Charybdis
Millennia had passed… Wars had gone by, technologies have advanced, nations have risen, nations have fallen. Deities and Pious Kings rise and fall still today just as they have before, but today things were different. Things were going to change. Today was the day the kings and queens of this world would meet in a lavish and beautiful kingdom that now stood in ruin. It was a scar on the land, reminding the Deities of the previous wars of which the took part in. Charybdis was crumbling, but as the sun broke over the skies and the centuries long war ended. It would be rebuilt, reconstructed, and re-beautified, for it was today that each Deity would reclaim their hall and reshape it in a new image- one capable of resembling them in this new age.
Though, with the war ending, making the collective home of gods was far down on the list of tasks that needed doing. It was today that the greatest of deific figures would meet amongst the halls of Charybdis and decide which of those among them would take the head of the table and become the King of Gods and his advisors. A powerful role it was to hold such a title, and one of the remaining Deities after the wars would fill that role and choose those that rule beside them. There were two advisors that needed chosen, and each would be given a unique ability for their particular aspect, those aspects being War and Peace.
These two advisors, after being chosen by their king as the Gods of War and Peace are each given a unique ability. Those abilities being the power to pacify battlefields for days at a time, or the power to give a hero near demigod-like powers. Of course, both of these powers pale in comparison to the strength of the King of Gods. Every god controls their own hall in Charybdis, but it is only the King of Gods that can bend its very essence at his whim. Voting a Deity into this position was a tough task for many of the remaining Deities after the grief of war’s passed, but alas, it was time for the Deities that remained in power to convene. There was only a handful of them, but the world was on their backs.
Adiel
It wouldn’t be long before every single one of those that Adiel once feared as conquerors would return to the hall that the lot of them once sat in as creators of this world. Oh how things had changed since then. Adiel was never one to partake in the constant savagery of the warring nations. Perhaps that was why Mandisa was prospering today. Mandisa was very isolated in those dark times even despite their mercantilist nature, for they had nowhere near enough troops to go on any sort of advance. Adiel only wished for those dark days to be buried.
A small cloud of sand swirled into a small twister in the middle of Charybdis. It wasn’t long before this sand began to lose its speed, gently settling on the floor, and as the veil of sand was lifted, Adiel’s usual figure came into view. She was just down in Mandisa working with a set of advisors to plan the erection of more obelisks along Mandisa’s most travelled roads, but it had likely been days since that occurred. Time flowed very strangely in Charybdis. It was often hard to place when exactly you were after spending extended periods of time in the halls of gods.
Before her was a long table with far too many chairs for those that would heed the summons of their fellow deities today. On one end sat a large throne-esque chair fit for their King. It was an elegant and ornate meeting room where diplomacy was originally to be conducted between the descendants, but instead it remained in slight ruin, and due to Adiel being the first to arrive, there was an eerie silence to the entire hall. Today marked a change in its emptiness, though. With a new king to lead, Charybdis would no doubt become lively with Deities, old and new alike, mingling and achieving great things. The disrepair of this room, however, had Adiel worried about what her personal hall looked like. No doubt it was completely tattered and ruined.
She began to slowly make her way through the great halls of Charybdis in search of her personal hall. As the first there, she would have time to at least take a look in the old place and see what had become of it. A rather pristine arch of sandstone carved into the side of a walkway marked the entrance to her old paradise. The contents of this huge room, however, were not as wondrous. Adiel’s obelisks bore out of the floors, walls, and ceilings alike. They were strewn about in the dusty room as if they infected it like stalagmites and stalactites. All the water from the river-like fountain that surrounded the room had been dried, leaving her hall- just as the rest of Charybdis- eerily silent. Adiel let out a long and wispy sigh as she peered towards the large chair that she once sat atop happily. She had hoped the room would soon be return to its former glory, but for now she merely turned back towards the meeting hall and ambled along the echoey Charybdian palace.
Casually and observantly, Adiel took a few paces around the table. It had been ages since a group like this had met, and many times when they had met before for diplomatic meetings during wartimes, Adiel simply didn’t attend. In a world of chaos and war, Adiel wanted no part. She felt the political aspect of the battling was silly, and would often deny any sort of assistance to others aside from perhaps a monetary gift or tribute to keep the fighting away from her beloved Mandisa. Perhaps that it why Mandisa is the flourishing paradise, albeit a bone dry paradise that it is today. Adiel didn’t seat herself- not yet. Instead she merely leaned against a pillar by the edge of the room, peering out at the open sides of the room that showed the clouds on which the palace sat and the wondrous setting sun. Her old friends would arrive shortly.
The Holy Deserts of Mandisa
The bustling business of Mandisans in the desert capital of Heliopolis had not halted in their daily tasks and work even with their knowledge of Adiel’s meeting. Merchants chattered through the city, peddling wares throughout the streets to travellers and Mandisans alike; masons toiled away in their great constructive feats, producing new wondrous structures whether they be housing, obelisk, or statue; and the businessmen of Mandisa found themselves circled around a table within Adiel’s great palace in attempts to discuss future trade routes that would be recreated after being cut off for so long.
Even outside the mighty Sun City that was Heliopolis, Adiel’s deserts were alive and rampant with the caravans of traders, travellers, and desert bestiary. Adiel’s beloved Scarab Beetles skittered along the same paths in the sand that were taken by camels that were packed high with numerous bags of goods. Jackals scavenged along the sides of paths, scavenging and hunting for a meal in the hot and dry air. Occasionally a traveller would spot a cat or a fox scurrying across the sands on the hunt as well. The people of Adiel’s nation were very close to the animals it harbored. So sharing the desert with its inhabitants was very important and kept in high regards by Mandisa’s pharaoh and goddess. It wasn’t like the wasteland that was Mandisa’s deserts didn’t have enough space for all its inhabitants and more, so Adiel wished to coexist.
Though, not all was well in Mandisa, just as in almost every nation. Even the wide deserts had their problems. The myths and legends of the Nekropolis, or city of the dead were ever present and growing in popularity. It was an old legend of a place that was lost in time. Only visible if you were to venture into the right sandstorm at the right time somewhere in the vast deserts, a gate would appear. Inside this gate, one would find the dead and the living dead in a festering city of decay. Any of those who managed to supposedly find the gates of Nekropolis and enter them were never heard from alive again. While many think it is simply travellers succumbing to the ever present and relentless desert heat, many Mandisans believe in the legends that explain the bodies mysteriously discovered in the deserts have much more sinister and supernatural explanations.
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