Form: Cotazur takes the shape of a man of average height, early in the eve of his days as characterised by his gray hair and wrinkled features. A well-kempt and smooth-cut mutton chop beard trails his jaw and bridges across his upper lip, exposing a strong, cleaven chin. Much more skin is hardly visible on the man, as the rest of his body is covered in a marine blue overcoat of cotton over a mighty cuirass yet over a long mail underskirt. A striking ribbon of red velvet upon white silk cuts across his torso from right shoulder to left hip, and gleaming cold rims every corner and strip of his armour - the hips and shoulders themselves protect themselves with thick plates. Down his back, Cotazur sports a cumbersome, overflowing cloak of silvery fur from a magnificent beast of legend.
Personality: Every inch of Cotazur’s form radiates authority. With a silhouette as broad as a boar and a scowl as harsh as the winter, his presence alone would bring the silence of a graveyard to the rowdiest of feasts.
Except that’s about where his authority ends - if it even reaches here at all. Cotazur commands no crowd with his voice - it is small and unconvincing, while his words are grand and empty. Even with divine power, Cotazur cannot seem to do anything right - his ravenous ambition is constantly sabotaged by his inability to communicate properly with others. He knows well what a failure he is, and it irks him to no end. He is therefore quick to snap at his peers and even exercise violence in want of other ways to express himself - and violence, he has learnt, usually gets you whatever you want.
Will:
Cotazur has the Will of Glory. Cotazur wishes to be heard, to be seen, but it runs deeper than that: His deepest desire is for people to recognise him for something other than his endless mistakes and to worship him for his successes. However, this will twists and ferments in his impatience, and his yearning for glory may lead him on a bloody path of conquest and despotism if that’s what it takes.
Had Cotazur ruled all the nodes, then maybe this would have sated his inner desire; maybe this would have been some form of victory that people would recognise him for. That is, if there are any left by the time he’s done.
The eastern mesas of the Varia provided good shelter against the northern winds, and despite the childans’ natural resistance to the cold, they needed to be wary of the elements nonetheless. The Rómssa, as the group in the Hárstákki caves referred to themselves, had moved away from the heartlands of the tundra and settled here, where they were safe from both the cruel weather and roaming bands of wound-up men seeking wives by any means necessary. Here, the women had developed a method of, if not actually warming themselves, at least warming their bellies. In the tundra mires to the west and the lowland wetlands to the east, a plethora of sour and sugary berries sprouted throughout the spring and summer. Chief among these and the most coveted by the Rómssa was the cloudberry, the gold of the tundra: these berries were often sour, but the tartness was quickly overtaken by a sweetness and a round finish that could never be replicated in other crops of nature. The berry-pickers of the Rómssa who returned with even just a small pouch of these berries would be treated as an equal of the band leader - in practice taking over as leader - and many would do their best to convince the picker in question to share with them the secret of where they picked - never would a picker share such a dear secret. Like a secret technique passed down through generations, the secrets of the cloudberry locations were passed from mother to daughter and no one else. The women of the Rómssa would on occasion bring trusted friends along, but only to ensure that their rivals wouldn’t dare spy on them, and even then the friends would be left a good distance away from the actual spot to stand guard.
Why were cloudberries so coveted, though? Sure, a nice berry to snack on in the late summer was always nice, but surely they couldn’t be all that interesting on their own. While saying this out loud would surely get you the whole band on your neck, there was a motive behind the picking beyond just eating the berries. The Rómssa did not have much in the grand scale of things, but they had their caves and they had a basic understanding of pottery. In some of their deeper caves, there existed the perfect environment for brewing the band’s most important source of joy and trade income: schnapps.
Rómssa schnapps was a surprisingly strong, spiced alcoholic drink which could be brewed from anything remotely sweet. The berries would be crushed by foot in baskets so that the juice poured out over the cave floor. The women had chiseled small channels in the stone floor leading to a small drop deeper into the cave, under which they placed pots to catch the runoff. The berry juice would then be boiled over a fire and spiced with the plants of the warmer southern wetlands: hops, angelica and caraway seeds. The spices not only provided very welcome flavour nuances to the wine, but also had extraordinary medical properties: Angelica treated coughing and diarrhea; caraway stimulated fertility and warded off curses and evil spirits; and hops warded off disease and calmed the nerves and hearts. Finally, the mixture would be stored in pots deep within the caves and left there to age and develop its character.
And no other berry cooperated better with these flavours than the cloudberry. This made cloudberry schnapps a substance more coveted than gold among the Rómssa - and among their rivals.
It was late summer. Sákka and her young daughters Súnna and Máddji, whom she had respectively had with a mysterious hunter from the forest and a charming wandering soothsayer - sat inside the cave stirring in a pot of boiling juice - cloudberry juice. The delicious scent could almost outcompete the thick smoke from the fire. Súnna paid close attention to her mother’s technique, mimicking it with movements through the air; little Máddji was too young to understand much of what was going on, so she had been given a stick of angelica to snack on. This would be the eighth pot Sákka had made this summer - her ancestral cloudberry patches had bloomed like never before. The other seven pots sat safely within their storage cave, vaulted behind a door of reeds sealed and hidden with magic. Such a seal was necessary when it came to cloudberry schnapps - its taste was as close as the average Rómssaing came to divinity - and stealing had occurred in the past, usually resulting in the cutting of someone’s tongue.
But recently, a strange, foreign entity had come to the Rómssaings for their wine…
The quick patter of feet signalled an approaching figure from behind. Without casting a glance away from the intensive process of stirring the boiling juice, Sákka said, “Who’s there?”
“Sister,” came the voice of Sákka’s younger sister Uksáhkká. Sákka afforded her a small glance, but even in the darkness of the cave, she could see in the flicker of the flame the sheen of sweat all over her body. She furrowed her brow and asked,
“Is something the matter, sister?”
Uksáhkká looked to be frowning. “I wouldn’t call it a problem, but… They have come back.”
Sákka frowned back. “Who’s come back?”
“The ones they call the Primes… They have come for more.”
Sákka let out a vexed growl and wiped her sticky hands on her fur tunic. “By the Father Spirit, they were just here! How thirsty can these wicked people be?” Uksáhkká offered her a shrug. They then each grabbed a fur that was lying in a pile nearby, took hold of each side of the ceramic pot and gently lifted it off the fire and onto a black-burnt pelt on the floor. Sákka stomped out the fire and said, “Súnna, bring your sister somewhere and go play, okay? Mommy will be back soon.” Then she turned to her sister and the pair headed for the cave exit.
Outside in the clearing in front of the cave, most of the band had gathered, some warily armed with stone spears and others keeping a safe, yet non-threatening distance. At the front stood the leader Helve Two-Teeth, an ageing crone, negotiating humbly with the group of small metallic creatures before him who probably all measured at half the leader’s height at most. Their shapes differed quite a bit, some of them were sharp and dark while others were round and bright, but they were all made of metal and light.
“... Yes. We Require Caraway And Hops. How Many Units Can You Provide, Childan Leader Helve Two-Teeth?” Said the foremost Prime, its voice stiff and rough and flat. It spoke with no movement coming from its body whatsoever while its two spear-wielding companions stood to either side of it with their smooth glassy faces blinking yellow. The leader sighed.
“As I said, you will have to be more specific: Is a unit the seed and pod by themselves or are you requesting pouches of the stuff? We can offer you both, but the answer as to how many will vary depending on what volume you have in mind.” She sucked on one of her two teeth.
The Prime’s face flashed red for a second, until it came back to yellow. “Error. We Require The Traditional Beverage We Traded For In The Past. With More Caraway And More Hops. Can You Produce Pots Of The Requested Beverage?” One of the Prime’s companions, one with particularly feline-like ears, twitched while its face flashed pink.
The leader sighed again. “Look, if you want schnapps, you can have schnapps - it’s been a tough summer, though. We only have a little to spare this time.” He snapped his finger. “Eijá! Go and find our guests some of our best produce.” A young woman hurried into the caves with two others in tow. Meanwhile, the crone turned back to the Primes and said, “So you’ve gotten the taste for schnapps, is that so? What, uh, what do you like the most about it?”
The foremost Prime’s face flashed yellow for a few moments, the machine almost appearing frozen. After a few more moments of this, one of its companions patted it on the head, which forced it to twitch and step back. The one who had tapped it was a rather feminine-looking one, with triangular mock-ears on top of its head and lithe, slightly worn down parts. It bowed a little, the movement unusually smooth for someone of its kind.
“I apologize about that, his Uplifting Ceremony was held only a few weeks back, so he doesn’t quite know how to use his body yet. I am the female One named Evoker, Leader Helve Two-Teeth.” Said the cat-like Prime, her voice sweet and full of intent unlike her newer, shinier brethren. “To answer your question, we Primes have not tasted the schnapps Beverage. We obtain it in the name of the Boss and distribute it to worthy Astalonian Homurans as we wish. The kitties tell us that they enjoy the warmth in their abdomen and the releasing of their inhibitions.”
The leader furrowed her brow. “Is that so…? Well, I suppose that is as good a reason as any. We’re no strangers to eager customers, but I hope we may be so rude that we may ask for a better deal now than last time. The food your delegation offered was, if I may, downright inedible.” She gestured to a pile of metallic scrap in the corner of the clearing.
Evoker only gave the pile of scrap a short glance before focusing back on the crone. “My apologies, Leader Helve Two-Teeth. What do you wish from us in exchange for the schnapps Beverage?”
“Some proper food,” the crone said with a wagging finger. “We would like meat of mammoth and grain of barley; whatever roots and fungi you come over as you gather this would also be fantastic.” The other Rómssaings nodded along in agreement.
Evoker’s visor turned off for a few moments, until it turned back on and settled on blue. “Leader Helve Two-Teeth, The Boss is interested and has offered a rebuttal. We are not able to offer the items you requested at this time. We can offer two Second Generation Prime Astalonians to aid you in your hunts and gathering efforts for a period of Ten Years, as long as you provide custom-made schnapps Beverages on a regular basis as well as aphrodisiac concoctions. Keep in mind our two agents will have to return to headquarters every year for refueling unless you can provide a suitable source of Aethelic Energy for them. Do we have a deal?”
The childans looked puzzled at the words spewing out of Evoker’s throat. Sákka leaned over to her sister and whispered, “What aphrodisiac concoctions?” The crone seemed to follow the same line of thought:
“I, uh, I must say I don’t quite follow - the order of schnapps, I can get, but the subject of aphrodisiacs, you will have to take up with my sister, our shaman. Is Ristinn here?”
“She’s out picking herbs and digging for roots,” came a swift response. The chieftain frowned.
“Say, have the homurans purchased this aphrodisiac from us before? What was it like? We might be able to find some for you here and now to verify if it was that.”
“I cannot confirm what ingredients the aphrodisiac concoction contained as it was a different Prime who purchased it, from a different group of Childan no less. Do you know of the female Prime Astalonian called Knuckle, Leader Helve Two-Teeth? Have you come across her? She has been missing for some time, so we do not know what Childan group she purchased it from. The Boss requires as much aphrodisiac as you can provide.”
“Haven’t had the pleasure,” the crone confessed. “If we do not know what this aphrodisiac is, though, I cannot in good faith make any promises that we’ll be able to provide it. I hope you can understand. How about we settle on the schnapps in exchange for meat to begin with, hmm?”
“Agreed. These two will be your assistance for the next ten years,” Evoker nodded towards the other two Primes present, “They’ve yet to choose names, therefore I hope you can guide them in this regard. About the schnapps Beverages, the Boss would like two deliveries a year of at least two five liter pots. Would it be acceptable with you if we came by for collection at the end of Summer and Winter, Leader Helve Two-Teeth?” Evoker leaned her spear against her shoulder and lifted her hand up to try and shake the Childan’s, despite the sheer size difference. The crone scratched her head.
“Can’t say I know what a litre is - is it a term to denote volume? I reckon it’d be large pots since you ask for them twice a year, and that would be doable: Five large pots. However, let’s take it back to the timespan of the trade deal. Please take no offense, but we have only traded once before, and that did not go so well for us. I therefore request that we start with a smaller deal than one spanning ten winters. I’m not sure if I will even be around in ten winters’ time; wouldn’t want my band to inherit something that - again, no offense - could backfire on us. What say you if we instead start with one year’s trade, hmm? You may come this winter and next summer to collect, and we will welcome the help of your two Primes for the same period of time. Agreed?”
Having not lowered her hand at all during the Chieftain’s spiel, Evoker replied. “Agreed, Leader Helve Two-Teeth. As a way to clear our name, we will not collect any schnapps Beverages today and we will bring you a gift worthy of your patience this coming winter. Would you prefer a tool, a weapon, or progress?”
The childans exchanged looks and the leader turned to her colleagues with a shrug. Upon turning back, she mumbled, “Would it be possible to be a bit more specific?”
“By ‘progress’ we’re referring to knowledge on more efficient procedures and tool-making that you could use to manufacture more units of schnapps in a shorter period of time.” Evoker explained, lowering her hand. ”Sponsored by the Boss, provided by Astalonian Homurans.”
“Then, uh,” she began and turned to her fellow bandfolk. “Alright, show of hands: a tool?” A few raised their hands. “A weapon?” Considerably more hands. “Progress?” A couple of hands, but many seemed to be on the fence.
“Not sure what part of our technique could be improved - the amount of schnapps is rather more dependent on the Father Spirit’s bounty, innit?” came an argument followed by hums of agreement.
“I concur,” said the crone and turned to the guests again. “If it pleases, then, we ask for a weapon in exchange for the schnapps.”
Evoker stared at the chief for a moment, then nodded and offered her hand again. “It is settled, Leader Helve Two-Teeth. The Weapon will be delivered as soon as possible.” Evoker then looked at the other two Primes, her face flashing purple, and then back at the Chieftain. “It is customary to shake hands once business is concluded, Leader Helve Two-Teeth. It is a show of good faith.”
The crone nodded and approached with a large hand held out in front of her, which Evoker took and shook. “Then let our mutual faith be good,” wheezed the crone cordially through the pain of iron limbs squeezing her fragile bones. Upon completion of the gesture, she wafted her hand as discreetly as he could and drummed on her chin with the fingers of the opposite one. As she did, the young woman she had sent for some schnapps earlier returned with a head-sized ceramic jug. “Say, why don’t you take this to those homurans - as our own show of good faith.” Helve took the jug from Eijá and handed it to Evoker with both hands. “It’s red currant schnapps, picked summer last. They’ve had good time to develop their flavour, I think - I pray our friends in Astalon will feel the same.”
“I’m sure they will, Leader. Thank you for this generous gift.” Evoker agreed, slinging her spear over her shoulder until it locked in place with a loud clank, then grabbing the jug with both her arms without much issue. “One last thing, Leader. May I ask you a final question?”
“Mmm? Yes?”
“Have you or your people dealt with a particularly deadly strain of fungus infection, with the capability of bringing back the dead?”
The whole band fell dead silent. Helve drew a slow breath and turned around halfway, beckoning towards the rest of her people. “Would someone see if they could find… that?” A group of four headed towards a tent at the far end of the camp. The crone turned back and nodded slowly. “Aye… Some months back, our Biijá went out looking for her sister, Tuá - Father Spirit guide her lost soul. She had been missing for the whole day, picking berries in the marsh. Biijá looked for her for a week before her corpse was found in the bottom of a ditch beneath a cliff…” Some huffs of sorrow hacked from the back. Many left the semicircle out of fear that their hearts would succumb to despair. The crone could barely hold the tears away herself. “Now, now, the Father Spirit taught us that death awaits us all in the end - our land is a paradise one day and a den of wolves the next. Only Tuá hadn’t left us after all - at least, her body had not. Biijá was on her way bringing her home, but… Halfway there, she says, she reawoke from the dead. At first, she was beside herself with joy, but she was only her sister in body - inside, an evil spirit had taken refuge.” A sinister nod. The crone clutched a talisman about her neck. “Biijá managed to escape through a miracle of the Father Spirit - a winter light descended to whisk her away in the nick of time. She lost a leg to the monster, but at least she kept her life.” She thumbed over to a woman sitting some distance away on a rock, one leg missing. She looked distracted, or empty, rather, staring into a campfire searchingly.
“I understand, Leader. To confirm, was the hijacked corpse of Tuá left to roam the woods? Is it still out there? Was that the first time you had such an encounter?”
“Aye,” said the crone. “It isn’t Ristinn’s first time, though - our shaman. She’s seen its like before many years ago, which is how she managed to deduce that an evil spirit had overtaken Tuá’s gentle form. I would show you to her, but she is still out.”
“No need for that, Leader. We did not expect to come across the Hivemind here but as per our duty, we will attempt to cleanse the area. Your Prime Assistants will hunt down Tuá’s body and cleanse it of the infection so that she may be given a proper burial and will keep a look out for increased rates of infection amongst flora and fauna. Be very careful, Leader. This infection has been causing trouble in the south for years now.” Evoker adjusted her grip on the jar of schnapps and curtsied. “I will take my leave now, Leader. I will return bearing gifts within the month.” She declared and walked into the trees.
This summoned forth a bow from the crone as well as everyone else who were still present. “Thank you, good Evoker. May the Father Spirit guide your way safely!”
The Rómssa tribe of Childan women is doing day to day stuff until the Prime Astalonians show up, apparently for the second time in a row, to attempt to trade for schnapps, one of the Rómssa’s unique products which also happens to be a somewhat medicinal alcoholic beverage.
The negotiations are somewhat long, made more difficult by the fact that the first negotiator was a second generation prime who wasn’t used to their body. It all goes smoothly once Evoker takes over and offers a weapon as a gift of good faith. After some discussion they settle on a deal: The Rómssa would deliver five large pots of Schnapps twice over the next year while both of Evoker’s second generation assistants stay with the Tribe and help them with hunting and gathering.
Before they part ways, Evoker finds out that the Rómssa have had encounters with the Fungal Hivemind and Evoker takes it upon herself to direct the Prime efforts to root the local infection out lest it grow out of control and consume the north.
It had been a little over a year now since the Earthen King had broken off the first stone and carved within it a rune to bind a spirit to it, creating the first stonemen - the golems. As He had thrown them to all winds, the Vein of Kraang had flown south - as far as south goes, they said - and ended up on the Ousolus, the chain of islands between Orsus and Terminus that rose and sank with the seasons like the pistons of an Astusian machine. Here, the progenitor of the Vein, Kraang-Shur, had settled on the island of Shyoht-Voli - “Voligan’s castle” - and started constructing fortifications in preparation for the inevitable Yesarian invasion of Orsus to the east from the distant hive lands in the west.
He knew that he could not do it alone, however; the island was large and a single golem could hardly stand against the endless tide of the Hive. So Kraang-Shur got to constructing his fellow guardians. However, the construction took time for Kraang-Shur, and the Shyoht-Voli was an island nearly devoid of exposed and easily accessible rock. This puzzled the stoneshapen Shur, for Shur had only ever known the feel and texture of the mountain he had been spawned from, and as Shur thought the conundrum over, the season had passed and the island of Shyoht-Voli had descended into the depths. Here, light faded into nothing, and the golem was visited upon by many more than just curious birds: Here, fish, cepholopods, mollusks, mammals and seaplants all took time to say hello, taking up refuge all around Shur’s body. At first the golem had felt exposed and naked before so many prying eyes, but as his days of labour began to number tens and even hundreds, he eventually grew to appreciate his new inhabitants. In his solitude, he even named them and made up stories for them to share with their egg clutches.
There was Tef, the nudibranch who had settled in the stone shelves that had approximated themselves into a humpbacked spine at his inception; the Kras, a family of oysters who had filled out his shoulders like a mantle of grayish fur; “the Rash”, an armour of barnacles running down his right arm and leg; and all the seaweed and algae that had greened his whole body, collectively called “the Coat”. Tef was his favourite, a knight of snailkind, aspiring to the same greatness as its house, the golem. One day, the two of them would drown the Hivemind Horde in the ocean.
Given the nature of his microbiome now, Shur chose to remain in the ocean even after Shyoht-Voli rose back up. At first, he lingered around the root of the island, moving between the shore and the depths collecting material to expand his vein: His would be an order of seaborne templars, sworn in the name of the Earthfather to fend off the evil brewing in the southwest. Shur collected rock and stone, shell and barnacle; he gathered mud and slime, bones and cartilage. With these reagents, he fashioned the first of his order: Kraang-Trax. The rune of awakening was carved into the eye of the crustacean giant and the coral-clad warrior awakened to blink at her creator.
“Hail, Kraang-Shur, progenitor of the Vein,” she saluted and bowed.
“Hail, Kraang-Trax, first to be shapen. How are you feeling?”
The crab-like giant moved her limbs slowly, sand and mud diluting into the water around her joints. They seemed agile, powerful, and her crossed eye looked back up at her maker. “I sense strength within my body. My parts lack nothing and I am satisfied. Tell me, master: What is my purpose?”
Shur bowed his head. “To the far west, our enemy gathers its strength. Help me build up our army and together, we shall bring pride and glory to the Earthen King.”
Trax bowed her form downwards and said, “As you wish, my lord.”
Many years later, on one of the islands of the Ousolu…
It had been a rough day in the court of Kekoa Kekoa’e Ali’i Nui, the chief of chiefs of the Takahanga Kingdom. The chieftain of Motu Ikaika, Tane Peni’e Kaukau Ali’i’s son, Moana Tane’e Ali’i’e, had gotten into a bloody fight with the son of the chieftain of Motu Iti, Keanu Anaru’e Ali’i’e, and slain him in the violence. Now the Motu Iti chieftain demanded blood money for the actions of the Motu Ikaika chieftain’s son - a life for a life, as the custom was. Tane was having none of this, and the two had sailed all the way to Kekoa’s summer home on Motu Ra-Roa, the most beautiful island to rise out of the ocean in the hotter months. For a week, the two had filled his hall with their bickering, and it did not help that they had brought their families along, who only egged them on from the back. More than once he had had to stop them from drawing weapons and clubbing each other to death.
By all means, the law sided with the Motu Iti chieftain - Moana had killed Keanu and was thus to himself be killed. However, the king had been hesitant - very hesitant. The Motu Ikaika chieftain was his cousin and brother-in-law, and very, very rich. Without the constant stream of wood for boats and coral for weapons from the islands Motu Ikaika and Motu Pohatu - both under Tane’s jurisdiction - Kekoa could kiss his throne goodbye. His whole realm rested on the high chief’s ability to send his warriors to any island in his realm to quell unrest; for that, he needed boats fashioned from Pohatuan palms and weapons from Ikaikan coral. His very flagship, the Ma’man, had been a gift from Tane when he had married the high chief’s sister. No wood for ships? No coral weapons? No Takahanga Kingdom.
Kekoa gnawed his knuckle to the bone cursing himself for not being able to abide by the law, the law of his father Kekoa. His other courtiers grew increasingly impatient; they understood perfectly fine why the king delayed, but they all warned that to break the law was taboo, especially for a king, and would bring grave detriment to his man’ah. Should he side with the injured party, he would lose his kingdom; should he side with his cousin, he would lose his mandate. The Ali’i Nui had not had a wink of sleep for two days - such did the conflict bother him.
On the seventh day, the king called together his court and summoned both chiefs to his audience. Truth be told, he was not certain whether he had truly reached a decision or if any decision would be better than a heart attack at this point. Kekoa gathered the men on the floor before his throne and took a deep breath.
“I have prayed and prayed… For days now… That this feud may come to an end. In Their light, I have reached a decision…” But as he raised his hand to point to the party in the right, a guard shoved aside the bamboo leaf curtain covering the door.
“My chiefs!” panted the guard. One of the courtiers gasped.
“My king! The peasant has broken the taboo and entered into our holy hall!”
“Maui, you daft slug, can you not see he bears a message?!” the king chastised. “Speak your message, guardsman.”
The guard swallowed and swiftly relayed the message, careful not to look directly at the king. “A grave terror has struck our shores, O Son of Gods: a raider horde! Hundreds! Many hundreds! They will be here within the hour!”
All around the hall, the chieftains’ reactions differed wildly: Some took to arms and charged out the doorway; some hastened to pack their belongings and run out the doorway and away from the battle; and most remained to await the king’s orders. The king’s brow darkened, but within him burned a small flicker of relief - yes! An outside enemy to draw the focus away from the blood feud. He got out of his throne, grabbed his trusty club and stormed towards the door, his courtiers flanking in behind him.
But then a hand grabbed his and thee king looked down. It was the chief of Motu Iti, the injured party, who glared him in the eyes and said, “My king! We still have business to settle here!”
Kekoa’s inner flame flared up further with wicked victory. Just what he needed. He summoned forth his deepest, cruelest voice and scowled so that his facial tattoos gave his face a demonic shadow. The Motu Iti chief blinked in fright and loosened his grip, but the king took his hand and squeezed it with cowering strength. “U’ilani, you selfish, little snake!” The chief shrunk two sizes. “That you would use your son’s death to sate your own prideful sense of vengeance, I can just barely sympathise with, but then… But. Then. You have the audacity, the INSOLENCE, to claim that -YOUR- selfish cause outranks the safety - the lifes - of -MY- subjects, who are now being slaughtered on the beach head while we bicker because of -YOU-!” The king slapped the chief to the ground and wiped his hand on his feather regalia. “I denounce your egotistical sense of self-righteousness, you filthy rat. Consider your case annulled!” The king then stormed out. The chief, broken on his knees, looked up in search of support; none could be found. It had been a battle of mandates and the king had won squarely: The king was the gods’ son, born forth from the union of the deepest sea and the highest sky to protect the people of Takahanga, and a petty squabble over who killed who did not even come close to the top of the gods’ sons priority list. A lowly vassal like the Motu Iti chieftain stood no chance.
King Kekoa walked out on a highrise overlooking the beach. As the guard had said, much of the village was in danger of being attacked any moment - black ships had made landfall further up on the island, and a slobbering, rambling horde was charging towards the fleeing populace. The first line of defense had already been consumed by the horde, and the chiefs who had been the first to charge out of the king’s hut were helping with the evacuation and commanding the second line of defense, firing them up by leading a war dance. They roared like wild beasts and bared their teeth and tongues before throwing themselves at the enemy, black beard braids flying everywhere together with clubs and hammers fashioned from coral, wood, teeth and bone. Even a blind dwarf could see that this was a lost battle, however, and not even the earthen skin of the Takahanga dwarves could stand against a tide of monsters numbering in the several hundreds. The king’s face remained dark as he scouted the area, trying to think of a plan.
“... Take the women and children to the ships on the southern part of the island. I will take whatever meat and fish we have stored in the village and lure the hiveminders to the north.” He took Tane by the shoulder. “You will take my sister, my wife and my son to my ship and be ready at a moment’s notice to get off the island. If I am not back by the time the horde has made it within eyeshot, leave without me.”
The king’s cousin hardened his expression, but nodded and stormed off with half the courtiers. The king remained with the other half and then roared, “Well, you heard me! Let’s get going!” The king led his dwarves to the village and raided the food stores for anything the mutants could find interesting. Then, they ran past the horde, around the island, and drew some outliers after them. Then the rest of the horde slowly began to turn as the sun really got to induce the stink of rot in the fish and meat. That was proper food for a hiveminder. Meanwhile, the second line of defense retreated and picked off some outliers on the way.
However, as time went on, it became increasingly clear that the horde was not so stupid as to let the king and his men simply circumvent them. One hiveminder was foolish, but the whole flock formed a fairly tactical consciousness together - they were in fact trying to trap the king. This dawned on the royal party much too late - they had by that point been pushed to the beachhead, and it was the wrong beachhead. No ship laid in waiting for them here. The king initiated a war dance and his party followed fearlessly, but the horde was not dissuaded. They closest in with a macabre slowness that only inspired fear in the dwarves - their voices grew smaller and their gestures lost their wild tempers. Even the king’s inner flame, so empowered as it was by his man’ah grew too small to sustain his stoic demeanour. He whispered softly a prayer for his wife and son as the beasts closed in.
Then, as a godsent miracle, the waters off the beach burst into a flood of salt and foam. The horde and the dwarves were equally baffled, and what stood in place of the water when the foam disappeared inspired fear in both parties. There stood six giants of all sizes - only common description being that they were, indeed, giant: they were of stone, of coral, of bone, of kelp, of teeth and of magic. Neither the dwarves nor the horde had time to reach before the six thundered in over the beach, passed over the dwarves, and started decimating the hivemind horde. Fists barbed with barnacles and spears fashioned from volcanic vents utterly destroyed the biotic horde, soaking the entire beach in blood and gore. The dwarves huddled together in shock and awe - neither stoicism nor bravery could even begin to create a facade in the face of something this sublime.
After the destruction had passed, the six giants formed a crescent around the pile of dwarves. The most stone-like of the giants stepped into the crescent and knelt down beside the heap. In a voice like an earthquake, it spoke in a language that seemed almost instinctively known to the dwarves - the language of the earth itself.
“Hail, brothers, fellow sons of the Earthen King.”
The dwarves untied their huddled knot and let their eyes glaze over in awe. Even the king had no response. The golem continued. “You were lucky that we were here. The spawn of Yesaris may not be much of a threat when it is one-on-one, but a horde like this would have consumed you to the last patch of skin.”
Finally, the king mustered up the courage and man’ah to reply and asked, “Who, who are you, exalted sons of the Stonelord?”
The golem seemed to almost grin at the little dwarf, and the Abyssal Templars presented themselves as such: Kraang-Shur the Progenitor; Kraang-Trax Tideshield; Kraang-Hrel the Living Armour; Kraang-Fram the Brave; Kraang-Droz the Pious; and Kraang-Laksh the Tall. The golem bowed and the dwarves returned the gesture. The king and his courtiers then presented themselves, and it was as though twins who had been separated at birth had come together again. For saving his life, the king promised the Progenitor his favour, and the Progenitor promised the king his loyalty as a fellow subject of the Earthen King. Together, the dwarves on land and the golems in the sea, would create a united front against the wicked spawn of Yesaris, ruling their two realms as the Kings of Ousolu.
Some years have passed since Voligan made the dwarves and the golems. A golem named Kraang-Shur lands in the southern island chain named Ousolu and starts building companions. However, the islands rise and sink, and soon Shur realises that life is better down where it’s wetter. He makes a companion of corals and names her Kraang-Trax. The Kraangs vow to fight all spawn of Yesaris that may try to make its way to Orsus by using the island chain.
Skip to the island dwarf kingdom of Takahanga where king Kekoa struggles with politics at his court. Two chiefs have gotten into a blood feud and the one who’s in the wrong, Tane, is super rich and essential to Kekoa holding the realm together. Luckily, the chaos is interrupted by more chaos in the form of a Yesarian horde invasion! Yay! The dwarves get ready to fight, but it’s an unwinnable fight, honestly. So the king tries to make a distraction by luring the horde away with meat. The horde isn’t actually that dumb, though, and instead outplays the king and traps him on the beachhead without a get-away boat. When all hope has faded, the Kraangvengers pop out of the sea deus ex-machina style and wreck the zombies. The golems and dwarves meet and forge an alliance against Yesaris. Try invading now, parasite bitch!
The dam in the works already looked more magnificent than any construction ever seen or recorded in the Thousand Lakes yet. The construction did not just dam up the river and created a small lake, but it stood twice as tall as it had before, like a grand bridge connecting the opposing sides of the water. The foundation was an impenetrable bedrock of stone constructed from boulders chewed to perfect pillars. The top of the dam had been outfitted with dens and chambers on several floors, and the top was a timber spire stabbing at the sky in honour of the gods. On a floating raft stage behind the dam, priestesses and shamans of all the gods did their dances on a great stage for all to witness, the dam becoming almost like an amphitheatre when they did so. The scenes were illuminated by torches burning with the flames of the Burning Snake-in-the-Air, and fire-priests would initiate the plays in the night with dances in Her honour. Here, stories of the greatness of the gods were told over and over, and the new crowd favourite was the play of how the newest local celebrity, Yaroslaw Boulderbite, conquered the wilderness and its cruel mistress, the Green Murder, and gathered materials with his lieutenant Nolinya to construct the Grand Dam of Voga.
Now the Voganids felt safe for the first time in over a year: Their dam had already been attacked by a bear once smelling sweets within the walls; yet even bear claws could not scratch the stone and clay mortar and break through the outer wall. This new security and peace of mind set the Voganids on other thoughts: Now came the time to recover the prosperity they had had before. With the Rod, food was not a pressing issue, but this left one more important point: Recovering the populace.
In times of crisis, womanbjorks would lower their usually fairly high standards for manbjorks in favour of the survival of the pack and the clan, but this was not the case now, especially among the higher strata of the Voganid society: Luga had not chosen a mate yet, and the suitors were lining up for a chance to be selected as prime consort, that most powerful position of bolshakov. But with the recent rise of great heroes amongst their people, it was no longer enough for a simple manbjork to show how fast he could swim or how few bites it took him to snap a thick twig.
"Hah! I do not know whether I should laugh or cry!" the bolshaya had mocked the suitors. She had then pointed to the exit of her new royal den and declared, "The manbjorks of the Voga have greater skills than biting timber faster than our neighbours! Look to the Mish-Cheechel; look to the Boulderbiter - tell me that those are not worthy manbjorks! Come back once you have made a name for yourselves like they have!"
For most of the manbjorks who left the hall that day, that was the end of their dream to swoon the chieftess. They would return to the woods and continue their lives as woodsbjorks or foragers and likely be selected by a lesser womanbjork after proving their skills in the primary sector. There was one, however, who took the bolshaya's words to heart:
A young manbjork named Svarog.
Svarog hadn't been Voganid for long. During the reconstruction, refugees for a nearby dam that also had been assaulted by agents of the Green Murder had come to the Voga dam looking for a place to stay. The bolshaya Luga had taken them in on the condition that they assimilate into the Rod Clan rather than to vassalise like the Wickertooths had. The clan chieftess, Lada, had bowed down to Luga and fasted under guard until she had grown so thin that she could no longer produce her own scent, as was the custom when submitting to a mightier womanbjork. Svarog had been part of that clan, the Pine Clan, named so after the trees most used in their dam, and he had fallen in love with the bolshaya at first sight. A fat, mighty womanbjork such as her had all the luscious curves a manbjork could ever want, and he was going to win her favour no matter what.
But how would Svarog interpret the command to make a name for himself? Mish-Cheechel was way too far away to mentor him, and even if he was nearby, he might not have wanted to. Could he start his own vendetta against the Green Murder? Nah, that wouldn't be very original - no one likes a whittler copying a whittler. Maybe he could reach out to the Yaroslaw Boulderbite and study advanced construction? Nah, same problem - the sphere of dam construction already had its star, and Yaroslaw Boulderbite and his silver-sheen teeth were unmatched in endurance and strength by anything non-divine.
So maybe he’d hoard a huge treasure for the bolshaya? Okay, now he’d gotten somewhere. No one had tried doing that yet: The Voganid manbjorks were still all about self-sufficiency - a good manbjork ideally needed no clan of his own; he could gather wood, build the dam and serve his womanbjork all without the help of competing males. What if instead of the laborious path to glory, Svarog chose the wealthy?
But what would this treasure for his beloved Luga be, he pondered and thought of a memory: One day during the Reconstruction, a stranger had come to the Voga and begged passage. The guards had held her off with their fire-hardened spears, as was the custom - if you didn’t smell like a Voganid, you had no business by the Voga. And yet the stranger had been granted passage anyway through a powerful spell: The stranger had spoken soft words to the guards and planted shiny charms in their palms - beautiful, brazen shells from the distant sea. “Cowries”, the enchantress had called them, and the guards had been smitten with awe and let her pass, their eyes absorbed by the colour and sheen of the shells. How had the enchanter acquired these shells, many had asked her.
“On the distant beach, there lives a tribe of giant slothmen who always walk on two feet. However, these are not like the sloths who also walk on four legs: These slothmen are with less fur and clearer speech; they hunt in the saltwater as no bjork can, and they collect these shells off the lake floor under the Great Undrinkable Lake.”
This had sparked a brief sense of wonder among the Voganids, but it had quickly passed as the looming threat of attacks by the Green Murder compelled all to work on the dam. Now, it seemed, the event had passed out of memory for most.
Svarog had decided. He would find these slothmen and ask them to give him a basket of these cowries. His bolshaya would surely adore him for that! Svarog the Traveller set off from the Voga later that very same day, armed with a fire-hardened stone spear and loaded with a river reed basket with dried waterplants on his back. He travelled alone, for he had no wish to share his idea with anyone.
The journey was long and arduous, but Svarog was previously of the Pine Clan, and no one in the Pine Clan had ever been caught in the open by wild beasts - he was not about to be the first! The manbjork slept under the carcasses of trees and kept to the river water during the day where few of the land predators could smell him. This was not a perfect solution, as the waters had many dangers as well, and not rarely did he have to kick himself back onto land to avoid the ravenous jaws of an oncoming sturgeon or a bloodthirsty pike. The journey took him nearly two weeks of floating downriver, avoiding predators and circumventing hostile dams, but at long last, a stinky, wet and hungry manbjork by the name of Svarog reached the end of the endless web of rivers, tasting brackwater for the first time in his life. He gagged and climbed onto land the second he could. Here, nature was nothing like at home: Endless giant forests had given way to white beaches full of stinky, black, bulbous lakeweed, and then a blue lake that stretched so far that no little bjork could ever hope to see the other side, no matter how tall they were.
This had to be the Great Undrinkable Lake, Svarog thought and spat out what remained of brackwater in his mouth. Here, he would surely eventually find the home of the slothmen with the shells. He followed the beach for half a day, but it didn’t take long before he became terribly thirsty. The sun wasn’t as strong deep in the woods as it was here, and the sands cooked beneath his four feet. Before long, Svarog had to stop for a break and look for water. He headed into the woods in search of a small brook, but he looked and looked and looked and found nothing. The sun cooked at the surface of his fur, and the little bjork was certain that he would pass out any moment. His movements became sluggish; his eyelids flicked lazily up and down; his tail dragged against the ground like a dull plow.
Then finally, he passed out, and a nearby growl could be heard. Svarog’s instincts tried to fire up, but the bjork was too tired, too weak. Oh well, at least he would die in the service of his lady…
The growls came closer, a crazed, hyena-like cackle and the thundering thump of menacing steps. Svarog faded out of reality and let fate take him.
A wash of cold dripped over Svarog’s lips. His eyes were too crusted to open, but his consciousness reawoke and tried to make sense of these sensations. Blimey, had he slept through the summer and into winter?
A menacing wheeze hissed beside him, followed by another quiet rumble. Panic claimed the manbjork’s systems and the little creature tried to muster the strength to escape blindly. It realised then that its body laid in cool water - freshwater. He splashed and tossed, but ten mighty talons hooked around him thick as branches and held him down. Svarog squealed and squeaked, and whatever held him growled back and seethed like water on a fire. Finally the panic tugged his lids free of the crust and Svarog stared a giant in the face - a horror of the woods! The enchantress had spoken true - it was a sloth! An almost hairless sloth! A terrible, vicious, almost hairless sloth! Svarog squealed some more and the sloth, which he now realised there were two of, unleashed a hacking roar that almost seemed to mock him.
The second slothman, much smaller and much less hairy, grabbed Svarog by the fur and clawed him down the back. Svarog tried to slap him with his free tail - the creature cast some more hacking roars his way. The one that held him flipped him over and tried to mutilate his chest with his talons - they scraped and scratched, but thankfully Svarog’s fur, like any good manbjork’s, was thick and dense. Sloth claws like these could do nothing against it - hell, the attack was almost comfortable!
Svarog curled his belly and yapped at the talons, trying to get a good bite in. He missed, though, and the creature understandably snarled, but then also wagged that same digit right in front of him tauntingly, pointing skywards. Why? What was it pointing at? Svarog followed the digit to the ceiling of what looked to be a leathery cave, like the insides of the cloaks that those weird shamans would dress in. The manbjork struggled still against his captor, but to no avail: Its talons were soft and bendable, yet strong as wooden logs. He tried to bite again, but couldn’t reach. Truly, he would be trapped here, and the slothmen almost seemed to be playing with him. What heartless monsters! Couldn’t they just kill him and get it over with?
Then the largest and hairiest of them put him back down in the basin of water. Svarog tried to take the chance to escape and skipped out of the basin, but the ten talons snared around him again and put him back to the sound of a low growl. Svarog escaped again and was put back. That mocking, hacking murmur…
Kha, kha, kha, the two creatures chorused. Kha, kha, kha, kha, kha. Svarog felt smaller, lesser. They kept him here for entertainment, he realised, for who else would store their food like this? The thought sickened him - these slothmen were worse than bears and eagles.
After a while, they left him alone in the cave. Svarog was by himself now, sourly quenching his thirst by sipping the now quite sweaty water in his basin. No matter. He could surely escape this place. He hopped out of the basin and looked around. It was dark here, but dying charcoals in the centre of the cave offered a conservative brightness that allowed him to make out contours. Using his well-developed nose, he felt his way forward to a crack under the cave wall - an odd place for there to be a crack. He didn’t have his spear nor his basket anymore, but whatever - he had to save himself now. Svarog flattened himself against the ground and prepared to squeeze himself out of the crack, but realised quickly that this was no ordinary cave wall at all - this, this was just like fur, like touching the skins that, again, those weird shamans would wear. His eyes squinted at the material - was this cave made out of fur? He then noticed the faint whites of bone arching up towards the centre of the ceiling - mammoth tusks. Svarog shuddered and crawled out.
Outside, it was midday. Svarog heard growling and roaring from behind the mound of fur he had crawled out of - looking over it, it looked like the body of a mammoth if you cut off the head and the legs; like a half-orb of fur. Svarog admittedly had little love for mammoths given that they walked where they pleased and would frequently challenge the strength of dams all around the region, but this? Only shamans did this sort of weird, macabre stuff and wore the furs of other things.
A nearby roar sent Svarog into hiding again. He watched from underneath a fold in the mound a giant slothman pass, a basket in his upper legs (or were they arms?) full of wiggly fish. Fish, huh? Maybe he was still at the shore? Svarog looked around - yup, over there he could see the sheen of the white beach in the distance. Then maybe this could be the land of the cowries?
He tossed another look over to the corner of the mound where he could just make out the edges of another mound and trace the scent of fire. He kept low and snuck around, sticking to the underside of the fur flaps surrounding the foot of the mound he had been in. Thankfully, his brown fur blended well with his hiding spot, so he wasn’t easy to see even in daylight. He just prayed his fur’s sheen or his stink wouldn’t rat him out in the moment.
That was when he saw it: There, right there by another fur mound - a basket as tall as he was, filled to the limit with cowries of all sizes and colours such that many had spilled over and laid in the gravel beneath. Gods, if he could run off with that…
He looked around again. By the place where he could smell smoke, more hacking, snickering growls could be heard. He measured the distance to the basket visually - that was a fairly open space and a fairly long skip. He bit a claw in thought. Could he even lift the basket?
“Oh gods around and above,” he whispered pleadingly, “anyone - how do I take this basket?”
Suddenly, a voice rang out within his mind ”Well, well, another beaver seeking to steal, oh this must be our lucky day.”
Svarog stiffened and cowered underneath the fur flaps. “Gods!” he squealed in a whisper. “Who are you?”
”That is simple, we are Yesaris, and we help, those like you,” A buzzing sound began to grow in the air, and Svarog could notice the slowly growing number of flies congregating around, ”So you wish to steal a basket? And what does this mortal intend to do in return for our aid?”
Svarog gulped. “Th-the basket looks very nice, for sure… I’d, I’d sure like it.” He scratched his cheek in thought. “I, I could give ya some of the shells!” he proposed.
A harsh, chittering cackle was the response ”Svarog, we are a god, we have no need for shiny shells, we are in need of, better offerings and, sustenance.”
The little bjork frowned and licked his incisor. “H-how about I ask one of those weird shamans to offer some meat in your name when I get home, huh? I’ve heard that the gods like that!” He ducked underneath the flap as a slothman passed by and spat a fishbone on the ground next to him with a pft!, flapping its talons at a cloud of flies.
”Hmmm, we suppose that will work, it would be nice to gain an offering finally,” for a moment, the god was silent, as the buzzing flies began to coalesce together, ”Very well, we will help you with this, endeavor, in exchange for speaking of our name and gifting us some offerings.”
Suddenly, the flies all gathered together, buzzing into a singular mass that twisted and shaped as the flies moved about. As suddenly as they began, they flew away, in their place, settled neatly upon the floor next to the bjork, was a long cloak, made of crudely stitched together leather and skin, it would easily fit over his body and shroud his form.
”Take this cloak and put it on, it will allow you to change your form into one that can blend into the environment, letting you get away with your little thefts. Just remember who helped you out with this.”
Svarog took the cloak and packed it around himself. He still had an aversion to wearing fur over his own fur, but this was life or death. He bowed in no particular direction and said, “Ye-yes, You of Many Voices! I won’t forget it!”
”Yes yes, you will not, safe adventures, Svarog.” With that, the voice faded away, and the buzzing flies dispersed, flying off into the distance of the skies above. The little bjork tested the fabric between his fingers - it was dense and coarse, yet loose and patchy. It looked like scrappy work, but it was surely divine, right? He measured the distance again. He, he hadn’t been tricked just now, right?
He let his eyes be seduced by the shells again - how many times had the priestesses ever warned of cruel and misleading spirits? He thought this through: Never, was the answer. The gods, except for the cursed anathema of all bjorkkind, the Green Murder, were good! This had to mean that the Many Voices had to be good, too! So he clutched the cloak and skittered into the open.
…
Nothing. He hadn’t been spotted yet. He kept skittering across the open space. Some of the slothmen even looked directly in his direction and didn’t even squint. He wondered for a minute what form he had taken on in their eyes, but didn’t decide to dwell on it too much. He soon reached the basket and marveled at its size. Okay, it hadn’t been quite as tall as him after all, but it was very close, and it was hnng! heavy! He looked around - still no one had noticed him, but he heard some commotion in the mound he had just come from. Out of the opening, which he could see clearly from this angle, came the smaller slothman and growled something to the larger ones, who seemed to shrug amongst themselves. After some yapping, the smaller one seemed to get one of the larger ones to join it for a look-around. This was not good.
Svarog acted quickly. He lifted the basket with all his might and waddled clumsily into the woods nearby. Again, he had gone unseen, but it was clear his theft had caused more commotion than his escape. He slept in the heaps of moss that night, both him and the basket hiding under the cloak as slothmen with torches patrolled the periphery of his vision. He was still hungry and weak, but now he was so close to completing his quest - if he could just get this basket home, Luga would choose him as her consort for certain!
The journey home took young Svarog a whole month; the heavy basket slowed him down considerably, and it took him almost a week and a half to find his way back to a river he was familiar with. All the while, he foraged the forest for what scraps he could eat and drank sap from birch trees to stave off the thirst. His incisors grew long over the course of the journey, but he never had time to really sit down and gnaw on a good tree; whenever he would take a break to rest, he would cloak himself and his loot, but predators could still smell him and frequently sniffed at his very face behind the cloak when he slept in the woods. Once a boar had gotten a bit too curious and begun digging at his cloak. Svarog had then bitten hard at the boar’s snout and sent it grunting away in a sulk. It was both safer and riskier. When he finally reached the rivers, his travels sped up considerably. He had been nearly out of strength from carrying and dragging the basket along, but now he could float the basket on a raft of sticks and driftwood. Whenever he encountered another dam, he would make landfall and wrap himself and the treasure in the cloak, sneaking around as quietly as possible.
One time, he had circumvented a fairly large dam and found that its inhabitants had stripped much of the surrounding forests bare. This made it hard to find materials for a new raft, so he tried to swim with the basket in his arms. However, this made him much too heavy and he accidentally dropped the basket, which sank like a rock. Svarog spent a whole two days picking up stray shells that had fallen out after he had fished the basket back up - he was certain he had lost many for good.
But eventually, finally, after a month had passed and his body ached like it had been beaten and tortured, Svarog reached the Grand Dam of Voga once again. With the last of his strength, he carried the basket past the guards and the damsfolk, all of whom marveled at its contents, and up to the tallest den on the dam. There, he was helped inside by the bolshaya's guards and managed to squeeze out the words:
"Fuh yoo, mah luhve…" Then Svarog, who had laboured so hard for his love, the chieftess, passed flat out on the mud floor, exhausted and barely alive.
Luga seemed surprised to say the least, and as she descended from her throne of reeds and wood, she ordered, "Medicine! Medicine for my consort!" Priestesses hurried on over with herbs and sapwine as the bolshaya picked up a silver cowrie from the basket and studied it closely. "Marvellous…" she whispered and addressed the closest healer. "Let him rest in my nest while he recovers and make certain he is fed well and often. One such as him who can bring his chieftess a treasure like this…" She smiled from ear to ear and compared the brazen sheen of another shell with her own brown, oily fur. "... He is a true manbjork."
Even though he was unconscious, one could almost detect a slight uptick in the edge of Svarog's mouth. His quest had Been completed. Now he was consort and bound to his love forever.
The Shellhunter, bolshakov, Consort-Lord of the Voga, had been born, and that night, the shamans charred and burnt a whole deer in the name of the Many Voices.
The Voga dam is lit as hell and now that food and shelter are checked off, the next step is to repopulate! Now all the manbjorks are fighting over mates, and no mate is as sought after as Luga, the big chieftess. Luga has standards, however - only the likes of Mish-Cheechel and Yaroslaw Boulderbite are good enough for her. This brings us to Svarog, who thinks about getting her a treasure, as he is neither a warrior like Mish or a builder like Yaro. Svarog remembers a visitor who came to the Voga some time back with cowries and decides to find Luga a shit ton of cowries.
He travels for ages to this mystical land of cowries by the sea. Once he gets to the sea, he passes out from thirst and is found by slothmen (childans), who take him in as a pet. Here, Svarog recovers, but hates being a pet, so he tries to escape. On the way, he finds a basket of cowries as tall as he is and wants to steal it. He is scared of getting caught, though.
In comes Yesaris who grants him a magical cloak that helps him shapeshift. With this, Svarog steals the basket and barely makes it home alive, being weak and hungry for a month. When he eventually gets home, he passes out and is taken in by Luga, who names him prime consort. That night, meat is sacrifised to Yesaris as payment for the cloak.
Yesaris: Starts: 9 0(discounted from 1): Create the Cloak of Ticks, a cloak that can allow its wearer to shapeshift their form into an object commonly found in the area. This only changes the perception though and is not a full shapeshift(ie: a Bjork turning into a pebble will still be squishy like a Bjork). Meaning that if someone is dedicated to searching for them, it's not entirely difficult to find them. End: 9
Location: The ruins of Dam Voga after the attack of the Green Murder. Ruins. Ruins as far as bjork eyes could see. The raid had indiscriminately shattered stick and log alike. What humble scraps remained of their dam could hardly be called a dam anymore - the reservoir was empty, for the wall had completely broken in three spots. Out of seven dens, four had washed downriver, and nearly a hundred bjorks had been made homeless in less than an hour. The three standing dens were all in various states of brokenness, but at least they held onto their anchors in the river; one of these, luckily, had been the matriarch’s den, and Luga had come out of it to do her best to calm the masses and unite her people once more, standing atop the tallest part of the ruins.
“This is an attack! An attack, it is!” shouted one. “We must follow in the path of Mish-Cheechel the Righteous and bring down this demon!”
Luga waved her hand calmingly, but without a hint of dismissiveness. “I agree from the bottom of my heart, Psief! Those who wish to follow the Avenger, the Bane of Green Murder, may do so! All your families will be honoured and taken care of by the clan, this I swear; however, we must not let anger alone obscure the damnation the Green Murder has plunged us into!” She gestured to the dam around her. “Look at our home - our home! We cannot lose ourselves entirely to vengeance, my people - we first must rebuild!”
“But how? How can we start over from this? Not even half of us have a warm place to sleep!” came another shout.
“Our food stores… So much of it drowned in the river!”
"The White Nights are coming! Snow has been sighted on the treetops! All hope is lost!"
“Death will surely claim us now! We cannot all fit in the dens we have left!”
“Pfah! You hardly know suffering, you Rods! This was every day for us!”
Luga tossed the last speaker a rare glare. “Nolinya, you be silent!”
Nolinya climbed up on the dam so she could be seen better, but dared not climb so high as to challenge the matriarch more than she already was. “Silence is necessary at times, but not one like this, bolshaya! If our people fear hunger and frozen nights so much that they cannot bring themselves to work, then all their fearsome prophecies will surely come to fruition!” She clapped her hands. “Desperate times necessitate desperate measures! Bolshaya! I will take upon myself this task. Let me appoint a master builder and select a group to head upriver. We will gnaw over every tree we can find and float them downwards to serve as material for a greater, stronger dam!”
Luga was about to counter, but she heard the applause of the skinnier bjorks, most of which had until very recently been of Clan Nolin, and saw more and more Rods lose their fervour to protest. Luga sighed and waved her hand. “Then so be it. Nolinya will be in charge of resource gathering and she will appoint for us a builder to oversee the whole construction affair. Name your candidate, boyara!”
Nolinya raised herself on her back legs and cast her hands into the sky. “I nominate Yaroslaw, my finest builder! Yaroslaw!”
A small, skinny manbjork skittered to the front of the crowd. “I hear the call,” he responded. Nolinya pointed to the dam she stood on.
“Can you repair this?”
The builder looked hesitant for a bit. It would be an enormous job, and he hadn’t had time to give the whole structure and overview first before Nolinya had put him on the spot. However, either because he felt the need to help in such drastic times or maybe just to save face, he shouted a firm, “Yes, boyara! With skill and ease!”
Nolinya smiled smugly over at Luga. “Is the candidate likeable in the bolshaya’s eyes?”
Luga furrowed her brow angrily, but said only, “... Yes. See to it that it is done well, Yaroslaw. We are all counting on you.”
The rest of that day was quiet with mourning. Corpses were gathered and given their last rites. Their incisors were broken off and tread on thread as an extension of the Clan Strings that now all could bear to remember their fallen ones. The corpses were cleaned and mended where that was possible and wrapped in blankets of woven reeds. Not all of them were, though, as the dam didn’t have enough reeds left anymore. Then, the corpses were burned on a great pyre with the gift granted by the Burning Snake-on-the-Air and crude planks and flat stones were erected in their memory in a nearby marsh. Two dancers of the dead reenacted the Singing Maker’s jig in his Glade to remind the onlookers of the good times, donning red-clayed make-up with exaggerated smiles and copying the steps and erratic kicks and swings of someone who had had too much sappivo, or fermented treesap. A third actress painted her face with a blueish gray clay to look older and went from griever to griever and shared the wisdom and warmth of the Old Bjork in hard times. Even one of the Deepwood Masks, those queer, lonesome lot from the deep forests that followed the teachings of a new god named Bonetooth of the Mask, came to the ceremony with offerings of deer hide and instruments of hollow bone that he clacked together and sang to, blessing Mish-Cheechel and all his followers with luck and skill in their hunt. Many, both kit and grownbjork alike, were initially skeptical and frightened of the shaman, for he had blood in his fur and smelled like a beast. He thus wasn't accepted into the ceremony until later in the day, when the sorrow in his songs and the rhythm of his bones resonated with the growing crowd who at this point was just looking for reasons to vent. Many gathered around the dancing shaman and egged him on, cursing the Green Murder and all her cronies of the woods, and seconding the shaman's blessings over the hunters.
Meanwhile, Yaroslaw sat at the foot of the dam, though the actual foot was much deeper in the water. There, he studied the layers of clay, mud, sticks and logs inside the crushed sections of the dam. He would have to rebuild this and he would have to do it well. But this project was much bigger than anything he had ever worked on. How would he mend something dimensions larger than anything he had ever seen?
“O, Maker, o, whomever may be listening out there… How can I oversee something like this alone? How can I build something like this?”
The gentle scritch-scratching and pitter-patter of small paws on mud and logs could be heard alongside a soft humming, lilting out a sonorous tune in judgement of the dam. Clicking and popping noises joined into the chorus as, up from the back side of the dam, scurried an otter. Wait, was it an otter? The smooth-furred mustelid regularly switched from all fours to walking on two legs and looked all the part the strange love-child of numerous different species, colored and furred and shaped as he was. Eyes that glowed with moonlight even without it present peered down at the wall with intensity enough to start the flood all over again.
”Nt, nt, nt, nt, nt,” came the clicking as the critter hopped up and down for a moment, testing the density of the wall, before crooning his neck to look towards Yaroslaw, ”It’s a start, yes, yes, yes, a start. It lacks a certain finesse but there’s raw talent here, mhm, mhm. There is still learning in you yet, I think, very much so, quite, quite, quite; Yes, very good.”
The chittering-chattering tone of the strange creature filled the air as it repeated itself, clicked, hummed and hawed. In an instant the mustelid-thing hopped onto all fours, darting closer, before following the last few steps on two legs to close the distance with Yaroslaw. One eye, moving on its own, peered off towards Yaroslaw while the rest of the creature’s head craned the other way, to continue observing the work with avid interest.
”Do not worry, my friend, for a builder in need is my friend, indeed. It is so rare for a humble architect like myself to find such wondrous works, albeit somewhat rural, rustic even, left half-done. Or, undone, as it were. Yes, nt, ck, ck, yes; you will not oversee this something alone, for it isn’t a something, but a building, and you are very much no longer alone.”
Yaroslaw sniffed suspiciously - this scent was unlike any he had smelled before - but he wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. The manbjork trundled to his feet and eyed the otter amalgam-thing, his tail raised over the water in cautious preparation. “H-how you do, stranger,” he mumbled between breaths. “I, uh, I wouldn’t come ‘round here smelling like that. The guard might catch a whiff of ya.” He pointed to the enormous dam. “B-but don’t actually leave, though! Y-you know structures like these?”
”Smell? I wasn’t aware I smelled of anything,” the odd animal mumbled, leaning in to snort at its shoulder before looking back, far more interested in the question than its own scent, ”No; I know ALL structures. A marriage of angles and tensile strengths and aesthetics, really. Absolutely beautiful, really. Yes, yes, nt, nt, nt; I know structures like these.”
Yaroslaw's eyes filled with hope and he cast a glance over his shoulder and to the top of the dam. Smells, or even absence of smells were quick to trigger bjork territoriality, so they would have to stay hidden here in shelter from the wind and pray that it wouldn't turn. He approached the stranger some more and placed a hand on the structure. "You, uh, you wouldn't be in the mood to teach me about them, right? I've been given a quest, a mission like none I've ever received before, and it is to rebuild this dam, but not just like the way it was - the boyara wants it grander, stronger - and you don't disobey the boyara," he mumbled stressfully.
The divine critter looked back to the wall of earth and mud and wood and rock, clearly fascinated by the opportunities. A mind made for far grander designs stacked stone on top of log and brick in his labyrinthine head while the mustelid-thing stood with hands on hips, looking altogether imperious in his designs.
”Yes, yes, we can do that. Don’t disobey, exceed, overcome! Grander, stronger, better; yes, yes, nt, nt. You will be my apprentice on this, so your name may be on it, and I, Lares, shall guide your paws! That way, we build it right.”
The apparently named Lares turned in such a way that his long, fuzzy neck and face had already began in one direction, practically pulling the rest of him along. He snuffled and sniffed and scritch and scratched at the materials he had to work with, looking about with interest. Little clicking noises erupted from his throat that echoed through the vale as he answered a billion questions for himself. One paw waved at Yaroslaw, wiggling enticingly for him to follow.
”Apprentice, come quick; this mud, it is silty but smells of clay. Such a deposit would make for fine mortar! But stone, and timber; these are essential. You have good wood in your wall, well picked; not good enough alone, I think. I commend your building sense, but you will need more. What is the hardness of your teeth, there, and can you appropriately quarry and chisel stone?” Lares said, looking back at his self-proclaimed apprentice Yaroslaw over his shoulder.
The nervous builder followed and scratched his head. “Quarry? Chisel stone? Never heard of no stone in a dam before, unless it’s gravel, I think.” He skipped over a divide in the ruins. “Wait, you mean we need more than wood, dirt and clay?”
Lares waggled his finger with an accusatory side-long glance, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“Ck, ck, ck, of course,” he asserted, thrusting the other paw down to lift a river-smoothed stone and presenting it, “Stone makes a good base, strong foundation. Wood pilings keep stable, dirt and mud fill the core. Make the dam bigger, stronger; very good, yes?”
Lares leans in and bites down, teeth tearing through stone like beaver-teeth through wood. He presents it confidently, now shaved down into a notched stone brick. Using a finger, he presents how the stones will lock together, albeit with some awkwardness in his demonstration.
”Behold! We build it right, exceed expectations! A great hall, perhaps? A temple a top? We shall see, nt, nt, nt. Expansions come later, apprentice, do not get too excited.”
Yaroslaw didn’t know whether to pry more or walk away, so he naturally concluded that he should just follow along. “Alright, teacher - I’m all ears. Please teach me your ways!”
Lares tossed the little brick aside and closed the distance on Yaroslaw, looking him up and down with a perfunctory gaze. It was, of course, important to determine the qualities of ones’ apprentice before acting hastily. Finally, one paw shot forward and grabbed Yaroslaw by the incisors, giving them a good look and a firm tug. Evidently accepting of whatever metric he was gauging their quality by, Lares clicked his teeth.
”Good, good. Nearly there. Acceptable tools, but we can do better. New tools would be wasteful, would need to teach you. Better you learn with what you have.”
With his assertion complete Lares flicked his middle finger at Yaroslaw’s incisors, his little claw clicking loudly against the yellowed teeth. A sheen rippled outward from the impact zone like a wave on water and the teeth rapidly changed color to a nearly white pearlescents, replete with almost a metallic gleam in the low moonlight. Content with his work and nodding vigorously, Lares point at the would-be dam once more.
”I will teach you to quarry stone as you chew timber, and we shall build a dam like no other! It will have chambers above for storage and structural support, but we shall address that later! Your Boyara will have her dam, and WE shall build it! How exciting! Now, let us get to work.”
Yaroslaw's eyes spread wide like blossoming flowers and he flicked his own teeth in wonder. "By the Maker! What did ya do to my teeth?!" He licked them and tasted the irony flavour, blinking as though it was candy. "Does, does this mean I can chew rocks?! Ain't no bjork ever done that before!"
Lares clapped pleasantly as he nodded with a deeply satisfied expression, clearly enjoying that the bjork was appreciating his handiwork. His praise of the maker, whom Lares could only assume was the Monarch, only pleased the little critter more. ”Yes, yes, a fine gift, eh? My apprentice shall not work with shoddy tools! Carve stone like lumber, just don’t swallow too much. Now we simply need find our quarry and carve our blocks! The work, my apprentice, can begin! How exciting~!” In the days that followed, Lares and Yaroslaw set to work. With the guidance and divine assistance of his new “master”, Yaroslaw found the endurance and ability to gather the necessary materials to continue the work at a dozen times the pace of an ordinary bjork. Whenever looked in upon the strange deity would disappear, hidden from view or elsewhere other places, making sure it was never Lares but Yaroslaw who was seen doing the labors. During the day they gathered supplies and materials and during, away from prying eyes, Lares did what he does best; build.
The dam, what was originally a simple bjork dam of muck, mud, and timber, expanded under his watchful gaze. Stone blocks, cut by Yaroslaw and divinely transferred to construction locations during the dead of night, we lowered into the soft silt and loam of the riverbed as foundations, interlocking and stacking a top one another while being abutted by thick beams of timber. Criss crossing and interwoven supports were placed, each one finely carved and left bare for later detailing. Over the course of five nights the great dam grew taller and grander and soon reached completion.
Although the structure itself was a point of pride for Lares, so much more work needed to be poured into it. Gentle and subtle carvings were inlaid with claw and tooth and nose, stone shaping with the ease of supple clay. Simple carvings of bjork, of river, of trees and of lakes sprang up across the facade that instantly lit thoughts of home in any bjork that might look upon it. Internal passageways were carved from the bottom up, giving access into the inner workings of the hardy, divinely inspired dam. It was inside that the most work would be set, where comparatively spacious rooms were placed. It would be a comfortable stronghold with breath holes to keep it full of air yet insulated enough to keep all the biting cold away. Finally, a respectable hall was made, enough to hold two dozen or so bjorks comfortably and even more if they didn’t mind rubbing shoulders.
Throughout it all Lares made sure to educate his apprentice appropriately, explaining everything he did. He was, of course, the Majordomo of the Monarch and could not be matched in such things, but he could certainly teach some of what he knew to his apprentice. What good, after all, could come from an apprentice who knew nothing of the work he was meant to do? Each new piece of structure or assemblage was explained, in detail, and the physics therein loosely elucidated upon the bjork apprentice of the God of Homes.
On the sixth night Lares assembled a final piece of the puzzle, easily rigged up onto a slide to be dropped into place. The block, essential for holding back all waters no matter how high, was to be the honor of Yaroslaw’s to place. With a simple wooden beam holding it up and a solid, heavy mallet given to his apprentice to finish the job, Lares sat back and grinned his creature-smile.
”There we have it, yes, yes, apprentice! Now THAT is a dam worthy of the name! It is THE dam now, I should say, ct, ct. The honor is yours, for it is your dam from here on out.”
Yaroslaw could hardly believe his eyes. Had he truly built that? He lowered his mallet and tapped the final stone thoughtfully. He looked down at his master, then out towards the crowds in the river below, who all screamed their cheers and chanted the name, "BOULDERBITE! BOULDERBITE!"
Yaroslaw rubbed the shiny incisors given to him by the strange otter and was about to hop down from the dam and say, "The honour isn't mine!" But then, the other bjorks atop the dam picked him up and paraded him around the structure, naming him the Stonesmith, the Boulderbite, the Architect. As the famed Yaroslaw Boulderbite was carried off to applaud and praise, Lares stood giddily behind his pirch upon the top of the dam. Everything had gone so perfectly! His apprentice would spread the ways of working homes properly and all would be well with the world, of that Lares was certain.
Flashback to the moments after the Green Murder fucked over the Voganids. Everyone's mad at Phelenia and Mish is basically a saint. After some sobbing and crying, Nolinya says she'll go chomp trees to make a new dam and says her best builder Yaroslaw can oversee the job. Luga reluctantly agrees.
Yaroslaw's now a bit scuffed, though, cuz he has no idea how to build a dam this big. Then Lares comes and says he'll teach him. To do so, he gives Yaroslaw iron teeth that can gnaw through rock and helps him build the sweetest dam ever. One that cannot be destroyed by beasts as easily because it's made of stone, wood and silt. After it is done, Yaroslaw is celebrated as a heroboi.
Lares - 17 vigour. -1 Make Yaroslaw Boulderbite a hero. -1 Bless Yaroslaw with the ability to build dams super quickly. Lares ending with 15 vigours.
Dear journal, Thank you for lending me your stone in this place where good clay and decent paper are in such demand. I wish to introduce myself to you formally before our cooperationship commences. Many souls in this world may see you as nothing but slabs of rock, but my kind knows well the sapience and emotions of what others may consider ‘inanimate objects’. I wish to greet you therefore, dear journal, with the same respect and humility I would offer any of my colleagues.
I am Thessemalitha, named so of my own choosing. In the first year of Our Rector, I came into this world as the majority of our kin, the Kynikos, did. Not long after my birth, I was swept up in the finest silks, fashioned by the Rector Himself, and I was shown to the libraries on the fourth floor of the Academy. Here, I was tasked with compiling volumes on the properties of stone - see? I know your kin quite well, dear journal.
It was worthy work, certainly, but in frankness, dear journal, I always believed I was destined for greater things. Pray do not undress my outer facade to any of my later readers, for I do not wish to blaspheme - the Academy is a most holy place, and to study in the Rector’s halls has been nothing short of paradise. And yet, when the ranger Biluda convinced the Rector to open the gates and usher forth the Grand Expeditions, I was ecstatic.
How fortunate that I would live to see all these sights, learn all this knowledge.
I joined a force calling itself the Southern Expedition. Our leader, Shirvaaz, dreams one day of journeying to the very south of this world - rumours say a great source of magic hides there beyond the edges of all land. Apart from Shirvaaz, we have Muulthas and Cylonthieus, our two guardians, and the ranger Hami. Like me, Shirvaaz is a scholar, and has been helping me order my notes and will provide feedback to my work.
It is with this greeting that I would like to initiate our cooperative relationship, dear journal. I thank you for lending me your stone pages, and hope that you will thank me for using them to immortalise my findings. We leave for the south tomorrow.
Entry One
Dear journal,
I should have made more of an effort to journal our travels across the seas. Yet as it turns out, even stonewriting magic, which comes so naturally to us scholars, is not as easy to control when crossing a stormy ocean. Perhaps it was a joke by the gods, for I pondered forth a good name for the sea between these two landmasses, but had no time to write it down. It made me quite frustrated, for I have not been able to recall it since. Though then again, if it was so easily forgettable, perhaps it is better to leave the naming to future generations.
The storm tossed off quite a bit off course, unfortunately, and Hami speculates that we have landed much further west than we initially intended. The Rector’s notes told us there would be land here, too, but it seems they, as blasphemic as it may sound, could be slightly outdated.
For now that we have finally reached land, we have come to green and mountainous soil. Hairy quadrupeds not too unlike those that roam the coast beyond Academy Island are plentiful here; they are much smaller, though, and it is almost a shame to leave here so soon when there are clearly so many unanswered questions in this region. So much to explore!
We will spend the day resting here. I will hike some distance from the camp - see what I find.
Entry Two
Dear journal,
I did it. I managed to convince Shirvaaz that this region still has too much undiscovered potential to be left unstudied. He agreed - though reluctantly - and has sent Hami and Muulthas into the woods to gather building materials to set up a research camp. Meanwhile I have been sketching my observations and studying their behaviours. I encountered this strange species which I have yet to have observed in the Far North:
Terminusian hill elk.
The behaviour of the Terminusian hill elk is not so different from the Northern elk in that they both consume biotic material and assume movement using four legs, also fashioned from biotic material, though neither here is it the same material as they eat. I am partial to Baldhazzahar’s writings on the lifestyles of bio-feeders for explaining how biotic feed is turned into living flesh and weave, but I will not delve into what Baldhazzar’s theory entails here. I can only say that I see no deviations from his hypotheses yet.
That will be all for this entry. I will be roaming these hills some more in search of more to study!
The Kynikos scholar Thessemalitha writes her journal, sayng she’s glad that she can travel and joins an expedition heading towards the south pole. The second entry talks about how they’ve just crossed the sea between the NORF and Terminus and are now chilling in Tamarzh-Kagi (zone between Nalusa and Keltra). Third entry is Thessemalitha saying they’ve decided to stay in Tamarzh-Kagi a bit and set up a research base. She also finds mountain goats and calls them Terminusian hill elks, because they remind her of the giant elk in the NORF.
It had been a less than ideal trip. Not even halfway across the Thousand Lakes region, Jiugui had felt that familiar rumble in his guts. The aftermath hadn’t been a pretty sight, that was for certain, but he had felt lighter and less dizzy afterwards. Jiugui had stood and admired his leavings for a moment - majestic, truly - before he had then conjured his cup into reexistence and filled it to the brim once more, toasting his work. Within the hour, the god was back to his tipsy self, and the man danced and sang down a cave bear’s path. After easing on down the path for a good while, his steps growing increasingly erratic and unbalanced, the drunk god eventually arrived at a roaring cave in the middle of an uncharacteristically burnt and barren part of the tundra. The snow fell thick in these parts, but melted in droves around this cave, which insides were hissing with molten tongues and noxious fumes. The drunk god squinted his beady eyes. What was this place, and why was every part of his body begging for him to explore it?
A shot for bravery, another for strength and a third to flow the former two down, the drunk god felt ready. Taking a detour in a circle around in the snow, including taking some time to fashion a snow angel, the drunk god arrived at the cave entrance around an hour after he had begun the trek of roughly a hundred yards. He stood at the entrance and smiled. The heat was most welcome - though he, a god, felt no need to thermoregulate, he could by instinct tell what surroundings suited best a drink with friends; the icy tundra, while it had its pros, was not one of them. The drunk god ushered forth a small burp and stumbled into the cave.
A long, winding tunnel of fire and stone surrounded him soon after the first half-hour, the temperature turning up to insane levels. His fuzzy mind had momentarily pondered the lack of animals seeking shelter in these caves, but he had quickly realised that it might get too hot for them here. Though then again, maybe they just hadn’t moved in just yet. He had no reference for how much time had passed since his inception; hell, he had no reference for how much time had passed since he had started drinking. The only answer he could reliably propose to the latter question was: “Not enough.”
“HALT!” came a furious shout, and Jiugui rolled together into a ball, spilling wine everywhere.
“UAAAAAAAH!” he screamed as a giant, serpentine creature wormed its way out from behind a lava stalagmite. It was well over seventy feet long, black of scales and molten of flesh, and had at least four-- no, six limbs! -- sticking out of its colossal body in a crocodilian manner. The beast encircled the little mat, snarling monstrously and baring its molten teeth.
“Little red creature who so frivolously enters the home of Yachtectzumatzim - speak your name and purpose now, or be ready to face the fate of all those who enter into my realm!” The lizard snaked its way around Jiugui in a tighter formation, fiery tongue licking at the air around the drunk god. Jiugui hyperventilated and spilled some more wine trying to stand back up.
“Now hol’ on jusshaminute, pahl…--” he managed to blurt around before his back leg gave out and sent him staggering backwards. Upon catching himself, he spilled a cupful on the skin of the beast, the spot immediately evaporating into flammable gas, which then also caught fire and left a sour odour. The beast grimaced.
“Puny!” it spat. “To think that you not only soil yourself in my presence, but that you also cast off your waste upon my elevated person! What immeasurable misdemeanour!” Yachtectzumatzim bared its teeth once more and gaped wide once. “I shall do onto you as I have done onto all the miserable creatures that dare squanter into my private home! Prepare to meet your maker, insect!”
“AAAAAH! NO, PLEASHE!” Jiugui tried to escape, but tripped over his robes and fell. This made him easy prey for the lizard, which swallowed him whole. However, the beast could not keep him inside its body for longer than a few seconds before it spat him back out again, howling and twisting in agony.
“BWUAH! BLEH! What disgusting flavour! What horrible stink!” It rolled around on the ground and gagged, droplets of sickly lava dripping from its jaws. Two pairs of limbs clutched at its throat and another grabbed its own belly. “By the Mother, what did you do to me-- HUUUUEEEEEERCHK!” The beast cast forth a line of magma from its mouth. Jiugui, meanwhile, laid flat on his back on the ground, covered in molten hot spit.
“Izzeh rude, whashu shayn’...” he slurred and sat up partially. He had another cup to drink and squinted at the squirming monster. “I’ll’ave’z you knnnow I… Jush bathéd.”
The worm made a half-baked attempt to recover, but found that its legs could hardly support its body. Its eyes felt lazy and sluggish, and its mouth seemed to drip with fiery drool while its tail tossed around with no regard for its surroundings. “Whaddev… Whaddev you done tooh mee…” it whimpered. Jiugui rolled into a stand and drummed his chin.
“Inderresdin’,” he remarked.
“You wwwworrrm,” hissed the lizard. “You’f… Pois’néd… Meeh… Gwack…” A lazy claw cast itself forward towards the drunk god, but did not reach all the way. Jiugui smirked and had another drink, speaking forth a verse to commemorate the occasion:
”Who’s the worm, you slipp’ry snake? I doubt you know what is at stake: Ev’n in caves of fire and stone This hero triumphs all alone; Muster all the might you can - You shan’t defeat this holy man! You’re a living flaccid rod And I’m the mighty liquor god!”
He then broke into a jolly jig around the defeated lizard, which snailed its way onto its back with a self-apologetic hiss: “Begahwn, y’ tauwntin’... Blergh…” The lizard tried to escape, but its limbs were useless, flopping about on the ground with no sense of coordination. In a desparate prayer, the great guardian of the tunnel, Yachtectzumatzim called out: “Mazriarg… Mazriarg, helhp… Meeh!” Jiugui, meanwhile, dastardly danced in circles around the beast, snapping his fingers and trolling a tune of triumph. The draft through the tunnel played on the strings of the air and the molten magma drummed in the beat of the drunken one’s song. A chorus of creatures living in the cave joined in on the fun, drunk on the atmosphere:
”I present a whole bottle of Pure and mellow wine, I pour a cup full for Your Royal Highness, Strong and fragrant wine.
Let our song never end, Let our fortunes never decline, A cup for ever in our hands, A song for ever in our throats.”
"Quite a long time to sing and drink, especially for one who so terrorizes a child of mine." A sense of heat not from lava or the magma flow radiated near the God, as would his sense tell of another of his kind near, her voice evidently announcing her presence. The small man’s torso twisted to behold the approaching presence, a lizard like the guardian, but larger - much larger - and noticeably angrier. He downed a cup for courage and rolled into a stance. What stance it was was hard to say, but it was a stance nonetheless. He pointed a finger at Yachtectzumatzin and then at the newcomer.
“HEY, I’ll’av’yoo know… HE attackéd ME foi’zt, okey?” Another cup. “Urrp… I jusssh self-deafeneded,” he said with an aggressive shrug.
She held herself back, listening to the nigh incomprehensible speech as her burning eyes flickered between the God and Achtotlaca. A slow carefully controlled drawl replied, "I think my little one has learned their lesson regardless of the circumstances."
She eyes turned to stare deeply and intensely at the floundering Achtotlaca, "Are you not very sorry for having so disrupted my peer and have learned to take such more caution as you should have learned fromyour Elders?"
The lesser Achtotlaca cowered sloppily, burying its face beneath its front limbs. “O, Mazriarg… P’eaze dun loog’add meeh-hee-hee…” he whimpered. Jiugui clapped his hands tauntingly at the creature.
“Hoh! Now ‘e cowerz! Lo, I zzztand victoriouz!” He danced some more in a small circle. He then looked to catch a scent and squinted at the giant. “Waizzz… You’ze like me!”
She rolled her eyes, and refocused on Jiugui, "Yes I am. I happened to be nearby when I heard the cries. Do you mind retracting what influence you've drawn upon my child?"
Jiugui burst into a wild cackle. “Hah!” He skipped into the air and clapped his feet together. “No, no, no can do! Broiph...”
Her eyes narrowed, "And why is that? It's rare to meet a god so incompetent as to be unable to act, I sincerely hope you are not so."
Her head pulled back suddenly, and she looked at him again sideways on, as if she had a sudden thought or needed to see something clearer. Yachtectzumatzim’s eyes went as wide as his intoxicated facial muscles could make them. The drunk god jigged some more and kicked in the direction of Yachtectzumatzim’s face. “Alash! Hurp! Drzink my wine - be drzunk for a day; but t’ dare drzrink Jiugui?! Ha-hoo, hoo-ha!” He kicked up in the air again and did a pirouette. “Idiotick! Foolizh! Stoopid!”
She leaned in close, heat leaked heavily with each word from her mouth, "And what your wisdom tell you about denying a concerned Mother's request my peer? Or do you prefer 'Singing Maker' as I would suppose that may explain a disappearance?
Jiugui lost his balance and faceplanted down on the hot rock. Recovering all-too-slowly, he rumbled and mumbled something unintelligible before adding, “Shingin’ Mager, whozzat? Shounds familler.” He staggered forwards a good few paces standing back up. “Whozzeffereemaybee,” he said to the tunnel wall before turning around. He shrugged and smiled with pity. “Gozza say I’m sohrrey, buzz no can do. ‘S like wazzer fallin’ down or plantz growin’ up - no wine more potent zhan Jiugui. Nozz even I know za cure, see?”
"I see." Her reply was as curt as her tone was hard. She stared very intently at Jiugui before lifting her head only slightly out of the way of his form to spew heat down around Yachtectzumatzim, encompassing him in warmth and soon the stone below most of his body melted- his head still resting on solid enough stone flooring. The lizard murmured his thanks and fell out of consciousness with sleep.
"We should get comfortable as I expect we shall be here a while then," She turned her head towards Jiugui once more and spoke. "And what name do you so claim to speak under then?
The drunk god shrugged. “Whazzin a name, anyway? Jiugui iz Jiugui. Jiugui speakz only underrr ze Monargh… ‘N underr influenze.” He chuckled to himself and poured another cup. “Oh, zhorry, how rude’a me, hereyegoh.” The wind carried the cup effortlessly to float by the giant serpents’ front limbs. “Sho, who’rze you agaihn?”
She took the cup in her left hand, lifting it to her mouth and poured the wine in where it promptly burst into flame, the gout of fire raising out and singing the cup. She replied after setting the cup down again, “Well Jiugui, I am Yoliyachicoztl, Goddess of Heat, Supreme Mother of my Iyotlaca, creator of the Achtotlaca, and Bringer of Flame.”
"Chsharméd," said the drunk god with a smile and a bow. He had another cupful and looked around. "Nice plashe, by zhe wayh. Cookéd id yourshelf?"
She moved her great body around past the other god, taking a hand to comfort the self proclaimed guardian. The creature was completely knocked out and his breathing was weak. She replied only after taking a moment, “I made a magma plume lead up to these far northern lands from the great many who dominate the under earth of the south.”
She turned her head, her eyes aflame as they looked at the god. “So tell me, Jiugui the Drunken God, how is it that you’ve come here?”
Another shrug. "By foot 'n fallin'. Or wazzit fallin' zhen footin'? Def-deffulidd-... Ugh, deffinidly a lotta fallin'. DHEN! … Walkin'... Waiz, wha'wasz yourr queshun? Oh, righz, how I gozz here… Sho!" He pulled up his sleeves for some reason. “I wasz walkin’... Didz I say zhat alreadzy? And then, and th-the-the-thnnn, fffffrrrtr-lelelelele!, and dhen I foundz a gave, cave. Iiiiiiii entzered... This fffffhing!” A fat finger pointed at Yachtectzumatzim. “Shorry, rude, thish very mush livin’ creashur, attack’d me.” He squinted and shut one eye, the other one balling the ceiling. “Thing thaszit.”
"Uh huh. I see. And you uh, care very much about 'wine', tell me more about that." She had settled down a bit, although her tail still moved somewhat erratically she kept her fore limbs caring for the Achtotlaca while she spoke and carried on with the drunken god.
The fat man grinned from ear to ear, his lips parting slowly like tectonic plates to reveal teeth as yellow as urine, filling his mouth like the tangents of a soiled piano. “Why, I dabbow, yesz,” he confessed and rubbed the rim of his cup with a hint of shy modesty. It filled again and he downed its contents. “Sho, wine’z whadd’appens when sweed thingz, or jusz anygindathing withz enuff shugarz innit, migses widd, uh, whater ‘n… Yeast! Yeast…” He hummed. “Sometimez the yeast iz in dhe water already… Sometimes id kinda jusz falls in dhere. Real weird how id worgz. Anyway!” He poured another cup for the heat goddess and floated it up to her again. “... The produgt begomes dis, dis jusz gread mix ov’ flavourz, y’know! Plus - there’sz algohl… Algohul… Al-go-hol innid. Y’know whadd algull iz?”
"No I don't really, why don't you tell me more about 'al-go-hol'. Something to do with the Yeast is it?" In truth she had no idea what a yeast was but the smaller deity seemed quite happy to talk about all this, and she was content to care for her mortal in the meanwhile.
“Ogey, sho!” The fat man rolled up his sleeves, which at that point had fallen back down, once again, doing a terrible job folding them so that they would sit in place. He then proceeded to slur his way through several paragraphs of brewing chemistry and all the different factors any good brewer would have to keep in mind when making beer, wine, strong wine and liquor. He went into detail about strains of yeast and how each strain brought something new to the table, either with a tolerance for higher alcohol content, a stronger appetite for sugar, sensitivity to temperature or other features that would all impact the flavour and texture of the drink. He mentioned the importance of salts, temperature, preservatives and flavourings such as hops, meadwort, sugars and, of course, made no effort to hide his very strong fascination for the effects of alcohol.
“Id givesz me insprashun, almose,” he proclaimed and raised his cup in the air. “Thish stuff… My brainz workz overtzime onnit.” Then he cleared his throat with no regard for manners and spoke, without so much as a hiccup,
Wine, wine, wine of mine - Textures soft and taste divine; To me you are a lord benign! The way you catch the moonlight’s shine - What can it be if not a sign? That our two fates as one align? A truth unchallenged, genuine! Eternal union sans decline.”
He burped and bowed. “‘N das al-gool for ya. Any queshuns?”
“Is there any way to make it less cold? It seems rather flammable too at that, not exactly the universal drink.” Yoliyachicoztl flung out the little question as if she hadn’t a care and was just making conversation, but her eyes remained burning and fixed upon the other deity.
The thrumming was upon her in small part, it was manageable to an extent, although she could feel her annoyance build dealing with the less than clear Jiugui at points...
The drunk god rubbed his chin and squinted his eyes to the point where they were by all accounts closed. He hummed with deep thought and then shrugged yet again. “Nah, dunzhinkso… Ezzanol boils faster than wader, whish is unfordunate down here.” He rubbed his chin. “Couz make somezhin’ thad worgs in hozzer climades, tho’.” He sat down and conjured forth a wide porcelain cauldron. He strolled around the room and sniffed the air. Then he picked a nearby geode melon, then some golden berries, before stirring it all into lava. He then picked some metallic fuzz growing on a magmatic fruit tree and drizzled it over the pot. He then stirred the contents around and poured it into a lavastone jug about the size of himself. He twisted a mustache and cast a glance over at Yoliyachicozti. “Ogey, I gozz no proof thisz’ll work.”
”If you already had proof that this would work, that you knew exactly what to be done, there wouldn’t be much room for experimentation or inspiration as you so delight in, or have I misinterpreted your great sayings my drunken maker?”
She twirled her head this way and that as she spoke to him, taking a small pleasure in the movement. The drunk god nodded in agreement.
“Zound ‘n wise, dear colleague. Sound ‘n wize.” Whatever was happening in the jug went through weeks and weeks of fermentation within the span of a minute and Jiugui then unlidded it and breathed in the sulphurous stink of his new invention.
“... Could thiz be…” He dipped his cup into the pot and pulled it up, only to notice that his hand was empty and that the cup had melted. He conjured forth a stronger cup with a higher melting point and filled it up with the searing hot beverage. He took a sip and rolled the liquid around in his mouth, pursing his lips after swallowing. “Ogey… It definizely burns…” He filled a cup for the heat goddess and floated it up to her. “Do you taste zhe burnt notes?”
A fore limb lifted to pluck the cup up from his grasp, taking the brim close to the heat goddess’s mouth. She turned it away a brief moment, pouring a small few drops careful to the side of her head as her eye and divine sense gazed through it. Finally, she brought it back and lifting her head poured the drink in. The initial flavour could most accurately be described as smokey with a sandy aftertaste, though the texture was gooey and, not to mention, scaldingly hot (though more like a lightly cooled drink to the Heat Goddess). Then came the burn - a quite literal sear down the throat that stung all the way to the sphincter muscle above the stomach sack; in the belly, it lingered like hot coals in the hearth, filling the goddess with a faint sense of joy and satisfaction. The remnants that remained in her mouth produced a black smoke that oozed out between her teeth and left a charcoal (or perhaps more stonecoal) aftertaste. Jiugui had similar streaks of smoke pour out of his mouth, though he seemed less than pleased with the flavour. Already, he was tinkering with the contents of his pot to see whether he could achieve something different. However, just as he decided to add some more lava, the pressure inside the pot built up to unfathomable levels. Before long, the little drunken god was blown away by a colossal explosion of fire and gas, sending him flying out of the cave with a scream
The Goddess silently watched him go, not taking a moment to try to stop the build up nor the explosion that sent him flying. Calmly she sloshed a bit more into her cup to examine it- it would take a bit for her child to wake, and he had to learn well the making of the same mixture. Something like this needed to be preserved and protected under wise gaze, and she had a feeling he had some wisdom now at least, or she would make sure of such...
Jiugui - 11 vigourz -1 (reduced to 0): Create a monument - The Hill of Flies: A reeking pile of divine excrement that intoxicates those around it. If someone were to harvest bits of it and dry it, the resulting product would burn for a whole year. Attracts insects and insectophages by the tons. -1 (reduced to 0): Curse Yachtectzumatzim, Guardian of the Northern Tunnel, with the Madness of the Drunken God. This curse may only affect those who have made an attempt on Jiugui’s life or tried to harm him physically at melee range. It breaks down one’s reason and memories and makes the body sluggish with drunkenness. Targets become prone to sudden outbreaks of erratic behaviour and develop severe alcoholism along with abstinences should they go too long without it. End: Joogee - 11 vigourz, lawl
Picking up where we last left off, Jiugui’s just finished escaping the bjorks he made. He gets the hangover shits and takes a colossal shit somewhere in the Thousand Lakes, then finds one of the entrances to the magma network. He decides to explore it and gets scared shitless by a lava lizard calling himself Yachtectzumatzim, Guardian of the Northern Tunnel. The lizard tries to eat Jiugui and gulps him down, only to then experience the absolute terror that is the taste of Jiugui. The alcoholic god poisons him with a terrible curse and gets gulped back up, laughing bullyingly at the lizard with diss tracks.
It is then when Yoliyachicoztl appears and is fucking pissed that Jiugui’s poisoned one of her bois and also dissed him. She demands Jiugui unpoison him, which as it turns out Jiugui is unable to do. No wine more potent than Jiugui, so not even Jiugui knows how to undrunk someone who drank him. Yoli sighs in quiet understanding and the two exchange greetings and try to get to know each other. Yoli asks if Jiugui is the Singing Maker, but Jiugui doesn’t remember. Jiugui offers her a drink, but it evaporates in her hand. Yoli asks Jiugui to explain what alcohol is and he does so in great detail. In order to make a drink Yoli can enjoy, Jiugui makes firewater, which is wine made from lava, magma cave fruits and metallic “yeast”. After giving Yoli a taste, he tries to improve it, at which point the pressure built up inside the brewing jug explodes and sends Jiugui flying offscreen. The post ends with Yoli committing the recipe for firewater to memory.
Location: The dam of Plotina, home of the Nolin Clan. It had almost been a year since the Awakening Song, the moment the first bjorks opened their eyes there in the Glade of the Singing Maker to find their creator dancing and drinking with a mouth full of song and joy. After the Maker had fallen asleep, the bjorks had waited a long time for him to wake up again - however, they hadn’t stayed long before the forest’s inhabitants grew curious as to what these new creatures were. The bjorks had been lucky, for the Maker’s stupor had ended in a river, which showed them the way to safety. As bears, wolves, tigers and eagles filled the tree line with salivating mouths, the bjorks had all dived for the water and escaped. As eagles had tailed them from the skies, the bjorks had split up to divert the predators’ attention. One small group had headed towards the south, following the river for hours and using the cover of reeds and giant leaves to hide from the demons in the sky. Eventually, the river they swam in tributed into another river, and there, the eagles gave up. This was the Tupil, “the heavenly path”, and the group had followed it until they had reached a section of rocky rapids. Here, they dared not go further, so they gathered at the bank and hid in the shadows of the canopy. Here, they had counted the individuals among them and, by law of strength and size, Nolinya, as the seemingly oldest and largest female among them, declared that she would take them under her wing as the leader.
“This world will evidently not wait for us to adjust to it at our own pace; we have no choice but to play by its rules until we are strong enough to change them as we like!”
The other bjorks, cold and homeless as they were in this new, unknown land, had agreed without protest, and so Nolinya had founded Clan Nolin and declared herself its leader, its boyara. To establish the hierarchy properly, she had had her followers swear fealty to her and her leadership.
“Chip off a piece of both your front teeth.” She had taken stalks of water lilies and twined these into a fibrous thread. “I will string them on this necklace and keep them with me at all times. That way, I will know of your loyalty to me wherever I go, and I will protect you all with my strength and body.” Her eyes had then taken on an accusive shadow and she had spoken, “You will also remember what you gave up everytime you see it - and what more I can take from you should you rebel against me.”
The matriarch’s sudden shift in tone had come as a surprise to most, and for a moment, the jitter of feet and flicker of eyes had indicated that some were about to turn tail. However, a distant eagle scream and the howl of a wolf had shattered any notions of instability in the flock. If Nolinya could keep good on her promise to take them under her wing and protect them, then that was better than taking their chances in the wild, unknown woods… Right?
So then teeth had been chipped and the necklace made. A sharp stone had been passed around the congregation and everyone, old and young, big and small, had offered a chip to the necklace, which Nolinya had dubbed the Clan String. With it around her neck like a mane of yellow spikes, she had climbed upon a rock and pointed to the trees they had just hidden under.
“Now then, my people - we have no time to lose! We have enemies in the sky and rivals in the woods - the water is our only ally here!”
The crowd had looked at the trees - their instincts had told them what to do. Their matriarch had clarified it further so they would commence: “Gnaw them down - gnaw them all down! Toss them into the river and lay them against the rocks! Take branches, dirt, leaves and mud - build us a fortress in the river that nothing can break!”
And so the bjorks of Clan Nolin had set out to construct their home dam of Plotina, which had started as a few logs close to the banks by the rocky rapids. Against these, the bjorks tossed mud, dirt and branches into the water to build a strong foundation. It took days, and many were taken by predators both in the day and night. The simple spears they tried to defend themselves with were hopelessly ineffective against bear and eagle alike, and served better as poles to ground foundations or as fence posts in food storages. After the first week, however, the first den in the dam had been made, complete with entrances to the front and the back of the dam. Here, Nolinya and her closest would rest; the others could sleep at her entrance or in the holes and small caves they had dug on land for the time being.
It didn’t take long, though, before Clan Nolin had suffered too many losses to the forces of nature: A group of foragers had been attached by a territorial stag and two of them had gotten wounded; a lumberjack had lost her life after a falling tree crushed her and instantly killed her; two diggers had gotten into a fight with a furious wood grouse and one had been badly scratched up and unable to work for at least two weeks - if he could stave off the fever from the infections, that was.
The prospects did not look favourably upon Clan Nolin. Nolinya could already feel those same eyes who had looked upon her with desperate hope only a month earlier now glare at her with betrayal and mistrust. She had taken them under her wing, but they were not yet safe - far from it. Nolinya grit her teeth - they didn’t have the bjorkpower. They were simply too few. The boyara sat alone in her den, her head rumbling with thought. She never went to sleep without a wooden stake at an arm’s length away now; she could be dethroned any day.
“Matriarch,” came a greeting voice. Instinct made her reach out her right arm, but she stopped herself as her eyes set on the entrant, a male named Rusan in the process of shaking the water out of his fur. Nolinya squinted suspiciously, but pulled her hand back and took a reserved stance with not a too distant leaping distance to the other exit.
“Rusan. What business do you have?”
The male nodded his head and eyed the other exit. He didn’t comment on it, but smacked his lips and said, “The Wilds test us again, matriarch. A terrible tragedy has occurred: Ververa has been slain by a lynx.”
“A lynx?! What was she doing, the fool?!” snarled the matriarch and dragged a hand down the length of her face. The messenger remained stone-faced.
“She was picking herbs with Bilan and Piot. They made it out safely, thank the River, but Ververa…” He pressed his palm to his chest. Nolinya mimicked the gesture. “... She didn’t make it.”
Nolinya drew a slow breath of genuine sorrow. Rusan closed his eyes and lowered his head. “I offer my condolences, matriarch. Ververa was close to us all, but I know the two of you shared a bond.”
Nolinya pressed her lips together and shut her eyes hard for a brief second, dragging another slow inhale. Then her face turned its own species of stone. “A bond all women share, Rusan - nothing more. Thank you for bringing this to me. Have the gnawers fashion her a suitable log for her journey into the great beyond. Once Crone Olgyi has cleaned the body properly, have everyone gather atop the dam.”
“As you command, matriarch…” Rusan responded, but just as he was about to dive, he turned and said, “Oh, one more message.”
Nolinya looked up. “Yes?”
“An envoy from a neighbouring clan came to us this morning - one Fiodr of the Rod Clan. They have built a dam by rapids of the Dnip. He bid you welcome to his matriarch’s den for a meal and a drink.”
Nolinya squinted one eye and chewed on some air. “I will think about it. Delay an answer for now.”
“As you wish.” With that, Rusan dove back into the hole that led out into the river again. Nolinya sunk into a low seat, front paw tapping her lips in thought and her flat tail tapping at the ground.
“A meal and a drink…”
The dam of Voga on the Dnip was larger than Plotina, but not by much. Where Plotina had only three dens at this point, Voga looked to be sporting at least seven judging by the domed curves along the length of the dam. Nolinya squinted enviously from her place at the edge of the forest. Behind her, a small following waited nervously. Nolinya caught one of them shivering at the edge of her vision and cast him a steeling glare.
“... D-do you think they have c-carrots?” came a small squeak from the back. Nolinya hissed.
“Shut it! Rusan!”
Rusan approached and bowed. “What is your command, boyara?”
“Wait for me here. I will be going in alone. Dig in and keep watch of the woods and the skies.” With that, she crawled out of the woods and into the river, swimming towards the dam. Rusan’s face betrayed not its stony texture, and the Nolins did as they were told. Nolinya, meanwhile, approached the entrance hole under the great dam; she beheld it from below and awed for a moment at its magnitude - one day, Plotina would be just as big, if not bigger. She ducked down under water, swam through the tunnel of sticks and dirt and surfaced on the other side.
“Welcome, friend of Rod. We have been expecting you,” came a kind voice. The inside of the den wasn’t dark and gloomy like her own; no, this one had been lit with some strange, blue lights - Nolinya had never seen their likeness before. As her eyes adjusted to the very faint light, she soon began to make out faces within the room. There were three of them: two males and a female. The female was large and fat, much fatter than her, and laid upon a bed of dow and reeds in the centre of the den. The room oozed with the scents of fresh and fermented roots and waterplants, and a sweet aroma of tree sap laid thick in the air like a fume. Nolinya was almost mesmerised, and her stomach growled like a grown bear. The woman chuckled and beckoned her closer. “Oh, you poor thing - you must be famished! Come, come! The food will be served any moment.”
Nolinya wasn’t sure what made her obey, but she nonetheless moved forward and had a seat in a smaller nest of dow and grass opposite of her. There, bowls fashioned from wood by bjork teeth were laid before her, filled with salads of water plants, mashed roots with herbs and fermented tree sap. She felt her mouth deluge, inciting another chuckle from her hostess. “Please! Eat, eat! It’s not like it’s getting any warmer out. You’ll need the blubber for when the White Nights come.”
Nolinya looked up from her bowls with a skeptical look. “The White Nights?”
“Oh yes,” said her hostess. “An envoy from the Splid Clan to the north spoke of it: They say that the days grow colder, and that a white powder has begun to cover the hills and harden the water. It will no doubt reach us here soon, too.” She nodded. “So eat up, poor you! You’re as skinny as a stick!”
Nolinya hesitated. “I… I do not eat the food given by someone I don’t know.”
The woman burst into a hearty guffaw. “Ho-ho-ho! Oh, my, what a mannerless little rat I am! Oh, my, oh my…” She flicked away a tear. “Forgive me, my dear, I was just so heartbroken by your skinny frame that I completely forgot the most basic etiquette! You must forgive me.”
Nolinya tightened her fists in a defensive rage. “It-it’s fine… You need not talk to me that way. We, we are both matriarchs of equal rank, are we not?”
The hostess smirked from ear to ear. “Oh, but of course, and since we are, it is only fair that we address each other as equals, Nolinya.” She flicked her a wink. “You may call me Luga.”
Nolinya blinked. “... You must forgive me, but I was certain your name would be--”
“Rod? Or perhaps Rodya?” Luga’s smirk broadened. “You must forgive the confusion, but I couldn’t simply name my clan after someone like myself - how selfish would that be? No, I instead named it after our saving grace, the Rod.” She reached out for her own bowl of root mash and started guzzling it down. “You should eat some,” she stressed yet again.
Nolinya felt her belly fill with rage in place of food. “I am not hungry,” she snapped back. Luga’s smirk shrunk and the matriarch rolled her eyes.
“Oh, come now… Can’t you take a little play between friends of equal rank?” Upon studying her souring expression, Luga sighed. “But very well - if you’re not hungry after all, then perhaps I should feed some to the people you have hidden in the woods.”
Before Nolinya could react, she continued, “Oh yes, we’ve seen them. They look as thin as you, if not thinner.” She sighed with exaggeration. Nolinya lowered her stance, but her the steps of the other two males behind her. They closed in in anticipation of what she would do. Luga, however, continued, “Tell me, is food truly that hard to come by where you live? Why, we could feed another hundred poor souls, for sure.”
Nolinya hardened her face. A pang of guilt hammered at her heart - why had she taken charge back then, actually? She was no leader. Luga was a leader - how else had she been so much more successful than her? Why hadn’t she stepped down? Was she afraid of the consequences should the others choose to prosecute her for all the people she had gotten killed? All the burials she had caused?
“Why have you brought me here?” she sobbed weakly. Luga raised a brow.
“Oh, darling, what are you crying for? Why else should I have brought you other than to share with your people our gorgeous bounty - to spread this prosperity to bjorks all throughout the land?” Luga rolled forward so she sat upright, tail between her legs. She reached out a paw and gently lifted Nolinya’s chin. The smaller female flexed every muscle in her face, but the tears escaped anyway. Luga tooted a sympathetic “n’aaw…”
“It-... It’s been so… So hard,” Nolinya sobbed. Luga nodded with understanding.
“Oh yes, my dear… But you are safe now… You are all safe.”
With that, the Nolin Clan abandoned the dam at Plotina and were accepted into the Rod Clan, attracted more by the promise of food and shelter than their master’s orders. Nolinya was still boyara, but even she had to admit that there was no equality in rank between her and her new chieftess: Luga took the title of bolshaya, grand matriarch, and united the two clans as a tribe named the Voganids. Work soon continued, though it was the great dam Voga they were expanding.
A year has passed since the bjorks were made. Right after they were, they were scattered all over the Thousand Lakes region by predators. A female named Nolinya starts a clan Nolin and proceeds to utterly fail to make anything work: Their dam is terrible; her clansmen keep dying to predators - it’s all a shit show.
Then she gets invited to come visit another clan, the Rod clan. They’re so much richer because they have the Rod, and their matriarch is this a fat lady named Luga. Luga proceeds to guilt-trip Nolinya into joining her by saying she hasn’t fed her people and is a selfish hoe, which Nolinya eventually agrees to.
Jiugui - 8 -1 Vigour - Create the Sacred Rod: An ordinary stick that was unfortunate enough to fall directly into the beam of Jiugui’s pee during his stupor. It was found by Luga’s clan in the river, where it had been caught by a magical glowing tree which it had summoned forth. This stick gained the power to create magical lights and energise plants to grow faster. Jiugui - 7
The trajectory he had taken had been calculated, but man, Jiugui was bad at math. Aiming for the tropical centre, he had completely missed the mark - and it had been in the absolutest sense of ‘completely’. He had missed his target by nearly a hemisphere, no less than five thousand kilometres, crashing through the atmosphere of the icy north and smashing into a frozen lake, or was it a sound? He had no idea, for he was deep underwater, trapped in an ocean of newborn kelp. The drunk man squealed and screamed for air, until he realised, quite quickly, that he could breathe just fine. Taking a moment to collect himself as best he could, the drunk snailed his way into an approximation of a swim (with one hand holding his cup, naturally) and crawled for the surface.
“HHUUUUUUAAAAAAAGH” he gasped upon breaking the surface, water and wine splashing everywhere like a sudden rain. The man offered some petty coughs as he flopped his way to the nearest beach, a rocky bed of pebbles leading to a thick, dark forest of conifers just as deep as the water he swam in, if not deeper. Hauling himself onto the beach, he rolled over on his back and groaned from the bottom of his throat. His skin was red with wine and cold, and his white robes were soaked so they stuck to his skin and turned a pinkish hue. Drawing in a deep breath, the man attempted to sit up. His fat belly got in the way, so he tried again; once more, he failed. Fed up with the limitations of his physical form, Jiugui had the wind sweep him from the ground and onto his feet, and the wind answered. The drunk was swept to his feet, which naturally had no balance and made him stagger backwards off the beach and straight into a tree.
SMOCK!
The god shook his head, lazy eyes gazing at the imprint he had made in the bark - an egg-like shape with four limbs sticking out like branches on a bush. He chuckled to himself.
“Rad..”
But then he looked up - the tree just, it just kept on going. He turned around. All around him, trees grew tall as the sky. And they quivered…
For between them walked giants - creatures larger than anything Jiugui had ever seen since he had gazed upon his colleagues in the Sunlight Temple, which to be fair was also the only other things he had ever seen. Either way, the god stood struck by awe, admiring the majesty of a bypassing mammoth and an overhead flock of colossal bats that blotted out the sky. The bass of thundering feet was ever-present around him, and the howl of giants danced on the wind like a powerful song. The drunk god burst out into laughter and raised his self-filling cup.
”Zenia mush shee thish! Whadda place to PARDY!”
He hammered down shot after shot and eventually invited some cave bears to join him. The bears got sloshed with him and invited the mammoths to join, who were reluctant at first, but couldn’t say no for longer than it took to ask thrice. By midnight, Jiugui had lit a small bonfire, and all the forest’s creatures had come to share in a joyous feast with wine, song and poetry. The newborn moon was at its peak at this hour and a section of the crowd that was not busy dancing or diving to the bottom of the punch bowl had gathered by the fire, where Trunks the Mammoth had knocked over some trees and formed a stage. There, Scarred Fur the Skald rose to her hind legs with some trouble - not even her fatty bear form could handle as much wine as Jiugui had poured her - but she pressed on and growled for the masses a kvad for the occasion:
Many in the crowd shed tears, Jiugui included. “Magnifishent,” he whimpered. “Apssoludly mahnifffishent.” A nearby male stepped up from the crowd, head bowed in submission as he staggered over to sniff her from behind. Scarred Fur growled decisively - the male had earned no such permission. Some other males stepped up to challenge the first - Scarred Fur’s poetry had gotten more than one stud in the mood. Jiugui exchanged a smug smirk with a nearby bat, who only snickered back in ultrasound. The god stood up, falling onto the helpful trunk of a nearby mammoth who pushed him back up, and clapped his hands.
“Now, now, dish urrp! dish is a pardy, guysh!” He staggered over to the very angry, very drunk bears, and clapped them all on the shoulders. “Dish is no time to fiiiiiiiiiiighd, righ’?” He conjured forth some more wine cups in their paws. “Come now, have anozzer wizz me! Zhree, two, one - ganbeeeeeeiiiiiii!”
The animals all roared their own sounds to toast and drank with the drunk god. This prevent conflict for all of four seconds, for as soon as the wine was drunk, one of the males slapped the other with a clawed paw. The beaten male keeled over on the spot, but more from the alcohol than the damage, it seemed. The assailant had little peace to balance out the weight of his blow before the third male attacked him. Then a dire wolf, face fur sticky with coagulated wine, joined in and jumped on the first male’s back, biting down on his back fat. Then came a dire boar to break up the fight, but he tripped over a passed-out sabre tooth tiger and straight into the drinking bowl of four giant eagles, who all flexed their wings in a drunken fury and screamed off the top of their beaks. A wooly rhino got into a furious debate with a colossal moose, probably over grazing rights or something, and got into a fight. Some reindeer who had come late all turned at the entrance point, and most of the animals who hadn’t had enough to drink yet all decided that now was the time to leave. Birds kicked off; grazers skipped; hunters ran; and Jiugui, well… Jiugui laid passed out in the centre of the fight scene, drunk as a skunk.
The night had turned to day and the drinking god opened crusted eyes to stare into the white laser of the orb of death in the sky. He groaned in pain and rolled over - the moss was a kinder sight. He felt cold - particularly running down one leg and puddling around his calf and downwards. A drum played a war dance in his head, and the thought of a cup of water made him both sick and thirsty at the same time. Oh yes, this was a familiar feeling.
“Uhm… Lord? A-are you alright?”
The bulbous man blinked at the moss again, then lifted up his cup to give it a blink as well.
“Be-behind you, milord.”
The man groaned and mustered every muscle in his body to roll around. It was then that his sight got bombarded by a myriad of images he had no idea how to react to: In place of his brief, fragmented memory of yesterday’s forest, there was now a river where he laid (well, he had three quarters of his leg in it, anyway); many of the gigantic animals had left, and in their place were small rodents, insects and birds who had all showed up to inspect the man; and most notably were three taller rodents - much taller, but not even close to as tall as even the smallest of last night’s giants. They also seemed rodent-like, with huge incisors at the tip of their upper jaws. They sported thick brown coats of fur, two arms with little hands and two legs with large feet, and a flat, leathery tail each, which laid flat against the ground like a single flipper. They all looked concerned to different degrees, but the one at the front seemed the most eager to speak:
“M-milord, how are you feeling?”
The drunk god squinted suspiciously and pushed himself up to a seat. He blinked at the trio, then down at the small birds and animals, then at his leg in the river (which was being taste-tested by schools of curious fish) and then finally at his surroundings: It wasn’t just the woods, but his divine sight could see that lakes had appeared all over, connected by rivers and surrounded by marshlands - a great network of lakes, rivers and swamps had spread throughout the entire region. The drunk god asked the first question that came to mind:
“... Where am I…?”
The first of the trio piously answered, “Y-you’re sitting in the Glade of the Singing Maker, milord.”
The drunk god shook his hand with a large, lazy movement as though trying to get his wet and sloppy sleeve to pull away from his sweaty skin and fall down to his elbow. His cup materialised in the respective hand once his clothing obeyed and the cup filled with plain water. “Where’s, uh, where’s this glade?”
“Why, couldn’t say, milord. This land’s as new to us as you are to it.” A pause. “I-if I may be so bold to presume,” it quickly added.
The drunk god grimaced curiously at the answer, but let it slide. “Alright. Who’re you lot, then?” Ssssssssslurrrrp, went his lips thoughtfully on edge of the water cup.
“Zwiéka,” said the first.
“Vislof,” said the second.
“Mosha,” said the third.
The drunk god nodded. “I see. And, uh, what’re you doing here, you said?” Sssssssluuuuurrrp.
“We were created by the Singing Maker, milord. There were loads of us last night, but most have gone off to settle down, I suppose.” Zwiéka turned around and produced a small root from a tiny pile a step away. “Want a carrot, milord?”
The drunk god accepted. Ssssssluuuuurp... CRRRRRRRUNCH, rrrorrp, rrrorrp, rrrorp, glllump. “I see. And, uh, who’s this… ‘Singing Maker’ of yours?”
Vislof and Mosha looked at one another. Zwiéka twiddled his hands anxiously. “W-well… That’d be your honourable self, milord.”
Sssssluuuuu-
The drunk god lowered his cup. His gaze turned away for a minute and his lips pursed with thought. After a moment of silence, Zwiéka tried again: “Milord?”
“I see,” replied the god curtly. The trio exchanged sheepish looks. “I get it now,” he added. It was madly obvious that he didn’t get it at all, but he did his best to look wise as he asked with whatever authority he could muster: “So, uh, do tell - what exactly happened last night?”
Once again, Zwiéka pulled her shoulders into a humble shrug. “Couldn’t say, milord. We don’t think we’ve existed for long enough to know much at all, really.” The other two nodded along.
Jiugui squinted. “So you’re saying none of you actually know what happened here?”
“Not a clue, milord. We came to life and, well, there were you, singing and dancing with all the joy in the world. Much more, we couldn’t say.”
Jiugui furrowed his brow. To think that the world changed so radically around him, and neither he nor his supposed creations would ever know what had happened.
A couple of hours earlier... About halfway through the fight, a charging musk ox managed to trample over Jiugui on his route to tackle a rowdy bison who had cruelly insulted his mother. The shock of a six-hundred kilo hoofstep was enough to barely, but effectively, stir the drunk god to life. He got up and clapped the side of his head to put out a handful of moss that had gotten stuck in his ear. He heard the commotion and cursed heartily under his breath.
“Shidd, yoo guysh… Magin’ so mussh noishe…” He rolled to his feet just in time to not get showered with an ocean moose blood as a bear ripped open the side of one. Jiugui had another cup of wine and squinted at the moon in the sky. Then he felt a pressure from within, squinted harder and nodded to himself. “Ogey… Thish ol’ slump’sh gozza go tage a leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeakch… Keep urk ze pardy goin’ forz mee, a’righz?” He then staggered off to the music of animal roars and dying howls. “Oop, ‘zcuse me,” he mumbled as he bumped into a ravaged wolf carcass. After bumping into a few more things and corpses, Jiugui exited the festival grounds and staggered into the woods.
It took him a long while to find a good spot to relieve himself, and every few steps or so, he would stumble and nearly fall, spilling his wine all over. He didn’t realise in his stupor, but where the droplets fell, the earth became soft and soggy, turning into marshlands that offered great living grounds for insects and mollusks, and fantastic hunting grounds for birds and rodents, all of which appeared in the area. Flowers filled the landscape and even shrubberies spawned from the mushy ground.
Sometimes Jiugui would trip and fall over completely, spilling all of his wine out across the landscape. Forests and land were washed away to make way for lakes large and small, which began to dot the landscape like holes in a cheese. Here gathered fish, otters, mollusks, birds, insects and amphibians, and water lilies and freshwater weeds created safe havens for the water-dwellers. The other giants who already inhabited the woods also came there to drink and hunt.
Then Jiugui encountered a ground sloth gnawing on a leaf. The drunk god, still jovially drunk, offered the sloth a drink. The sloth, happy to be noticed in such a friendly way, accepted, and immediately got sloshed with the drunk god. Together, they sang and shared their deepest emotions with one another like they had been friends since birth:
“Grrr-rorkh…” conceded the sloth with a sigh.
“Wow, sho brave…” lauded the drunk god.
After another few drinks, the sloth was much too wasted to carry on conversing, so the drunk god poured it another cup and said, “Ogey, lizz’n… Yew… Yew drzink dis, a’righz, ‘n, ‘n, ‘n, we dun f’d’nighd…” Then he, too, zonked out.
The sloth could barely move at this point, but took the cup and drank it all. It was in that instant that its drunkenness faded completely, and the sloth sat up with immediate concern. It poked Jiugui for answers, but the god would not stir. The sloth felt an odd scent and gave itself a whiff. It smelled like its cup, but even stronger. It sighed and tried to poke the god again to no avail. It would have poked yet again, but its stomach rumbled, and the sloth suddenly felt like a snack. As it lowered itself to all fours and walked off, it thought to itself: Hmm, maybe some fermented berries would be good!
Another hour passed and Jiugui stirred back to life. The pressure building up in his core was reaching critical levels, so he had to find himself a good spot soon, or he would burst. More marshes and lakes appeared as the god continued his journey. Then at last, he found it - the perfect spot. It was a beautiful glade overlooking a lake in the distance; woods surrounded it with an aura of serenity, and the moon shone upon it just right. The drunk god was satisfied, so he walked over to a tree and adjusted his robes.
Soon thereafter, rivers formed between the lakes and marshes, connecting the region with great networks of water through which the fish, birds and detritus could travel into the sea. These, too, became channels of life, as they filled with anadromous fish that laid their eggs in the river, but lived mainly in the sea. Freshwater crustaceans took up refuge in the brackwater, and land-dwelling animals came to the rivers to hunt and drink as they did with the lakes.
The drunk god eventually felt the pressure subside, but then eventually felt something else fight for its exit - something on the other side, so to speak. He grimaced and looked around - there, in the centre of the glade, was a perfect, singular shrub. It would do as cover.
“Milord?” asked Zwiéka to the contemplative god, her dark brown fur glistening with moisture like that of a, well, a beaver.
The god snapped back to reality. “Huh? Hmm?”
“Not meaning to pry or anything, but what will you be doing now?” The three otters gazed upon him with anxious, yet obviously well-awed eyes. The drunk god scratched his head and looked around.
“Well, uh, I don’t know. Guess I’ll look for Zenia or something.”
“Who’s Zenia? Is she like you, milord?”
Jiugui shrugged and drank some more water. “Uh, yeah, I guess.” He got up with some effort and had a sniff of the air. He scrunched his nose and looked down at the trio. “Oh, what’s that smell?”
Vislof shrunk together and tapped his finger together. “Sorry, I let out some castoreum.” Zwiéka clapped him supportively on the shoulder.
“Sorry, milord. We’re still getting used to life.”
Jiugui pursed his lips. “Right. Well, I’m off.”
“S-s-so soon?!” Zwiéka protested. Jiugui rubbed his nose clean.
“Uuuh, yeah, I mean… Most of you’s already gone off to settle down. I, uh, I think you’re already doing quite well for yourselves.”
The trio exchanged some looks. “I mean, that’s fair, but…”
“See? You’ll be fine! Now toodles!” With that, the drunk god skipped off into a sprint, travelling to the edge of a horizon in the blink of an eye. The three beavers were left to exchange looks again and Mosha said to Zwiéka:
“Do you think he would have liked to know about the clan dispute?”
Zwiéka sighed. “Well… I guess he won’t now. Come on, let’s head back.” With that, the Thousand Lakes region was made, and its first settlers, the bjorks, began their history as its pioneering sapients.
Not even a day had fully passed, and already the first trees were beginning to fall. The bjorks would leave their mark on the landscape in a most literal sense with time.
Shit, where to start…
Jiugui was aiming for the equator, but missed - like, imagine if Apollo 13 reached Jupiter; that’s how far he missed. He strikes down in the NORF and quickly gets drunk with everything that moves there. He then wakes up and is met by three bjorks (beaverfolk) who call him ‘the Singing Maker’. When Jiugui asks what happened last night, none of them know, as they were also made last night.
Flashback to last night, Jiugui’s drunk as shit and every animal that hasn’t left the party is busy killing each other in a stupor. Jiugui hears nature’s call and decides to go answer it, all the while stumbling and spilling wine all over, which creates marshes and lakes in the region and fills them with life. He finds a sloth on the way and gets it so drunk that it no longer feels the effects of alcohol, only the taste for it.
Jiugui then finally finds a good place to unleash the flood, and unleash he does, creating the rivers that connect all the lakes and marshes. He then feels the other call and does some squats behind a bush, creating the very brown, very glistening beaverfolk, the bjorks.
Of course, Jiugui remembers none of this and neither do the bjorks, so Jiugui fucks on out of there and leaves his creations to their own leisures which, let’s be honest, is probably for the best.
Jiugui - 9 vigour 4 vigour - Create the Thousand Lakes biome: A taiga biome full of lands, marshes and rivers, and all the sorts of small animals you’d find in Scandinavia, Russia and Canada that frequents this sort of biome. Stuff like otters, rodents, birds, fish, amphibians, insects and so on. Giants from the larger Northern biome also roam here.
1 vigour discounted to 0 - Make the drunken sloths: Modified giant ground sloths that eat exclusively rotting and fermenting fruits, leaves, roots and vegetables. Specially adapted to sweat out the alcohol in this food through its fur, which gives it a characteristic heavy alcohol odour, which again may potentially intoxicate anything that gets too close or tries to bite into it.
4 vigour - Create the sapient species: bjorks: The bjorks are a species of sapient, humanoid beavers. They reach heights of up to 140 centimeters and typically weigh around 30-50 kilogrammes. They resemble beavers in every other way, and live on a diet of roots, freshwater plants, bark, herbs and tree sap, which some cultures brew into wine or beer flavoured with herbs or honey. Most notable are their incisors, which like those of real beavers grow constantly and need to be filed down by gnawing on things. The bjorks are therefore tied to biomes or ways of life where they can satisfy their itch to gnaw on things. By nature, they are bound to the water and the woods and fashion dams, tools and huts out of wood. They tire and get sick quickly in dry conditions, and will die soon if access to water is limited. They therefore rarely leave anywhere without easy access to freshwater both to drink and to bathe in. They live in tribes composed of clans typically led by a matriarch. Clans share a similar scent distributed from their scent glands, the castoreum, which is used to mark territory. Bjorks are highly territorial against other clans, who are easily identified by scent. This makes diplomacy paramount for many, and war paramount for others. End: 1 vigourz. Not vigourous no more.
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