it. You may not share GOGOTH’s technical expertise, but somehow there’s a process for target acquisition in here and you imagine it will have similar patterns to that of how mortals process visual information and motion. You find that it has no memory of visual targets. You cannot place yourself or the other deities in some kind of “do not shoot” list. What it looks for is characteristics - threatening or suspicious behavior around key areas, like the facility or the ships, and the presence of reality-warping materials or entities. It may see you as a target as long as you are on the planet. But that gives you another idea - if the machines are looking for threatening or suspicious behavior, then you could act like you are supposed to be here. That was something you didn’t know how to do before, and Hello Darkness especially would not. The machine’s programming has certain characteristics it looks for, like posture, speed, tone of voice - things that are hard-wired. That hideous beast outside doesn’t know about this yet. “COME, SPIDER-MINION, LET ME RIDE YOU IN BATTLE.” He at least seems to be doing some work out there. That gives you time to chill out. Be your own boss for a bit. Just like you always are. OOC: Cat reduces Hubris by 2. Cat is now aware of what behaviors to perform to evade the scans of Guardians. He may traverse the facility and the planet without risk as long as he doesn’t do suspicious or threatening actions around the machines. Hello Darkness is still semi-lucidly in beast mode, cleaning up both the Guardians and Others outside, nearly forcing both into retreat. ---------------- Ivadora and Starkin - Skies above the Scrapball  The friction of your blade sliding through metal gives some warmth in the cold of space and upper atmosphere. Gangrene clearly enjoys the sensation, making a great snarl and various “shwing!” and “fluuuuuuuCHUNK” sounds with his mouth. The rocket barrages of Guardian ships are easy to weave through. The sword speaks directly to you. “Impeccable swordswomanship, my Lady! But there is… something else, isn’t there? Something new you’ve done.” The eye of the sword squints and tries so hard to pierce through the fog of its illness. “Ah, your arms! You have only two now! I feel so honored that you wield only myself. I feel your full strength coursing through my form. You do me a great service, my Lady.” Starkin is using gravitational curves to line up ships for long successive sweeps and to push others away. What few ships can get through make one or two barrages before being exiled away and set up for Ivadora to attack. OOC: The Scrapball is safe for now. There is only minimal damage to the surface. Whatever reason brought them to the Scrapball is still there and likely still intact. And of course you have the data from GET OUT frog. ---------------- Trespasser - Outsider Planet Traveling up the Outsider mass, you easily reach the system and planet that Cat did, and with no trouble. It seems Mhaith’s Ascent did their due diligence in allowing you an audience, and the transition to their system of laws does not seem to affect you. The terrible sounds Cat described, like strange mortal fantasies, are present but faint. Some random screams and trembles of emotion. Blue and black goo covers the landscape. In the distance you can see a stone structure being raised out of an ocean of goo. Hands pushing it up and putting new pieces on it. The first Outsider architecture anyone has seen.  A piece of the pool nearby raises itself above the surface and assembles an organic shape - a humanoid form. Goo hardens and changes color to form bone and skin and a form like Mhaith had when you last saw them in the temple. Flowers and other beautiful things sprout from their body, worn as if they were clothes.  An androgynous voice speaks in sterile monotone. “We are aware of your existence, being of this universe. You are known among us as Eignach, The Golden Ambassador; Their Feathers Shining Like the Stars. You intrigued Mhaith’s Ascent and made them quite content.” “They wished very much that you could speak to our leader, Vision of Meidhbhín as their Hand Reached Out from the Grave. I’m afraid that is not possible right now. Mhaith is with them discussing our options.” “The Black Serpent; Her Body A Thousand Screaming Insects; A Terrible Swift Sword Upon Us has waylaid our plans for this place. We need a weapon to fight them. The cold metal-things will be made to provide it soon. We have lost a full two-sixths of ourselves since our arrival.” “We ask that you do not interfere until the crisis is over. We are content with your presence.” The being collapses into a pile of goo and recedes into the pool. You are left to wait outside the structure, listening to the random screams of ecstasy and the organic noises of movement. ---------------- Summary: Cat lost 2 Hubris. VOTH lost 3 Hubris FA is now the CUSTODIAN The battle on Eternium is dying down and long-distance warping is possible again. The Orrery and Scrapball are safe again. Mhaith is out of contact while they meet with the Outsider leader. Current Mysteries: The Six-Fingered Planet, Gogoth’s Robots, Who Altered The Orrery?, What Did Majakazumi Know?, Gogoth’s Machine in the Temple, Chrys’s Grenades Thanks to my Co-GM NineIronSwingersClub, for writing Trespasser, Ivadora/Starkin, and Hello Darkness/Cat - along with finding the media present in this update. The Unlife Aquatic fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Aug 13, 2018 |
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Aug 13, 2018 06:29
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VOTH - Palace of Structure Hubris: 5 Ambrosia: 4 VOTH stood over Fa, still slumped on her throne. He seemed in thought, saying nothing until the eyes of the Goddess stirred. "Things are NOT as I REMEMBER them", VOTH stated then, voice stern, "For this is NOT the PALACE that my BROTHER once RULED. This is not the STRUCTURE that my BROTHER once IMAGINED." "BUT", a noticeably softer tone wormed into his voice, "You're NOT my BROTHER. So it does NOT need to be." "What MATTERS is that THE PILLAR OF STRUCTURE still stands. What MATTERS is that it has CHOSEN the SUCCESSOR for its MASK. And as the CHOSEN of THE PILLARS we trust their JUDGMENT. I trust their JUDGMENT. My BROTHER would've trusted their JUDGMENT, and it is my WISH for you to KNOW that he would've felt no SPITE for it taking the form that is YOU, just like it once took the form that was HIM." VOTH's arm swept in an arc, as if he were showcasing the very space around them. "See the FORM of the STRUCTURE that is you, FA THE CUSTODIAN. Hear it SING your NAME. KNOW the RADIANCE of AUTHORITY now vested in you, but KNOW also the WEIGHT of RESPONSIBILITY thrust upon your shoulders. For henceforth where you STAND shall STAND CREATION also. And should THE PILLARS fall, so shall CREATION." "There is NO DUTY more GRAND, more SEVERE in all CREATION. And it now RESTS on you." "Perhaps you feel BEWILDERED. UNDESERVING, even." "But KNOW: So did we ALL, in the BEGINNING." "KNOW that I would HAPPILY stand by you to THE END, without RESERVATION." VOTH offered his hand to the sitting Goddess. "NOW RISE, FA THE CUSTODIAN; BE AVOWED YOUR STATION." "Oh. And WELCOME." OOC: this is just a fluffpost, though VOTH is also trying to make FA vow not to break her duties as the Custodian via Scholar of the First Laws
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Aug 13, 2018 11:47
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Fa - Palace of Structure It maybe isn’t what she’d intended. It certainly isn’t what she wanted - she’d only wanted things to be fixed. The Pillar of Structure weighs like a heavy stone on her heart - it is unlike the flowing, intangible nature of Passion. Unlike her, and who she is. Who she was. Fa returns to awareness already in mid-speech from Voth. In the past, she’d gather the summary and tune him out but she is unable to do that. Something awful inside her compels her to listen to his words. Probably ‘obligation’ or ‘duty’, or one of those other pseudo-feelings she’s less accustomed to. Chosen? Who else was going to do it? What else was I going to do? She pinches her nose, even her newfound weirdly familial feelings for Voth unable to stave off the headache from his particular inflection and her hangover. Fa struggles to sit up with some sort of dignity in this awkward seat. “No, yeah, ye- Do I have to stand up for this part? - Alright, I swear. Of course, that’s the whole point of this. To hold everything together.” It isn’t what she wanted, but it is what she chose. “I swear. IF you stop saying ‘custodian.’ I get it, it’s just…” “...there’s some different connotations in some worlds I was frequenting last.” She grimaces and gestures sort of haphazardly in a winding motion indicating a longer story, “Just, yeah, less of that…” Her shoulders slump and she forces herself to be serious for a moment, “I swear. On my sisters.” She settles back into the seat, tired, but seeming larger - more sized to the throne - than before. “There must be a foundation, and it must be steady, if we ever wish to put down roots.” As she speaks, her words resonate through the walls, traveling further without ever seeming the louder for it. “I am… here to ser-” She catches herself - not to serve. That is something she could do before. “I will make our foundation strong.” The palace warps with her words just a little - the engravings twist deeper, the garden grows a little lusher. Being welcomed… That helps. The Passion’s face warms a little, grateful for… was that some real sentiment out of VOTH? It feels good. “I won’t let you down.” Almost instantly, her jaw locks, and her eyes shift. Oh. That was weird. Did we just - oh, we did. Is that what this? Some ‘I’ve lost my siblings, you’ve lost your siblings’ thing where we seek validation and surrogate relationships to compensate for the loss and work through the trauma? It is, isn’t it? gently caress. He can’t hear my thoughts, can he? We don’t have like, some Pillar Mind Link thing now, right? La la la la la la. Fa locks eyes with Voth for a moment, mildly alarmed, then laughs politely, “But enough. We’ve a lot of work to do. After…” She settles in again, placing a hand over her stomach, “... a nap, maybe.”
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Aug 13, 2018 13:56
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