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The People of Nothing.
Storyteller
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The Dwarves were the next creatures to make this way to the plentiful world. Dwarves, as everyone knows, pride themselves on their independence, craft, wealth and wit. Initial hostilities aside, soon the People of Nowhere mingled with the stout outlanders as they lived. Many the noble family started to lose their beards after a few generations with the strange, dark people in the untouched land. Many families of the People found them. The initial assessment of the short, stodgy stouts was that the people, tall and crude with an understanding of nature and how things worked that bordered on the inane, they had to admit a manic appreciation for the way the young civilizations toyed with crude clay and brick masonry. Too proud to ever coddle their taller, darker complexioned neighbors and family, the dwarves quietly tried to lead by example.. and found a liking to bricks and blocks, themselves. Their interest in smelting and smithing becoming no more than a hobby, as the dwarves moved on to real estate and alchemy. Once the first golem of animate brick and mortar was animated, and then the first sub-terranian city quickened and granted intelligence, there was no turning back. The Dwarves watched the People from their hidden homes.
Storyteller
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The People of Nothing were as children, you see. All races, all great people, as distinct and unique as they are, always begin as mundane grubs of a people. And then, at some point, they're touched by the divine fire. A molding breakthrough that defines them as a species, for the rest of that species days. The Elves wished to be noble, swift and eternal, like glass. The magic inside of them obeyed, and they became long lived and beautiful. Magic flowed through them like the light of the sun through a prism. The Orcs wished for simple strength and prosperity, for themselves and their kin. The people they conquered changed them. Orcs are diverse and hearty, because they have ancestry from everywhere. They may mix blood with most anything and adapt. The dragons sought only freedom, to never be denied access to anything, and to always be the apex of predators. Nature acknowledged their wish, and so the diverse flights became unstoppable in their own unique ways. Time would not take them, sea would not drown them, the earth would not pull them down. They would be big, strong and their breath an expression of their supremacy.
Storyteller
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The People of Nothing had just that. Nothing. No magic, no gifts, not even reason. They lived on the earth upon which they stood, and even that seemed to have no love for them. What salves for pain and suffering they had were passed down from parent to child, what health they maintained came only from what the plants and animals could produce. They could afford to give up nothing, for they truly had nothing. And still, on the whole, they were the kindest neighbors any race who settled on the surface of Nowhere had ever seen. No true pride, no gods, no armies. They were only as dangerous as the sticks and rocks of the region. Pitiable. But always unfalteringly compassionate. Naive. They knew anger, jealousy and hatred as individuals, but their inherent good always came through. They simply did not know madness or excess, having never had any. The older races admired the young native kin, which many of them correctly now called their cousin. To see them mature as a people, they felt, would be a grand adventure. To see the development of a grand people, and what they would become.
Storyteller
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Next came the dragons. Already neigh unstoppable from their ages of broods and generational adaptations, they found the many regions to be wonderful places to nest. With no competition, they too mellowed. Soon broods cropped up that were native to the land. Shortly thereafter, they came upon their first natives. In their dreams. Now, dragons are not fey. They are not beings of glamour, of passion or even fantasy. They simply go where they please. And the rich, naive dreams of the People of Nowhere were as entertaining as any theater. Soon they, too, respected the People of Nothing and their wonderful dreams. While they never sought them out as companions or to shepherd them, they left them and their livestock unmolested. They, too, wished to see the true birth of a great people. A pure, kind and just race, born of a bleak and powerless earth. And all the rest of the earlier migrants who arrived, agreed; The People of Nothing should be left alone. They observed the People as an uncle watches their beloved nephew in his crib, with high expectations and curiosity.
Storyteller
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Not all who came to the peaceful lands felt that way. In fact, over a period of one hundred years, many peoples of breed and kind from other regions came upon the world of Nowhere, eager to claim some of the land and bounty for themselves. Scarred, despoiled from countless aeons of conflict, competition and greed, they looked upon the budding People as a pack of predators would sheep. And so the People of Nothing were descended upon, before any of the established peoples knew they were there. The tall, dark skinned humanoids reduced to cattle, entertainment...... and food. Ogres, trolls, beasts of all sorts found the People a great source of amusement. A competitor too weak to strike back. They knew no magic. They knew no war. They knew only brick, only stick, only medicinal trick. Over two generations, the People of Nothing, who walked all over Nowhere, were reduced to the land of their birth. Their cries for mercy, for peace, fell to ears deafened by the laughter at their own cruelty.
Storyteller
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Ten years passed. The elves were the first to notice this change in the People. Where before, they'd frolick into the dreams of villagers and enjoy the curiosity, the innocence and wonder, now they saw only cynical nightmares. People tilling the land during the day tilled the land in their sleep, for masters that fed them scraps and lodged them in boxes. People defeated, having picnics with deceased relatives in their dreaming hours and pretending, if only for moments of rest, that everything would be normal again. That their kin weren't dead. Gone was the wonder. Gone was innocense. Many of their favorite people would never dream again. The pointed eared descendents of the dreamtime grew angry. The first people to anger, angry over Nothing.
Storyteller
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Ten years passed. The Orcs complacency was wearing thin. The smell of blood in the air unnerved them, or excited them. It had been so long, they'd forgotten which. It takes very much to make an Orc care about something that does not directly affect them or their family, but when their people are suffering, they all suffer with them. Such are the rules of family. "Where were all the Nothings?" They had not seen remote traders or wanderers pass by their villages and hamlets in years. Tenuous family ties and curiosity brought them to investigage. What they found shocked them. Shocked and disgusted.
Storyteller
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The habitats of their neighbors, the People of Nothing, were now mass graves and farm plots where the surviving descendents labored. Tribal and ancestral lands were now ruled by cruel beings newly arrived and unestablished. Tulpa, Bogey and Troll. Their bones treated with less respect than firewood. Family, neighbors, were suffering. Violated. Destroyed by foreigners. Left emaciated on roadsides and discarded as greasy refuse from cooking cauldrons. They did not forget the unrequented deference, the respect that had garnered their tolerance so long ago. The bloodline, however thin, they shared with them. Many axes were forged. Many hammers were smithed. Many tempers flared.
Storyteller
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Ten years passed. Ten years of denial by the dwarves. Soon, they hoped, the People who have Nothing would develop into Something. A trait, an affinity to native magic, divine patronage. A glorious, unified kingdom. Anything. Like anthropologists observing an endangered, dieing indigenous animal, the stout men of independence, integrity and inventiveness.. redacted. Nobody was coming to save them. No native deity, no metamorphosis. No breakthrough. The people of Nothing were true to their label. They truly had nothing native to the world that would help them. Nothing, but them.
Storyteller
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They came with axes, with spears. They came by foot, on horseback and some by wagon. They came, they slew, and they freed. Regiments of green and grey skins, who cut down adversairies with blunt, unsophisticated brute force. Legions of elves from the open plains and prairies, who stole into camps and villages and murdered scores. The races prone to fortressing were seiged by dwarves, and relentless, industrial demolition by their relentless animate brick golems. The interlopers who thrived on obscurity were rooted out and beheaded. Any who treated the People of Nothing as lesser people met the same grissly fate. Though they acted separately, their disgust converged. Indifferent to eachother, champions of Nothing.
Storyteller
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The blood of a thousand miscelaneous races congealed beneath the magic barren earth. The flesh and bones were eaten away. The next twenty years saw a dramatic rehabilitation, as the decimated cultures and people were retaught their old ways. A few even learned new ones. The wounds would take many years to heal. In this time, progress boomed. People learned things. The elves taught them of glass, dirt and beauty. The orcs of bronze and copper, eventually iron. The dwarves taught them of brick. The Band of the Indifferent all agreed, in tongues virtually none of them shared.
Storyteller
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Spring of the following year, celebrating the 21st year of liberation. All could feel it. The People of Nothing bred and spread, learned and burned. None of the magic races knew why, but they could feel it. So intimate the hum, the sensation, they knew it had to be soon. Every time they passed a village and marveled at the beautiful craftsmanship the people had made. Every time they witnessed a man of Nowhere tending the farms, and agrarian society. Settlement that did not exist beyond hunter and gatherers, just decades before. The People would change soon. Everybody knew it. The environment was blooming with new life, new energy. New, virgin magic. the wellspring of which had not been there before. The defining People and the land they sprouted from were maturing. It would not be long.
Storyteller
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Calamity. Somehow, by the mouth of some one or thing, word spread around the planes that a virgin land were coming to fruition. Primal, beautiful essences were seeding the world to bloom its native magics. That a world brimming with unspoken for, masterless mana and magical power was there, waiting to be exploited, nay conquered by those enterprising enough to dare it. Another wave of foreigners arrived, intent on carving into the world and drinking dry their claim of land. Mighty beings, both large and small. Some sapient, others mindless portals of primal hunger. The fertile Eden was again under attack, and the People, again, needed protection.
Storyteller
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The Champions of Nothing did not fare as well, this time around. Their numbers were too few, their means too limited. Their resources, respectable but exhausted. This time, the unlucky survivors joined their Nothings in bondage. As labor, as cattle, as food. The only survivors were the resistance that hid, or the sectors of each society that had stayed impartial and fled.
Storyteller
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The last vestiges of magic were finally bled dry from the Paradise of Nowhere. The world was aborted of its future, mined dry of its budding power, before it could even comprehend that it and its people had one. Never again would the world hold anything more than confused, ignorant animals and flora, with not a trace of the arcane or divine inside of them. The ancient mechanism, the timeless bond that tethers a sapient people to their origin, forever severed. Now, the People of Nothing would be, and would always be, a people who had Nothing. The only traces that it existed at all, now in the hearts, minds and souls of the people that exploited it. That profitted off the loss of others.
Storyteller
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The People were starved. Destitute. A newborn child without a teat to nurse. Their only allies in the world, strung along with them by the iron links, stirred amongst them in the mix of giant stews. Worked to death for the amusement of their masters, be they Gorgon, Griffin or Ogre. When the magic thinned and finally dried, the working abuse turned to simple, pointless cruelty.
Storyteller
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A man. A Person of Nothing. A being of Nowhere. His dark skin and kinky hair weathered and damaged by malnutrition and abuse. His wrists grown too thin to even comfortably hold the iron manacles that bound him to the ceiling. Delirious with hunger, deafened to the moans of his people and the races that would have loved to called him friend. He could barely register the slowly moving blob of shadow that crept along the corridor. His warden. A large, aged troll. The warden loved to consume prisoners, and he knew as the last man in his cell, he would be the one selected for the prison cauldron. A scrawny morsel to feed the man in charge, but a morsel nonetheless.
Storyteller
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The man died then. Oh, merciful release. The warm embrace of not living anymore engulfed him like a shawl, and he could see a figure before him. He knew not the face, but he knew the role of the person attached to it. Death. Death itself had come for him this night. The sinewless, animated skeleton glared with its unnerving sockets, and the poor dead man could not help but feel liberated. The worst had happened.
Storyteller
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"Hawenye," Began Death, "It is not your time." Poor Hawenye. His expression turned from one of elation to confusion, with equal parts fear. Not his time? Then why was he here? "Death is native to all lands with life. Where life manifests in spontanaity, Death manifests as well. Death determines who lives and who dies, and you are not meant to die this day."
Storyteller
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"Foreign souls have made themselves aberrant to this world. Foreign souls have swallowed up the birthright of its native people. In their guts digests pieces of the magic this world needed to mature and for its chosen people to steward it. In their hearts and flesh flickers the fires of creation. Your birthright, Hawenye."
Storyteller
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Nary a word was spoken between Death and the very startled animus of the former troll guard. The collector of the departed merely pulled the screaming beast into the sleeve of his cowl and continued on, fading into the distance as though nothing out of sorts had transpired, leaving Hawenye alone. This troubled the poor Nothing more than the brush with the force of nature ever had. Death had looked the other way. Out of pity or disgust, he couldn't tell.
Storyteller
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The emaciated body came back to life, as though it'd merely fallen into a starvation induced coma. His belly growled with an unmistakable hunger, hands suddenly giving way from the iron manacles. Falling onto the body of the dead troll, it was a matter of minutes before nature ran its course. The meat nourished in ways that the meat of regular animals and plants did not. Muscle, blood and marrow were each given their due. All but the bones, hair and nails. The meat of the magical creature was absorbed, put to work unusually fast. Hawenye put on weight. Muscle, blood and bone swelled to accommodate.
Storyteller
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In the morning after, when the guard had not returned, others became curious. An Orc guard arrived in Hawenye's wing, looking for signs of the wayward jailor. He found only a hideous collection of bones, hair and grease, and the most meaty Person of Nothing he'd ever seen. Fueled by rage of the obvious, unsure of how, the Orc opened his cell and began to beat poor Hawenye. To both their surprises, Hawenye's flesh refused to remain broken, torn or bruised. Like the troll which he had consumed, Hawenye now had the troll's power of regeneration. The Person of Nothing had stolen the birthright of his jailor. The humor was not lost on the man, who laughed loud and hard, recovering and refreshing after every hammering blow. Death itself had turned its back on him. His body repaired itself. There was nothing a mortal Orc could do about it.
Storyteller
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Hawenye strangled his Orc jailor to death with his chains. He then consumed him, his hunger seeming without finite depth. From the Orc, he stole the birthright of strength. The Person of Nothing now had Something More. Hawenye's righteous roar rattled the entire crude prison, as he charged about. More of his People were freed, and he bade them to follow. Nothing would stand in his way.
Storyteller
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A murderous surge sent heroic Hawenye into a spree, lopping off heads and splattering sternums of any that imprisoned them. His people, he bid to consume their meat and grow powerful. And so they did. Men, women and surviving children. He told them of how death itself refused to take him, how the foreigners had stolen their birthright. And most of all, he told them of power. If the interlopers had denied the People of Nothing their birthright, their claim to identifying divinity, then they would take the divine uniqueness of others as their own! Their allies, terrified what this meant for them, retreated back to their capitals. Whatever was coming, they wanted no part of.
Storyteller
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Many beings fell to the People of Nothing. Heroic Hawenye had grown, and grown powerful. From the troll he stole regeneration and constitution. From the orc, he stole strength. From the ogre, he stole endurance and near invulnerability. Biting down an ill intentioned fairy gave him superior agility, dexterity and fleetness of foot. He could fall slowly, but not fly. He were simply too heavy. But oh, to leap over trees with the strength of a body six times his weight and glide..
Storyteller
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The Divine fire, the birthright of mankind, was soaking into the people. The blank slates, the People of Nothing, would have their wish. It was not a being that told them, but an instinct. A drive. That their opportunity was before them, to define themselves as a species by their special traits. What would they be? Hawenye chose Nothing. The symbolic representation of magic's bane. Everything about the People of Nothing spoke of people who never had more, barely had enough. Their bestowment was not to empower themselves, but turn the magic of other races against them. Under the baleful eyes of a human, any that bore the native mystical power in their bodies and souls would start to burn. Their mana pools igniting like gasoline, their spells refusing to function. The metals silver, and cold iron became obstinate and toxic to corresponding invaders. Rather than choose the variety of their own divine mantle, they instead chose to be the bane of everybody elses. To strip the claim another living soul has to theirs, and use it as though it were their own.
Storyteller
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For a season, it seemed as though the world were on fire. Hundreds of thousands of beings were consumed, by jaws or flames. Their former allies cowered, huddled into their capitals and praying for their friends to remember them. The influx of immigrants stopped. The magic so swallowed by every invader who arrived now depositing back into the world, where it belonged. When the elves, the dwarves, the orcs and remaining dragons emerged, searching for signs of humanity, they found none. At least, not until they found a door.
Storyteller
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Through some means, some miracle, the People of Nothing ignored them. As though they weren't there. As the months went by, the humans of Nothing became translucent and ethereal, eventually vanishing from the world altogether. They left an entire heritage of native magic behind with them, choosing instead to live in a world of reality. Salty, banal practicality. But they did not harm or evict their closest allies. And so, the two worlds that were one remained so. The former Allies of Men would dwell in the magical side of Earth, and humans would dwell on the side without. To this day, the Allies of Men remain indifferent to friendly with eachother, and hostile to all outsiders. No human walking the earth today knows the truth. That their kind may stop the things that only Nothing can stop.
Storyteller
Engineer Guy
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I liked it. Sort of iffy at some points, but really good. Not exactly sure how you could use it for anything /tg/ related though.
Violet !!erCpmb+Sv1e
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>>14734966 Beautiful.
Thank you.
Saved, and I'm going to show this to my group.
I think they'll really like it.
Anonymous
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bravo good sir, bravo indeed. a thoroughly enjoyable read.
Anonymous
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It's times like these I wish I kept reaction images...
Storyteller
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Glad you folks like it. Took me half an hour.
Anonymous
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At the point where he started eating people, I was like "AND THUS THE TYRANIDS ARE BORN"
Anonymous
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Damn. This sounds like an alternate setting for Changeling to me. The Hedge is replaced with the magic side of Earth, Faerie is replaced with Nowhere. Hobgoblins are the various denizens of magic Earth. Keepers are jailers and slavers from Nowhere who use the World's magic to change the People in the way that they once changed themselves, by shaping them in the image of the Hobgoblins and the Keepers. The shaping would be done by taking the magic which had been tainted by fae and reclaimed by the People back out of the Earth and putting it back in the People, forcing them to reclaim what they had shed. Upon their return and escape back to the world they chose from the world they deserve, they find themselves still possessed of their magic, unsure of how to shed it.
Anonymous
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This needs more people ingesting it with their brains
Anonymous
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> Ate them and gained their powers
JSCervini !!L+hOixyXrvo
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Oh yes, I definitely like this! And I would agree that this would be a great alternative setting for Changeling alright.
Anonymous
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coolstorybro.jpg
