bigskywritings

[bigskywritings]

A TALE OF THE CITADEL

Aberth, setting of The Chaos Vault

This particular world, the setting for the snippet below, is one of the worlds created by Pelk the Harper, the god of music (among other things). One of his claimed Rooms is what amounts to a concert hall, and its hidden away on this world, the one he formed from it before moving on to make new worlds. A wide range of cultures and religions formed in his absence, but a common concept many of them circle back to is the idea that all of creation has two parts, existing as both a Shape and a Sound. Some have different names for this, some call it the Shape and the Voice or the Shape and the Song, or Form and Function or Substance and Speech, its defined differently in various parts of the world, but all ultimately contain the idea that there’s a physical component to existence, and a non-physical.

A small percentage of people on this world, usually called something like weavers or unbinders, have the ability to find the thread that binds the physical and non-physical aspects of a thing together, and temporarily unweave it, leaving two separated parts. The Shape, which exists unbound as an image without substance, a seeming illusion that has no mass, sound, scent, etc....and the Song, which exists unbound as the essence of a thing, but without form to concentrate it and define it. Once created, its the nature of a created thing to exist as a complete whole, and so being Unbound is an imperfect state of existence. Meaning as soon as an unbinder stops concentrating on keeping the two halves apart, they’ll snap back together and rejoin the way they’re supposed to.

Except centuries ago, people invented devices called mirrorflasks and echo-catchers.....to catch and contain these separated halves of an unbound thing, and keep them separated. Mirrorflasks are glass vials of any size, whose interiors are coated with an alchemical mixture that acts as a mirror that keeps a Shape eternally reflected and never fading, as long as the flask is corked. Echo-catchers are metallic vials whose interiors are coated with a similar mixture, that keeps a Sound or Song eternally echoing and never fading, as long as the stopper is in place. An unbinder is necessary to separate the two halves so they can be caught and contained, but after that, anyone can uncork the containers, the effect is the same no matter the person: the Shape and Sound will immediately rejoin, no matter how physically distant the mirrorflask and echo-catcher are from each other.

That’s irrelevant, the important part is that both flask and catcher need to be opened, and so they’re fairly useless except in pairs. If you uncork a mirrorflask but not its accompanying echo-catcher, the Shape or image of the thing will be released, just as if you uncork the catcher but not the flask, its Sound will escape as a formless thing that briefly can be heard or smelled or even felt, before its lack of a Shape leads it to spread out in all directions without boundaries, diluting it to the point of non-existence then.

So a fire that’s unbound and contained, will just be the illusion of flames if just its flask is opened, while if just the echo-catcher is uncorked, there’d be the sound of flames, the sensation of heat, but it’d be there and gone in a matter of moments. Anything can be unbound and contained, physical objects like weapons or forces like fires or even storms (the trick of unbinding is seeing something as a whole thing unto itself. An unbinder who sees a storm as disparate elements will never be able to unbind the whole storm, just pieces of it like a lightning bolt. But one who sees the storm as one singular thing can unbind that whole storm and store it in a flask and catcher.) 

Even animals can be unbound. The only thing that can’t is human beings, but with one exception....unbinders can’t unbind anyone else, but they can unbind themselves. Separate themselves into a bodiless voice and essence as well as a substanceless image...a kind of astral projection that’s exceedingly rare as its viewed as extremely reckless and dangerous....because while in that state, even an unbinder can be trapped in a mirrorflask and echo-catcher, the same as anything else.

Anyway, that’s the scoop on the below snippet. Gonna try and be better about tagging things on this sideblog because yay organization, lol, so the tag for things Citadel related will be ‘tales of the Citadel’ and specific to this setting will be ‘The Chaos Vault.’

(That’s the title to the bigger project linked to this setting. There are legends on this world of a vault that was hidden away or lost centuries ago, but in it was stored all the greatest natural disasters and cataclysmic forces that had ever been unbound. Unbinding things like that is basically a lost art, as older civilizations could do things with unbinding that ‘modern’ inhabitants of this world can’t even dream of....as the more scientifically advanced they became, the harder it was for them to see major cumulative things like storms and other disasters as just being one single thing that could be unbound, rather than a lot of smaller, individual elements. So there’s lots of legends about something called the Chaos Vault existing somewhere. Which eventually culminates in a high fantasy heist caper FTW).

Snippet from The Chaos Vault, in which Miya kills people cuz that’s kinda her thing, I mean look she has good reasons you can trust me, I’m a doctor, but also yeah, its a character trait:

Choosing a spot a few steps from the door that separated the kitchen from the hall - close enough to get a clear view of the servers coming and going from it, far enough away for her to time things just right - Miya braced herself against the far wall, leaning as if she needed its support to keep her upright. Less than a minute later, a server emerged from the kitchen bearing a full tray of dishes, and she straightened and pivoted just as he came within reach.

Her seemingly wine-drunk stumble was nothing short of artful, if she did say so herself, and their collision tipped the man’s tray just enough that the outermost dishes cascaded to the red-tiled floor. The sounds of shattering dishware echoed loudly thanks to the vaulted ceiling overhead. The shattering of a small mirrorflask was a trivial thing in comparison, when she let it fall from her clenched fist. A minor tinkling easily lost in the chaos she’d caused, just as the sound of broken dishes was drowned out by the much louder revels taking place down the hall.

And much like the shards of the broken flask were effectively camouflaged by the mess on the floor.

“Oh, Shape and Song, I’m so clumsy!” She bubbled exaggerated apologies at the man and clung to his shoulder, keeping his attention firmly on her and away from the red and black banded firesnake that slithered rapidly away from the noise. It reached the escape offered by the ballroom at the end of the hall, and vanished into the forest of dancing legs and swirling skirts.

“Its quite alright,” he assured while attempting to be graceful about dislodging her. It most assuredly was not, if the grimace he couldn’t quite hide was anything to go by. Then again, Miya mused, anyone likely to give him grief about the matter would be concerned with far greater things in a few moments.

But only if she made sure her little friend got his Voice back before he was spotted by the revelers. With no physical mass to trip over and coloring fairly well disguised against the tile, she had some time, but not much.

Miya heaved herself off her unknowing accomplice, and with a few more incomprehensible mutterings, she staggered toward the other end of the hall. Making use of the wall once again, both for “support” and her charade, she came to a rest near a window left open so the heated air from the kitchen wouldn’t circulate.

She dipped her head and unclasped her right earring. Its intricate array of tiny chiming windpipes, while annoying, hid the equally tiny echo-catcher among them. With a single smooth motion deftly hidden by her hunched stance, she uncorked it and tossed both vial and earring out the window and into the canal below, glad to be rid of both.

A Song once released needs no direction to find its other half, and rejoining its Shape and binding itself back together took but an instant. It would only take a few seconds more for it to be drawn to the scented-oil she’d dabbed her target’s sleeve with when brushing up against him earlier. With that thought, Miya pushed herself off the wall and started down the hall again, this time at a much quicker pace.

3…2…1…

A single scream cut through all other noise and carried horrified silence in its wake.

There we go.

And then it was the silence that was shattered. People spilled out of the kitchen and into the hallway like so many confused and frantic ants. But ones with their eyes all drawn towards the ballroom, leaving nothing but backsides watching her. Her steps straightened and took back their usual confidence, her stride made short work of the rest of the hallway, and she vanished through a side-door at the end of it before anyone thought to look around.

She skipped as sprightly down the steps to the garden as her garments would allow - which is to say, not very - and reached behind her head to release her hair from that ridiculous style. Mussing it just enough to let it flow freely down her back, she sank deeper into the night’s shadows and allowed a smile of satisfaction to curve her lips.

Surely there was nothing wrong with taking a little pride in one’s work.

#tales of the citadel #the chaos vault #pelk the harper

[bigskywritings]

WAVERIDERS

Part of The Firmament Space Opera Universe

Roughly two thousand years before the current events of the Waverider book and associated stories, growing unrest among the outermost planets of the Iridescent Empire led to various groups fleeing its reach. Not wishing to seek refugee status with the other great galactic powers of the time and lacking the resources to commission a world of their own from the vast terraforming corporations of the Ezkai and Appellai, they eventually settled a gas giant out on the galactic rim. Seeding anti-gravity wells throughout the habitable zone of the gas giant, in the altitudes where the atmosphere was conducive to human survival, these settlers (all hailing from different planets within the Iridescent Empire, with their own distinct cultures) formed individual city states rather than a singular conjoined civilization - with each city state gradually expanding over time to encompass additional floating settlements within the range of these various anti-gravity ‘columns’ of habitable space. 

Early settlers mapped the electromagnetic currents of the planet’s dense and highly charged magnetosphere, and as the cheap and antiquated spaceships they’d used to make the journey to their new home gradually decayed and failed, a new system of transportation between well-states was popularized. Using solar sails fueled by their new home’s binary stars, ships capable of weathering the corrosive elements of even other layers of the planet’s atmosphere were coated with a newly developed material with customizable polarity. In effect, it allowed the crew to magnetize and demagnetize their ships’ hulls with the flip of a switch. 

Thus they could attach themselves to an electromagnetic current and ride it across the planet’s magnetosphere and through the gas giant’s atmospheric ‘seas,’ demagnetizing their hull as needed in order to detach themselves from one electromagnetic current...and then using their solar-powered engines to hop to a current running in a slightly different direction before magnetizing the hull again to link up to the new current and carry on. This gave them a unique but effective way of traversing the vast distances of their new planet, one not reliant on interstellar technology said planet lacked the necessary resources to repair and replenish. 

The original settlers hadn’t set out intending to create a totally insular planetary civilization cut off from reaching the rest of the galactic civilizations, but upon realizing that was where things were headed should they settle on this planet long-term, it was generally seen as the best foot forward. Their new planet's combination of location, unorthodox geography, and inventory of resources was such that it seemed unlikely to be of interest to other galactic societies, thus a kind of protection from invasion in and of itself, while still being capable of building a self-sustaining society. In time they expected to fade off the rest of the galaxy’s radar - which is largely what happened.

However, there was one aspect of life before their new home that the early settlers weren’t ready to just slip away into their past unchallenged....with this being the psychic gifts inherent to all citizens of the Iridescent Empire. The Empire’s particular offshoot of humanity all possessed a unique capacity for psychic abilities, with brain chemistries capable of picking up and manipulating the ‘frequencies’ different psionic powers resonated on. However, the problem the Empire’s inhabitants faced was lacking an inherent energy source that could fuel the feats of psychic ability their brains were mapped to be capable of.

Unlike other divergent offshoots of humanity like the Ezkai and Appellai, who possessed some unknown mechanism for powering their varied psychic feats, the Iridescent Empire relied on the gems they mined, the prismatic stones. These gems’ unique crystalline structures acted as conduits that channeled the so-called “Wellspring” - an extradimensional energy source cutting across and through different universes, and a virtually unlimited reservoir of power that could be drawn upon to fuel the Empire’s psychics. As long, of course, as the psychic in question possessed enough of the gemstones that corresponded with the particular psychic frequencies they were attuned with themselves.

The Empire’s stranglehold on these gemstones - who had access to them and in what quantities - was the entire source of its class system and the underlying reason for the newborn Waverider society having split off from the Empire in the first place. Needless to say, they weren’t exactly an abundant resource for the new society, and quickly dwindled with no chance of replenishment as the scientists among the settlers experimented with what few they had in search of some other way to capitalize on their psychic potential.

The exact nature of their breakthrough, when it came, was lost to later generations of Waveriders, or perhaps deliberately hidden away. It is at least known to be linked to settlers’ discovery that the gas giant they’d presumed to be uninhabited had hosted at least one previous civilization. 

The first generation of ‘sailors’ on their new planet had quickly popularized tales of giant monsters lurking in the gaseous seas their ships sailed through from one well-state to the next. However, Waverider ships were built to be somewhat like giant submarines with sprawling decks that could be manned while sailing through breathable atmosphere....while the crew retreated into the depths of their ships when soaring through the acidic or poisonous gases of the nonbreathable layers of atmosphere. And as these monsters they told tales of were only ever glimpsed in the toxic storm clouds of these other atmospheric levels, eye witness accounts of them were considered suspect at best. 

They just happened to be wholly accurate.

Eventually determined to be some kind of dragon - distinct from the dragons of the Appellai, though with enough similarities it was speculated they’d inspired the Mother of All Monsters’ design of her own draconic creations - these dragons seemed to be non-sentient, feral creatures who fed on smaller lifeforms native to other layers of the atmosphere. But exploration into their existence quickly gave way to the discovery of floating ruins scattered throughout the various other atmospheric levels, in spaces similar but not identical to the antigravity wells of the human settlers. Even if the gas giant’s dragons were not civilization-builders themselves, it was clear someone else on this planet had been at some point.

In time, it was surmised that the builders of these various ruins had in the distant past transcended from physical bodies into existing as beings of energy (note: totally different from how the ‘patrons’ of the Selveyon System in the Patron and Muse books transcended and exist now). Early generations of Waveriders seemed to have at best a basic understanding of these builders’ civilization or science, but seemingly that was enough to unlock a breakthrough in their understanding of their own psychic abilities and potential.

And thus by means of some mechanism that’s been lost or hidden from modern Waveriders, their ancestors gave up on finding another fuel source for the psychic abilities they’d been used to utilizing as members of the Iridescent Empire with access to the Empire’s gemstones. Instead, they found a way to engineer or reconfigure their abilities to psychically hack existing energy sources and manipulate that which could act as its own fuel source. Feasibly anything with a wavelength and an energy source could be hacked or manipulated by a Waverider attuned to the right psychic ‘frequency,’ though the process is more straightforward with some wavelengths than others. Regardless, these ancient discoveries eventually gave rise to nine specific types of Waveriders and one quasi-mythical type.

1) Bright-riders: One of the five most common types of Waveriders, bright-riders are individuals psychically attuned to hacking light wavelengths and manipulating light to various ends. Depending on their skill and aptitude, bright-riders can create basic illumination, complex illusions, harness it as a weapon or ‘paint’ with ultraviolet frequencies in order to create fields of invisibility, etc.

2) Echo-riders: Second of the five most common types of Waveriders, echo-riders can hack soundwaves to render their surroundings inaudible, boost sounds or even create sonic booms from a simple fingersnap, as well as interfere with radio waves or other wavelengths meant to amplify or manipulate sound, utilize frequencies of higher pitch and intensity to mess with physiological and/or higher brain functions, etc.

3) Torch-riders: Third most common among Waveriders, torch-riders are able to hack and manipulate the microwave side of the infrared spectrum, amplifying or dulling thermal energy for a variety of heat and cold related effects. 

4) Shock-riders: Fourth most common among Waveriders, shock-riders hack and manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum - specifically in terms of all things electrical.

5) Iron-riders: Fifth and final of the five core types of Waveriders, though the difference among demographics between shock and iron riders is negligible at most, iron-riders also manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum, though more on the magnetic side of things. There’s slightly more overlap between the skillsets of iron and shock riders than there is between say, echo and bright-riders, with some shock and iron riders capable of the same feats though usually approaching the situation from different ends of the same spectrum...but for the most part their abilities are fairly distinct. 

6) Boom-riders: Slightly more esoteric than the five core types of Waveriders, with their approach to psychically hacking energy being less direct and obvious than manipulators of the prime wavelengths, boom-riders are attuned to direct trades and expenditures of kinetic energy. Their manipulation of this type of energetic interaction enables them to amplify and dull the kinetic energy built up or expended in physical conflicts, labor, transportation and the like, with a particular affinity for manipulating the kinetic energy tapped in all things involving momentum.

7) Sky-riders: Even less populous than boom-riders and with the specific nature of their energy manipulation being even more abstract, sky-riders are commonly referred to as hacking and manipulating gravity, though of course gravity is not an energy in the sense that the energies manipulated by other Waveriders are. Rather its more a symptom or byproduct of the various energetic interactions that are what sky-riders actually manipulate, and more a colloquial short-hand used to describe the abilities of sky-riders than an accurate representation of that skillset. 

8) Soul-riders: One of the two most rare types of Waveriders, as well as the most mistrusted and feared due to the actions of ancient soul-riders known as the Ghost Kings, soul-riders are akin to the telepaths of the Iridescent Empire and other psychic cultures, with an affinity for the specific wavelengths and electrical impulses that characterize brain activity. Thus they’re capable of many of the same feats as telepaths, albeit on a more finite scale as they’re reliant on the energy of that very same brain activity they ‘hack’ in order to power their manipulations of it. One of their most feared abilities, characterized by its usage by the aforementioned Ghost Kings, is a soul-rider’s ability to essentially body-hop by transplanting their own mind into another body, overwriting the existing consciousness with their own. 

The Ghost Kings, a finite group of no more than a dozen, hopped from body to body for more than a century as they attempted to dominate the still young Waverider civilizations and unify the entire planet as one singular empire under their rule. However, they were eventually defeated by their own greed as feeling limited and constrained in what kinds of telepathic manipulations they were capable of in comparison to the breadth of feats performed by telepaths of the Iridescent Empire, they sought to expand their range via experiments on the dragons native to the gas giant. They cybernetically enhanced the minds of these dragons in preparation for transferring their own brainwaves into these new more long-lived draconic bodies, which they theorized would also amplify the power available to them when performing telepathic feats, only to find the draconic minds less easily subdued than those of other human consciousnesses. 

The end result was the Ghost Kings’ minds were merged with the more bestial consciousnesses of the dragons, and with them all persisting as such into the modern age - feral telepathic creatures neither wholly man nor monster, with periods of lucidity as well as mindless rampages whenever one is encountered in the poisonous ‘wilderness’ of the gas giant’s atmospheric seas.

9) Heart-riders: The rarest and least understood of the nine Waverider types, heart-riders possess the ability to harness and manipulate the chemical energies involved in and released by biological functions ranging from the most complex to the minute and mundane. Commonly attributed as ‘life energy’ but in fact being far more infinitely complicated a subject matter, these energetic interactions allow a heart-rider to accomplish miraculous feats of healing, biological/physiological manipulation, the draining or transferring of ‘life force’ and much more. 

10) Quantum-riders: As much a subject of speculation and folklore as a known phenomenon, there’s no recorded instance of a quantum wavelength manipulator in existence. Rather, its more that its theorized that such a Waverider should exist, even if extremely rare...but with it also speculated that even should such a Waverider be born, they might not even realize it themselves, as many kinds of subconscious or even conscious manipulations of quantum forces might be dismissed as mere chance or luck.

Further speculative fuel for the existence of quantum-riders arose from the realization that the previous inhabitants of the planet had not wholly left it, but still seemed present in energy form, even if they mostly appear unable or uninterested in communicating with the current mortal inhabitants of the gas giant. These figures are characterized as elemental forces of nature with inexplicable seeming wants and interests on the rare occasions when they do interact with humanity: 

Lightning wisps are beings of pure electricity who occasionally appear near human technology to feed on it or almost mischievously toy with it

Fury sprites are thermal elementals who occasionally ‘pop into existence’ as balls of apparent spontaneous combustion who delight in random acts of destruction and vanish just as quickly as they appeared

Iron ghosts are elementals of magnetic force that create a semblance of form by funneling all nearby metal into armored skeletons or frameworks

Whisper phantoms are voices with no source that speak in peoples’ ears as echoes of themselves or those familiar to them and then vanish with a giggle 

Gravity geists are beings who appear as just a warped shimmer in the air but wreck poltergeist-like havoc on a locale

Atomic pixies are motes of light that always appear in a swarm and do appear to possess the ability to communicate via conjoining to create complex imagery and scenes, but with it never apparent why they arrange themselves into the images they do or what’s meant to be communicated by doing so

Bog-downs or bogs are phantom figures that only show up on energy scanners but are occasionally attracted by and cling to energy sources or even human beings and leech their kinetic energy or momentum, often only leaving and moving on once they’ve stalled them out completely - thus they can and sometimes are fatal to travelers or people caught out in isolated areas away from other more attractive energy sources

And while if there are elemental versions of human soul and heart-riders, they’ve yet to be observed and classified as such, legends persist of strange beings who might possibly be a kind of quantum life form. Popularly called chaos angels, they appear upon first encounter to be ordinary human strangers who just happen to be locus points for unnatural quirks of fate or fortune....until they vanish right in the midst of truly chaotic events that in hindsight seem to be direct results of their presence or actions they took while present. Its commonly accepted - even if not scientifically proven - that chaos angels do exist, and are one type of the beings who originally inhabited the gas giant before transcending to exist as wavelengths of various types and energies, as well as being the only type with any real interest in interacting with humanity in any kind of engaged fashion.  

Final thoughts:

Notably, a key distinction between Waveriders and the Iridescent Empire psychics they arose from is that while the latter may be attuned to multiple psychic frequencies they just need the right gemstones to tap into and channel, no Waverider possesses an affinity or attunement to more than one type of wavelength. Its unknown why exactly Waveriders seem inherently less versatile in type than their psychic forebears, but for whatever reason, the mechanism by which early settlers focused their psychic potential on manipulating already extant sources of energy resulted in said potential being condensed and concentrated onto just singular finite end-usages.

Or at least, that’s theorized to be the case, as no Waverider with an affinity for more than one type of energy exists....yet.

Additionally, the early settlers were remiss in thinking there was nothing about this gas giant that would interest the other galactic powers, as the connection between its dragons and the Appellai dragons created by the Mother of All Monsters established the Ezkai and Appellai were at least aware of it in ages past.....

And in fact, one of the tombs/temporal prisons of the twelve Fallen, specifically Sekas the Revenant Priest, was hidden on this planet by Ezkai Immortals after they won the Great War. Meaning they are extremely invested in making sure the Appellai never learn one of their twelve Fallen is imprisoned on this otherwise seemingly irrelevant planet far away from most galactic civilizations...

Related topics:

The Iridescent Empire, the prismatic stones, the Wellspring, the Ezkai and Appellai, terraforming corporations of the Ezkai and Appellai, Appellai dragons, the Mother of All Monsters, the Selveyon System, patrons, Ezkai/Appellai Immortals, the Fallen, the tombs of the Fallen, Sekas the Revenant Priest, the Great War

#the Firmament #Waveriders #Sunday writings

[bigskywritings]

Okay, warning to all like, three people following this blog currently: incomprehension upcoming as I post details on various projects that won’t make a ton of sense out of context but I want existing as published posts so that I can then compile all the posts into masterlist posts connecting them all with context and table of contents, so that they can then be read in a linear fashion and made full sense of. Alrighty, ready set ho! (I’m the ho).

[bigskywritings]

Even Heaven Can Break

A tale of the Citadel, and of Endings, and Beginnings

“God is dead.” Nerrick sighed and pulled off his glasses, mopping at them again with his now wrinkled shirt front. It wasn’t as though he held any great hopes that clearer vision might give him any further insight into the utterly inscrutable - and likely insane - young woman sitting across the table from him. He‘d already tested that theory and found it lacking. It simply gave him something to do. An ever so slight distraction from the roundabout circles they‘d been engaged in since - what was it now? Some six hours past?

“Yes,” he heaved, long past the point of trying to disguise his weariness. “You’ve said as much, multiple times. I don’t suppose you’d care to elaborate?” The girl - and she was nothing more than a girl, no matter what foolish superstitions she’d inspired amongst the lower classes - smiled again that same enigmatic smile that half made him wish he was a man more inclined to act on violent urges.

“God is dead,” she repeated with a small, careless shrug. “It seems a fairly straightforward statement of fact. I’m confused as to what more you expect me to say on the matter, Sir Magistrate.” His back molars ground together audibly. His patience maintained only by the constant vigilance of his temper. Nerrick reminded himself, not for the first time that morning, that he was a man noted for his restraint, his even temperament and unemotional dedication to justice. He was not about to be bested in a contest of wills by some ignorant, backwoods child, in his own prison.

The small dank room stank of mildew and rot, not to say anything of the havoc the dim torchlight was wreaking upon his fragile eyesight. Only his own personal ethics kept him from abandoning the girl to a more permanent exile in the deeper catacombs, an option that grew more appealing by the moment.

But as long as the possibility remained that she was merely repeating some heretical pagan belief, unaware of the repercussions her words had upon more civilized folk, he could not in good conscience treat her as just another rabble-rouser. Or, the Citadel guard against, condemn her to a space in the asylums, no matter how mad she seemed. Sitting comfortably three levels below the surface of the great granite and steel prison as though she were some grand lady awaiting tea in her parlor. .

“Perhaps you speak of another god unknown to me,” Nerrick conceded gracefully. The wooden chair, almost entirely rotted through, creaked ominously beneath him as he shifted his position, but God above, even his ass was falling asleep. Still she remained poised, back ramrod straight and never shifting those dark, pupil-less eyes from his. He was a man of reason and science and knew the unnerving Berut eyes to be nothing more than an unfortunate physical trait of her people, but it was easy enough to see how they’d gained their reputation for witchcraft and beguilement. Only the sternest of wills kept his gaze locked with hers. “I admit to being unfamiliar with all the customs of your people, and perhaps we speak of two entirely separate entities. The God of my people is eternal. He created everything we know, and much else besides, and He will endure when all else has turned to dust. He can not die.” “No.” Still she smiled. “There is only one God. In this, my people believe much the same as you. But you speak of faith, things that you can not know but believe to be true. I speak of fact. God is dead. This I know.” He tried reason. “God is the creator of all, and has no peer. If you admit this to be true yourself, then how can God possibly die?” She shrugged again. “Perhaps he willed himself to die. One can imagine eternity might grow tiresome after a time.” Nerrick could almost agree with that sentiment, as for a moment, he entertained the blasphemous thought that even God could be moved to suicide after sufficient time spent with this wretched creature. He dispelled such thoughts with a shake of his head - down that road lay this girl’s particular stamp of madness, no doubt. He tried another tack. “God created the universe. If He is gone, how is it that we are not? Shouldn’t the creation end with the creator?” “Perhaps it is ending, and it just hasn’t finished yet. We can hardly expect the universe to work on the same timetable as ourselves.”

“Tell me then,” he finally indulged her. “What makes you so certain God is dead?” “I saw him.” He sketched disbelief with an aged ashen brow. “You saw God.” “We seem to find a language barrier between us again, Sir Magistrate. Is my Erudi not accomplished enough for our conversation? Among my people, I’m considered quite proficient in your tongue, but perhaps I’ve been misled.” Nerrick flushed. Her Erudi was quite fine - more than, in fact, if a bit stilted. Another minor detail that bothered him, though he could not say why. How did such a young representative of an infamously uneducated people come to speak his tongue with the skill of the most lettered gentry? He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “How do you know that the man you saw was God?” “Wouldn’t you know God if you saw him?” “God is above humanity,” he rasped impatiently. “He doesn’t appear in human form. Should we see him, we’d hardly be capable of comprehending his glory.” Her lips moved in what he imagined to be an expression of pity. It was impossible to be sure, the way her eyes resisted any attempt to read emotion in them. They quivered like liquid night, reflecting the faint torchlight as unsteady flames alit on twin seas of oil. “You speak again of what you believe, because you have never known otherwise. I have known otherwise, and speak again of what I know.” “Enough!” His hand cracked down on the wooden table top, spearing his palm with splinters. His reddened face, already contorted in rage, barely registered the pain. Her face registered nothing at all - just the same painted mask of gentle amusement she’d worn since first escorted down here in the company of his guards. And it was a mask, he was sure of it now. She was too clever with her words to be either ignorant or insane. Whatever game she played at, he wanted no further part in it. “I have no more patience to waste indulging your heresy, and I refuse to subject more of my city’s people to it. You’ve caused nothing but disruption since you first arrived, inciting riots and restlessness among the lower classes, using their faith in service to your own twisted agenda, whatsoever that may be, and it ends here, girl.” She remained unmoved. A pale statue in a plain white dress, inky black curls spilling down both shoulders like curtains cut from the same cloth as those damnable eyes. Her lips twitched. “You may call me Adana.” Nerrick froze, save for where his chest heaved like the billows of a forge, grasping greedily at air to feed his exertions. The tinglings up and down his spine were more than just pinched nerves from too long sitting in one position. This girl, with her damn eyes and impenetrable nerves and heretical talk was more than just some insolent brat from the savage lands north of the city. He was no longer completely convinced there was nothing to the stories and legends of Berutian bewitchery. But those eyes held him now, and he didn’t think he could look away even if he willed it. “You resist giving me your name for these past several hours, and now offer it freely, without me even asking. Why?” “It no longer matters,” Adana told him, heaving a sigh of her own for the first time all morning. Nerrick almost felt that there was regret in that sigh, but her painted mask hid that as well as any other emotion, were it there at all. “For what it’s worth, it was never my aim to disrupt the peace of your city. Call it an unfortunate symptom…nothing more, nothing less.” “Then why?” “Everything you know is about to change,” she said gently. “Well, not for you, I suppose, but for them. They needed to know. It’s time for man to take charge of his own destiny, not spend the coming days huddled in shrines chanting desperate prayers to a deity dead and gone. They won‘t listen, not nearly enough of them at any rate, but some maybe.” Why not for me, Nerrick wondered, but instead he merely asked, “Why now? Why do you tell me all this now, when before it was just a game to you?” Adana laughed, a low throaty chuckle laced again with that hint of pity. “It no longer matters,” she said again. “You want to be here,” Nerrick intuited suddenly. “You evaded the guards for over a week, and then when they arrested you today, you hardly resisted. Like you wanted to go with them. Why? Why now, why here? What is it you want?” “To wait. Here with you.” And then, before he could ask for what, she continued. “There’s a mountain two day’s journey north of here by horseback. My people call it the Degatoi. Yours call it the Foothill, I believe. They say that’s where the Citadel rests, where God makes his home.” “That’s just a myth,” he frowned. “God doesn’t dwell amongst his creations, the Citadel exists in a realm untouchable by our own.” “Some myths are make believe. Others are facts that have since been forgotten. I believed it to be fact, as do my people. So I journeyed there, a pilgrimage of sorts. My…reasons are my own.” “And did you find the Citadel?” “No, it wasn’t there anymore. It moved. It does that, you know.” “Of course,” Nerrick snorted. “Why wouldn’t it?” “Why indeed,” Adana smile wryly. She smoothed her dress in her lap. “I did however, find God. He was lying at the base of the peak. Roughly your height, wearing unfamiliar clothes, though I suppose that’s only to be expected. His hair was strange, almost feathery, and he looked like no man I’d ever seen before. He was dead. And I looked into his wide, staring eyes and in them beheld the Abyss. And I knew then that he was God, and knew all the mysteries and secrets of the Universe that he’d known then at the last. My people can do that, you see.” Nerrick nodded, numbly. He had heard that, any schoolchild knew that myth of the Berut people, the legend that kept even the greatest sorcerers of the South from their doorstep lest it turn out to be true. They could see into a man’s soul with those strange eyes of theirs, see all the way into them into their deepest, darkest reaches and pull out every twisted secret and hidden truth for accounting. It was the kind of legend he’d always held up to be nonsense, but now, staring into those eyes of myth and reckoning, he knew it to be true. Knew all of it to be true.

He started to tremble, sweat dotting his brow, tracing salty rivers down the cracked parchment of his skin. The torchlight grew fainter and fainter and the air was dryer and thinner, harder to grasp at. Black flecks spotted his vision, and he took off his glasses again. Wiped them, though he suspected the problem was his eyes, not the spectacles. He’d heard these were all symptoms of a heart-death, but it was hard to worry about such things now. He had to know, had to wonder instead, what kind of things might one see in the eyes of a dead God? What kind of things might one know? “The same things we all know at the end,” Adana said softly. She looked at him in the rapidly regressing torchlight and he knew with the same certainty he knew everything now, that yes, her eyes held pity. For him. “You feel it now, don’t you? When it’s so close, that no reason, no logic, none of the games we play to convince ourselves we don’t know the things our soul senses - that little piece in each of us that’s the smallest sliver of divinity linking us to the rest of the universe - none of them can hide it anymore.” Nerrick shivered and licked chapped paper-dry lips. His voice came out a croak. “Why are you here?” “To wait.” “For what?” “The end.” And then, “I’m sorry.” The earth split with a roar, but to Nerrick, all seemed silent. He leapt back, knocking over his chair with a hoarse shout his ears could never possibly hear over the sound of walls crashing down, thunderous echoes reverberating throughout the small chamber. The stained slate floor rent with a crack right through the center of the room, and he stumbled, tried to right himself, stumbled again as the earth shook and danced and trembled like a living thing, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Dust stormed the air in gray, ominous clouds that twisted into his lungs with every breath he took. The sound and fury buffeted him on all sides, splinters and shards of broken rock bombarding his skin. Pricking, ripping, tearing and gouging.

His glasses cracked and fell, but before he the torches finally failed, he could still blurrily see the girl, Adana, seated serenely on the other side of the table, riding out the madness with perfect poise and watching him with those damned eyes. He fell himself finally and the ceiling split, raining clouds of dust and slate and broken rafters. One struck him full in the chest, pinning him to the floor. He felt ribs break, felt his terrified screams silenced by a shard of wood spearing him through one lung, all his breath going to granting him a few last gasps of air. Adana’s face filled his blurred vision then. In all the din, there was no chance of hearing her get up from the table and walk over to his side, but then there she was kneeling over him. She looked deep into his eyes. “You see? We all know things, even if we don’t know we know them,” she told him gently. “It’s because we’re all a little bit of God. Or maybe the Universe. Creation. I’m still figuring out where the line separating one from the other begins and ends. You were special, Sir Magistrate. Even if you didn’t know it. Take whatever comfort from that you can.” “Go with God.” Then her hand covered his mouth and nose, and she looked into his wide, staring eyes and beheld in them the Abyss, and all the secrets and mysteries of the Universe he had known at the end. ************* Adana rose with some difficulty, and drew the magistrate’s keys from his belt. She smoothed her dress - it would never be white again, she feared - and made her way to the door over a floor that still quivered and rattled, but only restlessly now. Much of its temper had been spent. The hallway beyond was relatively untouched. She quirked dry lips at divine providence, but perhaps it was more accurate to say she enjoyed the favor of the Universe at the moment. The torches were all spent and broken, save for where one had fallen upon the corpse of one guardsman and set his skin and hair aflame, lighting the gray hall fitfully with its macabre light. It was more than enough to see by. At least, more than enough for her eyes. She stepped over another body and ascended the small, tight stairwell at the end of the hall gracefully. Less so, when she almost ran into the blond, dirtied youth who came clattering down the stairs in the opposite direction. He reared back, startled, and she saw that she’d been accurate in her assessment: he was probably no younger than she herself, but his youth shone from his eyes and the sprightly smile that sprang to his face. She recognized him as one of the city-folk always to be found at her gatherings, listening intently to her words. Reyus, she thought his name was. She smiled. “Milady,” Reyus rasped out. The air was still thick and heavy with dust, and he had to stop and pant for breath before continuing. “We were just coming to rescue you!” He waved aimlessly behind himself with what she took for a stolen sword, perhaps looted from a guardsman dead in the earthquake. Coming down the stairs behind him were another young man and a slightly older woman, similarly ill-equipped. Adana favored them with a bemused smile. “How thoughtful.” Reyus blushed a rosy dawn and pressed his back to the wall to allow her passage by. He followed quickly at her heels as she passed the other two and continued up the stairs - rather like an eager but ill-trained pet, she contemplated with some amusement. “Well, there was a number of us - rather, we thought…we weren’t certain what the magistrate would do to you, and we were concerned…” “So I see,” she murmured as they alighted on the ground levels of the prison and found ten or so more men and women of varying ages and garb awaiting them with anxious expressions. They filled in silently behind them as Adana continued towards the front gates, kicking aside the outstretched limbs of the dead where they littered her path. “And are these all your enemies slain? What fearsome warriors have come to my aid here?” She suspected she might be needling Reyus just to see how much further his face could purple in shame and embarrassment. But it was the end of the world, after all. One should take one’s entertainment wherever they found it. The hues of his face performed admirably. “The rest of the guards fled when the earth shook. We never suspected - milady, what is happening? Is this your doing?” “God is dead,“ she said softly. “Such a thing is not without consequences.“ Adana stooped and unwrapped a relatively undamaged black cloak from one body, throwing it over her shoulders. “You’ll want one as well, I believe,” she told the boy.

His eyes held hers bravely, and he nodded. His was an interesting soul indeed. A cult had hardly been her intention. Gaining the attention of the magistrate had been her only real aim, and if she happened to seed her own mystery a bit early, and allow it more room to grow - well, that had hardly seemed at cross purposes either. But, she supposed, it was never too early to find one’s faithful. A boy like Reyus might come in handy, and who knew what secrets the others might hold? She nodded decisively, and raised her voice to address them all. “Everything you know is about to change.” “I have a long road to walk ahead of me,” she continued. “It is not for the faint of heart.” She turned and walked from the prison‘s gatehouse. All of them, she noted with some interest, followed close behind. They raised scattered cries and shouts of alarm as they beheld the vista outside, but she barely looked up. She already knew the sky overhead was a dark red as though aflame. Roiling purple thunderclouds collided and went to war, crimson lighting stabbing at one and then another underneath. A long black tear split the heavens, stretching from one horizon to the next. Consequences were to be expected. The streets ahead of them were filled with the ruins of buildings and the bodies of the fallen. Survivors milled about in small groups, suffocating in shock while scattered fires raged. Flames crackled hungrily, fitful tongues licking at the sky and spewing their venom of smoke and ash. She could hear, faintly, the desperate prayers for salvation and succor. She sighed, and would have told them to save their breath, but then, she’d already done so. Reyus spun about, lost for even a direction to point his horror. “Milady, what about them?” Adana shook her head without slowing. “They’ll follow, or they’ll die. This city is not long for this world. It’s too close to a Vein. Nothing more can be done, and the whole world will follow if we do not reach our destination.” “But where are we going?” She favored his persistence with another small smile and drew the hood of her cloak up over her head. “We‘re going to the Citadel. To seek divinity.” It began to rain, thick, heavy drops that were warm to the touch, quickly soaking them through and through. She was glad to have found a black cloak, as the imagery of her white dress stained by this unnatural downpour was not one she cared to contemplate - even if it would already never be white again. She reached out to raise Reyus’ hood for him when he remained too distracted to care. The blood staining his golden hair, still vibrant even beneath the dust of dungeons, was not an image she found herself caring much to contemplate either. His was a curious soul indeed. “Milady, I don’t understand. If God is dead, what divinity do we seek?” Adana laughed, a deep throaty chuckle that echoed through the ruins of the broken city. “Ours,” was all she said. They picked their way through the rubble as the skies continued to bleed.

#tales of the citadel #adana and reyus: night and day

[bigskywritings]

The Citadel ‘Verse

The Citadel, in a nutshell, IS the universe, as the universe in the cosmology of this shared world setting is sentient, in a fashion. It birthed itself, but it was raw and unformed. Its consciousness is an instinctual, primitive sort of consciousness, incapable of complex thought or motivation. It’s driven by certain fundamental impulses…namely, that it needs conscious, sentient beings to define it, to give it shape and function. Take the fairly common fantasy trope of a weapon which has a consciousness of sorts, that knows that in order for it to fulfill its purpose, to have meaning and actually exist as a weapon, to function…it needs to be wielded, used to draw blood…and it needs someone to hold and wield it to do that. 

Similarly, the universe here exists as a house that needs to be lived in…but that’s shapeless and unformed without inhabitants to say that a house has walls and windows and doors and a roof. And then once they do, it shaping itself into that house, because that is the only way for it to have meaning and purpose. It’s like a parent that lives vicariously through its children. It existed, and there was nothing to it or for it other than simply existing, until it accidentally, through the random colliding of rock and dust and matter created a world. And upon that world, intelligent life. This accidental creation of intelligent life woke it up to a higher level of awareness, one that actually sought out this intelligent life as a kind of symbiosis, to give it meaning and shape and function…a purpose other than simply existing.  The Citadel is the heart and mind of the universe. The nexus, or focal point of its spirit. It exists as a Citadel because that’s how it appeared or shaped itself to appear to the first being to come across it. It understood on some level that for the sentient being to grasp its power, mystery and majesty, it needed a form that conveyed itself as such….and so it shaped itself into the Citadel, drawing from that first figure’s mind for inspiration. It’s as old as life itself, and has lasted in that form through thousands of generations and cycles and deaths and rebirths of the First World. All patterned after that first encounter between sentient being and Citadel....where when that being entered, they were given the controls to the universe, essentially, and thus became a god, reshaping the world according to their own needs, wants and desires. However, its important to remember that the Citadel is not just the universe…but that it is the sentient universe. It’s alive, in a sometimes creepy, horrific fashion. And though its wants and needs are simple in comparison to the complex motivation of a human being, it is a primal truth that entropy is the natural state of the universe. It can’t stand stagnation….and thus whenever God stops creating, reshaping, driving the universe to some grand end or another, whenever God is lazy or bored, or content to simply exist…it takes back its power. Sometimes without killing them, sometimes bloodily or fatally, but always then inciting revolution and ambition in hearts and minds with its legend, as it seeks someone new to claim its power and be God. 

Because of this, there have been whole cycles of life and death and destruction and rebirth on this world with various gods shaping it and its peoples to their whims. Gods of all genders, sometimes one, sometimes two or three people sharing in godhood, sometimes the power of the Citadel split amongst whole pantheons. But each time, there has always reached a point where they grew lax and slothful, consumed by their own legend and no longer the driving force the Citadel desired them to be. They all stagnated, content with the status quo, and that is something the universe can never abide, and so they die and chaos reigns again until some new god or gods impose order according to their own personal blueprints, and the cycle repeats. 

The First World’s histories have no record of any of this, because each cycle usually ends in such a bloody conflict, and with such world-shaping powers being flung about, that the world is pretty much literally destroyed. All life obliterated, with the new god or gods having to start from scratch for the simple reason that nothing else survived their ascension intact.

The god of the previous cycle, Deni, though by the time of his death there was no one left who remembered his name, was unique in that he actually lasted two cycles. He ascended to power as merely one amongst a pantheon two cycles ago, one in which the Citadel dethroned the current god and a faction of mortal men and women collaborated to lay siege to Heaven and gain the Citadel for themselves together, as a group. 

When they found the Citadel and gained access to it, fighting past the armies that sought to block them in the name of their God (as the Citadel that time only took back its power from that god, it didn’t kill them, and so they were still alive. Powerless, but able to use their influence among the religions and nations that worshipped them to try and hold onto the Citadel, hoping to reclaim its power), Deni found - or was found by - the Armory. And so for his first cycle as a god, just one among many, he was a war god, a force that embodied conflict and strife. 

When pantheons ascend, rather than a single god, they typically each gain access or dominion of a specific Room of the Citadel, and the forces or aspects of the universe contained within. The Armory, is home to every weapon ever made, contains writings describing every strategy ever conceived, and embodies the ideals of might and superiority over one’s enemies, but just as much the protection of one‘s friends and family. It’s the raw, primal power of the universe, honed into sharp points and blunted shields that can be harness to either forge or destroy. The Armory is War, but what War is....depends on the war god.

As a god of war, Deni was initially more a spirit of evolution, social and political, rather than a bloodthirsty warlord or tyrant. Because of this, Deni constantly had the Citadel’s favor, as he wasn’t interested in strife for the sake of strife throughout his original cycle. Instead, he constantly wanted to build and create new nations, alliances, even beings. He watched the rest of his pantheon stagnate around him, and it frustrated him to no end, and so the end of his first cycle came in the form of him essentially stalking the rest of his fellow pantheon through the Citadel and killing them one by one. The Citadel aided him at times, taking the power from some of his pantheon and killing others of them for him, but there are broken statues, pillars and doors, and scorch marks throughout the Citadel even now, where it still bears the marks from his war with the rest of his pantheon. 

The Citadel’s been bathed in the blood of its gods many times before, and many other cycles have ended with various gods, each imbued with the power of different Rooms, all hurling their power at each other in the world outside. Splitting continents and crushing mountains and drying up oceans, and more. But that was the first cycle in which gods actually fought each other within the halls of the Citadel itself. Of course, in his second cycle, whose end began the current one, Deni eventually stagnated and resigned himself to the status quo he’d created after thousands of years, and so the Citadel turned on him as well. He died within the Citadel, but the Citadel, being alive and now much more aware of itself after all these cycles and all these gods imprinting their wants and desires onto its shape and form, is capable of moving itself. 

The crux of the Holy Wars saga, the initial ‘launch-point’ for the stories of this universe, is its various characters looking for the new location of the Citadel and gaining access to it by force or guile. The Citadel itself is an antagonist, as it’s not in its interest to make it easy for anyone, even those it appears to itself. 

Although the Citadel predates humanity and other sentient beings, as a conscious thing itself, it’s grown up alongside humanity. Absorbing both its vices and its virtues, but rarely in balance. One usually outweighs the other in its actions at any given time. And so due to evolving a certain appetite for blood and destruction, there are times when it wants a bloody end to the cycle - with this being one of those times, in no small part due to Deni’s previous impression. 

Although some Rooms appear to individuals who don’t seek the Citadel out, and basically freely granting them the power of those Rooms without them ever looking for it or even wanting it, the Citadel only does so in the case of people it wants wielding its power but knows will never seek it out or get there on its own. 

And so even as kings, thieves, priests, sorcerers….all quested for the actual Citadel, it was already birthing new gods all over the world, coming into their power, toppling nations, building religions, reshaping the world. Many of these new gods, even though they had access to their particular Room, the one that granted them ascension, found they were still barred from the Citadel as a whole. Unable to find the door that leads to its interior rather than just opening to allow them entrance to the Room itself...which frustrated many of them to no end. So a number of them began to seek the Citadel as well, even if they had no intention to do so prior to being offered its power freely....and they too waged war, forging alliances and enemies along the way. Some sought to replicate Deni’s deeds and kill off all rivals, claim the Citadel for themselves; others sought specific Rooms or the deaths of specific gods to add to their powers. Not all of the gods that ascended near the start of the war were amongst those banished from the First World at the end of it. Some were killed by other gods, others by mortals desiring their powers, and some by the Citadel itself as it changed its mind about some on a whim. Some gods ultimately ended up with access to two Rooms, other Rooms end up shared amongst two gods. For instance, Adana and Reyus, the gods of Night and Day, were still fighting over sole control over the Hearth Hall when Seshan split the Citadel and banished the others from the First World, leaving them both holding that Room’s power....and both thus unwilling to leave the Room in the eons that follow, as it might give their rival just enough of an edge to seize full dominion of the Room for themselves.. The First World was drastically reshaped over the course of the war for the Citadel. As the various sorcerers and heads of nations’ conflicts reshaped the social and political landscapes, the conflicts of the new gods reshaped the physical. Adana’s initial ascension led to her blanketing most of the world with an unending night, until the Citadel gave Reyus access as well, after which their struggle over the Hearth Hall led to disastrous and sudden changings of the seasons, and unpredictable switches from night to day and back again. Resulting in a landscape where humanity could no longer rely on when it will be day and when it will be night, or even summer or winter. Upon attaining control of the Mausoleum, the new god of death locked himself away from the rest of the Citadel and the First World, so no one could usurp his power. Sequestering himself in the Mausoleum resulted in it being closed to the dead, and so the dead were left to stalk the mortal world as ghosts and undead....with far more disturbing consequences for the mortals who died after the Mausoleum was closed to them. Eriu’s double dominion over both the Gardens and the Aviary while most of the other Gods still only had one Room to their name left her powerful enough to maintain an oasis that remained untouched by the disasters caused by the others, for all mortals that come to her for protection. And so on and so forth. Ultimately, the war for the Citadel culminated with the finalized pantheon all in the actual Citadel, both allies and enemies alike, all doing battle as they each sought to make it to the Throne Room, the Room that gives dominion over all of creation, and which remains unclaimed until Seshan gained it. She was helped by the Citadel itself, as by that time it had evolved a sense of preservation as well - and after Deni’s conflict with the rest of his initial pantheon left parts of the Citadel actually scarred and damaged, it wasn’t too thrilled to have divine conflict actually within its walls again. Still, it liked its current pick of gods too much to just take all their power away and start from scratch, so instead it helped Seshan ascend to the Throne Room and assert control. 

However, it expected Seshan to use its power to quickly end the conflict and either kill off her biggest rivals and intimidate the rest, or else help her allies gain access to the Rooms that would give them the edge. That’s what always happened with pantheons in the past. What it didn’t count on was Seshan’s determination that it was the Citadel itself that was the enemy of humanity at this point, responsible for the unending cycles of violence and destruction that ironically, kept her world stagnant and unable to evolve past a certain point. 

And so when she banished the other gods from the First World and into the unformed Abyss beyond, she banished all the gods, even her allies, as she knew by then of Deni’s past and recognized that even the most well intentioned among them can be corrupted by the Citadel and turned into a tyrant - and though she did not believe herself immune, she reasoned that the more gods remained, the more risk remained as well. She enacted this banishment by using the Throne Room to physically and metaphysically split the Citadel. The Throne Room stayed on the First World, but each of the other Rooms of the Citadel were split off from the others and cast into the Abyss. And then she locked the Throne Room behind them, so that even once the gods were able to emerge again from their Rooms or use the doors within them to reach others’ domains, no door was left open that could have led anyone to the Throne Room, or enabled them to return to the First World via its location.

But not only did this banish the others, it also resulted in splitting the Citadel’s consciousness and power, preventing it from acting as a whole being. It desired to reform, but was powerless to do so itself. Still, it used what influence was left to it in order to influence the gods in eventually creating their own worlds around their Rooms, and drives many of them in their quest to return to the First World and claim the Throne Room. 

The gods can use the Rooms to access each other’s worlds, and do so from time to time. Sometimes with the knowledge and permission of that world’s creator and Room’s occupant, and sometimes when they’re not in the Room and are unaware or unable to prevent them sneaking in before its too late. The god of death has kept the Mausoleum locked and barred to the others until recently, when something happened that left him nowhere to be found and the Mausoleum once again unlocked and opened to the others, many of whom are eager to add its power to their own. The god of dreams has somehow hidden the Dreaming Chambers from the others, so while its not exactly locked, they can’t seem to find it, and all the others avoid the world reluctantly-jointly created by Reyus and Adana, as nobody else wants to get caught in the middle of their conflict over the Hearth Hall. 

There are still unclaimed Rooms at the end of the war, still cast out by Seshan as well as she wanted no unclaimed Rooms left on the First World to tempt people into seizing their power. Rather than just drift empty in the Abyss, the Citadel did manage to link most of them to various of the newly created worlds….meaning that there are worlds that have one Room, occupied by the creator of that world, and then another unclaimed Room hidden elsewhere in the world. Often relocated from time to time by the Room itself, waiting or looking for the perfect person to claim its power, much to the irritation of the creators of those worlds, who know there’s another empty Room on their world but can’t seem to pin it/them down.

And so the various gods have passed the eons since their banishment in all sorts of ways. The god of dreams builds world after world and gifts the people of each with different magic before pitting them against pantheons he creates as testing grounds, looking for one of his worlds to grow powerful enough to challenge the other gods. Kovi, a soldier who never asked for dominion over Time, endlessly prepares his world to resume a war he never believed ended. The goddesses of sun and moon, lovers who created their world together as a gift to each other, are locked in eternal combat with Alyon, god of darkness, as he continually batters at the door to the Solarium in his attempts to invade their world and drown it and them in darkness. 

Dian, god of corruption and temptations, travels from world to world pitting inhabitants against their own creators, as the goddess of vengeance stalks him across each one, eternally determined to make him pay for his hand in destroying her people back on the First World, a people eons dead and gone and remembered by no one but her. Indech, the god of chaos, had his mind shattered by the god of knowledge and now exists as a pantheon of beings who are all him but without any of them realizing it....as his sister Eriu still seeks a way to piece her broken brother back together.

The god of destruction sleeps at the heart of the blood-red gas giant where others drove him into an enchanted slumber to keep him from rampaging across the cosmos, guarded over by the god of duties and the god of sacrifice, as the god of thieves spends centuries plotting to slip past them and try and seize the Ruins that embody Destruction for himself.

The goddess of science experiments with the fabric of reality itself, and the goddess of evolution plays games no one else understands. Telva, goddess of adventures and peril, builds world after world from the Bridge, simply looking to be entertained. Nobody has a clue what Pelk is after in his travels, just as no one has any idea what happened to the god of gambles or the six others of their pantheon to vanish without a trace. 

Crime and Imagination conspire together and then declare themselves immortal enemies; War was once Peace before Tyranny laid siege to her people and her people had need of a sword. Beauty is the only thing left alive on his world after Passion consumed the hearts and minds of its people and took them with him when he left....he can’t bring himself to create anew, for it won’t be as good as what it was before. Justice is murdered by the Dawn though she refuses to say why; the Lords of Consequence, demigods who take after their father, are determined to get an answer someday, somehow, and seek godhood of their own to make it so.  Invention and Artifice steer their people towards the stars, Hunger eyes their progress and does what he does best. 

They all make and unmake worlds for untold millennia; they all plot and scheme and are plotted against in terms. Their eternal feuds are infinite in number, but one truth unites them all and lasts no matter what else changes across the eons:

No matter how many worlds they make, none of them will ever be the one they were made from. 

That one was taken from them.

And they want it back.

#tales of the citadel