The blackness, a shimmering velvet canvas, is jeweled with the bright epochal actions of the gods and their children. A doorway sketched itself in the emptiness, streaming the exotic particles that are the template of all stories. The door curled in on itself, like timeworn bark bending from its trunk, revealing eternity in all its fractal, multicoloured glory. A silhouette stepped from it, and became absorbed by the blackness, the doorway healing itself with a sigh.

With prismatic eyes, the Traveller saw with a gaze that penetrated time and space within this neonate universe. He drifted in the void and, as the deeds of gods became known, smiled. It would become very interesting. 

The long slumber of Ixilixi had ended, and the Great Spider God once more pointed its composite awareness upon the universe it helped create. And it was not happy, noted the Traveller. Instead inchoate stirrings of war brewed in its thoughts. Ixilixi was a jealous god who valued fraternal purity, and as a consequence sent a piece of itself into its people. A singular  ice-spider rose above all others, radiant in countenance and personality. Upon its carapace was the long and arduous task of reunification. The ice-spider culture thrashed, wracked with the pangs of change as intransigent  factions were ruthlessly culled. Ixilixi gathered its cold people to its bosom, its blessing of eternal unchanging dripping like venom. The ice-spiders seethed on their watery worlds, ever vigilant for alien influences.

The Traveller was saddened to see that Hichiti had returned to the substance of worlds, dissolving in cosmic winds to spread out to all the corners of eternity, but decreed that the God of Scales' race of goat people still remained, as the champions of Aqualuna's humans.

The demigod Verity was beautiful, pure, and intelligent. She was also gifted with the ability to mold the destinies of the other races. This enraged the Traveller and as he began to strike her down and punish Mylann, he considered wisdom and asked if there were not a more peaceful resolution. Verity remained, a shining example of good virtue, and the Traveller gave unto her the hub of Unity. The races would not collide in wrathful combat, but engage in agreed upon contests of skills within the arena of Verity. Mylann, Goddess of All Things Beautiful, found herself fulfilled.

Malachi, the God of Play, was up to his old tricks, Acting to impose an imperceptible change upon non-sentient matter. The Traveller sank deep into stone and ice and other suchlike insensate matter where seconds were millennia, and watched. It was the music of spheres, the dance of particles, coalescing from random noise into strange but ordered patterns. Eventually these patterns accreted into more complex configurations and, influenced by external interactions of the baryons, into even further complexity. Consciousness rose from that conflagration of hidden light, rising and falling, an amplitude wave of culture. Malachi, in a careless and wasteful Act, had created countless separate and magnificent civilizations of transcendental beauty and wisdom that would never be seen and known by even the gods of this realm. The Traveller sighed, his eyes flashing. 

 Aqualuna gave her pet humans free will. The Traveller watched another squandered Act pass. As a Goddess of Life should know, Life always finds a way to forge ahead despite any obstacles thrown in its path. Destiny was just a self imposed manifest mandate upon the future by a being or groups of beings. Still the Travelled smiled upon the humans and their caprine guardians, at how lovely Aqualuna looked, walking among her creations. 

The Traveller moved on, the picture perfect scene of pearls and jewels and ice receding in the darkness. When all was just a star glistening in the darkness, the Traveller peeled open his door to become awash in its psychedelic grandeur. His face swam with fleeting shoals of light from countless worlds. Malachi was wrong. The Traveller did not get bored.

There was just too much to do.

Author guidance for This exercise

THIS ROLEPLAY IS LOOKING FOR ONE MORE PLAYER - SEE COMMENTS FOR MORE INFO, PLEASE DO NOT ADD UNLESS YOU ARE AN APPROVED PLAYER

How to play

Basics

* Write in third person.
* Write descriptions, thoughts and feeling, as well as your observations.
* Do interact with other Gods, ask them questions, offer deals, truces, threats, etc as you see fit.
* Don't write on the behalf of another player, always write strictly what you are doing.
* Write in past tense. Everything you do is something you are attempting, something you will do. It remains to the Traveller to resolve any Acts, so don't rely on your's or anyone else's descriptions actually happening as written until the Traveller resolves the end of a turn. You can write in a way that assumes another unresolved Act has happened but be aware that if your Act relies on it and it fails in some way, there will be a domino effect and your Act too shall fail. The only Acts you can be 100% sure have happened are ones that the Traveller has made or one the Traveller has resolved at the end of a turn.

Players

Maraena - Goddess of the Sea, Wind and Purity (Westrina)
Ishka - God of Weather, Water and Water life (DruidX)
Mylann - Goddess of Love, Freedom and Beauty (Lexiehar)
Aqualuna - Goddess of Light, Life and Sentience (Moonwalker)
Ixilixi - God of Time, Destiny and Arachnids (Ixarux)
Malachi - God of Earth, Force and Experimentation (kristanigrad)
Hichiti - God of The Wilds, Justice, and Beasts (mike_itong)


Travellers

I am also going to be inviting guest authors to acts as the Traveller, to represent the unknowable, fickle power he possesses by having different authors acts in whatever way the deem fit when interpreting the Acts at the end of a turn (as well as punishments that need doing, etc).

For the most part, I shall take on the role of Traveller, but if anyone is interested in a guest appearance as the Traveller, contact me and we can talk about it.

The Traveller has so far been written by:
darkliquid
zxvasdf

The Game


I am the Traveller, the walker of worlds and my word is law and judgement final.

Play will take place as a series of turns. A turn will be complete when an Act or abstention is made by every player.

Turns

* Each player makes an Act, a single sentence defining what it is they want to do. Acts should be embellished with additional narrative and shouldn't define the outcome, only the intended outcome.

* Players not wanting to make an Act may save it up until the next turn. In the case of an abstaining, the player should write a purely narrative post observing the Acts of others, the world and possibly some interaction with other Gods. You can do all that when making an Act too, but you have to, when making no Act.

* Players that hold up for the game for over two days without giving notice or reason why will be assumed to have dropped out and their God will fade from being. Gods are the embodiment of divine intent and if the intent is gone, so does the God. The effects of their Acts however, will remain.

* Players can not undo or contradict each other's Acts. The Acts of a God become fact, a fixed nature of reality and the Gods must obey these divine laws, even if they don't apply to them themselves.

* A turn ends when all players have Acted or Abstained. When this Happens, the Traveller will write the outcomes of your Acts for that turn, describing the universe you have moulded with your instructions. After the Traveller has completed this, the next turn resumes.

Multiple Acts

* When an Act is posted, you can do one thing and one thing only. Trying to do more than that will result in the Wrath of the Traveller. If the Wrath results in everything you have decreed being nullified and declared void, tough, you just wasted an Act.

* You can do multiple Acts at once, but only if you have saved them up by abstaining during previous Turns. You can have a maximum of 3 Acts after which abstaining further just burns away the Act, leaving you at 3 Acts.

Divine Tools

* Divine tools can be created with an Act, an artifact in the physical world imbued with divine power and purpose. Artifacts are like acts and can do one thing. Like Acts, they are indestructible and can not be contradicted or changed by other Gods. Artifacts must have a power that falls in one of 3 domains, namely:

Alteration - the ability to warp and change things
Destruction - the ability to destroy or erase things from existence.
Preservation - the ability to protect and preserve something.

The one thing to remember with Divine tools is that once created they aren't entirely under your control any more, they exist in the mortal realm and as such can be used and abused by mortals. The bonus of creating Artifacts is that they can be used multiple times, since they become tools that can be wielded by mortals. God wishing to make use of an Artifact still need to expend an Act to interact directly with the physical world (in which the Artifact resides) but mortals suffer no such restrictions. Thus Artifacts are extremely powerful but can't be entirely controlled by the Gods.

The Wrath of the Traveller

The Wrath of the Traveller amounts to basically this - what I say goes. If you break the rules or otherwise cause problems the Traveller will intervene in the Acts of his children, changing things as he sees fit to obey his rules whilst also severely punishing those responsible. His actions may be unfair, harsh, unjust, evil, beneficial for your enemies or completely contradictory to your intent. The Traveller made the rules that the Gods must abide by and this he can break them when punishment and change is required.

Aeons

After a number of turns, the Traveller will suggest the Gods sleep and will put it to vote. If the vote goes ahead, the Traveller will advance time and write of the changes to the world and lore in that time, re-awakening the Gods in the aftermath of their absence. If the vote fails, the players can continue but beware, the traveller will get impatient and will begin to make his own Acts.

Basic rules

* If you don't name something, I will.
* The Traveller will take all Acts as literally as possible, so be clear and precise lest horrible things happen due to an inaccuracy in your decree.
* You can't limit the actions of the Gods in anyway or create artifacts or make Acts that stop other Gods from doing anything.
* You can effect things made by other's Acts but you can't erase them entirely - only the originator of the Act can do that.
* Domains - a player doesn't have to restrict themselves to the domains they claim for themselves. Domains come into play if a player ever occurs the wrath of the Traveller: for an Act not in the purview of their Domains, the punishment will be especially harsh. Also, if two Acts happen to conflict or effect the same thing, precedence will go to the God whose Domains are most relevant.
* More rules will be added as clarification is needed.


Other bits

A log of the Acts and discussion about the roleplay is kept here: http://www.protagonize.com/group/planning-brainstorming/topic/2448

updated May 1 '11 by darkliquid