[OOC] Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

[Mardox]

I wonder, how many Heroes are we allowed to make?

@Scarifar

Shall we find out?

[Cyclone]

I wonder, how many Heroes are we allowed to make?

@Scarifar

I already have plans for three. I don't imagine myself settling at that though; I might end up closer to five.

The OP doesn't mention any limit and I see little need to set an arbitrary cap, so make as many as you'd like.

[Kangutso]

Within reason, of course.

[Muttonhawk]

I have a feeling that it would take a lot of effort to maintain plots for a large number of heroes.

[Mardox]

Theoretically it could be done if one had the dedication.

[Frettzo]

@Kho, can I level Astarte up without posting?

[Cyclone]

@Frettzo

You have nothing to say? Not even deigning to answer Zephy's invitation into his flying house after Astarte gave him the jar of magic stuff? What are we going to do with Frettzo...

[Fabulous Knight]

@FrettzoHow come you want to? Levelling up matters when you want to post, no? -- And if you want to post, you could just level up then, right?

Or is there a reason I've missed?

[Frettzo]

@Cyclone, she's been invited to Zephyrion's home? I didn't get mentioned in any post of the sort, unless it was the direct response to her gift and I've just forgotten.

I don't have much that I want to do right now and I don't want to accumulate Might without investing it in some way. Posting only to level up would be a hassle, because it'd involve either hunting a bunch of animals or doing something I feel Astarte wouldn't do.

[Cyclone]

@Frettzo

It was a direct response, yes. I think it bad form to use @mentions in an IC post and therefore didn't do that, but to your credit the summary just mentioned that he responded to Astarte and not that he invited her to come.

The pertinent section:

But now he had a moment to think on it and respond to Astarte. He reached back to her with his mind, "A most splendid and intriguing gift! Its energy acts most unlike those that I command. One day you must fare to my palace and see it in person; when such time comes, I implore that you bring more of this strange substance!" The jar before him evaporated into a cloud of strange smoke and then materialized once more somewhere else in his palace; Zephyrion was sure that he would find the time to tamper with that magic at some point. Now, however, he was otherwise occupied.

Cyclone

[Scarifar]

So, who hasn't posted something for this turn yet?

[Frettzo]

@Scarifar, I haven't, and I probably won't post anything for this turn. Hence why I'm asking if it's possible to level up without posting

[Kangutso]

I haven't posted either. Every time I go to start on a post, my brain just goes 'nope'.

[Double Capybara]

I'm almost finishing my post

[Mardox]

So, who hasn't posted something for this turn yet?

@Scarifar

I need/want to do more.

[Antarctic Termite]

Also, so far there aren't really any monsters or people that won't die.

@Legion02

About that.

totally not a Lovecraftian cult

The Sculptors

Species - Artistic Movement - Cognitive Parasite - the Other

Activities: A fully developed member of the Jvanic Cult is generally a solitary entity. Sculptors retain much of the intelligence they had in their former life, be it as Hain, Djinni or Urtelem, at the expense of their former social and emotional impulses. A Sculptor can still feel drives such as joy, fear, anger, and despair, and these feelings are an instrumental part of their inspiration to create, but they are no longer attached to other individuals. Neither empathy nor hatred exists in a Sculptor. Rather, their emotions are tied exclusively to the aesthetics of their surroundings. Some creatures, landscapes or cultures may inspire a Sculptor to be filled with eagerness and arousal to create something bright and energetic, while others are liable to motivate it to design something bleary and depressive in form. No matter what emotion a Jvanic cultist may be stricken with, it will always be inspired to create art of the same caliber.

The cognitive capacities of these creatures will vary according to their origins, and they can be summarised as entities of prodigious problem-solving ability, high curiousity, photographic memory, and superb spacial awareness, but motivated so exclusively by the drive to create art that most other rational species will consider them borderline sub-sentient. Their negligence of most forms of language exacerbates this sentiment, although they will sometimes choose to produce art via written narrative or abstract poetry, and can sing. Of course, with diversity of body comes diversity of mind, and Sculptors have preferences and specialities like any other sentient species.

The production of art is the eternal missive of a Sculptor, second only to self-preservation. Jvanic Sculpture is not limited to the shaping of clay, but can be produced in an endless variety of ways. In addition to producing installations of any kind of available material in any combination- Sand and stone, plant materials, animal remains, refined metals and devices- Sculptors also practice painting, gardening, sketching, architecture, animal husbandry, mosaic, and the aforementioned writing and poetry. Although they are rarely graced with an audience, Sculptors even practice music in song, dance and instruments. In fact, there is no action undertaken by a Jvanic Cultist that is not deliberated and beautiful, as even their gait, movement, and style of combat appears elegantly choreographed to their mood, be it in graceful fluidity, artful excitement and chaos, or impressive stoicism and power.

Although Jvan does not outright control her cult, they are attuned to her whispers across the Gap, and accept her song as supplementary inspiration to their environment and mood. This is most prominent when a Sculptor begins its ascendant journey, and needs guidance in both practical skill and artistic theory. As a Sculptor matures, it grows confident enough to follow its own way, and rarely requires visions from the All-Beauty, although a particularly exciting project is the only thing that can cause separated Sculptors to converge and cooperate.

In the absence of environmental pressures forcing their hand, Sculptors are usually on the move, always seeking out new materials and inspiration, leaving a sporadic trail of work in their wake. Unlike fiberlings, these entities are not random or erratic in their wanders, but follow consistent semi-random patterns of exploration over a wide territory, perpetually expanding it at one edge and receding it from the other to produce a slow net migration.

Sculptors are survivalists by nature. Typically omnivorous and well-equipped for combat, their new body is robust and adaptable and will see them through most threats in most environments. They are rarely aggressive and it is curiousity alone that motivates a Sculptor to approach a potential hazard, examining it and learning where the boundaries of safety lie. Their memories are long and sharp, and their extraordinary lifespan allows them to build up keen instincts for danger. Resident and travelling fiberlings will always show an odd deference to mature Sculptors, and will never stalk or play with them against their will. Fiberlings without anything better to do will even follow instructions dictated by a Sculptor. The artists are well aware, however, that a fiberling is its own creature with its own fears and instincts, and try not to rely on them heavily, if at all.

Although they are typically loners, the occasional anomaly occurs in which an entire family or small settlement of sentients are collectively inspired and motivate one another to ascend together. In such cases, the group of Sculptors will rarely separate, and will support each other, sharing resources and goals as they did in their previous life.

Recruitment: Sculptors play a very passive role in their own reproduction. All Jvanic art is designed with a certain strangeness in form and pattern that allows it to host a complimentary, complex organic structure in the unseen world, the final stage of a Sculptor's life cycle. This Other body is fairly consistent despite the tremendous diversity of the Sculpture it may reside in, and remains there for as long as the art is mostly intact- This may be as little as a few minutes over the course of a song, or for thousands of years in the life of a stone carving.

Sentient species have the mental capacity to truly appreciate and admire the complexity of Jvanic artwork that they encounter, although not all may do so. When a creature with sufficient logical and emotional intelligence becomes enamoured by the beauty of work left by a Sculptor and wishes to experiment in creating something similarly elegant with their own faculties, they become susceptible to implantation. Susceptibility is entirely dependent on the psyche of the individual and their response to the art, which is, of course, influenced by genetic, environmental, and situational factors. A hain with other things on its mind at the time may pass by a Sculpture a hundred times without any effect, even if it has vast creative potential.

Implantation is nonetheless quite a common occurrence, and a large proportion of any community in the domain of a Sculptor carries a dormant egg within their subconscious by the time they die. The presence of an egg has no effect on the mind of the individual, nor can they detect its presence. This seed can only be incubated and hatched by conscious, creative effort to emulate the beauty they once saw. There is a certain threshold of dedication required to bring a Sculptor's egg to term, and in most species, about one individual in ten thousand will have the luck and determination to receive an egg and hatch it. Once the process of ascendancy has begun, it can be delayed, but not stopped or reversed.

The early development of a Sculptor is marked by the rapid growth of neural pathways that are attuned to the Gap frequencies dominated by Jvan herself. Her voice helps to act as a guiding catalyst for the initiate as they come to know how much there is to do and learn. This stage is marked by increasing withdrawal from emotional connections to the community and heightened sensitivity to the aesthetic beauty of their surroundings. Odd comments lauding the abstract elegance of society as dynamic, single organism rather than a collection of individuals with their own ideals and feelings may be an indicator of successful hatching.

As the initiate overcomes the need for social attachment, they often retreat into hermitage or are ostracised within their community. At this stage their survivalist instincts rise to prominence and they often abandon all dignity and personal comfort in order to find a lifestyle that supports their obsession with art, which has become nearly all-encompassing. Ordinary behaviour also starts to grow unusual, bringing to mind an unstaged, abstract performance as their emotions come to dominate the way they talk and move. The psychosomatic effects of their changing brain brings about the onset of physical deformities such as a bolstered digestive and immune system, strange skin growths and lesions, lengthening or receding digits, and chronic pain as their limbs begin to bifurcate. Sensory and extra-sensory perception heightens as the new brain becomes capable of discerning traces of the Other that permeates the shadows of the conventional world.

The final stages of ascendance into a mature Sculptor take a few decades to reach. By now almost no community will support or accept them, and the initiate has no desire to partake anyway. Simple deformities have developed into agonising disabilities before they grow into their final, painless, exquisitely functional stages: New limbs, extended bodies, reinforced skeletons, resilient organs. These structures will sustain them for hundreds of years beyond the lifespan of their original species. The initiate has developed a serene and insatiable love of the beauty in all things, and can produce gorgeous and bizarre works of art that compliment any environment without the assistance of their god. Their bodies and minds are now so saturated with hybrid Other cells that they can perceive both worlds at once and consider the unity of the two to be integral to their craft, ensuring that everything they create can be seeded by a living, proliferating fragment of their own inspiration.

Appearance: Mature Sculptors come in many shapes and sizes, but often bear clear, consistent signs of their original species. Those arising from humans usually remain endoskeletal and retain the supple arms and hands that allow them to work with delicacy, even if they may manifest on entirely new limbs. Hain usually produce Sculptors with a sturdy, segmented shell, equipped with sharpened points for fine art and self-defence. Upon ascendance, Djinni tend to lose some of their amorphous nature, developing permanent fixtures such as fins, although they still form by far the most abstract Sculptors.

More unusual are mid-stage cultists. The transformation process generally produces a rather elegant final form, but the intermittent iterations need to grow and shed a range of organs in order to smoothly transition into their final form, and are rarely symmetrical (that one's a little bad, be careful).

I got tired of this one after a while. No real horror or exciting mechanics involved here, Jvan's sentient race is just a bunch of homeless art students that run around doing their thing.

[BBeast]

I have more to do, but I likely won't have it all done in time. I'll post what I do have, which is important as it has some impact. I'll do the second half later.

[Muttonhawk]

God damn it, now hain are going to be wary of art...

EDIT: Well, given how rare it is, it probably won't end up in a phobia. It'll probably just be a children's story warning against spending too much time on unimportant things in life for now. It's just that such a story would come true every now and then. :|

[Kangutso]

I made the mistake of looking at the last pic...

*shudders*

[lif]

tfw you're balancing family and school issues while collabing a huge post and you forget to obsessively stalk the OOC.