Mythic Era, Age of Fire, Turn 5

The Avatar of Tholak stirred, buried deep within the earth of Tholak's continent, thinking and watching. Thinking about its future, and watching the creations and events of the world above. While Tholak's own interest in and activity on this world waxed and waned, the interest and activity of other great and terrible powers was constant and relentless.

Pseudo-Tholak saw the way that continents were made and unmade, the way that empires were forged and destroyed, and the way that lands were blessed and ravaged. Pseudo-Tholak's power war great, but it was dwarfed by the sheer unbridled, divine power of these great unknown entities which acted upon this world. Upon his world.

While Pseudo-Tholak buried himself deeper into the earth, surrounding himself with layers and layers of stone and metal, hoping to escape notice, he knew that his efforts to protect himself were ultimately futile. If one of the great outer powers wished it, his existence could be ended, and all of his works undone, all in one quick, effortless instant. This sense of futility and weakness drove Pseudo-Tholak to further, yet still knowingly futile, schemes to protect himself.

Although his ability to create beings with the spark of life had been vastly diminished by the creation of the Trolls, it was not yet fully expended. While Pseudo-Tholak could not create another race of self-sustaining, reproducing, intelligent life, he could still create singular entities of life and power. And so Pseudo-Tholak did just that.

From the many layers of stone and metal between him and the surface Pseudo-Tholak began to form a guardian, who would patrol and defend the depths of the earth, and dissuade or devour those who would come too close to his resting place. Like a potter shaping clay, Pseudo-Tholak spun the stone and metal above him into a great disk, over a kilometre wide and nearly a hundred metres thick. Within this crafted disk Pseudo-Tholak imbued a spark of life. Lacking in intellect or higher purpose, this creation, this monstrosity, sought only to feed, to grow, and to survive. Pseudo-Tholak needed no more from it.

From the disk's edges, gaping orifices opened up, and rock, metal, and gems poured into them. From these devouring orifices appendages of stone grew, and those appendages stretched out and devoured more minerals, and grew and grew more still. Exerting some control over its writhing, mindless appendages, the disk was able to manipulate them to eerily and calamitously propel itself through the earth, causing tremors and quakes above and leaving great cavernous spaces in its wake.

This great and terrible disk of many stone appendages, this Polypetrapod, did little to stem Pseudo-Tholak's increasing sense of fear and helplessness, but it did make the depths beneath Tholak's continent just that much more deadly and treacherous.

Effect For 1 of his 40 points, Tholak uses Command (Divine) Avatar to make his avatar use Create Monstrosity. The created Monstrosity, the Polypetrapod, is a chthonic beast of stone. The Polypetrapod's central body is a round, disk-like mass, and from its edges many large, tentacle-like appendages, each tipped by a devouring orifice, writhe and bore through the earth. Think like a whole bunch of long, eyeless Onixes, each attached at the tail to a large, stone disk.

The Polypetrapod lives deep in the earth beneath Tholak's continent, and its irregular and scattered movements create great networks of tunnels, caverns, and other subterranean spaces beneath the surface. The Polypetrapod does not often rise near the surface, but those exploring deep tunnels or living in deep caverns may rarely encounter one of its appendages. The Polypetrapod is not aggressive per se, but it is indifferent to and perhaps unaware of any death or devastation it causes, and is territorial if it deigns to notice any signs of life within its subterranean domain.

The Polypetrapod's appendages are of thick, hard stone, and are thus hard to injure, but they are not magically protected and are not invulnerable. They can be crushed, crippled, or even detached from the Polypetrapod's central body by mundane destructive events, natural or otherwise. The Polypetrapod's central body will also deliberately detach those appendages that become so large as to be unwieldy, or which otherwise hinder the Polypetrapod's ability to travel through the earth.

The Polypetrapod's core is invulnerable to mundane weaponry and natural seismic events, but can theoretically be breached by divine, magical, or truly heroic force. If damaged but not killed, the Polypetrapod will eventually regenerate, but the regions it heals over will be weaker than its original body. The Polypetrapod's core also grows new appendages over time to replace those that are destroyed or become detached.

Those appendages that are detached continue to bore through the earth, but detached from their core they take erratic, wide-ranging paths, occasionally boring up into mountains or even breaching the world's surface. Detached appendages can, depending on their size and the quality of what they eat, live for many decades or even centuries, but detached from the life-sustaining core they will eventually die, often lashing out in rage as they approach their final moments.