The New Fourm

So I have this story that's been rotating around in my head for a while - well, I actually have several stories (so many stories) that have been rotating in my head for years, but this one is the smallest, and most recent, and easiest to talk about, I hope. Also the most currently relevant for TAUfic reasons and also that RPG game we're starting today.

This story doesn't have an actual name yet; the world's (technically island's) name is Alothia, so that's what we're calling this thread. Eventually I'll get an actual name going, it'll probably be something to do with Chaos because that's the whole shtick, but that's at some point in the future. Probably after I irreversibly fuse everything I know and love about this story with TAU. (Don't worry about it.)

Alothia is a very large island in the middle of an ocean; the inhabitants don't know much about any other worlds or areas out around them besides Alothia itself, because they're largely preoccupied with everything on Alothia trying to kill them. There are additional hazards out into the ocean itself that make travel extra difficult; I only have the vaguest senses of these so far, but they aren't as major of a plot point. The main claim to fame is the magical situation. Alothia is steeped in magic, and especially steeped in chaos magic, and it has been for as long as anyone's great-grandparents can remember. The technology level is somewhere in the range of typical fantasy (bows/crossbows instead of guns, some magical replacements for lights, etc). Most of the island has nature running wild, with everything from deep nearly-jungle wooded areas to a volcano on the peak and possibly a hydrothermal vent analogue.

There are three main things to break down about the world itself to really get the overall vibe and I'm hoping I can actually summarize them neatly enough and shortly enough to make sense lol.

First: there are five magical elements, and all magic able to be cast by humans as well as (most) entities on the island can be sorted into one of these five categories: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, and Chaos. Fire also includes lava and magma; Water includes clouds, rain and any body of water; Earth includes stone, dirt, and arguably most plants; Wind includes both air and lightning. Chaos is both a catch-all category for any spell that doesn't fit into the other four (e.g., a spell to unlock a door, which isn't really any kind of Earth or Air spell), and also a distinct Thing of its own that typically boils down to probability/chance magic (e.g., influencing events towards the least expected/most chaotic outcome). Humans have different magical strengths, some work better with specific elements than others, but generally anyone can learn magic, and there isn't a distinct organized school for it. It's mostly vibes traditional styles passed down through generations.

Second, the entities. Humans are the main inhabitants of Alothia, or at least they consider themselves to be. They live primarily in settlements, villages or towns that have been protected by rings of hearth-wards (a chaos magic that keeps out any nonhuman or non-animal entities that haven't been explicitly invited inside). Some travel is possible between settlements, but it is dangerous, because anything that lives on the island that isn't a human or animal is very magical and very dangerous, and can't always be killed. Those entities are called sprites, and demons.

Sprites are minor elemental spirits; they don't have a huge amount of intelligence, usually somewhere around a young child's equivalent, and they are made up of their element and will die if isolated from it (e.g., catching a water sprite in a warded jar and carrying it inland). They're mostly hazards, and can't really be reasoned with, but can be fairly easily tricked and outrun if one comes across you and decides to get mad at you for splashing through its favorite stream. Fire sprites live mostly in the volcano and the possibly-to-be-created vent situation; air sprites on the wind and up on the thermals; water sprites in ponds, streams, and shorelines; and earth sprites along the ground, anywhere from the forest to the mountain. Nobody knows whether chaos sprites exist or not, because they've never seen one. (Speculation is that they either don't exist, or they're invisible to humans, or they can mimic the appearances of other sprites to blend in.)

Demons are powerful elemental spirits. They have a human or higher intelligence level, usually humanoid appearance, and can survive being cut off from their element for longer periods if necessary. They can sometimes be reasoned with, but tend to get very territorial, and it's best to just avoid them if at all possible while traveling. They can't use magic from other elements (e.g., an earth demon can't use water magic), but they can craft more complicated spells and uses of their own magic; each one has a colloquial name from the humans because calling something a "fire demon" all the time is boring. There are only two demons of each element in existence at a time, but not always the same two, because of the third point I'm about to hit down below. There are chaos demons: these are nicknamed Greenstrikes because of their ability to move at blur-fast speeds, and the overwhelmingly green bias in their clothing. Greenstrikes also look the most human and are the most terrifying to other humans, because their powers include shapeshifting, mimicking voices, and more. They follow nothing more than chaos, and you'll never know when you encounter a Greenstrike if it's going to kill you in a horribly amusing way or just trip you facedown into the mud and leave with a laugh.

Third: the process of Succession. There are only two demons of each element in existence at once, but this changes. As sprites live longer, gain more power and intelligence, sometimes they pick a fight with the demon of their element. Sometimes the sprite wins, usually via ambush or having lots of other sprites help. And when this happens, sometimes, the demon's magic is absorbed into the sprite, and it then becomes the new demon. Whatever sprite kills a demon of its own element, inherits its magic and takes its place permanently, or until another sprite kills it. Each demon has its own appearance, personality, magical quirks, and so on; Greenstrikes in particular have animal-shaped masks that cover the upper half of their faces, and these masks change animals from demon to demon.

This is already really long so I'll cut off my further rambles here and just say this: the story itself that I plan to write in this world focuses on one human teenager, who gets ambushed by a Greenstrike while out with her friends, accidentally kills that Greenstrike, and then wakes up to find that she's taken its place and become the new Greenstrike - the Fox Greenstrike, specifically. The main part of the story is her unraveling the secret of where the chaos sprites come from, and coming to terms with what she now is - because succession isn't a process you can undo, accidental or otherwise.

Alothia my beloved <3333 Please feel free to ask me any questions about anything!!! I'll keep rambling about this on and off for a while I expect

OH HELLO

Slurping up this juice! SLURP SLURP

I have questions!

1. If demons are about human level brain ways, does that mean spirits get notably more thinky after succession, or can spirits get smarter over time, it's just the majority of them are young by their standards and haven't really wizened up yet?
2. Do spirits get more powerful over their lives in general or are they more static?
3. Could a spirit rival the power of a demon without succeeding?
4. If a human can succeed a chaos demon, does that mean that humans are chaos sprites? That doesn't quite work with humans being able to cast other forms of magic, but chaos magic is already established as a bit weird.
5. Also what if a demon were to be killed by something non-animate. Like. An earth demon gets hit by a meteor. Does the nearest earth spirit get promoted? Is the power just sitting there in a pool until something suitable for succession gets close enough to be glorped onto?
6. Relatedly, what if one earth demon would kill the other?

hell yes i LOVE questions!!

BeelieveinBees wrote: Wed Nov 12, 2025 9:58 pm If demons are about human level brain ways, does that mean spirits get notably more thinky after succession, or can spirits get smarter over time, it's just the majority of them are young by their standards and haven't really wizened up yet?

Kind of a combination! I think the intelligence/reasoning level tends to increase with 1) age and 2) amount of magic primarily, and as sprites age they do absorb more magic and grow, so they'll still grow smarter and stronger with age regardless of any intervention. Most are younger, it takes a very long time for most sprites to grow strong enough to even think to challenge a demon. The boost in power from succession does noticeably help with the intelligence level though. Also provides something of a shapeshift - all demons can shapeshift in some way, but have a notably humanoid base form, and sprites are decidedly not human shaped (they've got more of a "moving piece of their element" sort of thing going on. Earth sprites look like rolling rocks, or mounds of dirt shambling across the ground, sort of thing.)

BeelieveinBees wrote: Wed Nov 12, 2025 9:58 pm Do spirits get more powerful over their lives in general or are they more static?
Could a spirit rival the power of a demon without succeeding?

Answered part of this in the first bit (they do get more powerful over their lives in general). The other part - yes, they could get nearly to the same level of strength as a demon, and some probably are and don't care about trying to take a demon's place. Part of the deal with the demon position though is a huge boost in power, because it amps up the amount of magic they can store and deposits a lot more magic into them in the same action, so even very old sprites can't quite fully match a demon's power level without actually winning that fight and succeeding it.

BeelieveinBees wrote: Wed Nov 12, 2025 9:58 pm If a human can succeed a chaos demon, does that mean that humans are chaos sprites? That doesn't quite work with humans being able to cast other forms of magic, but chaos magic is already established as a bit weird.

You've hit the nail right on the head!! The Big Secret is that humans are the chaos sprites. They don't know this for the most part - there's enough humans in the real world these days who still don't think humans count as animals, so I figure it's not too unrealistic for humans to look directly past where they fit into this world and just assume they're a secret third thing that isn't a sprite or a demon. Maybe they assume they do count as animals. That'd be kind of ironic considering the example I just pulled.

But yes, humans are the chaos sprites. The bit about not being able to cast other types of magic is definitely something that shouldn't quite work, but it's another one of those things I'm tossing under the canopy of "Chaos Magic Is Bullshit" (i.e. both a catchall and its Own Thing). All humans are more naturally inclined to chaos magic than anything else, and by all manner of expectations, they shouldn't be able to use any other kind of magic.... and so by the laws of chaos (chaos being, defined as it is in this story, "the least expected outcome") they Can Do It. It kind of doesn't make sense and that's kind of the point. Am I explaining this correctly, because it works in my head but I'm not sure if it does to anyone else, haha.

Having humans as the chaos sprites is a big enough deal that I might make that Fox's Secret for the Immortals game, actually. I think that fits appropriately enough.

BeelieveinBees wrote: Wed Nov 12, 2025 9:58 pm Also what if a demon were to be killed by something non-animate. Like. An earth demon gets hit by a meteor. Does the nearest earth spirit get promoted? Is the power just sitting there in a pool until something suitable for succession gets close enough to be glorped onto?
Relatedly, what if one earth demon would kill the other?

This one is very very funny because it is something I've thought about quite a bit! If a demon is killed by something other than a sprite of its element, it gets what I've been calling "discorporated", possibly because I read Good Omens at a formative time in my life. It's temporarily mostly-dead. Its essence, the core of its magic, remains where it died, but it's not conscious - it stays there passively absorbing magic until enough is collected to let it actually reform into a conscious, solid entity again. It's still going to have to spend a lot of time gathering enough energy to do much after that, but it's back on the physical/aware plane once again so it can manage it a little easier.

The time to reform varies wildly depending on the circumstances of what killed it, the proximity to magic/to its innate element, and how much I want to mess around with the Plot. Using your example, if an earth demon was hit by a meteor, I'm not entirely certain yet if that meteor would count as earth magic, but the impact would definitely drive it down into a crater, which leaves it surrounded by its element. It'd reform pretty fast. If a water demon got hit by it, it'd take much longer to reform. (If a chaos demon was hit by it, it'd reform very fast, because the sheer odds of a demon who can literally slow time to move superfast getting hit by a freaking meteor on accident are pretty damn low, and that's a hell of a lot of chaos to throw on top of them.)

That said, I have also played around a bit with the idea of another sprite being able to kind of hijack the death, but I think I've landed on needing the sprite to make or at least influence the actual Killing Blow to take the power. If a sprite shoved that demon into the path of the meteor, say, that'd work for succession. If they just watched and laughed, eh.....less likely. (Except for a couple silly little side-fics where I've played around with the other non-Fox chaos demon getting vaporized and then the power going Elsewhere. For funsies. And AU reasons. But those aren't the main canon.)

Same thing happens if another demon kills the first one, the power doesn't go to the killer demon - some of it will, sure, if it's a demon of the same element they'd get a power boost There Can Only Be One style (assuming I'm not completely misremembering that reference), but they wouldn't be able to completely prevent the discorporated demon from coming back. Just delay it a bit. (Fox has definitely killed the other Greenstrike(s) out of annoyance sometimes.)

I think that's all your questions....? Keep them coming though lmao I love answering these

So if the chaos demons were always human once, why are they Like That? Does being a greenstrike come with the drive to be a chaotic little bitch or is it just that, until Fox, the sorts of people who were drawn to killing a greenstrike were the sort of people to continue behaving as expected from greenstrikes?

BeelieveinBees wrote: Thu Nov 13, 2025 7:07 pm So if the chaos demons were always human once, why are they Like That? Does being a greenstrike come with the drive to be a chaotic little bitch or is it just that, until Fox, the sorts of people who were drawn to killing a greenstrike were the sort of people to continue behaving as expected from greenstrikes?

kiiiind of a combination of both, and this is one of the things I still haven't fully ironed out, but here's what I do have so far.

Killing a Greenstrike isn't actually as simple as just causing them an injury that would kill them. There's a very specific set of criteria - I need to expand this so that every demon succession has its own set of specific criteria, but the Greenstrikes are the ones that I know the most about right now. One of these requirements is that no dedicated weapons can be used, which in practice means that usually Greenstrikes are only killed with improvised or natural weapons - things like rocks or wood or other environmental hazards. The other is that for succession to trigger, a Greenstrike cannot be killed on purpose. It has to be an accident, and not something that you set out to do. This is for Chaos reasons; if both the victim and the killer didn't expect the killer to win the fight, then that's enough chaos right there to trigger something. For a case study example, baby-Fox killed the previous Greenstrike with a broken-off branch from a tree that she'd picked up as a last-second defense attempt; she tripped over something while backing up and holding the branch as the previous Greenstrike charged her, and the Greenstrike wasn't able to dodge quickly enough to avoid it, so impaled itself.

The reason I'm explaining this part is because while it's been embedded in my lore for how succession works, it does kind of hamstring any explanations for why Fox is Different. Because the kind of people who'd seek out a power like that, who would go out of their way to kill a being like a Greenstrike on the off-chance it benefited them...wouldn't succeed. They might discorporate the chaos demon, sure, but they wouldn't succeed it.

So, in the end, I guess it's kind of both. Part of becoming a Greenstrike is getting charged with so much chaos magic that you're driven to do the Most Chaotic Option until or unless you can get ahold of yourself, which in some situations means that the least expected thing for you to do is turn on the group of very good friends you brought out here with you and trust with your life, and to attack them. (Lots of angst potential there. I have definitely done this before.) It's not an outright "turns you evil >:D" thing, but it does make their behavior more chaotic, and less predictable, and fucks with their impulse control a decent amount. That alone doesn't explain all of it though, because unlike Alcor in TAU, Fox becoming a demon isn't the outlier - she's the rule. So the explanation is that she's one of the very very few ones who has a support system.

Because if you watched your loved one kill something you thought unkillable, and then turn into that exact thing, a thing directly out of your nightmares that you just saw kill people you cared about - not everyone would react well. Lots of people (when terrified, traumatized, unable to comprehend what just happened) would react Extremely Badly in fact, and would either 1) assume the new demon in front of them is a trick being played by the previous demon and attack/flee/not listen to its words, or 2) immediately assume that Something Went Wrong and their loved one is now a demon and is now trying to trick and kill them, and attack/flee/not listen. Also, again, pointing back at the "sudden overwhelming rush of Chaos" thing - anyone who gets flooded with that much chaos magic wouldn't react very normally either, so would have a hard time convincing anyone of their lack of harmful intent. And then the isolation and the repeated treatment like a demon over the years would get to the new Greenstrike, and eventually they'd do whatever they could to get more chaos/get noticed/take it back out on the humans, and end up becoming what they feared.

Also, I think it will help that Fox underwent succession with no witnesses. Her friends had already fled, she'd desperately tried to hold the attacking Greenstrike off - her friends assumed she'd been killed and were too relieved to notice too many discrepancies at first when she came back. And by then she'd been able to convince them she was her, and then the whole Greenstrike Thing Reveal didn't go as badly as it could have. So yeah, Fox has an actual support system who still likes/trusts her even though she's a Greenstrike, and also access to a lot more chaos than most starved Greenstrikes (bc she was able to trick her way though the hearth-wards almost without even trying the first time, and also her friends are more willing to just give her the invitation to get in), and those combinations are what kept her from going too far off the deep end.

She is, also, just kind of a chaotic little bitch in general. That too.

I mean, there is only two of them, and they live an awfully long time. It wouldn't be unreasonable to say that the greenstrike before fox, and the other greenstrike concurrent with fox, just happened to be Like This, or have become Like This over time. Perhaps thousands and thousands of years ago there was a greenstrike who was chill! We forgor because they died a long ass time ago!

Okay so I have a question.

People are clever little patter seekers. In OG Alothia, over generations, do people start noticing that the fox masked greenstrike is like, pretty chill overall? I'm not imaging that people would seek her out or whatever, but - well. Actually.

Humans in our world will do anything they can that they think will let them control the powerful uncontrollable forces in their lives. This is what offerings to the gods were about in some older European cultures. You didn't offer Poseidon your best while bull because you loved him and thought he was cool, it was a bribe so your powerful and volatile neighbor wouldn't wreck your shit. Are there places where people would leave offerings to the greenstrikes out to try and bribe them to leave them alone, or for other purposes? What about when/if people noticed that this new greenstrike wasn't as volatile as its predecessor, would anyone leave offerings as an attempt to try and win its favor?

Hell what about other demons? Leaving an offering out for the water demons so that it rains makes a lot of sense. If earth demons really do include plants, well, shit. That's two guys to keep real damn happy if you can. On a volcanic island, offering something to the lava demons so they don't wreck your shit is also logical, and with how big ocean storms could be the same goes for the air demons.

Oooooh I haven't thought about this, but I do definitely like the vibe.

I think there definitely could be places where offerings are set out, for the Greenstrikes and for other demons both. How much actual power could be derived from them is something I'm not certain of, because Alothian demons don't work like traditional demons - they're closest to elemental spirits in TAU terms, so less power derived from belief, etc. That said, offerings could probably win favor (or bribes) pretty easily, if they were useful or interesting enough...

I do agree that this would be a common thing, the more I think about it. It would make a ton of sense. I could see there being specific areas, maybe natural shrines where offerings/bribes could be left - if you're being secretive or you want to reach out to a very specific demon then you could probably put them elsewhere, or where a demon has been sighted, but otherwise I think most settlements would have established natural "offering sites" that people picked up and started using over the years.

The cultural impacts of the demons on this world aren't something I've put as much thought into, which is definitely an oversight! I did have some loose thoughts on cautionary tales about the different demons/sprites, but not as much on the other impacts. Attempting to bribe/lure a water demon to your area in order to combat a til-now ongoing drought would make a ton of sense.

What kind of bribes they would take is...going to depend heavily on both the demon and its element. Earth and water demons tend to have more solid forms (along with chaos demons), and they tend to like different things. Earth demons would definitely take high-quality or very pretty/shiny rocks, ores, or gems as bribes, they like incorporating those into their forms and showing off their collections. Water demons might like more oddly-shaped items or things that would look good underwater, I could see them collecting things like sea glass or adder stones. Fire and air would be trickier - neither have a particularly ~solid~ form unless they need one, and neither environment is very hospitable to keeping trinkets. Fire spends a lot of time in lava/in the volcano, and air in the actual air and the lightning. They might, instead, prefer bribes/offerings that are things they can use or consume: fuel for more fires like lanterns or matches, or something like wind chimes or pinwheels that move in response to the demons' movement and could be used for decoration in a specific area.

Definitely going to incorporate this into the world now, though. Love the ideas....

swbookworm wrote: Wed Nov 19, 2025 4:21 am I think there definitely could be places where offerings are set out, for the Greenstrikes and for other demons both. How much actual power could be derived from them is something I'm not certain of, because Alothian demons don't work like traditional demons - they're closest to elemental spirits in TAU terms, so less power derived from belief, etc.

Minor nitpick in that "traditional" gods, demons, and the like do not give a shit about belief. The idea that how you feel about a god, demon, spirit, or other supernatural being matters in the slightest is a very new one, as in, to my understanding is it first started showing up in 20th century fiction. The closest more traditional belief comes, to my knowledge, is some cultures who believed that the physical sacrifices they gave mattered to their gods/etc, but it was the physical dead animal / whatever that mattered, not the feelings or thoughts of the humans involved. In those cultures, sacrifices were kinda like modern taxes. The government gets a lot of power from the money we give it. If we all stopped giving it money, it would wither away, however it will get pissed off if we do not give it money, and there will be consequences. It, however, doesn't give a shit if you hate its guts, or don't think it's legitimate, of have any other opinions, so long as you still pay your taxes.

Back to the subject of Alothia:

• You didn't really get into the greenstrikes with your last answer. This is really interesting to me because I bet it gets tricky, traditionally. You don't want to piss the greenstrikes off, but also you don't want to draw their attention. Not giving them anything? Probably a bad idea! Giving them too juicy of a sacrifice? Also probably a bad idea! And what sorts of things do chaos spirits even want? Do you have to shake it up, what with the nature of chaos?
  • And how chill is Fox with non-family? Enough that people notice? Enough that she gets specific offerings? How would someone communicate what they wanted through an offering? I mean, it's known that the greenstrikes can impersonate humans, so them being able to read isn't off the table so a note might work?
  • How much is it assumed that a greenstrike understands humans? Like, is the general thought "they know enough to trick you but they don't really get it"? Is it "they have a deep understanding but will twist it because they think it's funny?" Something in between? It could easily also vary based on the current/recent greenstrikes.
• How much is the individual differences between same element demons known? Can most people tell the two water demons apart?
• Has there been other greenstrikes who had close interpersonal relationships with humans? Obviously not in the cultural memory of the people of Fox's time, but could that be something people find evidence of having happened at some point?