Tuujaimaa

Divinus: The Deity Roleplay, Mk. V

---

A shrill sound, something between a howl and a hiss, drew Ahtziri's attention away from her reverie. She turned her head to look towards the source of the sound, only to be bowled over by Pazuzu leaping into her and giving her face a long, sloppy lick--and she laughed, bringing her clawed hands up to rub his muzzle. The two rolled over one another in the dusty crags of the cave they were in, occasionally bumping into creatures that looked like Pazuzu had before he had received his Mother's blessings, and after only a few moments of raucous play the entire litter seemed to be awake and joining in on the dogpile. For the first time in her short existence, Ahtziri knew what it was to be content--she knew the feeling of love given and love received, she knew the feeling of belonging, and she knew that a mother's love was boundless. She let the scene play out just a little longer before beating her wings to gently manoeuvre the creatures away from her, and most of them simply skidded along the floor towards the edges of the spacious cavern that was their nest. One was caught by her wingtip directly, and the force knocked it up into the air with a terrible yowl--but before it could get too far, her tail whipped up to catch it and cradled it softly as its serpentine tongue licked the thing's face and all was forgiven and forgotten.

Pazuzu himself let out a quick bark, nosing towards the entrance of the cavern, and Ahtziri turned herself to look towards it. Though nothing was approaching their ersatz warren, she could intuit precisely what her firstborn meant: they would need a bigger space, now that they were able to thrive with impunity under her protection. She stood up, then hovered slightly off of the ground in order to shake the dust and dirt from herself, and whistled a piercing tone to beckon her children to her. They each made their way over to her simultaneously, bumping into one another with no heed for the limitations of the physical space or their own wellbeing, and only when Ahtziri's taloned feet touched the ground did they sit on their haunches and shuffle into a relatively even layer. She counted thirty-four of the creatures, not counting Pazuzu, and pressed her clawtips together in a brief moment of thought. If they were to make it in the world, to survive and to thrive (she knew not why this was important, only that it was), they would need to be augmented in a similar fashion to that of Pazuzu--and they would also need something or someone to watch over them when she was not present. Though the rage she felt when the humans had first cornered Pazuzu had left her and she could not even remember its white-hot sting, she remembered all too clearly the consequences of the confrontation: these mortals, wherever they were, were a threat to her children if left unanswered.

She pressed a single clawtip to her right palm, slicing across it with a deftness and conviction hitherto undisplayed. She coaxed forth a single droplet of the divine ichor that flowed within her veins, a drop of distilled deifaction, and beckoned Pazuzu forth to kneel before her. He did so quickly and obediently, twin tongues hanging from his twin muzzles, and she beckoned him to drink of her essence with a single look. His raspy tongue raked itself across her open wound, lapping up the single droplet, before Ahtziri knitted her flesh together with a thought. A deep, purple glow began within Pazuzu's maw and trickled down his throat like spreading flames, clearly visible even beneath his sinew and flesh and fur--and he let out an almighty whine as it changed something within him forever. Though his features did not explicitly change he grew to be several times larger than he previously was, now standing face-to-face with the Mother of Monsters (who herself was around ten feet tall in her humanoid form), and the sinew of his wings became wreathed in a shell of gently dancing purple flames. He opened his muzzle to bark, but instead of the guttural sound of a monster emerging came a sound he had not expected:

"Thank you!"

Two of Pazuzu's eyes looked towards his lower muzzle, and two towards his upper. He blinked once, then twice, before his eyes opened themselves incredulously wide, and he spoke again:

"I can... speak? I can... I can think! Oh, Mother, I love you so!"

Ahtziri's smile had grown equally incredulously wide at that moment, and tears of joy spilled from her eyes with no regard to what she wanted. She drew in a quick, shaky breath and pressed herself into Pazuzu's now-massive frame, openly weeping into his fur as the love she felt for her firstborn child poured from her very being. It took her a good few moments to compose herself, and as she did so the other creatures sat open-jawed, tongues lolling out of their mouths and tails wagging furiously. They growled out their unanimous approval, four yellowed eyes and four dark pupils dilating with their rapturous attention, and suddenly it was all too much for them to bear and they piled onto Pazuzu (though he now utterly dwarfed them in size) with gentle and loving nips. Blood was drawn fairly quickly, owing to Pazuzu's lack of divine resilience, and the creatures each lapped it up hungrily.

"Okay, okay! Stop!"

The last word was spoken with such intensity that the force of the noise buffeted the things, sending them further back into the walls than Ahtziri had, and though many of them let out raspy mewls of pain their tails did not stop wagging and they remained utterly enraptured by their newly empowered brother.

"Oh, Pazuzu... My beautiful, beautiful child." Ahtziri took a moment to regain her composure, swallowing and inhaling deeply, before continuing.

"I cannot be everywhere, and I cannot look after your pack to the exclusion of my children strewn across these lands. While I am gone, you must look after your brethren, the... do you have a name for yourselves, my child?"

Pazuzu's features contorted in obvious concentration, the tongue from his lower muzzle hanging out towards the left and the tongue from his upper muzzle towards the right, as he took a second to think it over.

"... hm. No, Mother, we do not. What would you call us?"

"I shall call you the Abiktu, then. You must protect them, Pazuzu, and change them as I have changed you."

Ahtziri took a step back, pressing her forehead against Pazuzu's snout for a brief moment, and turned away towards the mouth of the cave. The Abiktu all looked towards her, their forlorn gazes prickling against her skin, and she turned around for a final time.

"I will return, fret not. There is no force in this world that can kill a goddess."

Pazuzu nodded, his lower maw snapping and howling to get the attention of the others, as Ahtziri flew off into the night.

---

The winged figure of Ahtziri flew atop a great swath of barren rock, even the ruins that had littered it having been pulverised to dust. The only wind that blew was the result of her great wings flapping steadily, and her gaze was steeled as she looked down into the earth below. Thrive. The word thrummed in her skull, an invisible urging that gently tickled her consciousness with tantalising whispers of lives yet unborn and flesh yet unshaped. Ahtziri wondered in the privacy of her thoughts about the nature of her role in the world--it was simply a fundamental fact that all of the monsters of the world were her children, born or not. But if they were to truly thrive, she would have to create more: she would have to birth new horrors into the world to quell the onslaught of mortalkind's cruelty beneath an endless tide of flesh. She would have to act as steward and creator both, taking the mantle of Mother upon herself in every possible sense. The second that the thoughts crossed her mind she knew them to be inviolably true, a fundamental aspect of her being in the same way that she was divine, that she was the Mother of Monsters, that she was Ahtziri. She steeled her resolve before plummeting to the earth in a graceful (insofar as she was capable of grace) swoop, landing upon it with a thud that shook through the earth for many miles.

Ahtziri placed her hands on her belly, closed her eyes, and let the world fall away. Though she was happy to simply birth monsters into the world, the creature she had in mind was simply too large for such a feat without her shedding the constraints of the form she was in--and though there was nothing around that she could sense, some hint of restraint refused to fall away from her on that particular topic. The truth was too glorious to reveal to the world in its current state, too much for it to bear--so she focused the powers of creation coursing within her, coaxing a mote of life from her womb, and suspending it in the air. It was a tiny, fragile thing--but as Ahtziri focused and gave of herself it grew rapidly, expanding and pulsating, soft flesh emerging from it at a staggering rate and folding upon itself. The formless mass quickly took shape, stretching and elongating exponentially, until soon it was so large that it was forced to coil around upon itself to even stay within Ahtziri's field of vision. Segments of black chitinous plating grew from the soft flesh, surrounding it like ringlets of armour, and a cavernous maw filled with teeth emerged at one end while a tail tipped with an enormous stinger emerged from the other. Ahtziri screamed out with the exertion of the effort before withdrawing her magic, and the great wurm crashed towards the ground mouth-first. Its teeth began to furiously gnaw at the earth, burrowing deep into it and swallowing it, and still it took five minutes for the thing to disappear beneath the surface due to its immensity.

The Bizai'i

Ahtziri looked down at the hole that marked its ingress, momentarily staggered by the sheer size of it. She smiled to herself, proud of her monstrous creation, before flying off into the night once more.

Summary

Ahtziri plays with her Abiktu children, many-legged wolfish creatures with four eyes, two maws, and sinewy batlike wings that hunt in packs. She chooses to endow Pazuzu with a spark of her divine ichor, granting him considerable intellect and increasing his size massively, and tasks him with protecting the pack while she tends to the rest of the world that requires her intervention. She flies off a considerable distance away to somewhere truly barren, spurred on by a strange desire to bring forth life, and creates the Bizai'i, a tremendous wurm that burrows beneath the earth and consumes ores to grow a tremendous rocky carapace. Satisfied with her creation, she leaves to wander the wastes in search of new opportunities to adopt or create monsters, and to ensure that no mortals hunt her children.

MA

1 (0) - Create the Abiktu as a widespread race of monsters
1 (0) - Create the Bizai'i

Divinus: The Deity Roleplay, Mk. V

---

Of all the rules and regulations of the universe, the truest was always thus: Nothing ever comes for free.

Creation, as the ineffable 'they' would say, is the work of lifetimes; destruction, of mere moments. Both of these statements were equally true, and centuries of supplicants had finally offered enough of themselves to coax the forces of creation into being. Perhaps it was the chaotic streaks of magic that illuminated what could only charitably be called a sky, perhaps it was the radiation seeping into every living thing and reducing it to imperfections upon imperfections. Sometimes the answer to a question was not in a solution, but in dissolution--sometimes, destruction was a necessary catalyst for creation. Whatever the reasons the universe might have had for the current spate of dogged persistence were not strictly relevant, as the defining feature of the raw chaos in that moment was beautiful, ecstatic creation: the birth of something divine.

Ahtziri emerged from the husk of her cocoon like a bat out of hell, screaming and tearing at nothing in particular as sable wings carried her high above the barren wasteland from which she had emerged. It took a full thirty seconds for her to come to some semblance of calm and stop her newly created vocal chords from producing a sound so heinous that it threatened to pierce the fabric of reality itself, and as she hovered in the air with ragged breaths leaving her lungs the echoes of that sound could be felt still. Seconds passed, her feathered wings gently beating against the backdrop of utter cosmic annhiliation in the distance (or perhaps not--did utter nothingness even have dimensions?), and then she was moving again with conviction and purpose. Her clawed feet touched the ground with a resounding thud, and a feminine hand gently caressed the blood and ichor-soaked splinters of wood that had cleaved themselves from the whole once she'd emerged. She bent down to pick one of them up, feeling its weight and its texture in her hands, but stopped suddenly as her flesh pressed itself against the ground.

She could still feel the echo of her scream within the pocked, craggly ground--and then she could feel vibrations that seemed to only grow in intensity, building on their ruinous resonance, and only her godly reflexes allowed her to jump off of the ground in time to escape it cracking and crumbling beneath her. She studied it intensely as she hovered above it, watching how it pulverised itself into fragments, and then pebbles, and then dust--and in but a precious few seconds it was all gone, unmoored from the world, drifting away towards the absence of existence in the distance. The gentle, rhythmic beating of wings was the only sound that remained--and the Mother of Monsters looked into the distance with a sense of loss she could not explain. It tore through her body and flooded her very being, a melancholy twisting and writhing inside her, until she could take it no more and soared inland to distract herself from whatever it was that had affected her so.

---

She flew for hours, scouring the remnants of what once was, and her melancholy turned towards a strangely familiar yearning. Every now and then she would touch down and walk amidst the ruins of civilisations she simultaneously recognised and did not, her serpentine tail hissing and flitting its tongue about the stale air as it searched for something it did not know how to find. Ahtziri's fingers pressed over sheets of torn metal, faded canvases that had once contained colour and beauty and life, and though they filled her with a ruinous nostalgia for something she had never known and could never know they were not the object of her search--she wept a single, silent tear and she took to the skies again to look for whatever it was that she had set out to find.

Hours passed her by once more, punctuated only by the grumbling and screeching of unstable earth that she was already familiar with. Here, at the edge of the world, there was nothing but death and ruin. She turned herself inland and flew in, stopping to look back at the nothingness before her a final time, and let the onslaught of air dry her tears as she flew. She could not rightly say how much time passed before a rabid hissing and snapping shook her from her mourning, her tail wrapping itself around her arm to push itself towards her face. It bit into her cheek, harmlessly sliding off, and pointed downwards towards the ground towards the east--she batted it away with the back of her hand, her lip quivering in momentary rage, before she realised what exactly it was trying to convey and she swooped down towards the ground to check what it had found. Its tongue tasted the air rapidly, pulling itself in a flurry of directions, before the distant sounds of a skirmish began to grow in intensity. Spurred on by her curiosity, Ahtziri flew towards it with all the haste she could muster and soon arrived at the scene of a fight.

A band of three humans (she didn't know how she knew what they were, but she did), armed with crude spears and swords made from pilfered metal and long-dead wood were backing a tangled mess of matter fur, bloodied teeth, and four rabid unblinking eyes into a corner. Its teeth gnashed and it let out a horrific, mewling howl, but despite the display of aggression it was still being slowly moved backwards into the stone ruins of what might have once been some kind of domicile. Though the roof and two of its walls were gone, or had fallen to the floor in clumps of debris, two walls of stone still stood perpendicular to one another--and the creature was running out of space to back into. As soon as Ahtziri's eyes rested upon it, her heart swelled in her chest--she felt love for this broken and horrible thing, a mother's love, and the sheer force of it froze her breath in her chest and welled her eyes up with tears. Just as quickly as it had come, however, it passed--and the love turned to fury, curdling and souring, as the humans advanced upon it once more. She could see the bodies strewn about the place, humans having killed six or seven of these canid predators and the pack having killed double that number of humans--there was no time for thought, no time to process the emotions. She was upon the three in an instant, grabbing the first by its neck and forcing her fingers through it into the soft, warm flesh beneath--with a single twist of her muscles she ripped its head clean from its shoulders in a gruesome display of savagery, taking advantage of the shock to rush a few feet to the side and grab another human by the skull. She lifted him off the ground effortlessly, her yellow-red eyes boring into his with such intensity that only the adrenaline in his system kept him from passing out, and began to squeeze down on his fragile bones with all the force she could bring to bear. It took less time than a human was capable of perceiving for his head to explode in a gory shrapnel of blood and bone, his brains scattered across the bare stone walls like paint.

The last human turned in incredulous shock, dropping his weapons, and screaming at the top of his lungs at the sight. He pulled in shallow, frantic breaths as his hands quivered and trembled, his entire frame vibrating with the exertion of the act and the lack of oxygen he was receiving. Sputtering words tried to make their way past his lips, but his tongue seemed to have swollen to an incredible size and it simply flopped around in his mouth like a stinking, rotting slug--the colour left his skin, and after another second he collapsed to the floor in quiet terror, dazed and reeling.

"My child... My beautiful child..."

Ahtziri turned to the suddenly emboldened creature that was once cornered, crouching and resting on her haunches so as to be face-to-face with the thing. Four eyes looked into hers, and the awful thing licked her face as if it were nothing but a harmless puppy seeking approval from its mother. Ahtziri let out a peal of laughter, bringing it deep into an embrace with her, while her tail snapped and hissed at the quivering wreck of a man that was still blubbering on the ground.

"You do not know what it is to be a mother. You do not know what it is like to see your child hunted because it is different, because it is reviled... but you will."

Ahtziri picked the man up with her tail, its teeth grabbing into his shoulder while it wrapped around his form, and she placed a hand upon his belly with a gentleness that one would not expect from a creature capable of the carnage she had just wrought. A pale, sickly glow began to emanate from her palm, creeping up her fingers like a baleful flame, before settling into him with an ominous purple light. She withdrew her hand and she brought him closer to her, the carrion stench of her almost-foaming breath wafting directly into his face, and pressed her face directly against his.

"You have been blessed by Ahtziri, and no monster will harm you. They will recognise the scent of a mother..."

The man did not think, did not respond, did not blink. Ahtziri tossed him to the side with her tail, letting him go, and the distinct sound of feet running away as quickly as they physically could was heard in the background. The Mother of Monsters turned her attention back to the monstrous thing on the ground, looking up at her with an expression she could only describe as reverence, and she rested her hand upon it. Its flesh began to ripple and undulate beneath the grey-black fur matted with blood and bile, and a howl punctured the air as sinewy wings erupted from the thing's back and its wounded flesh knitted itself back together. Its jaw dislocated and popped, additional rows of razor-sharp teeth erupted from its blackened gums; additional claws sprouted from its paws, followed by additional limbs stretching out from its body until it had eight in total. Ahtziri looked down upon it, and cradled its maw in her hands as she placed the tenderest of kisses atop its filthy, mangy snout.

"Come, Pazuzu. Show me your brothers and sisters."

Summary

Ahtziri is born, and watches as the place she was born from disappears into the void owing to the unstable nature of the world at present. She feels a sense of longing for something while looking into the void and ventures inland to find it--and comes across a group of humans about the slaughter the last of a pack of monsters they had fought with. She kills two, and impregnates the final (male) with a newborn monster identical to the one they were about to kill, and sends him on his merry way to enjoy what little time he has left. She changes the creature into an even more fearsome predator, gives it a name, and goes off to find its kin.

Divinus: The Deity Roleplay, Mk. V

Ahtziri, the Mother of Monsters

---

The domain of monsters oversees that which is considered to be the antithesis of mortalkind and civilisation: things utterly alien and incomprehensible to the structure, order, and morality of mortalkind and nature at-large. It is the corruption and twisting of flesh into something bestial and primal, it is a terrible fecundity that breeds and breeds without ceasing, and it is the surrendering of social norms in favour of primal cruelty and reckless abandon--where reason is forsaken and only a twisted mockery of what once was remains. Though it is what mortalkind at large is not, it is not a construct that can be set apart from mortality and all its conditions: the greatest monsters are born of mortalkind’s convictions that they are right, and of their lusts and passions inflamed until all else falls away. To be monstrous, and thus to fall under the domain of Monsters, it is not enough to be primal or wild--monsters are grotesque and macabre mockeries of the sane, things that defy the natural order, taken to horrible extremes and born or twisted in flesh to match this ideological perversion.

Ahtziri is (or at least considers herself to be) the mother of all things monstrous, be they born or created, and her powers are concerned with the creation and manipulation of the monstrous. She is a goddess of exceptional fecundity, birthing many monsters herself with horrifying regularity and speed--and this propensity for creating life is something she can also bestow (or force) upon any sentient living being. In addition to birthing or allowing others to birth the monstrous, she is also able to twist flesh into a monstrous caricature of what it previously was, so long as it becomes something that the being considers to be monstrous (or causing their current form to match an already monstrous psychology). Ahtziri is, notably, a goddess of life--she possesses the capacity to facilitate the creation of living beings on a staggering scale, but this comes with the caveat that any life blessed by the Mother of Monsters is tainted, and destined to become a monster in ideology or in form (and quite often both).

Ahtziri is a capricious and melodramatic creature, who lives life to its extreme in every moment: she loves fiercely, despises utterly, and experiences rage with the entirety of her being. She flows from extreme to extreme without apparent rhyme or reason, in one moment drunk on her adoration for you and in the next a flurry of claws and teeth and sinew, rabidly attacking without concern for life or limb. After her mood swings, however, she forgets any lasting consequences of any of her fickle changes of character almost immediately--love gives way to hate, and fury is met with a gentle, nurturing side that longs only to be your mother and love you completely.

Ahtziri’s only true constant, above all else, is her maternal love for everything monstrous. She never loses her affection for all of her children, and many of her flights of fancy are motivated by that maternal love in one way or another, however unjustifiable it may seem. She considers herself the mother of a large and abstract family in a simultaneously sincere and twisted way--genuine maternal love exists, but there is also a motivation of possession and jealousy in her love that can lead her to express a certain cruelty towards her children if they evoke her spite (but she is never unable to forgive them completely).

---

A Myth; A Monster

"It was written in the Scrolls of Kur-nugia, long ago, that death is irreversible. That once a soul has reached its final resting place, the doors are barred and no return is ever possible--and this, for all we know, is still true now."

The hoarse, throaty voice of a man rang through the eerie silence like the peal of a clarion bell, and several shadow-draped figures turned their eyes to look at its source in unison. They came to rest upon a frail, tottering old man whose hands could only barely stop themselves from shaking at the mercy of a seemingly absent wind, knuckles white and bony from the exertion of holding on to a clay tablet as if it were the last hope for all that ever was and would be.

"... yes, death is irreversible once the soul has departed. But when the soul remains, safely ensconced within what remains of the husk of this world, there is a spark of possibility--so say the teachings of the Great Mother! That if our lives are stored here, they may be transmuted--changed--and that hope might continue, no matter how bleak it seems now. That we will be spared the endlessly grasping hands of the dead!"

The words seemed to pick up faint traces of some unidentifiable and bone-dry powder on the ground, little puffs and ringlets of the stuff just barely forming before settling once again into the dirt. The old man squinted in the dying light, somehow still suspended in the sky, and took a lurching step forwards so that he was just barely caught in the umbra of its looming shadow--within it, some semblance of strength seemed to return to him, and he rose himself a full inch taller than he had been to address the swaddled and huddled figures craning their necks to hang upon his every pontification.

"... there is a tree, said to have been grown by the Goddess, that does not take life but stores it within its many branches--a tree once so great it could have sheltered the world 'neath its boughs! Death... death is certain for us, now, and the shades of Kur are not long behind our heels. Even now they nip at us, and soon even shadow will not cloak us--so to it we shall travel, and to it we shall offer what little remains within our breasts. Perhaps, ere long, our sacrifice will placate the shades and something new will begin. Perhaps..." the words trailed off as whatever momentary strength the man had mustered left him with a shuddering cough, and in the half-light the air seemed dewy with a little ripple of his rapidly leaching life essence. He brought a hand up to his mouth and wiped away fresh, bright blood--and then he brought his quivering hand to the threadbare cloth of his tunic and feebly wiped it away as best as he could.

---

The plateau had not been that far away--but in the absence of light and wind and time it was impossible to say how long the six or seven survivors had walked. They had passed the ruins of wonders they'd thought would never cease in the sky, stone and metal streaking in patterns across a canvas of infinite depth. The sustension of the last rays of light had not yet passed, and they glittered like the promise of something against the infinite void that had already swallowed their source. They trickled into the extant ruins of the wonders that had been and bounced off of them, into the eyes of the crawling enclave of survivors, and traces of histories they'd never known were revealed to them: a roiling storm possessed of a motherly aspect; a glint of silver that contained another world; a half-remembered love so fierce it had almost burned everything around it to tears and ash. These things survived only in the twilight of existence, and were wholly unappreciated by their final observers--with the exception of one.

A great claw of withered and gnarled wood tore itself out of the ground, like the futile defiance of a shade not ready to embrace the eternity of the void. As the man approached it, his pulse quickened within his veins--and he coughed again, the tiny red droplets suspended in the air for just a moment before pulling themselves on invisible currents towards the shape in the background. The old man did not speak any more, merely continuing to walk, until his flesh sloughed off of his bones and slumped to the ground in a heaving, steaming pile. Then it, too, crawled towards the last bastion of hope until it dissolved away into a fine mist and nestled itself within the folds of the wood. Another joined him, and then another, and then another--and when they were done it shimmered and glistened with the fluids of life and a gentle rhythm began to flutter from within it. The wood pulsed and writhed, suddenly possessed of a strangely hale and vital aspect, before contracting--and then expanding, and contracting, as the ligneous gave way to the pulsing of flesh and sinew. As each pilgrim crawled ever-closer, the greedy hand of death snatched the breath of life from them until at last there were no witnesses or supplicants left. The writhing of the flesh-that-was-wood grew and grew, until its din suffocated even the silence.

Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Thu-thump.

The cry of a mother birthing a child pierced what remained of the world, and Ahtziri was born.

---

The Mother

Ahtziri’s head is rarely human, often taking the form of an animal (or monster) based on her current mood and who she is interacting with. The only real constants are her wings (which may be made of scales or feathers or sinew, but are always present), having more breasts than is normal (three, in this aspect) and that she is always heavily pregnant. Her form is equal parts alluring and grotesque, and her flesh seems to writhe and pulse of its own accord even in the absence of stimulation. She possesses a long tail that begins as a furry appendage, then becomes sinewy and stringy, and finally ends in scales and the head of a serpent with uncountable rows of razor-sharp teeth.

The Maiden

In this form, Ahtziri loses her obviously pregnant belly and the most monstrous of her features. She becomes cloaked in a gossamer veil of ecstatic beauty, the perfect imagine of fertility, but her third breast remains--and its areola and nipple become a closed eye. Her wings remain but her tail disappears, and eyes become soft and dewy. This form is designed to appeal primarily to those who are distinctly not monstrous, and to trick them into copulating with the Mother of Monsters--only for the deception to be revealed, the glamour shorn away, and for the child to be born. It is a personal favourite when Ahtziri interacts with the falsely pious, a wicked tool of deception to show them how monstrous they are within and how anything born of them shall look.

The Truth

Ahtziri’s true form is a monstrous, life-bearing creature so unfathomably alien and abhorrent to the fundamental rules of reality that merely the sight of her causes inescapable madness and perversion. She might not break the mind of a mortal completely, but it is guaranteed to be twisted and perverted to the extent that the person who once was most certainly no longer exists.

She is a towering mass of undulating and ceaseless flesh, various distinct forms of life emerging and changing all at once: she is the essence of every monster that ever was, every rule of sanity and decency broken in some way or another. Her true size is impossible to fully grasp, as is any semblance of shape--new life constantly forms within and from her, splitting off and tearing away into the night. She perpetually gives birth to untold horrors from various unknowable orifices, obscuring the sky with hordes of winged things and covering the ground with a ravening mass of flesh, tooth, and claw. Flesh that comes near her is immediately and irrevocably twisted, and it immediately betrays its previous owner: Ahtziri’s true form overtakes and subsumes life on a staggering scale, devouring it in order to birth new horrors from the memories contained within.

The Black Prophecy (Dead now; requiescat in pace!)

Hrothkirk, 315 P.F.

---

Though the wetlands proper were some distance away from even the outskirts of Hrothkirk, the buzzing of gnats and mosquitoes still made itself known within the humid and fetid air that hung at the edges of the settlment. Sounds of fast and irritated slaps were not uncommon amongst the ramshackle huts of mouldering wood that gathered as the ground became more and more sodden away from Hrothhøll proper, and the droning of the fauna seemed to serve as a strangely choral backdrop for often-muttered prayers praising the Exalted One. The tradition of His worship was sparse in the Hundred Lakes, and sparser still in the Twenty Halls to the east--but the denizens of Hrothkirk were the stock of ancient crusaders, and their vows to watch over this strange and swampy land had been repeated and sworn since their great god had walked the earth still. None within the church could truly remember why the vows had been sworn, or what it was they were supposed to do, but they upheld the tradition nonetheless and eked out a humble (if pious) living. Though the low hum of prayer was a constant, these days it was punctuated in places by wracking, wet coughs and shuddering exhalations of breath that were almost enough to make one think the air carried invisible shards of ice. Thick, stinking mud squelched underfoot as Gorm made his way through what could only be called a path with an excess of generosity, swinging a censer suspended from thickly braided ropes and trying to breathe in as much of the sweet and spicy smoke as he could to mask the overwhelming odour that now lingered in the air. He barked out the lines of the prayers that he was supposed to, barely managing to make it through without wretching or gagging, before arriving outside a small cabin that looked palatial in contrast with its surroundings, and burst through the door.

"Thyra!"

The words were accompanied by the sound of a wad of phlegm being dredged up and spat onto the floor, and shortly thereafter by another door opening and a haggard-looking woman with matted streaks of blonde hair glued down to her face by sweat and grime. She did not deign to immediately respond, instead taking a deep swig from a tankard, and hunching over with a hand on her back as she clearly struggled to regain the breath that she'd been holding.

"Ah, Gorm... they're getting worse, I'm afraid." Thyra choked out, Gorm looked down at her, grim lines etching themselves around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth, as he placed a hand on her shoulder gingerly and wiped his own sweat-slick hair from his forehead.

"You're not looking so good yourself, Thyra. May He keep you and sustain you."

The words tumbled out of Gorm's mouth hastily, and he snapped his hand back in order to move over to a small table. He gathered up a couple of wicker bowls containing crusts of bread and cuts of salted mutton that'd been brought to them by Father Erikke as alms for those suffering, taking a second to look at them before turning his gaze to the coughing woman across from him. He picked the bowl up and placed it in Thyra's awaiting hands, and then he took the censer that he'd been holding and placed it on the table. He fiddled with it for a second, fumbling for a latch, before finding it and releasing the top half of the worn, thin metal. He grumbled something under his breath as he looked around for a flint and tinder to relight the flame, finding it after a couple of seconds of looking around the sparsely furnished room. He brushed himself off, took a deep breath (swallowing the thick mucus that had built up in his lungs as he did so), and reignited the flame within the censer to burn the incense anew. After a couple of tries the flame overcame the humidity and the herbs within the basket set alight, and a couple of slow breaths managed to coax the smoke to begin flowing once more. He fastened the thing back up, picked it up, and made his way to the door.

"I'm going to hand this out. Do you want me to fetch you some more water? You should lie down, Thyra, you might have come down with it..." Gorm began, hesitating a second in the doorway, and turned to look at the clearly worse-for-wear Sister. It was difficult to tell in the dim torchlight, but he could just about make out that her eyes were puffy and red, terribly bloodshot, and that her forehead was sopping with sweat. He mumbled a prayer under his breath before releasing an exasperated sigh, and moved back into the shack so he could put the censer and bowl back on the table to tend to his friend. She had barely moved an inch during his visit to check in, and he decided that he'd put her to bed and fetch her some fresh water from the well just to be safe--he'd done the rounds alone the past few nights anyway, and it was clear to him that she was in no state to do anything but rest.

"... Evening rose... Do you smell the evening roses?" Thyra's voice punctuated the noise of the insects and the prayer in the background strangely, with an oddly harmonic quality, that was equal parts pleasing and grating. She stumbled for a second and her eyes went glassy, and only Gorm's quick intervention prevented her from collapsing on the ground completely. He nudged open a nearby door with his foot, revealing a darkened space just big enough for a bed, and guided Thyra to it. Her skin was clammy and unusually cool, and something oddly sticky seemed to almost want to adhere his flesh to hers for a brief second before he was able to pull away--he'd noticed the same thing happening to the others who'd gotten sick and his face contorted into a grimace.

"I... let's get you to bed. I can finish the rounds tonight by myself."

It took a few moments, but Gorm was able to lay her down and place a damp rag on her forehead. He washed his hands in the bowl of water that it had been sitting in, and noticed that some of the grime that had collected on his hands seemed to be floating on top of the water. He couldn't tell if it was the light, but it looked oddly... black, and strangely viscous, like some kind of oil. He shrugged to himself before walking back to the other room, where the smoke had collected in odd plumes that seemed almost to take the shape of petals within the air, and the scent of evening roses flooded his nose for a brief instant. He figured that it was just whatever sickness was spreading around, shaking his head and rubbing his hands down his face, and picked the censer and bowl up. As he made his way through the frame of the door the sound of insects and prayers resumed, louder than he ever remembered it, and a thrumming like whispers and sighs settled just outside of his perception. He began to walk the circular route around the edge of town where the sick were being kept, and handed a few strips of the meat and a crust of bread to each of the denizens within the sodden edifices. The more he walked the louder the prayers and the buzzing got, and after only a few minutes all he could smell within the smoke was the pungent aroma of metallic blood, cloying up his nose and his throat and his lungs. He stopped for a second as a spasm of coughs racked his chest, heaving and sputtering, before spitting out an enormous wad of pitch-black phlegm. He breathed the air in through his nose and this time the stench of blood was so strong and his reaction so visceral that he vomited an oily mass of black liquid onto the ground and black tears escaped the corners of his eyes.

He managed to take only a few more shaky steps before his legs collapsed beneath him and the items he'd been carrying fell to the ground, his knees sinking into the mud and the vomit as he did so. His vision swam, and as he gasped for air he fell forwards and planted his face firmly in the mud in front of him with a wet slap. He closed his eyes and grimaced, lungs heaving, as he felt his consciousness slipping away beneath him.

"blessed be Her name, O Máthair-Amaidí... blessed be Her name, O Máthair-Amaidí..."

The words slipped into his skull before he'd even noticed, and the word "Mother" left his lips before the world went black, and the white flame within him was doused.

The Black Prophecy (Dead now; requiescat in pace!)

Something something something JUSTICE.

Sir Aulus

Arnth’s Inn, Marcester -- Early Spring -- 315 PF

---

It had been a trying season for the small town of Marcester. The rains had come too late, and though they had enough in their granary to last another winter it would be difficult when the cold came the next time around and they had not yet replenished their stores. It would mean periods of long fasting in meditation for the learned folk, and a slight nibble of hunger for most of the year for the serfs--but worse had happened, and they thanked the Exalted above that a rain had come at all. The one commodity that the town shared in excess still enough to be called plentiful was ale, and owing to their location along the main road towards Arcos from Paterdomus they saw much in the way of travellers thirsty for the stuff.

They could scrounge together the greens to throw in a pot and a side of salmon to bake on the fire, and the wheat from the mill was still fresh enough to bake a half-decent loaf. They’d extol the White One’s virtues and His word, and they’d be thankful for small mercies and the fact that they had one another, and then life would go on as it always did. The wheel turned, night became day, and on one morning the fateful dawn brought with it a great flash of red and the sound of hooves breaking the lacquer coating of frost on the ground. Two thuds joined it shortly thereafter, a sharp whinny, and a firm hand coming into forceful contact with wood.

The inside of the inn had been relatively sparse for the time of morning--most would’ve already risen once by dawn and would just about be beginning their second rise if they were to work the fields, but owing to the large majority of individuals stopping along a commute at this time of the year they’d perhaps taken their second sleeps a little later and were choosing to wake at a time more amenable to begin travelling at. The knight--it was plain to see, owing to the blade strapped to his back, and the white tabard on his chainmail--sat himself down at a table and put his head in his hands as he waited for one of the earlier risers amongst the staff, likely the innkeep’s daughter or some such.

A gruff bearded fellow five or so feet away sat next to a lankier blond lad no older than 16, and the bearded fellow gave his companion a quick nudge with his elbow and nodded at the knight.

“Give him your beer, Arnza. I’ll grab ‘im a bowl of stew and a trencher.” he said, quietly enough to spur the young lad into quick motion without the knight paying much in the way of attention. The younger lad shuffled his way to the knight’s table with a wooden tankard as quickly as possible, just hastily enough that as the vessel hit the table a soft plink could be heard within it, as the elder pushed his way into the kitchen and his silhouette vanished behind a small plume of steam.

The kitchen was quite hot already, as they’d lit the oven for the nearby folk to come and bake their bread in while it was still dark. Though he felt the steam first, shortly afterwards the smell of those loaves now cooling on some table off in the far corner hit his nose and an inch of a smile began to creep up his face. He stared into a cauldron of stew--the leftovers from last night, no doubt--and he gave them a cursory sniff to find that they were still hot.

‘Must’ve been the lass, I saw a few o’ the Arcosi wake up and wander down while she and her brother were lightin’ the oven.’

It was a simple and practiced routine, even for Arnth himself, to have a quick meal assembled and brought out to the hall with a briskness only the disciplined ever managed to reach. In but a moment or two the knight had a still steaming bowl of stew and a flagon of ale.

“Will you be needing the room, Sir..?”

The knight managed to string together a simple “yes, and another ale” before slurping a mouthful of the stew and wincing at the sting, only to swallow through it and start the process over again. It would have been rude to interrupt him, the innkeeper thought to himself, before looking towards Arnza and nodding at him once. He gave a spirited nod back and made his way to a nearby staircase, into which he promptly disappeared.

“I don’t recognise your Order by your uniform, Sir..?”

It came out as a slightly more piercing inquiry than he’d imagined, but the knight had seemed to pay it no real mind, simply electing to mumble something about the searing dawn in between the gulps of ale and stew alike he was taking. It seemed authentic enough, and he’d happily clear the room out and just allow Father Pesna to make the judgement proper when it came time for prayer that day.

Many hours passed. The morning was filled with those eating before resuming their journey, the locals looking to peddle their own wares to the merchants on their way to the Holy City, and the traders coming in from Arcos--by the time noon had come around it had all reached a fever pitch that only burnt itself out after the sun started to decline in preparation for the evening’s entertainment. At this point the knight had elected to show himself once again, this time with a helmet and a few other more personal details. It occurred to Arnth that his horse must’ve had saddlebags that had been brought up to his room while he’d been busy earlier.

The Knight introduced himself as Sir Aulus of the Knights of the Searing Dawn, and told the innkeeper that he had been sent to the town by order of the Justiciar to oversee a charge of apostasy with suspected witchcraft. He left rather abruptly after that, but Arnth had the distinct feeling that he intended to begin his needling of the townsfolk immediately. He’d be expected to keep the room for the man, but some measure of his tithe would be waived for keeping such a room openly available to all those on holy missions--and even if it wasn’t a financial incentive, he had to think to himself that it was right and proper work too, and he had no small degree of admiration for the righteousness that kind of work took.

The day passed with only a steady trickle of custom until Vespers, by which time Arnth had gotten a chance to speak with the Father and confirm that the Knight’s story was true. The Father had explained that though he was yet to receive a letter, he was made aware of this particular order of knights’ presence in the area and was happy to give his blessing when Arnth recounted the peculiarly tapered and layered red cloak that the man had been wearing.

He paid no heed to the man in particular during his comings and goings over the next few days. Business for him was almost entirely as normal--most of the traders had little to fear from what they had mostly correctly identified as a witch hunter. Arnth’s wife had heard from the miller’s sister that the so-called herbalist who lived out towards the forest had received a particularly lengthy visit from their resident huntsman but emerged largely no worse for wear. It was peculiar, he reckoned, as they’d heard no small amount of gossip from knights errant and traders about the flavours of apostasy, witchcraft, and other such heresies against the Exalted One’s divine will across the land--and they’d made a number of correlations that did not seem to be availing them in this particularly peculiar situation.

Before they’d known it a week had gone by and little again had changed save more and more trickles of rumour about the inquiries that had been working their way into every facet of Marcester. He’d only actually heard fleeting snippets of conversations himself, and he could divine nothing more from the knight’s words than a particular sense of diligence about his job. He tried not to pay any more heed than necessary to the situation, but in the small hours of night it was all that his wife’d talk about--which of the women he’d interview next, what he thought he knew, who he was closing in upon. He admitted to some degree of curiosity, but piety won out--he reminded his wife about the sanctity of his mission and what was expected of a follower of the White One, and she nodded sagely and let it alone.

A few more days passed, and the peculiar knight had spent less and less time in the inn of late. Arnth could’ve sworn he’d heard prayers he didn’t even recognise from the room on the second floor, but the words he did recognise were proper and the tone seemed suitably reverent, so he tried to find solace in his faith and not worry about it too much. The night afterwards he hadn’t returned at all, though Arnza had told him when he got up after his second sleep that the Knight had returned, absolutely soaked through and positively furious. He almost asked his son where the Knight was, but that same strangely fervent prayer sounded from the kitchen across the way and he made a note to talk to the knight some time that evening.

---

The Knight is here, covered in reeking filth and blood and who knows what else. His face hasn’t changed since he sat down and he’s muttered the word “Drusus” under his breath for the past five minutes straight. I’ve half a mind to go and wake Father Pesna, but I daren’t leave him alone. His right eye is bloodied, swollen like a wildberry, and I think I can see shards of glass from the temple or the glassworks in his legs and ripping through his tunic. What in the bloody hells happened to him?

Then, in an instant, he seemed to gain a moment of clarity. He stood up, drank the mug of ale from my hands, and told me to listen very carefully:

“I have to report to Justiciar Drusus. Tell the Father that I’m sorry.”

And he started to gather up his things like a man possessed and ride off towards the Holy City without waiting for first light. I’ve not a bloody clue what happened, but I’ve never looked at a man before and been scared for ‘is soul like that.

The Black Prophecy (Dead now; requiescat in pace!)

Máthair-Amaidí

Identity: Máthair-Amaidí; Aekashirillion, the Thousand Maws; That Which Sleeps Below; The Shacklewrithe. These and many more were the titles once possessed by great Máthair-Amaidí when they writhed upon the surface of the world, and before the Móreanach was cleansed and shattered as it is today.

Type: Scion

Myth: “In times of yore, the land of the Hundred Lakes was not always as it is now. Long before the White One began their crusade against the forces of darkness, when the Great Sire lived and breathed still, the Hundred Lakes were a single fetid pool of brackish and maddening waters. Legends still live today about the foulness of that land and its tainted waters that drove all not aligned with darkness to desiccation and delirium, the cause of rotten harvests of fish and kelp--but that is another story for another time. All that must needs be mentioned here is simply that the abominable place once existed, and housed within it one of the Great Sire’s foul brood. It was a disgusting and scale-ridden thing, with great tentacles and even greater mouths--and it hungered not for flesh, but for sickness!

The White One’s crusade came for the Móreanach and its oozing, pustulent waters when the Great Sire fell, and the tendrils of miasma that seeped from its gaping maw led them to this place of kindred squalor and obscenity. Weakened still from their narrow victory over the Great Sire, the crusade deigned not to attempt to sacrifice more noble lives but instead to cleanse the taint from this place and dedicate it to the provenance and sustenance of men.

Though rite and prayer, through contrivances mechanical and metaphysical, the Móreanach was purified into the Beatus Aquas, and upon it settled the stock of crusaders brave enough to eke out a living in this once noxious and inhospitable demesne--and the being that thrived within it was banished deep below the ground where its taint would be sealed away for an eternity--so long as the blessed waters of the great lake sat atop it like a seal of wax.”

“Hold, messere--’like a seal of wax’? Is that the line you’re going for?” came the response from a filthy little scamp, shuffling about amidst the muck and brackish water that even now threatened to encroach upon their small campfire.

“Well, lad, if you don’t like my story ye can scamper back off into the bloody fens and see what awaits ye!”

Silence, except for the buzzing of gnats, settled over the ersatz camp.

“But lo! A great calamity struck this world, and as if releasing a heaving sigh the earth shattered and twisted under its own force and the great lake was split into the Hundred Lakes that we know today. But now that the blessed lake is gone, and the waters have seeped into the soil all around the land, what is there to keep that foulness bound? What force exists that might stay what lurks below..?”

The dishevelled man in sopping rags finished his story with great, sweeping motions of his arms, and as he leaned in towards the grim illuminations of the sputtering flames pustules of ooze and pus made themselves plain upon his face, and his breath hovered in the air like a reeking cloud of filth. With a single stroke of his hand upon the little scamp’s face an oily, black streak emerged and was soon absorbed into their skin.

“She waits for us below. You see it now, yes?”

They both wept black tears, and cried out in rapturous agony.

The Black Prophecy (Dead now; requiescat in pace!)

Don't drink the water, kids.

Máthair-Amaidí

Identity: Máthair-Amaidí; Aekashirillion, the Thousand Maws; That Which Sleeps Below; The Shacklewrithe. These and many more were the titles once possessed by great Máthair-Amaidí when they writhed upon the surface of the world, and before the Móreanach was cleansed and shattered as it is today.

Type: Scion

Myth: “In times of yore, the land of the Hundred Lakes was not always as it is now. Long before the White One began their crusade against the forces of darkness, when the Great Sire lived and breathed still, the Hundred Lakes were a single fetid pool of brackish and maddening waters. Legends still live today about the foulness of that land and its tainted waters that drove all not aligned with darkness to desiccation and delirium, the cause of rotten harvests of fish and kelp--but that is another story for another time. All that must needs be mentioned here is simply that the abominable place once existed, and housed within it one of the Great Sire’s foul brood. It was a disgusting and scale-ridden thing, with great tentacles and even greater mouths--and it hungered not for flesh, but for sickness!

The White One’s crusade came for the Móreanach and its oozing, pustulent waters when the Great Sire fell, and the tendrils of miasma that seeped from its gaping maw led them to this place of kindred squalor and obscenity. Weakened still from their narrow victory over the Great Sire, the crusade deigned not to attempt to sacrifice more noble lives but instead to cleanse the taint from this place and dedicate it to the provenance and sustenance of men.

Though rite and prayer, through contrivances mechanical and metaphysical, the Móreanach was purified into the Beatus Aquas, and upon it settled the stock of crusaders brave enough to eke out a living in this once noxious and inhospitable demesne--and the being that thrived within it was banished deep below the ground where its taint would be sealed away for an eternity--so long as the blessed waters of the great lake sat atop it like a seal of wax.”

“Hold, messere--’like a seal of wax’? Is that the line you’re going for?” came the response from a filthy little scamp, shuffling about amidst the muck and brackish water that even now threatened to encroach upon their small campfire.

“Well, lad, if you don’t like my story ye can scamper back off into the bloody fens and see what awaits ye!”

Silence, except for the buzzing of gnats, settled over the ersatz camp.

“But lo! A great calamity struck this world, and as if releasing a heaving sigh the earth shattered and twisted under its own force and the great lake was split into the Hundred Lakes that we know today. But now that the blessed lake is gone, and the waters have seeped into the soil all around the land, what is there to keep that foulness bound? What force exists that might stay what lurks below..?”

The dishevelled man in sopping rags finished his story with great, sweeping motions of his arms, and as he leaned in towards the grim illuminations of the sputtering flames pustules of ooze and pus made themselves plain upon his face, and his breath hovered in the air like a reeking cloud of filth. With a single stroke of his hand upon the little scamp’s face an oily, black streak emerged and was soon absorbed into their skin.

“She waits for us below. You see it now, yes?”

They both wept black tears, and cried out in rapturous agony.

Rhau: A Seabound Tale [Currently Accepting New Apps!]

I am here to announce my illustrious presence.

Or something like that, I don't know.

Why Is No One Joining My RP (General Advice Thread)

Let me ask you a very fair question:

Do you think that there is even a small chance that your viewpoint is incorrect and that the people offering alternatives and solid advice here have a point?

If you are not willing to accept that you may be wrong, you are not here to be helped--you are here to be validated. You cannot be helped if you only want your worldview to be reinforced, not changed for the better.

Why Is No One Joining My RP (General Advice Thread)

The key to a writing a good roleplay that will stand the metaphorical test of time is introspection, reflection, and iteration.

Or maybe it's just everyone else's fault for not joining and sticking around.