Northern Downpour

I've made the leap over to blogger, but will probably update it as often as I update this. lolz 

From the time of the arrival of the Terminus and up until the Fall, Theus was held to a system of governance based on three principles which evolved over six decades. With each passing year as the system was refined, the Dead City itself physically and spiritually changed.

Korak the Raven set down the Deep Laws and declared that all laws must be clearly written and made public. All Theans under the Deep Laws were equal before its magnificence; it was to reward those who followed it with gifts shaped from reverent prayers of the living, and to punish those who violated it in a manner that would reform their threefold actions of corpus, speech and mind. Thus, the Deep Laws guaranteed that actions taken are systematically predictable. It was argued by Korak the Raven that if the Deep Laws were enforced correctly, even a weak ruler would be strong.

With the laying down of the Deep Laws, the roads of Theus became as polished black marble that no blade could scratch nor any fire scorch. The streets widened to allow the leisurely passage of its many denizens. Bridges sprang forth like long shadows to cross rivers, gardens and the Low Roads. No location was cut off or hidden from any other.

Eshu the Fox put into motion the Mysteries to ensure that no one could ever usurp control of Theus from the state itself. Especially important to the Mysteries was the principle that no one should be able to fathom the motivations of the ruler, thus no one could know what behavior might help them in getting ahead except by following the Deep Laws.

As the Mysteries wound their way even into the body language of the denizens of the Dead City, its buildings and walls became as dense as the longest of nights. The city learned to protect itself by never yielding to aggression. Those who sought to bring war to the Dead City wrote that they could never find it. For those who would bring misery to the dead, the city would simply not be there.

Rasimha the Lion designed the Empty Throne; the position of the ruler (not the ruler him or herself) that holds power. Therefore, analysis of trends, the context, and the facts are essential for being in power.

With the raising of the Empty Throne, the dark streets and hallowed towers of the Dead City became illuminated with lamps, glowing crystals and drifting clouds of luminescent mist. Gardens grew rich with thorned roses. Where the dead wandered the streets in rags or chocking clouds of soot, they wore opulent robes of fine silk and cotton, their withered hands adorned with rings of gold, silver and platinum.

By this it should be clear that the Terminus did not intend to rule over Theus, but rather to help it to rule itself. Collectively they agreed that it shouldn't only the living who holds reverence for the dead, but the dead as well should hold themselves to higher standards than those saddled with the burden of flesh. They should be the ones to show the living how to apotheosize the deceased.

The Terminus Collegium

Of the eleven Mages burned on the infamous Walpurgis Night, five emerged from the Underworld, transformed by death, passion and diamond-sharp wisdom. Official records in Theus say that the five emerged simultaneously from separate Avernian Gates in the city's Great Plaza. A creeping smoke spilled out over the Plaza as the five gates opened...

Korak the Raven's feet never touched the ground. She exhaled a great sigh of frosted breath and the Sun, Moon and Stars were snuffed out, plunging Theus into the Deepest Night. She spread wide her arms and declared that the Heavens shall have no dominion over the dead; they will make their own destinies.

The hardened stone of the Plaza fractured under the weight of Cosidius the Ram. Like a smith hammers hot steel into perfection, Cosidius hardened the hearts and minds of the dead and, with it, the city itself. The dreamlike haze of Theus solidified into a density unlike any other; lead spires thickened and became blackest gold.

Vegandr the Wolf's sharpened teeth and pointed nails seemed to shine with its own cold sheen, his pale yellow eyes pierced the Deepest Night to drag fear and terror out of every Thean to lay eyes on him. He drew out their trepidation and they chased after it, hunting their fear, cornering, killing and devouring it. In the end, Theus conquered fear and hammered it into strength.

Rasimha the Lion's voice resounded like thunder, declaring the victories of the dead over the trappings of the living. She expounded the wisdom of ten thousand things and with each of her 108 arms, she slew the roots of ignorance to reveal the shining answer behind every mystery. When she gestured with the Vajra Mudra, the Sun and Moon roared in the sky, casting out confusion and uncertainty. The stars followed in obeisance to to their guru and protector.

None even noticed Eshu the Fox standing amongst the other four, their eyes passed over him, their ears heard nothing of his footsteps. Korak said Eshu stands between the Spire and its Shadow; Cosidius said Eshu arrives before the Black Boar and remains after he has passed; Vegandr said Eshu stands on the other side of every closed door; Rasimha gestured to Eshu and said "look upon him now, do you not see him?" But the people did not see him.

 Paimungandr

Further north than the ancestral home of the Analoi, a desert stretches leisurely like a titan at rest, baking under the proud and merciless sun. When an expedition of the Alae Draconis glimpsed something moving beneath the sand, they paused in their flying barque and watched a terrible heat erupt from the sand like a free-standing wave. A winding tunnel of heat and sand and wind erupted with sentience, the sand turned to glass. It was named Paimungandr, the Serpent of Earth and Fire, a molten glass beast ten meters thick and over a thousand meters long. The sun's light passing through its body ignited everything to its south and, just as quickly, it devoured the flames that sprang forth. As it passed, it left behind a trail of frost.

The expedition watched as the sun set and the desert grew cold, the glass serpent grew slow and ceased its movements. It cooled and became solid before fracturing under its own weight and dissolving back into the desert where winds eventually covered it with sand. The next morning, Paimungandr rose again.

The Red River Nezalr

Thirty-six of Atlantis' founders were from a continent in the distant west they called Saiol, they told stories of how their city number a hundred-thousand people straddled a river of red water named Nezalr. Every generation (20 or so years) Nezalr's waters would solidify and shatter as the sun touched the horizon at dusk into a cloud of fluttering red finches. Their birdsong began as the sun was half-way down and, as if by magic, the sun would be held in place casting long, deep shadows and flushing the sky with copper and rose hues. The riverbed of Nezalr would be cast in the deepest shadow of all, and out of it would emerge Nezalr herself, an androgynous figure nine feet tall with skin the colour of red citrine, eyes of polished back obsidian, and motionless hair piled atop her head the colour of howlite. Nezalr often wore a trailing shapeless dress of black smoke and raven feathers.

As she walked the streets, nine of the city's founding families pushed their eldest children out the doors for Nezalr to find. Sometimes she would take days to find them all and, when she did, it was rumored that two of the red finches would fly down the child's lungs and drown them. No bodies had ever been found.

Just days before the thirty-six Saiolese founders left for Atlantis, Nezalr had come. By accident, the youngest child of one of the families escaped into the streets and was drown by red water finches. Nezalr was furious. She grew so large that she covered the sky with her dress, she rained ash and embers on the city like snow. The empty river grew deeper, burrowing into the depths of madness from where things of anger and lust and gluttony appeared.

The child who was supposed to have been taken by Nezalr, feeling the weight of guilt on his shoulders, threw himself into the riverbed and, after his hands were stained forever with blood and his feet were burned to pitch, he found the heart of Nezalr. He drank her heart dry. This brave child lay in her rotting world-body and it is said his elder brother appeared to him to end his agony. They burned together.

The thirty-six founders built a memorial shrine in Atlantis upon their arrival of the brothers who sacrificed themselves to dry the red river once and for all.

Theus, City of the Dead

Theus was always a city of the dead, it was built by them for them. Within its walls there was little distinction between creation and the lands of the dead. 108 Avernian Gates stood in Theus' great plaza under a sky that was covered in heavy dark cloud by day and illuminated by the cold twinkle of the night's stars. It was a city of repetition and ceremony, heavy with meaning but poor in purpose. Nine years after Atlantis' Walpurgis Night (when eleven Mages accused of treason and heresy were burned in celestial fire before the Archons of the Viscus Draconis), five powerful ghosts walked through five Avernian Gates wielding powerful numina of the same nature and potency as the arcana they understood in life. They each wore a mask to forever obscure their former identities: A lion, wolf, ram, raven and fox. Where Theus had no form of government, they organized its ghostly denizens into Dead Courts; they wove a pattern of title and function into Theus' social fabric and, with it, the very architecture of the dead city changed.

The lands beyond the walls of the Theus found themselves under the same dark cloud banks, the trees withered and their bark either bleached to bone white or darkened to deepest ebony. No winter could freeze the waters of the river Natos, no summer could keep away the chill of the western wind.

When the Atlantean aristocracy began to understand that Theus had changed, they sent an envoy to negotiate peace, travel rights, trade and unknowable things still. The envoy was well-received and after months of negotiations an Atlantean embassy was opened in Theus, and a Thean embassy was opened in Atlantis. The living gained access to the wisdom and wealth of the Dead Dominions, and the deceased gained access to the passions of the living.

As the Celestial Road crumbled and Atlantis was torn apart at its foundations, clouds of refugees sought sanctuary in the City of the Dead, but they found its doors closed. Atlantean Lords wove powerful magic to force open its roads and found that the bustling city was empty. The refugees closed themselves inside empty Theus, they cowered as they watched the sky heave and roil with the stuff of dreams and nightmares. Night descended on Theus and the light of the moon, undisturbed by the chaos in the heavens, revealed a message written on each of the 108 Avernian Gates in the great plaza: "Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone far beyond, altogether gone beyond; O what a revelation!"

The Abyss came for them in the dead city and those who died there did not rise as ghosts. A few escaped through the Avernian Gates into the Autochthonous Depths where they were uncertain if the Abyss could follow. None know what became of them, or the city they left behind.

 The Alanoi

To the far north of the Isle lay the shores of a tribal nation calling themselves the Alanoi. Many of the Alanoi were called to Atlantis by the dragon dreams, but none had returned to visit their ancestral homeland in decades. After mastering the Spirit Arcanum, the Alanoi Mage Mi'hau decided to return home to see her family.

Mi'hau arrived on a windless, clear sunny morning. The fishing boats were still docked, there was no smell of roasted salmon and pineapple on the air for communal breakfast, no singing the song of dawn's last light. All was quiet and still. Mi'hau found on the raised wooden streets, in homes and on the beach tall statues bearing large faces; thousands of them, all nearly identical in shape, size and detail.

Something nudged at her awareness and she peered across the veil to see the statues burning with spiritual energy, playful and joyous energy caught up in its own enlightened ecstasy. Wrapping spiritual essence around her tongue she spoke with the statues to find they housed the collective souls of several Alanoi; each one bore a single spirit amalgam of three or more Alanoi. They told her how they were visited one night by a beautiful dragon made of light the colour of moonstone and she exhaled a feast unlike any other. As she sang, her voice produced a symphony and her exotic dancing alleviated physical discomfort and mental anguish. The Alanoi ate, danced and enjoyed themselves for many hours.

The dragon then made them an offer, to teach them the ways of magic, to be enraptured by the ecstasy of the divine for all time. Few agreed immediately; the dragon said she would return the next night to make the same offer, and she did. More agreed over the course of the next night's festivities, but a few grew angry at the others' trust of this dragon. The dragon returned every night for twenty-eight days; those who accepted the dragon's offer shed their bodily forms and transcended materiality to exist as pure enlightened consciousness. When they found they could not communicate effectively with those "left behind" they erected these statues out of the earth and wood and sky that any who touched them could speak to and understand the enlightened Alanoi. In time, those who chose to remain behind left the village, leaving it all behind.

Mi'hau sent word to Atlantis and many of these statues were gathered and brought to the Awakened City. Decades were spent in communion with the enlightened Alanoi, learning supernal secrets that shocked some into sudden awakening. When the Ladder fell, these statues were scattered across the cosmos. They, themselves, do not house the Alanoi. They serve merely as intermediary devices with which one can communicate with them.

[INSPIRED BY ArchitectofAges OVER AT REDDIT]

 None can say whether or not Atlantis was real, but what we can gather from Artifacts, Ruins and Ancient Ghosts, it is likely that there was, at some point, an enlightened civilization of Magi. This nascent civilization likely had to deal with things we would not in this post-fall world. What kinds of things did they have to confront? Show me your Atlantean-era phenomena!

Sovereign and the Architect
A storm approached the isle, its billowing clouds undulating with the colours of sunset and the crackling of gossamer lightning. It was clear to the Sapphire Guard that this was no ordinary storm, they reported to the Synod that it was a confluence of extreme heat and cold. The ocean beneath the storm boiled at its periphery and snapped frozen nearer its center, producing this catastrophic storm. The Deep Ocean Colonies, before they were cut off, sent word back to the Synod that there was something alien at the heart of this storm, a twisting metallic wavelength. As the colonies went dark it became clear to the Synod that the storm was not headed for Atlantis, it was simply drawing near. Its course put it on a heading for the far-off chain of islands collectively called Thessaly.

The storm dissipated as it crashed against Thessaly, the transcendent object at its heart emerged, burning and freezing the land beneath it as it passed over. The Synod had commissioned the Viscus Draconis to observe from a distance. What they reported back was a mass of metallic resonance brimming with material potential, its many parts undulating with varying mass effect fields producing the calamitous discharges of energy that devastated everything around it. At steady intervals it would strike out with a chaotic lance of built-up energy that in some rudimentary way resembled mana, but burned with a vitality that could not be properly discerned. Where this energy struck, the scorched and frozen landscape disgorged new life, birthed from a strange flame.

This energy released split the air and a sound rumbled across the sky like thunder, followed in response by what sounded like a trumpet the size of Mount Yehal. In that cacophony, the observatory party's linguist, skilled in the Mental Arcana, discerned its name or title: It called itself Sovereign. Its thoughts rolled around over creation in waves of alien intent, full of imagery and meaning not meant for a linear-thinking mind. Cognitive information organized in a calabi-yau manifold that proved too much for proper analysis.

Sovereign reached the peak of the dormant volcano Maha Kassapa and it was baptized in the fires of the earth. Bizarre metal and material resonances collapsed from possibility into reality and Sovereign was reborn as a dragon: The First And Most Brilliant Celestial Architect. With twenty-three wings, the Architect lifted its burning chromatic body to the heavens and, twenty-three days later, a new star appeared in the sky. It was so bright that it appeared to be a second sun. The Architect shone at this intensity for twenty-three days and on the final day before the dragon dampened its own light so as to be nearly indistinguishable from the other stars, it manifested an emanation-body before the Synod to speak but a few words. On the subject of its rebirth and journey to the constellation Dorado it is recorded to have said: "Just a little insurance in case the inevitable happens; and if I know humanity, it will."

 Been dealing with some frustrations, lately. Sometimes I wish I could just shut off certain parts of my humanity.

Our epic 4-year nWoD game came to an end the other week. There's a new game, a Hunter game, but I've chosen not to join. Would like to, but I just can't function. We originally used to game Friday night and this worked well for some of us, as some of us didn't work Saturday; others did have to work, or some preferred to go out that night. We moved to Sunday night and we agreed that we'd start earlier on Sunday because everybody works Monday. Sunday gaming gradually got later and later and later. I'd love to game, but I can't deal with the sleep problems it causes.

All the weight that I worked so hard to lose since August ... I've gained back. Well, I just have to keep trying. I've got everything to lose.

If you're looking for an experience, look no further! New York's hottest club is "TRASH"! Just step through the stainless steel doors of this meat-packing hot spot, you'll be greeted by none other than Pierre, the Muslim Elvis Impersonator! This club has everything: Clones, freaks, sneezing, a Russian man on a prepaid cell phone ... And anyone can get in, there's no password. At the door just do the Cosby face.