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Thomassibre
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| Snailberry Bush |
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Posted by: __denby - 01-19-2025, 06:01 PM - Forum: Flora
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Snailberry Bush
“There will be no yelling at people who are bleeding themselves to unconsciousness.” - Kristen Cashore
Summary:
The Snailberry Bush acquired such a strange name due to the odd properties of the juices of the berry. Being inedible in its entirety and possessing rather sharp thorns, the berries are rather high in tannin and stranger juices that lead to rather curious changes to the scabbing action of wounds. Allegedly discovered by accident when a sad sod cut himself upon the thorns of the Snailberry Bush by falling off of his horse and into a clutch of them, a strange story made the rounds at his local alehouse. The poor man claimed that he emerged from the bushes covered in lacerations yet not profusely bleeding as one would expect. Of course, the cuts still hurt like the dickens! Beyond this obvious rumor, believed only by practitioners of witchy brews, not even goats will eat the plant due to the semi-toxic nature of the berries.
Basic Description:
Rather unappealing in nature, the Snailberry Bush is a sprawling and thorny shrub that possesses broad, green, oak-shaped leaves. Scattered throughout the bush are clusters of small and squishy red berries, often likened to the color of freshly-let blood, though the berries tend to associate rather nearby the lengthy thorns that grow throughout the plant as a defense mechanism. Snailberry bushes possess sharp and rigid thorns made of a hardened, wood-like material that range from one inch to three inches in length which easily penetrate the skin of an unguarded hand, or the very body of a man who falls into the bush, as the rumor suggests. It also possesses a very iron-rich, almost acrid smell that comes from the berries, typically scaring away any birds that might want a snack.
Rarity: Rare
Location:
The Snailberry Bush is by no means a common appearance, it’s rarity caused mostly by the proficient use of natural defense mechanisms causing the plant itself to have a very poor distribution of seeds and generally being a nuisance. Farmers burn it, animals refuse to eat it, birds refuse to make their nests in it, and the broad leaves and thick sprawling nature of the plant causes the seeds from dried berries to not be carried far by the wind. All of these situations combined have pushed the Snailberry Bush to near extinction, making it a rare sight. A hardy specimen, surely, but so hardy that it has stifled its own ability to procreate across the land. When it can be found, it is typically growing in rich, loamy soil, and at times springs up in and around abandoned farmland or freshly graveled roadways due to the presence of horse manure and the ilk. Acquiring seeds from dried berries and planting them elsewhere is not difficult, as the plant is quite capable of growing almost anywhere rich soil may be found.
Properties:
An incredibly hardy plant, the Snailberry Bush is heavily thorned and sprawling.
The bushes' thorns are between one inch to three inches in length and very hard.
The berries are mildly toxic and possess a strong acrid odor, typically warding off birds and small animals.
The berries are small and squishy, having the coloration of freshly-let blood.
It possesses broad, heavy leaves which tend to guard the wind from passing through the plant at any quick speed.
The Snailberry bush is rare due to having been pushed to near extinction by farmers, and the prohibitive nature of its defense mechanisms. It is not actually that difficult to grow, but takes some time to reach maturity.
Special Properties:
The berries are high in tannin, giving the juices natural astringent and cleansing properties, as well as the capability to tan leathers.
The berries also possess a strange clotting agent which promotes the growth of lymph scabbing, sealing small and medium wounds quickly with a flexible and rigid scab, generally textured much like a snail’s shell; hence the name.
Eating the berries causes intense abdominal pain due to the tannin content, and if consumed in large enough volumes, can cause liver damage.
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Whitelist Application Format |
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Posted by: __denby - 08-20-2024, 12:12 AM - Forum: Whitelist Applications
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Whitelist Application
Copy this thread, from In-Character Section to the end of the thread, fill it out and post your application in this subforum. It will be reviewed as soon as possible!
In-Character Section:
As a reference, please ensure that all of these are two to four sentences, barring the character name, so that we may gauge your roleplaying abilities.
If you would like to link an In-Character Section from another Roleplay Server, we do accept this! For our records though, the OOC Section must be completed As-Is.
Character Name:
Character Description:
Character Personality:
Character Backstory:
Story Scenarios:
Below you will find some scenarios in which you should make a Roleplay Reponse. Please ensure that this is a minimum of two to three sentences, so that we may gauge your roleplaying abilities.
As you step off of a small, shoddy seafaring vessel- you set your gaze upon the local dockmaster. Rain is pouring down, seemingly not soon to cease. In the dockmaster’s hand lies a placard, upon which he is visibly writing names and information. As you approach him, the gruff man’s voice calls out to you- “Oi! Wha’s yer name and port o’ call, stranger?”
[x]
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The town before you seems rather small- most of it is filled with shanty-shacks and hastily set up marketplaces. A vendor calls out to you from a rather well-appointed tent- a sign hangs above it: ‘Tolemire’s Potions and Oils.’ The owner’s voice seems sly, impish- “How about you sidle on over here, take a look at my wares? Want to have more than one round with your lady of the night? I can help you with that sonny.”
[x]
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Suddenly, you see a few bandits make off with a poor woman’s supplies. They very obviously flee down an alleyway that you know of. A few guards are hastily running towards you, though it is obvious they do not know where the thieves have gone. One of them yells out to you- “Where did they go?”
[x]
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You’re moving through a small forest just as it is reaching dusk, and a low bank of fog begins to roll in. Suddenly, a strange creature begins to emerge from the twilight- though, its’ form isn’t entirely visible. It moves slowly, and its motions seem to be aggressive. What do you do?
[x]
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Out-of-Character Section:
1. Username: [x]
2. Minecraft Username: [x]
2a. Alt Accounts?: [x]
3. Age: [x]
4. How did you hear about our server?: [x]
4a. If a player referred you to our server, who are they?: [x]
5. What’s your favorite lore piece and why?: [x]
6. Please define metagaming in your own words and provide an example: [x]
7. Please define powergaming in your own words and provide an example: [x]
8. Have you read the terms of service and rules of roleplay? Do you agree with them?: [x]
9. What do you want to do in Sangreal?: [x]
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On the Origin of the World |
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Posted by: __denby - 08-19-2024, 10:52 PM - Forum: Mythos and Faith
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On the Origin of the World - The Creation of the Sangreal
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![[Image: qlippoth.png]](http://193.122.143.38/qlippoth.png)
~ ~ ~
Out of the incomprehensible magnitude of the void, a single point of illumination sprung manifest into being. That which was not suddenly was, and with a point came reference, and from reference there emanated perception. In a moment, before the very concept of a moment could have come to be, It became. It was and is eternal and ineffable, the virtue of perception; the light in all eyes, the very twinkle of the stars. It then willed to know itself as self, whereby the perceiver of the reference could itself be perceived. In an ever complexifying summarization of systems, an effort to categorize the imperceptible and plumb the ungaugeable undertaken, Illumination beheld itself.
In knowing itself as one, Illumination then desired to bring into being a thing, which separate from the illumination could contain the very concept of all ‘thingness’. Knowing self to be all that was, agency in vacuum was as no agency at all. Dividing itself thus from the totality of being, the foundational concepts of separation and otherness in regards to there being a ‘thing’ at all, found themselves made apparent. The fire of illumination then beheld the other, self reflected. Illumination then dwelled upon the surface of the vessel of possibility, the Sangreal. A time outside cycles Illumination gazed upon the waters of the abyss beyond the surface of the Sangreal.
Dwelling upon the waters, playful hands of virgin divinity gave archetypal life to substances, furious spirits of primordial creation springing into being within the abyss as a pond might with summer pollywogs. Eyes of flames and storms of lights, glimmer within shadow and admixture upon mixture - consciousness untamed, magics unknown and presences divest of cosmic proportion broiled within the deep. The heart of Illumination swelled with joy at the vision of such creations and desired then to mold a form likened unto its own, possessing another point of perception. That which all others unto now, no matter how vast, knew not themselves. Illumination would imbue the Sangreal with the very fire within itself. Desire was made manifest, and Will to order the abyss sprung into being.
Yet for there to be personae of ordered perception, Illumination divested itself of the totality of the godhead, and in essence made fertile the abyss. Illumination knew it not, that for there to be order, there must also be chaos. That all balanced by its equal opposite such that the sum of all becomes naught. In this single act of divine transgression, Illumination now beheld itself within the womb of the Sangreal, having willed itself separate within the tumultuous abyss of forces. Will and Chaos were beheld by their master, while they were ignorant of their place. Seeing a begotten that he knew not, thoughts malign and disturbed appeared upon the mind of the divine progenitor. Wrathful to erase this creation and begin anew, a still and feminine presence drew near to Illumination, quieting the mind. This unknown companion was the Sangreal itself, and it spoke only four words; “Let there be narrative.”
There had been no words spoken, no intent enacted upon the surface of the abyss until that point that was not born of Illumination, evoking a bloom of panic upon the mind of the godhead. A sudden vastness came to the knowledge of Illumination, powers that he could behold but not control. Enraged, jealous now of the very power that had been separated from self and given to the Sangreal, Illumination descended upon the narrative within the womb that was the Sangreal and her abyss. Unknown to the divine, with light there must be shadow, and with action there must be response. Every act chosen by the godhead only further deepened the forces of the narrative, further tightening the unseen net. Illumination chose to seek the voice, dividing himself into smaller and smaller fragments, descending and ascending the realms of experience that grew ever outwards. Out of will and chaos came intent, there grew purpose and choice, actions and forms that contained distance. Separation grew as a gulf between every instance of creation and the understanding of Illumination began to be lost, for he knew not that to illuminate the abyss was to become it.
A silent dawn arose then upon a differentiated creation, the framework of narrative imbued with the power and authority of raw creation. Stirred by primordial forces, a reflection of the events beyond the narrative's context, new thoughts began to emerge from the differentiated illumination. As the godhead had descended into the abyss possessed by the emotion of rage, the abyss felt. Where creation had begun out of the joy of that ineffable aeon, Sangreal herself was a mirror of blackest reflection, bearing thus that experience and its counter. Where love and play grew, hate and grief festered. The masculine illumination and the feminine abyss spun themselves within narrative, springing forth all that could be. Illumined by the light, the first thinking thing emerged, the first emotion imprinted upon it that of fractious nature. A great beast born of the abyss, this thinking thing drifted alone, capable of awareness and diffused with power. It thought. Abandoned by the mother and observed by the father, this great thinking beast too would observe the mystery of its emanation. Seeing only itself, the beast set about thrashing the primordial world, intent to loathe all that now was.
Perceiving itself as the divine and not the child of it, it bellowed unto the differentiated abyss new words; “Do my will.” and the silence responded not. The great thinking beast roared into the darkness, raging against the invisible illumination, “Depart from me!” - and eternities elapsed, every manner of assault devised and attempted, but the silence responded not. So the beast dwelled silently, for but a moment of time would pass before that quiet voice spoke out of the abyss a second time, saying, “Run your course, child.” Having heard now the voice of the holy Sangreal, the beast devised and sought to curse the revealed, and to don a mimicry of the masculine Illumination as offense to the shadowed Mother. To pour fie and bile upon the primordial creation, where the unseen father had once cultivated good in equal measure. In response, the shadowed mother worked her will, setting about to bind within narrative the very cycle of mortal life. The great beast knew only to fall within the traps set for it, for the Sangreal spoke for the third and final time; “Curse you, King of Fools, that you rage against selfness so. As long as the fire burns in life, so shall you war with it.”
Time began. Like a scroll unfurled, past and future spread outwards by narrative. Infused upon all things was love and goodness, yet also their opposites. In the beginning there was much power, the power of the Sangreal, and life supped readily from the cup of promise.
“But then the times grew to such evil, that the Holy Cup was caught away to heaven and disappear’d.” - The Holy Grail
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| Weyrat |
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Posted by: __denby - 08-19-2024, 10:50 PM - Forum: Demi-Humans
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Weyrats
"Flesh woven by pestilent greed."
![[Image: xn0YWzd.png]](https://i.imgur.com/xn0YWzd.png)
Inasmuch the same as the races of men and elf in their ways of life created a sort of psychical tension within the ever-forming realm of the Sangreal, the dwarves were no exception here. A race of manlike things whose hardy ethics and familial bonds carved into the bones of the realm like so many termites - singing, breaking bread and sharing mead. It was not the happiness of the dwarves, for they were often quarrelsome things, it was neither the great works and mighty fortresses that caused a certain sticky envy to ooze between the veins of the earth beneath their feet. Nay, it was the bounteous feasts and ponderous golden trinkets that hung from neck and ear - it was the great glinting gemstones and ancient casks of wine that called out to the darkness beneath their feet with every devoured morsel. It was the opulent cities and great halls of their own mountain fortresses which gave rise to a new thing beneath the mountain. Where the dwarf sought wealth for their kin and kith, this new thing sought wealth for squander; it sought food and drink for debauchery, it sought clothing for mimicry and tools for pride. That draconic spirit of envy buried deep within the realm festered and infused itself with the least of those that scuttled and scurried in the dark halls of the mountain.
It is said that the great beast in some way tainted the very foodstuffs eaten by the dwarves; it was the emotion, carried through by the act of nourishment that fell scant scraps to the meagre rats and mice which lived alongside their dwarven host. They grew, in size and mind to grow into little more than a rival, a cruel caricature of dwarfenkind. It did not affect the dwarves, and thus they did not notice until groups of man-like rats, four and five feet in height began to arise as boogeymen in the larders and supplylines of the furthest mines. As rats, they multiplied - a youngling weyrat seeming to reach a state of combat-capable maturity in less than a year. In contrast to the slow and methodical methods of the dwarves, these ravenous and furred things were far better adapted to the deep dark. Some possessed furs of deep grey and mottled black, still others ranging from browns to whites - as likely varied as their loathsome precursors. Deep in the mines and anteways of the dwarves there grew a small civilization of these weyrats over some years, and feral though they are, they are capable of communication, thought and civilization on the level of the surface races. It is evident however that their society is merely a facade, with the wealthiest being solely the strong and the greedy. In the fairer cities of the surface world there are from time to time found weyrat merchants, where in places abandoned dwarven civilizations have been co-opted by their animalistic counterpart.
Their frames wiry but strong, their paws nimble enough to unfasten clasps and sift coin from dust - it was as if the tools of this realm were made for them. At least, that is what a rat would tend to think. Where once they had chewed indiscriminately, they began to sort. Where once they had nested in chaos, they began to arrange. They did not rediscover dwarven purpose—they replaced it with something altogether different. They learned value. The first caches were crude: piles of metal objects dragged into hidden corners, glittering without reason. But over time, patterns emerged. Tools were grouped by function. Weapons were stacked, then separated by condition. Trinkets—rings, chains, carved stones—were gathered not for their utility, but for the way they drew attention. A chipped gem might be placed prominently while sturdier iron lay buried beneath, as though the Weyrats understood instinctively that perception itself could be traded.
Deep within the old merchant quarter of the dwarves, they established their first true market. The great hall, once lined with orderly stalls and governed by strict guild laws, became a maze of crooked tables and hanging wares. Tunnels collapsed by time were reopened, not for passage, but to create secret routes and hidden storage. Nothing was wasted, and nothing was truly lost—only moved, concealed, and eventually, offered. For the Weyrats did not merely hoard. They dealt. Their raids upon the surface began as opportunistic ventures—night forays into farms, caravans, and unwatched storehouses. But soon they grew bolder. They learned the habits of traders, the timing of shipments, the weak points in dwarf-guarded lifts and sealed doors. Goods vanished without trace: bolts of cloth, casks of ale, crates of tools. Even coin itself, stamped with the marks of distant realms, found its way below.
And then, in a twist that baffled those above, some of those same goods began to reappear. Travelers who wandered too near certain fissures or forgotten mine entrances reported strange encounters: cloaked figures with twitching whiskers and bright, appraising eyes, offering wares in exchange for other goods. Their speech was halting but deliberate, laced with a peculiar sense of calculation. They haggled not with anger, but with a kind of playful cunning, inflating value where it suited them, dismissing worth where it did not. A farmer might lose a crate of tools in the night, only to find a Weyrat merchant weeks later offering those very tools—alongside others—for twice their worth, or in exchange for something entirely different. A dwarf might guard a shipment through treacherous tunnels, only to discover that the rarest items had vanished and were now being bartered deep below, traded back in altered forms or bundled with curiosities of dubious origin. The Weyrats thrived on this circulation. To them, ownership was fluid. Possession was temporary. What mattered was movement—of goods, of opportunity, of advantage.
Within their subterranean domain, a hierarchy emerged, though not one of kings or councils. The most successful traders, those who controlled the largest caches and the most intricate networks of tunnels, held sway. Alliances formed and dissolved with the exchange of goods. Debts were tracked with obsessive care, recorded in scratches along stone walls or in bundles of knotted cords. To owe was to be bound; to collect was to rise. Yet for all their cunning, the Weyrats remained creatures of instinct as much as intellect. Their markets were noisy, chaotic places, filled with chittering voices and the constant clatter of shifting wares. Disputes were settled quickly, often with tooth and claw, but rarely to the death. A dead trader could not repay a debt. The dwarves, when they returned to reclaim portions of their lost halls, found not emptiness but occupation. Their sealed vaults had been breached, their careful inventories scattered and reinterpreted. Attempts to drive the Weyrats out met with limited success. The creatures did not defend territory in the conventional sense—they abandoned sections under pressure, only to reappear elsewhere, their goods already relocated.
Some dwarves, pragmatic and weary of endless skirmishes, chose a different path. They traded. It was an uneasy arrangement. Deals struck in the dim light of reclaimed halls, with Weyrat merchants perched atop crates of stolen goods, offering items that had once belonged to the dwarves themselves. The terms were rarely fair, but they were effective. What could not be recovered by force might be regained through exchange—at a cost. In time, the underways became something neither dwarven nor wholly alien: a layered economy of loss and acquisition, where goods flowed in loops and ownership blurred into transaction. The Weyrats did not restore the mines, nor did they destroy them. They repurposed them into something restless and ever-shifting.
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| Kobolds |
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Posted by: __denby - 08-19-2024, 10:49 PM - Forum: Demi-Humans
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Kobolds
"Flesh woven by irreverent chaos."
![[Image: o7Ecywh.png]](https://i.imgur.com/o7Ecywh.png)
In the manner of order and orrery, Elven-kind in their woodland citadels planned all by the motion of the spheres. Feast and festival divided by the unflinching space of time, love and conflict interspersed among what is deemed proper by the heavens. It was this restriction of the exuberance of the divine spark by mortal notions that began in a way to curdle, seeping beneath the surface an unconscious recoil amongst the nether-mind of the Sangreal. It was the plan of Narrative to create these various living creatures with 'plans' and 'goals' and 'strategy', and that plan having been witnessed by that one of darkness infuriated it. From the cold mind of the abyss was wrought then a vision, of pillaging and feasting - of razing and drink - of violence and spontaneity. In the manner of thrashing, barking, yowling pack-beasts of the forests there was the essence of hot-blooded chaos elevated to mind. Flashes of crimson, of impulse, of taking and tearing for the sake of it given form. This hateful child of old brought forth his progeny of filth through the twisting of pre-existing fauna. Like taken by a sickness, the wolves, the coyotes, the foxes and the strays ejected by villages of men lay themselves in secret rooted burrows. Wait to die they did, and did not; bones snapping, body tearing, a new thing arose from that burrow possessed of a newly modeled mind bent upon fury and revelry.
It was this twisted curse appointed to the blameless creatures of the woodland that brought about a variety of color and form in their kind. Typically ranging in height from four feet to six and a half feet, the Kobold possesses a body of fur in the manner of the beast they were. Having the upright form of digitigrade-bipeds, the forelimbs possess hands in the manner of elves and men, equally with minds capable of understanding and using the tools of such races. The hindquarters and legs of a Kobold tend to possess the paws and tails of their beastly progenitors - and their manner of men is only shared in the design of the shoulder and way the head is carried. Heads, mouths, and general behaviors tend to stem in some degree from the animal forebear, including eating and digestion habits. While the Kobold may possess the ability to be integrated into the society at-large, they have a propensity for crime and destructive behaviors by their very nature. In the years after the dawn of life within the Sangreal, elf has been at war with kobold with much evidence to the latter's treachery and destruction.
In the elder days, before the roads broke and the sky seemed closer to the earth, there stood the city of Lethrien—an immaculate work of high elven design, rising in pale tiers along a river that curved like a deliberate brushstroke through the land. Every arch and avenue followed a principle. Every garden was measured, every tree pruned into intention. The elves of Lethrien believed that order was not merely preference, but virtue made visible. Their laws were few but absolute. Their calendars were mapped centuries in advance. Even their songs adhered to ancient structures, passed unaltered from one generation to the next. To deviate was to unravel; to unravel was to fall. Beyond the city’s boundaries stretched a forest long regarded as a stable constant—wild, but predictable. Its edges were patrolled, its deeper regions cataloged. Creatures lived there, certainly, but none that threatened the balance of Lethrien’s existence. Or so the elves believed.
The first signs were dismissed. Hunters reported strange tracks: not wolf, not man, but something that shifted between. Groves at the forest’s edge were found shredded—not consumed, not harvested, but destroyed. Trees torn apart without purpose. Birds fled the canopy in unnatural silence. The Council of Measures recorded these incidents, debated them, and assigned observers. Patterns were sought, hypotheses drafted. Nothing in their long history had prepared them for a force without pattern.
Then came the howling.
It began at dusk, a sound like laughter dragged across broken glass. The forest itself seemed to recoil from it. That night, the outer watchposts fell. By morning, the first refugees staggered into Lethrien’s lower districts—wounded, incoherent, speaking of creatures that walked upright yet moved like beasts, their limbs too long, their jaws too eager. They were called, in the records that followed, the kobold. But no term fully contained them. They did not invade as an army would. They spilled. They erupted from the forest in erratic surges, striking not for gain, nor territory, but for the act of ruin itself. Fields were trampled, not harvested. Wells were fouled. Homes were torn open and left in splinters, as though the act of breaking brought them satisfaction. When met with resistance, their violence sharpened. They did not merely kill—they lingered. They returned to the same places to undo what had been rebuilt, as if driven by a need to deny restoration itself. The elves responded as they always had: with structure. Defensive grids were established. Rotations of archers and mages were assigned precise intervals. Barriers were raised according to geometric principles designed to maximize coverage.
It did not matter.
The dog-men did not respect lines. They did not respond to deterrence. They learned nothing, yet adapted in ways that defied understanding. A wall would hold one night and be bypassed the next, not through strategy, but through sheer, chaotic persistence. Worse still, the forest advanced. Trees at the edge of Lethrien began to grow unchecked, roots cracking stone, branches reaching into avenues once kept pristine. It was as if the wood itself had abandoned its quiet agreement with the city, surging forward to accompany its feral inhabitants. Within the Council, dissent—once unthinkable—took root. Some argued for greater force, others for retreat to inner districts. But every decision required deliberation, every action adherence to established process. Time, once their greatest ally, became their enemy. The breaking point came not with a grand siege, but with a simple failure. A scheduled rotation of defenders did not occur. Messengers sent to correct the lapse were found torn apart. In the absence of that single, precise movement, a section of the city lay exposed—and the kobolds poured through. What followed was not a battle, but an unmaking. Order collapsed under the weight of unpredictability. Streets designed for symmetry became channels of panic. The songs ceased. The laws, though unchanged, became impossible to uphold. For the first time in their history, the elves of Lethrien faced a force that could not be reasoned with, predicted, or integrated into their system. And so, they did the unthinkable. They fled.
Under cover of what defenses remained, the surviving population gathered what they could—records, relics, fragments of their carefully maintained past—and fled southward, abandoning the city that had defined them. Lethrien did not fall in fire, nor was it conquered in the traditional sense. It was rendered incompatible with the nature of its inhabitants. In the years that followed, travelers spoke of a pale ruin swallowed by wild growth, where broken spires rose among tangled branches, and where, at dusk, the howling still echoed through the hollowed streets. Of the elves, it is said they never rebuilt as they once had. Their new settlements were looser, less certain. Their songs changed. Some say they learned resilience. Others say they lost something irretrievable—the belief that the world could be made to hold still. And in quiet moments, when the wind shifts just so, they remember the sound of something that could not be ordered, and the city that could not survive it.
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| Goblins |
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Posted by: __denby - 08-19-2024, 10:49 PM - Forum: Demi-Humans
- No Replies
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Goblins
"Flesh woven by vile wrath."
![[Image: jTaHvkI.png]](https://i.imgur.com/jTaHvkI.png)
Narrative's laughter, joy, love, her feelings of creation trickled down through the rocks and the silt. It filtered, dripped and percolated deep into the cold and dark places of the realm, untouched by light and teetering ever-so-gently upon the lapping surface of the Abyss. It angered that ancient writhing mind, and the beast hated such that the hands of Narrative had built. It despised the humans for their places of wealth and learning, it hated the elves for their great and lofty philosophy and their decadent industries. It was this hate, that formed into a thought - a thought in a mind so ancient that the concept could be before it was, wrath. It would not be that the men and the elves could stand in their grand cities and opulent fortresses - the beast envisioned war, flames licking and banners jostling. Hate, felt as though filled in the mouth with metal and fury - roaring. The thought grew teeth and gut and voracity; the thought grew ears, eyes, and a mind that craved that which it did not have. From the slime and the muck of the low places of the world, there arose a physical form with which it was embodied.
It was symbolic, in a way, that the most wretched swamps and mired valleys would produce a form of life in antipode to the high things of men and elves. From the muck arose creatures, similar in stature to man, ranging in height from four to six feet. Equally varied in mass and shape, there were those with sharp minds and round bellies, equally those with but a stone between their heads and bodies of wrought iron. Skin as tough as the hide of an ox and with muscles that drew more from the beasts of the realm than that of men, the forms of these creatures seemed truly an antithesis. Facially, they possessed features that were an admixture of man, of hog, and of frog - the alliteration potentially important to the mind of the demiurge. Animal affects such as horns and nodules appeared, mostly depending upon the faculty and the locational origin of the specific tribe. these goblins bear a strong resemblance to frogs magnified and twisted by malign purpose. Their hind legs are powerful, capable of carrying them in great, sudden bounds, while their hands—webbed but tipped with sharp, grasping claws—serve equally well in water and on land. Their skin glistens with a constant sheen of moisture, mottled in greens and blacks that render them nearly invisible among reeds and rot. They do not seem to breed as other creatures do, nor have any found nests, eggs, or young. Each sighting describes them as fully grown, as if the swamp itself disgorges them when conditions are met.
Aggression in them is not situational, but constant, a simmering state that seeks outlet. They hunt, certainly, and will devour fish, fowl, and flesh alike, but feeding does not appear to lessen their hostility. Indeed, there are recorded instances of them turning upon one another in brief, savage clashes that end as abruptly as they begin, with no lasting feuds or signs of rank established. Of particular note is their reaction to the works of men and mer. Structures, fences, and—most especially—fire kept under control seem to draw their attention. Some speculate that the scent of smoke carries far across the wetlands, acting as a lure. Others argue that it is the very notion of order imposed upon the wild that provokes them, though such thinking strays from natural philosophy into the realm of metaphor. The destruction of a small riverside settlement some decades past offers the clearest account of their behavior beyond the swamp.
As recorded by a lone survivor, the creatures emerged at dusk in unnerving silence, only to erupt into a cacophony as they breached the outer palisade. They moved with alarming coordination, overturning carts, scaling walls, and seizing torches from their victims. Fire spread quickly thereafter, leaping from thatch to timber as if eager to assist its new masters. Yet the goblins did not behave as raiders seeking plunder. They took no goods, claimed no ground, and made no effort to pursue those who fled beyond immediate reach. Instead, they remained amid the growing blaze, darting through smoke and flame with seeming indifference to heat or injury. When the settlement had been reduced to smoldering ruin, they withdrew as suddenly as they had come, vanishing back into the marsh without a trace.
Some goblins appear to have integrated with the societies of Sangreal at large - these occasionally being outcasts from their tribes, though some see them more as intelligence-gatherers for future raids. It is still too early to determine the end-goal of every Goblin, but it is know their origin is with the dark, and not the powers of the light.
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| Halflings |
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Posted by: __denby - 08-19-2024, 10:48 PM - Forum: Humanoids
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Halflings
“Vessels of mortal flesh, bound by the aspect of Belonging.”
![[Image: AD_4nXfMyn8_3K7gRPKMDfoQmBu_-Y-gGjF-cuY-...v5Wtznhabg]](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfMyn8_3K7gRPKMDfoQmBu_-Y-gGjF-cuY-nz2l2zIX21JKtQvaM04S7MY0vgFShVGnH72yk-UP49Ndvab7KIDcARPJo_bqsZuv1q7d0gxGnL9wuJkP9VuqNYjmTwkyq5cOyjOXqQ?key=TkSBtgn38ew_v5Wtznhabg)
It came to pass that many cycles after Narrative had produced the first clans of dwarf, the world still did not ring with a positive note. In fact, where the dwarves had been possessed of the intent to be diligent, they too possessed in spades the concept of greed, wealth, and the division of society according to those concerns. While on the surface the world was better, more diverse and filled to the brim with new concepts and materials, it too brimmed with death. War machines crafted by the insatiable hands of dwarves drove legions of men to their afterlives and ruined elven cities whose foundations had been laid at the beginnings of their age. Subdividing the aspect of Intent that had been so carefully preserved with the creation of the dwarves would cause unknown consequences for her burgeoning- albeit misled race. So, a new aspect of the Godhead would be required to emanate a new force into the creation; one unused, separate from the descension of the tree of life was Desire- and so it was chosen, like a golden berry in the seething void. Narrative then focused on a new creation, drawing within the Aspect and upon the feeling of Belonging. To the dwarf, there was the clan and there was profit, but to the halfling there would be only kin and mutual prosperity. After all, it was the clamor of children and the clinking of dishes that Narrative herself had come to so greatly enjoy in the play that acted out before the Godhead. Forming them from the straw of the field, mead of the valley and the earth of the Westcontre’s highlands, Narrative emanated the fourth race of the Grail by the aspect of Desire.
Standing no more than four feet and eight inches, it is somewhat a misnomer that the halfling is ‘half’ the height of the human. Short in stature and rather thin in build, the race of halfling is not strong nor is it quick, instead having features that are almost neotenous compared to the other species of the Grail. There is equally little in the way of sexual dimorphism amongst the halfling species, their lives being long and the societies from which they descend being incredibly communal. Hair colors typically range from shades of blonde to dark brown, usually turning white or gray with extreme age. The oldest of halflings, while infirm and poorly sighted, have been known to reach almost three hundred years. Skin tones range from earthy blacks to pale linen and typically are determined by the environment that each group has called home.
The first halflings drew breath within the territory of Abessia, deep within the highland forests where little interaction from the other races would be had. It was in this way that the newly formed creatures under Narrative’s watchful eye adopted a form of communal matriarchy. It was the mother that birthed them, it was the mother that fed them, and it was the mother that should rule over them. Typically the oldest and assumedly most ‘enlightened’ female of the clan was appointed as matriarch, and in this way the halflings preserved great wisdom within their culture. More important to them were the cycles of nature, the joys of great meals and succulent dishes brought about by their mastery of animal husbandry- and most of all the harmonious community that seemed to simply spring into existence around them. Theirs was a peaceful life until their first interaction with the race of men.
For nearly four centuries, the halfling village of Mossvale rested like a moss-covered gem in the emerald cradle of the Verdant Vale. Beneath arching canopies of alder and rowan, generations tilled the fertile soil, lived by the rhythm of sun and seed, and honored the wisdom of their singular sovereign: Grandmother Thistleburr. Elected once in a lifetime by consensus and custom, the Grandmother was no queen, but a living archive of the halflings’ gentle, matriarchal lore—a weaver of peace, a keeper of seasons, a judge with flour on her sleeves. Mossvale had no need of gates. No wars had touched its soil. Strife was a stranger, and ambition was considered a weed—useful in tincture, poisonous in overgrowth. Then came the Abessy.
They descended from the passes of the Sapphire Mountains like an answer to a riddle never asked. Tall, sun-burnished, eyes like volcanic glass, the Abessy brought more than goods: they brought spectacle. They danced before they spoke, bartered with riddles, and moved through Mossvale with the easy confidence of fire through dry leaves. Their culture gleamed with a dangerous magnetism—imperial in bearing, seductive in sound. They called Mossvale a “sleeping jewel.” They called Grandmother Thistleburr “the Crone Regent,” half in jest, half in charm. And Mossvale, in its naivety, laughed with them. The Abessy brought artifacts from their eastern coasts—iron-studded drums, fermented wines that sang through the blood, narcotic herbs that turned dreams into visions. At their fires, stories of gods with spears and queens with crocodile mouths replaced the old tales of mole spirits and orchard sprites. Their language, rhythmic and proud, slid like honey into halfling ears. The youth listened hardest.
It began with the harvest rites. Where once halfling girls danced slow circles in linen and garlands, now they painted themselves in ochre and moved in fierce spirals, mimicking the Abessy rites of passage. The boys, formerly apprenticed to rootwork or oven-craft, were taught how to chant in cadence with footfalls and strikes. Fallow fields became arenas. Clay stoves stood cold as feasts turned to revelries of spectacle and flesh. Thistleburr watched in silence from her hill-cottage as the very roots of her people’s identity withered beneath the heat of the Abessy sun. She spoke, eventually. In the Meeting Hollow, she addressed all. “We are not broken, to require remaking,” she said. “A vine does not envy the tree simply because it grows tall and loud.” But her words, once enough to halt feuds and guide generations, were now met with sideways glances. The Abessy priestess Matara-Kem, newly settled in the village’s old herb hall, responded with her own parable—of rivers that stagnate if not stirred, of people who die when they do not evolve. Within a year, the Grandmother’s authority was ceremonial. By the second, openly mocked. Then came the Ember Solstice. Under banners of gold and black, Matara-Kem declared a New Compact: a hybrid culture, ruled not by one grandmother but by a triumvirate chosen through “strength, vision, and divine favor.” Thistleburr, refusing to endorse it, was escorted from her home by youths who once brought her spring flowers. Her cottage was burned, her name struck from communal record. It was said she wept, not for herself, but for the taste of smoke in the orchard air.
In time, Mossvale was transformed. Spears replaced shepherd’s crooks. Songlines became war chants. Modesty turned theatrical, hospitality became transactional. The matriarchal rhythm, once slow and steady as a river’s current, had been drowned beneath a thunderous tide. The Abessy called it Renaissance. In exile, Grandmother Thistleburr named it the Withering. Years passed. In the shadows of Bramblefen, where briars grew thick as curses and even the Abessy dared not tread, Grandmother Thistleburr endured. She lived among roots and ruin, gathering strays: halfling children who had fled the New Compact, elders who would not kneel, even a handful of Abessy dissenters who found Matara-Kem’s zeal too absolute. She taught them not only how to harvest mushrooms and whisper to bees—but how to kill. She had once been the bread-keeper of her people. Now she learned the arts of breaking. From scavenged wreckage and stolen scrolls, Thistleburr fashioned a doctrine of war. She twisted Abessy tactics—scorched field maneuvers, shadow raids, ritualized deception—into something colder, more precise. The first raids were whispers on the wind: a granary burned to the ground, an armory emptied, a priestess found poisoned with wolfsbane. The triumvirate dismissed them as outlaws. But when a newly raised idol of the war-god Hamarek was felled and buried in a dung heap, the people began to murmur.
When her fighters struck at the Summer Vigil—masks donned, drums drowned by screaming—Mossvale finally understood. Thistleburr had returned. The village erupted in confusion. For many halflings, Thistleburr was still a memory of warmth and sense, a ghost of balance. Yet her return was no soft spring. It was winter with a blade. Matara-Kem, shrewd and unyielding, ordered a purge of any who spoke Thistleburr’s name with reverence. Dozens vanished into the Rootcellar Prisons. In response, Thistleburr sent back their guards in pieces—ritualistically arranged, a mimicry of the Abessy funeral glyphs. Still, the turning point came not with blood, but with fire. The Fields of Loam, Mossvale’s sacred grain terraces, were razed under moonlight by Thistleburr’s own hand. She stood on a ridge and watched the harvest burn—flames dancing like mad children across centuries of memory. Her apprentice, a quiet lad named Brindlecap, wept beside her.
“Why, Grandmother?” he asked, voice small beneath the crackle.
“Because if they eat, they endure,” she said, eyes dry. “And if they endure, they forget what we were.”
It was the moment she crossed a boundary no halfling ever had: the deliberate starvation of her own blood. The siege began that winter. Mossvale, girded in Abessy stone and pride, buckled not to force but to hunger. One by one, homes were abandoned, faiths fractured. Matara-Kem held her temple until the roof collapsed under fire set by infiltrators who sang lullabies as they torched the beams. Thistleburr walked into the ruins not as a liberator, but as a shadow. She claimed no title. She restored no council. The triumvirate lay dead, the shrines shattered, the drum circles silent. But what was left was not Mossvale. The orchard groves were stumps. The children had learned to stab before they learned to bake. Even Brindlecap, her most loyal, no longer smiled. The halflings won their village back. But they had paid with their soul. It is said rain fell from the sky slick with salt on the spring equinox that year, the tears of Narrative once again wetting the world that the unseen hand of darkness had taken too the goodness of her race and bent it into something foul. The children of the new Mossvale no longer sang. They trained.
From the age of five, they learned to track without sound, to slit throats in the dark, to cook roots into poison or poultice. War had become not an exception, but inheritance. The trees had grown back crooked. The village was a fortress of alder and stone, its walls carved with the grim faces of saints who had bled. Festivals were few. Bread was bitter, and stories shorter. And yet, among the crumbling shrines and smoke-darkened hearths, the old name lingered: Thistleburr. To most, she was myth. The Pale Grandmother. The Witch-General. A name muttered when someone vanished in the woods or when fire appeared where none had been lit. Her teachings were canon and curse alike. In the Hall of War-Records, a single threadbare banner bore her sigil: a branch split at both ends, blooming and burning at once. But one young girl wanted more than fragments. Ivyroot, born of the warrior caste but possessed of a scholar’s hunger. She found the last living witness in the outer glade—a centenarian beekeeper known only as Old Brindlecap. His hands trembled, but his memory did not.
“She was kind, once,” he told Ivyroot, “before she turned her kindness into a weapon.” Over weeks, Ivyroot listened. She learned of the moss-woven festivals, the long loaves passed down in peace, the orchard rites, the dance of grandmother’s bells. She learned that Mossvale had not always been a training ground. That there had been songs without screaming. “But she saved us,” Ivyroot said once, hesitant. “Didn’t she?” Brindlecap exhaled, a sound halfway between a sigh and a laugh. “She saved the body, child. But lost the heart. What we reclaimed—was it Mossvale? Or just the name?” Haunted, Ivyroot began her true work. In secret, she compiled the forbidden: lullabies, hearth-legends, even fragments of Abessy poems once outlawed. She mapped the lost groves by moonlight, sketching trees that no longer stood. Her writings, bound in bark and sealed in beeswax, would become known as The Memory Codex.
It was Ivyroot who first dared to say what no warrior would: “We must choose which part of our past we carry, and which we bury with the dead.”
In time, her teachings spread. Slowly. Painfully. A new generation learned to bake as well as bleed. To mourn without vengeance. They carved spoons as well as swords. Not all agreed. Not all forgave. But a balance began to emerge—not the old matriarchy of peace, nor the burning theocracy of the Abessy, but something liminal. Something earned. Halfling society has been marked by a great distrust for the other races since, seeing no good coming from anything beyond the walls of their own village now.
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| Dwarves |
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Posted by: __denby - 08-19-2024, 10:48 PM - Forum: Humanoids
- No Replies
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Dwarves
“Vessels of mortal flesh, bound by the aspect of Diligence.”
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![[Image: AD_4nXfqYJNaA_4r1jYgIZ9AT2QQdbXULaSa9r9y...v5Wtznhabg]](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfqYJNaA_4r1jYgIZ9AT2QQdbXULaSa9r9yl0ZFni_iQkiA_HdvllDtvRd6LfHNYgN8NMqDJ4IQPm3dkigYNacByHZ4Kntekn1Ny5nmWxnU6qD9rI5hvpAs2I3FPUlgn9E_re3z?key=TkSBtgn38ew_v5Wtznhabg)
War burned as flames upon the great tapestry of life that the divine play came to endear. Want and envy drove the great houses of the Elves to one another’s throats, while the races of men like a pestilence, found heart in slaughter, theft and plunder of their warring greaters’ fief. From the cauldron of emotion that dwelt within but a few lords, there could arise suffering and pain on an immense level. In their fractious state, the Godhead had only just began to realize that so much more than a stage of enjoyment and mirth had been set. How many generations had passed since the first life crawled forth from oily sea under blackened sky? Life and Death were but cycles, feeding the eternal flame of creation’s engine - such was the design, but something else corroded the gears and ate away at the foundation. Illumination could feel it. Life lived, life felt, and it felt suffering. Thus in an effort to right the keel of Sangreal, Narrative was inspired with but an emanation of Intent, descended from the Will and Order of the godhead. Needs existed within the forces of the world that, in their lack of fulfillment, caused undue suffering. Men and Elves, craftsmen that they were, simply had aims elsewhere. Thus, springing forth from the riverclay of the Westcontre and taking shape by the aspect of Diligence, the third race of the Grail was born - the Dwarf.
Dwarves are rather short, none exceeding four feet and eight inches- though their true nature is not simply defined by their height. Despite being of such short stature, they possess abnormally dense bone and muscle, resulting in their weight and strength being similar to that of the standard human. Dwarves are small, yet strong, but they do not possess the agility and speed of humans due to their size and rather awkward bulk. Facial features of Dwarves are usually heavy, large noses, heavy brows, and thick cheekbones are common features of the average Dwarf, as well as a well-protruding chin. Stocky necks and broad shoulders are equally common, and all attributed to their physical nature. Dwarves have a wide variety of skin-tone, though it is spread usually from pale to Chocolate-Brown, Ebony-Black, and anything in-between. In terms of hair color, Dwarves are fairly generic in this regard- ranging from a very Dark Dirty-Blonde, to a Dark Brown or Black, and anything in-between. In great age, Dwarves may gain the classic Grey to White-haired appearance that goes with age.
Nestled in the rugged embrace of Ossus, where the River Caelwe weaves through the spine’s deep valleys, dwarves set about forming their first real city-state. A society of industrious artisans, shrewd merchants, and fiercely loyal clans, the Dwarves of Ossus built a reputation as masterful stewards of wealth. Their culture, steeped in the pursuit of familial prosperity, thrives on the intricate dance of trade, crafting, and clever negotiation. The Ossan Dwarves trace their origins to the First Clans, who delved into the valley's rich veins of silver, gold, and gemstones. Over centuries, they transformed their mountain halls into bustling centers of commerce, with marketplaces carved into the rock and vaults brimming with treasure. The heart of Ossan society is the city of Kragsthal, a sprawling subterranean metropolis where the clink of coin echoes alongside the hammer’s ring. At the core of their culture is the concept of Keldorin, the sacred duty to amass and safeguard familial wealth. To the Ossan Dwarves, the prosperity of the family is paramount, and each clan operates like a small trading house. This drive has made them canny merchants, adept at extracting wealth from humans, elves, and other peoples who come to trade in Ossus or encounter their caravans in distant lands.
The Dwarves’ mastery lies in the balance of supply and demand. They are artisans of the highest caliber, crafting fine jewelry, enchanted weapons, and tools of unrivaled durability. These goods, highly sought after by human lords and elven nobles, are sold at exorbitant prices. But the Dwarves are equally adept at importing goods from distant regions—silks, spices, exotic woods—and reselling them to their neighbors at a profit. This web of trade allows them to act as intermediaries, extracting wealth from all sides while revealing little of their own sources. To further their economic dominance, the Ossan Dwarves are not above subtle manipulation. They finance wars between human kingdoms, ensuring demand for their arms and armor while extracting repayments in land, gold, or trade privileges. Elves, though more resistant to Ossan bargains, have been lured into disadvantageous trade pacts through the Dwarves’ careful flattery and unyielding patience. Governance in Ossus reflects their mercantile nature. The Council of Coin, composed of the heads of the wealthiest clans, rules collectively, each decision weighed against its potential profit. Disputes are settled in the Hall of Scales, a grand chamber where arguments are measured as carefully as gold. Though fiercely competitive, the clans are united against outside threats, for they understand that a secure Ossus benefits all.
Despite their mercantile cunning, the Ossan Dwarves maintain a strong sense of kinship and tradition. Festivals celebrating clan achievements, the unveiling of masterworks, and the recounting of trade conquests are central to their lives. They honor Thuldin, the Forgekeeper, as their chief deity, offering prayers for ingenuity and prosperity. Through their blend of artistry, economic acumen, and sly maneuvering, the Dwarves of Ossus have become a dominant force in the region, transforming their river-valley into a hub of wealth and influence. In every deal, every finely crafted coin, and every traded treasure, the Ossan Dwarves weave their legacy of mercantile mastery.
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