I floated there, a consciousness adrift in some nothingness of paradoxical contrasts. On one hand there was the sensation of icy cold water surrounding me, stagnant and turning fetid but so deep I had no light to navigate up or down. Then there was the swirling streams of warm and cosy air that felt as if it made a sphere of its playful turbulence around me allowing breath were there shouldn't be one to be had. My sensation was both of those at the same time over a body I wasn't even sure was even there and yet superimposed by such a suffocating sensation of nothingness that I felt frozen stiff with tortuous mental agony. Then it came.
-
She was dragged along the cracked flagstones by her hair by the monsters acting like human beings. Her knee’s had been broken to prevent her from running away and now ignominiously she was forced onto an altar.
Then down came the horrid dagger and before they plunged it into her chest they carved into her chest some profane symbol.
“Magnificent spirit, hallowed maker of the universe! Please hear my desperate prayer!
Guide my heart, guide my hand so I may proclaim your praise! So I may make this place hallowed in thy name!”
The insane cultist chanted at the top of his lungs while he carved into her bared flesh on the altar beneath. His voice growing darker and inhumanly distorted as it neared the end. “I beg this of you in your divine presence, O’ mother life, O’ father death. Empower me with your eternal grace as I sacrifice to thee the third sacrifice of a second born daughter of a second born daughter. Praise [The Potentate of the Primordial Firmament]!”
The final stab wasn’t into her heart... no, because that would have been easy. And she’d seen how these crazy cultist fucks acted, they carved out her heart before the merciful end. All the while she glared on with maddened spite filling her eyes with fire that if given half the power its gaze held would burn a universe down to its foundation.
-
I blinked shaken a bit by the sudden rush of short term memories from a being I was rather certain wasn’t me. Those had been the memories of a… hyuman?... no a Human? Yes a human being, not my own. Though with it came knowledge, snippets of cloth and leather work and of books… stories.
That rose a concern within me, I realized I didn’t have memories of my own. It was like waking up knowing quite a bit yet being a blank slate of personal memory. Then those… other memories came to me, bringing with them small titbits of knowledge that made me realize how paltry my own was to begin with. My small existence feeling smaller somehow.
-
He sat in the sphere watching the star just outside the windows of the sphere. It was a marvel of the cult. A sphere that allowed the dedicated to be sacrificed in peace once the rite was done, all with a view of the marvel his god had wrought in his world.
Outside the sphere was outer space itself and the view was one of a rare conjunction thought to be the portent of the cults god. A piece of reality trying at mimicking their lords domain.
A continent sized chunk of a planet hung floating caught between the gravity of the blue sun beneath the island and the singularity above. The gaseous fires and streams of celestial wrath that stars usually lashed out at the world around them tamed into a stream that wreathed the event horizon in blue near ethereal fire. Giving mortal eyes a clear view of the end of reality and existence itself. As natural a representation of fabled Ktep as it could be.
He smiled bitterly as he took the dagger up in his hand. No his lords realm would be filled with life and surrounded by a sea of clear waters upon a soft grey beach of sand. Like a mythical land of gods hanging in the void of space the image hung in his mind as he began his chanting.
Once he finished the first verse he started cutting in the holy symbols upon his flesh. Much like the other two cultists would be doing in their own spheres by now. He praised the merciful Father of death, the keeper of souls. The Eternal Mother of life and to [The Eidolon of the beyond] The being that comprised both.
With final words of praise for the Eidolon on high he plunged the ritual dagger into his own heart with the profane prayer the last thing to pass his lips. His last sight the rituals intended star in the distance going nova.
-
Again I mentally rocked back as the new flash of short term memories not my own rushed to my mind. Buffeting it with knowledge along side the memories, snippets of engines and construction. It rattled me as I had nothing prior to draw upon to understand what was happening and why I was being… assaulted by these memories I knew weren't my own.
-
The hammer swung down upon the glowing metal upon the anvil. Her heart swelling with pride as she moved it back into the forge for the last heating. A hand on her shoulder makes her look behind at who would disturb her during her work.
The face of her father was there, his proud antlers and sharp ears as regal as his jaw. Hazel eyes brimming with pride as he takes the tongs and grants her the honour of being her tong holder as she smiths her last forge hammer. Or so she hoped, this was to be the way she passed her current rank as a blacksmith.
With determined eyes locking with her fathers, the two nodded and began. Chanting the ancient prayer of the forge passed down through the clan’s grandmaster smiths.
“As [The Star Wright] wrought the stars themselves, we give of ourselves to create.”
They began, the hammer coming down and the shape of the new one finally finished moulding itself. With a quench in sacred oils of forging, the hammer head was then brought to be detailed after the initial polishing and grinding. Before the final quenching to settle the hardness into it.
“With hammer the mountains he built, with pick the earth she filled. Let the sacred runes of the stars guide my hand in the work of creation. In their name.”
The woman whispered over and over as she worked feverishly until it was done at last. The hammer, a masterpiece like no other she had made before. Then the breath of the world itself answered and a swirling breeze twirled around her in the workshop before power flooded the hammer.
Her hopeful future maker of masterworks.
Her smile was beaming ear to ear. The Star Wright had deemed her worthy! She was a master smith at last!
-
I came back to myself again wondering if I might have a similar taste as whoever this [Star Wright] character was. That hammer had looked fantastic and by the memories I had, to live through it felt like, I knew the work that went into it.
Even the knowledge I was starting to think was a knowledge bleed over from these memories was welcome this time. The working of hammer and forge came to me along hints of finer and more detailed workings that might be done but nothing concrete just yet but it called to me.
-
The cauldron was bubbling with caustic green liquid. The bubbles sending the occasional plume of grey fumes up into the air above though mostly it was background noise for him. His nose perpetually in a book as always while he read up on his arcane lore.
He had mastered death with his necromancy and alchemy and he would conquer so much more. He would rule life as well in time. His mastery of the arcane arts of Mana and the manipulation of Aether was second to none and he was now uncontested safe by the gods.
But time was what he needed and it was what he demanded as he threw the last set of ingredients into the bubbling pot and shouted out his demand.
“I demand of the denizen of the beyond! I demand an audience with [The Autarch of the Twin cycles]! I demand I be given the other half of my right! I demand the power over life as I have over death!”
The answer was swift, irresistible and unstoppable. An answer of clear anger at the sheer gall he had for demanding anything of the Autarch at all. Instead of being beseeched, negotiated or plead with the Autarch had met with a demand from a petulant man-child and so it had struck the man-child down.
His last thoughts not of revenge but of horror as the true face of the cosmic Mingshe he had demanded power from comes to him at last. Nothing more than a figment of his imagination given life by the energies of the beyond itself lashing out in wrath. His last moments those of screaming agony.
-
I felt as if my lungs were hyperventilating as the need to gasp for breath overtook me as I came to myself once more. Yet I couldn’t. The memories and knowledge of the man so focused and joined in this memory somehow even more so than the smiths from before.
I felt adrift in a sea of memories. Memories from strangers but none of my own. Did I even have an identity? What was I even? What was the fucking point of some ball of consciousness in the blackness of the fucking void?!
My screamed mental demands answered with another deluge of unwelcome memory.
-
The sapling was healthy and hale after the storm had passed over the forest. Wooden fingers placing a small twig to give a little extra aid to the sapling in standing tall one day. The gaze moving up from the flourishing moss and undergrowth.
Inhale. The air clear, fresh and filled with the invigorating energies of life and Chi. The forest would grow well and as the flora grew in quality so too would the fauna.
It rose, the wood of its joints creaking as it took another step. The growth around him receiving a noticeable if slight invigoration of energy. A phenomenon repeated with the forest around it with each continued step, life almost infused in the area with each and every step. With each soft yet bellowing exhale of invigorating breath.
It was the caretaker, the druid and gardener of the great forest. It had done so since the beginning and would continue to do so till its end. For life could thrive even in death. They were linked after all different sides of the same coin as the humans liked to say.
Like a testament to the statement it strode through the fresh growth now finally showing itself in an area which had burned down a bit ago. A sigh of contented whimsy left its mossy lips and it dispersed into leaves to travel to another place in the forest that needed its tending. It was as the Celestial Mingshe wished it.
[The Autarch of the twin cycles] blessed forest wasn’t to be left unattended.
-
I knew it was childish, the mental tantrum I was throwing once I finally came back to myself. Some calm part of my mind going over and cataloguing almost all of the knowledge following the memories. This same part of myself realizing the tantrum was simply me doing something of my own choosing in an existence I was without a clue over. Nor any agency of my own.
Pressure built in my head as I felt the knowledge press into an area that felt too small for it in the beginning. Being forced to stretch and expand at the expense of the memories forming them into something more a kin to... instinct? perhaps.
-
She stood atop the mountain. The dais upon which she stood the only constructed object around. Allowing her an unimpeded view of the desolate lands she’d once ruled. Black seas lapping at bone white sands that continued to the central mountain of the island upon which she stood.
The spire in the centre with the low wall of a half circular range around the middle of the island. Before it had cut a striking figure with the tower built into and around the spire and the city that had grown out like the roots at the base of a mighty primordial tree. The lush forests and lands of her people now gone.
Washed away on a tide of oblivion brought on by the black waters around the large island.
“Ktep has fallen. Forgive me.” Her raspy and hollow voice comes from her lips as her eyes turn upwards. To the doom of her people.
The doom she’d wrought.
Hovering above was the black hole, like a black sun ringed in ethereal blue fire. What was to be an eternal symbol to [The Dweller from the Void]’s glory had turned to the death of its people and land. A doom that even now sent its black tendrils down from above, slowly snaking and slithering through the air as if the tendrils were seeking through water.
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Slowly closing in on her. To snuff out that last flickering light left on Ktep. To take the last Shadow lord and high priest of the dweller left in existence.
And she just… let them.
-
I wanted to hyperventilate again. These latest memories had filled me with such existential dread and hopelessness that it took me a while to come to any semblance of calm once again.
With no more coming I stewed for a while.
Wracking my mind and going over what exactly I knew and had retained from the barrage of memories from six different individuals. Memories I suspected were either the last ones they had or somehow defining the individuals lives in some way. Though I did note the distinct majority of last moments alive type of memories I’d been forced to live through.
[Race selected! Void spawn lvl. 0]
It flickered in my consciousness and I flinched a little from it. My instinct to somehow flee from it in case it brought with it more unwanted memories not my own to flay my mind with. After a sufficient time had passed that I was reasonably sure this wasn’t what I feared, I mentally reached out to this thing that had invaded my mind.
It was... a box? No, not truly something like a box but not at the same time. More a plaque or tablet of white marble veined with gold flecked obsidian. The words written in a paradoxical manner of two different fonts overlaid upon one another yet still it was legible to me. Somehow showing one maddening font of a language made up of letters, pictograms, hieroglyphs and arcane runes of green eldritch energy that felt profane enough to flay my very mind with but a glance. Yet it felt soothing to me as well, like a piece of some forgotten home or the forgotten whispers of a mother to her babe.
Yet at the same time it showed lettering more at home in some of the tomes I remembered the individuals from the memories know.
With a mental tablet displaying font in two different and rather opposing fonts that I somehow read both at once, I decided to acknowledge what the fonts said.
Void spawn.
Was that what I was?
What exactly was a Void Spawn anyway?
I wasn’t allowed to ponder much on it as the mental tablet flashed and forced my acknowledgement of its new contents.
Please choose which one of the following titles you wish to have unlocked first.
The Star Wright
Effect: Grants access to the ‘Training’ module giving access to proper guidance until Expert rank of mastery of professions.
Secondary Effect: +5 Free stat points per 5 levels in professions. (Retroactive)
The Dweller from the Void
Effect: Grants access to the ‘Quest’ system allowing for the guided growth available on Imerith. Allowing the user to get used to the system set at the new god level of privilege and allow it to aid the user to move forward in a more structured manner.
Secondary Effect: +5 Free stat and + 1 Skill points per racial level up.
The Eidolon of the beyond
Effect: Grants access to the ‘Mark of the Triskelion‘ talent tree alongside the ‘Talent management’ system.
Secondary Effect: For every 5 levels of a class earn a talent point. (Retroactive)
The Potentate of the Primordial Firmament
Effect: Grants access to the ‘Household management’ system allowing for the summoning, creation and anointing of household members.
Secondary Effect: Every 10 racial levels + 1 bio point and a Household perk point every 7 racial levels. (Retroactive)
The Autarch of the twin cycles
Effect: Grants access to the ‘Kingdom management’ system, allowing for anointing of ranks among other granted effects.
Secondary Effect: Gain +1 Kingdom, +1 Household and +1 Talent point every 10 class levels. (Retroactive)
I stared at the tablet in wonder and confusion. It said a lot without really giving any real context for me to make an informed decision from. I wasn’t human like the first, second and fourth memories had been. The rest of the memories of races other than human the sixth and final one likely something that would send humans fleeing, screeching in fear and terror.
I felt I got a new pause to organize my thoughts and I went over this list of titles I was supposed to select and a few things clicked. Such as these titles were all referenced in the memories in one way or another.
And that judging by the single title not with a retroactive effect applied to them was any indication it was highly likely that whatever this existence I’d been conjured into wanted me to take the second title option.
It all indicated to me some intelligence, malevolent or benevolent was yet to be seen, had a plan for me. My creation, reforging or resetting upon a path that would eventually end in me becoming what the titles referred to. Either way I somehow knew it wasn’t something ordinary either.
With all of that in mind and with the only other foundation of knowing I had a racial level at 0 right now and nothing else the secondary effect of the [Dweller from the Void] title seemed to be the best choice. Though I couldn’t deny my gaze moving up to the [Star Wright] title’s promise of a training module.
The base of scrap knowledge and then the assault of memory and knowledge that came afterwards was anything to go by then I’d need everything the first two titles could give me. I could only really hope that this ‘New god level' privilege allowed me access to the quest system. Hopefully it would serve to help me build a solid foundation to stand on.
And hopefully a bit of help in understanding what exactly was going on. So I made the only real choice I thought I had.
[Title chosen: [The Dweller from the Void]!]
[Congratulations! Access to the ‘Quest’ system has been granted, your level of privilege is at full tier 2! The highest access allowed to new beings outside the creators of Imerith!]
[Error! Eldritch origin detected! Error!]
The last words flashing into my head like some one had made them into a metal stamp they’d then heated just to then slam said glowing stamp upon my mind. It was agonizing and disorienting and I could barely string together a conscious thought for a while afterwards. When the next words came I flinched back in fear of another such blow at my very being but I slowly read the words when no pain accompanied them.
[Error resolved through code: W-o-F Sas-0001]
I stared distrustfully at the words in my mind for a long time, flinching when they changed again and my distrust didn’t diminish in the slightest.
[Would you like to continue through the process? [Y]/[N] ]
Again I stared, this time in deep thought. I’ll admit a lot of my thoughts were of a malevolent nature towards whatever made the tablet in my head and these damned words that came unbidden. To say nothing of the mental memory assault from before.
Tentatively I reached out mentally and pressed the [Y] icon.
[Class selection starting! [Error] Race hasn’t reached first threshold, class selection unavailable.]
No pain which was a good thing in my limited experience and despite being oddly disappointing, not getting to pick a class. It was still informative in a way. I now knew I needed to reach this first threshold first before I could get a class.
[Allocation of traits, skills and professions in relation to calculations from deity manifestation events.]
Events tallied as the following towards final deity manifestation:
3 unwilling blood sacrifices of obscure astral requirement.
3 willing blood sacrifices of an eldritch ritual to oblivion.
1 Act of pure dedicated and worshipful act of creation.
1 Act of a wrathful and destructive manifestation of divinity given form credited to a random surge of the energy of the realm beyond existence.
1 Act of service to life in service to a hitherto non-existent deity of the same name as the previously mentioned act.
1 Act of the closing of a circle culminating in the final death of a fallen elder god and its realm.
Error!!!
Further Events to be tallied from the manifestation witnessing of each event resulting in 3 Errors.
1. Multiple instances of knowledge leeching from the manifestation’s gestalt consciousness have resulted in the acquisition of multiple professions by dint of simple knowledge of the professions at birth. This has been off turned by reducing the four classes that should have been acquired along the way as professions classes.
2. Multiple instances of aspect or both half's of a cycle bestowal in half of events.
3. Multiple instances of differing forms with a singular form dominating the others during events. Error’s require resolution…..
Resolution reached!
None of what I read made much sense to me. They did somewhat mesh with what I had witnessed from the onslaught of memories from before though. Not that it really gave context for what was happening anyway.
Conclusion in layman’s terms: All six events happened relatively at the same place and the same time across six interconnected universes and were they intersect at nexus points to a seventh. This has resulted in the birth of an eldritch god and its home realm though errors have arisen due to number of titles given at each birth causing event. Error resolved by connecting prime world of Imerith (the seventh universe) allowing for integration of a new deity with multiple titles.
However resolution has caused another error due to natural birth of the deity being eldritch in nature and origin. Error resolved by spawning entity in home realm and by guided growth through the quest system allow entity the minimum required foundation to become a new god in Imerith. Subject has chosen the first title to provide accelerated growth to meet the bare minimum standards required of godhood for Imerith. To resolve several errors further the minimum completion of the quests is the minimum standard for godhood.
To reach farther do better.
Ok... Another notification that told me both a lot and nothing at all in understanding a seemingly ever expanding scope of required understanding. Though it was nice enough to explain a little. All I truly understood though was that the more these notifications told me the more my understanding of just how little I understood was.
Though it did imply I was a deity of some sort just an uncommon type I guessed. What little context I had was from the first memories referring to something collectively named Lovecraftian according to the memories at least. Though I think I should be worried about the sheer number of errors I’ve caused in this supposed system that governed these mental notifications I was getting.
[Going over manifestation location… Location identified in the archives – Divine realm seed generated – Divine realm name: The forgotten realm of Ktep.]
Calculating energies manifestation hasn’t and has access to…
Energies manifestation will not have access to: Holy, Infernal and Psionic.
Energies manifestation will have access to: Eldritch, Mana, Chi and minor access to Aether.
Psyche integration with Void spawn host body commencing shortly… please hold.
[Error!]
To resolve the errors that have occurred the system has chosen the governing physiology of your being most compatible with what you are. This is going to be represented with the [Manifest Physiology] skill which will allow for secondary mutations and manifestations due to eldritch physiology as the base.
Alongside these, the two minor titles [Father Death] and [Mother life] have been granted but require further growth to provide any effect.
[Fractal seedling internal structure]
Allows for the creation of a fractal seed of a dimensional internal structure on the inside of the body to not just blend but also complement and empower one another of the energies reaching new heights and primordial potential as the entity grows. This manifestation is capable of great things but limits the entity to a maximum of 7 forms and regardless of if or when this number of forms is reached or even surpassed in some way still binds the entity to the number in some way.
Some how this new tablet made me feel a sense of relief after the chills the first shorter one had instilled and I started to think that perhaps. Just perhaps. In its own strange way these tablets and this supposed system had my best interests at heart if the quest system was anything to go by. I’d noticed the nuance of just following the quests to the minimum would make me pass the minimum standards for divinity in this Imerith world I’d eventually come into being in.
It made me think that perhaps if I do the quests over the minimum requirement wouldn’t that mean I could get a better than average start for a deity? Or did it mean that I’d simply increase the strength I’d manifest within this Imerith? Or would I do that at all? Was it simply the standard of this system? I then almost mentally flinched again as I saw the next tablet.
[Manifestation errors check…]
[Error check successful, no further errors detected.]
[Proceeding to initializing manifestations integration with prepared [Void spawn] vessel]
[Commencing in 3… 2… 1..]
It was a little strangely worded but somehow I felt giddy at the prospect of having a physical form and not this void of only consciousness that was my current existence. Feeling like I’d only been there for a short time as well as what might have been aeons for all I knew, I felt my consciousness shrink in on itself.
Though instead of the panic that my natural reaction would have been somehow knowing that I was being put into a body didn’t make it as terrifying as I’d expected it would be. Instead it was somehow peaceful, the only context I had was from the memory assaults and it was going to sleep after a hard days work knowing you’d wake up fresh, rested and cosy. It sounded bizarre to me but did also sound rather nice, perhaps I could try it out?
Wait was I even real?