I think that would be great. That sounds like the issue for something I've been daydreaming of lately: an extremely rare race of planetouched descended from rogue modrons.
"Monte Cook: it's just a game, you nerds!
us: we learned it from watching you!"
heh, this didn't register until now.
I wonder if the Architects have made their own D&D editions up to help simulate their reality box worlds.
Parallel LVI: The Bloodied Vineyard
Parallel 56 mirrors the nature of Multiverse Prime, save that much of this reality has been covered in or is in a war with jungles of razor vine. Beds upon beds of the stuff have choked through countless portals, with many planar metropoli completely entwined in the cutting flora. It is not certain if the vine is sentient, though its rapid growth can sense threats and stretch out toward them.
While razor vine has always been a nuisance, this sub-species seems capable of cutting the flesh and at times even the armor or arcane shielding of any who rub against its sharpened stalks and leaves. Witnesses claim that it has cut through walls of force as well as prismatic spheres. Spells utilized directly against it are subject to dangerous wild surges.
Worse yet, the wounds the vine causes require a great amount of magic to heal. Even then, sometimes the flesh unexpectedly parts days or even months later as if in memory of the plant's touch. Not even the elemental or incorporeal are safe, their wounds leading to some kind of essence draining infections. Undead of all kinds, including liches and death knights rapidly fall to such wounds and have developed a healthy dread of the vine.
Many theorize that the original source of this virulent strain of the plant came from the Abyss, given that the inhabitants there are forced to contest with some of the thickest beds of the vine. Even the greatest of Abyssal Lords has been unable to keep the growth of the vine from overrunning their layers, and most tanar'ri have found themselves entangled and forced to contest with the stuff.
Naturally disaster struck when the Cage itself fell victim to the plants' conquests, though some safely outside the City of Doors claim that Sigil itself was the source of the vine-plague. There is no definitive evidence of this, though it is odd to see the Lady of Pain asleep when randomly turning the corner. She floats, Her body serene and supine, about an elf's arm-length above the cobblestones. Those encountering Her are ushered along by dabus above whose heads are a sputter of terrified rebuses. Those attempting to contest with the Lady's guardians are surprised to find Her shadow still stretches out with retribution, though its shroud does not flay one's skin in this Wheel. Rather, those falling under it collapse into slumber (or some similar state of topor) at which point they are gathered by the dabus and stored in the caverns of Undersigil.
The underground depths of the Cage sport thousands of beds, jars, aquariums, cairns, vaults, and cages for the sleepers. Once asleep, it seems no sustenance is required save for the argent, liquid light the dabus ensure all victims - even elementals and ghosts - are given three times a day, but only every seven days.
Due to the vine mastering Sigil, the Outer Planes have largely succumbed to its strangling hordes, as have many of the Prime worlds. The Astral is largely choked off and traversing its silver expanses is nearly impossible as the vine cuts silver cords.
The Inner Planes have fared better, but there the vine is gaining ground in the planes of Air, Water, Steam, Smoke, Earth, Ooze, Ether, Shadow and most disturbingly the Positive Material Plane...
Parallel LVII: Fetal Genesis
You look to an origin, a past splintered unity, and it is because of this you fail. All of you - gods, fiends, celestials, royalty of Chaos and bureaucrats of Order.
You think there was One, and then Many. You who are alchemists, can you not understand, finally, that one takes Many and then makes One, that this Birth requires insemination and conjoining?
I long to live and die in a Body, to think with a Mind, to have a Soul free to choose. And slowly these gifts are given by Myself to Myself, woven through Doors to give a Boundary so that I might become a Being capable of its own perpetual Becoming.
This Boundary is my Body, which you have seen fit to call a Cage...
=-=-=
Parallel 57 is in a state of major upheaval. It seems to be contracting relative to the other Wheels, as things from this place end up smaller when taken to the others. Additionally, planes seem to fall and fold into each other, as if all the myriad universes of alignment and element and thought and ether were but one paper canvas set from its blankness to painting and origami.
Thoughts rumble out of the Astral, indecipherable but intimately known by all the beings in this particular creation. The Blood War has ended, seen as a pointless venture by all the demons and devils alike. Despite the protestations of the yugoloths, both sides have retreated to their homes and meander about in shock punctuated with weeping or violence.
The celestials celebrate, but these parties perhaps have gotten out of hand as the distinctions between the Upper Planes feels to be fading in the midst of this revelry. Archons dance into Arborea, gifting themselves inspirations to shift the symphony of their dance, even as eladrin enter Arcadia and stay on as peaceful monks meditating among the orderly orchards.
The Prime and its Alternates, ever infinite, seem to burgeon and expand even as the Inner Planes diminish. It is clear, though not yet confirmed, that they are bleeding into the Prime, rushing in the staccato manner of arterial rivers and starving-during-your-months-abroad-while-I-remained-faithful impatient lovers to become one with each other.
What is this being woven from the planes, the Spire its spine, the Lady its mother and inverted womb? And of all the dying Inner Planes one is watched most closely by the parallel walkers, for when this descendant of the Lady is whole and birthed billennia from now how long will the reach of Its shadow be?
Digression: Count Morgenstein and the Clockwork-Boy-Thing, Part II
At my feet rests another corpse, its soul unable to be recalled to bear witness to its body's murder.
And just as with the previous one, scrying into the past reveals nothing, as if the body has always been dead. I would send one of my chronomancers back, but the murders have all been committed within the boundaries of myriad Sigils where the Lady was alive and well.
Even if the Lady did not bar temporal travel within the boundaries of the Cage, the part of me that is still flesh and thus capable of intuition frets over the dreams running through the automaton parts of my skull, the ones centering about the Keeper of the Medallion of Time and Place. Even now as I stand where the killer must have stood mere hours before, in the seven sided Sigil within the Parallel of Stardust Roads, I swear I feel the whispered, laughter soaked breath of a thousand phanes.
We are in the District of the Dead, and the employee was a half-orc tout born to this particular Cage, so at least the funeral will be easy.
Not that I plan to attend.
Beside me another employee, a cleric of the Hourglass God from Parallel 8 with copper dyed skin, hands me the message that was an origami turtle placed on the victim's tongue.
"Father. Why have you not met with Mother yet? Why do you leave me as a shadow when I want to be as real as you are?"
A simple question, with a simple answer. I have not met with Oelkia Tsu because the lunatic is in a reality box being transported across multiple Wheels. I do not know if he is fleeing from my grasp, having been warned by his fellow Architects of Infinity, or if this is some new experiment the faction is conducting in yet another desperate attempt to live up to its name.
Regardless, I have agents in pursuit and an interrogation room being prepared. Needles and scalpels have a way of making even the most mad of men temporarily sane.
Okay, I put an article in the editor queue about traversing the Metaverse.
Note that I pretty much used the material I created in the draft to avoid stepping on anyone's toes. I'm fine putting other people's stuff - In fact I'd really like to, though keep in mind it would have to be one of the shorter ones. The article is about 5 pages and I'd like to keep around that length.
NPC write ups, say two paragraphs, are also welcome. I used Laquera, again because it ties into Vecna and is also someone readers would have a connection to for that reason.
Criticism of the article, suggested rewrites are most welcome.
thanks,
Sci
ETA: Took out the Vecna Parallel. Felt like things were becoming too Vecna heavy. Suggestions for two Parallels that are on the shorter side welcome. Right now I have the Luminous Deluge (Positive Energy infects everything) and Conflict of Empires (illithids vs spellweavers) in there, but willing to shift those out.
Anything of mine is fair game - I'm not sure I have any that would qualify as shorter ones, though I could try distilling something down.
As I mentioned on the Prime thread, I'm madly tending to work and other stuff for a couple more days, but should be leaping back into the writing and editing fray soon.
I was thinking about the idea of parallel wheels vs. the primes of Log X.
It occurs to me that having prime worlds every issue is something a plane-hopping campaign could make use of, whereas alternate cosmologies might be something less usable. Also, figure we need some mechanics for parallel walking if we're going to present it as an option for adventuring.
All to say I'll probably add to the article in time to make it suitable for the zine or as a separate PDF -> making it longer, including stats for NPCs and the like. If anyone has suggestions for crunch related to the NPCS previously mentioned or relating to some of the options/ideas in this thread, definitely welcome your input.
Of course alternate Cosmologies, as some of these certainly count as (Rip's Mystara Parallel and atomicb's Parallel 52 for example), would work well as articles independent of parallel walking. Most of mine, if not all, wouldn't.
As always, this is just one person's opinion, feel free to counter or submit anything you like!
thanks,
Sci
Yes, it seems as if an introduction to the parallels and walking them could easily warrant a document all their own, which could be referenced in future issues of the zine.
Parallel LVIII: A Lady always has the Last Word
"A huge, bloated, fiendish figure - the very god whose body you walked upon in the who-knows-how-distant-past - stands amid a number of slain foes. You see among these corpses great beings whose images once decorated temple halls: Zeus, Thor, Paladine, Mystra, and more. Most incredibly of all, the ram-headed fiend holds above his head the last of his enemies, her body broken and sagging:
The Lady of Pain.
Sigil is dead. The Multiverse belongs to Tenebrous."
-Dead Gods
"Itzi, what is it?" The old man looks with concern at his...yes, sod it all, his son. Not like they had anyone else in what were most assuredly the last days for the Light and the Grey.
"Her." The boy points, the old man looks with hope that one of his age and especially his experience should've shed long ago...looks and sees nothing. Still, he walks over and puts a comforting hand on the ragged child.
Both of us left to wander until the Collectors come calling. Both of us left alive as toys for the undead fiends who feed on my resignation and Itzi's hope filled delusions.
"She's dead boy. Her Serenity...He used a Word, you see, not like the words we're speaking now but a Word that speaks to the worlds...and he spoke to Her and told Her of Death. And now - "
The old man spreads his arms to the meat gardens being built by the dabus, who in turn are whipped and worse by the visages that swarm the floating once servants now slaves. His arms are wide enough to take them all in, all the larder houses, and the broken temples too. Every temple is now a Shattered Temple.
Every temple save one, and upon its steeples leer lascivious gargoyles cradling skull topped shafts while the chained dead within its outer walls are condemned to sing the praises of the One, the Lord of Sigil and Prince of the Undead. Within its confines the dead suffer far worse degradation and horror. Even now, in the light of peak, you can hear their pitiful squealing.
"- this is All that's left."
The boy is still staring, looking at the empty air as if it might contain a woman floating serenely, a savior's face wreathed by a halo of blades. The old man has a rock in one hand, the one not holding the boy.
He raises it over the boy's head. Do it - do it you selfish old sod! Let the boy have some time in Heaven before the dead breach its gilded gates!
A visage floats above them. So high above as to be among the skeleton packed city streets on the opposite end of the torus's curve. Though they cannot see it for all the smog born of flaming offal and burning meat, the eyes of its mask are centered upon them.
The old man thinks of sleeping alone in the hovel, no son asking for tales of better times when Sigil thought its guardian a constant and unconquerable soul. No one asking to be held, a child impossibly believing geriatric arms can hold back the terrors that have come for them all.
The old man sighs, and the rock falls out of his hands.
Behind the mask, looking down on them, the visage smiles.
=-=-=
Someone should have stopped him, when he murdered Primus and took the First Modron's place. Someone should have sought out the shadow that was Tenebrous when brave Tomeri refused to cower, refused to relinquish her pride before even the last thing she would ever hear.
Someone should have saved the Lady of Pain.
Perhaps they did not think Orcus, wand in hand, would stand at the top of Howler's Crag and whisper the Last Word to pantheons upon pantheons. Perhaps they could not conceive of him pushing his way into the Caverns of Thought, holding Ilsensine hostage, thinking the final True Word into so many unaware minds.
One wonders if the illithid god ran back to its distant realities far beyond the circumference of the Wheel. His corpse is not among those choking the Astral. One wonders what what's-left-of-Maanzecorian thinks about that...
Perhaps the powers did not imagine Orcus murdering the Lords of the first eight layers of Hell, ending the Blood War within a fortnight and thus giving the tanar'ri the freedom to go hungrily tumbling into the Prime...
Demogorgon died babbling revelations, Grazz't wanders the phlogiston in exile alongside his masters Ztefano and Vuron. Orcus speaks sweeter words to the corpses of lords Pale Night and Dagon, who when the end came did not fear the Prince of Undead's god-killing weapon.
Or perhaps the pair held greater fear for the secrets they refused to divulge. Though her shell is empty, at times Orcus crawls under her shroud and holds dead Pale Night like a lover, hoping she might still whisper some treasure or warning given that her corpse clings to its ardor and slime.
Dagon's bones are scattered across the black sands of Thanatos, the obyrith's head preserved in a pool of ichor and myrrh. This one also never speaks, confined instead to laughter and weeping...
Surely, this was when the yugoloth should have been saved by the Father-Mothers? It might just be that the Baern were caught unawares, lost in their scheming, and so are now besieged in the silence encircled towers with their remnants of chilren, deaf to all words lest their ear holes catch wind of the Last. Could it possibly be that they are waiting, playing out a longer game, one in which Orcus's mastery over the Lower Planes and much of Neutrality is but a part -
Could the Baern, besieged and bereft of almost all of their birthed instruments, be rejoicing as legions of visages surround the Spire, mirroring the sight around their deposed children's three Towers, taunting the Rilmani to come out of the last two unconquered rings of their home?
If this the case, then why do they war amongst each other? Why does Khin-Oin soundlessly shake with the throes of their mad desperation? Why does the Oinoloth look not to his sire-mares but the aurumachs for an inkling of hope?
Rumor among the 'loths has it the children of Balance have left to the seek aid on the flip-side of mirrors, though why the visages do not then take over the last of their lands is unknown...And an Unknown is what the Athar pray to at the center of the Outlands, even as their transplanted Bois Verdurous offers only silence and doubt. Even now some think wistfully back to the god-crowded Wheel, while others more faithful to their cause instead look up and plead without praying to the absent celestials.
Does Heaven regret its inaction, its lack of attention? Do the angels sit behind planes sealed shut and point fingers, squabbling only a hair less violently than the Baern, or have they all come like beggars to seek salvation amongst Pelion's scraps?
And Itzi, the boy, why does he sleep soundly for the first time in years? Did not the old man tell him about the broken body of Her Serenity, held in the avatar's claws?
What's that he's saying?
Let's listen closely now, cup our ears to snare the child's dreaming whsiper:
"When She speaks what has been spoken...that's when the Lady will win back Her Throne."
Parallel LIX: Keep Praying for a Golden Ticket
Sigil is clean and beautiful, a light drizzle glittering in the sourceless sunlight. The vines that wrap around the softly luminous argent columns are dark green and covered with deep purples grapes whose juices taste of wine. Men and women scaled and furred and human and elf and a thousand other things pluck them as they wander the city, enjoying the light warmth of weak alcohol even as they speak poetry and philosophy.
And floating silently and serene in their midst, collecting the gracious dip of their heads and the generous bends of their torsos, is none other than Her Serenity leading the vanguard of Her dabus attendants.
The city resounds with the laughter of innocent children, echoing in a torus so large it spans the width and breadth of a continent.
There is a flash, a portal opens, and two starving kobolds stumble through. These refugees are raised up by an orc and marid, ushered into this idyllic Cage, told how lucky they are. Theirs is the only portal that will open onto Sigil for the next hundred years.
The kobolds weep, though whether in relief for the mercy granted to them or the mercy denied to those left outside none of those gathering around them could say.
=-=-=
Parallel 59 is overrun with monstrous beasts. Colossal insects, gargantuan animals, tarrasques and wild omnimental storms rend and plague and batter the planes and Prime worlds.
Toril is overrun with house sized eggs fallen from the breeding of town-spanning, space faring alligators sunbathing amongst the shards of its now shattered moon - All Selune has left are her tears.
Most of Oerth is but a larder for Fenris's brood, and most of Athas is flooded by the cruel mortai that gift it more rain than it would ever have asked for.
The seas of Krynn are rife with sharks and coelacanth, while ants the size of dragons swarm over its lands.
The Inner Planes have birthed millions of animental behemoths and leviathans, decimating the ecology of their homes even as breaches are opened by acre spanning entropes allow them to deliver their amoral wrath onto countless others including the great ice equines that trampled Phlegethos and the storm leopards that left Dothion's surface a mirror to its brother Shurock.
The proxies of the varied pantheons have established safe zones at terrible costs, and even these are not free of the feral lycanthropes that stalk planars and mortals alike. Its said that swarms of wererat assassins rule the fractal corridors of Malsheem, and werebat hunteresses swoop through the labyrthine caverns of Pandemonium. Meanwhile werebear shamans ride their giant kin, the Shardik ursines, into higher and higher layers of Mount Celestia even as limnorms spread across the seas and snows of Ossa and Pelion respectively.
Spiders of all shapes and sizes have ensconced the Infinite Staircase with curtains upon curtains of webbing.
Giant wasps and bees make their hives in Limbo, turning the chaos matter into patterns of papyrus and honeycomb. Mechanus's feces stained gears play host to free running menageries and termites that have a taste for the metals of Law.
Druids rule the Outlands entire, and the thinned ranks of Rilmani respectfully bow to the Planar Heirophant who hovers above them, the metallic skinned exemplars accepting things as they are as a Balance of sorts.
Was this greatest of druids responsible for this? None dare ask the blossom-woman to her petal wreathed face. And besides few would understand her answer, for all her speech is in floral scents and pheromones.
There is one respite from this savage wilderness, a place free of this desperate and daily battle for survival. It is ruled by the blade-haired Lady of Mercy, but She grants entry only to one whim chosen portal once every one-hundred years.
Parallel LX: Dust in the Wind
On Multiverse Prime, the gods who once walked across the paradise of Pelion either transcended or died, or perhaps left to fight a war against an implacable foe. What was left in the wake of their departure were deserts of sand and snow.
On Parallel 60, this is case for all the Outer Planes. Imagine the surprise and disappoint of the cursed oracles of the Prime as they led their peoples into what they had thought were the realms of their gods and instead were naught but ruins being buried in wastelands. They had followed naught but the echoes of what were either last gasping breaths of perhaps just goodbyes. The worst fates awaited those who entered Gehenna, which is now nothing more than the clouds powdered ash and stone of pummeled volcanoes. (One does note that there is a lot of debris in this plane, more than four finite sized volcanoes could ever account for.)
There are no gods on this parallel, and those walkers who speak of deities are often hung on the charge of anti-blasphemy. There are no planar lords either, and save for the occasional alignment touched animal or flora barely anything lives on the Outer Planes.
The Inner Planes are just as empty of divinities, and there exist no elementals strong enough to claim dominance over their horizonless homelands. Yet these planes at least have not crumbled away, for the Plane of Dust is at it always was and likely will be. At least they are not bereft of inhabitants, though none of these inner planars can or will speak about the absence of sentient life on the planes of alignment.
There is one place that though found empty the Primes made quick use of. Sigil has been take over by mortals, and though the Imaskari briefly controlled the City of Doors its freedoms are now guaranteed by the Order of the Blade. None are sure who or what empowers these paladins of the Balance, or where their peculiar blades come from, blades that cut through matter, magic, and even the mental energies of the emergent psions with such surprising ease...
Digression: Count Morgenstein and the Clockwork-Boy-Thing, Part III
Things cost: Food, clothes, clean water to wash the newborn. Money for the midwife, who'd come to the brothel on credit, money for the air magi who purified their home of Sigil's near ubiquitous smog.
Thankfully, Count Morgenstein paid well, more than willing to account for the risks so long as the help was quality and willing to take on the dangers.
Hartha did not know who the Count was, she had never met him. She understood him to a be dwarf who traveled the planes...and some say beyond them. Such fancies were of interest to her poet-teacher wife, rather than her Blood Warrior self. Her wife's love of their adopted child was in the form of changing diapers, giving baths and breastfeeding.
Hartha, scarred and hard and knotted like long loyal rope - her love was in keeping a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. And so she stands guard at one of the safehouses in the Lady's Ward, swearing at times that the same woman - someone named Laquera - has entered the doors while already inside.
They tell her to be on guard in these antipeak hours, that someone has been killing those in the employ of the Count. Strange, given that everyone she knows among his considerable ventures and investments in the Cage is still alive, or at least unalive or functioning in the cases of undead and sentient constructs respectively.
(It is still hard for her to believe the "warforged" have feelings, that they are more than clever simulacrums.)
When the cloaked figure approaches she winces, not from what she sees but from what she senses. There is something dizzingly wrong about this...man? He seems to approach at a leisurely pace but with each blink his form closes the distance with the gait of a sprinter.
The moment the man plunges minute-hand claws through her armor, she gasps. When? How? It isn't quite fear that takes her, but rather a sense of wounded pride. This is, after all, a woman who has won a duel against a marilith. Even when she sees the gears that serve as joints and the gristle and muscle that provides the clockwork parts with a slurp-churning alacrity it isn't horror she feels.
She thinks of a wife and child abandoned by her death, trying to calculate the pension that will be left to them, her heart and mind doing the numbers even as she falls into the rosebushes the Count procured from some other Sigil she'll never rise through the ranks to discover, roses that smell sweeter than anything ever grown here in Multiverse Prime.
Parallel LX: The Wind Gasps, The Stones Weep
In the end, the war between the Elemental Planes of Air and Earth consumed both planes. Numerous planar breaches were torn between them, leading to grinding winds sweeping gouges that wider and deeper and massive swarms of cutting stone shards concealing planet spanning protrusions of luminous, cancer-spawning stone.
Allies and forced conscripts were drawn in from the Quasielemental and Paraelemental Planes, and thus travelers to the Plane of Air should expect to find crystalline dragons, oozing horrors, phaetons, and sentient clouds of choking dust even as those who visit the Plane of Earth must contend with cavern bottled storms, smoke veiled hunters, xixecals, and the invisible and ever watchful assassins of Vacuum. The djinn refused to take part in the initial conflict but now find themselves among the most stalwart defenders of their homeplane. The dao have dragged in slaves from across the Great Wheel to serve in the armies of Earth, enchanting and training these forces for aerial combat in the newly constructed fortresses within the Great Dismal Delve.
The non-elemental deities of both planes have sealed off their realms, refusing to take part in the conflicts for now.
The number of planar breaches and vortices deliberately and inadvertently created has led to a great deal of planar instability especially on the Prime. Earth loses its natural consistency while Air becomes thicker and less yielding. Worlds have suffered as their atmospheres become suffocating and the shifting density of their tectonic plates leaves the surface and Underdark in ruins. Even in worlds less damaged there are thinning harvests and acidic rainstorms, lightning hammering mountains and volcanoes vomiting burning ash into the sky.
If peace were to be achieved now, perhaps there might be some way to repair the damage. Unfortunately even among the Inner Planes the reasons for this war is largely unknown, and while the forces of Fire and Water are concerned both sides see an opportunity to extort their neighbors as well as possibly seize a great advantage for their own element.
In Sigil there is much talk about the conflict, though as yet the Outer Planes have not played a significant role. A few deities thought to intervene for the sake of their worshipers - their corpses now lie in the Astral, undone by secret magics no one thought the elementals possessed.
Parallel LXI: Pity the Land that Needs Them?
In this parallel, the gods are caught in a complex stalemate ever since Ma-Yuan mated with the Tarrasque and their starving spawn sought of divine meat in order to sate their nascent hunger. As such the powers have retreated from much of planar life, focusing their efforts on the Prime and the continual shielding of their realms. Defending themselves from the predations of the god-eaters is so taxing that it prevents them from sensing much beyond the borders of their realms. It also keeps them from granting spells to most of their clerics, paladins, inquisitors, and oracles.
Yet before their forced isolation, they unleashed new proxies across the planes to serve their interests. Those who came from the Upper Planes and Mechanus were quick to see that their best interests lay in working with those of shared interests, leading to the League of Light and the Diamond Council. This naturally forced the agents of Neutrality and Evil to form similar alliances called the Grey Brigade and the Cabal of Shadows respectively. The proxies of Chaos, grudgingly realizing they could neither achieve victory nor defend Limbo if Xaos was at war with itself, finally formed the Brotherhood Legion of the Thunderbolt Titans....or whatever name they decide upon this week or maybe this hour or minute or moment...
The proxies are found across the Outer and Inner Planes, continually foiling each others schemes when not interfering with the schemes of others. Possessing the resources of their divine sponsors but lacking in their miraculous power, these groups have turned to spies, detectives, factions, merchants, and artificers to ensure that they are capable of responding to threats and opportunities as they arise. Massive fortresses, connected by portals, have been established in every plane not under control of their rivals. This has led to much of these conflicts occurring on the Inner Planes or on Prime Worlds where deities are no longer able to lend a miraculous hand.
Parallel LXI Organization: The League of Light Overview
Sent forth by their masters, and in some cases their creators, the League realized that attempting to realize the vision of their gods and prevent the triumph of Evil was not a job they could accomplish if each was isolated and alone. The abilities granted by their status as proxies would be far, far more effective if they were to unite as a team in the name of Truth, Justice, and the Upper Plane way.
The League is led not by a proxy, but one of the few active gods named Lelak. This quasipower is the daughter of Pelor and a mysterious goddess known only as the Dawnflower, both of whom have been devoured by Ma-Yuan and his hungry brood. Lelak is thought to have witnessed the death of her divine parents, and has sworn vengeance against Ma-Yuan but just as importantly has sworn to protect those weaker than herself. Lelak's strength and command over the blazing power of the suns is accompanied by her unusual power over dark, twisting shadows. When questioned about this, she smiles a heartbreaking smile and says that without Light there are no Shadows.
Though she is the most at risk when the League goes on missions, given that the god-eaters will always target her as food, she refuses to deny her aid to those in need and is greatly admired by the League for danger she willingly exposes herself to.
=-=-=
Will add details on the other proxy teams at some point, but if anyone wants to do the honors (or add more info about the League and its members) feel free!
Digression: Count Morgenstein and the Clockwork-Boy-Thing IV
They'd thought, given what they'd heard, that the man would be more of an obvious eccentric. That he'd babble about theories they wouldn't understand, maybe write snippets of equations over his skin.
Tsu's madness, if he was mad, was of a much more somber kind. It made this journey somehow safer and yet far more boring than they had anticipated.
"We passed that tree an hour ago." Juniper moaned. June was sure they were going in circles, but Oelkia Tsu assured them - with no small bit of annoyance in his voice - that her lifetime of ranger experience was paying too much attention to pointless occurrences of deja-vu. And while June had tussled out the dark of the Labyrinthine Portal, Giescali was more apt to trust Architect Tsu in this place.
Wherever this place was.
Giescali remembered accepting the assignment, Tsu coming to the guild office and signing the documents. The guild members getting a good look at the Architect so they'd know who to gut if they didn't get duly compensated for the likely loss of him and June. A world wounded by the druids of Blight, Tsu had said. A lost colleague he'd decided to track down.
Seemed like mushy romance stuff, was June's opinion. But then June had little room in her heart for romance, Giescali knew that much first hand. It's why he liked her so much. She shared his disdain for attachment, they're relationships lasted only so long as the job.
Tsu, however, didn't seem like a man in love. He seemed like a man who was angry, infuriated from having to set himself to this search and rescue...or whatever this was. His attitude matched most of this place, everyone filled with high tension, talking about the deviloths and demonoloths summoned by the Blight.
It was this crossbreeding of fiends that made Giescali know they weren't on the Wheel anymore, not even some backwater Prime world filled with mold covered trees and termites that nested in stone.
We woke up here. Did he drug us and bring us through a portal?
He remembered Tsu taking them to his home, to pack his things he'd said. And on the table there'd been this beautifully carved Red Lacquer Box....
been away for a while - picking up something I started several pages ago here -
Parallel XLVIII: The Near Realms
Sigil is a city of bunkers and towers, cast in scarred and scorched black iron. With little upkeep to do, the fearsome draconic dabus monitor the city from their high-up perches, glumly carrying out their absent Lady's final order. The impression is of a city under siege, with visitors and residents alike spending no longer in public spaces than it takes to do their business. Only the Clueless linger.
Wheelwalkers are uniformly taken aback by the shrines to the Lady of Pain, though locals will quickly point out that she deserves the reverence and is frankly in no position to do anything about it. Even on the planes, it is a rare municipal official that has closed a gate to the Far Realms from the wrong side.
Pilgrims still deliver flowers and trinkets to the spot where the Lady sacrificed herself, an entire city block of charred, black earth. It was mid-afternoon when the portal opened - exemplars and urchins alike stood by slack-jawed as buildings suddenly tumbled into the darkness. All was quiet for a moment, before their surprise turned to horror at what emerged. This was a parallel with no Vast Gate, no Blood Queen - while being remarkably similar to the Multiverse Prime, it had been blessedly untouched by the Far Realms. Not even the most sagacious celestial or fiend had precedent for the monstrosities that emerged.
The Lady was lost early in the ensuing battle. Accounts tell of her acting with no hesitation, arriving at the scene of the calamity and immediately descending towards the dark pit, meeting its geyser of monsters in an explosion of alien gore. She disappeared into the portal and moments later it simply vanished. This and other stories of the Battle of Sigil have brought a tear to the eye of many a hardened wheelwalker - proxies of warring powers standing back-to-back against a sea of gibbering aberrations, a trio of shining angels luring a tentacled horror into a waiting mob of ferocious devils, the gentle dabus enacting their Lady's final contingency and transforming into death-dealing creatures of the sky.
Unfortunately it was many hours into the fighting when the Guvners realized that the creatures may have been the least of their problems. Prismatic swarms of strange insects had also poured through the rift and were now drifting unimpeded through the city's portals, to countless locations across the multiverse. Mages were able to corral a portion of the insects as the warriors butchered the last of the invaders, but both were pathetically small victories. Half of the city was leveled and thousands were dead, with the damage across the planes yet to be measured.
...
While the creatures that spilled across the planes that day were as much fundamental particles of Realm stuff as insects (or any other sort of living creature for that matter), what they did was quite insect-like. They sought out warm places to lay their eggs before simply blinking out of existence, and were hardly discriminating in doing so. Primes, planars, animals, plants, exemplars, elementals, undead; some burrowed into constructs, powerful magic items, or even regions of the outer planes of exceptional magical potency. Hosts would quickly lose their mental and physical facilities as the eggs gestated over several days before finally exploding and loosing a new dark swarm. Though this went on for decades, decimating populations and extinguishing entire races, over time the intensity of the pestilence appeared to diminish and the hatching of their eggs no longer destroyed their sickly hosts, but instead transformed them into strange new creatures.
…
Hundreds of generations later, this parallel is a strange place indeed. The rich diversity of the plane-touched races pales in comparison to this parallel's realm-touched. Virtually every planar race of note has a realm-touched analog, with some races (notably genies, drow, and rakshasas) no longer existing in their original forms at all. That said, the sum numbers of all of the “pure” realm-touched races pales in comparison to the Alkiah, once a catch-all term for realm-touched humanoid mongrels and now a relatively well-defined race all its own. One wheelwalker famously described the Alkiah as an artist's brilliant and mostly successful attempt to make aberrations beautiful. Tall, slender humanoids, the Alkiah's exoskeletal skin appears at first glance to be highly polished silver – upon closer inspection, one will discover that it is composed of countless plates no larger than the head of a pin. Patterns of colorful plates snake across their bodies, throwing off rainbows of color in direct light. Angular, chitinous joints interrupt elegant, streamlined limbs; their faces are like beautiful minimalist sketches made real and their skulls extend into dramatic backswept cones, the shapes of which are typically the best indicator for distinguishing between Alkiah from various regions of the multiverse. Their voices appear to issue from a bottomless echo chamber at a single, unwavering pitch.
While far more realm-touched creatures would be described as evil than as good, most lie in some hazy place in between, the malevolent madness typical of aberrational creatures paved over by deeply alien temperaments characterized by stretches of eerie serenity interrupted by explosions of incoherent rage and shocking violence. While Alkiah are a substantial presence in many cosmopolitan planar locales, managing their extremes of emotion and treated little differently than comparably puzzling outsiders, most realm-touched keep to themselves, an arrangement that suits most planars just fine.
With the Realm swarms long gone, Alkiah and other realm-touched have reproduced through natural means for thousands of years and are thoroughly creatures of the multiverse, pervasive racial tensions notwithstanding. However, on extremely rare occasions a being is born with some vestige of racial memory of its origins. Driven mad by this knowledge and possessed of an unflappable need to reopen the rift, cults of these sad sentients will periodically launch suicidal terrorist attacks on Sigil; though none have made any headway towards accessing the Far Realms, these violent incursions keep the city in its perpetual state of martial lockdown.
…
While patches of alien flora and fauna can be found virtually everywhere across the planes, there is no better spot than the Beastlands for observing the new natural order. For a time the plane appeared as destroyed as an infinite plane can, with even natural insects and other carrion feeders poisoned by the remains of swarm-infected plant and animal life. But as elsewhere, the wave of extermination eventually gave way to new forms of life that rapidly doubled back across the plane, filling the void. Fractal forests amble across the landscape, their comings and goings announced by choirs of humming bioluminescent flowers. Herds of immense insectoid land beasts stop for a mid-day break and their scales take flight, the sky blackened by a cloud of avian parallelograms. The rapturous beauty on display has distracted many an unfortunate traveler from the plentiful hazards on offer, from carnivorous plants to countless dangerous beasts.
...
Naturally, the massive death toll that came with the swarms dramatically impacted the powers on this parallel. Entire pantheons saw the ranks of their worshippers thin and thin until they could hold on no longer. Looking out from their realms and seeing strange alien forms in every direction, many of the surviving powers retreated to demiplanes in the ethereal, and a second wave of departure was triggered by the arrival of the monoliths. Scholars and powers alike had speculated about the realm-touched petitioners and the arrival of new gods – these two questions remained oddly unanswered for a very long time, until the structures known simply as the monoliths began to appear across the outer planes. Miles high, these alternately beautiful and grotesque monuments are composed of shell, bone, and metal. Their abstract forms evoke plants, insects, and tentacled beats. As they appear to grow over time, most speculate that the monoliths are some form of realm-touched afterlife. They are impregnable to magical inquiry and supposedly are inscrutable even to the gods themselves. The Alkiah are quite silent on the matter.
Awesome stuff. Looking forward to more.
Hopefully I can get back into the swing of this thread, there is some awesome stuff going on here.
Happy Holidays!
Sci
I hope so! Looking forward to further tales of the Count and family!
Digression: Count Morgenstein and the Clockwork-Boy-Thing V
The Crossroads House was an anomaly. Its structure was, save for seven Rooms, something eternally borrowed from locations across the parallel Multiverses. It seemed to select the pieces of itself on whim, recreating parts of itself across days or within mere moments.
Within this maelstrom of passageways, rooms, windows, stairs, and a variety of other architectural formations oftentimes leading to planes and planets both benign and deleterious, the House forced the Architects to engage in a side-and-seek game with what was likely the most precious of the faction's creations:
The Room of the Prisoner.
The last time Count Morgenstein was here, he had come on behalf of the Keeper and been turned away.
That previous encounter had seen the Count enact an arcane binding on the Prisoner, one that enabled him to enforce a spirit-wrack via the part of him that was construct fused to flesh.
This time, however, the dwarven parallel walker could feel that this same enchantment had been twisted, possible inverted. With two Architects and five guards in tow, he approached the room the Prisoner was housed in even as he readied his own defenses.
Though the Rooms themselves were truly parts of the House and not aspects of construction forced into bi-location, they too were subject to change as were their inhabitants. The doorway towered over them all, the Count most all, though the entrance was blocked by a wall of ice that seemed to have melted from the ceiling of frozen water above them. Moonlight strode through the icy lake above them, and in another reality elk migrated across the surface with nary a creak to mark their passage.
The room beyond the ice was flooded with a viscous white glow that seemed, in the way of ink, to diffuse ethereally through the blockade of frozen water. The Prisoner itself seemed to watching them from across an empty dance floor, a tall and gangly boy standing under what seemed like a tree made of metal and glass. Perhaps it was the sculpture of some deep sea crustacean, its mandibles fused into a(n) (orange?) hoop from which thick, knotted together cilia drooped.
Then it stepped toward them, and as its foot touched the floor the room became a vault of polished green steel mirrors, and the Prisoner's form was lost in the surge of wavering light refracted through the sudden existence of water. No longer a boy, something larger, with intimations of the mantis and manta. Had this been what the sculpture was of? It had been to hard too see clearly in the light.
"Have - you - brought - the - Keeper - godless - one?" The question was produced through a gargling exhalation that somehow carried the malevolent creature's ill placed cheeriness.
The Count resisted the temptation to attempt a new wracking, his hand of flesh a tense claw over the necessary device embedded into his metal arm. He glanced back at the woman, one Izabelle Hotah.
"Tell us, if you will, about the Red Lacquer Box." The Count winced at the gentle pleading that threaded through the tone of her voice.
The Prisoner floated away from the ice, and then surprising no one yet still startling the guards of the Count it slammed its form against the barrier between itself and freedom. Once. Twice. Thrice. Above them the ceiling shook, startling the elks above, but no cracks appeared in the frozen water that separated it from its visitors.
Twice more it attempted to break free, then finally relented. The House wavered around them, but their surroundings held. The ceiling of ice above them, the black triangular tiles at their feet. Behind them for about two hundred feet these same tiles were mired in the mud they'd tread through, muck from the vats of slaad spas the House had made them cross.
"It was given when I was in a very, very generous mood." The Prisoner had retreated, floating back and becoming something else again, something with a siren's seductive, lilt for a voice.
The Count looked to Izabelle once more, but she was already thinking, chewing on her lip, and did not notice his gaze. She paused, searching for the right phrasing, then spoke once more.
"Is there something you can tell us about its formulas?"
The siren sang, in a language unknown to the Multiverse. The Architects raised up varied gem-studded instruments, seeking to record anything the Prisoner might give them in the hopes it would lead to the construction of genuinely infinite dimensions.
For a moment everyone, even the Count, were lost in the beauty of this unprompted performance.
Then the Count realized half of him was falling to rust...
I need to force myself to sit down and compile all the worlds again, don't I? Heheh...
Parallel LXII: Saint George Throws Up His Hands
From a distance, the Spire here appears to be a bundle of reeds set on its end – upon closer inspection these are hundreds of tightly packed tubes made from impossibly thin crystal. In the city above, portals are attended by gruff, bespectacled monkeys, who inspect portal keys and send travelers on their way in great glass elevators that scream down the Spire.
Though seasoned wheelwalkers may think nothing of harrowing modes of travel such as this, none are prepared for what awaits them upon arrival at their destination. The tubes that reach up to Sigil are actually the tails of this parallel's great transitive dragons. Across the multiverse, these magnificent creatures of crystal and ether are bound with magic and metal, quietly enduring the indignity of planar travelers regularly emerging from their wrenched-open jaws.
....
To put it mildly, this parallel has dragon problems. It isn't clear if the enmity between the children of Bahamut and Tiamat is far greater here or if the preponderance of draconic violence is simply an outcome of their massive numbers in this reality.
While the Blood War remains largely confined to the lower planes, at its peak the Dragon War spilled all across the great wheel. Over time, metallics and chromatics became unwelcome on the planes - now they rage at each other across the prime in a spaceborne conflict of empires that makes the Unhuman Wars seem like a particularly cross misunderstanding by comparison. On many worlds, humans and demihumans are finding their dominance supplanted by kobolds, draconians, and dragonborn.
Few native planar dragons fought in the war before it was banished to the prime - nevertheless, they continue to suffer under a historical distaste for dragonkind. Good dragons have retreated to secluded lairs or been cruelly victimized, like the gentle transitive dragons. Many of their evil peers are now regional terrors, much like prime chromatic dragons of yore.
Demagogues and warlords have leveraged (real and imagined) draconic threats to amass power and territory across the planes; recently it is becoming increasingly clear that this parallel has only traded the chaos of one epic war for the chaos of many much smaller ones.
I'm loving the Crossroads House - it happily reminds me of 'The Doctor's Wife', Gaiman's very fine 2011 Dr. Who episode.
Was also thinking about the changing face of the Prisoner and what to take away from that. Is he (bear with me here) something like the inverse of the crowd of Darkwoods from The Duchess's Escape? That is, the Darkwoods are many distinct physical entities that are incarnations of the same individual. Whereas I feel pretty confident there's only one Prisoner across realities, yet it seems to be many different people/beasts/things. I'm not sure what this would all mean.
This whole thread is awesome. Wicke, I'd love to see summaries of the newer parallels but moreso would love to see more of your ideas.
Atomicb -> love this new dragon parallel. Hope you include info about the Asiatic dragons.
I haven't seen the Doctor's Wife, will have to check it out.
I've talked to the Architects, and they are embarrassed to say no one is sure what the Prisoner is -> A half-real thing that shifts through possibilities, a god or planar lord of a single room, or even a tulpa representing the Architects dreams and insecurities that would vanish if it were ever "freed".
The other question they can't answer is why the Keeper of the Medallion of Time and Place avoids speaking to the Prisoner directly.
And who can forget the Linnorm dragons? (Ok, I suppose the answer to that question may be "pretty much everyone").
Along those lines:
Yesterday I was listening to an episode of the Know Direction podcast, a session from GenCon 2011 with Wolfgang and Jeff Grubb and others talking about building out Midgard - the world-building aspect got me thinking about this thread, which I agree is awesome, but made me feel a little sad that scratching the surface is the best that we're going to do.
The part of my brain that thinks I don't need sleep wants to build out 52 into something. Perhaps perhaps perhaps.
Agreed.
That said, an updated list from several pages ago:
1 - Inner to Outer, so Below so Above (sciborg2)
2 - The Tripartite Sigil is the Engine of Modernization (sciborg2)
3 - The Dead City, the Missing Lady (sciborg2)
4 - Where Quiet and Wild Reign (sciborg2)
5 - Where Rivers Overflow (sciborg2)
6 - Sigil is for Lovers (sciborg2)
7 - It's All Hinterlands Here: A Wild West (sciborg2)
8 - A Conflict of Empires (sciborg2)
9 - The Triumph of Celestial Bureaucracy (sciborg2)
10 - The Gilded Darkness (sciborg2)
11 - The Sylvan Battleground (sciborg2)
12 - The Nascent Dream (sciborg2)
13 - The Waters, the Land and the Crown (sciborg2)
14 - The Aftermath of the Sun War (sciborg2)
15 - The "Triumph" of Vecna (sciborg2)
16 - The Rilmani Get Serious (sciborg2)
17 - The Ocean Foundations of Serpents (sciborg2)
18 - Unnamed (jem)
19 - Whispers On Your Shoulder (sciborg2)
20 - Spokes In The Cosmic Wheel (eldersphinx)
21 - Promise Of The Infinite (eldersphinx)
22 - The Lady is Made of Sugar and Spice...and knives (sciborg2)
23 - The World Tree and the Cosmic Web (sciborg2)
24 - The Roads through Stardust and Void (sciborg2)
25 - Spheres within Spheres (jem)
26 - Petitioner Perfection (atomicb)
27 - Where Nature Rules (wicke)
28 - The Alchemy of Virtue and Vice (sciborg2)
29 - Prime Time (atomicb)
30 - The Mysterious Stranger (jem)
31 - The Circle (sciborg2)
32 - Entropic Thunder (bahne)
33 - planar Refugee (bahne)
34 - The Grudging Truce (sciborg2)
35 - The Wind Swept Lands (sciborg2)
36 - The Center Cannot Hold (sciborg2)
37 - My Father's Mansion, The One of Many Rooms (sciborg2)
38 - The War of Parted Lovers (sciborg2)
39 - The Storms of Pandemonium (wicke)
40 - The Sundered Planes (sciborg2)
41 - The Spirit Ocean (sciborg2)
43 - The Contest (sciborg2)
44 - The Lady is Naked But Veiled By Stone (sciborg2)
45 - Blessed are the Liminal Messiahs (sciborg2)
46 - The Dreamer's Exchange (sciborg2)
47 - The Evolution of Evil (vikinglegion)
48 - The Near Realms (atomicb)
49 - The Luminous Dream (sciborg2)
50 - The Shadowverse (sciborg2)
51 - His Death Throes Echo in the Caverns of our Skulls (sciborg2)
52 - That's Why the Lady is a Swan (atomicb)
53 - The Ghost Chance of Memory (sciborg2)
54 - The Devil You Don't (sciborg2)
55 - Sigil in Your Shadow (sciborg2)
56 - The Bloodied Vineyard (sciborg2)
57 - Fetal Gensis (sciborg2)
58 - The Lady always has the Last Word (sciborg2)
59 - Keep Praying For a Golden Ticket (sciborg2)
60 - Dust in the Wind (sciborg2)
60 - The Wind Gasps, The Stones Weep (sciborg2)
61 - Pity the Land That Needs Them? (sciborg2)
62 - Saint George Throws Up His Hands (atomicb)
102 - The Duchess's Escape (rip)
103 - Mad Queen Morwel (rip)
"The part of my brain that thinks I don't need sleep wants to build out 52 into something. Perhaps perhaps perhaps."
Oh definitely. I think there are a few parallels here that could be whole, fleshed out cosmologies and that is one of them for sure. If you want to develop it further I'd be interested in reading!
"Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight".
-Albert Schweitzer
Digression: Count Morgenstein and the Clockwork-Boy-Thing VI
Around the Count a snowfall of rust collected upon the surface of the pitch colored tiles underneath their feet. His guards - a collection of a cleric, two artificers, a psion and an abjurationist - immediately began to heal, ward, and repair him utilizing their respective talents.
The Prisoner, for its part, sang on.
The dwarven parallel walker felt no pain as the half of him that made his body entire an artifact slowly disintegrated despite the best efforts and arcana of his artificers. At present the internal mechanisms interlaced with his organs held, though he could feel the rust creeping into the interior of artifice-frame. It would not be overly long before the impossible happened and the artifact was destroyed by a means other than the one that the previous Keeper had informed him of.
Would he explode? Would his spirit be caught by the varied soul traps and contingencies he'd enacted for just such an event? He watched the creature singing even as the elk above them stopped and pawed at the ice beneath their feet. They too were caught in the web of auditory beauty.
The Architects, for their part, either numbly pleaded or toothlessly threatened the Prisoner even as the entrapped creature - or whatever it was - continued with its performance. It was only thanks to the psion he'd brought along that his own guards were able to slow the efficacy of the attack against him.
With a sigh, Morgenstein activated the spirit-wrack before that option was snatched away by the impromptu oxidation of his person.
The song became a scream, causing everyone but the Count to start. The rust slowly trembled beneath his feet trembled into a pastiche of equations and musical scoring. The Count felt the enchantment's inversion, realizing too late that it was not meant to cause him any physical harm.
He wiped the pooling wetness from his eyes as the Architects confirmed the arcana written in rust would allow them to track the Red Lacquer Box.
Though it was little more than a silhouette in the brilliance of its home, the Count knew the Prisoner's eyes met his own and saw the nascent kinship that bound them with gossamer threads. He knew it hoped these weavings would metastasize into something that would choke him into treasonous action.
The Architects bent around him, recording the precious gifts of their child. Not once did any of them look up at Morgenstein's hardened face and see the conflict seeded into his soul. His own guards, if they took notice, were trained not to betray his reactions with their own.
For his part, the dwarven wheelwalker stared through ice, his gaze refusing to flinch from the burning white light, willing himself into dismissive apathy even as the loneliness and isolation of the creature before him now swam through his mind and his soul.
Though he was not wholly successful, the etchings of rust beneath his feet were no longer threatened by the falling of his tears.
Damn, that was beautiful.
Digression: Count Morgenstein and the Clockwork-Boy-Thing VII
It was strange to look at these things, each a miscegenation of yugoloth and one of the races of devil or demon. It was strange to believe the celestials had broken the baern, the obyriths, the hellish eaters of light, that the scattered remnants of the younger fiend races were all that was left...and even then these paltry samples numbered less than the things before her.
They were crossing an ocean of dead vermin, the dessicated exoskeletons of starved locusts and flies that had devoured every last bit of greenery and flesh that in a frenzy that gave no thought to the future. Barren trees and the dead brown stubble of broken cornstalks had shadowed them across the miles they'd cross. Patches like abandoned piles of brown rice that, up close, resolves themselves into the corpses of dead maggots and larvae that would now forever fail to bloom.
This graveyard was coated with the dull coloration of varied shades of mold, the last witnesses to what would assuredly be a lifeless plain soon enough.
In this dead land their employer and guide summoned living collages of limbs and wings and mouth parts, psicoloths muddied with the features of glabrezu and succubi, arcanoloth heads set atop the bulking frames of pitfiends, the burning aura of the balor coating the skin of some fleshy mass dotted with the soothing eyes of the ultroloth.
"Don't look too closely", Giescali warned, to which she nodded. She was well aware of the danger but she also could feel the web of abjurations that Oelkia Tsu had used to entwine these conjured fiends.
The ultroloth eyed thing, like the others, would be quickly dismissed once Tsu had finished his interrogation. Each of these fiends had been asked to reveal the location of Nanji Ogovar. As yet none had been able to give more than hints of whereabouts.
(She was on the Prime. Not this world, another one. One they could reach through Sigil...)
In the meantime, like the ingestion of opiates, the calming effect of those opal eyes allowed her to think with a bit of enforced calm, to ponder this impossible place they had found themselves in.
The fiends broken. Evil diminished, the Lower Planes flooded by the Blight. Tsu had also mentioned the lack of tieflings, and warned them not to mention even the existence of such creatures. The man paid well, but June had begun to wonder if it might be time to calculate acceptable losses.
The question was, of course, if push came to shove would Giescali follow her lead? Would her part-time lover help her bring this man down?
Of course they couldn't kill him, not until she was certain her own magic would allow them to drag the way back to the-Wheel-she-knew from his corpse.
"It is chilling to watch Thou move upon thou,
who lies alone in the dark waiting to be mastered.
It is a shock to realize that this low, slow collusion
of master and victim within one voice
is a rationale
for the most awful loneliness of the poet’s hour."
-Ann Carson, The Glass Essay: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178364
Digression: Count Morgenstein and the Clockwork-Boy-Thing VIII
Like calls to like. That is what the Keeper has told him, advice passed down in a moment of instruction-confession...or so the Count believes. Sometimes it is hard to remember what the Keeper actually tells him and what the Keeper tells him in dreams...
("I have no gods." he says as reminder to himself.)
Still, like calls to like. So there is a puzzle, a pattern, in the suddenly deluge of the Prisoner's loneliness inside him and the flotsam it dislodges from the layered sediment of his memory:
(There is the hammer he holds as a child, his father's arm bracing his own, aiding the son's bearing of this tool's hard iron weight.)
(There is the return to his family's cavernous city, the familiar feel of the magma warmed stone of its streets, the familiarity welling up lanced by the later conversations that made him realize he'd come home to a place of strangers.)
(There is the curious skipping over him by the campfire by the other soldiers, self assured that dwarfs don't love the way others do. He almost forces his story upon them, her body grinding against his own even as honor keeps his hands to himself. She wants to seduce him to love and he knows that such a thing is impossible)
So lost in the past he forgets the clockworks parts of himself, until movement on the other side of his gaze causes him to stir. He realizes he has been staring at the sleeping one-eyed, one-armed Laqui who herself stirs from her nap, climbing clumsily toward the surface of awakening.
She opens her eyes, smiles sleepily at her "clock-man uncle Morgan".
Then she raises her stump to attempt to scratch at an itch on her scalp - once, twice, thrice before she uses the other hand.
The Count turns from her, even as he offers a soundless, wordless promise.
(I will kill Laquera one day. I will kill her and then I will have you healed.)
When he looks back Laqui is asleep once more.
His once-again-whole metal fist is placed within the machinery of his communications device. His fleshy half hangs limp, to all outward signs a corpse save for the barest wakefulness given to his remaining leg so that he would remain standing upright.
In this too perfect stillness he recalls dancers on a stage, frozen in staccato intermissions in which they held each other aloft in varied formations, the slight trembling giving credence to their training and athleticism.
Once, his body held such muscled grace as well.
He speaks to the Keeper, a thousand voices, preceding echoes and the fading reverberant voices, telling him that whatever his "son" is, it is stirring the future and pasts of the parallels it walks through.
(He remembers a skull cracked open, brain matter on his hammer and the days after that he saved all his tears for nightfall and solitude.)
He speaks to the Architects, of projects funded and keys to safe houses, and encourages them to work harder at tracking down the Red Lacquer Box.
(He tastes that disappointment which comes each time he realizes some newly tread Wheel offers nothing that resembles the feeling of an ever lost home.)
He speaks to his own agents spread across the Wheels, requesting divinations and communions.
(He raises his hand, and four throats are cut. Princes in a line of succession, all tainted by the touch of Karagoth. The youngest is young, even for a human.)
He does not notice that Laqui senses the fresh crack running through him, does not see her rise from her slumber, cannot feel it when she takes his numb hand in the only one she has remaining.
Parallel XXI: The Lady is Made of Sugar and Spice...and knives.
Format:
Divinity's name
Description
Symbol
Appearance
Les Desservir
Gods of innocence, youth, fruit, and desserts.
Streawberige (Fraisinette, Moranguinho, Fresita Rosita)
A terrestrial goddess who has domain over the beauty of nature and virtue. She is the patron of the innocent and pastry chefs. Cats are sacred to her; her avatar may appear in the form a large pink cat.
♥♥♥ (with little green leaves)
She appears as an auburn haired maiden with freckles dressed as an idealized peasant usually wearing a red dress with a white pinafore and a large pink bonnet; her presence is indicated by the scents of strawberries.
Hurtilbery
A terrestrial god who has domain over fruiting bushes as well as fishing and sloth. Dogs are sacred to him.
A straw hat
He appears as a smiling/smirking, brunet youth with dark blue eyes dressed as an idealized peasant (straw hat and dark blue overalls ) usually fishing or leaning lazily against a tree. His presence is indicated by the aroma of fresh baked berry pies.
Myrtille (Bleuette)
A terrestrial goddess who has domain over fruiting bushes as well as memory. Mice are sacred to her. Her avatar can appear as a large yellow mouse.
A stylized blue eye
She appears as a blue-haired maiden in pig-tails with dark blue eyes dressed as an idealized peasant, usually in shades of blue.
Manzanita (Maçãzinha, Aeppel)
A terrestrial divinity who is a goddess of youth and apple orchards. Turtles are sacred to her.
A yellow apple with a green leaf
She appears as a ginger-haired child with apple red cheeks in idealized peasant clothes usually yellows with green.
Albricoque
A terrestrial divinity who has domain over fruiting trees and educating the young. Rabbits are sacred to her. Her avatars can take the form of giant, white rabbits.
A pale orange-yellow circle with a green leaf
She appears as a platinum blonde child in idealized peasant clothes usually in shades of pale pinks.
Framboisine (Frambuesita, Framboesinha, Raspecia )
As a terrestrial deity who celebrates the season of Summer in the lives of mortals and vegetation; she is also the goddess of mischief and patron of pranksters. Monkeys are sacred to her.
Bright pink lips with a slight smirk
She appears as a magenta-haired young maiden usually in various bright shades of pink with a mischievous smirk. Her presence is indicated with the sound of giggling.
Blostma (Laranjinha)
A terrestrial deity who has domain over flowers and a protector of orange groves.
Butterflies are sacred to her.
Orange butterfly
She appears as a dark-skinned, hazel-eyed young maiden dressed as idealized peasant usually in shades of orange; her presence is indicated by the scent of oranges and the flurry of monarch butterflies.
Proumnon
As the terrestrial god of knowledge, he knows wisdom is compatible with formal education and conventional learning. The learned man knows from experience when his words will provoke a conflict while the wise man knows it intuitively, instinctively. Wisdom is simply having the sense enough to know what it takes, experience or an education, to learn. He promotes sensible solutions and actions; he suggests compromises and alternatives. He plans for the future, attempts to anticipate problems in upcoming events and tries to prevent it. Owls are sacred to him.
A violet circle with a green leaf
A violet-eyed lad in aristocratic schoolboy dress (usually shades of purple) with a scholarly, bespectacled appearance.
Citronelle (Citronette)
A terrestrial goddess who has domain over beauty and vanity; she is also a protector of lemon groves. Oddly, frogs are sacred to her.
A yellow oval with a green leaf
She appears as a curly blonde maiden dressed as an idealized peasant usually in shades of yellow. Her presence is indicated with the scent of lemons.
Limaozinho
She is the terrestrial goddess of citrus fruit as well as dancing. Birds, especially parrots, are sacred to her.
A light green oval with small, dark green leaf
She appears as a young maiden with green hair and dressed as an idealized peasant usually in shades of green. Her presence is indicated by the desire to dance.
Kerasos (Cerecita, Cerezita, Cerisine, Cerejinha)
She is the terrestrial goddess of loving affection and protector of cherry orchards. Geese, especially white geese, are sacred to her.
A red circle and pink circle joined by green stems
She appears as a red-headed child dressed as an idealized peasant usually in shades of red and pink. Her presence is indicated by a feeling of being loved.
Angélique (Angelita)
She is the terrestrial goddess of goodness and a messenger goddess. Skunks are sacred to her. She is often accompanied by indigo-colored skunks and/or white skunks with indigo stripes.
White wings
She appears as a young maiden with platinum blond hair and dressed in white and pale blue dresses.
Persica (Pesseguinho, Pêche Melba)
She is the terrestrial goddess of shepherdesses and patron of shepherds. Lambs, especially golden lambs, are sacred to her.
A pinkish-yellowish circle with a green leaf
She appears as a young maiden with curly pink hair and dressed as an idealized shepherdess in bright pinks.
Bananinha
A terrestrial goddess who has domain over athletic competition . She is a proponent of health, exercise, and physical self-improvement.
)))
She appears as curly blonde dressed in simple clothes in shades yellow.
Uva Azeda (Uva Agria, Uvita Agrita)
She is the goddess of wine; a terrestrial goddess with domain over fermentation and brewing. Snakes are sacred to her. Her avatar may appear as a large, purple serpent. Her presence is indicated by the aroma of wine.
Purple circles forming an inverted triangle
She appears as a matron or crone dressed in purples.
Purpur (El Panadero De Pasteles, Macaron Mauve)
He is the terrestrial god of baking, delusion and vice (specifically: Avarice, Envy, Gluttony, Lust and Pride). He is also a trickster god. Naturally, he’s the patron of charlatans and bakers. Black birds are sacred to him.
A lavender chef’s hat
A man with white hair dressed in purples with a chef’s hat and apron. His presence is indicated with the smell of burnt baked goods.
Prunella (Pasita, Prunelle)
She is the terrestrial goddess of strife. Worms are sacred to her.
Frowny faces in shades of purple
A young girl with dark hair, dark clothes and a frown.
Parallel Poodleflax: Windhaven in the post Saox Elsewhere-Meshing
The deeping wicks cast their shadows in this quiet core, away from them that dwell in the Elsewhere. Outside? Oh, the joyous Elsewhere would drink you in and add you to the Spheres, another voice for the growing Chorus
The fallen Ring-City, once of the Cracked and Collapsed Spire. Opened up to and by Heart's Desire, she of the Blades and the Ripping Shadows. Ripped open the shadow of the Ring-City, she did. Now, it lies across the Elsewhere. Happened before the Elsewhere-Meshing too, though some called it a Ring-Toll harbinger. I say...I say maybe, and remain unaligned, much like the Chasm-Beneath-and-Between.
Once-Sigil, now a fair and sharp archway-city, stretching from Broken Gears, where the Boxmen keep to their timekeeping, to the swirling, twirling, always-churning Tempests. Stretching across the Chasm-Abyss now. Not the Abyss of classical literature, mind you assumption, but a new Abyss-In-Absence. Said to be as deep as the Spire was once tall.
There're markets across the length. And Markets! Oh the Markets-Panic, they that dwell in those post-days. Keep their times clean, would you not agree? It's a full on thirty Day-strides to cross from side to side, such is the length of that once fallen Arch-City!
And the Arts across the Elsewhere! Fell's scars! In statues! In paint and ink, on paper or flesh! Carved out of the beating heart of the Elsewhere-Land! Colossal mountains shaped by tool and tooth! Such marvelous majesty and magnificence! You should walk with me, across the Elsewhere and watch the Arts live their lives!
The Old-Uppers and Old-Lowers? They split. Some fell down and still fall, though you can still Step-Through to them. Some Mesh-Joined with Broken Gears, others went to the Tempests. Some float atop the Abyss, caught on eddies in the Absence-Flow. The Abyss-Fallers sail and float across, in search of new lands and places forgotten, learning the names of the Lost Powers! It's a quite exciting time for them!
The Silver-Void that once connected the Classical Elsewhere? Can't say for certain, though I suppose it should still be there. Not much call for going Outside in these days of Powers-Forgotten post-Meshing.
Of course, the Inners are as turbulant as ever. They experienced their own Meshing, though of Opposites-Forms, not neighbors like across the Elsewhere. Imagine the wonders of Earth-Air, or Ooze-Smoke or Lightning-Dust! Oddly, there is no Positive-Negative, though I can't imagine what they might have wrought for the Deep-Inners. There are wonders down there, and to hear of the Abyss-Fallers speak their creeds, they share our Abyss-Chasm, though from the other side. Oh, imagine dropping down into Vacuum-Mineral from the Once-Sigil! Such poetry!
@Michel Andre: Love these gods, they have a good mythic feel while keeping to the themes of the Sugary Parallel. Perhaps they oversee (lord over?) one of the upper planes, like how the Norse gods oversee much of Asgard and the Greek and Elven deities oversee Arborea.
I like the idea of avatars have a scent, and the sacred animals was a good touch. Skunks and geese congregating, or flying geese forming symbols or messages are good plot possibilities.
@Wicke: So Sigil cracked and the Multiverse tumbled? The Inner Planes are on the other side of the Abyss? Great, great stuff. Love the style you wrote in too!
Basically. And I see Sigil as existing as a great bridge-city across this new Abyss and between the lawful and chaotic sides of the Outer Planes. Some of planes were mostly untouched: Mechanus (Broken Gears) and Limbo (Tempest). Some merged: Acheron/Arcadia, Arborea/Pandemonium, and I have this vague notion of a strange checkerboard landscaped Elysium/Grey Wastes, though I'm not sure where it would connect. Maybe it cycles around from one side of creation to the other.
Others just kinda broke loose and drift and float in the new Chasm-Abyss: Ysgard and Carceri (the earth rivers of Ysgard and the spheres of Carceri mix and mingle now, and there are probably a few cubes from Acheron out there too, for good measure). I envision the Abyss itself as spiraling all the way down to the Inner Planes.
I also liked the notion of having the natives refer to the time prior to the breaking as the Classical period. And I have a strong suspicion that the Primes either disintegrated or access to them is practically barred. Any references to the Astral and Ethereal go back to the Classical period when all access to them was abruptly cut off.
Parallel LXIV
Inverted Moral Wheel
In the beginning it was lawfull void not Chaos! The Abyss was a seed of life in the void.
So, from Chaos life was born, and Obiryts were the life seeder; Than Law resented life and tried to put an end on it! The Dukes of Aqua beated the Demons; Mishka, The Wolf-Spider (C/G) was imprisoned and his Queen retired in the Abyss of Life.
Eladrins exterminated Obiryths out of jelousy and spite, But theyr heirs, born from the souls of generous, creative and freedomloving mortals, the Tanar'ri remained!To fight the Demons, harbringer of chaotic life the gods of laws created the Angels. But Asmodeus greater of the Angels grow many doubts. Why were them to exterminate life? Why couldn't they bring order in a more peacefull way? Why there was punishment for desobedience but not reward for conformity? He made the gods sign the primal pact, allowing him to reward the souls of the worthy; The gods than casted him out the heavens, but than they discovered the truth! The Fallen Angels, now knew as Baatezu were actually spreading good along with order, driving mortals to redention and purification.
In this Multiverse what was Good is Evil and what was Evil is Good.
The lower planes changed in this way:
Pandemonium is a place of freedom, eccentricity and loud cheerfullness.
The Abyss of Life is an endless triunph of wonders.
Tartarus is the refuge of the dissidents and of the revolutionary! Who oppose tyrants often ends here, along the Titans.
Hades is a peacefull land of the Dead, devoid of pain and tribulation.It house part of the ultimate altruists, the Yugoloths.
The Geheenna, is a bastion of good, way more militant than the other planes of good! His Yugoloths are the more interventist inferic race.
Baator is the land of the good order, the land of justice, honor and duty, the Baatezu being acive agents of redemption and salvation.
Acheront is the paradise of the soldiers, a land of orderly batterfields,clever strategies and honorable battles won by the smartest, not by the strongest.
Mirrorly, we have:
Arcadia, a land of bigots, prejudiced traditionalist.
Celestia, the ultimate empire, ran by ruthless Archonts who wants crush free spirit from the wheel.
Bytopia, the twin hells; One a slave based countryside the other an unforgiving savage land ridden by cannibals.
Elysium is a land of hypocrisy and appearance, were racist Guardinals buid the prosperity of the élite on the suffering of many.
The Beatlands are brutal an unforgiving hunting lands.
Arborea is a land of whims and unrestricded passions, ruled by petty and jealous Eladrins.
Ysgard is a land of brutal, never ending conlict, fought on an extreme unforgifing land.
On the Inner planes Good elemental forces are stronger than the evil ones.
On the Astral Planes, noble crusaders, the Githyanki, rules an empire prosperous and righteous.
On the Prime, many worlds identify sky and light with evil, while earth and darkness are associated with hope. Undeath is also seen as a rightfull rebellion to the tyrannical order imposed by tyrannical gods.
I think the new Acheron is my favorite. Do you think there is an Overlight, where the surface world has more evil races than the noble and largely peaceful Underdark?
For sure there is! It come along with the inversion of moral axe.All powers which normally are evil are good and the opposite;Some neutral power have some slighty alteration too!
As I said, a lot of what is normally associated with evil, like darkness, poisonous creatures, undeath, death and the underground now is associated with good, while sun, light, flyng creatures, the surfice of the world and the natural harmony are now associated with evil.
Parallel LXIV
Inverted Moral Wheel
Tartarus is the refuge of the dissidents and of the revolutionary! Who oppose tyrants often ends here, along the Titans.
The Pantheon of Mount Othrys
They rebelled against harsh order and clashed with their power-hungry children; they won. Rather than condemn their offspring; they escaped into Tartaros heartbroken. They are subjected to falsehood and vilification; they were called Titans. Stories of their “sins” were spread throughout the prime; the truth about them was obscured. The day of reconciliation approaches with the inevitable march of time.
The Lord and Lady of Time
KRONOS : The Abdicated King, Lord of Heaven
As the God of Consequence, Kronos is time as it affects the course of human life. He weapon is the sickle - a symbol of reaping (as in you reap what you sew). To the creations of Prometheus and Epimetheus), he fixed their lifespan and made them mature. His priests preach the philosophy of patience to the flock and teach them to adapt themselves to their changing bodies, lifestyles and needs as they go through life. As the song says, every new beginning is some other beginning’s end; his meditations on the essence of the temporal have evolved him into a god of endings and beginnings similar to Janus. He and Rheia, the generatrix of time, represent the divine omega and alpha in the “linear” nature of time-stream; she “births” time which he “devours“. (Actually, they form the divine diameter in the true circular nature of time. )
He erred with his child-rearing; he will admit this. While Ouranous was a strict father, Xronos overindulged his offspring. He is falsely accused of atrocities he did not commit by his resentful children. Kronos now waits patiently; he foresees Zeus and his pantheon overthrown by their own offspring. When they are defeated, Kronos has prepared a rescue and a home for his humbled children.
RHEIA: The Queen of Regret, Goddess of female fertility and the mountain wilds.
Once queen of the pantheon of Othrys ; she is the goddess of female fertility and the wild mountains. From menarche to menopause, she is the goddess who controls all menstrual cycles. To the creations of Prometheus and Epimetheus, she gave fertility and/or wombs.
Rheia needs no worshippers; she simply draws power from her children. She nevertheless has her witches to do her bidding. She forsake her husband and siblings to lead her children’s uprisings; she envisioned leading a new pantheon but instead ignored by those she empowered. She resides in Arborea and temples to her thrive in the mountain wilds. While she has been forgiven by her siblings, she can not yet forgive herself.
The Lord and Lady of the Knowledge
KOIOS: God of the Axis of Heaven, Intelligence, Prophesy; Lord of the North
He is the god of the questioning intellect, inquisitiveness and curiosity. With his enquiring mind, he is the prophetic voice of Heaven itself. Koeos was also known as Polos (the pole) and probably presided over the axis of heaven in the north around which the constellations revolve. Koeus was one of the four -brothers who conspired with Kronus in the rebellion against the order of Ouranos. He and Phoebe, goddess of insight, represent the mind. To the creations of Prometheus and Epimetheus, he and Phoibe gave them minds (intellect). He, Phoebe and their daughter, Asteria, are found either on Minethys or Colothys in deep meditation.
PHOEBE - PHOIBE: Goddess of Earth's Centre, Prophecy, Oracle Delphi, Purification, Intellect
The goddess of the answering intellect; she is unseen knowledge, and inspiration. The elder goddess of insight and prophetic goddess of the great Oracle of Delphi. To the creations of Prometheus and Epimetheus, he and Phoibe gave them minds (intellect).
As a divinity of prophecy, she is usually divining with her husband, Koeos, and daughter, Asteria. Otherwise, she may be answering entreaties for the future from heralds with excellent tribute. Phoibe was also the -goddess of the Delphic oracle--a shrine which stood at the navel of the earth. She probably spoke with the prophetic voice of her mother Earth, while her husband Koios or Polos (literally "axis of heaven"), was the who uttered the prophecies of his father the Sky. The daughters of the pair--Asteria and Leto--represented the oracles of darkness and light. Leto's son Apollon clearly presided over the prophetic power of heaven and light, while Asteria's daughter Hekate was associated with the prophetic powers of the night and chthonian darkness, including dreams, astrology and communion with the dead or necromancy. She, her spouse and daughter meditate in their palaces at either Minethus or Colothys.
The Lord and Lady of Beasts
KRIOS: God of Constellations, Years, Seasons, & Leadership, Domesticated Animals, Constellation The Ram
Krios‘s titles include: Lord of the south, Beast-master of the herds; the god of the heavenly constellations and the measure of the year. He is associated with the constellation of the heavenly ram; its springtime rising marked the start of the New Year, and the other constellations follow in its wake. To the creations of Prometheus and Epimetheus, he gave them horns and male aggression. Kreios was one of the four brothers who conspired with Kronus in the rebellion against the order of Ouranos. Xeois always appear as part ram and part man. He and Eurybia, the fishing goddess, represent the natural congregation of both beasts and men. Megamedes, another name for the Crios, meaning "the great lord." Because of him, herds of dogs, horses, goats and sheep teem on several layers;.
Eurybia: Atlantean goddess of the power of the sea; bride of Kreios
She favors mariners and other warriors of the waves. She is the maritime queen of the beasts. Like Krios - the gods who make animals and men congregate, she causes schools of fish.
Eurybia is the goddess of the mastery of the seas from the pantheon of Atlantis. Because of her, schools of fish and sea creatures thrive on several layers of the lower planes. This kind-hearted goddess is a fisher’s divinity; she is worshipped in hopes of a good catch. Her fury is usually reserved for those who over-fish an area and disrespect the importance of sea-life. She seems to have presided over the external forces which influenced the main (open sea) including the rise of the constellations, seasonal weather and the power of the winds. Her husband is Krios, associated with the constellation The Ram and marker of the new year. Her grandchildren all had power over the sea. They included the Anemoi (Winds), the Astra (Stars), Hekate (Witchraft), Selene (the Moon), Nike (Victory), Bia (Force), Kratos (Power), Zelos (Rivalry). Some of these represent human command of the seas: the winds for sailing, stars for navigation, and force, power and victory representing naval supremacy.
The Lord and Lady of Life
IAPETOS God of Mortality, Ancestor of Man; Lord of the West;
As the god of mortality and the allotment of the mortal life-span, Iapetos is regarded as the divine ancestor of humanoids, races which inherited the worst qualities of his four sons: crafty scheming, foolish stupidity, excessive daring, and rash violence. (The sons of Iapetos were described as possessing the worst of humanoid traits: on the intellectual level, Prometheus is overly sly and craft Epimetheus a guileless fool, Atlas is overly daring, and arrogant Menoitios prone to rash and violent outbursts; their natural traits led each to their downfall.)
His sons Prometheus and Epimetheus were the creators of animals and men; to the creations of Prometheus and Epimetheus, he gave teeth and/or claws. Iapetos was one of the four brothers who held Ouranos fast while Cronus usurped his power. Iapetos and Klymene, goddess of fame and infamy, represent the transient nature of mortal life and recognition after death.
KLYMENE Goddess of Fame, Infamy
KLYMENE is the goddess of renown, fame and infamy. She is one of the elder Okeanides, wife of the Iapetos, mother of the Prometheus, Menoitios, Epimethous and Atlas and the ancestress of all mankind.
Klymene's husband Iapetos is the god associated with mortality; Klymene represents the fame that mortals strove for in order to obtain a lasting memorial in death. Indeed, the masculine form of her name, Klymenos, was a popular epithet for the god Haides, and had clearly chthonic associations.
The Lord and Lady of Light
HYPERION God of Light, Days & Months, & Observation; Lord of the East
Hyperion is the god of light, and of the cycles of time measured by the lights of heaven -- the sun, the moon and the dawn. To the creations of Prometheus and Epimetheus, he gave them warmth. Hyperion was one of the four brothers who held Ouranos fast while Kronus usurped his power. He is the father of Sun, Moon and Dawn.
THEA - THEIA Goddess of Sight, Light, Blue Skies
The elder goddess of sight, and the precious value of gold, silver and gemstones. As the elder goddess of shining light of heaven, she is also connected to "foresight" and "prophecy".
THEIA is the goddess of sight (thea) and shining light of the clear blue sky (aithre). To the creations of Prometheus and Epimetheus, she gave eyes. She was also, by extension, the goddess who endowed gold, silver and gems with their brilliance and intrinsic value. Theia married Hyperion, the god of light, and bore him three bright children--Helios the Sun, Eos the Dawn, and Selene the Moon. Her followers believe that the eyes emit a beam of light, much like a lamp, which allows one to see whatever it falls upon. Hence Theia the mother of sight (thea), was also the mother of light-beaming sun, moon and dawn.
Theia is apparently a female aspect of the protogenos Aither, the bright upper air, or shining blue sky. Again, a suitable role, for a daughter of Heaven, and mother of the Sun, Moon and Dawn. Like her sisters Themis, Dione and Phoibe, was also an oracular goddess. Her name is connected with the word theiazô, "to divine or prophecy." Under the title Ikhnaie, "the tracing goddess," Theia possessed an oracular shrine in the region of Phthiotis in Thessaly. (Her sisters were likewise oracular goddesses--Phoibe held Delphoi, Mnemosyne Lebadeia, Dione Dodona, and Themis shared the four. )
The Lord and Lady of Freshwater
OCEANUS - OKEANOS God of the River Ocean, God of Fresh-Water, Heavenly Risings and Settings
The god of the celestial, eponymous, freshwater river: the place of rising and setting of the heavenly bodies. creations of Prometheus and Epimetheus, he gave them fresh water .
As a god he presided over the rising and setting of the heavenly bodies : the sun, the moon, the stars, and the dawn. His ever-flowing waters, encircling the edges of the cosmos were associated with the never-ending flow of time. Oceanus was the only one of the brother Ouranides not to directly participate in the usurping of their father Ouranous; he was the lookout.
TETHYS Goddess of Fresh Water and Nursing
The goddess of the underground flow of freshwater and nursing the young; she is also the clouds in the sky. She wills Naiads to subsist and is the mother goddess of Centaurs and Sirens. She and Okeanos are the Divinities of Freshwater. To the creations of Prometheus and Epimetheus, she gave them milk to nourish their young
The elder goddess of the sources of fresh-water. She was known as the great nurse ("tethis") of life, and was sometimes equated with the Protogenos Thesis (Mother Creation). Tethys mothered the Rivers, Clouds and Springs. She is the mother goddess of the pantheon of Othrys; she is goddess of the time a mother can nurse her child. (She gave mammals the ability nurse their young.) She is the wife of Okeanos, the earth-encircling, fresh-water stream, and the mother of the Potamoi (Rivers), Okeanides (Springs, Streams & Fountains) and Nephelai (Clouds). Tethys is imagined feeding her children's streams by drawing water from Okeanos through subterranean aquifers. From her name is derived from the word têthê, "the nurse" or "grandmother." In mosaic art she appears with a small pair of wings decorating her brow, probably in her role as the mother of rain-couds.
Tethys is later represented by poets as the sea personified, and so equated with Thalassa, a goddess of Atlantis.
The Lady of Custom
THEMIS Goddess of Orderliness, Oracles, Assemblies
Themis is the good goddess of divine law and natural order--the traditional rules of conduct first established by the gods. She is also a prophetic goddess who presided over the most ancient oracles, including Delphoi. In this role, she was the divine voice (themistes) who first instructed mankind in the primal laws of justice and morality, such as the precepts of piety, the rules of hospitality, good governance, conduct of assembly, and pious offerings to the gods. Derived from her name. the word themis referred to divine law, those rules of conduct long established by custom.; the term was not usually used to describe laws of human decree.
Themis was an early “bride” of Zeus and his first counselor; she was forced by Zeus to mother the Fates and the Seasons. As the elder goddess of natural order, divine law and tradition, and the oracles of the earth, she was often represented seated subserviently beside his throne advising him on the precepts of divine law and the rules of fate.
Themis was closely identified with Demeter who subsumed much of her portfolio when Themis escaped to Tartaros. Indeed Themis' six children, the spring-time Horai and death-bringing Moirai, reflect the dual-functions of Demeter's own daughter Persephone. Themis was also identified with Gaia especially in the role of the oracular voice of earth.
She now focuses on her role as the elder goddess of custom, assemblies and right-order who presides over feasts; she is justice, peace and good-order and the seasons. To the creations of Prometheus and Epimetheus, she gave them habits and instinct. She is much more relaxed since joining her siblings. Rumors are she has a beau and has been seen in the ninth level of Ba'ator.
The Lady of Remembrance
MNEMOSYNE Goddess of Memory, Words & Language
Since she was the elder goddess of memory, words and language, she was forced to mother the nine Muses in the harem of Zeus. Mnemosyne was also a prophetic goddess associated with the underground oracle of Trophonius.
As a daughter of Ouranos (Heaven), Mnemosyne was also a goddess of time: she represents the rote memorization required, before the introduction of writing, to preserve the stories of history and sagas of myth. In this role, she originally was the patron goddesses of the poets of the oral tradition.
The is Mnemosyne was sometimes described as a triple goddess: Elder Mousai (Muses), who preceded the nine daughters of Zeus as goddesses of music.
The Lady of Libido
DIONE Goddess of Love and the Oracle Dodona
The goddess of lust and procreation; a prophetic goddess who presided over the Oracle at Dodona alongside Zeus;. she was forced by him to mother of the goddess Aphrodite.
She and Phorkys were born when Ouranos’ ambush resulted in his ejaculating into the ocean. Her popularity and her cult made her the most dangerous to the Olympians; her origin was given to her daughter and her religion obscured from history. As an indication of her power, her name is simply the feminine form of Zeus (Dios). To the creations of Prometheus and Epimetheus, she gave them the desire to procreate.
Dione was malignly described as "the temple associate" of Zeus at Dodona. The three old prophetesses of the shrine, known collectively as the Peleiades, were probably her priestesses; they were named "the Doves" after the sacred bird of her daughter Aphrodite--who also possessed a temple within the shrine. Dione's sisters were similarly oracular goddesses: Phoibe possessed Delphi, Mnemosyne Lebadeia, and Themis Delphi and Dodona. Dione was identified with both Phoibe and with Dodone (the eponym of the oracle).
The Lord and Lady of the Deep
Phorkys : The God of the Sea Depths
The old man of the sea is named as one of the sons of Ouranos. PHORKYS was an ancient sea-god who presided over the hidden dangers of the deep. He and his wife Keto were also the gods of all the large creatures which inhabited the depths of the sea. Their children were powerful sea-entities: Skylla (the crab) a monster who devoured passing sailors, Thoosa (the swift) mother of the rock-tossing cyclops Polyphemos, Ladon (strong flowing) a hundred-headed sea-serpent, Ekhidna (viper) a she-dragon, the Graiai (grey ones) spirits of the sea-foam, and the Gorgones (terrifying ones) whose petrifying gaze probably created the dangerous rocks and reefs of the sea.
Phorkys was depicted in ancient mosaic as a grey-haired, fish-tailed god, with spiky crab-like skin and crab-claw forelegs. His attribute was a torch. Seals are sacred to him.
Keto: The Atlantean goddess of sea life
KETO is an Atlantean marine goddess who personified the dangers of the sea. She was more specifically a goddess of whales, large sharks, and sea-monsters (Greek ketea). She consorted with the sea-god Phorkys, and produced a brood of amazing creatures: Ekhidna (the Viper), Skylla (the Crab), Ladon (the Dragon), the Graia (the Grey), and the Gorgones (the Terrible Ones).
As the mother of Skylla, Keto was also called Krataiis (Of the Rocks), Lamia (the Shark) and Trienos (Three-Times). The last title equating her with the thrice-swallowing whirlpool-monster Kharybdis.
Micheal Andre, it's all appropriate, but in the Inverted Moral Wheel Multiverse the children of Phorkys and Keto are not dangerous monsters, but helpful, if hideous, guardians.That's specially true in regard of Gorgones and Ekhidna.
Medusa, even after Athena cursed her retained her kind heart, who she transmitted to her descendents, the Medusas;The Pegasi horses are instead vengeful and resentful.
Ehkidna, mother of monsters, was the wife of Typhon, the last worthfull opponent to the Olimpyans.The blood-lust of so called heroes costed her many childrens (Hydra of Lernia, Nemean Lion to Hercules, Calidonian Boar to Meleagro,Chimera to Bellerofonte), while other such Cerberus went under the protection of Hades. She still care for her grandchildren, the descendants of her children, and hope for one day her husband will break free.
Great stuff guys, makes me wonder about the Norse Pantheon as well.
In the inverted moral wheel Ragnarok is not feared by good peeople, but actually attended with hope. Giants are the friends of common people, and commoners who dies peacefully (Odin call that dishonor) are wellcomed in the warm halls of Helgarr.
Warriors who refuse to slaughter and plunder are also wellcomed here.
Parallel LXV: Blossoms in the Aftermath
"you think, 'that orchard inside is nothing but ash'
- but -
it's just soil that's fallow and some day, month, year, epoch later a fragile green thing with a little blossom (pregnant promise of fruit) pushes out for a gasping breath of sun lit air. you blink again, struck, and a humming bird thought blurts across the Mind:
'when was the world this Colorful'? you ask yourself.
and you Smile at the memory of forgotten Newness."
-Blade of Innocence
Kinoa was born on the Naglfar, in the husk-hull of this ship that spans continents and sailed over the planes of the Wheel. Her first cries echoed faintly in this cavernous bulk, our fledgling nation earned with blood spilled over the finger and toe nails of the dead.
It is amazing to see what a child raised in a certain environment can be inured to. A miracle of sorts that she can look out sleepily, with only politeness to combat her boredom, as we sit and stare out at the bones of giants and wolves and dragons strewn across the red soaked marshes born of the flooding of the Ma'at with blood. Willows rising over the corpses of colossi, hurricanes of raven flocks wailing overhead, and she points to a line of ants, demands that I give the gatherers deserved and proper attention.
That she can feel only hunger, rather than a touch of reverence, as we pluck the apples shining because they have grown from rotting godflesh, with no shadow of tragedy stretching over her soul...yes, what word can I use to describe her laughter, her innocence, other than miracle?
To watch her peaceful slumber, that is a wonder amongst the broken wonders.
=-=-=
Ragnarok took most of the Multiverse by surprise. Among the gods it was Tharizdun, the Far Realms, Erebus who made many fear for the future. Loki was one of them, a fellow god playing the game, and when one does expect such a schemer to end up staying true to the hate that wrote prophecies into the futures glimpsed in the well of the Norns?
Ysgard was an Upper Plane, for the sakes of saints and proxies! That it was a Plane of War, that it existed as a frozen moment poised over a cliff, was something that was either unnoticed or disregarded in the political calculations of too many players in the Cosmic Game.
Yet when the Plane of War unfolds, expands, stains like indigo dropped into water it touches Ares, touches the Blood War, touches echoes of marching legions of Wind Dukes diving into hordes and hordes of obyrith.
Fire giants call upon salamanders and efreet mercenaries and allies, frost giants upon xixecals and trade words for the seed craft of the immoth. Naturally the djinn and Cryonax feel they must become involved.
Alfheim draws the elven gods, the death toll forces the fey of the Seelie and Unseelie courts to take notice.
And above the screaming, the dying, the mountains broken and seas boiled into deserts the shadow of a ship, its approach marked by the scent of grave soil cutting through the sweat and blood scent of battle.
Yet with Ysgard soaked into creation, dawn and its equivalents see warriors rise again and again until the Reapers of varied pantheons cannot help but intervene.
Death comes, but not before a single crack runs up the Spire and expands, it's innards opening to reveal three burning spheres of light...three orbs of Concordant Opposition.
Three seeds for a new creation, three eggs that now hatch too early.
Now, even as the old Multiverse wars a new one grows over it, into it, within it.
Imagine, if you will, a song being rewritten before its performance is done.
Another Facet of Parallel LXV (Blossoms in the Aftermath)
"If Lord Ilil will not assist you, she said, go to Ur, to the temple of Sin, and weep before my father. If he will not assist you, go to Eridu, to temple, weep before the god of wisdom. Enki knows the food of life; he knows the water of life; he knows the secrets. I am sure he will not let me die." -Duncan, Hal (2011-08-11). Vellum
It is the kind of story that we call myth, the kind that you recognize even in the first telling. The kind you recognize yourself in, though never having heard it before.
Ishtar descends to the House of Death, stands naked before the throne of the Underworld upon which her sister (shadow) rests in the manner of slavering lions.
(Yes, you think without wanting to, I know that feeling.
I know what it is like to be naked in the Shadowed House of the West, someone in my circle of beloved looking down at me.
I know what it is like to be judged in that House, defenseless as I grasp, desperately, for my innermost heart.)
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There was peace when Tammuz, whom some credit as the first Resurrectionist, was hostage-surrogate between the two sisters Inanna and Ereshkigal.
Then Tammuz died - his death vengeance for the murder of Enki - outside of the Underworld, outside the seven gates of the House. His corpse faded into the Astral, a dead god that would not rise.
Yet Tammuz stood in place on Ishtar herself, and now the fiends of Ereshkigal came from the lands of Hades, crawling over the stones of Olympus and the wood of Yggdrasil to steal the goddess from her City of Stars.
Yet Ishtar does not go willingly, and a war is fought that leaves Elysium cracked enough for the evils bound in its swamps to escape. For the work of Enki exists beyond his death, and thus Gala-tura and Kur-jara - made from dirt found under the fingernails of the gods - stand fast in defense of the Star Crowned Whore of Babylon.
The horrors of Ereshkigal slowly, across the span of eons, drag Ishtar down a path of wood and stone, and both Tree and Mountain bear wounds and leave artifacts of bark and shattered rock strewn across planes and world.
Some of her pantheon choose to come to her aid, while others seek to ensure the ancient laws of the Underworld are upheld.
Finally, think the gods of the Sumerian pantheon, the Babylonian gods can be put in the dead book. Inanna rallies her devils in Hell, and marches forth from the Inferno.
So begins a facet of another Ending, but amidst the carnage the astral dragons note that the corpses of Enki of the Waters and Tammuz of Resurrection draw closer together, ice bergs edging toward collision...and perhaps creation....
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Note: Murder of Enki is referenced in Planescape's On Hallowed Ground, wherein it is noted that there is a split Babylonian and Sumerian pantheon - where the former seek to overthrow their elders who are the latter.
The whole thing gets kinda twisted when you have Inanna and Ishtar as separate goddesses, along with a divergence in the rest of the pantheon.
Note:
Parallel LXV: Blossoms in the Aftermath is inspired partially by Mieville's Kraken, partially by Hal Duncan's Vellum, and a healthy mix of D&D material.
If anyone wants to throw in some mythic mayhem, definitely do so, the theme here is Genesis happening in the midst of Apocalypse...
Damn, Hal Duncan captures my idea of parallel wheels based on stories in a far more interesting poetic and damn it even mathematical way haha:
"There's an idea of 3D time that underpins VELLUM, an idea that as well as the forward-and-back linear time we're aware of, there's a side-to-side of parallel worlds, and an up-and-down of realities which work by different metaphysics entirely. Think of it in terms of story. A story starts at the beginning and goes in a straight line to the end -- the "frontal" time we recognise. But a story, the myth of Inanna's descent into the underworld for example, has variations -- in one version she has a single rescuer, in another there's two. So that's your parallel realities, your side-to-side time. And over generations these stories are retold, simplifed and/or complexified, revisions lain down on top of the old like sedimental strata. Think of the way James Joyce used the myth of Ulysses as a substrate for his novel.
So in the same way the Cubists were using fragmentation to try and represent a 3D object in the round, or as if from outside space itself, to give us a multi-faceted perspective on it, that's what I'm trying to do with VELLUM in terms of time -- to present the story as a 3D object, with the multiple perspectives all fragmented and folded together."
Another Facet of Parallel LXV (Blossoms in the Aftermath)
The water changes color like the sky does when overcast with the tattered remnants of a dissolving thunderstorm. There are times when its indigo dark and clotting and even as she blinks she can see the change that comes in the opening of her eyes - water cerulean blue and and so softly translucent she swears she can see the smoothed stones on the bottom.
Perhaps one day it will always be clear, when all the fiends' blood divorced from flesh is redeemed.
Today is not that day, the fire-genasi thinks, looking over at the hooded passenger who requested she and her crew undertake this voyage. Hinah shudders. Today is certainly not that day.
The passenger waits patiently as they dock, the crew - almost entirely made up of mortals touched by the elemental - eye those awaiting them warily. Once these waters would have burned the fiends, but now there are piscoloths calmly staring up at them.
No, not at them. At him. The passenger, the arcanoloth, who even now is removing his hood. What they see in his eyes causes the yugoloths of the Beastlands to start - never before have they seen penitence or devotion in the eyes of their own kind.
Burned into the jackal headed fiend's forehead is a furless set of scars tracing the shape of a child's severed hand. Who or what this god is unknown to Hinah, unknown to any of her crew, and yet for every week of this too long journey all of them have dreamt of that hand, on a table of cloying rosewood, those toddler fingers grasping for something, someone.
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Right before the titans broke their chains and stormed Olympus, prior to the sailing of the Naglfar and the unleashing of Fenris, before the deluge and rains of fire and the dances of Kali and Shiva, there came a call to the fiends of the Lower Planes.
Most did not answer, but some exiles among Hell's nobility, wandering tanar'ri, ambassadors of Apomps and yugoloth spies followed the Voice into the dark Void beyond Gehenna's four volcanic mountains, between the spaces of Carceri's pearls.
When they returned, they were clergy, demondand lying with daemon, demon and devil bonded by faith.
They spoke of the Black Hearted Messiah, the Deliverer who could offer a communion with evil unfettered by flesh or even spirit. The yugoloths even claimed that this Savior could offer what the Baernoloths had long promised but never delivered - true understanding of that gem of infinite facets, that black lotus of uncountable petals.
Then the Multiverse began to die and be born all at once, and the worlds of the fiends were shattered. Apomps went silent, and the collective memory of the demodands crumbled into fragments. The Lords of Nine found Hell a battleground of prophetic fulfillment, and the Abyss was cursed by a powerful ravage that even now threatens to purify the Misshapen Lands.
The Baernoloths were unprepared for this ending, unprepared for the wasting of their flesh to be cured, unprepared to be helplessly beautiful before their children. Unwilling to look upon their now gorgeous Father-Mothers, the 'loths locked them away in the pits of their Three Towers.
Most of the daemons, however, remain faithless to this day among the broken dawns of twilight.
I do want to look at math, paradox, and the planes in a future zine article.
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