Life

Memory, Space

The first of your people crack their shells for the first time, warmed and cared for by the sands of your isle. Apex licks the first of his young awake. They have not inherited his power or his divine connection, but they are strong nonetheless. They will be strong. Under his guidance and leadership, he teaches them to dig their own burrows, to breathe fire and turn sand into glass that it might hold its shape even when underground. He teaches them to hunt fish, that they may stay alive. To tell stories, that they may remember. To watch the great expanse aboveground and dream of flight, that they may know what it means to be alive.

You have your first Action.

The dragon Apex encourages cooperation amongst the lizardfolk, showing them that they are stronger when they work together instead of only for themselves. But not all goods and services are equal. It is only fair, is it not, for them to receive just compensation for what they provide?

You awaken the next day - one mortal lifetime later - to Apex praying for guidance. A "caravan" of dark-fleshed "traders" has made their way across the desert, to set up camp in the oasis near the Tree. Some of the more curious lizardfolk have started selling their glasswares to the strangers, and have received in turn strange bits of metal that they call "gold". The strangers are friendly and eager to trade. They say that if trade amongst the folk makes them stronger, will trade outside the folk not strengthen them further?

Apex speaks, and when he speaks, your people understand. This new gift of polyglossia - of being able to quickly understand, learn, and speak new languages - is a gift from Time, and the people celebrate their newfound ability to speak and communicate with each other and the rest of the world.

With their newfound tongue, the idea of diplomacy naturally follows, and diplomatic channels are quickly opened up with the foreign traders. Over the course of the turn, the gold currency that the traders bring with them quickly enter circulation within the lizardfolk, and with it the idea of votive sacrifices. The firepits - scorched glassy by the lizardfolk's evening worship - slowly fill up with gold coins from worshippers praying for this or that.

With a pinch of your fingers, you fold a small amount of space between your isle and that of Time; and, with a twist, you pinch a shared space open. Two portals open simultaneously, and the suddenly open swirling gateway sends both of your peoples scurrying away.

A few months pass, and eventually some of your people grow curious and courageous enough to go beyond. They return, excited, about the appearance of more strangers on the other end of the gate: furred and snouted, they are peaceful and welcoming, but have no understanding of what it means to trade. Though they do not yet accept the use of gold, your people think that in time, they will. More importantly, there is profit to be made here! Fresh lands, fresh markets, fresh consumers and merchants!

You gain 1 Essence from War's discovery of Fireseeing.

Meat grows from the great tree at the centre of the trade post... and there is little rejoicing. There is no profit to be made here, no leverage or arbitrage to be made from something that is just given out for _free_. Especially something that is given out for free at the marketplace itself. The people eat without complaint, but they are ungrateful for this small miracle. "Why can't we be blessed with more coin instead," they grumble. "Let us choose what we want to buy instead of choosing for us!"

Ungrateful bastards.

A preternatural calm descends upon the isle of Life, so that all who visit feel peace in their hearts. Trade lulls for a while as the Calm blunts the aggressive edge that every good trader must have, but over the course of the years it slowly returns as the people learn to channel their desire for a competitive advantage differently.

You gain 1 Essence from War's discovery of firewalking.

Another twist and fold of space, and another portal opens: this time, to the isle of War. An entire legion of the steel-clad creatures stream in, steam radiating from their armour as they wade into the waters of the oasis, and your people approach them: cautious but friendly, ready to try to use their natural talent for diplomacy and languages to learn their tongue.

The lizardfolk first realise that something is wrong when, instead of accepting the gifts that have been presented to them, the legionnaires appear to be trying to shake off the Calm. Your people begin retreating, politely and in small numbers at first, but then in a full panicked rout when they realise that some of the legionnaires are actually succeeding at shaking off the Calm.

The monsters do not kill many of the people, but they take several of them as captives through the portal back to their isle. There is much plunder and looting, and the burning and destroying of whatever they cannot take. For several years, the tree remains a ruined wreck as the lizardfolk hide in their glass caves, too afraid to leave lest they are kidnapped from their homes and families by these beasts. Apex eventually manages to drive the creatures back through the portal, but the damage is done.

Why would their god send these beasts upon them? What great wrong have they wrought that they must suffer so? Was this because they were not sufficiently grateful for the previous gifts of Life? For a short period of time following the raid, worship increases in fervour, but you suspect that this fervour is short-lived.

After years of desperate praying, the portal from which the hellish monsters appeared finally close; and slowly, gingerly, the lizardfolk re-emerge from their caves, to reconvene around the tree. This cannot be allowed to happen again, the trade families agree. The people must learn to fight, that they may defend themselves against these demons. Fire will not work against the demons. You will need glass, sharpened to a spear's tip, but launched from a good distance away, that you may kill the demon before it kills you with their iron claws.

These concerns reach the ears of the lizardfolk's allies. Although many of the Hulbit - the dark-skinned traders with whom the lizardfolk have formed such a strong trade relationship with since the beginning of time - were killed in the raid, a small number of them have remained, and they have a suggestion. Back home, they are used to dealing with raiders, and they have developed powerful magics that they are more than happy to sell to the lizardfolk. It will take them some time, not to mention a great deal of effort, to bring these magics here, but if an understanding can be reached regarding price, well...

As the lizardfolk prepare to accept the deal from the Hulbit, Apex swoops down from the heavens and roars. His voice is flame, his word thunder, and the Hulbit scream as they flee from the doom that is the dragon, their goods scattered to the winds.

The lizardfolk are stunned. Why have you destroyed our salvation, they demand from Apex. You may not care because you are immortal, but we care! We are mortals! The lizardfolk try their best to repair relations, but Apex is relentless: at every meeting, the dragon destroys the tents and force the Hulbit further and further from the tree, inch by inch, yard by yard. It takes your champion a few years, but eventually, there are no traces of the Hulbit left on the isle.

The people are inconsolable. Their oldest trade partners, driven off like common pests! Their most ancient trade lineages, cast down from greatness overnight by the pesky work of that infernal dragon! Why, at least the fire demons left us our trade partners; whatever will we do now for everything that we need? Whoever will we trade with, aside from the stupid fursnouts for their stupid horses (who have gone silent anyway, the sandblasted things; they said something about some sort of plague? whatever).

Then, as if to make things worse, the demons return again, this time stepping through flame. This time, they are stronger and more vicious than ever, and they do not stop at taking just a few of the people: they are taking entire villages, returning through their portals to drop them off, and then returning for yet more. The Calm does little to stave their bloodlust, as do the arrows: the demons simply laugh as the glass arrowheads shatter against the steel of their forms. Once again, the people are forced into hiding, and this time - decimated, bruised, with no allies to help them rebuild - the wound bites especially deep.

It was immediately apparent to Apex that the new generation of hatchlings was special. Unlike the rest, the wings of this clutch were not thin vestigial limbs, but firm and well-formed, capable of flight. Apex roars his approval, loud enough that even the people of the other isles can hear him. Finally, the skies shall be theirs.

The people are initially cautious, but within a few decades, the young lizards are capable of flying even further than Apex himself. Capable of gliding on the natural thermals for whole hours, their small light forms make them perfect for flight. There is talk of sending the lizards further out, to explore the other isles, but for now, it is just that: talk.

Your people make their first great expedition. It will take them weeks of flying to reach the isle of Knowledge, but they have prepared well for the journey. They bring glass and coin, tranquillity and diplomacy. The brightest and strongest of the generation have volunteered, and they have been chosen to make first contact. This will go well.

Your people bring back wonders from Knowledge's isle: glowing crystals that seem to pulse beneath their hands with raw potential, mushrooms that make you see the world as it really is instead of what it appears to be, a strange metal that they call "iron", and these armoured creatures that swim underwater that they call "fish". There is insufficient quantities of these things for your people to use them on any sort of industrial scale, but enough to raise the spirits of the lizardfolk.

You receive 1 Essence from the lightbridge.

Fire melts sand, turns it into glass. Dragonfire melts sand, turns it into dragonglass: thicker and harder than stone, the crystaline substance is impervious to most attacks. Using the glassworking techniques that they have mastered all those centuries ago, the lizardfolk erect a wall of dragonglass around their settlement, to keep out those who seek to do them harm.

A few peaceful years pass. The trading post on the other side of the lightbridge between your isle and that of Virtue flourishes, though it takes the primitive forms some time to understand and accept currency. However, some of your people appear to be having some problems with the water supply. Over the past few years, the water level in the oasis has dropped by a few handspans: nothing to worry about yet, but this is unprecedented. Apex makes a sizeable donation to one of the pits and prays for guidance.

The drought writhes and flexes in your hands, and it desiccates a part of your realm as you struggle to get a grip on it. It almost seems as if you're about to tear it apart; but then it twists through an unexpected dimension and flees, leaving you with nothing but sand in your hands. You hear familiar laughter coming from an adjacent realm.

Things get worse: the panserbrands raid, and worse, the fursnouts help them. With their status as preferred trade partners, the fursnouts get past your dragonglass walls and - once inside - light a bonfire large enough for the legions to march through. Just in case, they also destroy the gate mechanisms, ensuring that more panserbrands can stream through the fires that the fursnouts have set throughout the land. The brands poured out like molten lava, flowing across the land, destroying everything in their path, and the fursnouts sent death and disease through the ranks of the lizardfolk, decimating and utterly ruining them. By the time they are done, less than half your people remain.

The drought twists through unnameable dimensions and tries to slip past your grip into the gap between the Planck constants, but this time, you're ready for it. You weave a net made of spacetime and catch it in trap made of spacetime, and with a minor exertion of will, you destroy the drought like the nuisance that it is.

Your people rejoice when the summer rains come again. Their prayers have been heard and answered.

Your people arrive on Fate's isle. If all goes well, trade will ensue shortly.

Your people watch and learn from the aliens. There is much to be learned from here, from the elemental magics of the people of Knowledge to the dreamshaping of the people of Fate. But before they can get anything out of Knowledge, war breaks out on her isle: a revolutionary fever causes brother to turn on brother for being "mages", and your people hurriedly fly away lest they get caught up in this nasty affair.

This leaves your trade link with Fate, and from the oneri they learn the first lesson: there's no such thing as free trade. Monopolies are infinitely more effective than actual commerce. Your lizards return home, their heads full of new ideas of murder-backed gold.

But disaster strikes a few years later: Apex has disappeared. Nobody has seen him for several weeks now, and it is particularly hard to hide a full-grown dragon on the isle from your sight. You are not sure where your Champion has disappeared to, but you can smell the distinctive stench of treachery in the air.

Apex returns on the winds of summer, wounded but otherwise no worse for wear. He speaks of how he was treacherously attacked by one of War's new champions - a creature made of smoke and dimmed flame - but how, when he was being dragged through Virtue's isle, Virtue himself acted to free him from his bondage.

He has spent the last few years on the god's isle, waiting for a chance to repay the forms for this lifedebt: and this opportunity came when Time and War worked together to attack Virtue. The raid was ultimately repelled, albeit with some losses on the side of the forms, and Apex proudly recounts how he has sent many of the raiders straight to their shameless gods.

Knowledge

Arcana, Wisdom

In the cavern, surrounded by raw magical potential, the Champion shapes his first spell before even learns how to read or write. It is a spell of raw will and emotion, formed of primal desire, shaped by desperate need. It is a spell of home, of hearth and sanctuary and healing and protection, and it reaches out to suffuse the entire cavern. This is Home now.

You awaken the next day - one mortal lifetime later - to discover that your people have discovered that just as magic can be used to heal and protect and shelter, it too can be used to rend and tear and destroy. Home is on the verge of civil war, lead by two opposing parties: one who wishes to use their fledging spellcasting to expand beyond Home, the other who wishes to stay. Arethuse, your Champion, prays for guidance.

Under the tutelage and guidance of your Champion - aided by his ability to share his memories and experiences with those around him - literacy in Arethusian glyphs quickly spread throughout your people. Nuanced and subtle when it comes to intellectual discourse, a single glyph can convey a wide range of complex thoughts and ideas, but it is surprisingly obtuse when it comes to expressing one's self creatively or emotionally.

The civil war is quickly stopped in its track when, overnight, the inhabitants of Home are joined through empathy. Without language, the conflict was inevitable and perhaps irreconcilable; but now, able to feel what everyone else feels, the tension is quickly nipped in the bud. Peace descends upon Home once again.

Arethuse stares at the fishes in the lake in the middle of Home. The people have been catching them by diving into the icy-cold waters, and while that has fed them well enough so far, the fishes are learning: the moment someone dives into the water, the fishes immediately scurry for cover, making it increasingly difficult for them to catch anything. He contemplates turning the water into ice to freeze a fish in place, but it has become increasingly difficult for him to control his power with any precision. He worries that he may end up freezing the entire lake.

He understands that he must farm the fish, that he must selectively breed this fish with that fish to create fishes that are fatter, slower, more willing to be caught. The goddess has shown him how. But though he understands this, he lacks the tools necessary to do this. Frustrated, he leaves Home for the first time in decades. Perhaps he will learn why his powers are becoming harder and harder to control.

Your Champion will be unavailable next turn.

You gain 1 Essence from War's discovery of Fireseeing.

As the ice slowly parts to reveal the rust-red colour of buried iron, the people - curious by nature - begin chipping away to reveal this new resource. It takes them but a few years to discover the usefulness of iron: how it can be turned into spears to hunt the fish, how it can be used to reinforce tunnels that are on the verge of collapse, how it can be used to bludgeon someone attempting to work magic on you before the spell goes off. The class divide between those with magic and those without narrows a little, but not enough to knock the mages out of their current leadership position.

Arethuse returns Home, his face drawn and haggard. He has travelled to the edge of the isle, he tells the rest, and by refracting light through a lens of air, he has seen the wonders of the other isles and the other peoples. He speaks at length of the rainbow bridge, of the sun that orbits an isle, of a dragon that flies and breathes fire on the world below. But then he pauses, uncomfortable. The people press him, and reluctantly, he tells them.

He has seen their doom, he says. The tides of magic have become more wild, more chaotic, not because they are losing their control, but because there is an external force acting upon it. He calls it a spellplague, a force of evil intent only on the utter destruction of the people. It is a virus, but it is also sentient and malevolent and more than capable of twisting good intentions into evil. All that it touches, it turns to evil.

Arethuse reveals a black mark upon his belly. He has tattooed glyphs of control and restraint over the mark, but even that has not been enough to stop its spread. Arethuse sighs and says that it is perhaps best if he leaves the people, that the plague would not spread through him, but the people plead with him not to leave again. Hesitantly, he says that he will pray for guidance.

You gain 1 Essence from Virtue's and Fate's discovery of literacy.

You gain 1 Essence from Time's discovery of mathematics.

You exert your will and Essence upon the spellplague afflicting Arethuse, and though it resists, it eventually leaves your Champion, fading into the ether from which it came. The people celebrate, but Arethuse is concerned. The spellplague is still out there, he prays. This merely removes its mark from him, but the plague itself, the twist of corrupted magic that is slowly spreading its way across the isle, it is still there.

Statement: using fireseeing as a lever, the panserbrands of War open portals to all isles. Wherever there is fire, War's people can scry through the flames and travel through the flames.

You remind Arethuse that all knowledge is power, and what are mana crystals but power concentrated and made solid? The glyphs that he has learnt can do much, but with a mana crystal, entire experiences - whole sense-memories - can be stored for posterity's sake. The people take to this new use of mana crystals like a fish to water, and soon an entire economy - from erotic recordings and drug experiences to entire adventures - begins springing up around its use.

Arethuse leads your people in the formalisation of schools, ensuring that every child - regardless of what they may choose to be later in life - is at least literate and able to understand the basics of magic, even if they are not able to work it themselves. This causes the number of mages to dramatically increase over the divine day, resulting in the development and formalisation of more spells in this generation than all the previous generations combined.

But there is a price: the spellplague. The deeper the mages delve into the study of magic, the more likely they are to succumb to the plague; the more magic they use, the more magic they develop and the more spells they create, the faster the spellplague spreads through them and, though them, to the rest of the community. By the end of the generation, more than 20% of all mages have become infected by the spellplague's dark mark.

Thankfully, however, nothing appears to happen to those marked by the plague. In fact, the plagued appear to gain many benefits. Not only do they enjoy a longer natural lifespan, they also gain the ability to draw power from sources of magic other than mana crystals. It is unclear exactly where they are drawing this power from, but the spells that they cast are significantly more powerful than all other mages. Perhaps the spellplague was misnamed, Instead of a plague, perhaps this is a blessing from the goddess herself? A new gift, perhaps?

On Arethuse's part, however, he has eschewed all use of magic for the time being and has instead focused on trying to understand the nature of the spellplague. Many have sought to challenge him for his staff and his title, but he has rejected all such duels, saying that his work is more important. Word is spreading through the community that Arethuse has become weak, that the reason he has locked himself in his house is because he has lost his powers and is now afraid that he will lose his title. These whispers are still whispers for now, but a lie can get halfway around the world before truth can even put its shoes on.

Within a few short years, the spellplague fades from your people, leaving only a bad memory behind; but to your surprise, there is little rejoicing or celebration. With the spellplague gone, one in five mages suddenly find themselves without power. There are riots in the streets as cruel mages - once untouchable - find themselves dragged from their houses and beaten to death by the peasants that they once lorded over. The very existence of the magocracy is threatened as commoners start rising up against their former masters, cold iron in hand.

And then the fire demons came.

What little control the mages had over the people evaporated into chaos as metalclad creatures began appearing through cookfires and forgefires alike. They are fast, they are vicious, and they are intent only on one thing: slavetaking. The mages try their best to fight back, but their spells are too slow, too cumbersome, to work in the heat of battle: even when they freeze one of the demons in their tracks, there's another right there waiting to take its place, weapon-limbs hungry to do violence. Whole villages disappear into the fiery portals overnight, and the people flee to the furthest corners of the cavern in blind unthinking terror, their fear amplified by the communal empathy that they are all linked by.

The raid was the final nail in the coffin that was the struggling magocracy. In the place of the mages, the people have elected themselves as the leader. This will be a democracy, they say. This will be a land ruled by the people, for the people. All who live and breathe will have a voice: an equal voice, they say, looking at Arethuse.

Arethuse does not stay to celebrate this new democracy with the rest of the people. He lays his staff by his door and retreats deeper yet into his manse, hanging wards of silence and isolation as he goes. The people do not hear from him for many years, and eventually, in the midst of all the excitement that comes from setting up a new government, all but the most stalwart historians forget that Arethuse ever existed.

There are rumours of a man, without staff or wand, wandering the isle. Going from village to village, speaking to the elder at each place, and then quietly disappearing back into the tunnels between the caverns. Inevitably, after the man leaves, some people also disappear, typically in ones and twos. The lost ones are always old and learned: old enough to remember a different time, learned enough to remember when the name Arethuse was spoken with veneration and respect.

There is also word of winged lizardfolk landing at your isle's borders, bearing coin and smiles. They learn your people's languages remarkably quickly. Their words are honeyed and sickly sweet. They have travelled far, they say, to bring you these gifts. They merely wish to trade. Your people are cautious but curious: just as you made them.

Statement: you now have a faction of cabalists who follow Arethuse's lead and fervently worship you. They will become known once their population is equal to or higher than that of the democrats. You will regain Faith once their population is greater than that of the democrats.

Statement: if you do not Act next turn to prevent it, you will establish trade with the lizardfolk.

Statement: the lizardfolk have established a trading post on your isle. They have also introduced the idea of currency to your people, and their gold coins are now the standard medium of exchange amongst your people.

The goddess counsels patience. The cabal should rule from the shadows, not from the front. Wisdom comes from patience, knowledge from waiting, learning. Arethuse understands. He does not agree, but he understands.

Arethuse is warned of the possibility of an impending raid, but no raid comes. All is quiet, all is calm. The cabal grows slowly. The people are becoming resistant to Arethuse's arguments and persuasions. There are book burnings in a few outlying villages. Lynchings of "intellectuals", burning of people suspected to be mages. The cabal is forced to spend several years just lying low to avoid being caught, and even then they lose a few of their number. Arethuse is forced to kill someone to escape. That day, he weeps over the evening meal at what he had to do.

The divine promise of a place in the afterlife cheers Arethuse and his men. As a sign of their commitment, and to mark their covenant with the goddess, Arethuse scrawls the 'thn' glyph - three diagonal slashes, with an opposing slash on the bottom-most - on his arm with a blade made of crystal. Four slashes, one for each of the families with him. They will hide and wait this tide out.

The cabal burrows yet deeper underground, turning the passage behind them into labyrinthine passageways that lead to false ends and pitfalls and shifting ice floes... and not a moment too soon. Within weeks of the cabal's establishing a new Home, there is news from above: the democrats are turning on each other, accusing each other of being cabalist sympathisers, of being mages, of being intellectuals and academics and all manner of magic-users. A wave of revolutionary fever grips the population. It lasts a few years and then, just as suddenly, it sputters out.

During these troubled years, you hear that the justicars from Virtue's isle have tried their best to maintain some semblance of order, but the revolution is too fevered, too chaotic, for them to do anything except prevent more life from being pointlessly lost. When the revolutionary spirit passes, life just seems to pick up again from where it left off. Almost as if it never existed. Almost as if it didn't matter. The democracy is now officially dead. Only anarchy remains, barely kept in line by Virtue's increasingly overworked justicars.

His powers further enhanced by the gift of the goddess, Arethuse knows that this is the time to strike. Gathering his men to him, he opens the pathways, straightens out the labyrinths that have kept them safe for all these years, and - flamecloaked, with a staff of ice and a sword of lightning - strikes to reclaim the city.

The justicars retreat. They do not wish to fight a war that is not theirs: it is not the way of Virtue. They counsel peace, advise calm, but at the end, they leave. The cabal is only forced to kill a few of the people: for the most part, once they realise that - without the element of surprise - they cannot actually adequately defend themselves against a collective of mages, they put down their arms and surrender. Arethuse has reclaimed his land. Back Home for the first time in almost a century, he weeps tears of joy and sorrow.

With Arethuse as Champion again, things go a lot easier for the people. The empathic link is restored through the villages, and peace once again finds a place in the hearts of the people. With peace comes discourse, and with discourse comes wisdom through Arethuse, straight from the goddess herself. Many are welcomed back into the fold, but a few diehard anarchists remain. They say that if Arethuse truly means for them to rejoin society of their own free will, they should be given the option to secede and form their own colony. If Arethuse refuses them this option, then everything he has been saying is a lie.

Fate

Dreams, Fortune

Your people rise, chitin-clad, from the darkest heart of your isle's jungle. Surrounded by the natural richness of the jungle, lulled into sleep and stupor by the opiates around them, they make no progress as a people in reality; but in their dreams, oh! In their dreams, they are each kings. Their dreams bleed into each other, creating a double reality. Asleep, they rule over whole empires, drunk on unimaginable power. Asleep, they wage glorious wars with each other, and laugh and clasp hands about it when they are awake.

You have your first Action.

Ansi appears in each of their dreams, silver-garbed, flame-crowned. He speaks to each of them of the new trees that their god have granted them: dreamwood, responsive to their very thoughts and imaginations, shaping themselves to resemble the architecture that they dream of. The people cheer, knowing that their god sees them and loves them both in dream and in reality.

For a while, all is well. But when you awaken the next day - one mortal lifetime later - the dreamwood houses of some of your people have started taking on... disturbing features. Where it was once spiralling geometries and abstract beauty, the dreamwood of some of the children are starting to turn dark, riddled with symbols of death and fear and heavy portent. Ansi prays for guidance. He says that there is a darkness on the fringe of the dreaming, beyond the marches. He says that even he fears to go there.

Descending from the mountain, Ansi brings his people a gift: alchemy, the art of transmutation, of purifying and distilling and ascending from lesser to greater. Within a year, the Oneri have mastered the art of distilling the plentiful opiates around them into powerful drugs that do various things: from taking the pain from an injured man to giving a troubled dreamer a dreamless sleep, the Oneri are masters of opium.

Emboldened by the goldsap that they imbibe before going to sleep, the Oneri gird themselves for the journey. In their right hand, they carry a deathwish; around them, they wear fearlessness; upon their crowns, a light - set by Ansi himself - blazes, giving them direction and guidance. They wander into the darkness beyond their dreaming.

They do not return.

A new group of scouts are sent off into the fringes, this time with your fingers directly pulling on the threads of their destiny to ensure that they will return. They set off into the fringes of the dreaming, empowered by goldsap, reinforced by faith, knowing that no matter what happens, they will return to Fate's realm and be hailed as heroes.

The things that appear in your realm are barely recognisable as Oneri. They are pale and hollow-eyed. They bleed liquid darkness from their eyes and mouths. They speak as one. There is nothing beyond the dreaming. There is nothing beyond the dreaming. There is nothing beyond the dreaming. There is n-

They persist until you extinguish the tiny spark of divinity that is their soul.

Ansi tells the people that they must take the ore from the mountain and mould it into something useful. The idea is met with general disapproval. After all, why work so hard to achieve something in reality when you can simply dream something into existence while you're high on goldsap? But Ansi is firm. He says that the disappearance of the scouts spells trouble, and that the people must be ready for whatever storm is brewing on the horizon. Slowly, reluctantly, the Oneri start mining.

Ansi dreams of writing, and in his dream he creates from whole cloth the sixteen basic ideograms that will make up the Oneri language: the four middle forms for alchemy, the four lower for the earth, and the eight higher forms for the dreaming. In blazing letters of gold he writes the ideograms boldly upon the face of a mountain in the dreaming, and all who sleep that night dream of the ideograms.

A dreamlink forms between the Oneri and the Panserbrands, and for a whole month, the Oneri dream of victory: of splendid mountain caverns overflowing with gold, of the feel of blood and death in one's weapon-limbs as a lizard tries to flee from you, of the exultation in the fear and terror that you - an invincible war-machine - inspire in all who behold you. For the whole month, the Oneri do nothing but watch from the shadows of these dreams; and from their dreams, the Oneri learn how to make war.

Ansi prays for guidance. It is clear that these louts do not and will not realise that they are being watched. Perhaps, instead of opening up the dreamlink fully to them, we should continue watching them? Surely there is more the Oneri can learn from them, especially if we start walking in the dreams of their smiths and miners.

The Oneri walk through the dreams of the panserbrands, disguised. They ask innocent questions, study meaningless words, consult auguries that make no sense in the real world but hold great portent and symbolism in the dreaming. From the warriors, the Oneri learn to make war; and from the thralls, the Oneri learn the secrets of metallurgy, that they may make weapons of war.

Although the people are enriched by the knowledge, Ansi is worried by the news that his spies bring back to him. There has been an upheaval of some sort in the lands of War, it seems: their champion has been bound by his own people, and a new champion - a firewalker who promises them victory over all the isles - has been raised in his place. What is worse, it seems as if they are perfectly poised to do so within the next few years: the firewalker's experiments with oil and blue flame are yielding results, and it will not be long before they arrive at our doorsteps.

Worse yet, Ansi learns that dire omens have been spotted along the fringes of the dreaming. A nightingale with the eyes of a dead man sits in a spider's web. A gilded skull with eyes of emerald and silver rolls through a shadowed valley. A blind locust gnaws on the stalk of a plant, and the blood that drips from the stalk forms a ideogram that cannot be read. The dreamweavers are too afraid to get any closer to read the omens. They say that their powers weaken the nearer they get to the fringe, and that tendrils reach out to grasp and devour their dreams when they get too close.

The locusts die, putting up little resistance. You expected there to be... more. But no. As you twist the threads of their fate and bind them with death, they simply crumple up like so many dead leaves and shrivel up. These may have been intelligent once, but whatever intelligence was there is now gone.

One night, one of your dreamers screams in terror: and, from his dream of flame and fire, one of the panserbrands forces its way through into your isle. It grins with an orange glow. An ideogram is burnt into its uppermost left weapon-limb: "hello."

Although it lasts but one mortal night, the raid is brutal and unrelenting, and whole communities of dreamers are taken from their homes before any of them can raise the alarm. Entire swathes of the dreaming disappear as the people maintaining them die or disappear, and whole dreamwood towers collapse as their shapers are brutally murdered in the process of constructing them. By the time the people finally manage to mount a defence, one in ten Oneri have been taken, and the remaining raiders simply melt back into their hellish portals, laughing as they go.

Through dreams and fate you weave a form for War's new Champion: one of smoke and burnished flame, of shadow and darkness instead of fire and violence. He will be their blade in the dark, a spy and an assassin, and as you loosen the creature onto the world, you think to yourself: you have wrought well. Perhaps too well.

All is quiet. All is calm.

It was almost trivial to find the heretic firewalkers. Made of steel and fire, they were completely unsuited to live in the jungle: by the time your men raid their largest camp, some were too rusted to even run. Dragged to the foot of the mountain, their bodies are dismantled and their flames kept in hermetically-sealed alchemical flasks while they await judgement.

Your people bay for vengeance. Let us tear them apart, they pray. Free us from our bond, our word. Let us inflict the pain upon them that they have inflicted upon us. We will show them a new fringe, and we will exult in their rightful destruction and execution. We will build a dreamwood sculpture from their agony around their iron bodies, we will work such alchemy that their flames not be allowed to die, but be born again every night to suffer nightmares of our creation. Give us this, and the monument we build will be dedicated to you.

Fate assents, and the Oneri throw a day-long feast to celebrate. They dance, they drink goldsap, they dream: and from their dreams, the dreamwood grows to form a prison for the souls of the panserbrands. There is power here, new power, fresh power, divinely-inspired. The wood grows through their flame, piercing their spirits, impaling them in life and in dream. And the architects have just begun.

Their agony will last but a single lifetime, but for the brands, it will feel like forever. After all, in dreams, whole years can pass in a single minute. Time is elastic, flexible, and the dreamers are creative, if nothing else. For the next 30 years, the living tower of iron and dreamwood becomes a central fixture around which the people offer up prayers and thanks.

Your people saw that the brands were mobilising for war before even the rest of their people knew what they were doing. There were many signs: the movement of arms, the changing shape of logistical demands, the tell-tale pattern of endless meetings and bureaucratic redtape that accompanies all such actions. They steel themselves for a raid.

It does not come. Instead, the brands march on the isle of Life and, assisted by the fursnouts, utterly destroy a good number of the lizardfolk. Only those who have gone into hiding survive the purge. Ansi tastes their fear, copper-tinged and metallic. There are not many of them left.

To join one of the great crime families that rule the Oneri is to become sworn into the secret brotherhood of priests that they all belong to. There is an initiation, in dreams and in reality. There is a mark, both visible and invisible. There is an oath, both secret and public. There is a ring, both worn and hidden. Every month, before the new moon, they convene in the shadow of the great watchtower along the dream coast - where the fringe once stood - and offer praise and worship; and to socialise, plan, scheme, and ensure that their rule continues unimpeded.

The dreamlink opens to everyone all at once. Inevitably, a few of the dreamers go insane, but for the most part, your people take it reasonably well. The next few days is a fevered record of each people's cultural habits and practices: how Time's people leave food out to rot in honour of their goddess; how Space's people loves the shiny metal that they call gold; how Knowledge's people are currently undergoing a civil war; how Virtue's people are interfering with the civil war; how War has stolen Space's Champion; and how Strife sits in the middle of all this chaos like a spider, gathering Essence, spinning intricate webs.

Through the dreamlink, you hear of news: War's panserbrands have made yet another successful raid - this time targeting Virtue's isle - and have made out like bandits. However, they have retreated through their own portals, leaving their ally the fursnouts behind to be captured by Virtue.

The oneri beat the drums of war in the dreaming. In dreams of death and murder, they breed armies: spectres made from their ancestral memories of the fringe, cloaked in the shadows and terrors that lurk just beyond every window, every door, every threshold. From their race hatred of the panserbrands they make siege engines, large trebuchets that fling caricatures of the fire elementals at their foes.

The world trembles as they sense the change in the dreaming. War is coming.

War

Fire, Art

Harvested from the earth and sky by Tartarus, the panserbrands - too young to know anything but violent conflict - gather in a large wartribe. There, he teaches them what he has learned from War: how to turn coal into heat and air and sustenance, how to alloy copper and tin to make bronze, how to bring death and destruction to all who stand in their way. His warlords are but children, but even now they compete and fight and kill amongst themselves, that they may grow stronger and match the flame of their lord Tartarus. Beneath a stone sky, nestled in the earth, the brands work and war.

You now have your first Action.

Tartarus dreams, and sees the earth itself ripped asunder. There is treasure here, loot and plunder awaiting any strong and canny enough to find and use it. His warlords create a new caste of people: thralls, panserbrands who dare challenge another for the Rite of Dominance but, in their failure, are not strong or courageous enough to die. They instead choose to weaken their flame and take a lesser form, one more suited to manual labour instead of glorious War.

You awaken the next day - one mortal lifetime later - to a strange sight: your people are not fighting. Tartarus tells you that a few years ago, an earthquake unearthed a rich vein of a thick viscous substance that they have called "oil". This oil not only sates their hunger, but also makes them experience strange feelings like... joy. Euphoria. Contentment. For the first time in their short existence, they are happy.

Over the course of his next lifetime, Tartarus teaches the brands to fight: not as disparate individuals, but as one unit. They learn to trust the brand on their sides, to lock shields and fight shoulder to shoulder with their battle brothers. In war, grudges and debts are put aside: until the battle is over, the only thing that matters is the battle.

The brands discover iron, and with it the creation of high-carbon steel. They do not build temples, but honour certain days as feast days and holy days. Lacking a calendar or any obvious way to track time, it is unclear what astronomical signs indicates that a certain day is a feast day or a holy day: Tartarus himself seems to know, and it always seems to be when his people need it the most. Holy oil is consumed most vigorously during these days, leading intoxicated brands to make flame-promises that they come to regret when they sober up.

Tartarus awakens one day and realises that, while all life is battle, not all battle must be violent. Force is the last resort of the weak. How much stronger is one if one is able to _dominate_ without resorting to force? This philosophy slowly spreads throughout the brands, and while it does not abate the violence, it does slow it down slightly: as the years pass, fewer brands die at each other's hands.

The brands awaken one day to find that a hardlight bridge appears between their isle and the forest isle in the distance. A scouting expedition is quickly mobilised, The two people meet, and through crude mummery, a careful armistice is reached: there will be no aggression between the two people, for now. Both sides will establish a nominal guard at both ends of the bridge, and both will pray for guidance from their respective gods to try and discern the point of the bridge.

You gain 1 Essence from Fate's discovery of mining and basic metallurgy.

You gain 1 Essence from Knowledge's discovery of mining and basic metallurgy.

It is not always the strongest or the most charismatic that gets chosen to be fireseer, but the wisest and cleverest warrior. The ritual is painful and difficult, and only three out of ten initiates survive: but the gift of initiation is worth the pain. Their flames turn blue - like the skies, like the waters of the other isles - and they are granted the ability to look through flame to all other flames.

The brands beat their war-drums, loud enough that the entire mountain resounds with their sound. The people hunger for victory. The time for words is over. The fireseers have looked into the flames, and they see the softness of Virtue's barkforms. They will burn, and the warlords shall be enriched by new thralls, new plunder, and new lands to conquer.

There will be war.

You guide the vision of your people to a different land, away from the ripe and fertile forests of Virtue, towards the dry and arid deserts of Life instead. Here is greater plunder: here there is glass, and meat, and a rare tranquillity that simply begs to be broken. More than anything, here there is coin: made of a yellow metal that they call gold, this coin can be used to buy anything and everything that your heart desires. Whoever has this coin is rich, and with wealth comes power and an alternative way towards dominance.

Your people clamour for battle. You cannot hold them any longer. If they do not get to raid or fight on the next turn, they will rebel against you and the rule of Tartarus.

Life opens a portal to his isle as planned, and the brands - armour darkened with soot and holy oil, weapon-limbs sharpened and polished to a keen edge - march through as one legion. All is quiet for a while: then, the brands return, screaming their triumph, dragging captive thralls and gold and plundered treasure in their wake.

Tartarus says that there was some supernatural calmness on the other side that stopped a good 2/3 of the Legion from doing anything but curling up to sleep, but enough of the brands managed to shake free of the enchantment. Once they were through that, the rest was as easy as eating a child in a kiln: the only creature who could fight half a damn was the dragon, and the only thing that he could do was breathe fire. Against panserbrands, who were born in fire. Tartarus laughs, and the rest of the brands laugh along with him.

A great mural is etched into the mountainside, by their new thralls, to commemorate their first victory. For a whole month, oil flows like magma down the side of a volcano, and the people - drunk on their success - do little but celebrate. Eventually, Tartarus manages to whip them back into discipline, but it takes some doing.

Although Life closes the portal to his isle, your people can now firewalk, and they do so with impunity. They have seen the weakness of the other isles, and they are eager to cut their teeth on more blood, more war, more victory. But Tartarus stops them. He says that he has seen a greater evil coming, and that they must develop walls and trade with the other peoples, that they may present a united front to the enemy.

Your people laugh at Tartarus. This is rustspeak, they say mockingly. Is the great Tartarus afraid of more raids? We do not need you, ancient one. We have the firewalker Cerberus, and he will open a way for us to all the isles. We will test ourselves there, and we will be victorious. And when we return with the spoils of war, we will crown Cerberus king and champion.

Tartarus kills many of the upstarts, but even he, the great warmaster, cannot fight them all. His body is molten down to form chains for his soul, and his flame - though it cannot be extinguished - is quenched in the waters of Life. Cerberus welds a new weapon-limb to his side - one made from the bronze and steel of Tartarus - and the panserbrands prepare for true war across the isles. Cerberus works with oil and blue flame to widen the fire-portals, to make them large enough so that they can send the legions to each and every one of the isles on the next turn. He is succeeding.

You work your will to melt the chains that bind the soul of Tartarus, to boil away the water that keeps him tame and impotent. You are the god of Fire, of Craft and War. Your Champion will not be kept docile. Your Champion will rise once more, and take control of your people again.

Nothing happens.

Beneath the brass banner of Cerberus, accompanied by mighty drums, the panserbrands march to war on every other isle. As they saw in the flames, the other peoples are weak and stupid. Only Virtue's people, their former allies, put up any sort of meaningful resistance: everyone else shatters upon first contact, like overtempered steel, like overquenched copper. The panserbrands are steel, and the rest of the world is soft tin, to be cut and shaped as the brands will.

The mountains now echo with the toil of their new thralls as the panserbrands, the new masters of the world, recline in the lap of luxury. Gold and oil and gemstones of all kinds are unearthed from the bowels of the mountain as the thralls are forced to go ever deeper to sate the appetites of their hungry masters, and though they die by the dozens every day, it is no matter at all: after all, there's always more where they came from, right?

From smoke and flame and a shadowed spark of divinity from Fate, you raise a new Champion: one that will not only free Tartarus, but also serve as his knife in the dark. Where Tartarus is War incarnate, Acheron is Military Intelligence made manifest.

While Cerberus labours in his throne room, tinkering with the firepaths to make them hold open for longer, to allow more brands to enter before they must be refreshed, Acheron enters as a wisp of candlesmoke. Cerberus does not notice... but he certainly notices when Acheron unlocks the gate to allow a squad of Tartarian loyalists to storm in and seize the flame.

The coup goes surprisingly well. Tartarus is freed, and with the death of Cerberus, most of the brands pledge themselves to Tartarus once more. However, the firewalkers belonged wholly to Cerberus, and when their bolt holes were assaulted in the wake of the coup, they disappeared into the other isles, where they now remain, smouldering like so many coals in a bed of ashes.

Statement: your slave population will decrease by 10 or more each turn, depending on how hard they are used. Once it reaches 0, your people will demand to go on raids again, that they may replenish their numbers. If they are not allowed to, they will revolt.

At limb-point, your warriors drive a significant number of thralls across the new lightbridge towards the frozen wasteland. There is some chatter about why the hell we're sending these perfectly good slaves to their death, but that kind of talk is quickly squashed by a stern look from the expedition commander. The thralls land, shivering, on the frozen lake. Your people leave. They do not look back, except to make sure that the thralls do not follow them back.

It takes quite a few lizardfolk thralls, but eventually, Acheron finds one that is susceptible to his peculiar brand of persuasion; and when it starts talking, it simply does not shut up. It spills its guts: about how they were experimenting with eugenics to create winged lizardfolks, so that they can fly to other isles; about how they use gold as currency, and how they were first introduced to gold through the Hulbit; about how they use wood and twisted reeds to make bows so that they can launch death at their enemies from the sky...

Acheron stops them. Tell me more about these "bows", he commands. Within months, Acheron provides Tartarus with schematics for something that he calls a "crossbow", and the prototype weapon-limbs are quickly passed out and adopted by most of the men.

Acheron leads the team, moving the extraction team through the strange woody terrain like smoke and hooded flame. They even do the unthinkable: hide when one of the disgusting slaveforms walk through the hardlight wall that surrounds their village, and follow in behind while the wall remains open.

It took the team two years - two years of hard living in this soft and detestable hellscape - before they received news of the firewalkers. A fire was started near a house, and a rusted weapon limb was found there. The people thought it was from the raid all those many years ago, but Acheron knew better. The firewalkers were found, rounded up, had their forms molten into scrap (that was unceremoniously dumped over the edge of the isle), and their flames were smuggled out of the isle without so much as anyone else noticing.

Statement: your people will revolt if you do not raid next turn.

You receive 1 Essence from Virtue's creation of justicars.

The firewalkers agree to open the portal. When they sleep, they see flashes of nightmarish tortures being perpetuated against some of their captured brothers. They try to close their eyes, to shut their ears, but they are unable to do so. They will take the deal. Anything to not end up like their captive brethren.

The raid goes off without a hitch. With their status as preferred trade partners, the fursnouts manage to make it past the dragonglass walls and - once inside - lit a bonfire large enough for the legions to march through. Just in case, the traders also destroy the gate mechanisms, ensuring that more panserbrands can stream through the fires that the fursnouts have set throughout the land. The brands poured out like molten lava, flowing across the land, destroying everything in their path, and the fursnouts sent death and disease through the ranks of the lizardfolk, decimating and utterly ruining them. By the time both of you are done with the lizards, there is less than half of them remaining.

The retrieval goes off without a hitch: Acheron and his brands sneaks past two lightbridges, a bevvy of guards, and follows the traces of rust to the pathetic village that the firewalkers have constructed for themselves in the deep desert, far from civilisation. They are a sorry lot, and it does not take much to corral them up and torture one of them into opening a portal so that they can all go back.

Your luck holds: the plan goes off without a hitch, and Acheron binds the dragon with the living metal from one of his best men while it is asleep. But disaster strikes as he drags the creature through Virtue's lands: the chain snags on a rock, and the rock turns out to be one of his disgusting stoneforms. It screams and raises a ruckus, and before Acheron can act to silence the annoying creature, the chains binding the dragon snaps, almost as if it were a miracle. Acheron knows when he is beat, and he and his men flee back across the lightbridge, empty-handed but otherwise safe.

It turns out that even hardlight walls are not impenetrable: that, if enough force is exerted upon it, the tree-pillars holding up the walls will break before the hardlight does. Once the panserbrand vanguard is through the canopy, more stream through, accompanied by a contingent of fursnouts in the middle loosening death and disease through the forest. The surprise attack would have been flawless if not for two wrinkles in it: the presence of the titanform, a large tortoise-like walking forest that empowers all who drink from the waters flowing from its back; and the presence of Apex, the Champion of Space, rising straight into the sky with a roar of blue flame. He fights to repay a lifedebt to Virtue, and he sends many of the panserbrands and fursnouts straight to their gods within the first few minutes of battle.

Their assault stymied, the brands quickly disappear back into the fire portals, grabbing with them as many thralls as they can... leaving their "allies" the fursnouts behind. With the titanform single-handedly keeping the frontline from falling into disaster, the fursnouts are forced to fall back on one of the lightbridge... where they are subsequently met by justicars retreating home after the chaos on Knowledge's isle. The fursnouts are detained, and now serve as prisoners of war.

You ready the people for the greatest raid of their lives. Through the doors of dreaming, the gates of the underworld will open up, and their ancestors will arrive, to fight by their sides in the defence of their isle. They will be reassured of the glory that awaits them when they fall in battle, and they will be joined by the heroes of yore for one last glorious fight.

Nothing happens. The Essence from Time comes through, but the doors of dreaming do not open. No attack comes from Virtue. No venerated ancestors arrive. Days turn into weeks, and weeks turn into months. Idle guards become frustrated, angry, impatient. There is infighting amongst the troops, a spike in the number of ritual duels.

Then, over the course of a frenzied hour, all the coal in the mountain burns up with a madman's ferocity, killing many thralls and toppling sections of the city in the process. For the next few years, the panserbrands starve. Many die within days. Of those who survive, many throw themselves at Virtue's isle, hoping to find trees to burn, to sate that everlasting hunger within their souls: they are repulsed by Virtue's justicars, by the waters of the titanform, and sent back to their isle, where they are killed for disobeying orders. Nearly half of the panserbrands are destroyed over the course of a year.