yoshua171

Divinus: The Deity Roleplay, Mk. V

The Primal

Theme

_{^{He Who Twists and Breaks and Changes}}

---

---

^{The Primal | The Great Presence | Moniker | The Formless Flesh | The Unbound}

The Domain of Form

The primordial ooze from which life once sprung, the Domain of Form is just as one might think: that which presides over all living shapes. It is the domain of flesh, and blood, and bone. It is the flexing of muscles, the products of glands, the vessel for consciousness, and the foundation of all life. Sa'a Malath Kaal is both the quintessential source of primal physicality and the legacy of that which coalesced from the remnants of the decaying cosmos and its forgotten gods. With this power he can mold the shape of all that lives so long as from substance it was wrought. From this primordial ooze a vital essence erupts, which by his will arises as beings of great variance in form, size, or function. However only the forms that living, evolving flesh might take can be rendered from this essence and so is the Deity of Form bound by its own essential nature.

Yet as the Domain of Form--as understood by the deific intellect of the Great Presence--begets shape and function, so too does it dictate evolution and change. It is the shifting of the body from parent to child and the gift of metamorphosis. Similarly, it is the curse of deserved (but oft unwanted) transmutation of limb or spine or fang. Just as from that wellspring did all forms once coalesce, so too may it transform them.

TL;DR

The Domain of Form is concerned, mechanically, with all things biological with a particular focus on the process of metamorphosis and/or evolution. The domain may be used to influence the shape, size, and function of organisms, as well as to outright create such. It is limited by its nature as it cannot create non-biological entities though it has the capacity to interface with them by creating organic structures that can interact with said forces or beings.

Persona

A form in flux, a mind to match, Malath Kaal is an entity engrossed in its own nature, in the endless possibilities of Form, concerned with life (but not worried by it). He is a being interested in balance and imbalance, predation and prey—survival and alteration and change. The Great Presence, the Formless Flesh, the Unbent, the Primal is intrigued by mortalkind, be it their minds, the forms, or even those instinct-driven beasts that live in the wild--or the many florae they devour.

So say his edicts: Living is essential; Metamorphosis divine.

-- Myth --
The Tale of Tsa Merek

[+]

A long journey was behind him for it had been an arduous trek from his homeland across rivers, around lakes, and through treacherous plains filled with predators in a world that was not kind to those few left to inhabit it. It had been after months that he'd finally stood before the great mountain that his people revered, the place known as the Black Maw. From afar it had seemed almost normal, though vastly greater in size than its many peers which stretched from east to west to either side of the monolithic peak. Now however, from so close, Tsa Merek beheld the truth.

Before him opened a perfect parabola, an arch, a gateway beyond which light seemed not to pass. Above it was the mountain, its peak stretching past clouds and into the blue skein of the heavens. Unlike its slate grey relatives with their reddened cliffs and white snow-capped peaks, the entirety of this mountain seemed as if it had been wrought from the night sky, but bereft of stars. It was utterly black from base to tip, and had it not been midday Merek might have missed the deeper darkness of its entrance.

To look upon it was to glimpse the threshold between the mortal world and the divine, it was to peer into an unknown beyond which one could not fathom the contents of the world. Merek swallowed hard, feeling bile travel down his throat, going back from where it had risen. The sensation reminded him of the stories their shaman had told him of the Primal's wrath.

"To gain the Ire of the Unbound God is to open oneself to the fullness of its attention. For his gaze to fall upon you is to feel the writhing of your flesh as it is twisted against your will. Malath will change you without care, its intentions beyond any mortal's ability to comprehend. Know this, Tsa Merek, to pass beyond the threshold of the Black Maw is to step into the domain of that god. To stand in the Primal's abode is to invite his judgment. Step lightly and speak with only truth and conviction. Do not lie, Merek. Do not lie, for to do so is to invite the wrath of eons into your body."

They were words he could not have forgotten. Even when his memory had begun to fail him he had repeated them, he had scratched them into stone, then into his flesh. They were engraved upon his chest. Not so he could read them, but so he knew the meaning was writ upon his being.

He took a breath and stepped beyond the threshold of the Maw; what awaited him was silence, stillness, and an impossible abyss. The ground was cold and level, perfectly smooth, but as he continued forwards, reeling in the dark, it warmed beneath his feet. Slowly it seemed almost to come alive as a gentle thrumming pulse beat a soothing rhythm against his soles. He grit his teeth and barely breathed, terrified by the black. He faltered, glancing back only to find that no exit remained behind him. Where before the threshold once had stood, there was only endless black, as with every other direction.

Turning back around, he remained still, unable to move. He was terrified, moreso than he had imagined he would be. In that moment he thought--no, he was certain--that he was going to die. Then the silence broke and the mountain shook as the Black Maw--Se'raa Kelet--spoke.

"Tsa Merek. Seeker, Father, Adherent," the voice said, shaking his bones with its vibration. The darkness changed, but Merek could not decide how, for no light had entered the god's domain. Unsure what else to do, the man moved slowly to his knees, prostrating himself before the force he had come there to entreat.

"Please," Tsa Merek said, his voice feeling tinny and small, his ears still ringing from the thunder of the Maw. For a time there was no response, in fact no sound at all, and then something slipped against him, fluttering across the cloth of his back. He shuddered as--moments later--the sound of something huge dragging lithely across smooth stone emanated from behind him.

Slowly more sounds faded into his awareness, each accompanied by the churning of the air as if something unfathomably vast was moving through the chamber.

"Seeker of protection, O' ye of tested faith," began the low drone of that titanic voice, its sound sonorous and primal. "Mah Lia you have abandoned, left behind in your home of earth. Your people did you depart, seeking out divines with which to consort. Seeking aid, seeking miracles unearned."

Though he could not see, Merek's eyes widened at each utterance of the voice, his heart growing panicked and frantic in its rhythm.

"Begging you kneel before me, your convictions frail as grass or leaves or silt."

Directly before him something struck the stone. It did not crack, but the sheer force of the thing pushed him back as wind blasted from its point of contact. Curling in on himself as he recovered, Tsa Merek peered desperately into the dark, seeking any sign of hope.

"Please," he whimpered, terror in his tone, "...I came only for my people, to save them from famine and from drought."

The sounds stopped and stillness returned.

The shadows unfurled and from them emerged a symbol. Merek gasped.

The Eye of Malath had opened before him and briefly beyond its glowing gaze the man had glimpsed a vessel of monolithic size. It coiled and writhed and twisted through the chamber, its many limbs pressed against the walls and floor. Yet, he had caught only the barest image of the Deity of Form, seen only a silhouette frozen in two moments before the light became a blinding brightness that shook his mind and body both.

"Seeker. Father. Faithful child, protector of the weak," proclaimed the Eye.

Merek did not hear the words, he felt them in his bones. He heard them with his flesh, they tingled across his skin and rippled in waves throughout his mind and every neuron in his form. The light grew and its glow suffused him, filled him, lifted him from the ground. He opened his mouth, but could not scream or speak or cry. His body shook, but not from fear, no; it was like every iota of his being was vibrating with the power of that deific entity before him. Yet, something was wrong, deeply wrong, for his mind--his awareness of himself--faded as the power grew in intensity and size.

'No!' his mind screamed out, but there came no response and soon the man-who-was-not-a-man, who had once been Merek, had forgotten his distress and even why he might have felt it.

---

For many days after he wandered the land, trekking across the wilderness, through storm and flame and snow, until finally, he came upon a village. Red-leaved trees and buried houses which perhaps once were carved from stone. A sense of familiarity came upon him and with it came the light. Kindled within him, it grew and grew...and grew. No, it was he who changed as the light added to his bulk even moreso than before. Once more he forgot his former shape, becoming sluggish in his expanse. In time, the sweat from his many glands fed the earth around what the man Merek had once known as his home. Plants grew and the people--once his family and his friends--took of his flesh to feed upon.

As they rose from the darkness of their homes and cast aside the misery of starvation a feeling came upon the man who had a beast become; Satisfaction.

Visage

[+]

The Primal

Formless, yet possessed of all that flesh might birth, the True Form of Malath Kaal is one both of endless metamorphosis and imperceptible stability. Ever-shrouded by a blanket of midnight fog, attempting to behold the Great Presence in its entirety is an impossibility. Instead, one catches only glimpses, hears only the sounds of claws grinding, flesh slithering, and limbs skittering over surfaces. Eyes and lengths of winding viscera and bone, skin or muscle are seen, but never all at once. Utterly an enigma, the shape of this God of Form is its own contradiction for while it is ever-changing, it too is utterly unchanged, remaining always in a static form whose various aspects cross between the perceptible and the unseen at the slightest whim or provocation--or so one might theorize.

The Eye of Malath

[+]

Image courtesy of the amazingly skilled CorrosiveCherri!
_vvv ^{Click for full preview.} _vvv

The Primal simplified, the Eye of Malath is a symbol of variable size, color, and luminosity that can appear before those upon which the Great Presence’s attention falls. While not precisely a form in the truest sense, it is instead a non-physical projection of the god’s awareness, appearing only where its awareness is most focused. This state of being is possessed of strange properties, as it is unburdened by the limitations of flesh and of anonymity that the True Form imposes upon the Primal. Thus, the Eye can pass beyond barriers, solid or energetic, or even interpose itself upon the forms of entities less than divine. Though all forms of Malath have the capacity to invoke drastic and incredible changes upon the vessels of living things, it is the Eye that can do so with no more than the faintest touch from the strange illumination it emits.

Yoshua's Character Storage Mark VII

The Primal

Theme

_{^{He Who Twists and Breaks and Changes}}

---

---

^{The Primal | The Great Presence | Moniker | The Formless Flesh | The Unbound}

The Domain of Form

The primordial ooze from which life once sprung, the Domain of Form is just as one might think: that which presides over all living shapes. It is the domain of flesh, and blood, and bone. It is the flexing of muscles, the products of glands, the vessel for consciousness, and the foundation of all life. Sa'a Malath Kaal is both the quintessential source of primal physicality and the legacy of that which coalesced from the remnants of the decaying cosmos and its forgotten gods. With this power he can mold the shape of all that lives so long as from substance it was wrought. From this primordial ooze a vital essence erupts, which by his will arises as beings of great variance in form, size, or function. However only the forms that living, evolving flesh might take can be rendered from this essence and so is the Deity of Form bound by its own essential nature.

Yet as the Domain of Form--as understood by the deific intellect of the Great Presence--begets shape and function, so too does it dictate evolution and change. It is the shifting of the body from parent to child and the gift of metamorphosis. Similarly, it is the curse of deserved (but oft unwanted) transmutation of limb or spine or fang. Just as from that wellspring did all forms once coalesce, so too may it transform them.

TL;DR

The Domain of Form is concerned, mechanically, with all things biological with a particular focus on the process of metamorphosis and/or evolution. The domain may be used to influence the shape, size, and function of organisms, as well as to outright create such. It is limited by its nature as it cannot create non-biological entities though it has the capacity to interface with them by creating organic structures that can interact with said forces or beings.

Persona

A form in flux, a mind to match, Malath Kaal is an entity engrossed in its own nature, in the endless possibilities of Form, concerned with life (but not worried by it). He is a being interested in balance and imbalance, predation and prey—survival and alteration and change. The Great Presence, the Formless Flesh, the Unbent, the Primal is intrigued by mortalkind, be it their minds, the forms, or even those instinct-driven beasts that live in the wild--or the many florae they devour.

So say his edicts: Living is essential; Metamorphosis divine.

-- Myth --
The Tale of Tsa Merek

[+]

A long journey was behind him for it had been an arduous trek from his homeland across rivers, around lakes, and through treacherous plains filled with predators in a world that was not kind to those few left to inhabit it. It had been after months that he'd finally stood before the great mountain that his people revered, the place known as the Black Maw. From afar it had seemed almost normal, though vastly greater in size than its many peers which stretched from east to west to either side of the monolithic peak. Now however, from so close, Tsa Merek beheld the truth.

Before him opened a perfect parabola, an arch, a gateway beyond which light seemed not to pass. Above it was the mountain, its peak stretching past clouds and into the blue skein of the heavens. Unlike its slate grey relatives with their reddened cliffs and white snow-capped peaks, the entirety of this mountain seemed as if it had been wrought from the night sky, but bereft of stars. It was utterly black from base to tip, and had it not been midday Merek might have missed the deeper darkness of its entrance.

To look upon it was to glimpse the threshold between the mortal world and the divine, it was to peer into an unknown beyond which one could not fathom the contents of the world. Merek swallowed hard, feeling bile travel down his throat, going back from where it had risen. The sensation reminded him of the stories their shaman had told him of the Primal's wrath.

"To gain the Ire of the Unbound God is to open oneself to the fullness of its attention. For his gaze to fall upon you is to feel the writhing of your flesh as it is twisted against your will. Malath will change you without care, its intentions beyond any mortal's ability to comprehend. Know this, Tsa Merek, to pass beyond the threshold of the Black Maw is to step into the domain of that god. To stand in the Primal's abode is to invite his judgment. Step lightly and speak with only truth and conviction. Do not lie, Merek. Do not lie, for to do so is to invite the wrath of eons into your body."

They were words he could not have forgotten. Even when his memory had begun to fail him he had repeated them, he had scratched them into stone, then into his flesh. They were engraved upon his chest. Not so he could read them, but so he knew the meaning was writ upon his being.

He took a breath and stepped beyond the threshold of the Maw; what awaited him was silence, stillness, and an impossible abyss. The ground was cold and level, perfectly smooth, but as he continued forwards, reeling in the dark, it warmed beneath his feet. Slowly it seemed almost to come alive as a gentle thrumming pulse beat a soothing rhythm against his soles. He grit his teeth and barely breathed, terrified by the black. He faltered, glancing back only to find that no exit remained behind him. Where before the threshold once had stood, there was only endless black, as with every other direction.

Turning back around, he remained still, unable to move. He was terrified, moreso than he had imagined he would be. In that moment he thought--no, he was certain--that he was going to die. Then the silence broke and the mountain shook as the Black Maw--Se'raa Kelet--spoke.

"Tsa Merek. Seeker, Father, Adherent," the voice said, shaking his bones with its vibration. The darkness changed, but Merek could not decide how, for no light had entered the god's domain. Unsure what else to do, the man moved slowly to his knees, prostrating himself before the force he had come there to entreat.

"Please," Tsa Merek said, his voice feeling tinny and small, his ears still ringing from the thunder of the Maw. For a time there was no response, in fact no sound at all, and then something slipped against him, fluttering across the cloth of his back. He shuddered as--moments later--the sound of something huge dragging lithely across smooth stone emanated from behind him.

Slowly more sounds faded into his awareness, each accompanied by the churning of the air as if something unfathomably vast was moving through the chamber.

"Seeker of protection, O' ye of tested faith," began the low drone of that titanic voice, its sound sonorous and primal. "Mah Lia you have abandoned, left behind in your home of earth. Your people did you depart, seeking out divines with which to consort. Seeking aid, seeking miracles unearned."

Though he could not see, Merek's eyes widened at each utterance of the voice, his heart growing panicked and frantic in its rhythm.

"Begging you kneel before me, your convictions frail as grass or leaves or silt."

Directly before him something struck the stone. It did not crack, but the sheer force of the thing pushed him back as wind blasted from its point of contact. Curling in on himself as he recovered, Tsa Merek peered desperately into the dark, seeking any sign of hope.

"Please," he whimpered, terror in his tone, "...I came only for my people, to save them from famine and from drought."

The sounds stopped and stillness returned.

The shadows unfurled and from them emerged a symbol. Merek gasped.

The Eye of Malath had opened before him and briefly beyond its glowing gaze the man had glimpsed a vessel of monolithic size. It coiled and writhed and twisted through the chamber, its many limbs pressed against the walls and floor. Yet, he had caught only the barest image of the Deity of Form, seen only a silhouette frozen in two moments before the light became a blinding brightness that shook his mind and body both.

"Seeker. Father. Faithful child, protector of the weak," proclaimed the Eye.

Merek did not hear the words, he felt them in his bones. He heard them with his flesh, they tingled across his skin and rippled in waves throughout his mind and every neuron in his form. The light grew and its glow suffused him, filled him, lifted him from the ground. He opened his mouth, but could not scream or speak or cry. His body shook, but not from fear, no; it was like every iota of his being was vibrating with the power of that deific entity before him. Yet, something was wrong, deeply wrong, for his mind--his awareness of himself--faded as the power grew in intensity and size.

'No!' his mind screamed out, but there came no response and soon the man-who-was-not-a-man, who had once been Merek, had forgotten his distress and even why he might have felt it.

---

For many days after he wandered the land, trekking across the wilderness, through storm and flame and snow, until finally, he came upon a village. Red-leaved trees and buried houses which perhaps once were carved from stone. A sense of familiarity came upon him and with it came the light. Kindled within him, it grew and grew...and grew. No, it was he who changed as the light added to his bulk even moreso than before. Once more he forgot his former shape, becoming sluggish in his expanse. In time, the sweat from his many glands fed the earth around what the man Merek had once known as his home. Plants grew and the people--once his family and his friends--took of his flesh to feed upon.

As they rose from the darkness of their homes and cast aside the misery of starvation a feeling came upon the man who had a beast become; Satisfaction.

Visage

[+]

The Primal

Formless, yet possessed of all that flesh might birth, the True Form of Malath Kaal is one both of endless metamorphosis and imperceptible stability. Ever-shrouded by a blanket of midnight fog, attempting to behold the Great Presence in its entirety is an impossibility. Instead, one catches only glimpses, hears only the sounds of claws grinding, flesh slithering, and limbs skittering over surfaces. Eyes and lengths of winding viscera and bone, skin or muscle are seen, but never all at once. Utterly an enigma, the shape of this God of Form is its own contradiction for while it is ever-changing, it too is utterly unchanged, remaining always in a static form whose various aspects cross between the perceptible and the unseen at the slightest whim or provocation--or so one might theorize.

The Eye of Malath

[+]

Image courtesy of the amazingly skilled CorrosiveCherri!
_vvv ^{Click for full preview.} _vvv

The Primal simplified, the Eye of Malath is a symbol of variable size, color, and luminosity that can appear before those upon which the Great Presence’s attention falls. While not precisely a form in the truest sense, it is instead a non-physical projection of the god’s awareness, appearing only where its awareness is most focused. This state of being is possessed of strange properties, as it is unburdened by the limitations of flesh and of anonymity that the True Form imposes upon the Primal. Thus, the Eye can pass beyond barriers, solid or energetic, or even interpose itself upon the forms of entities less than divine. Though all forms of Malath have the capacity to invoke drastic and incredible changes upon the vessels of living things, it is the Eye that can do so with no more than the faintest touch from the strange illumination it emits.

Divinus: The Deity Roleplay, Mk. V

Hmmm

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

I gotta say, it really is hard to resist the urge to shitpost at this point. I won't, since POO asked not to, but like hooo weee would it be fun.

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

This just got spicy.

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

I think "most people," are "succeeding," because a lot of them are just joining already existing RPs, or they have been around n the site for a long ass time and have developed either a good reputation or a group of people they can write with/rely on (or it's both of these things). Also, I think the vast majority of people on the site are looking for group RPs, and so end up in group RPs.

Beyond that, uh, it's a matter of luck, timing, effort, etc.

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

@rebornfan320

It's funny because it's so easy to think that other people are having a much easier time than you. The reason for that is generally--unless you're specifically looking for it--you only ever see people's successes (RPs that are active/alive long enough for you to notice), whereas their failures (so to speak) are quickly swallowed by newer, more active threads, as they are pushed further and further back through numerous pages.

So yeah, this idea that "everyone else is galloping," is just a result of you not paying individual attention to every attempt that other users on this site have made to get something going. Plus, other aspects of that just happen behind the scenes (On discord, in PMs, etc) so there's not even any chance for you to see it.

Essentially, if you're only looking for peoples' successes, that's the only thing you're going to see.

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

@rebornfan320 aight, so I gotta level with you man. If you started a decade ago, right, and then 3-5 years ago suddenly you started just...getting tons of abandoned RPs/ghosters etc, then something changed. Either every single person over literally 100s of threads (by your own count) were miraculously all just terrible at communication and had no regard for anyone else but themselves or something changed in you. The latter is more likely.

Further, people can understand where you're coming from, but not agree with you. This may make you uncomfortable, I'm sorry if it does, but it's true. Just about everyone in this thread has been at the very least on the Guild just as long as you, and who knows how long on Old Guild or websites prior to that, so the chance that all of us (and the 100s of people who ghosted you) are wrong is basically zero. The odds on that are definitely not in your favor my dude ^^;

Furthermore, idk about everyone else, but I've been RPing for roughly over 12 years and I've felt what you're feeling before. So I can definitely understand and empathize. I bet a bunch of other people here have felt this same way, I bet some portion of those people who have, also sometimes feel mad jaded by putting themselves out there and nothing coming of it. The difference though, between you and them is most people move on from it and try to do better, whereas you are dwelling on it and letting it be the only thing that is true to you.

Sorry man, other people also have experiences just as valid as yours--even similar ones--and just because they disagree, does not make what they're saying any less valuable or accurate.

But hey, I'm just some dude on the internet. Just a dude who has also been doing this for a ludicrously long period of time. Just a dude who sometimes feels this same way, but doesn't actually go and blame other people about it because it's more pointless than just...trying harder. I'm just some guy, what do I know, right?

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

@rebornfan320 Bruh, how long have you been RPing?

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

Oh, something else to keep in mind when it comes to taking constructive criticism is that trying a piece of advice once and it failing does not constitute the advice being wrong or responsible for the failure. It just means you tried it once and that time didn't work. Try again.

Don't drop a piece of advice just because it fails once, twice, or three times. If you've tried to make RPs/threads X amount of times and have gotten failure (resulting in a perception of a pattern of failures/bad luck) then why not try a given piece of advice (or more than one) just as many times to see if that method has the same rate of failure.

That or just...give up, find some other hobby as others have mentioned.