I'VE BECOME SO NUMB / I CAN'T FEEL YOU THERE / I'M TIRED OF BEING WHAT YOU WANT ME TO BE

[Antarctic Termite]

every step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoesevery step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoesevery step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoesevery step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoesevery step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoes

every step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoes every step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoes every step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoes every step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoes every step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoes

every step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoes every step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoes every step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoes every step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoes every step that I take is just another mistake to you "Don't know what you're expecting of me" put under the pressure of walking in your shoes

21 remaining, lv. 10
(assuming all possible level ups)
-19 =2
+10 =12
+10 =22
-22 =0

Schools
Banks
Company
Stock

harder to read, already canon

easier to read, annoying code

[colour=LightYellow][/colour]
[colour=LightCyan][/colour]
[colour=MistyRose][/colour]
[colour=Honeydew][/colour]
[colour=Lavender][/colour]
[colour=BlanchedAlmond][/colour]

[color=00a99d][/color]
[color=61403c][/color]
[color=613c3c][i][/i][/color]
[colour=674c49][/colour]

-Blowfly Marquisate (Tauga, Heartworm, Rotfly Watch, Laboratory of Mirus)
-Metera (Chiral Phi, anyone dumb enough to associate with her)
-Old Sea Priesthood (Jvan, Lambda-19, her boyfriends, Alefpria?, Tsunami, Jvanic Folk)
-Dabbles! (Alefpria)
-Tira (Tira)
-Diaphane Sorority (Yulosi, Zotash'e, Sable)

[Antarctic Termite]

Sable.

A pile of rubble in the middle of an old stream valley. A sound of takk-ing stone on stone, intermittent and variable. Someone was throwing rocks. Not with much force, either.

"A halo from my father," said the voice in the gulch. "A blade from my mother. A thousand curses from Yivvin, and..." A cocked head, as the next fistful of rock cracked down the walls. "And good hearing from Aihtiraq, I guess. That's one thing to be thankful for."

The boy looked up to where a sable marten was curled upon a crag, looking down at him. The two seemed equally startled by each other. His pockmarked metal disc followed his head.

He cracked a smile, looked down. The ferret-thing scampered away up the rock. He turned back to the D-shaped blade sticking up from the rocks, its handle embedded in its spine. He stood up from the rocks.

"Was this the best you could do?" he asked, addressing the walls. The Jvanic spines had been cleared out long ago, but things still grew back. Forked slender points, facing skywards. "An abomination? Another bastard, to throw into the fire? Was the rape of my mother worth this?" He kicked a rock.

"What am I, a Jvanic elemental? A Djinni whose element is you? Or maybe something more like a change-eater? Is that why I must burn everything that I touch?" Sable picked up a rock out of the many, many that lay. It sank into his hand. His skin was water, the flesh beneath as mud. He watched as the stone dripped out the other side, soiling the clear fluid that covered his surface, dripping away as sepia that fled back to him on the ground.

"Or am I a Sculptor? Yes, that makes sense, does it not? Someone to tell the story you refuse to believe. Someone who knows his own narrative, a character who chases the conclusion for its own sake. You just want it to look nice, don't you? No matter what happens, you're just chasing the story."

Sable waved his hand in front of him. He was, in body, the spitting image of what Flux had been three centuries ago, before the change. Only younger. The sepia clouds were falling away into him again, leaving his outer flesh clear.

"You're willing to believe that the responsibility for change lies with anyone but you," he murmured. "You pay morality a tribute because it stung you in the past. Do you think you can atone for your sin the same way you solve all your other problems? By making horrors and abandoning them?"

He swept his arms up to the sky and raised his voice. "Is that what I am? Am I the body who's destined to fight you into a standstill? Is that not correct? Am I not the one you chose to fix all your mistakes? Cure the wounds you inflict and mete out the penance you owe?"

Sable's fists hardened.

"And I will, no matter what it takes. I will thwart you. So... Who am I?"

"Am I your keeper? Am I a harbinger?"

There was no answer. Sable lowered his hands and his voice.

"Am I a messiah?"

There was no answer.

Until, eventually, there was.

"SABLE! Quit your teenage monologuing and sweep out my fucking dojo!"

A broom clattered down among the rocks from somewhere far above. Sable's keen ears heard something about 'I'll make a good goblin out of you yet'.

"Yes, Auntie! I'm coming!" Sable resolved to go within the next five minutes. He looked back out at the gulch. Nothing.

He sat down on the rocks, facing the blade.

I miss them, Sable said, quietly, in his head. I never met them but I miss them. I miss your voices. His fingertips drummed on the stone. "You should never have died. Why did you die?"

The blade's rune gleamed at him. Wit's End.

'May the one who takes up this sword forsake its use, and all other arts of combat, until words fail them.'

"I accept this oath," he said, and put his hand on the blade. It glowed. Sable put his other hand around its grip and pulled.

It was stuck.

"Oh damn this," he whined, yanking the huge ceramic sword with both hands and a shoulder. He grunted with effort as the blade stuck fast in the dirt.

"Sable! Your oryx wants feeding!"

"Coming, Auntie!"

He spattered the ground with his hand, shaking it out to reform it. The rocks dissolved into the ink-marks, the ink-marks flowed back to his feet. At last he heaved and the weapon came free.

"Coming!" he yelled again, setting the blade on his back, where a curve of liquid held it in place. Sable scrambled up the rock.

[Antarctic Termite]

Phi - awww, kids
Phi - FIX YOUR RELIGION
Phi - kill a man
Phi - Invest!
Phi - Orianaposting?
Phi - Belvast
Phi - Missionaries

Coming And here we go Going

Going And here we go Coming

Coming And here we go Going

Going And here we go
Coming
And here we go
Coming
And here we go
Coming
And here we go
Coming

Coming And here we go Going

Going And here we go Coming

And here we go
And here we go
And here we go
And here we go

[Antarctic Termite]

A young troll mage.

His story.

Two days. Two days without sleep. Beyond that, Lao had lost count. He was exhausted.

He ran. He stumbled. He made no progress. It had been forty days since the last dawn. The third dawn. Surely everything would be okay. If the sun would only rise one more time.

Lao watched the sky, watched black turned to mauve turn to orange turn to yellow.

Turn to brown.

"No!"

Olive green succeeded the yellow and no sun arose. Light began to flow to the world around him, sickly greens that made no sense on the backdrop of sky. Not as he looked at them. Lao shot his eyes around and saw the hues turn deader at his gaze, hoping to find something true green, something bright, not drab and dead and vile and grained and no no no NO-

"NO!"

Lao rammed his fist into the dirt and raised it to his face, watched grains of grit cling to his hand only to realise they were crustaceans.

"It's not REAL!"

None of this was, he was tossing in a fever bed, his body was sweating, his brain was churning, he could almost see the wild folds of twisted blanket tangling him, almost feel him on his skin...

But it was. It was all real. He could not convince himself that the truth was a lie, and the blankets smouldered in his grip, left him naked and alone. The gnarl-trees watched him with their slitted eyes.

Lao had called on Yah Vah, and Yah Vah had answered.

Yah Vah had answered.

It's all in my head. Lao picked himself up and was naked no more. He gripped his head and walked back on his path, knowing the watchers would follow. It's all in my head. All in my dreams. It's not real. That was the only answer he came up with, although he knew it was false. It had been all in his head. How had it come out?

Lao imagined a brain crawling away from its socket, though he knew he shouldn't; he couldn't help it. The vision manifested, there on the floor where he'd walked past just a second ago; if he wasn't used to it by now he would have reeled at the fact that he hadn't noticed it before. His own body lay bleeding there, a pink monster screeching in its head, then turning to reveal the jaws it must have screeched with, and scuttling into the dark. Lao stared at his body, transfixed.

It blinked.

"Aargh!" So desensitised had he become to the hell-world's tricks that this barely registered on him, only surprised him. That was what sickened him.

"YOU!"

Lao raised his Tounic staff to the distant horizon, watched the disk hanging at the end of it start to glow. It could trick him, get him lost, but it could not take from him. The pair of eyes appeared on the horizon as he bid. White eyes. Ripped from Vigilate and Scitis. He could see their skul-

"YOU MADE THIS!"

A bolt of porcelain shot into the dark, out from the center of the disk into the sky. The two eyes blinked and instantly went out. They lit up again. Lao roared. He could slay a man, not a world.

He'd called to every god, trapped as he was inside the hell, but none had answered. His cry was lost among the thousands they received every day. It was not often that a god responded. But Yah Vah had.

Lao started to sprint, away from the corpse, away from the gnarling trees, away from their gaze and into the hills, the bluffs shaped like faces wrought from bloodied stone. They outpaced him, those eyes, and fought him, raising trees up to bludgeon him, raising stone outcrops to tear at him. Lao fought, and fought back, but they knew him, knew him better than anyone.

They were him.

He was fighting himself. Every swing.

They threw Lao back, bloodied and beaten, but this time he would not stop. The end was coming. The eyes were drawing closer.

He'd called Yah Vuh because he was bored. And she had answered.

Lao ran across dirt and pond and wood and field, scenes of home now tainted with his wildest dreams. Trees with eyes and crops of teeth. Lakes of stone and crystals hanging from the sky. Darkness that was only gnats and soot. Nets among the grass. Spikes in every pit.

The more ground he covered, the worse it became. The more Lao saw, the stronger those eyes grew.

He closed his eyes and tripped, stumbling, throwing himself into the pit. The waters caught him and he sank, then floated, lying back on a pool a mile wide. It would not let him die.

Lao turned the rune-disk on himself, but fangs grabbed the end of his staff and dragged it under water. He tried to swim. He could only stand. The water was not deep. It dried up in an instant.

Lao fell to his knees and wept. The hell-world did not answer.

It did answer.

Whispers, everywhere, whispers without words.

"Just take it," he mumbled. "Take and let me die."

The great eyes were upon him.

Lao screamed, and Lao's body screamed, and the voices screamed, and Lao watched himself grow far away, fleeing skywards as brown turned to blue and Lao's body watched Lao's soul flying deep into the sky upon a shade...

...

'Lao' stood. He was bloody and sore, and after checking himself down for major injuries, took a brief walk to see if he still could. Yes, he could. That was swell.

It was mid-day. He recognised the terrain. Not much more than a day's walk from home; he'd make it before third moonrise. He checked for his staff and realised it was missing. Oh, well. He'd do some explaining to the runesmith. He'd get scolded, which was bad, but it wouldn't be more than he could handle. He'd only been gone two days.

So all in all, that wasn't too bad, thought 'Lao'. He planned to forget all about it.

And then he'd go back to his life.

He'd settle as a cleric, not some adventurer. That was a far more sensible approach. He'd marry Jikki, the miner's daughter, and have some kids. He'd work in the daylight and sleep well in the night, and every now and then he'd go and drink with his friends, for fun. He could handle it. Everything would be okay. He didn't need to dream high dreams any more.

'Lao' set foot for the village, striking up a two-note tune as he went. The music made him feel good. Feeling good was nice. Yes. That's right. Feeling good was nice. It was all coming back to him now.

---

Orbital velocity: one thousand, two hundred metres per second.
Mass: half a tonne, existent. Estimated virtual maximum about eight million tonnes.
Density: two kilograms per metre cube.
Interpsychic resonance: stable.

With the first functional periphere matured and in orbit, I think I've done an excellent job. Even given the short notice and disappointing size of the entity, it still stands up to all but the most stringent of tests and largely lives up to its predicted specifications. I've despatched it to Ovaedis, to commence operation as a unit of primary point defense.

Lao's next life will, if nothing else, be an interesting one. It's a shame he couldn't have continued the one he was leading. Imaginative individuals are a precious resource on Galbar, as anywhere, and even with the cognitive programs I left in Lao's old body, we may see some detrimental effects on the local society. Nothing so bad as to outweigh the experiment of leaving a soulless mortal alive, of course, but it's not something I'd do readily. Given some years I would have used alternative means to develop a soul to maturity, but that is time I do not have.

I'll complete an initial production run of several hundred individuals, and see where I go from there.

Summary: jvan no / JVAN YES

Jvan creates yet another form of war machine. This one is called a Yonder, or periphere, a massive ghost-like entity capable of trapping other creatures in a vast and hostile living landscape. They'll tend to be pretty surreal.

Yonders are born as cognitive parasites, like Sculptors, but rather than fusing with and enhancing their victim, they trap them in a nightmare world of their own design until the Yonder has absorbed enough imagined landscapes to mature. Once mature, the Yonder rips away from the victim, taking their soul and a copy of their memories with them. While the vector for Sculptorhood is art, Yonders are born from spores.

Jvan intends to use Yonders as defensive constructs, knowing that change-eaters are fantastic hunters but awful at holding the line. She creates a few hundred of them and leaves ~four hundred soulless bodies behind. So that Galbar doesn't lose those creative genes, the soulless people are jury-rigged to continue operating in a pretty normal way, fitting in to society, raising children, and whatnot.

Obviously there'll be some bugs in a human simulator programmed by Jvan at a moment's notice without much effort. I'll leave it to your imagination.

One Might has been spent to create the Yonders.

Between Yonders, Sculptors, and Scribes, Jvan has unlocked the Beauty (Horror) portfolio. This is defined as surreal or existential horror as a genre of art, and the effects it has on a mortal audience.

Jvan
9 Might Ambient
0 Might in Ovaedis
2 Free Points
2C / 0D
Level Six

3/3 Might invested in Beauty (Performance)
3/3 Might invested in Beauty (Horror)

[Antarctic Termite]

Mercenary - Birth
Tauga - Marquisate 3
Tauga - Marquisate 4
Chiral Phi - general Phiposting, i.e. KIDS
Heartworm - Death
Lambda - Vestec and Isonymph
Tira - Gadar