The Town of Goldenport.

This is a quiet little port tucked away in some coastal peninsula. The history books say that it used to be a happy, thriving community. Everyone was cheerful and productive in their own trade. Homelessness and bad luck were hardly heard of, and everyone was willing to give a helping hand to each other, especially new comers. There was a constant stream of merchants and tourists. The people there had a deep rooted, down to earth sort of pride that was probably rightly earned.

That was, until the mayor was found face down and drowned. With no leads on the cause, people became more on guard and suspicious, especially in the beginning day. If it was a killer, would they do it again?

Perhaps this suspicion and fear is what brought the era of happiness to an end, but it also attracted other odd and frightening happenings. Sailors began reports of strange shadows that seemed to follow them. Then they began to occasionally go missing. Pets too. Rats became an increasingly common occurance. The skies became overcast, even though it almost never would rain. And then there was the fog. People in town started drinking more, business was done quickly and with little to no conversation. Taverns and bars built inns onto themselves for those who avoided going out in the night.

Those who didn't, or who watched out the window, would start seeing figures n the fog. They took the shape of many things. Animals, people, even out on the bay, there were occasionally ships seen that would just...disappear after a couple seconds.
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@mokley
Hm...I think searching out the author would work -nods-

@Crawkid This is the best kind of horror -- reminds me of Lovecraft, the stories where you never see the monster and it's more terrifying because of it. Immediately I started thinking of Ruse that might have been created out of a horrible shipwreck or natural disaster -- or maybe a group of witches doing this intentionally. The mystery is intriguing.

As for the author -- maybe the author himself has a mystery surrounding him. Impossible to track down, his supposed house empty, his books published through strange means.

Deeper down the rabbit hole we go! xD

@Mokley
Thinking perhaps the town is now flooded with ruse..maybe the fog itself is one~

Author: ok this is good. One mysterious author, and another character on a manhunt(?) to find and speak with him.

Throughout the land, travelers have occasionally encountered strange beings seemingly made of clay, draped in simple garbs. Their sizes, colors, and aesthetics vary, but there are a few consistencies - heads resembling vases which only darkness can be seen within, and multitudes of tentacles taking the places arms and legs. Vendors earned their name when, after some investigating, their intentions were discovered - they are wandering prize givers.

When someone comes across a Vendor, it will approach them and stand idle, waiting for them to initiate the process. The person will have between one to five minutes (varies), before the Vendor loses interest and continues along its prior path, to offer at least one piece of any suitable currency via tossing it into the Vendor's vase-head. Larger Vendors will usually lower themselves into a suitable position to make this step easier. Any amount of currency may be given, and it has become apparent through extensive testing by scholars that the more currency is offered, the higher the quality of the received item. Once currency has been given, and after a brief moment of pause - in which time gurgling and crunching sounds can be heard within the Vendor's body - the Vendor will proceed to regurgitate a random object of varying form and function. Some examples include:

- Weapons. These may range from common daggers to extremely well-crafted blades rivaling that of even the most renowned blacksmiths' make.
- Random household objects, such as dinner plates and silverware, paintings (occasionally depicting rather bizarre events), and even entire pieces of furniture.
- Various fruits, vegetables, and other food items in varying condition.
- Eggs belonging to various creatures, and occasionally live infants of said creatures.
- Fully grown horses with well-prepped saddles.
- Clothing items, as well as armor of varying make and quality.
- Gemstones which are often worth much more than whatever amount of currency was initially offered.

To add, some individuals have attempted to offer Vendors items other than currency in exchange for a random item in return. In this event, all they will receive is the same item, albeit in a heavily damaged state. This action does not appear to incur any hostility from Vendors, who will not return any attacks against them. If a Vendor is killed, cutting open their body will reveal nothing but a hollow interior, with no riches to be pilfered.

It is currently unknown where Vendors originated from, but the etchings on their clay-like skin imply they were sculpted by someone or something in the past. Scholars' attempts to locate such a being have, alas, produced no results.

Following are several accounts of random travelers' encounters with Vendors.

"I met one while on my way to the next town over to deliver a parcel. Mates down at the tavern said you should always spare a coin or two if you get the chance, so I tossed in three coppers into its... vase... head... thing. Moment later, it reached in and pulled out a nice pair of shoes, handed 'em to me, and went on its way. Very comfy shoes, been using them ever since."

"During my travels, my horse at the time was struck dead by a bandit's arrow, but I was fortunate enough to escape with my life. Luck shined on me not an hour later, and a Vendor standing some ten feet tall happened along my path. I offered it thirty pieces of gold - as I was rather desiring of something, anything useful - and the damn thing up and spat out a horse. A whole clean mare, brown fur, black mane, and with a bloody saddle on it to boot! Wasn't even a tiny bit bothered about having been vomited out by a creature of clay. Horse has been with me for months now - named her Maela."

"Met one. Gave it a few gold pieces. Got a cup in return. A nice silver cup, but still - just a bloody cup. Waste of money if you ask me."

Wrote this on a whim. Would love ideas on how to expand it. I'm going to try and roll out an article or two every day. I haven't had this much fun writing in a while.





Give a man a fish and you feed him for the night, teach a man how to fish then you feed him for life. Knowing that he wasn't going to be around to feed his son forever, Muo's father sought to do the latter and brought him to the river just outside of their village to give him lessons. Muo who was freshly eight at the time did not have much interest in fishing and thus allowed his mind to wander during the hours they spent standing by the river with their lines cast. He would scan the river from west to east and dwell on how far it stretched. Remembering that his father told him that eventually, the water would venture to the sea, Muo began to imagine the kinds of fish that lived out there. Far from a marine biologist, Muo had a theory that fish grew to be as big as the body of water around them just as the water took the shape of its container. Muo was an imaginative child and there were times that he let it get the best of him.

However, he was sure that this wasn't one of those times.

Once he was sure that he got as good of a measure of the river's length as he could manage, Muo gazed across to the opposite bank. At first he saw nothing but trees and brush. Sighing, he looked at his line to see that it had not budged an inch. Fishing was so boring!

"Dad," Muo whined to his father, "can we go home yet?"

"No Muo," his father answered sternly, "it's our job and a man must do his job either completely or not at all."

Muo snorted before looking back across the river to see nothing again. Only, that was what expected to see.

"Hello," Muo murmured so his father couldn't here.

Standing opposite of them, fishing as well, was another father and son pair. Muo and the boy made eye contact so he waved. The other boy waved back simultaneously.

"Dad!" Muo boomed joyfully. "Look over there! They're fishing too!"

His father's sight darted across the river to see what his son saw.

"Oh Muo, stop goofing around and focus before you miss a catch."

Muo was confused. Did his father mean to say that he did not see the other pair across the river.

"B-but Dad they're st-"

"Look Muo your line!"

Never mind the pair! Muo squealed in delight as his line dipped into the river. He was about to catch his first ever fish! Working together, Muo and his father wrangled in the tiny rasckle that was barely bigger than the boy's thumb.

"Awe," Muo whined, "I wanted a shark."

His father chuckled as he dangled his son's miniscule catch front of him.

"You'll have to go a little further for that, Muo. Don't feel bad. You have to start somewhere."

"Yes sir," Muo nodded his head.

The two gathered their belongings and started up the hill towards the village. Before reaching the top Muo glimpsed over his shoulder to check if the other father and son were still fishing.

They weren't. As Muo and his father headed up the hill the other father and son turned towards the woods with their own gear slung over their shoulders. Muo, being only a boy, didn't think much of it.

They must be heading home too. It is getting late after all

"Muo!" He was snapped out of his curiosity by his father's voice. "We have to get back before dark!"

"Coming!"

Forgetting all about the pair across the river Muo zipped towards his father. Watching him as he had watched them was the other father and son pair.

"Dad," Muo said to his father before they entered the woods. "Where do you think they're going?"

"Home," Muo's father answered, his voice creaking. "Where I wish we could go."

Then, as if they were never there, they faded.

Added Hybris, God of Arrogance and Proving Others Wrong to the characters tab.

I connected it to the god Del and the Barkolopus. I am envisioning the Restored Empire to be more or less a restoration of the Null Empire, although that hasn't been written yet.

Holy crap you guys rock! I have some of my own articles in the works, but you all keep posting more ideas that would be perfect to incorporate, hahaha.

@SepticGentleman Haha this is a great laugh to start the morning. The vendors are so charming and unique! I assume they may only be found along the long roads? Any inkling where they come from -- or more importantly, where the stuff comes from? xD This reminded me of a character I had once that could instantly summon any item he liked, but it was being stolen from nearby.

@Zealous Blade This gives me a MushiShi vibe -- and also a slight uncertainty which pair of father-son is actually real. Maybe there's something about this particular river that mirrors its sides? Or even, perhaps, crossing the river takes you to a sort of mirror-existence? Or, maybe there's something about staring down the length of the river that allows a Ruse to infect or possess a person's mind.

@Wardian This reads more like a legend of the origin of some unusual mountain formations than what actually happened, as some of the concepts are just a little too crazy even for this world, hahaha -- but it brings up some good questions about whether a Ruse can sustain itself (as in nature there are always exceptions to rules, and the God of Proving Others Wrong is a perfect example) and what is actually required in order to destroy a Ruse. The Barkolopus are Ruse-eaters, and the Null Towers serve the same function. It's already been brought up that burning sage, for example, can ward them off, but can they hurt each other? Could a powerful collective intent to destroy a Ruse work as well as to create one?

Now, completely unrelated, I'm imagining a village gathering together in anger and beating off a huge, terrible Ruse with sticks -- and winning. xD

@Mokley Honestly I was just gonna leave the details of their/the items' origins ambiguous. And they stroll through very small towns sometimes, but never larger settlements - as if they are aware of the risk of getting swamped with people looking to draw a prize.

I've created a dummy account on Inkarnate for us to collaborate on creating maps! I'm not sure what will happen if two people try to edit maps at once, but I guess we'll find out haha.

Go to https://inkarnate.com/users/sign_in and log in as the following:



As of right now there are no maps yet, but feel free to create new ones. :)

Idyll City -- the sky-island best known for its brightly painted skyscrapers and gravity-defying architecture -- has been hiding one of the most impressive feats of Thought Technology recorded to date. It is called the FENIKS Project, and it is causing ripples among intellectual communities throughout the world.

After decades of dedicated research at the Razum Research Center, Najima Kiira's team -- called the FENIKS Project -- has announced its success. "Death has been conquered," Najima said in a recent interview. "Fear and loss have been obliterated. This is a new age of hope."

Participants in the FENIKS Project -- some as young as six years old -- undergo surgery where a sliver of charged stone is implanted into the patient's skull. After a day's recovery, the patient is free to live a normal and happy life, with only annual checkups to ensure the stone is performing correctly.

Upon the death of the patient's natural body, the stone is retrieved and transferred to a Telo: an artificial body, likened to a doll, which does not age nor die. The patient, upon waking, remembers their life up until the moment of death -- and sometimes beyond -- and retains the entirety of their personality. After a brief period of therapy to learn to utilize the new Telo body, the patient is free to continue their life free of sickness or injury or further threat of death.

THE CONTROVERSY
"My Telo has wings!" a ten-year-old patient cheered in an interview. "They said I'll be able to fly! I've already got plenty of pretty dresses picked out. There's a boy in my class who's a Telo, and he has teeth like a shark. I think his mom's gonna make him file them though, he bit the teacher's dog."

"I'll be able to watch my grandchildren grow up," an elderly man wrote. "I'll captain the ships again, see the world, climb the highest mountains, and these old bones won't be slowing me down."

"I feel better knowing my husband has the FENIKS Project behind him," a mother of three told the GAZETTE. "I can't imagine our children growing up without a father."

"This isn't everlasting life," said Eliana Reyes, the FENIKS Project's most vocal critic. "The patient still dies. The implant is simply recording, storing the person's memories and energy. The process of transfer to a Telo is a glorified spell of witchcraft to create a Ruse. What gets up off that table isn't your son or daughter: it's a Ruse that thinks and acts like your child."

"What happens in the long term?" asked Frede Dall, an anti-thought activist out of Loris City. "This thought technology was only developed six years ago; its oldest successful patients have lived in their Tela for only that long. What happens after a decade? A century? Not even the Ruse are immortal."

"You realize witches have been doing this since the Bubbling," said Louis Wallace, leader of the Black Cap Coven. "The clan mothers would wear the stones, and when they died the stones would be put into a dog or a horse, and she'd continue to guide the clan in spirit. It was an honor to the ancestor, not a resurrection."

"The FENIKS Project is the future of the preservation of knowledge," insists the founder, Najima Kiira. "The mistakes of our past will no longer be left to history books; we will learn directly from our ancestors, and we will no longer repeat their mistakes. Ahead of us is an age of peace, hope, prosperity, and a release from the grip of Death."

Elaborated on Mirror, Mirror by the River with a conversation that I hope gives myself and all of you out there a bit more insight into exactly how the phenomenon works. I tried to still keep that mysterious air around it.

@Mokley Those types of projects always creep me out and have me thinking about the morality of them. Love it.

@SepticGentleman

Wow! I love this idea. I wanna meet one XD

@SepticGentleman

Wow! I love this idea. I wanna meet one XD

Well the idea is pretty much all set out without much more explanation needed, so you could write about an encounter with one. I know I'd enjoy reading it.

Added a example of the sort of thing that gets people killed in Elohim.

We didn't figure out what Cansma is have we? is it a region?continent?name of the world?name of the dimention?

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The Web of Fate

The word "Fate" is a well argued philosophical point. Some think it is non-sence, some think it is an element of mystery similar to the Ruse, And yet more think that there is a diety out there that controls everything.

For the most part, everything is speculative and one's belief in the concept only goes so far as how comfortable they are with the idea. But in the oldest library there is an article filed away, explaining a phenomenon that's been perceived by many great philosophical minds in the past.

(think I'll make this into a full article, but first food and stuff)

@CrawkidIt's a large region, sorta like the Great plains in the US

Now that the articles are mixing it up and intertwining a bit more, they're getting harder to categorize, haha. This is a great thing! Maybe I'll end up listing the same article under multiple categories. Let me know what you guys think!

Elaborated on Mirror, Mirror by the River with a conversation that I hope gives myself and all of you out there a bit more insight into exactly how the phenomenon works. I tried to still keep that mysterious air around it.

This is haunting and awesome. After some debate I placed it under Locations and not Stories, since it'll probably eventually be mapped. :D

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Added a example of the sort of thing that gets people killed in Elohim.

The inverted people are so very weird and unique and, in their own strange way, horrifying. I could see adventurers approaching out of mystified curiosity and soon regretting it. I placed them as a sub-point under Elohim, but let me know if you think it should be placed elsewhere!

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The Web of Fate

The word "Fate" is a well argued philosophical point. Some think it is non-sence, some think it is an element of mystery similar to the Ruse, And yet more think that there is a diety out there that controls everything.

For the most part, everything is speculative and one's belief in the concept only goes so far as how comfortable they are with the idea. But in the oldest library there is an article filed away, explaining a phenomenon that's been perceived by many great philosophical minds in the past.

(think I'll make this into a full article, but first food and stuff)

In a world debating whether the persistent soul is truly that or a Ruse imitation, the question of Fate is definitely relevant. The Man on the Tower seems like quite a person to stumble across. Might he have published books? I wonder if he'd be the same Author that our heroine is looking for.

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Edit: I'm going to go ahead and start linking articles from the OOC in the Characters tab, else I fear their ideas might be lost!

@Mokley

Thanks :) love contemplating the idea myself, and I felt the mysticism and mysteriousness of this guy I'm kind of piecing together would fit and stuff.

And if he was the very same guy, I'd think either he goes by many names or..maybe the name he used for the article was from before he disappeared? Otherwise, I think it'd feel like her goal was too tangible for the difficulty its supposed to be at? Dunno

Hey guys, how's this for a world map concept? Please do feel free to edit this as inspiration strikes, just keep in mind it's meant to be on a world scale similar to a map of earth: https://inkarnate.com/maps#/316344

@Crawkid True, it would feel too easy for an epic journey!

I can't help but think of The Author from One Shot. xD

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@Polybius Awesome insight! Am I right in interpreting that dreams and nightmares become reality? That opens entirely new weird possibilities. x3

Wait, is this still a fantasy setting?