The shaping stone
ZOHG THE IMPETUOUS
Once upon a time, many centuries before Asokar dwelt in Sigil the City of Doors, in a land sustained by faith and mineral, a wizard named Zohg made contact with wisps and learned many secrets. He traded the persistence of his partner, the feeling of his lover, and the direction of his students. He traded the achievement of his mentor, the balance of his children, the precision of his toolmaker. He traded the order of his nation and the singularity of his self. He traded the magic word UNORUS.
For all these, the wisps gave him the Spell of Opening, and told him all its means and functions. They warned him against its use, but Zohg lacked control to restrain himself, lacked diligence to instate proper safeguards. Zohg felt only a chill where once passion burned, and Zohg wanted the fire back.
From a high place, Zohg stood over the land and he cast the Spell of Opening, and as he and everyone he ever knew died, he saw the empty chaos of Limbo, and wept with joy.
ERI THE KEEPER
Once upon a time, many centuries before Asokar dwelt in Sigil the City of Doors, a keeper named Eri saw her world Opening and all around her was death. She called on her charge, the crystal, and it sustained her. Her arms fell away, but she rose on wings of ersatz fire. Her legs melted, but she swam through Limbo with pearly fins. Her head and face hardened to adamant, but she saw with diamond eyes. Eri endured, and so did the crystal she kept, for fully thirty seconds after Zohg ended the world.
But Limbo was less tame in those days, before the Shaping Stone affixed a center, and even a crystal could not withstand it. Too, the crystal was a part of Zohg’s world, and like everything and everyone else within it, it had been Opened. So even as Eri drew upon it for power and sacrificed her own identity for its, it melted away. The crystal’s essence dispersed throughout the sea of equity.
INFINITE VARIETY
Limbo’s expanse is infinite. Limbo’s variety is infinite. Limbo’s possibilities are endless. Anything that might exist in Limbo, must exist. Anything that might happen, does.
The essence of Eri’s crystal could not be destroyed by the Opening, but it was spread thinly throughout the whole of the chaos sea and lost. All things spread and disperse with time; this is the nature of the multiverse. The chances that the crystal could spontaneously reform in a wholly indestructible format capable of withstanding the roiling change around it? Remote. Infinitesimal, but infinitesimal is not zero.
And so the Shaping Stone was made, by spell, by sacrifice, and by rock.
SLAAD
Now Limbo is transformed, for Limbo has what it once did not: a heart.
This is the Shaping Stone, the womb of the slaadi. It weighs many tons, and it is larger than an opera house. Upon it sits Eri the Keeper, Goddess of the Slaadi, and Zohg the Impetuous, God of the Slaadi. All who touch the Shaping Stone are transmuted: that which is not slaad and touches Eri’s side becomes red slaad, that which is not slaad and touches Zohg’s side becomes blue slaad. That which is red slaad or blue slaad becomes green slaad. That which is green slaad becomes gray slaad, mother of its people.