Aug 12 2023, 12:42 AM
Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:
This post contains potentially sensitive material:
gore
self harm
graphic themes
death (?)
~5000 years ago, near the time of the rebellion:
Task. It was tasked to explore the deepest areas of the nest, though it would not know if these were to be safe spots or jail chambers, or simply to know what lay hidden. Tamulus, who had made it, had asked it to do this personally and discreetly. Having been imbued with the most powerful bits of arcane, Tamulus created it for important missions, or so it had been told.
Task! It would complete the task. Well enough, it had found a very suspicious crevice that seemed interesting: indeed, one could almost see the base of the Oilstone Spire! What a find! To think of all the mayhem they might cause with this—
Oh! It had fallen! Scraping and desperate for purchase, it nails break and splinter until only blood is left to cling to the rough rock, and still it falls, down, down, down... and then it SHATTERS.
It lay broken and alive, its magic too numb from the overbearing spire to properly form a chrysalis, and so it is kept in buoyant life-death in the cradle of a broken, half-formed epidote shell and it pleads for help. Tamulus would find it, yes? No. Nobody finds it. Nobody finds it.
Time is an unknown. Flesh is pain, its body having betrayed it, it tears and eats and rids itself of these traitorous pieces. It goes mad, but it does not want to die. It does not want to be like this, either. Not here, not in this state of suspended life. And worse, the radiation from the belly of the spire taunted it and twisted its mind even beyond what it suffered thus far.
It did not want to die!!! It did not want to die alone! Wasn't there anyone!? Anyone at all!? If only it had been stronger, this would not have happened! That was it... Yes, that was it. It would become stronger! It would find the others again! Surely they had looked for it? Wouldn't they be so happy to see it again?!
In an absolute effort of sheer will, and given the time it spent brewing beneath the Oilstone, the creature—or what was left of it—imbued the embodiment of what remained of itself into its shattered epidote carcass: Flesh is pain; Don't leave me alone; I need to become stronger... And the epidote, harnessing the arcane abilities of its for-bearer, became host to an entirely new, but not different, entity.
But for a long time, it slumbered... exhausted and weak, it hibernated like the rest of the caves, sometime post-rebellion until a new force came along and demolished the Oilstone spire, giving new life to the caves and to itself. Like being awoken to a splash of cold water, it hungered for company, for life, and it began to send tendrils of epidote through the stone where it could try to find others—to find anyone!—to help it, to know it. Though it did not remember itself, it retained the core of its life-death, the three fundamental thoughts that kept it haunting the nest:
Flesh is pain. Don't leave me alone. I need to be stronger.
As a consequence of this, the epidote eventually found a way to grow, sending tendrils of itself through the solid rock and seeking out other sections of the cave where it could act upon the motivations. Find flesh and destroy it. Find gems and hold them near. Find magic and feed upon it.
Task. It was tasked to explore the deepest areas of the nest, though it would not know if these were to be safe spots or jail chambers, or simply to know what lay hidden. Tamulus, who had made it, had asked it to do this personally and discreetly. Having been imbued with the most powerful bits of arcane, Tamulus created it for important missions, or so it had been told.
Task! It would complete the task. Well enough, it had found a very suspicious crevice that seemed interesting: indeed, one could almost see the base of the Oilstone Spire! What a find! To think of all the mayhem they might cause with this—
Oh! It had fallen! Scraping and desperate for purchase, it nails break and splinter until only blood is left to cling to the rough rock, and still it falls, down, down, down... and then it SHATTERS.
It lay broken and alive, its magic too numb from the overbearing spire to properly form a chrysalis, and so it is kept in buoyant life-death in the cradle of a broken, half-formed epidote shell and it pleads for help. Tamulus would find it, yes? No. Nobody finds it. Nobody finds it.
Time is an unknown. Flesh is pain, its body having betrayed it, it tears and eats and rids itself of these traitorous pieces. It goes mad, but it does not want to die. It does not want to be like this, either. Not here, not in this state of suspended life. And worse, the radiation from the belly of the spire taunted it and twisted its mind even beyond what it suffered thus far.
It did not want to die!!! It did not want to die alone! Wasn't there anyone!? Anyone at all!? If only it had been stronger, this would not have happened! That was it... Yes, that was it. It would become stronger! It would find the others again! Surely they had looked for it? Wouldn't they be so happy to see it again?!
In an absolute effort of sheer will, and given the time it spent brewing beneath the Oilstone, the creature—or what was left of it—imbued the embodiment of what remained of itself into its shattered epidote carcass: Flesh is pain; Don't leave me alone; I need to become stronger... And the epidote, harnessing the arcane abilities of its for-bearer, became host to an entirely new, but not different, entity.
But for a long time, it slumbered... exhausted and weak, it hibernated like the rest of the caves, sometime post-rebellion until a new force came along and demolished the Oilstone spire, giving new life to the caves and to itself. Like being awoken to a splash of cold water, it hungered for company, for life, and it began to send tendrils of epidote through the stone where it could try to find others—to find anyone!—to help it, to know it. Though it did not remember itself, it retained the core of its life-death, the three fundamental thoughts that kept it haunting the nest:
Flesh is pain. Don't leave me alone. I need to be stronger.
As a consequence of this, the epidote eventually found a way to grow, sending tendrils of itself through the solid rock and seeking out other sections of the cave where it could act upon the motivations. Find flesh and destroy it. Find gems and hold them near. Find magic and feed upon it.
And now it had successfully become one with Parthenium. After years and years of searching for others, the dog had grew near it, and the epidote had wound its way into the chrysalis. Now it had fully consumed the dog, yes: they had rid it of its flesh and of its pain; it had the company of epidote-infected lessers, who traveled with it now as a pack of thralls; and now, now it needed to be stronger! The rippling of epidote beneath its fur-cloak, worn over its once-corpse body, bit and gnawed at itself. If it could find others, it could become one with them, too. They did not share thoughts, but they shared... The thrall rats watched not-Parthenium eagerly. Where to now?
@Parthenium is now a Gemthrall.
Gemthrall: A gemscarred who was unable to remove the impurity before its tendrils disabled its vital organs or a golem who gets infected. Flesh begins to deteriorate but the tendrils begin to animate on their own. Gemthrall appear to be spiky zombies at first, with bits of crystal poking out from the flesh and assisting with movement. Eventually after all the flesh has deteriorated all that is left is the support structure, making the end result like a golem in a shape that resembles what the creature was in life. As the host is now dead only the three core motivations are left.
The level of danger either of these pose is proportional to the number of thrall gathered together or the proximity to the entity’s epidote vein. A lone thrall may simply stalk a gembound or make half-hearted grabs for its gem while an army of them may present a real threat to life in the cave.
Gemthrall can spread the epidote infection by piercing the flesh of another with its epidote spikes/tendrils (and successfully breaking a piece off to stay behind/infect), or if another consumes a piece of the epidote. The epidote itself is not viable for Give Life, but Parthenium's original Black Jade is (this is cradled in a grasp of epidote; canonically, the Black Jade was unwilling to save the host-flesh due to the interference and severity of the epidote infection).
Gemthrall: A gemscarred who was unable to remove the impurity before its tendrils disabled its vital organs or a golem who gets infected. Flesh begins to deteriorate but the tendrils begin to animate on their own. Gemthrall appear to be spiky zombies at first, with bits of crystal poking out from the flesh and assisting with movement. Eventually after all the flesh has deteriorated all that is left is the support structure, making the end result like a golem in a shape that resembles what the creature was in life. As the host is now dead only the three core motivations are left.
The level of danger either of these pose is proportional to the number of thrall gathered together or the proximity to the entity’s epidote vein. A lone thrall may simply stalk a gembound or make half-hearted grabs for its gem while an army of them may present a real threat to life in the cave.
Gemthrall can spread the epidote infection by piercing the flesh of another with its epidote spikes/tendrils (and successfully breaking a piece off to stay behind/infect), or if another consumes a piece of the epidote. The epidote itself is not viable for Give Life, but Parthenium's original Black Jade is (this is cradled in a grasp of epidote; canonically, the Black Jade was unwilling to save the host-flesh due to the interference and severity of the epidote infection).