A Dawn of Worlds Game

Rocks grew in the ruins, great dark stones pulled up from the bland landscape. Rents tore open in the earth and bled great rivers of molten bedrock, where elsewhere strange grasses covered hills as the land roiled under this unending assault. Blue and violet, like a bruise or a storm, spreading rapidly out onto the land, each lightning strike leaving not smoke but change, still multiplying still picking up pace. Where the arcs seemed to pause and think, awe-inspiring crystal formations were heaved from the land - great clear prismatic things, scattering light for miles in dazzling arrays.

And as the lightning rolled, storms grew overhead, dark rolling clouds, and as the rain fell the lava rivers cooled again and there were great stone plains now, bleeding wounds scarring over and re-opening, again and again. The lightning arced ground to sky, sky to ground, ever increasing in volume and ferocity and pace, the beating of some giant drum or heart, over and over, again and again, now thousands of arcs, hundreds of thousands, lighting the clouds from below, a miniature violent sun spread miles across terrestrial surface, now not a heartbeat but a roar, still increasing, exponential growth coming to a peak until the air itself was boiling, atmosphere on fire, sound beyond comprehension, all building up to a

          [DISCHARGE]

                                        She was.

---

Round 3, Turn 1 / Age of Creation

Acting God: Frantic Goddess of Energy

Prior Power Total: 2

New Power Total: 15 (2+11+2)

Actions: Shape Land, Shape Climate, Catastrophe (2+3+10)

The newly-born sun and moon changed things again. The strings thrummed with energy, new strings uncoiling and stretching off into nothingness in all directions.

It saw the forest, and the multitude of possibilities stretching from each trunk, and each branch. This one stand alone was not enough, though. It asked the land near its island if it wanted to be more, to reach for the new light above, and the land responded.

Trunks stretched tall, and taller yet. Towering giants looked across the sea toward the mountains in mute challenge. It then asked the skies to nourish and temper these dense stands, and the clouds opened their arms with frequent rain.

Another strand plucked at its attention, and it knew the energy of the new sun and moon would not be enough. It needed something more concentrated. More... direct. More clouds gathered above its chosen island, this time darker, angrier. It waited for the precise moment, then touched the clouds. Actinic light arced from ground to cloud, turning grey drizzle to sharp relief.

"That will do. Continue as you are."

- - -

Round 2, Turn 3 / Age of Creation

Acting God: Latent God of Potential

Prior Power Total: 0

New Power Total: 8 (0+8+1)

Actions: Shape Land, Shape Climate, Shape Climate (3+2+2)

Final Power Total: 1

- - -

THE PINK SPOTS ARE MY LOVELY, LOVELY FLOWERS. AREN'T THEY MAGNIFICENT?

I didn't think I had to put up the sun and moon.

Her forest did not sing as it should in this perpetual twilight. The fruit did not glisten as her heart felt it should, the leaves were not glossy; indeed, there was nothing to make them shine.

Thoughts lead her to the north of her isle – in her mind, this was her isle now – and pulled herself a throne from the ground. Arms to the sky, she began to sing. An earthy, quiet voice at first, not audible to the Others, then louder, until her voice reaches her companions and the heavens themselves. Reluctantly at first, the grey veil parts under a swelling gold orb hanging in the sky.

A sun is born.

She is pleased for a god's moment. But even as the world is bathed in new light, the goddess knows her work is not complete. Her forests and all that shall come will need time away from this divine warmth. Again her voice raises; this time a song of peace, solitude and ephemera glides throughout the planet. Gone is the sun, replaced by a pleasant heaviness and a silver moon.

And so it is night.

The perfect time for an overextended goddess to rest herself. She does, drawing on her final reserves to call up grass from the grey to be her canopy.

-

Round 2, Turn 2 / Age of Creation

Acting God: Part Time Moon Goddess

Prior Power Total: 5

New Power Total: 15 (5+10+0)

Actions: CREATE THE FRIGGIN SUN AND MOON and Shape Land

Acting God: Nascent God of the Veil

Prior Power Total: 1

New Power Total: 11 (1+9+1)

Actions: Shape Land, Shape Land, Shape Climate (3+3+2)

Final Power Total: 2

- - -

And, quietly, pulled from the fabric of potentiality by the call of a kindred spirit, perhaps, or by the need to act - for inaction was no entity's nature - they came. And they bore with them the marks of their temperament - the land roiled under their hands, carved into new and better shapes, suiting new visions.

They were the First and Foremost, and they were now here.

The First among them observed its kin in silence for a time, observed her handiwork. It observed the first gusts of wind, previously unknown, as they split the surface of the mirrorbright sea - and it knew that this change would never again be reversed, that in time the sea would churn.

The Broken Mirror had left as they had come, to see the world as it changed - for in it was the First Understanding and it was echo to that curiosity. Thus, then, First and Second stood alone on the shores of Her domain.

("it would realize the unrealized. cleave the start from the end - and now here you are. we come, quiet, to the face of this new world our home.")

("what shall we make, i wonder?")

It wandered the forests for a time, and here - in the crux of another's genesis - it learned of its purpose. Here, in a fallen, rotting fruit - there, in a withered flower. It walked amongst the vibrancy of life and the certainty of death and it knew then what an end was.

('i wonder?")

It observed its other kin and the mountains it raised, the channels it carved in stone, the creator who created itself. And then, it departed, to the southern shores of the north.

It pulled the fire from the earth's heart and made it a throne of rock and dirt,  high and wide, belching smoke and debris skyward. And to surround this newfound peak, it created ashen plains, fertile dirt, grasses and scrub trees, gently rolling hills. It summoned up a gentle breeze to blow in this deceptive, gray place forever, and gentle rain - in the shadow of the volcano it made the world soft, it made the world forgiving. It made a cradle for the future.

And finally, it rested at the rim of the newborn mountain, and looked out over the world. ("i call you not brothers nor sisters, daughters nor sons. i call you nothing, as from thence you come - but know this.")

("the world sits on a throne of love, from the end to every path thereto, and in all our trials and tribulation this love for you will not change. you are the new dawn come, the shape of the world to be. you are beauty.")

("make what is yours.")

- - -

Acting God: Latent God of Potential

Prior Power Total: 0

New Power Total: 6 (0+6)

Actions: Shape Land, Shape Land (3+3)

Final Power Total: 0

- - -

It did not yet exist, but it was ready regardless.

The first will had touched the world, and opened the way.

The oceans of time flowed in all directions, and it began to trace strings. One by one, following the threads where they went. It found the path that led to its own existence, and pulled.

And then it was.

In the multitude of futures, it chose one. With its first act, it showed the small rocky continent the vast spires of its future, and the land sprung up to meet its hope.

But stagnancy is not right. There must be exchange; there must be mixture.

It showed another part of the continent the formless ocean of its past, and the land sunk to review its history.

- - -

And they would sometimes stab each other over these disagreements.

But that will come later.

Now, those forests sweep up to meet the sky, jewel toned leaves stretching out and flowers carpeting the ground. Fruit dangles from various trees, berries waiting to nourish and poison. And from this riot of color amid the silent sea comes the goddess, adorned in vestments of nature.

“Your longing would wake the dead.”

---

Round 1, Turn 2 / Age of Creation

Acting God: Perpetually Annoyed Corn Goddess

Prior Power Total: 0

New Power Total: 10 (0+10)

Actions: Shape Land, Shape Climate (5)

Final Power Total: 5

- - -

Acting God: Nascent God(?) of the Veil

Prior Power Total: 0

New Power Total: 11 (0+11)

Actions: Create Avatar (10)

Final Power Total: 1

- - -

And before life, there was death, though it did not know yet what death was.

It came from the waters, aware but featureless, nascent, unrealized, forming. The land was smooth then, flat, as yet untouched by the hands of yet-to-be-birthed Gods or the beings that would proceed from them. It dwelled upon the shores a time, at once certain of itself ("that all this is, i am not"), and uncertain ("i know every way but do not know my own"), and questioning ("i am inevitable, but what is my inevitability? i am the end but what is an end?") and knowing ("things will come to be, and they will not know the way, and i will show them the way and wait for them at path's end"). And for a time, before time - for there was none to mark the clock's passage, nor being nor process, and this new God had no concept of time on a planet with no face - it sat, as much as an identity and an idea can sit, and watched the crystal-flat surface of the unperturbed seas.

And then, God rose from its rest, after perhaps a moment, perhaps a planck-second, perhaps a billion years, perhaps the age of ten billion universes, and it had a thought. God touched the surface of the water, and the ripples broke the endless mirror, and it Understood.

This was the First Change.

And God knew that it would not be alone for long, but this God nonetheless grew lonely waiting for those who it knew would join it, and so created another, and it said to this other ("that all this is, i am not, and you are not, and you are not me, but from me, and together we shall wait for the Others.")

And this Other was the Broken Mirror, radiant in the reflected light, split like the cracked surface of the motionless sea, which had ceased its motion over the course of the act of creation. It was given form before form was understood and therefore looked like the culmination of all potential, and it was the First Being, death-giving-life, a revelation made corporeal. It was Avatar.

And the First Being, who would not take shape until shape had been thought of, sat with God by the water's edge, and echoed the First Change. And the Broken Mirror reflected itself in concept.

And they sat and waited. For a moment, for a planck-second, for a billion years, for the lifetimes of ten billion universes, they waited.

And Others joined them.

- - -