TURN SIXUnveil the ancient,
Beginnings unfurl,
Grant thee a glimpse,
This world's birth untold.
- ? - &
- Hood -FATES DESCISION - EMPOWERING SERPENTS - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) - 3 (Stretching Magick Thin) =
9FATES DESCISION - BLEAK FORESTRY - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) - 3 (Stretching Magick Thin) =
3The shadows of the inkfield swell as the murky abyss consumes the lowland shore. Each grain of sand that vanishes into the sea is a an inch yet more enchroached. But perhaps more so pressing for the spirit enshrouded mystic wallowing in stomach high waters are the many shadows twisting off the ends of invisible void lines that permeate the land. The shade warps past the remaining Forgotten, and past Hood too, striking into the thrashing sea. Then at once, all is calm for the briefiest of spells as the necromancer attempts to gain their bearing. Only thereafter, that ethereal glint of topaz eyes grows even brighter, the eternally crest-stamped moon rolls our above the distant stars, it's silver-blue light penetrating even the abyssal depths of the shore, revealing a gut wrenching sight. No mere sharp-toothed eels the size of men, these serpents have ballooned, stuffed with the emptiness of the void into true, great sea monsters!
?, you rest your arms momentarily, overlooking the infinite pit below your many-spired keep. Glimpses of gnashing teeth and overwhelming size secure your confidence for now. Again you turn your magicks upon the land, a mote of the abyss sent across each spindling leyline, the distant duel seems to have taken a bit more out of you than expected. . . Regardless you are unavialing, that ghost white hair mingles weightlessly in the still air as you focus your will. Yet, nothing more than mere spores emerge from the extent tentecles of the pit. Still, resolute, you confide in the fact that some seeds take time and must be nurtured to grow to their full size. This will do for now. . . Shortly thereafter, now equipped and vaguely regimented, your ardent beastkin sit crosslegged in the chamber just inside, in front of them, that Lone Soldier on one knee. She faces you, noting your silent struggle, "Please. . ." She speaks softly, "These halls cannot break our spirits, tell us how we can help you. Dear friend."FATES DESCISION - A SHIP OF BONE - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
9(( OOC:
BlackPaladin, earlier your post contained your magic action as creating a ship of bone to sail and have your skeletons crew it. Did you mean to delete this? Commanding your servants is a completely free action, so I'm going on the assumption that you would have done both had you known that. Please let me know if I've made a mistake, I just think it's the most sensible and fair outcome with regards to the situation. ))
The sea does not merely swell, it buckles under the massive beasts that thrash and roar, drunk on their newly granted power. At first, it seems their increase is a detriment of a kind, the waters here too shallow to support them, that hope is ever so quickly drowned as the land continues to erode. Knowing full well that even a great mystic as yourself could succomb to the teeth of a monster or worse yet their stomach, you again set your eyes on the matter of the past. Your black magicks shock the earth below the water, a massive whirlpool erupts and twists, but you remain firm as the deep ground opens up. The long decayed carcass of a massive whale shifts from the bottom upward, a number of old sea beasts and lost sailors of a time long forgotten shore up hull. Spines of serpents much like the ones that harry you connected and solidify as twelve massive oars, neccisary should you wish to move a sailess ship. But no matter, for no it acts as intended, a bastion from the teeth of the sea. The bony hull of long fossilized bone shatters the restraint-less serpents bite, but the danger is far from over. . .FATES COLLIDE! - HOOD & SKELETONS VERSUS LURKING SERPENTS - Lurking Serpents make the first move! - 1d10 + 4 (Might) =
8Hood defends! - 1d10 + 3 (Skill) + 2 (Cover) - 2 (Outnumbered) =
5The Forgotten counterattack! - 1d10 + 2 (Skill) + 2 (Cover) - 2 (Outnumbered) =
12!Almost in unison, one of the many looping eels just below the murky surface lift their prodigious bodies up, towering just above the deck, surveying Hood and his few remaining Fogotten upon their Barrowhold Galleon. Their shimmering gem eyes seek out the most delicious sort amid the ship, the mystic powers of the disfigured necromancer, not to mention his delicate flesh and slaking blood. One of the beasts strikes inward to where Hood stands at the helm, both his shield and spear outstretched, but they are no match alone for the creature. The lurching of ship puts him offbalance, where the Lurking Serpent catches a leg between its teeth, crushing with the force. The ancient spirits that wrap his body let out an unearthly wail that almost seems to trepidate the monster, but they are not powerful enough to keep the pain from splitting Hood's shin. Even so, his face remains stoically unchanged, the Forgotten, each bearing their spears of sharpened bone charge the serpent clutching their master. With a tremendous clatter, their blades strike true, piercing their monster's skull and destroying any vestige of a nervous system.
It lays solidly dead, long enough for Hood to wrench their twisted leg from between the lengthy teeth. As he steadies himself on one leg and the calamitous spear, the other beasts raise their toothed heads, this is no battle of mere attrition for the mystic and his skeletal crew, it may just be a slaughter. . !Hood - Suffers a wound! (Wounds: 4/5) His spirit shield fails to protect him from the blow (1d100 < 25 = 84)
The Forgotten - Population: Unchanged
Lurking Serpents - Population: Unchanged - Recieved Wounds
Population - Some
Stature - Thick eel-like sea serpents. About the size of a small sailing ship.
Notes: These creatures emerged from the Inkfields, and bear thousands of sharp fangs. With no purpose other than to feast. They were engorged by ?'s powers of the void on Turn Six
Wounds - 3/3
Might - 4
Skill - 1
Hardiness - 4
Willpower - 1
ANIMALISTIC: This creature bears the intelligence of a common beast, and often acts on instinct. However, it may learn to obey a master.
AQUATIC: These creatures gain a terrain advantage when doing combat in the sea.
Population - Small
Stature - Slightly taller than the average man.
Notes: On Turn Five, Hood dredged ancient beastmasters from the deep earth on the Continent of Monsters and equipped them with shields and spears. These skeletons bear additional joints in their arms and legs.
Wounds - 1/1
Might - 1
Skill - 2
Hardiness - 2
Willpower - 0
MINDLESS: These creatures bear no mind, nor will of their own. They cannot think for themselves and respond only to their creators rudimentary commands. Magicks affecting the mind will automatically fail against them.
LONGSTRIDER: Traverses land at a quick pace.
EQUIPMENT: These creatures bear shields and spears of bone.
- Maria 'Habitat' Violet - &
- Clesydros -FATES DESCISION - GROWING ROOTS - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) + 1 (The First Slate) =
10!The Anomolous Sapling too has drawn your intrigue Maria, more than a mere passing fancy. What secrets of life and creation could a thousand-thousand year and ere over tree hold? The thought alone supercedes the ongoing struggle of master mages at work, and almost transcends the conflict itself. So to that end, you sit gently on the rocky isle, bare knees touching the stone. You place one palm at the base of the little sapling, your mere touch engreening the wastes. Only a few living spores remained from days long ago, but with them marked, you guide these withered roots thereon. A fungal bloom almost immediately takes place in the deep soil, almost impossble you'd think, yet the spores take hold of each root and grow exponentially in mere moments. Yet, they do not so by sucking the last remaining lifeforce of the sapling, no, rather the opposite. It's almost as if their growth upon the roots fuels this little plant. It's leaves take on a more verdant look as soon as your spell completes. Beneath the ground, an old dormant life begins to emerge.
As you observe your work, it seems the sizable golems of pure transparent crystal, glimmering under the moonlight begin to shift. They carefully remove the growing crystalline shapes, like scything wheat from the earth. Despite their emenant power, they seem to keep from crushing the crystals to dust, gathering and depositing a small pile beside the sapling.FATES DESCISION - ISLAND TELEPORTATION - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) + 1 (The First Slate)=
10!As Maria works, entrusting her with the strange plant, you gaze over the horizon, blinking, and once again arriving on the first island to the south in which the sapling originally called home. You do so again to its split sister, then once more, and yet again. Each isle just as barren and rocky as the last. The settled dust permeates your shoes, you can feel the grating scratch of sand at the soles of your feet as you trudge about and scout each island briefly. No further south the chain moves, rather it twists to the east, and so you follow the trail. Minor teleportations across small stretches of water lead you eventually to what in ancient times was no doubt the parent of these minature little islands. You step upon its shores, yet another ash filled land, yet to your surprise, you can make out the form of a few scattered stones untouched by the blaze once ago. Bricks of marble here and there, perhaps treasure of the past buried? You set these musings aside for now, and return to the northmost island where Maria has completed her brief working.
Satisfied with the Kruovios and their common labouring you sit between the crystal and the enliving sapling, focusing on the image of those forgotten stones. Maria witnesses your magick again in the act, in but a moment a teal-green bubble emenates from your fingertips, growing to encompass the whole of the land. With your eyes sealed firmly shut, you murmur briefly for Maria to do the same lest the transition strain her eyes too great. You feel your tempals buldge and the world shudder at your magicks. Then, in an instant, the child is rejoined with its aeon forlorn parent. In perfection, the island you sa upon is connected to the eastern most land in what you feel was its likely home long ago. There is much to be done. . .
- Amon -FATES DESCISION - WILD MAGIC SURGE - 1d10 + 1 (Secondary Aspect) =
7FATES DESCISION - BEAST OF BASALT LOYALTY - 1d10 + 5 (Willpower) - 4 (Chaotic Nature) =
8Exsistence is your toy Amon, you fear no beasts of stone and fang, you fear no archmages of time or destruction, you fear not the coldness of the void, nor the judgement of the Creator! That handsome, sharp-jawed face of yours contorts in a broken way, denoting the long lost resonable center within. All at once, under duress, purple waves like the amorphos nebulas and explosion of creation in times even more ancient than this land erupt from every pore, every fiber of your being. Those crystalline blue eyes of yours turn back in on themselves, unable to bear sight of the chaotic wind dredged from the primordial beginings. All but one of your Gazelings find themselves gazing into the orginal chaos emenating from your form. . .
When at last you open your eyes again, the Marble Wyrm is gone, vanished. The sea nary even churns, as if nothing was ever there in the first place. Just as well, but a single gazeling stands still on the Beast of Basalt's back alongside you. The rest are just as ghosted away. Well. . . You suppose this means no treating with the vast wyrm after all. Perhaps that is a boon in the end however, you can't even begin to imagine where or when they might have ended up though. At least your path to the throne is clear. The island creature beneath your feet has undoubtedly taken a liking to you as its master, while the lone Gazeling hops idly up and down beside you. The Beast continues its movements inward. Together the three of you cross the veil of starlight and nebulic dust. . . A massive slatestone precipice is before you, where the waters of this still world fall and vanish into the infinite cosmos. Far above, the Throne awaits.
- Shapeless Apparition -FATES DESCISION - EXOSKELETON - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
5Each little node pulses and beats rythmically like great hearts embeded in the earth. Each shudder, each beat is enough to drive the living mad, had this western continent anything to offer but dust and rock. You don't even consider such artful things however, your only concern is the rate at which you grow, matter is pumped from fossil and peat into your primary body, engorging it so. At it's current rate, your conjecture is that you will reach a new plateau every third turn. It seems this rate is the most you can sustain for now.
In this time of growth you again sift through the ancient rubble of long waylayed civilization. Fossilized bone peacefully rests in the deep earth, amongst once great cathedrals and humble hovels. Their lost culture is meaningless to your aim, you take in the material, organic as it is, their form is somewhat easy to incorporate. It's not long before a good bit of your amorphos mass is covered into a calcified layer, though its rigity may somehwat impede alterations in your shape in some circumstance, you are certain it will protect you from some convential wounds so long as it hold up to duress.
- Dr. Unpleasant - &
- Yellow Pixel -FATES DESCISION - DRAGON IDOL - 1d10 + 2 (Primary Aspect) =
4Being the lifeless husks that your many servants are, you do not so much as wait for them to get out of your way. With both your arms, you swing to the side with force, the movement dragging with it a landslide of the soot and ash. The gray substances filling the air with a cloud of dust the settles above. Perhaps out of your frustration and growing worry of the other mystic on the island, your magicks are not as refined as they could be, yet regardless a sizable portion of the particles is in your mystic grasp. With the powers of creation, you conglomerate every last molecule upon itself, much like the ashen idols into the shape of a modest drake. The beast is as of yet unliving where it stands, the spell having taken an unexpected toll on your body. But no matter, you can remedy that should you choose later.
Your unpleasant gaze falls upon the crevice in the land in which more ash yet pours. Your idols and enkindled ones pick upright themselves and continue their excavating. Those eyes bear witness to the stout zombies' tombs, a pathway marked by standing cases of marble, each cracked open by your prior spell. Each seared within by the shapes of where the Enkindled Ones laid to rest. The pathway leads beneath the inert caldera, where an archway just as unotuched by the entropic march leads deep within the base. Aside from the volcanic shrine, and tombs you've already desecrated so, the pathway leads northward as well.FATES DESCISION - CLOUDS & STORMS! - 1d10 =
7.squirrels race with all manner of banana in hand, hiding away in the many blocky chambers and hidden halls of the castle. Some climb upon their yellow master, giving the mystic pixel support with their mere prescense, while still the Falcons remain resolute, gazing out over the distance where each and all of you can just barely make out the cloud of ash swirling above into the form of a great fanged monster. With no shelter to call their own, you shudder at the battlement, energy crackles across your two-dimensional form. All the ambient moisture of this dead world begins to gather above your body, a bubble of brackish waters. At once it is sent into the night's sky, the blue-gray moonlight empowering its rise. There, high above, the water disperses and scatters, turning to dark smoke and cloud above where a sprinkle is cast.
Weather magicks are beyond your immediate purview, but the danger forthwith to protect your joyous creations seems to bring out the best in your little pixelated body. These dark clouds roll overhead, looping in on themselves until they've condesned into an ominous storm. They cast theselves over the castle, over the Great Banana Tree, and most of all, over the old volcano, over the black-clad mystic, and their armies of soot and ash. In a great burst, pleasant rain patters down across the center of the island, your Falcons raising their wings of feathery down to beat away the storm over you and your brave little .squirrels, while the deluge hammers its targets.[/i]
FATES COLLIDE! - RAIN VERSUS ASHEN IDOLS -Ashen Idols - 1d10 + 1 (Minor Cover: Shields) =
10!Dr. Unpleasant neededn't even time to think, he could see the impending clouds as they were formed, feel the ire of the Yellow Pixel on the horizon. It was enough for him to order the Idols atop their great stone steeds each and all to raise the shields above their heads, water beating down and cascading across the igneus rock. He directs his servants to ride deep into the now uncovered mountain hall where they'll be safe from the heavens judgement. Meanwhile, his once-living men of embers seethe and hiss as the rain touches their bodies, they do not react, the water does not seem to disrupt them like it would the ones made of ash, perhaps for their exists a fossilised body beneath it all. . . The steam billows out from the many Enkindled Ones, laying a great fog across the land to cover their brief retreat, while adding to the mixture of vapors above.
Alas, the soon-to-be dragon of ash and soot is pelted by the first water that had touched this dead isle for aeons, even the strongly compacted dust could not fully withstand the influx of rain. Though your army is unharmed, the land outside the caldera shrine has become just a bit more hostile. . .
(( Right, I hope everyone's satisfied with the way this went thus far. As I mentioned earlier, I'm going to try being somewhat harsher on multi-actions that are significantly different than one another just to keep a relative level of balance. That is not to say artefacts or seats of power do not grant their own reward, but ultimately 'action economy' in a game like this is at a strong premium. Perhaps that's way servants are a powerful resource to command. ))