Xorvintaal
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In the time before the gods, this land was wild and primordial. Unbound by the wills of the wills of the gods, the spirits raged across land and seas. The rivers shifted with the wind, and mountains crested like waves. Beings of power rose and fell, carving out castles of fire, of ice, of wood, or bone. Even mortals rose from the chaos, living short and brutal lives.
Yet, such a state of chaos, with its enormous potential, would eventually give rise to order out of sheer chance. And so it was. Over the eons, eight regions became less and less chaotic, each growing as it cemented itself further into the fabric of this world. And like a plant drinking water through its roots, so too did these drink deeply the magics of this land.
In time, these forces coalesced, turning in on themselves and permutating into what would become the gods. From each of the regions, a god was birthed.
First rose the mountains, an enormous mountain chain that rose high into the sky. The northern end gave rise to Ravana, with the south, Acter. In the north, the winds were harsh, and the path treacherous. Winding shelves of rock made for narrow passage throughout the peak, though possible, these paths are perilous. The steep rough terrain is not a pleasant place to make one's home, yet many species of bird and rodent have come to dwell here. Larger animals live here as well, goats, rock snakes, and large agile cats call these lands home. Shale feather eagles can often be seen circling above. The south is wetter and greener, receiving more rains than the north. Grassy highlands dot the mountain, and groves of pine cling to existence where bird or wind deposit their seeds. Game is more common here, but so too are predators. Many look to this location for its strategic importance, overlooking both forest and field alike.
As one continues south, the mountains continue deep into the heartland. To their west, lay the swamps which gave rise to Yume No Kaze in the north and Jud in the south. A region of soggy pools and wild willow trees. Here the circle of life bleeds grey between the light of life, and the darkness of death. Rot hangs heavy in the air, and insects buzz through the smell of decay. Amphibians of many sizes are common, though among them the Marsh Gulper species reign supreme. A gargantuan ambush predator, known to swallow oxen and men alike if given the chance. Fish, snakes and birds are also common. Mushrooms, lichens, and baser organisms thrive here. In a way, it is a very full region, full of life, full of death.
To their east rose from The Dust Wilds, a dry barren land of dry dirt and cracked stone. North belonging to Than and the south to Cwrec. Here Strong winds from the west kick up dust and gravel, with lethal velocity during the winter storms. This creates a near constant sound, of small rocks battering against stone expanse and rock cliff, wearing them down into more small stones to one day join their erosive cause. The days are hot and the expanses of stone grow hot enough to crack and pop under the sun. The nights are cool, and the wind shifts and dulls it's sharp advance. From the crags and crevices, what tenacious life that eeks out existence here, wanders beneath the cloudless sky. Lizards and snakes are common here. Bats, birds, and a species of flying Guinea pigs have roosts among the cracked stone. They feed on hard nuts, born from dry gnarled shrubs, on what grass can find. On the north, a band of land wraps around the mountain edge, winding under cliff and along slope, no more than half a mile wide, reaching far across the northern coast, beyond the mountain, and into the swamps
South of the mountains, the slopes give way to the South Forest in the west, in the region that births the god Muffins. The wet winds are blown northward by the winds from the south. While wet, this region is not as much so as the swamps to the north. The humid temporate climate gave rise to a forest of great thick trees. Among the leaf litter and shade, numerous creatures from deer to bears thrive. Birds and rodents of many kinds live among the canopy. Monkey birds can often be spotted lazily eating fruit among the leaves. Wolves, large cats, and bears form the top of the food chain here.
Finally in the southeast, the Wide Plains which gave rise to Garmathis. Sprawling open grasslands spread far beyond the horizon. A sea of grass, speckled with islands of woodland groves. Large herbivorous creatures thrive on the open plains. Bisonphants, and wild stallions can be spotted grazing, while coyotes and lions linger in the shadows. Smaller life thrives here as well, hidden among the tall grasses, or in burrows in the soil.
From each of the regions, both mountains, both swamps, both badlands, the forest, and the plains, a light rose into the sky, and with it, a newborn god. They halt their ascent, and look down upon their world with fresh eyes. They see the world laid out before them, eight regions, eight gods. Each sees their brothers and sisters, and the lands before them. This is their world.
Cwrec spins down merrily into the southern Dust Wilds like a fiery chinook, kicking up a massive dust storm and inadvertently excavating and scrambling a deposit of titanic bones near the as yet somewhat fuzzy border with the north badlands and nestled in the foothills of the mountains, where deep, worn gullies and crevices shield them from being blasted to dust in his jolly wake. Although a bit too jumbled to be useful to paleontologists, they should still be perfectly serviceable as crafting materials, perhaps offering a transitional material to wandering Ittlithir until they get around to exploiting copper.
Discover Ancient Fossil Deposit (3)
Discover a deposit of Ancient Fossils. Ancient fossils are hard and can be fashioned into armor and weapons on par with the softer metals, without any knowledge of smelting. Also particularly valuable to necromancers.
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Can only be played on a mountainous region. Creates an allied Dwarven City.
(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/959228766922612746/960051791905566730/xorvintall.png)
Jud spends some time hollowing out the earth, rerouting underwater springs, peppering everything with neat statues, planting plump helmets everywhere, before turning some of the leftover earth into industrious dwarves, allied to Jud's muddy cause! May they prosper!
Not long after they are made, the dwarves begin to work with their standard fervour, mining out metal veins, farming crops, heading aboveground to hunt mountain goats and making some of the first tools to exist within this grand game of Xorvintaal.
Muffins studiously adjusts her hat. There's work to be done!
Name the forest Snugglehearth
Create Mortals (5) in the middle of Snugglehearth
Gulpers look and act much like giant plump grizzly bears. They're better optimized for bipedal locomotion and fine manipulation of objects, but otherwise a Gulper in a bearlike position looks more or less identical to a fat bear, while an upright one looks more or less identical to a bipedal fat bear. Also like bears, they have a fondness for fine cuisine and comfortable lodgings, tend to be rather curious and jolly, and are quite able and willing to rip most things in half when hungry or angry.
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First, they play No. 29 - Create Minor Land Feature for 1 mana. Gesturing towards the northern mountains, domain of Ravana, they channel the power of the card to erect a cold spire of dark stone from the earth. A monumentous thing, its surface glossy and somewhat translucent but ultimately impenetrable to the eye, the tower is an imposing sight to all. Its depths are crisscrossed by various caverns and tunnels, with ample space for all manner of things to roam about within. A single spirit of the earth is created alongside it, sharing the tower's color and somewhat crystalline appearance. They catch Ravana's attention and gesture towards their creation, as if to ask, Are you impressed?
Create a small geological landmark. This might be a cavern, a canyon, a small mountain, or other similar formation. If no major spirit is present, spawn a neutral power one earth spirit. If any giant is present, a Gianthome is created instead.
Then, they play another card from their hand - but this one is unidentifiable, and fades away without immediate effect. They seem pleased, regardless.
For their last action, Garmathis plays No. 4 - Create Mortals for 3 mana. From all across the plains arise the Lakoni - a people with six-legged torsos like that of a horse, but hairless upper bodies, one set of arms, and variously colored eyes, hairs, skins, and coats. Free-spirited and kind by nature, the Lakoni begin gathering in massive communities across Garmathis' domain. They feed upon the various grains and vegetables native to the plains, with the able providing for those who are not, and all members of a community cared for by their fellows.
Create a race of mortals, having direct control over the specifics of the race. This is a non-magical race. Mortals require sustenance and possess some kind of soul.
Their tasks for the first turn complete, Garmathis passes some of their time by assuming the form of a Lakoni and gallivanting across the plains with their creations.
14, Create Dark Fortress (5)
Create a Dark Fortress, having control over its design and function. Spawns a specified power one allied vampire, warlock or necromancer with the "Plans to Take Over the World" trait.
118, Create Edible Plant (0)
Creates a species of edible plant in the region. If a famine is in effect, it ends automatically. If Primal Fury is in effect, summon three neutral power one Man Eating Plants instead.
Acter... well, Acter starts by taking out a blueprint sheet. Well, that and a feather quill. They start sketching out a sprawling complex before realizing that they don't actually have that much space.
So they compress it.
The, ah. "Dark Fortress" begins to take form, near the center of where the mountains meet the badlands - in fact, quite nearby Cwrec's store of fossils. Large plates of the mountain's deep-grey stone are bound to each other with a metal far more advanced than any mortal could make-
There's dwarves.
Eh?
There's dwarves, they definitely know how to make good steel.
...I can make it a better metal, then.
-a metal far more advanced than any mortal could make today, its dark blue coloration holding a sheen of green, much like the distant ocean. More than simply holding the structure together, this metal - Cascadite - was used in a myriad of mechanical systems throughout the Fortress, their machinery complex yet undeniably effective at... well. Ah.
Whatever it was they were for. It wasn't entirely clear. There seemed to be a lot of pipes and cogwheels just scattered about the place at random. It was easy to lose track of what was supposed to do what, or simply get completely and utterly lost. It certainly made the location feel much larger, however.
And then, at the center of it all, was... a courtyard. A sprawling one, that felt almost like it was too large to truly fit inside the Fortress. At its center was... well, it was originally a fountain. Strictly speaking it still actually is a fountain, probably. The problem with properly calling it a fountain, however, is that an entire tree grew up around the Cascadite artwork, its bark a stark white against the dark grey stone, its leaves the blue-tinged green answer to Cascadite's green-tinged blue. Where once, water would have sprayed out from the fountain's top, now, it seemed the tree had grown channels within itself, spreading the water throughout its branches until it fell like rain under everything in its shadow.
And then Acter took every plant that existed, and then a few more lot more that didn't, and threw them literally all over the building.
Are you sure?
100%. Never been surer. This'll be great, I promise.
Just, everywhere. There were probably a couple dozen varieties of plants found in the Fortress that not only didn't exist anywhere else, but also did things that no other plants did. Most of these things were utterly worthless things to do, of course, but god-damn did they do them.
And finally, to top the Fortress off, Acter set about making a caretaker for it. A template of the Ifioi was retrieved and constructed, then garbed in a cloak of white bark and "crowned" with a circlet of dead leaves, their skeletal veins appearing extremely fragile, yet remaining unbroken no matter what may happen. Into them was invested a certain... madness? Manic energy? Certainly curiosity and drive; the rest likely would have to be decided by others. Great powers of druidry were granted to them that they might experiment with the essence of life itself... and the first thing they made was a plant that would not merely grow in corpses, but then use the structures left behind to achieve mobility. Ask the druid, they certainly weren't zombies. Technically.
Listen do you want the plant-zombie to harvest your crops for you or not? Stop arguing about technicalities and let the corpses do the hard physical labor, you're still alive and should get to follow your dreams and stuff.
(They were remarkably friendly for a probably-mad druid with a penchant for raising the dead and a desire to rule the world. Though they quite assure you that the whole world-conquering thing is entirely a benevolent matter. No, really, they're honest. Who'd you rather do back-breaking labor, yourself or the walking plant?)
And really, that was only their first plant.
Name: Ygdri
Race: Ifioi
Appearance: Slightly larger than average for an Ifioi, Ygdri has an entire total of 12 arms (two pairs of which are actually made of vines), and there is always at least one pair that is doing something; in fact, Ygdri almost seems to vibrate with pent-up energy. Her eyes' irises are a dark black, almost indistinguishable from her pupils, while her skin has an uneven suntan, shifting between a various shades from one spot to the next. Her fur is dark brown, but with the lichens and other airplants growing within it, you might think it green. Her white-bark cloak trails on the ground, with the bottom edge almost blackened with dirt (much like her fingernails), while her dead leaf tiara has pride of place atop her forehead.
Personality: Ygdri is, again, remarkably friendly for somebody out to conquer the world. She's also absolutely relentless about it, with a degree of willpower devoted to it that one wonders if this isn't the method by which she plans to conquer the world, one friendship at a time. She is equally relentless, however, with her research - a topic far less comfortable to most mortals, as it involves the engineering of plants that do things that plants really, really shouldn't do. Go on, tell her about your day; she'll listen encouragingly and enthusiastically, and when it comes time to tell you about her own day, she'll gleefully tell you about how she made a plant whose fruits explode with acid and melt people. Or something to that effect. Regardless, it seems that her ultimate plan is to make plants that can fill whatever needs normal mortals have so that they can pursue their wants instead, which is probably a legitimately benevolent goal. Only time will tell if anything like that will work.
(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/303715036202008586/960938637707579452/unknown.png)
Upon arriving at a suitable depression in the Chwll, the Cwrecane turns to face the ground and begins to rain. And rain. And rain. Cwrec aims to transform part of the Dust WIlds into a blooming scrubland around a reasonably long-lived oasis, and this will continue for some time.
Changes the weather in region to a increase or decrease rain, the length or intensity of seasons, or some other element of the weather in the region. This can change the type of region into a similar type of region over three turns.
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Garmathis plays No. 103 - Found Religion for 1 mana. They design the belief of Greater Giving: there is no higher virtue than to give unto others one's own excess, whatever it may be, and to do so will elevate oneself beyond mortality - effort, nourishment, kindness, and more, it shall all be rewarded in kind. Perhaps for the Lakoni it is no different from how they carry themselves already, but to codify such behaviors is an interesting twist, Garmathis thinks.
Found a new religion of your own specifications or alter one of your existing religions. Gain one point each turn for each settlement or city that follows your religion. Gain an additional point for each settlement that follows only this religion.
Now, to find out what exactly the others have been up to this turn, by playing No. 110 - Spy for 3 mana. Taking a form much like their own with no concrete shape, but able to alter itself at will to assume countless disguises, Garmathis tasks their agent with discovering the secret actions played by their fellows this turn.
Create a specified power three spy unit. Spies are exceptional at avoiding danger, avoiding all encounters beneath their power level, and have a 50% chance to avoid encounters of their level and the level above. Spies are great at discovering the results of secret actions. Spies discover a number of secrets equal to their power level, then disband.
Only ephemerally disappointed with their excess mana this turn, Garmathis resigns to wait for their spy's efforts to bear fruit.
Jud winces slightly as he suffers metaphysical backlash from a particularly poor move in the game of Xorvintaal, before returning to his usual jolly self.
He grabs a bunch of special clays and ochres from inside his third gall, and sprinkles them over the center of the South Mountains.
Jud spends 3 mana to create a Power 3 neutral elemental (preferably earthen) at the center of the South Mountains, named Lun
(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/959228766922612746/967101961642053652/xorvintall3.png)
Jud then chooses a particularly muddy looking dwarf, and gives them a nice big medal signifying they are now chief merchant of the mountainheim.
Jud spends 2 mana to add a merchant to the Mountainheim.
Cwrec takes a short break from raining on the Ittlithir's parade to send a jet of water blasting into the high Chwll. This uncovers a lavish banded iron formation not excessively far from the dark fortress.
Discover a iron deposit it an area. This resource can be exploited by mortal hands to occasionally create the Iron Ore resource card.
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Aww, you didn't iterate from the map I put on discord earlier :c
(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/959228766922612746/967161663558135899/xorvintral_four.png)
Also I believe that copper deposit in in the Clli.