Jessimae (old profile)

Marmorarius' Creation: A Story for New Dollites

"Marmorarius was not always our home and ‘Ambrosius Creta’ was not always our name. In fact, there is a wide gap in Marmorian history. We still do not know what happened during our planet’s ‘first life’ because we were not here for it. In the beginning, we came from the Evigheden. In the beginning, we were wanderers.

We don’t know where we were born, but we were born without form. We were souls floating among the stars as we travelled from one place to the next. A mass of lights, mistaken for stars, constellating in the sky. We were content to live without words, without a home, as long as we had each other. We spent countless eons speaking to each other through light like fireflies. We watched the universe unfold. 

 But nothing could last forever. We were dying even without flesh. Our lack of physical forms was the problem; there was nothing protecting us from endless entropy. We travelled at superluminal speed and it was ripping us limb from limb. Everyday our lights grew dimmer, our family smaller, as the void felt less like home and more like death. It wasn’t a good death, a natural death. It was a White Death. A nonexistence.

There was only one of us unaffected. One soul that had a physical form through strength, or will, or some wisdom the rest of us didn't have. Our leader; sometime during our march they had possessed a passing asteroid. How they came to lead us is lost to time but their trail was marked with violet fire. They were the first Marmorian Deity, Agápē.

We've depicted them in so many different ways. To some, Agápē is a titanic Dollite. Their eyes are the radiants of two stars, their hair is molten salt, and they wrap their chevelure around themselves like a cloak.

To others, they are a massive four-legged beast. They race through the night sky with the souls of our ancestors on their heels. Their fur is the color of a nebula and their fangs are burning ice.

Sometimes, they are simply a living comet. Their flesh is rocky but warm, their eyes shut tight against the solar winds, but they always listen. They are a solid presence finding their way by the singing of stars.

One thing is constant and that is that Agápē loved us. Every soul that fizzled out wounded them, an answering keen met every death rattle. Our leader sought to end the death around us. They turned themselves around and hurled through space with new purpose. They needed to find us a home.

It took centuries to find. Every year took a little more hope with it as another life was lost. Our leader was at the last of their strength and on the brink of a White Death themselves from sheer tiredness. It was then that they found something. If we could have, we would have cried when we saw it. An empty, barren planet.

It was grey and ugly. Here was a planet that had lived and died once already. The creatures of Marmorarius’ first life had been violent; they’d scorched the life from their home with fire and war. It looked like nothing would ever grow there again, like nothing would ever walk its surface.

It wasn’t ideal, but we were out of time.

Our souls descended to the planet’s surface like a hail of paper lanterns. Agápē didn’t come down with us but stayed circling the planet’s orbit. We only grew more confused as they built momentum, going faster and faster. Were they going to slingshot away? Had they left us to die?

They turned towards the planet, letting go of orbit and rocketing to the ground. We could only watch in mute horror and amazement. They crashed into the empty seabed and forced it deeper into the earth. The world groaned in protest as the impact created cliffs, coastlines, caverns. Shockwaves and fissures raced across the dead land. We strained to see our leader in the blackness of the pit.

They were at the end of their strength, but they couldn’t let us all die with them. We needed bodies, we needed something to make them out of, we needed clay.

Our gentle leader opened their wrists, their ankles, their throat. They scratched away rock flesh with obsidian nails. Where the skin split, clear liquid poured out. They bled and bled into that pit, that ocean, until we couldn’t see them under the foam. The rush drowned out the quiet and it was like the world was breathing again.

The blood soaked into dry earth and made it fertile again. The waves beat against the shore and dissolved rock into clay. The blood of our leader, our God, would birth every dollite body. They were our mother and the dirt was their womb. Forever would we belong to Marmorarius.

The twelve strongest among us forced limbs to be corporeal and sculpted our bodies. Every dollite they made they claimed as their own and that was the start of the Twelve Great Families. Our ocean became sacred; it allows us to repair and replace our bodies. It protects us from the White Death.

And gentle Agápē? They say our God will return. Their sacrifice was a Black Death, a return to void and rebirth, and one day they will own a new body. When that day comes, we will follow them once more."

Jessimae is that awaited reincarnation. The 13th clan's lost heir.

Jessimae, clay flesh eternal,

Bring dissonance back into tune,

Teach us science and math

How to measure time by the moon

 Beacon of truth and progress

A steadfast Eldritch defense

Chaos infinite created this world

But only you made it make sense

   After years of work, Agápē returned. The 12 Families worked tirelessly for millennia in a collaberation to end all collaberations; sigil makers and clay workers trying to find a form their parent liked, a symbol they'd attach themself to. Shot in the dark after shoot in the dark until the masses lost hope. One day the Families were mourning their latest failed body by the sea of blood, when she opened her eyes. The last dollite soul had attached itself to the husk; their mother was home. Long live Jesimae, the avatar of the First Deity.