Old Man

Mirth considered all the races her kindred had created, and sighed. That cat things, the pink things with thumbs, the flaming birds, the tree folk, the fey folk, the adorable spider folk, the immortal rock folk . . . were they folk? . . . what wondrous things. Mirth thought that the sentients were a great addition to this new world, and was getting wistful. She'd made things for the sentient races, but making a sentient people? That seemed daunting.  Maybe she would start with a singular creation, something to bolster all of the races and to get her feet wet at motherhood as it were.
 
Though she loved laughter, Mirth realized that folk can't laugh all of the time. Mostly because the other gods would see that as too much of an intrusion, but also because it would rob laughter of its magic, and turn it to a cruelty. And Mirth wasn't cruel. Folk also can't be without laughter all of the time, and Mirth noticed that sometimes the sentient peoples needed to be lifted up, shown joy again. Those that had smaller iterations of themselves that grew . . . ah, yes, children, that was the word. Those that had children had a valuable resource, given that the young were vast reservoirs of energy and laughter. Mirth idly scratched the ear of one of her favorite species of dird, and drifted along on her deific stream of consciousness, letting it carry her to an idea.
 
A friend, and uplifter of the spirit, and also a guardian of those small versions of folk. Yes, something big, and fierce if need be, but mostly congenial. Visible to the young, but an invisible helping hand to adults. Mirth laughed, and out of that laughter arose:
 
Guardian Beast/Spirit: Tororu
 

All people endure them But few pass them all They strengthen the worthy And weed out the vile The scales of evolution, The insight of:    

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    

I swallow worlds, I eat the night There's no end to my appetite Though my thirst is only slight Every being fears my bite No weapon can impede my might Strike me, but I'll win the fight      

That's... so profound. And rules give people stability and certainty in a world of chaos and fear. Security. And iof some laws are good, more laws are better. Here, I'll help out by being a God of Laws too! Laws for what people can wear, and when. Laws for where people can build, and how. Laws for how big the holes can be in cheese!  Licenses for every form of work, and every regulations for how it should be done. All written down -- since someone already gave the world writing, I know somebody mentioned books -- written down in detail, so no one ever has to wonder what to do or how to do it. SO MOTE IT BE.
 
People will be so happy!
 
Gift to Civilization: Bureaucracy.
 
Bureaucracy probably can't be avoided for a large and complex society. It's how ordinary minds perform tasks that are too big for any individual, but wow, there's no stupidity like bureaucratic stupidity.
 
And though there is law -- endless, swaddling, stifling law -- there is rarely justice. Only procedure.
 
Our world probably does not have a DMV, but any society develops something like it once it reaches a certain complexity. Drab chambers of bored people filling out paperwork.

 
Dean Shomshak

I get the impression some people want to hate certain films and look for ways to attack them. WW84 had flaws but it was still a pretty good supers film, not a trainwreck like Suicide Squad or borderline offensive like BvS. 

Basically, people aren't desperate enough to take these jobs...

Mythic Guardian:
Some people did not want to appear in court to answer complaints. Erinyes, bailiffs of the overworld were created to serve these summons out of the elements in the vicinity of their summoning. Seeing a creature of earth dragging someone to a courthouse is not common, but it does happen.
CES

Theer had an image problem. Why did so many people fear her? She blamed Timra’Keth for the most part. The people of the world blamed her for the wild, unpredictable dangers of the world without seeing their beauty. They called her a god of destruction though she could not be held responsible for such things (though she did appreciate such things). No, people were perfectly capable of destruction without her help. Nor was she the god of death or of fire or of war, yet people attributed these things to her no matter how pretty the butterflies were. The world was born of chaos, and chaos will be there after it is gone. She needed to show people the former to dispel the fear. She needed to show what chaos could be…

Theer, the God of Cha0s, selects as a secondary domain Potential!
 

 
“There is no heavier burden than an unfulfilled potential.” —Charles Schulz

The Trickster picks their Gift to Civilization: Martial Arts!

It is currently legal to run over protestors in Florida with your car.

US suicides dropped last year, defying pandemic expectations
 
(Not directly relevant to the thread, but it was a frequent point of discussion here a while back.)

I'll never quite understand the obsession comics fans have with continuity.  I love comics but I don't think a realistic overall timeline is compatible with the genre.  Bruce Wayne must be almost 100 years old by now FFS.

Bet you thought the pandemic couldn’t get any worse in India

Fixed

Watched one episode of Jupiter's Legacy on Netflix.  I'm hooked, but it looks like there might be some moral ambiguity coming.  At least they're not doing it with Superman.

If the IHME throws out official counts of COVID deaths (which are problematic in certain authoritarian states) and instead uses excess death data, then after correcting for non-COVID effects, the actual fatality count from COVID-19 is almost exactly twice the official number.  That puts the US at over 900,000 dead and the world at almost 7 million.
 

 
900,000 is more than the entire population of San Francisco, and more than the total dead of all U.S. wars combined.

I'll never quite understand the obsession comics fans have with continuity.  I love comics but I don't think a realistic overall timeline is compatible with the genre.  Bruce Wayne must be almost 100 years old by now FFS.

Props for the seven year thread necro, btw. Let me know when the campaign starts. 😉

Secondary domain: Navigation
 
When there's an infinite ocean and uncountably many lands on it, it may require divine help to get from one location to another reliably.
 
That help exists.

E'il creates and distributes the beginnings of Our favored sentient life, the Eech.

Originally there were nine times thirty-seven Eech, and then E'il doubled that number for good measure.  He spread them throughout the world, no two together, each Eech on or near the shoreline of a larger-than-average land, and the Eech sang as the waves of the sea crashed against them from time to time, and conversed with whatever other sophonts (and others) were nearby, if those others were of a mind to talk.  They feared not pain; they feared not fire; they feared not folly; they feared not fear, or destruction, or death, or the ocean deeps.  The Eech were not indestructible, but in their destruction they could spread, as chance and the whims of other creatures carried them from their original emplacements.

For the Eech, in their primordial form, are stones.  The original six hundred threescore and six of them were large, the size of humans' houses, or towers, or even the hills on which the towers might be built.  Fracturing an Eech does not diminish the Eech: each fragment is a new Eech, with the memory of its forbear but a new personality, and the largest remaining fragment retains the mentality of the original.  In the beginning only wave and cataclysm slowly broke the Eech apart, and sophonts accelerated the breaking, as they mastered tools and availed themselves of Timra'Keth's Gift.  A few Eech were shaped and became fixtures in buildings or roadways or harbors.  Some lesser pieces were admired for their form or hardness or color and became tools or ornaments.  Some were recognized as ores and smelted into new forms, and all that was made from an Eech became a new instance of Eech-ness, with its own voice and mentality.  Slowly the Eech spread across the lands, and then between the lands, as other agents moved the sentient rocks from place to place.  In this way does E'il hope to fill the world with uncountably many singers, and the concert of their voices, along with the unceasing music of wave and water of the infinite Ocean.  For in Kulan's Domain does E'il also take delight.

The Eech communicate by voice, and with any who will listen and speak in reply.  A new-shattered Eech may become a village of stones, chattering, singing, bickering, joking, declaiming among each other, a village that changes slowly as the smaller fragments are made or carried away.  They welcome conversation but do not talk incessantly, and if a matter deserves long thought, well, a stone has quite a long time to do its thinking without need to interrupt the thought to pay attention to the necessities of flesh.  It is in their nature to understand all language, but other than by voice, no mentality can be discerned in the physical form of the stone, so magic or psionics cannot find or affect the soul of the stone.
 
If there is one great sorrow that afflicts the Eech, it is in the ephemerality of the other sophonts.  Many Eech can tell of many friends they have known over the long ages, friends whose forms long ago fell silent and are no more, recounting them with delight, and sorrow, and annoyance, and affection.
 
The Eech: sentient rocks