and lord, I fashion dark gods too; all

[Carnage]

and lord, I fashion dark gods too;

Ungrateful.
He hears the murmurs, though he pretends not to. He had promised them that he would take a land, and did he not? Yes, it is a wasteland, a barren, hideous, place, but he doesn’t quite mind – he minds more that this was not his intention.
(For he had a wasteland, once, an old battleground. A place where he fought, and died, and walked again.)
So he doesn’t mind this. Perhaps in time they will seed it with trees, or perhaps he will keep it like this, a scar drawn across Beqanna’s breast.
He keeps none of them here. The land (wretched place though it is) is here, and it is enough. It is his mark.

The fever has subsided, somewhat; the pain slowing from a river to a trickle. He still sweats as he moves about here, leaving salt-streaks on his dry coat as it evaporates.
He eyes them, knows he should say something. It feels strange, to be a king again, tied to a land that’s not just his kingdom, but his creation.

“This land is our bounty,” he says. Bounty is an odd word to use when describing such a place, but he uses it nonetheless, “our fair salvage.”
(There had been nothing fair about what he had done to make it.)
“You may stay, or not,” he says, “those who stay, I welcome you. You may build. You may bring your children here, your lovers.”
Once, he might have demanded the men leave, might have created for himself a harem. Now, he needs no such thing. It doesn’t matter.
Ah, their cancerous king, crowned again in dust and dismay. Waiting to remake a place that should never have existed at all.

c a r n a g e

OOC:
-- please reply here (either IC or OOC) stating if you want to be put on the board <3
-- name suggestions? I honestly like "the wastelands." but if we want a cool name I was also thinking Pangea (the original supercontinent) because that's lowkey a mean joke, but whatever. other suggestions are VERY welcome

[Tioga]

You were automatic, as hollow as the 'o' in God.

Our decent down the Mountain seems shorter than the climb up. Perhaps it is because I am curious to see just what the Dark One has summoned forth for us, what kind of land does a God or Devil create?

Disaster.

I am disappointed. That which my eyes behold is desolate, nothing like I would have imagined. I set myself up for this, expected too much, anticipated the best when I should have readied myself for the worst. Of course it was, barren and bleak, suffocated of life except for those who would willingly embrace it. Fine, if this is what it was to be I would set myself a task. Not only would I persevere in this new world, I would persevere here, in this wasteland. I would make it better somehow, heal the land slowly if I had to but I would not be cowed- not even by this. Not even by Him.

I snort in my dissatisfaction, clamboring my way down into the wasted remains of earth. I toss my head and give a shrill cry as a gallop across a stretch of red, cracked clay.

Hell is empty and all the Devils are here.

{TIOGA}

khaos x wichita

html by Kyra

tioga will stay. she thinks she can make it better, or try to anyways. she doesnt want to seem weak in any case.

name suggestions: tartarus....hesperides  

[Pollock]

(—the sick god said let there be a valley…)

He can only suppose the god likes desolation.

(Space, they say – a lord of mouthless planets and sterile constellations.)

He can understand the appeal. This badland is not ugly. She is twisted and diseased (she is unadorned; he can fix that) but there is a poetry and an art about her. The gift-giver cannot pretend he does not bend towards the more spirited. After all, he grew up in fecund woodlands – steely pines and bone-white birches – loamy and damp, he dressed them with his things (like jewels on earthen crowns) and fed them.

And then his Forest had become sour, unhappy without his pretty offerings.

She took his things, broke down the organic material that had made them them (the oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, leeched away and softening them). She took and laid waste to them all, leaving teeth, like shrapnel, behind.

So he had sought a better forest.

A flowering, whispering, gravid kingdom. He found towering redwoods, rough-hewn and ancient, so newly vacated. Still, bodies clung to it – a handful of hips and lips; some fat with child... their world had been a small one (even smaller now). Sharp-tongued shrews and meek squaws, the disciple had left them behind like sitting ducks – and her, that feast! Red and white, a woman now.

Those trees had been Her seed and sprout.

“Pollock,” he says, and he is one of them – his ‘Ungratefuls’, but is it ever healthy to feel completely gratified? 

Somewhere is Bruise (his child – the first to come to him, milk-needy and colt-footed, with no mother in tow) and Sinew (though she is not his – only an errant, wild ambition).

(Build. And had he not told her it was so?)

He is good at building. 

He had made a magnum opus – a violent, gothic thing – out of mud and snow, once.

----

I like The Wasteland too, Pangea also awesome. I have, through my very random name finding methods, rustled up:
- hamarr (old norse word for crag)
- erövra/erovra (a swedish word, means capture/take/conquer)
- ödemark/ødemark/odemark (swedish/danish word for wasteland/wilderness/wild)
- stelen (dutch word for steal.. is a verb but whatever... looks nice lol)
- runnella (finnish word meaning ravage/maim/mangle/you get it)
- bevara (swedish word meaning preserve/maintain/conserve/keep/protect.. works in a couple ways i guess)
- videvik (estonian), hämärä/hamara (finnish), sumrak (bosnian) - all mean dusk
- ortus (latin for sunrise... maybe too bitchy?)
- eremus (latin for wasteland/wilderness/desert... which the wasteland kind of half qualifies as)
- valles (latin for valley, maybe too close to olden days.. not fresh enough)

okay, I'm done. I could literally do this all night given how many languages and words exist.
Of the ones I found, I would narrow down to Hamarr, Videvik, Valles and Eremus myself, I guess. Still, totally cool with whatever xD

[Harmonia]

She is there, her hot anger brimming just beneath the surface - but pacified by this act. This fit of rage that set Beqanna on its head. Nothing pleases her more than the thought of the fairies (those cruel, evangelical beats!) getting what they deserve. They were not their children to grovel and crawl to - they were so much more. Magicians. Demons. Demi-gods. Gods. Harmonia craves the feeling of magic back in her bones, longs to feel it slide across her skin like the cool morning mist.

If anything, she longs to feel the great peace of nothing again. She needs her shield.

She is there, of course, peering from beneath her impossibly thick palomino forelock. Small, thin, not impressive to look at. Surgery was gone, but she didn't care anymore. Let him find his ilk elsewhere, far from her. His mouth always open, always wanting and needing. He annoyed her now, and at last she was free.

"Home sweet home," she says, almost to herself.

HARMONIA

the pied piper

OOC - I vote Wasteland or Pangea

[Raelynx]

I love the way that your heart breaks with every injustice and deadly fate

Home. For so long, it had been Silver Cove, but he had never really felt. It had never really been his, never truly drawn him, kept him. But this, this is different. This is the land of his God. The land made just for them.

And it is perfect.

It might be a barren wasteland, but it is beautiful. The wide stretches of dust, the broken canyons, the empty river. A perfectly desolate hell for the monsters that would call it home.

His scarred, gnarled, hairless skin blends with the gray landscape as though he had been made for this horror. In a way, he had been. Carnage had made them both.

There is no question he would stay, would make this desolate patch of land his home, would bow willingly to its king. He follows because he knows this is his destiny, knows this is what he had been born for. With a grotesque smile upon his cracked lips, he steps before his king (his god), and says simply, ”I will stay.”

Raelynx

[Igni]

Love is friendship set on fire ...

If she would say that her new home turned out to be, not quite like how she expected it, she would be describing it very very safely. She hadn’t really had something particular in mind – all she knew was the Tundra – but it had been better than these lands. Some green, vegetation, water, shelter, something where you could live pleasantly. Not these yellow sandish land and never-ending strain of wind.

But, he is a god, and maybe, maybe he wants to teach them a lesson too. Not by taking away their lands and homes, but by giving them a land they had to build themselves. Like they had to earn all good features of the land. Igni truly believed it would be like that, a god wouldn’t give them meaningless hope, right?

So she joins him, and a few others, head politely lowered and never meeting his gaze too long. Looking a god in the eye would be very, very rude thing to do. Silently she thanks him for his generosity, but she doesn’t voice her gratefulness out loud. ”What, what can we do to build the land?” Both addressing the re-shaping view she had in mind, but also how to build their lives here, their political infrastructure.

... and fire is the burning passion within.

OOC: Igni is staying, hoping that the reason behind the wastelands is that they have to earn and grow a good new land together XD. Wasteland sounds good, but I like Tartarus too! Valles and Hamarr would be nice too, just please not ‘Stelen’. I’m Dutch so seeing a Dutch word for a land is ugh, idk, too strange? XD

[Gunsynd]

Gunsynd

I wanna chain you up       I wanna tie you down

He had asked, and he had received. They had stood together on the slopes of the offensive mountain in defiance. And they had won. The fact that things had not gone precisely as planned does not reach him, he stands firm in his convictions. He would follow his god into hell if he only asked it of him. Little did he know how close he would come.

He feels the god’s gaze on him before his eyes process the image before him. A shiver of anticipation makes its way imperceptibly down his spine. And then the magic hits him; so unlike all magic he has experienced thus far. This was deeper, darker, more primordial. This magic is what the world was made of, what caused the earth the orbit the sun, what caused their hearts to beat. It was sharp… hot. While the process had been nothing but a pang of stomach pain for the god, Gunsynd felt the pain of his DNA being mutated acutely. When his power had been drained from him he had been put to sleep, but awake as he is, he wishes for the comfort of unconsciousness. 

He grits his teeth and his eyes are wide from the searing pain. It seems to start at his hooves and slowly, methodically, work its way upwards like a flame. It rips him open and puts him back together again, slashing at his every molecule and cauterizing the seams with the heat of the dark magic. As it rises to his organs the pain becomes unbearable - it consumes him and a scream erupts from deep within his lungs. With whatever senses he has left he can see that his god speaks, then turns and heads down the mountain. Gunsynd cannot follow, cannot move a muscle. His brain screams at his body to move, to obey. But there is only pain and white-hot magic. 

The whole ordeal takes only moments, but to the monster it seems a lifetime is spent awash in nothing but pain and magic. There is nothing else. It kills all of his other senses and his only wish is to collapse, to die, to make it stop. But there is no escape from it, as it works its way into his brain he wants nothing more than to lose consciousness and fall into the black abyss but the magic will not let him go that easily. Scream after scream is emitted from him but he can’t even hear the sound over the overwhelming sensations within his head. 

And then it is over. The god’s magic leaves him, and he crumples, his legs folding beneath him like they were made of string. His heavy head hits the rocky ground and finally the soft sweet land of nothingness envelops him. 

It is night when he awakens. The darkness makes it difficult for him to discern that he is back, but slowly his eyes register the moon hanging in the sky above him and then the stars that surround it. He senses the pain in his muscles and he stirs, lifting his head and shaking the dizziness away. Laboriously he rises to his feet and stands quivering in the moonlight, made new. Where there were once memories he feels now feels empty, liberated. The only thing on his mind is following the trail of his god’s magic down the mountain and into the land that it has created. 

There are no thoughts of fairies. He does not think the mountain strange. He does not pine for the loss of a lover. He only moves one foot in front of another until he finds the wasteland. He knows that this is home. The same magic that made it has remade him. He feels it in his bones, that he and the land are the same. Cancerous, sick, ghastly. But here nevertheless. He finds the god with ease and his words reverberate within his skull. Some things come to light - the fairy, the anger, the defiance. But there is a sick, sharp pain in his brain when he thinks about it so he turns instead to matters at hand. 

“I am here to stay.” He says almost too readily (the words are raspy and cause his throat to burn, though he can’t remember the screams that are the cause of his discomfort). “Use me as you see fit.”

I M   J U S T   A   S U C K E R   F O R   P A I N

Sorry for the word vomit. Gunsynd is here and wants to be on the board All my pretend votes go to naming the place Skaro <3