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[okenenst]

Erilim Through Our Eyes 1 - You don’t need to be a good shot in Erilim sometimes

The cracking sound of thunder deafened his ears to the thumping muscle in his chest. The sensations of the scorching sand which had slipped its way up into his shirt and down into his boots quickly became non-existent as the screaming blue bolt of energy flew only inches above his head. There was a draft in his hat now. The sweat that had been trickling down his face felt almost electrified for a lingering moment as he stared wide-eyed into the swirling crystalline impact zone which was only four feet away from the sand dune he had pinned himself against, it stretched on for at least another ten feet and emitting a low and crackle-riddled growl as it slowly dimmed.

There was no time to stare, though. ‘Thwomp!’ The sound the rifle’s canister being ejected quickly ushered him back to full-awareness. His hand fell to his side; he hadn’t even unholstered his pistol until now. The faded-brown boots were planted firmly into the sand, one after the other as the duster and now partially ruined, wide-brimmed hat clad figure fully exposed himself from cover, the opposition in sight. An inexperienced arm pulled up the small gun, the small sloshing of a green liquid from within the glass canister kept him reassured that he hadn’t forgotten to replace an empty one. Catching a glimpse of the large bipedal reptile duck down behind its own sand dune, one much higher up, actually was relieving. It meant that he had been overestimated, but overestimated in the wrong way.

Bright brown eyes squinted and he braced as he quickly cranked back the lever by its grip with one hand and quickly squeezed the trigger with the other. There was a bright green flash, a glowing beam whirred out of the narrow end and just as it appeared to about to head off into the distance, far beyond his target, it suddenly changed course, diving down to where it had been hiding. It ended with a green splash of light on the other side of the hill. The man crouched back down, despite knowing too well what this weaponed was promised to do, and that his enemy had not seen that potential was a guarantee that things had gone in his favour. But he wanted to make sure, just in case. A few moments passed and all was still quiet, bar the calming winds which were no longer trying to throw sand in his face. A soft sigh was breathed. Now began his trek up the steeper sand dune. Once at the top he spotted his assailant lying sprawled out down the other side of the dune. The face-down crocodile wasn’t dead, his weapon wasn’t meant to kill anyways, but he did worry somewhat in case he had been hurt on the way down.

The slim figure crouched over him, examining his awfully big duster and other articles of clothing. He was a little jealous of the quality and condition they were in compared to his own worn-out attire. That said, he was quite impressed to see such clothing fashioned for a nine-foot bipedal crocodile. Coming back to the matter at hand, he began to poke around his pockets for the item. As the scarf around his mouth was pulled down, he groaned, realising that if it was in the reptile’s front pocket he would have to maybe flip him over.He had the time to do that too. That made it all the more annoying, his shot would likely had put him to sleep for at least a few hours, maybe half a day. Quickly spotting the rifle that was nearly as big as himself, he thought it might make a good wedge to roll him over with. Of course he made sure to check it wasn’t loaded or primed to fire before he did so.

His arms weren't cut out for this kind of work, but it was hopefully the only job of this nature he would have to do, then he could be on his way again. Back on track.

Trying to comprehend just how long he had been out here was a futile effort, as time here, as he had been told by the many patronising ‘old’ folk who had been here ‘longer’ than he had, was soft. While he didn’t really understand exactly what 'soft time' meant, and he had an inkling that many of the people who had told him this also did not know either, he kind of got the general gist of it. While it was a simple fact of this infinite desert, it terrified him deeply.

Tobias and Adi had fled together. The world was falling apart around them and as a last ditch-effort, they set sail for Erilim. Erilim was not simply a location that could be marked on a map, which made finding it a difficult effort, but once you were there you could not leave. But at least it was unaffected by the near apocalypse occuring in the world around it, some even speculated it was a different planet all together, even if you could sail to it across Okenenst’s seas.

But as they arrived and swallowed by Erilim, all their exits cut off from them, they became separated.

Adi shook his head, pulling himself out of the day-dream, focusing back on flipping this guy over. Day-dreaming was dangerous, you really could spend hours or days doing it without even realising, because time was ‘soft.’ It worried him. He was only doing this to find Tobias again; it’s all he wanted. They came here to escape the world together, not to be separated forever. If he knew this… they might have stayed behind on the ending world. How far could they even be apart? Both in terms of distance and time. He knew people didn’t really die of old age here, not that he had ever heard of at least. But anything could happen within the hundred days or years they had been here. He knew he would recognise him if he saw him though, he hadn’t met any other humans out here yet, and neither had the people he met here either.

The lizard flopped over, Adi grimaced as he saw all the sand stuck to his face. He didn’t hate this guy enough to leave him like that, but before he could get distracted he rummaged through the front pockets. He knew these folk were called Agura and he always felt weird about unconsciously applying pronouns to them, they only had one sex and many of them rejected the notion of gender. But Silive had insisted that this one had adopted the male gender after spending however many centuries around others.

The small ball of patterned metal was eventually tugged out of his front pocket, and Adi smiled not out of satisfaction but relief. This heat was getting to him; he still wasn’t used to it. And now with his hat ripped he could feel it even more on his dusty brown mop of hair. He swapped his hat with the Agura’s. He figured that he might as well have been owned it for nearly having his head shot off. He was surprised to find that it fit him snuggly, though. The once pale, now tanned hand wiped most of the sand off his black scales before looking towards his over-sized rifle. Adi didn’t like the idea of this guy really hurting others with something like that, he figured there might be little left of someone if they actually got hit with it. And at the back of his mind he knew he could sell it too. So back to Silive we went, trailing the rifle and with an extra belt of magic-filled canisters wrapped around his waist.

Just another step closer to Tobias, he thought to himself. But how many more?

[okenenst]

The Conceptual Plane

Okenenst has more than simply one plane of existing, while most of the stories take place within the first plane, the physical one, there are many more which have been created passively or intentionally throughout its entire existence.

One such plane is known simply as the Conceptual Plane. Its origins lie with early sapient life and the birth of religion. The Conceptual Plane works through genuine belief, and so when the first races and cultures began to spring up around the world their gods were made manifest within the Conceptual Plane. As they began to believe in their gods, they were becoming reality as a sort of snowball effect was taking place, the more they worshipped, believed and the numbers that do so increased the more real their gods became.

It is reasonable to question how gods who created the world in one culture can exist with gods of other cultures who very well likely have their own different world creation stories. Make no mistake, every god that has its followers and has been born from the conceptual plane does exist in varying degrees, but all of this causes a meta-physical strain on the world.

As the strain of the world is subconsciously felt, it sows discord among its unwitting denizens. When this strain reaches critical mass globe-spanning war often breaks out, natural disasters are rife, and countless nations are obliterated. However not every god can simply be undone by destroying its worshippers. Some gods, through one way or another, are able to escape their existence in the Conceptual Plane and become self-sufficient, some abandon their followers while others rule over them directly in the physical plane.

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly how many people need to believe in a god or how much they need to believe in it for it to exist within the Conceptual Plane, let alone for one to transition to the physical plane too. It could be thousands or it could be only one. A god made from one mind has yet to happen, but it is not impossible, however this is a belief to the point of absurdity that the individual would need to be completely deluded at the least to even have a chance of creating a god.

The Conceptual Plane is not limited to the creation of gods, not by a long shot. Magic in countless forms has been born from the plane, most magics do not need vast amount of followers to be brought into creation, and they do not need active practitioners either.

Ironically, the god that is often believed in the most is never one that people worship. Every nation that has hated each other and each others cultures and their gods have all contributed to one False God. The False God often is born into the physical plane during the critical mass of the meta-physical strain placed on the world. It embodies everything every nation or culture hates about each other and yet it spares no one, as it is imbued with the evil, vile and unholy attributes that the hate-filled denizens hold with only contempt within their hearts for the other nations of the world.

But yet, some gods pre-date even the Conceptual Plane...

[okenenst]

I am very happy to finally be able to share some of the things from my original universe which I have decided to dub as “Okenenst” which is named after the planet where the majority of these stories will take place. Also this piece took a little under 3 hours to complete and my pen sensitivity bust on me, of course I could have just restarted the computer but I’m just too damn lazy. However for now we focus on the origination of Okenenst and the universe.

The Ur-Gods.

They are astronomical sized beings with a vague humanoid shape, they existed far before anything else in the universe yet we do not know where they origins lie. They were rather simple and base beings, they were not all knowing nor with any sort of intelligence to use. Their lives are a mystery yet their deaths were the most important things to ever occur in the known universe.

As an Ur-God dies its soul erupts from its chest and burns eternally in space, forming a star. Its body then cools as it no longer has the heat of its soul, the body will then crumble and fall apart creating rock and ice, these materials then collide with each other and form planets.

Okenenst is one such planet created by the remains of an Ur-God and it currently orbits the sun created from the soul of the last of the Ur-Gods. The knowledge of the Ur-God’s existence is known to no one, no beings in the universe ever co-existed with the Ur-Gods and they did not make any records or leave anything else behind, they are truly enimgas.

The universe would perhaps be a more frightening place should one know about them, the collection of stars that occupy the night sky are essentially a graveyard of dead Ur-Gods.

[okenenst]

90% of Gheliv art made before the Ruination is scenes based on the misinterpretation of other races’ folk stories, legends etc but with all the characters replaced by humans

[okenenst]

As revenge for slaying the revered Basilisk, the primordial dragon, the Eeir performed a ritual to uproot the massive glacier they called home and drive it through the centre of the west-most continent and right through the Gheliv capital city, practically obliterating it.

This event was known to the remaining Gheliv as The Great Ruination, or simply The Ruination. To the Eeir that day was called many things as it was both a day of justice and morning, but in Eeir imagery it is often depicted as the bones of the Basilisk rising one final time to devour the humans who slayed it before resting eternally.

[okenenst]

Agura are a race of bipedal swamp reptiles (basically crocodile people) who inhabit the southern swamps of the westmost continent. Previously divided into many tribes, they unified when the Gheliv people began to use terraforming to shrink their swamps.

An odd curiosity is that at any given point there is three albino Agura among their entire species, they are referred to as Shulash meaning ‘God-devoted’, they act both as priests and warriors, it is common for Shulash to become famed by their people for their expertise in combat despite their white scales not being as camouflaged in their swampy environment, but the sight of a white Agura covered in the red of Gheliv blood is a striking image that can almost never be erased from the mind.

Shulash are indeed closer to their gods and often perceive the world around them differently than the rest of the Agura, while their abilities often vary from each Shulash some of them can include the ability to feel what the trees and water sense, the ability to spread the growth of the swamp through rituals, the perception of just some of the multitudes of planes of existence and non-existence (which can be used to seek guidance directly from their gods among other things). There is no known limit to what gifts a Shulash can have or develop. 

Despite their gifts Shulash can also be born or develop curses on themselves, mostly through accident, the most extreme cases of this have been passive necromancy which causes nearby corpses to rise and follow them. And also passively causing diseases or illnesses to most non-Shulash around them, most commonly blindness. Because of this Shulash typically live in isolated temples from an early age however blood-relatives of the specific Shulash are immune to any of their curses. Villagers and other tribe members often leave gifts and tributes at the temples for the Shulash, showing that they do care for them despite the unintentional harm they may emit simply by standing near them.

Agura are an entirely hermaphroditic race and the concept of gender is one that is foreign to them.