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[Shelved]Voidal Horror Rewrite


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The Voidal Horror Rewrite

 

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Above is a link to the document containing the Horror Rewrite. Direct all of your comments, concerns, and questions to this thread and I'll happily tend to them as best I can. This writeup comes to you from the likes of Tentoa, Phil, and myself. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 


 



The Elder Ones

 

Qthgotn-Qthgtyn, the Limning Herder. Shbchl, The Erudite Gorger. Achan-Chatla, the Lilting Wisdom.

Horrors from beyond time, beyond space, beyond mortality; the Elder Ones.

 

Born from the Veil spits anomalies and contradictions of nature; things misunderstood by reality itself may come crawling from beyond the bounds of Creation and into our world, entities so unfathomable and infinite that their existence is itself a violation of natural order. Creatures such as these, if they can be called such, squirm and wriggle in the Infinite Deep of the Veil, spawn of the Void, and are wholesomely strange and bizarre. No mortal tongue can describe them better than “abnormal.” Sentient as any man, intelligent as any scholar, and analytical as any scientist are these things, devious as demons and hungry as the Void they came from. They are inquisitive in nature as if they were manifestations of curiosity itself. These are Voidal Horrors and the world knows their touch.

 

From these three Greater Horrors and a volatile work of blood sorcery came the  awakening of Shub-Umbilius, the Arch-Horror Behemoth, the Singing Chasm and the Queen of Decadence. Her boundless mind is a great threat to Horror kind, asserting herself atop their pseudo-hierarchy not out of law or order but through power and domination; Lesser and Greater Horrors obey her hungers for the sake of survival for her mind is so great and terrible, boundless and infinite, and incomprehensibly ravenous that she may devour their Mindplanes at any moment and erase them. From her puss-ridden womb she spits Lesser Horrors, spawn of the Void, whom may be played by players with OOC consent from the lorekeeper of Horror lore. All Horrors require an application and filled character sheet as seen in the bottom two links of the page. All Horrors now spawned through blood magic may only be played by Event Team members or Lore Team members as event characters.

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

Definition

There are two variants of Voidal Horrors; Lesser and Greater. Both are incomprehensible aliens from beyond the stars which bear tentacles and float, both have blood rich in arcane-tinged genus capable of great marvels through blood magic, both are immune to worldly harm like poisons and disease for their forms are beyond the touch of nature and its weapons, both regenerate from sludge-beds throughout the world, both have heightened prowess with the arcane, both speak the tongueless tongue of Moonspeak, and both possess Mindplanes. The Greater variety may manifest their Mindplanes, and may birth writhing Broods.

 


 


 

Physiology

 

Horrors are chaos incarnate, as such they  come in all shapes and sizes, while they share the common theme of cartilage-based tendrils it so happens that each and every horror is different from their kin, some insectoid, some marine, some sharing traits with common animals. They are usually small and capable of locomotion, some via legs, some use the cartilage tendrils, while others may simply float each and every horror is capable of moving throughout our plane. Horrors are not physically adept, their impossible anatomy is not structured for use within our orderly realm, many if not all horrors are physically feeble and their lack of hands makes them clumsy, incapable of feats of great dexterity or strength such as a swordplay; they are limited to a lifting weight of fifty pounds or twenty three kilograms. No Horror has the muscular strength to wear armor, making them especially vulnerable to physical harm, indeed a Horror in battle is a dead one. What makes Horrors capable of surviving in our plane is their extremely high intelligence, they are each and every one clever, capable of diplomacy and often veer toward pacifism in order to maintain a conflict free existence.

 

Below is three  excerpt Horrors’ description:

 

“Achan-Chatla was a frightening figure to behold, eldritch and impossible by all anatomical standards. There was little sense to be had in its form, a wide vertical maw that parted to reveal innumerable teeth, clear like a snake’s eyelid but as strong as any beast’s this mouth acted as a center mass to a truly innumerable number of ivory tendrils, featureless save for the incredibly coarse skin and the malformed and many colored eyes that dotted them it floated above the ground by about a foot, its full height that of six feet,“

 

“Shbchl’s alien anatomy renders it fit for the environment it was born into; to compensate for dwelling in the Yawning Deep its form enabled its survival. Its entire body spare a number of fleshy, baroque tentacle-like limbs is covered in a lustrous, iridescent black exoskeleton. Light refracts off the creature’s shell and breaks into nebulous, ephemeral patches of emerald hues and shifting colors of violet and mauve. Portions of its shell and specifically its flesh tendrils all reflect a vibrant and vivid coalescence of nigh neon cyan and saturated violet when submerged within the dark; this coloration can be nullified if Shbchl wishes but it otherwise naturally glows in alien and weird patterns in the dark. Thick, nail-like hairs nearly half a meter long each sprout from parts the abomination’s joints, allowing it to sense the area around it like whiskers. Shbchl’s form disallows the carrying of weight over fifteen pounds lest it must stop floating and very, very slowly drag something under seventy pounds.

Its head consists of an elongated and plated cap of tall, salient ridges run like spines along its skull, ending in a fine point and its face a carapace-shelled, cyclopean maw of inward-facing prongs and layers of mandibles with small, spidery legs which it may hold and touch with around its mouth; pseudo-lips. Along the sides of its head and partially above the mouth are lines of a total thirty eight eyes, each varying in size but symmetrical to the opposing side’s size. The eyes of Shbchl along the ridges of its sides are situated two pairs of scorpion-like, husked, shimmering-black arms that meld from section to section before ending in a fine, hard tipped point like its chelicerae. Beyond Shbchl’s protracted head runs a lengthy, grubby body below akin to a black maggot. Its soft, supple, thickly veined and squirming self is protected by a stretch of centipedeal plates of an exoskeleton and numerous thick, rigid legs along its sides. A large thorax is situated below the head after two sternums is a hub of coxa which bud from its body like unwanted growths. From these coxa sprout a total of fourteen tendrils of soft, iridescent flesh complete with toothed suckers for gripping and raised rims of transverse, fleshy supports like rows of thumbs that run along the tentacle and complete the ends used to strengthen the durability of its arms and grip onto objects of move water and sand over it as a desert snake or eel uses to strafe through both mediums. This expanse of its lower body is usually tucked together in a zigzag pattern beneath its thorax and head, pulled up into a central “body” and is often used to protect its inner juicy bits. Should Shbchl become frightened and must flee or is either swimming in water or run through sand its lower body will undo and sprawl out for a total of six meters long and like a train the Horror will speed away in a serpentine manner; Shbchl’s alias is ‘the Sidewinder’ for this reason.

With its fingered maw, Shbchl may use its chelicerae and mouth-digits to grip onto an object about the side of a melon and unhinge its four jaws, opening a cavernous craw leading into its inwardly spiked, haired, blood-thinning saliva drenched gullet. This slow, vulnerable state is the most extreme physical feat of the Horror and like Achan-Chatla’s beak Shbchl’s maw may be snapped shut with extreme force, enough to crush bone to splinters to feed the creature. “


 

“As a denizen of the Void, its’ body is contorted much like its fellows. Its flesh is black as pitch, undulating slowly as whatever fluids it is home to pass feverishly within; the flesh itself is slightly chill to the touch, the freezing cold of the Void still clinging to its form. Without a true face, the head is so smooth as to gleam in the light of wherever it might be whilst a single tendril falls down from behind its head. In times of panic, that single tendril is known to rise above its head and split apart, forming two distinct curls that mimic the horns of a goat. The torso is tall and spindly, adorned with many hundreds of intricately curling patterns of what might be called veins, that conjoin together where the navel of a descendant might be found. Each arm is of the same black, growing greyer towards where we might expect the hands to be found. The wrist abruptly explodes into myriad tendrils. When necessary, the horror may cause both arms to split apart into several comprising tendrils, aiding them in whatever manipulation they may be attempting. Below the ludicrously thin waist, what we might expect to be legs split apart into again, several fairly large tendrils. Whilst these can be extended to propel the horror to their full height, they normally curl themselves around to propel their holder forwards through rotation. By turning around and around, each of these slowly hauls the horror onward.“

 

As well, a Horror’s blood is a potent concoction of genus and alien fluid, comprised nigh entirely of pure, raw mana from the Void. This rare blood creates the grounds for legendary feats capable by blood magic in the harnessing of excessive amounts of genus deep in the lifeblood of these slithering outsiders, especially regarding occult rituals using arcane arts. The potency in a Horror’s “veins” is consistent throughout their kind for their pink, bismuth blood has the volatility of threefold a mortal man’s worth. Imbibing such blood is a dreadful mistake for any sane individual, for the purity of arcane-tinged genus in the blood of Horrors is so strong that digesting the liquid begins a long and dark spiraling descent into madness. Like an archmage put into a hazy mental state from possessing powerful magic for too long, drinkers of this blood become ill with the likeness of the Horror they drank it from. However, to some it is a gift; to enter a Greater Horror’s manifested Mindplane the visitor must drink from the veins of the Horror in order to liken themself to the Horror so their brain may translate the dreamscape into something less harrowing.

 

With bodies comprised of manifested mana and as artificial, unfathomable works of flesh, carapace, and fluid, Horror’s lack the proper organs and lifeforce to  have their physiology disrupted by the stealthy agents of nature; disease and poisons are rendered inert inside a Horror’s body, simply sweating out of them in the form of mucus. This mucus, while originally toxic, is inert and the disease or poison once in their body has been rendered into nothing but gel and slime.

 

Death and Regeneration

 

Should a Horror encounter an event that would usually kill a mortal entity they are instead displaced. As entities without lifeforce, therefore not living, they thus cannot die nor be undead for they could never die to begin with; Horrors are an anomaly against nature and instead of losing their soul -- something Horrors lack all together -- their mind recedes to their Mindplane or their place within the Veil where they originated from. With a metaphorical foot already placed in the material world, the Horror may then choose to regenerate their body. As forces from beyond, they may recreate their avatars or choose to remain in the Veil and lurk as they like in its eternal aeons of chaos and madness.

 

An invasion of Horrors is denoted by sporadic growths from the deep wherein sludge churns and expulsions of mucus and amniotic fluid occasionally spill out like pestilent vomit. In locations where a Greater Horror deems safe and homely they may wretch up this naturally accumulating mucus and create a crib to meditate in, a bed for them to lay and regenerate within. Should their bodies become inert through pseudo-death or events which would usually kill a living mortal, their minds recede to their upper Mindplane wherein the force may rebuild its form by will. Soon, the avatar of their greater consciousness shall spew out from a sludge-bed, having regenerated in cocoon-like bundles of iridescent ichor in a purposeful bed or a stray one if a Lesser.

 

Magic

 

Eremites of the Void, Horrors are the natural-born masters of the magical chaos and contradictory, infinite anarchy of the Void; where Archons adopted the Void, Horrors were born in it, molded by it. As the quintessential creature to bear the arcane, the vices and limitations of magic for mortals are not so for Horrors, for they are the epitome of casters; true nightmares from the disarray and primordial soup of the Veil. Horrors devour knowledge; they hunger deeply for information, no matter its source, truth, or nature, however magical arts are treated as a fine delicacy to savor and gorge on through learning and experimentation. With minds unbound by the normal capabilities of even the wisest wizard and warlocks, Horrors may reach mastery over a magical art that requires study an IRL month and a half faster than other magi. Horrors are able to tap into the infinite cosmos of the Void and pluck mundane arts from it like fishing in a pond, their minds so boundless and abysmal that by the very act of being they absorb knowledge. Upon reading of or seeing any arcane magic cast or described, a Horror may teach themself the art through their inherent mastery of learning and tutelage under the Void itself, merely requiring an out of character overseer. As well, so long as their repertoire of arts remain mostly based in the arcane -- keeping at least four Voidal arts -- Horrors may expand their minds past the weak, limiting shackles of mortality and attune to a sixth magic.   

 

Lacking souls and lifeforce, Horrors are limited to the kinds of magic they may learn, leaving the following as possible arts they may come to study and master:

-All Arcane arts

-Atronach Forging

-Blood Magic

-Further Alchemy

-Soul Puppetry

-Voidal Feeling

-Arcane Displacement

-Cognatism

 

-Nazthorak

 

(Subject to updating.)

 

Language

 

Every Horror, no matter their shape or form, is capable of speaking what is recognized among other Horrors as the primal, crude, and raw iteration of what mortals deem language. Through whistles, slurps, belches, hisses, scrapings, scratches, and other woesome sounds meant only for a vacuum is the tongueless tongue of Moonspeak, the Common among those native to The Space Between. This maddening chatter gnaws at the minds of mortalkind for it is no physical creation of resonance or vibration but an extension of the Horror’s transcendent mind towards another, expanding and expressing itself through an unfathomable and nauseating babble. Only those truly and utterly insane may even attempt to grasp at the meaning of these “sounds,” but those forlorn and sad few dedicated to the study and allowed to listen to a Horror for long enough may learn to mimic the whispers and fevered gargling. These are known as the Moonstruck, speakers of Moonspeak. A sad reality for these individuals is that their forms were never made to allow such strange notes and weird melodies, forcing their speech of the language to be improper and poor: any Horror may appreciate the attempt but is equivalent to listening to a speaking deaf; close.

 

Mindplanes

 

Horrors, aberrations and mishaps in physical form, lack both souls and lifeforce for their invasion into the material plane granted them an avatar for the force that is their minds. Horrors are not abominations themself but rather the formless brains behind the puppet. The proverbial plane upon which these entities think is beyond mortal comprehension, some describable only by maddened babbles and fevered whispers of the moonstruck and ill. A scholar may describe them as fields within the Void, areas claimed by a Horror as Aenguls and Daemons had in the formation of the world in order to claim their powers, implying the Veil is a patchwork of small, Horror-claimed demiplanes whereupon they exist as half-Creation, half-Void cocktails of sinew and shell. These planes allow Horrors to exist without souls but as entities so unleashed and unburdened by reality that mere thought enables their pseudo-existence, machinations of the Void and utter madness. These planes are the homes to Horrors and where they exist on a half-spiritual level. So near to the Void and trembling, they allow Horrors their very nature of being such as their magical prowess or enriched blood. When a Horror is slain they retreat to this plane, expelled from their avatar, and slumber as long as they desire until they seek to reform their body.

 

These Mindplanes are playgrounds to Horrors, incomprehensible landscapes of nightmares and dreams borne of the Horror’s thoughts. Their cranium, however, is borne of a language so beyond mortals for most they cannot be trafficked to or beheld. Mental mages may attempt to peer into the mind of a Lesser Horror but only become stricken with madness upon the attempt, however Greater Horrors have more resilient planes which, with the proper precautions, can manifest into a physical plane where souls may vacation to under the right circumstances.

 

For a mortal to behold a Greater Horror’s Mindplane, represented by a 100x100x100 cube of bedrock tucked away somewhere in the world or build world, they must undergo a process of translation. In order for other minds to enter this greater mind, first they must be likened; for the visiting mind to attempt to comprehend the utter madness and pure, primal chaos that is a Horror’s Mindplane they must become like the Horror and spiral into madness with their blood to begin to try to understand and experience their mind, known as translating. A second translator is needed beyond the drinking of a Horror’s blood, that being that the Horror must know mental magic and has mastered their own mind, allowing for it to be tamed and subdued just enough so the minds of others are not torn asunder in the violent changing and anarchy of their thoughts. A third, final translator is required which is perhaps the most rare; a physical link must be made in order for the physical properties of Creation to attempt to follow into the Mindplane, where the insanity and utter chaos of a Horror’s mind is only slightly quelled. Here, through using a Horror’s blood to imbue either paints, clay, or mortar, works of great art must be made: paintings, sculptures, or feats of architecture. A blood-drunk, moonstruck madman must create these translators in order for them to function correctly under the babbling disorder of Horror magic. Should the chaos-embodying artistry be completed in method best representing the appropriate Horror, a hand may be laid upon the art and a passphrase of the Horror’s choosing may be uttered in whatever tongue the Horror deems fit to act as a key into their mind. This act follows the worldly laws of planar locomotion and movement between space regarding the arcane and here, with speaking a passphrase to enter the artwork, a being may disappear and be drawn into the translator to then appear within the Mindplane of the Greater Horror. These lands, while under the complete and total control of a Horror, are susceptible to damage; wear and tear upon their physical translator may render the connection to the Mindplane inert and should the relic of art be destroyed all minds bar the Horror’s are shunted out and their bodies remanifest in the material plane, suffering critical bludgeoning damage from being torn back into the world.

 

Broods

 

Greater Horrors, with empowered Mindplanes, are capable of the same power of Creation as the dismal Void they crawled out of. From Greater Horrors may pet-like creations be spawned from their ungendered wombs and spill forth miniature copies of themselves. The many-tentacled form of Achan-Chatla may birth tiny, three-armed squid-snakes  from his beak or the shelled and tendriled likeness of Shbchl may wretch up small crustaceans like pill bugs to serve it. These little critters are extensions of the Greater Horror’s Mindplane and serve as additional avatars for their mental force, addition arms and legs to a Horror’s metaphorical body. These creations may operate alone as thus be given small, menial tasks for unlike a mundane mortal the minds of these alien beings may act on multiple levels and thus function in multiple bodies, able to focus on more than a single thing at a time. These creatures may serve as substitutes to birds for carrying messages, small librarians to order and read books, canon fodder for combat -- of which these creatures prove utterly useless in a fight and cannot impose damage worse than mild scrapes and cuts -- or mere pets to coddle, love, or devour. A Greater Horror may have a maximum of five broodlings at any time and may spawn them at will.


 


Shub-Umbilius, the Trilling Cavity

 

Decadence in physical form. Gluttony, raw and true. A voracious appetite for all. This is Shub-Umbilius, a Behemoth Arch-Horror pulled from the greyspace of the Veil, mother to the squirming and languishing. Summoned through the black, occult sorcery of blood magic fueled by the fuchsia blood of the three Greater Horrors, Qthgotn-Qthgtyn, Shbchl, and Achan-Chatla

 

Bloated and lethargic, this pulsating mass of quivering flesh and humming bone mantlepieces is the colossal form of Shub-Umbilius, The Trilling Cavity. Her girth spreads ever far, filling her birthplace with her gargantuan being -- a chasm deep beneath a mountain, sizable just enough to fit her horrific alien form; one that was coated in a thick film of mucus and pus, occasionally writhing enough to part the film and expose its abyssal flaps and folds, her many eyes and gibbering mouths exposed to scour and babble at the walls. Her fleshy, brain-textured body mimics the very Void itself -- a bed of chaos borne of the churning potential -- whose skin and cartilage-ridden carriage wriggles and throbs with festering tumors and tendrils that match its oversized girth, and while able to destroy with her sheer physical weight she is too burdened with apathy to leave her cave, filling it to the brim with her mass. She instead opts to amalgamate the energies within her puffy innards, shaping twisted abominations of the Void within her to be wretched out and tasked with servicing her. These creatures alone, save for the few madmen who worship her terrible eminence, do her bidding for fear of consumption.

 

Tentacled and lazy, the Queen of Decadence earned her title rightfully; perplexed and curious of the nature of existence and Creation, she seeks to addle her brain and twist her perception as most intensely as possible. Cubic yards of drugs, tons of alcohol, and massive quantities of other such addling substances attract her taste, seeking to sit and bake for the experience is what she craves, hungering for a high ever unreachable. Too she hungers for knowledge and sends out her Horrors to acquire specific items; she hungers for history and for objects of historical importance so she may collect them and their annuls deep within the base of her belly. Another item she craves is magics, seeking her Horrors to pursue arts and feats of sorcery to fuel her drug-laden existence so she may master the Void and the curious oddities of mortal energies and maladaptations of the Void. Lastly and of equal weight, Shub-Umbilius craves meat. Livestock, mortals, even cadavers and rotten waste; the Cavity hungers, voracious and ravenous, and her want cannot be quenched. She sings her ghastly melodies through harrowing, artistic mastery over Moonspeak and chants her anthem throughout the ducts and crevices of her chasm, serenading all who come near with her lust for narcotics, information, arcane knowledge, and meat.

 

For her ***** tastes and odd lustings, the Trilling Cavity is a hermit at heart and a shy beast; only in the company of her most trusted is she comfortable, weary of the eyes of her Lesser Horrors or mortalkind. She thus requires a caretaker from her Greater Horrors, a being willing to dedicate itself to her and her cravings. Only the most utterly mentally ill and crazed may do, for the sanity of the living sickens the Behemoth, causing her belly to roll; she is home with the mad.


 


 

Lore Links

 


Voidal Horrors

Creation Lore

Shbchl, the Erudite Gorger

Qthgotn-Qthgtyn, the Limning Herder

 

 

Credits:

Zarsies: writing

Tentoa: writing, consultation, and damn good reading

Phil: writing and consultation

 

-If a Greater Horror goes inactive due to negligence for over three months a new Horror may be born to replace them, killing the previous.
-There is a cap of 5 Greater Horrors and 8 Lesser Horrors

-Moonspeak is nothing more than "nauseating babble" and cannot bring about mental or physical pain.


 

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Can you port over the text so that there's a copy on this thread?

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Just now, The Pink Lion said:

Can you port over the text so that there's a copy on this thread?

0
 

 

I can with text but not the images. ;-; Images for lyfe

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i yearn for the day when i can be as good a writer as zarsies 

 

juicy lore my dUde +1

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I might be biased but I like it. +1

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Great read and great lore. +1

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I'm very pleased. The lore piece is credible, tangible, and would make a fine part of canon. Excellent work you guys!

 

ps, sorta nsfw

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So long as Celestials are kept in mind and either left vague or close to what they are now then it seems okay. I suppose I don't mind that they aren't mentioned though I would have expected them to be in a rewrite. Other than that it seems a little biased towards one type of horror instead of keeping it open to individual interpretation. 

 

Edit: Horrors cannot use Celestialism imo. Celestials are keenly aware of one thing and that is their survival. Other horrors hunt them and so their is no way these horrors wpuld experience "the calling" because celestials would simply avoid them. 

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7 hours ago, Zarsies said:

-Runesmithing

Requires a soul

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Soul Puppetry doesn't require the users soul to be used. Though it uses the victim's soul blueprint. 

 

I would be down if horrors could use it +1

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5 hours ago, Sir K Andruske said:

So long as Celestials are kept in mind and either left vague or close to what they are now then it seems okay. I suppose I don't mind that they aren't mentioned though I would have expected them to be in a rewrite. Other than that it seems a little biased towards one type of horror instead of keeping it open to individual interpretation. 

 

Edit: Horrors cannot use Celestialism imo. Celestials are keenly aware of one thing and that is their survival. Other horrors hunt them and so their is no way these horrors wpuld experience "the calling" because celestials would simply avoid them. 

0
 

Celestials are not mentioned because this is not a rewrite for all Voidal Horrors; we still have Abominations, Behemoths,  Terrors, and Horrors. This focuses purely on Horrors of Voidal Horrors. The naming conventions are a little confusing but I'm not about to change the name just for that. Also I'd argue that said Calling would be the same because of the survivalist mentality of Voidal Horrors (see the original creature lore) for /not/ coming would be the threat against their survival, not coming to begin with.

 

1 hour ago, zzaacchhss said:

Requires a soul

0
 

Updated!

 

1 hour ago, Evocress said:

Soul Puppetry doesn't require the users soul to be used. Though it uses the victim's soul blueprint. 

 

I would be down if horrors could use it +1

0
 

Updated!

 

 

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I saw that Bane reference. 

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Great lore. I've experienced the type of roleplay that Voidal Horrors can bring, and it was quite interesting; keep up the good work!

+1

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Love it! Yet another great lore piece guys! Nice job. +1

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