BELOW: CRAWL 10 (Patreon)

The list of changes is… extensive. Between the list of inactive titles, the boosts to my Aspects, the new WOUNDS, it’s a lot. And I can’t help but notice that three of my five Aspects are perched right at the threshold of 20, offering me the tantalizing possibility of three new skills to go along with them. 

HUNGERING GHOUL: LOWEST TIERTHAUMIELSIN: 33ASPECTS:

VIOLENCE: 17 (14+3)One’s ability to cause Harm and Suffering

DESIRE: 33 (23+10)One’s ability to Perceive and Influence indirectlyLust’s Blinders

CONSUMPTION: 19 (14+5)One’s ability to Devour and Endure

COWARDICE: 19 (13+6)One’s ability to Avoid harm and find Escape

TYRANNY: 13One’s ability to Command and Dominate

SALVATION: N/AOne’s ability to Exist

COMMANDMENTS:YOU POSSESS NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. SUFFER AND BECOME.

MANIFESTATIONS:YOU POSSESS NOTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. SUFFER AND BECOME.

GNOSIS:MANIPULATION OF SIN (2nd TIER)One’s being is defined by SIN, but through comprehension, through will, a SINner may shape that definition, turning their acts of un-grace into specific steps, specific changes, and further distance from the ABOVE. More than just a thing to imbibe, the true manipulator can wield SIN as fuel, as lubricant, as multiplier of harm.

WOUNDS:BROKEN GULLET (COMMON)Shattered pieces of what was a face, what was a throat, forcing one’s hunger to overwhelm and allowing them to shovel anything into the wound that causes it.SUFFERING STOMACH (Uncommon): Torn open and made to drench flesh in pain and acid, an organ birthing violent digestion that burns through living and Still matter just the same.EXPANDED MIND (RARE)Cracked like an egg and left to bleed its yolk, the weakness of the flesh is offered onto the altar of the awareness of the mind. OSSIFIED JIGSAW (COMMON)A body once designed to be whole is refitted as a jagged puzzle, forced to function with the trauma of its shattering.

ACTIVE TITLES:

“ONE WHO ENDURES STILLNESS”Common TitleTrapped, unable to move or even breathe, this SINNER has maintained their consciousness, has kept their sanity and self, refusing the erosion of Stillness. +1 TYRANNY+2 CONSUMPTION+15% STEALTH WHEN PERFECTLY STILLSIN DEGRADATION SLOWED BY 7%

INACTIVE TITLES:

“ONE OF THE BREATHLESS” Common TitleIn spite of the presence of breathable air, the SINner has decided to willingly forgo respiration for over a month during their time BELOW. +1 TYRANNY+1 DESIRE+5% SIN intake from Breath

“ONE WHO FOLLOWS STUPIDITY”Common TitleIn spite of their explicit awareness of the foolishness of the decision before them, this SINner has strode forward, pursuing their own incomprehending idiocy over the blessings of common sense. Entering a trap with no plan of escape, facing a beast whose skill and might eclipses one’s own, erasing crucial information from one’s mind for no good reason, all these and more are the least of this SINner’s stupidities, and the likes of which earned them this Title.+3 DESIRE

“BEHOLDER OF THE HEIGHTS”Common TitleA SINner has glimpsed the heights to which they might one day climb. Having borne witness to the horrors of their older and more vile fellow, they know now the fate of all who strive deep BELOW.+2 CONSUMPTION+1 COWARDICE+5% Resistance to SIN pressure

“BLIND FOOL AMONGST FOOLS”Harsh TitleBearing a full mind and open senses, and then casting them all aside, is an impressive feat. Trusting oneself entirely to machinations beyond them, chance, or the powers they believe their own, earns the mad their own Title.+3 DESIRE+4 CONSUMPTION+1 COWARDICEA single usage of “Fool’s Luck” 

“SURVIVOR OF A LESSER FIGHT PIT”Common TitleMore than half of those who enter a “fight pit” remain there until they go Still. More than half of the remaining become fodder and food for the ongoing slaughters. This SINner is neither category.+2 VIOLENCE+1 CONSUMPTION+10% Damage to others

My stat sheet is extensive. Dramatic and exhausting to look at in equal measure, and utterly impractical if I was in the midst of combat or in a hurry, but informative, at least. Like reading a damn textbook entry every time I try to think about myself in more than abstract terms. 

I can disregard all inactive titles for now. They’re strong, and most of them are, in my opinion, better than the one I currently have equipped, but until I gain the control required to tear its many roots out of my pool of SIN and back out to the surface, I don’t know how to replace one with another. So it’s irrelevant. To boot, even if I could, I would be unable to equip more than one at a time, though I don’t know just how many of them I’ll be able to equip once I’m past the THAUMIEL threshold. 

Maybe I’ll be able to sacrifice or “eat” some of them during the evolution process. I don’t know, and can’t spare the energy to care right now. It’s all moot, because I don’t have the skill or power to do anything with it yet. 

My priority, then, is to spend my SIN as fast as possible. 

Back in the “fight pit”, I ate and hurt enough people that I made it past the evolution threshold, more than once. If not for my GNOSIS, the “manipulation of SIN ability”, I’d probably have fallen into a trance right then and there, but being able to forcibly drag myself back from the brink probably pushed me towards another tier upgrade, and allowed me to pump up all of my stats wildly. 

It was stupid. Risky. Unnecessary. But I… don’t really care? 

When everything’s suffering, then the worst suffering of all is time. Maybe. The thought of being eaten? Arrogance or not, delusion or not, I think I could cope with it. Survive. Make something of myself in all that acid and lack of air and crushing flesh. But the thought of being powerless for even longer?

I hate it. Viciously hate it. 

So I did something stupid, and gambled with high stakes in a game whose rules I don’t know and with money I don’t have. And I won. 

I don’t think I ever want to do that again, and I didn’t enjoy it, and I’m probably going to be dealing with consequences from it, but fuck it all, it paid off.

I’ve got 33 points of SIN remaining. That’s enough for two upgrades. Which means I could either get two of my Aspects up to twenty… or I could get DESIRE up higher.

I don’t know if reaching 40 will do anything. Double of 20, which is when I got my first skill, so maybe I’ll get my second, but maybe it’ll be a totally different threshold, a random number or a way higher multiple or whatever the fuck. It would be another gamble, a big gamble that might cost me another two skills for a few more days (or a few more blasphemous meals), for maybe no reward at all. 

I can feel one of my new WOUNDS at work. 

Expanded Mind is, like all the other WOUNDS, a give-and-take scenario. On the one hand, my skull plates are officially… well, disconnected is putting it gently. There are now big fucking gaps in the architecture of my skull, where the brain matter beneath it has been forcibly allowed to expand. I haven’t noticed any specific effects as of yet, but as I stare at the possibilities in front of me and ruminate, I definitely feel… something.

It’s not like I’ve got more thoughts per second or anything. It’s not that I’m suddenly magically smarter. It’s more… It's kind of like being high, like a little bump of cocaine and a mellow hit of weed right after, like the sleepiness is added to a new burst of energies and ideas.

Except that’s probably an inaccurate description, but I’ve never had cocaine and I don’t know what I can compare my brain to except itself, so. There. 

But I look at the amount of SIN that I have, and the skills available to me, the gamble in place before me, and my brain sort of… tingles. 

It’s only made it easier to crush my fucking skull, and definitely makes my head bob a little bit when it moves. It’s been made heavier by the way the plates aren’t anchored to each other and with the additional brain mass in there, and it hurts, though not nearly as badly as I feared. More of a constant migraine than anything you might expect from “my skull is broken open in multiple places”.

So far as I’m aware, every WOUND has its uses. It makes the suffering worth it, so long as you can endure it. So I’m hoping that this one works just as well as I need it to, and helps make this decision easier, or more logical, or something. 

Two Aspect increases. I can either do nothing, get two new skills, or hope that making it to 40 is enough to get a second, higher-level skill. 

Placed in front of me like that, there’s really only one right answer. 

I push all but three of my total SIN units out of my center and deeper into myself, digging through the Aspects of my being under the guidance of the system. 

CONSUMPTION +1

COWARDICE +1

CONSUMPTION HAS GROWN PAST THE LIMITS SET UPON IT. AN ASPECT HAS ESCAPED THE BOUNDS SET UPON THE FORMS OF CREATION, AND MUST TAKE NEW SHAPE. 

COWARDICE HAS GROWN PAST THE LIMITS SET UPON IT. AN ASPECT HAS ESCAPED THE BOUNDS SET UPON THE FORMS OF CREATION, AND MUST TAKE NEW SHAPE.

CHOICE IS DEMANDED. A NEW FORM MUST BE ESTABLISHED. CHOOSE. SUFFER. AS IT MUST BE. 

The same message, just modified this time. Again, I sink into the notification, drifting down into it, like a superficial layer below reality. Not as profound as falling into the depths of that cold, cold darkness of true evolution, of breaching past a threshold gate, but still plenty dark, still plenty chilly, and full of strange and winding patterns. 

Again, I descend down into the lakes, down into the malformed river that is not that boundless ocean but is still deeper than I would ever like to go. But it’s disorienting, now, like I’m falling into two at once. One leg into one cold dark, one leg into another, or… or like falling into a puddle of oil and water at the same time, pitch dark, two different layers of liquid that occupy the same space. 

It’s not something I can easily describe. I fall into both at once, and both of them present themselves to me, and my newly broadened brain-sac opens up to the possibilities of both.

In one direction, the cold that feels hungry, that saps my strength, that fills me with a feverish energy and makes me feel starved nonetheless, splits into two directions. Except not really, there’s actually dozens, maybe hundreds of different currents, light little tugs and minute little movements that try to distract me or pull me but aren’t strong enough to make a difference. I think… maybe, maybe I could follow them? But they’re so light I don’t know how I’d ever find where they’d go, or what I’d find.

So two pathways that pull at me, two strong enough to make me feel where I am and what I am. 

FORM OF CONSUMPTION: EVER-STARVING BEASTLING

FORM OF CONSUMPTION: BLOATED, FULL, DISTENDED

And then, there’s the other direction. There’s the shape of my fear, my COWARDICE, and how… how shallow it is. 

I do not embody this Aspect of myself. My fear is too deep to run from, and I have spent too long crawling towards it, for there to be many directions I can choose. Still, there are those currents, lightly drifting past, but almost none of them are strong enough to follow, almost none of them cold enough to feel a difference in. 

There is only one thing pulling at me here, and even then, it is a soft tug, one I have to actively look for and pull myself towards. 

FORM OF COWARDICE: SLITHERING WORM

My mind feels stretched, aching, turning and hurting and falling into both pools at once. 

EVER-STARVING BEASTLINGEat, eat, eat, and yet you never find sustenance. Chew, chew, chew, and never find satisfaction. In that endless hunger, find the truth of who you are, and the truer-still facts of your nature as less than an animal. Unnatural, cursed, yet still you find meaning. The more you starve, the more your bestial nature emerges. The more you satisfy your urge, the greater the depths to which your starvation may fall.

The other current is warm. Too warm. Feverish, and thick, like sludge.

BLOATED, FULL, DISTENDINGGreedy little thing. Abomination of wanton hunger, consumed and consuming, your gluttony begins to show upon your flesh and function. Swallow whole that which should overwhelm you, eat more than you need, and be rewarded for that SIN. Consuming flesh to the point of breaking apart thine own body allows that body to be reshaped, growing vaster and harder to kill with every stomach-bursting meal.

Neither option is… particularly appealing. But both of them feel like they’ve come from actions I’ve taken in the past. I have, just recently, even, eaten to the point that my stomach should have burst. Would have, if not for the Broken Gullet. Synergies are funky like that. But I ate more than I needed to, inherently, by diving into that fight pit and drinking deep of everything I could get my hands on. It tracks that I’d be offered something gluttony based. 

The other one… well, they both punish me, I guess. One of them is cruel in a very different way, though. Bloated, Full, Distending demands that I stuff myself full, making my dysphoria worse, breaking myself along the seams, only to grow further. It would probably make up for my physical weakness to an extent, and without needing to be a WOUND. 

But it would certainly be harder to navigate the tunnels if I got larger. And harder to fight if I got slower. And… it doesn’t fit the vision I have for myself. 

That last part yells the loudest. 

Ever-Starving Beastling is straightforward. Suffer more, get stronger. Eat, gain the ability to suffer worse. The specifics of all that? Completely fucking alien to me, and probably will remain so for a good while, even after I pick the skill. But I can handle suffering. If it means I can do what I want to do, I can handle a lot of suffering, and if I can’t, well…

It’s amazing what the human mind can get used to given enough time. If I manage to keep myself together, if I manage to push that madness the way I want, then it’ll all be worth it. 

The same gamble I’m still taking. I refuse to give in to my fear that I won’t be enough, that I’ll break. I won’t break. I will break hell. 

If I have to suffer for it, so be it. 

I push my mind into Ever-Starving Beastling, and brace myself. 

Then, my mind switches tracks, slipping over into the other pool of liquid un-reality that exists inside me and inside the Aspects I am deepening. 

SLITHERING WORMYours is the aspect of scavenger. Crawling thing. Maggot of dead flesh. Vulture over still-walking corpses-to-be. Your cowardice is that of the opportunist, the practicalist, whose fear defines boldness and opportunity as much as it does your downfall. If you are seen, that you are a worm is known. If you are unseen, you crawl, squirm, climb, wriggle through the world as monster and exploiter. At the cost of SIN, be as your nature demands even when seen. 

It reminds me of Liar, Thief, one of my skills I was offered by my DESIRE Aspect. It claims to make it clear to others “what I am”, though what that actually means is unclear. Will I have a weird glow? Will random words appear over my head? Will people just get a sudden gut-feeling when they see me?

Can I avoid a skill? Save up for later, get my Aspect even higher without choosing a skill to bank on a stronger one after? 

I try to pull away… but it doesn’t fade. My attention remains focused, bright, stuck on the skill. The SIN inside me stirs as I pull at it, but… 

Fuck. Another thing that it feels like I could do something about someday. And… 

It doesn’t seem like a bad skill. Not as bad as Liar, Thief in its advantage, or in its disadvantages. 

I succumb to the tide, falling into it and feeling it fall into me in turn. 

When next I wake, I am made anew. When next I wake, I feel new shapes inside of me, new patterns, like the pool of SIN at the core of my being seems to have more ways where it might flow. Like… indents, in the clay of who I am, or the clay this place makes me be. Though I can still use my GNOSIS to move the sin about, “up” and “down”-hill, up the sides of the pool to the “surface”, there’s now other ways where it… 

Well, it doesn’t want to move anywhere. If it has to be anthropomorphized, it would be reluctant, angry, annoyed at my very existence. But it… prefers to move through those pathways, down into my Aspects and into my newfound skills. 

After all that meditation, coming back to wakefulness is like coming up from deep underwater. I have to go out of my way to swim up, up, bit by bit, or the sensation of drowning, psychosomatic or no, starts to scream in the back of my mind. 

Almost…

There.

I become aware of my surroundings in a moment of consciousness, my brain belatedly catching up with the things I know I experienced and remember experiencing but wasn’t actually conscious of while meditating. 

Like the fact that there’s someone else in the little crevice I am meditating in. 

Someone I recognize. 

I blink, my sudden movement making the figure before me startle and scamper back.

If I had a mouth, the question would be easier to ask, but I think I communicate with my eyes pretty well.

Samir???