World Creation Superdraft 5: May 2021

[Hermit]

1 hour ago, L. Marcus said:

Trickster picks as their Secondary Domain -- Magic!

 

Nothing bad can come of this

[L. Marcus]

Oh yes it can.

[Sociotard]

Beats folly magic.

[Cancer]

It's a versatile tool, so of course it can.

 

... As long as you let it.

 

I mean, just imagine how much less confusion there would be if in the real world, the Entity of Mathematics disintegrated any fool who tried dividing by zero!

[csyphrett]

I think I am picking Punishment for my second secondary. 

CES 

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Theer, Lord of ChaoS, presents the world with his fauna gift, butterflies.

 

 

They have the most marvelous effect!

[Cancer]

FWIW, I am wearing my Balls of Chaos t-shirt today.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

53 minutes ago, Cancer said:

FWIW, I am wearing my Balls of Chaos t-shirt today.

 

As you should!

[DShomshak]

Next: Flora, Fauna or Ore:

 

Struggle? You mean, my Humans will have to work hard just to eat, and maybe starve anyway? No way!

 

But I'll show you, Lhash'ka. Because I'm a God of Life, too! Maybe an even better God of Life than the God of Life! I'll prove it by making something for people to eat that'll be easy to raise. [Begin playing Thus Spake Zarathustra: Dum...] It'll be able to eat just about anything. At least anything that sits still to be eaten. It's small, and slow, and doesn't have any nasty sharp pointy teeth, so it's no danger. Nothing to fear. (Ha, Timra'Keth!) [Dum...] It'll have nice soft fur too, that Humans can use to make warm clothes. It'll even make a pleasant sound -- a beautiful purr, because I'm a God of Beauty, too! That'll make people want to keep my beasts and take them wherever they go. [dum...] And it'll breed real fast, without need for mates, to make sure people always have enough. I give the world... THE TRIBBLE! [DA-DUM!]

 

Genius!

 

 

And they were fruitful and multiplied... and multiplied... and multipled...

 

Dean Shomshak

Shameless

[death tribble]

Butterflies ?

From Chaos, I get that.

But that means flowers or something else.......

 

And I think the something else is what Log Baby had in mind

[death tribble]

6 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

Struggle? You mean, my Humans will have to work hard just to eat, and maybe starve anyway? No way!

 

But I'll show you, Lhash'ka. Because I'm a God of Life, too! Maybe an even better God of Life than the God of Life! I'll prove it by making something for people to eat that'll be easy to raise. [Begin playing Thus Spake Zarathustra: Dum...] It'll be able to eat just about anything. At least anything that sits still to be eaten. It's small, and slow, and doesn't have any nasty sharp pointy teeth, so it's no danger. Nothing to fear. (Ha, Timra'Keth!) [Dum...] It'll have nice soft fur too, that Humans can use to make warm clothes. It'll even make a pleasant sound -- a beautiful purr, because I'm a God of Beauty, too! That'll make people want to keep my beasts and take them wherever they go. [dum...] And it'll breed real fast, without need for mates, to make sure people always have enough. I give the world... THE TRIBBLE! [DA-DUM!]

 

Genius!

 

 

Dean Shomshak

Shameless

DING ! DING ! DING !

 

Stop the draft !

We have a winner !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

what ?

 

The Tribble playing favourites ?

And why not ?

 

Dean,

 

for the audacity in this pick, have a bonus pick

[Old Man]

When I drive away the shadow,

When I turn the knot to smoke,

When I melt away the fogbank,

When I burn away the cloak:

 

There remain no deceptions,

No obstacles for sleuths,

I destroy all obscurement,

What remains is

 

Spoiler

 

Secondary domain: THE TRUTH

 

 

 

[death tribble]

If that is the case then I fear the consequences

[Pariah]

Not all struggle must be to the death.

 

Not all opposition must involve mortal danger.

 

Sometimes the opposite of Good is not Bad or Evil, but Better.

 

Secondary domain: Sport

[Pariah]

38 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

Next: Flora, Fauna or Ore:

 

Struggle? You mean, my Humans will have to work hard just to eat, and maybe starve anyway? No way!

 

But I'll show you, Lhash'ka. Because I'm a God of Life, too! Maybe an even better God of Life than the God of Life! I'll prove it by making something for people to eat that'll be easy to raise. [Begin playing Thus Spake Zarathustra: Dum...] It'll be able to eat just about anything. At least anything that sits still to be eaten. It's small, and slow, and doesn't have any nasty sharp pointy teeth, so it's no danger. Nothing to fear. (Ha, Timra'Keth!) [Dum...] It'll have nice soft fur too, that Humans can use to make warm clothes. It'll even make a pleasant sound -- a beautiful purr, because I'm a God of Beauty, too! That'll make people want to keep my beasts and take them wherever they go. [dum...] And it'll breed real fast, without need for mates, to make sure people always have enough. I give the world... THE TRIBBLE! [DA-DUM!]

 

Genius!

 

 

And they were fruitful and multiplied... and multiplied... and multipled...

 

Dean Shomshak

Shameless

 

[Cancer]

... what he's done is made food for all.

 

To misquote the trolls in The Hobbit:

 

Tribble yesterday, tribble today, and blime if it doesn't look like tribble again tomorrow....

[Hermit]

Timra'Keth gazed in horror! The dangers just kept compounding, accruing, and mounting.

Butterflies? Walking lures to lead children right off cliffs! Tribbles? Oh sure, maybe you can eat them before they eat everything else, but what if you're allergic? Maybe they're bad for you! You don't know! They could lead to heart conditions!

Truth is claimed! Well, spreading THAT around is going to lead to hurt feelings! And SPORT? They'll put their eyes out! Why these humans had just arrived and already they were doomed. They needed to be discouraged from foolish actions, like, going outside.

The problem was clear! The peoples could see too well! Their imaginations needed musing so they might look beyond bright colors and fuzzy puffs! Things were too clear! And so...

 

Timra'Keth got to weaving! She wove three great blankets, one to dim the sun's light to mere pin pricks of silver where one could see things bleached of most colors and only when they were near! Another blanket, thicker and blacker than the first, that allowed no light at all to fall from the sky! The last was gray, and very very damp, laying not in the sky, but low. Thick. 

 

And she made sure that regularly, these blankets would be thrown out, sometimes without warning! This would keep them from climbing cliffs! THIS would keep them from going far beyond home! This would encourage them to stay from the woods where they might get lost!

And that, O Children, is how Timra'Keth became the goddess of Darkness, in it's myriad forms!  So that man might close his eyes to the misleading and tempting promises of what he sees, and instead open his sense of dread and see the shadows stretch to hint at the dangers that waited, or else see naught at all- and shiver at thoughts much darker and dangerous than even that.

 

Another Domain: Darkness (Night, Shadow, Fog, eclipses, burlap sacks over your face from behind! ALL that fun stuff)

 

 

 

Yes, this suggests there is a sun and stars over our flat earth of sorts, or other light source. Consider this a confirmation unless someone else wants to play/claim otherwise I guess

 

[Hermit]

Timre'Keth and Folly checking out the new world right after it's creation?

 

 

[L. Marcus]

The Trickster reveals his Chosen People: the Raakastah, a Little Bit Beastly Catfolk!

[Hermit]

10 minutes ago, L. Marcus said:

The Trickster reveals his Chosen People: the Raakastah, a Little Bit Beastly Catfolk!

 

Who probably have night vision and will wander around despite the darkness!

 

Congrats, you've doomed them all!

 

[L. Marcus]

Hurrah!

[Old Man]

The universal constant,

the progress of the years,

It can happen in an instant,

The sum of all your fears:

 

Spoiler

 

Secondary Domain: CHANGE

 

 

 

[Psybolt]

Second domain:  The Sun, sunrise, sunset

 

The darkness encompassing the land was not beautiful.  There was an ugliness to it and Kulan could not continue to ignore it.  He turned away from his own loveliness and turned to that of the land. 

 

"The sun's light shall clear the darkness from the land, but there shall be more.  The arrival of the sun during the day and the retreat of the sun as well shall take the breath from those who gaze upon it.  The colors.  The warmth.  The feel of the beginning or the end.  It shall now be."

[Pattern Ghost]

A new universe, full of potential!

 

How did such a wondrous thing spawn a goddess of Fear? Or attract one? Where did Fear goddesses come from anyway?

 

How silly.

 

Boarders on Folly, really . . . oops! There we go, maybe *that's* where gods come from?

 

The goddess realized she now existed, and laughed uproariously.

 

Fire and Chaos joined Fear and Folly. What a recipe for fun! And is that a Trickster over there?

 

Mortals better run.

 

Will there be mortals? Butterflies and Tribbles, the dominant life (those tiny catfolk had potential, but boy could those Tribbles breed!) of this hellish wasteland full of dread and folly, and fire and chaos . . .

 

Mirth, the Goddess of Laughter, had an idea.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

One cannot have proper gallows humor or true schadenfreude without death.

 

Secondary Domain: Death.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

They say laughter is the best medicine, but Mirth was feeling a bit bad about introducing Death to the new creation, necessary though it was, so her gift to the intelligent species would help stave Death off just a bit longer.

 

Gift to the Intelligent Species: Medicine

 

[Sociotard]

The boy ran from his camp. He knew better, but there was a butterfly he hadn't seen before, and there wasn't much for him to do on Trading Day, so he slipped out and after it. They say that whatever a butterfly led you to was more often surprising than pleasant, but it was worth it for the times it was both.

 

The butterfly itself was headed up the prarie's solitary hill, to the solitary tree that sprang from its crown.

 

The boy was out of breath when he reached it, but it was worth it. The tree was flowering and fragrant, and he could see a view cut by Kulan himself.

 

"I like the view too. Especially on trade days. So busy!"

 

The boy was so startled he nearly fell down the hill. "Oh! I didn't see you."

 

"To be fair, I didn't manifest until you came up. See?" The sandy-skinned girl in the white frock vanished quick as smoke on the wind, and just as quickly came back. She gestured to herself, "All this isn't real. I'm the tree, but I make this so I can talk to people.  They're more fun than the butterflies."

 

And so the conversation began. The boy learned what a dryad was, how they only appeared where a tree was given special attention.  Once, a couple had taken advantage of trade days to get married up here, and commemorated the event by planting a seedling.

 

"And that was enough. Their love and attention drew my soul down, and now I am. Most days are a lot lonelier than that, though. Your people only come for trade days a couple weeks out of the year. The rest of the time I just grow flowers for the butterflies."

 

"You can grow flowers on purpose?"

 

"Oh yes. Whatever our saplings were, dryads are the cosmic ideal of a tree, the very concept of trees given matter, every tree at once. Apple?"

 

A great yellow apple swelled at the top of a branch, then fell right into his hand. He ate it and laughed, and the tree was happy.

 

They kept talking, and the boy told how it was to move on the plains, gathering the tribbles and making sure they didn't overdo a field or get loose. How all the families used the hill to find the spot for the trading camp.

 

But Timra'Keth would not be denied, and the night came on them like a Rakasta. "Will you walk me down? The hill is steep and I won't see the stumbling stones."

 

"I can't make this appear very far from where I grow. Oh! I have an idea. Pick that branch off the ground. Good. Some of the grass is dry. Pick it and wrap it around the end. No, tighter. Now, you have a little knife?" The boy showed the little blade and she showed him where to place the tip. She wasn't practiced at opening herself up yet. A push against her bark, smooth as birch, and and a twist, and a thick fragrant sap flowed. He pressed and worked until the grass was matted, and then he made a fire with two sticks.

 

The torch completed, a called out a goodbye, and the tree was sad to see him go.

 

The boy visited again the next year, and the next. He bought her apothecary books and tools and samples. If she could make treatments and cures, perhaps other people would visit her, even when it wasn't trade days. "I know how lonely you get. It's a pity you can't talk to other trees."

 

"They talk, but through scents, and they mostly talk about pests or when to blossom. That copse down there has some sort of fungus they will just not shut up about. Oh! Speaking of, I learned a new trick." A glowing fungus sprouted from her trunk. "Here, let's just read these awhile."

 

That they did, and the tree was happy.

 

The next year, though, the young man came late, and he came from. "I've been called to go to war." He held up a trinket. "I heard about this custom, wishing trees, where people make little totems for their wishes and hang them in trees. The glass bulb holds what remained of that torch you gave me, years ago. I wrapped it up and kept it in my pocket, so I could have you with me. I hope you wear it."

 

"Always. I wish I could go with you now. But here, wait a moment." The illusion went silent, then flickered, then dissapeared with a scream. For a moment the young man held his breath and everything was still. When the illusion reappeared, she drew a long flat pole. "This is a longbow. I made the wood yes. This part was from my heartwood. I hope it keeps you safe."

 

The young man took the bow and held the illusion close, and the tree was happy.

 

It was many years before the dryad saw him again. He staggered up the hill. He collapsed at her roots.

 

The dryad's illusion choked back tears. "Can I give you an apple?"

 

The old man laughed between his wheezes. "I just want to lay here a while."

 

And he did. And the tree was happy.

 

Sentient Life: Dryads