Alucroas

A Bubbling Brew To Bash Boredom's Brains In

The beast continued its charge, bothered only by its own hunger, fueling its savage determination to find a meal. Then, something extraordinarily odd happened: the radioactive fire contained within the dark matter orbiting Barrusom's body inversely sent the local temperature of space plummeting to a level that would make anything that passed through the inferno exceptionally brittle. Furthermore, dark matter was the glue that held the cosmos together, and was directly responsible for the bonding of elementary particles, atoms, molecules, and all things present within the cosmos. Without it, there would be no planets, no stars, no galaxies rich with things for the Ravager Of Cosms to feed on.

Disconception, in its last moments, inverted the properties that allowed dark matter to hold everything together, including the sword's own mass. Had Barrusom not flung a substantial portion of the sticky stuff off its fur, the blade’s effects on its flesh would have caused the ursim to dissolve and crumble apart. Instead there was distance, albeit a small distance, yet still enough to prevent it from getting its body directly involved with the matter-destruction process that Disconception had wrought forth. The end result was the blade ushering its own anti-climactic deconstruction, molecular disassembly, and particulate dissemination, by forcing dark matter to behave in a manner that caused it to pull its existence apart instead of together.

Infinitesimally small fragments of metallic dust, themselves soon to be nothing, touched the upper-layers of Barrusom's sticky fur. It felt a slight weight differential, followed by an irritating itch that made the Ravager growl and turn around, responding as though something had just touched it. Surveying the area with its eyes, Barrusom bore witness only to that which it had seen countless times already, but as a precaution against further interference, decided in its primitive thinking to do something about being bothered.

Rearing its forelimbs up again, Barrusom mercilessly bashed the continuum of space again and again, backing up with each imprint it left so as not to be standing in place when the inevitable shockwave erupted. Then, driving its claws through the fabric itself, the monster deliberately ruptured the membrane separating the ocean of blood and milk from this universe. Space exploded yet again, carrying tidal shockwaves filled to the brim with the very same acidic content Barrusom had vomited up mere minutes ago, their corrosive effects so damaging to the continuum waves that soon, there would be no continuum lifting Exeter up, down, or wherever her sense of direction told her. Soon, there would be only waves of space-time dissolving red and white acid that would inundate and decimate all but the Amalgam, and those creatures whose habitats were the Outerverse itself.

Satisfied with what it had accomplished, the beast turned tail and blitzed toward its meal, fed up with not being able to gorge itself. Unfortunately, for it though, something else was also starting to get fed up–namely, with what the Ravager was doing: damaging the universe in such a way was bound to produce impurities, and throw off the collective multiversal equilibrium via interverseborne, pathogenic release, and thus – interfere with their natural lifecycles. In other words, universes would grow sick and die before their time, and that was extremely inconvenient for a different beast's feeding cycle.

A single eye appeared as a holographic, sphere-shaped crimson ocular, from which eight transparent tentacles spanning 7/8ths of this verse's total AU pressed against the star-speckled backdrop of space, and observed the chaos through a single black slit.

It was the Executioner…

A Bubbling Brew To Bash Boredom's Brains In

The sight of gory destruction flowed into Barrusom's eyes, its brain processing the floating trail of death as a beckoning cosmic snack bell. Redirecting its path without a thought to where it had been going previously, the Ravager drove its claws through the continuum, gouging and slashing several more rifts open as it violently changed course on a racing path to feast. Considering It had not been far away to begin with, travel time was extremely minimal, the creature extending its siphon tongue with no regard for anything other than sucking up the mess Exeter created for him.

Unbeknownst to Baurrsom as it chewed, crunched, and even created more bodies after being unsatisfied with the amount it was given, in its turning and small hopping motions to lap up the creatures like an anteater, the creature finally took notice of the effects its footprints had on space. Namely the way they explosively bent and expanded the rift, wherein a new portion of the Amalgam’s branches were coming through. Consequently, Disconception found its momentum disrupted several times, with the rootsystem itself actively directing its growth along a path of interception, having like Barrusom, been given a chance to suck on the blood of dead Corpas pack members, and deduced a strange cause of death via the odd alteration of their flesh. It wanted to understand this phenomenon and copy the properties onto its own logographic parchment, wherein the laws of its own cosmos would be swiftly updated once more. Several splinters erupted from impact, the blade inevitably causing less and less damage until was alas snared in place, and luckily for Exeter, she would have been able to feel the absence of destructive intent being imposed on the blade: rather, if she could read minds, or sense intent, it was curiosity that she would first pick up on.

By the time the ursim finished eating, and the Corpas finished finding spots to hide, Barrusom had already taken off again. It was only a matter of moments before the pack reemerged, this time being markedly more careful not to remain too close by. Some of them acted on a different impulse, and instead went to go sniff the sword that had been caught up in the branches, eager to acquire a scent on the thing that randomly appeared to slaughter them. In the meantime, the Amalgam network only continued to expand in complexity, roots gradually extending to colossal branches, each apergetic explosion following Barrusom's path aiding in the endeavor of endless growth.

Meanwhile, at least as it stood now, Exeter seemed to be the one causing the most death.

A Bubbling Brew To Bash Boredom's Brains In

In the wake of its vomiting, Barrusom felt emptier than it had, even starting off, belching little more than bad breath vapors into the cold void of space. Instead of marveling at the sparkling glow of its crystallizing burp gas, its six-eyed gaze caught a much more appealing spark, though the size of its flame was barely akin to combustion motes and embers compared to what the beast had reached in evacuating his stomach contents. Before it had puked, Barrusom was close to the size of the Atlantic Ocean – now, the reach of its middle limbs was long enough to grip the heartland of the United States, and Central Europe simultaneously, with its feet gripping the head of South America, and the throat of Africa.

Shaking off the discomfort, Barrusom's fur was flung wildly to and fro, flinging humongous globs with sizes on par with the great lakes off its body. Each time the beast entered a universe, it did so by slashing through the contuum's guts, inadvertently bathing itself in sticky dark matter, the glue of that held matter together. Consequently, when the supernova reached Barrusom, the fire, and all the radioactive heat emanating from it was enveloped in a cloud that neither fed nor extinguished the fire, merely holding it in place.

Feeling a tad confused, and aggressively impatient, the Ravager rose up on its hindlegs, then slammed its front paws against the spatial fabric, generating a black tsunami which eclipsed all the previous ones it had clumsily rode in on. Stepping forward onto the colossal footprints it pounded into place, Barrusom waited for the inevitable return to a state of normality, though its effects on the monster's position were going to be anything but.

Waiting slightly longer than it wanted to, Barrusom began to growl with impatience before being suddenly launched like it was sitting atop a coiled spring, dragging the captured flames with it via the protective coating on its fur. The sensation mildly shocked the creature, causing it to let out a brief, albeit deep yelp considering the sudden change in its vocal pitch. Tucking in its limbs, rather than bounce across branches like it had done before drinking, the ursim spun like a cannonball with its eyes causing a most disturbing visual effect on nearby light sources, pulling their rays towards its face like streamers following the beast's “flaming” rotations, photons twisted into a thoroughly contorted distortion at the cause's epicenter; flinging more dark matter off its “flaming” body, Barrusom narrowly caught up with the shockwave it had released, and was fast-approaching the wave’s crest.

The need to feed was growing evermore maddening in Barrusom’s mind now. Soon it would land upon, and ride the wave it created to an appetizing planet, star, asteroid belt…anything would do right now after throwing up. Its relentless urges were exemplified in the destructive expansion of the rift as the wave pulled and stretched on space, letting more and more of the root system into the universe, the branches quickly becoming visible in conjunction with the continual conversion of space-time into rapidly hardening sludge.

In the midst of the growing chaos, a swarm of mustard pawed feet, bearing a hybrid structure akin to that of a canine insect characterizing the rest of their segmented armor, wandered along the moss-covered Amalgam. Elliptical mouths parted, revealing probing tongues covered in emerald studs tasting for food, whilst sharp diamond-shaped nostrils waited for signs of death and detritus to enter through. A pair of icy blue eyes scanned the area for a sign of direction, tails ending in a cluster of protruding thorns swishing back and forth.

No larger than German shepherds, the Corpas pack, Foragers of Cosms had arrived, not to aid Barrusom, but to follow the path of carnage the beast so often left behind in its wake, and feed on its gifts. Like the Ravager, they too were very hungry, but in a much more basic, non-insanity inducing way, which nevertheless lit the first spark of extraversal enlightenment. Barrusom was not the inhabitant of a strange dimension--its home was a verse all its own, threaded between other cosms, and presenting an ecosystem which appeared to display its traits more through the Amalgam’s invasive, logos-consuming tendencies.

How much of this Exeter would be able to piece together was unknown, nor was it entirely clear if Barrusom had fully perceived her during its less than stellar charge. How much danger the Lumanarun was in could not be answered with certainty: the tidal wave, though far stronger than the previous one, would merely move her around again, and though the swarm of insectile dogs did not function on a primarily predatory mindset, killing to survive was hardly out of the question. Would she meet their searching stares and become an early-game forage snack, would she spot them first and thin their population which numbered in the tens of thousands, or would Barrusom finally figure out that there was something deliberately trying to keep his paws off the cosmos’ many beehives and go berserk.

A Bubbling Brew To Bash Boredom's Brains In

The Ravager paid attention only to that which served, or impeded its capacity for lulling the unrelenting whining of its cells, crying out to have their empty spaces filled. Its belly bubbled with discomfort, thoroughly agitated by the boiling sensation building inside its stomach. A stuffy feeling spread through its veins, congesting arteries, and made Barrusom roar through the continuum of space-time itself, emitting a vibrating force that made the darkness rattle and fuzz with static energy.

Amidst the chaos of its whining, Barrusom slowed its charge, the shockwaves following its footprints springing back into place moved at a speed fast enough to pass beneath its feet, lifting the beast up like a surfer and adding to his feeling of unease. Space vibrated again, and produced a different sound, akin to a deep groan as the waters it drank earlier rose and fell, touching the ursim's esophagus, as he slid down the waves backside back. It was making the Ravager very nauseous, and there were many more waves yet to endure thanks to its mindless charging.

Numerous times did the shock-waves lift and drop Barrusom, and numerous times would Exeter find her ability to acquire a stable image of her target blocked by light-distorting waves. Furthermore, each time Barrusom’s six-eyed vision cone happened to catch her in its radius, streams of photons would go flowing around her, dimming the cosmos behind her down to pitch blackness, whilst blinding her anterior sight of the reckless monster, whose eyes were light-sucking vacuums with a gravitational pull on par with singularities. Fortunately for the warrior, this feature of Barrusom applied only to photons, leaving her body technically safe from the pull, but still woefully unprepared for the space-time waves that were about to lift her up just the same as their creator.

Still swerving uncontrollably, Barrusom's perception of the cosmos blurred, its constantly changing direction, even as it slid down the wave causing an undulating bend in the river of light rushing down the pathway to its eyes. Finally, the sensory madness became too much, and without pause or restraint, the beast’s stomach contracted hard enough to squeeze its contents up its esophagus, and expelled them through its siphon tongue with enough pressurized force to bisect a moon. Ontop of having extreme cutting power, this substance was highly corrosive to many things, space itself among them. This was not merely due to being mixed with Barrusom's stomach acids, however–the very swamp he drank from was a primordial ocean, born from the first creatures feeding upon the fruits that grew along the Amalgam’s many branches.

If Exeter, or her sword survived what was literally nothing more than the result of an upset stomach, she would see the great root system’s tips breaching through the dissolved continuum, as well as Barrusom, which whose size had actually increased in direct proportion to what it just puked out. Meanwhile, the darkness of space along the rift transmogrified to a fertile, quickly solidifying sludge, along which the Amalgam grew. Like the other things born of the Outerverse, it too, held a name - Ebrias.

A Bubbling Brew To Bash Boredom's Brains In

I am going to give other people a chance to decide if they want to join before responding. This post is actually a few months old and a few people who it was shown to private told me I should use it as a free for all trial by fire/gauntlet, so that's what I intend to do.

A Bubbling Brew To Bash Boredom's Brains In

@Alucroas If that character won't work for you, I've been developing a fully original character from scratch: A "space priestess" who wields a negative-mass sword using her innate connection to all matter in her vicinity to account for how unintuitively it would move (not to mention telekinesis as a fallback for when chasing it with her hands becomes infeasible). Her fighting style would be partially inspired by the swordfighting aspect of Tai Chi, but of course in space and with the caveat of the feedback loop present in this exotic weapon: "you pull sword -> sword pulls you (which is the same as you pulling the sword due to relativity)".

@Spider Pickle

That sounds like it'll work as a starting point if you're looking to be able manipulate cosmic forces. Otherwise, as far as character types go, I only ask that people bring their own original creations. After that, it's up you and whoever else decides to join on what to bring.

A Bubbling Brew To Bash Boredom's Brains In

The Darkness of space, still as it always was, speckled with pin pricks of red, white, and yellow painted a stagnant image. One had to wait hundreds of millions of years for something new to happen, for a change to occur, trapped within the eternally slow passage of eons. Beyond space, however, in the gaps between reason and time, where once there was true nothingness, a network of gray roots, covered in azure moss, and teeming with vibrant, everlasting life, a gargantuan ran across the branching paths that were threaded between universes.

Its simian gait, carried on thick, furry knuckles, covered in a light-distorting slime brought the barrel-chested beast to an incline, prompting its middle-arms to reach down and drive its charcoal, ursine claws into bark. A lesser creature would have dislocated its arms at the elbow from such a sudden stop, but Barrusom’s burly, extraversal strength simply made him lurch forward, tugging the whole structure as he leaned on his forelegs and kept himself from falling over with his rear, his lupine tail flapping in the hot breeze.

His upper-face, in contrast to the rest of his brutish body appeared as though it were concealed under a heavy, iron mask bearing a lustrous sheen that hinted at a starless cosmos. Six holes spread across the forehead, where light was lacking everywhere else, Barrusom’s eyes held an entire galaxy’s worth of swallowed photons, divided into thousands of ravenous searchlights. His long maw hung and jutted at a downward angle, four lateral incisors at the anterior corners of his mouth caged a central row of slicers, molars becoming ever-more visible as his jaw lowered in salivating thirst at the undulating, translucent swamp-waters, churning a thirst-quenching mix of blood and milk.

Possessing zero impulse control, the beast yanked his claws free, kicked off his rear feet, and used his fore like a fulcrum to fling himself forward, tucking his wild form into a bouncing somersault. Every rolling impact pushed and bent the branches, all springing back into place, only to have their integrity tested again and again as Barrusom recklessly rolled down. The end of his descent was the protrusion of his mid-claws against the bark, forcing him into a sudden ascent, cannonballing through the air, mouth agape with an extended tongue compressed into the shape of a hollow tube.

Impacting the waters, devastation reigned supreme for several seconds as he drove a hole through the nutrient-rich surface, producing a veritable tunnel, rapidly collapsing as the water rushed to fill it in. A colossal ring tsunamied outward, assaulting the mangrovian lower half of the Amalgam’s rootsystem, the network’s bottom section becoming more and more exposed as Barrusom’s tongue sucked down trillions of gallons of mother’s creamy crimson carnage.

Several massive bubbles floated up to the surface, a sign of Barrusom’s belch from a belly filled with not nearly enough substance. He was no baby bear after all, and could not satisfy his appetite on something as banal as drinking from an ocean-sized bottle; thus, he bellowed in a manner that combined fury and belligerence, forelimbs raising and slashing as his impulsive urge to consume led him to brazenly tear several rifts in the Outerverse that he would use to bring himself to the biggest buffet of all.

–

A bulge in the boring star-spangled canvas appeared, the slashed-up blackness of space rose up, and burst as a horrifying cosmic blister as Barrusom – the Ravager Of Cosms blitzed and barreled across space on a thoroughly unrestrained rampage. His behemoth-clawed feet pounded, and punctured and stomped the cosmic carpet, apergetic energy building up in the footprints he left behind, generating mammoth aftershocks as they sprung back to normal; consequently the darkly dotted dotted blanket of the universe undulated up and down like ocean waves, disrupting nebulas, disturbing planetary atmospheres, and destroying every semblance of peace and tranquility left, as even the local stars felt their nuclear processes becoming discombobulated.

The calm, boring state of the universe had been viciously damned, and as the telescopic peepholes on the doors of a hundred thousand civilizations were broken down, not a one of them would be so lucky as to find a cute little teddy bear looking to borrow some honey.

Instead, they would see only Barrusom, ready, and unwaiting to raze and rip open their bowels.

A Bubbling Brew To Bash Boredom's Brains In

This is a high-powered open challenge with no limit on how many can join. Expect extreme levels of destruction and carnage. This is not the battle to be holding back in. Otherwise, this isn't meant to be a novella thread, but do bring decent grammar, and keep whatever narratives you do or don't bring consistent enough to be comprehensive.

Lastly, and to repeat myself, this fight is 100% guaranteed to escalate to obscene proportions if the intro didn't spell it out already. I will not hold back, and neither should you.

Neo Babylon

Squelch

Crunch

Bang Bang Bang

Thwackzzzzzzzt

A myriad of different sounds filled the darkness of his slowly waking mind, each note crying and screaming as an orchestra of mayhem. The croc man’s abdomen twitched, elbows sinking into the mud as he arduously slung himself forward, almost allowing himself to sit before the blurred sight of bloody flesh and fur crystallized in his cold, green eyes, ending the motion in a guarded crouch. Kant’s claws spread, tail curved at the perfect strike angle, body slowly rotating with hissing jaws agape.

Throughout his intense threat assessment of the area, he took a headcount of four strangers, and instantly regarded them as one would a band of reckless outsiders. Was it any wonder they were being attacked by the indigenous wildlife? Was it any wonder that the reptile felt an internal sense of pride at the fact that he was the only one not being treated as prey? Then again, such mindless beasts could easily try to pounce on him, and yet they did not, bringing a vague sense of duty, and obligation to his conscience that tempered his arrogance. He was alive for a reason, and life–irrespective of its origin–was not something to be taken for granted, thus he resolved himself to right his pride and seek out a solution to level the playing field.

Kant did not like taking sides. The bugs were hungry and required food to survive, and the others, whether he found them harmonious or hazardous to nature, possessed a higher chance of aiding him in his quest to resolve the strange feeling that beset them. Therefore, it fell upon him to ensure their survival, at least until he knew who among them were worthy of becoming his long-term allies.

The debonair man appeared to be in the most immediate need of aid, and the young lady with the magic lightning rod gave him an idea.

Water rose through the mud, spreading across the ground at one foot per three seconds. Soon the bugs would become less mobile, unable to pounce due to becoming boyant and having no solid earth with which to stand on, though nothing could be said in relation to their tree climbing skills. Spotting a sickly tree that appeared to be nearing the end of its life, Kant dove into the rapidly growing swamp and swam as fast as he could, splitting water with open jaws as his tail propelled him through the murk. Clamping his jaws around its stem, several long strenuous moments passed before he heard the bark crack and splinter, finishing the job with a swift tail swipe that sent the tree falling against another.

By this point the water level had reached twelve feet in depth, and the croc was busying himself scaling one of the healthier trees, whilst banking on the intelligence of the oddly dressed man, and thunder girl to take advantage of the opening he had given them.

Neo Babylon

Name: Kant
Aliases: The Grower and the Mover, The One Who Rots and Cleanses the Swamp, The One Who Feeds on Gluttons.
Height: 8ft
Sex: Male
Likes: A healthy diet of meat and berries, those who respect the swamp, and passing his knowledge down to future guardians.
Dislikes: Unhealthy creatures who would taint the swamp with their filth, people who cannot fathom the difference between a predator and a guardian, and the ones who say eating your enemies never solved anything. They clearly haven’t seen a person relieve themselves in a swamp.
Distinctive Features: His eye color changes based on how he perceives another's emotions.

Appearance: He is a tall, bipedal crocodilian with a bulky frame, and a leaning gait that is counterbalanced by a thick, sturdy, ten foot tail which serves as his primary means of propulsion, doubling as a powerful weapon capable of breaking bones. His skin is hard, bony, and appears to have integrated some features of the armors belonging to those he has slain for disregarding his warnings about respecting the swamp. His snout is sixteen inches long, claws six inches and curved. Consequently, the scales possess blunt, rectangular edges, particularly on his shoulders, elbows, wrists, and knees, whereas his torso is covered by what appears to be a more rigid second skin, functioning as pseudo plate mail.

Personality: Respect the swamp. It is his only rule. Do this, and Kant can be quite patient and accommodating to the needs of those who enter his domain. With this being said, he does not take kindly to any ecosystem being threatened and has an innate sense of when one is being endangered through willful recklessness. He understands that people need to eat, to build, and to ultimately maintain their civilizations, but he does not excuse those who carelessly disregard their capacity to think and act in harmony with nature. Those who willfully reject their own brains will find their skulls crushed between Kant's jaws.

The Third Lid: Everybody feels things. The spectrum of emotions is as vast as the marshlands, deep as the jungle, and at times can be as murky and oppressive as the humidity of the swamp. Not all feelings are dark, damp, and gloomy though, some shine bright like the sun, others are like a soft glow, and more still emit a pulse that traverses the line being hypnotic, mesmerizing allure, and terrifying brazeness that leads all down the path of rage.

Crocodiles use their third eyelid to filter out the water's obscurity, allowing them to see clearly through the depths. Kant's third lid not only allows the biological benefit of unobstructed underwater sight, but allows him to see the emotions of whoever stands before him, be it man, beast, monster, or devil. He can see their true, albeit momentary color, which is to say whichever feeling is presently strongest, he can see is literally presented to his mind as a spiritual wavelength reflecting a single spectrum of light.

Whoever so allows their true feelings to be witnessed by Kant shall also witness their color reflected in the eyes of the croc. Seeing red is, to put it lightly, more than just a metaphor when Kant is the one looking at you.

The Smell Of Magic, And The Taste Of Deep Water: Kant's nose can smell the supernatural, he can taste the ethereal flesh of spirits. He can sniff out a curse, detect faint enchantments, and he can likewise discern if something edible will have more than just the usual assortment of nutritional benefits merely by tasting it. He can likewise hold a ghost between his jaws, and crunch a cursed, or even blessed sword with his bite force, swallowing them back into the void.

Earth and Water: He can push the water, and shove the earth. He can nourish the green leaves and rot the brown bark, raise the deep above the knees, or lower it to a puddle beneath one's feet. All these things are possible at his physical touch, with water rising or falling at a rate of 3 feet per 10 seconds, and plants growing or decaying at the same rate, with a radial range of 20 feet.

Might Of The Protector: Kant is strong enough to lift a man with one hand, his jaws can crush stone, his tail can break bones, and he can roll a boulder with his powerful arms, chest, and shoulders. His claws are sharp enough to slash and pierce flesh, durable enough to parry swords, speartips, and can flick arrowheads out of flight if struck right.

Last Memory: A sudden, ominous wind blew through the swamp, followed by a dark vortex crackling with lightning swallowing him into its depths.

Additional Plot Hooks: “This world suffers from a malady. I will discern its cause and crush it between my teeth.”