Glaciures: Ice-Beasts to Gods


Glaciure, small, "Living Iceberg"

Class:Mineral; living ice
Hab: Cool; Arctic or Temperate settings, subterranean Deeps, or Aquatic
Fre: By setting or Uncommon
Num: 1-10
Lair: Nomadic; n/a
Size: 1-10 tons
Move: 20 mph glide over land or through water
Def: Stone-hard, no vulnerable organs
Att: Clubs with stone-hard pseudopod, crushes, freezes
Int: Simple Beast to Low Human
Spec: Projects cold, all sizes spawn ice beasts and ice slugs
Posns: None, but glaciure ice is valuable; stays cold regardless of surroundings


Glaciure, medium, "Glass Mountain" (or at least hill)

Class:Mineral; Living geological feature of ice
Hab: Any - radiates its own coolth!
Fre: Rare
Num: 1-6
Lair: 100%; it is its own lair
Size: Hill to mountain sized
Move: 10 mph - IF it moves at all
Def: Stone-hard, no vulnerable organs, shear mass
Att: Freezing, crushing
Int: Human to god-like
Spec: Control of cold and probably local weather; perhaps more, some demi-divine
Posns: Items may be frozen in the Glass Mountain + Glaciure ice is valuable


Glaciure, gargantuan, "Goddess Glaciure"

Class:Mineral; living geological feature / Goddess
Hab: Arctic clime -self-generated!
Fre: Very rare
Num: Determined by geography
Lair: 100%; it is its own lair
Size: Mountain range to continent or sea sized
Move: Glacially slow crawl - but faster pseudopods
Def: Stone-hard, no vulnerable organs, shear mass
Att: Inspires local Folk and beasts, weather control, impels her subject deities, and may actually react Herself, with crushing glaciers, divine powers, etc.
Int: Goddess
Spec: Will exercised through personal valet-deities and divine powers, followers
Posns: Major Goddesses have whatever they want; they prefer "themed" items if any.


SEE Ice Slug for larval form, Ice Beasts for optional intermediate forms.

Glaciure

A Glaciure is a creature of living ice. A small glaciure, under a couple of tons, is just a cold, cold critter, but by the time they get halfway to being continent sized, Glaciures become infused with divine nature-spirit godhood.

Small "iceberg" glaciures require external chill to be comfortable, but as they increase in size, instead of needing cold they create it. A glaciure over a ton in weight can produce enough cold to keep itself comfortable. A Glaciure over a mile long radiates enough cold to chill the area by a climate zone, while a ten-mile broad Glaciure creates a pocket of arctic climate in its region. (Yes, even in the midst of desert or jungle.)

Glaciures vary in density; some will float in seawater but there are some that sink; more intelligent Glaciures have sufficient density control to sink or float at will.

Glaciures grow by adding regular water to their bulk; small glaciures use external cold to fuse on this new mass while larger Glaciures are able to generate their own cold. A vast Glaciure may attract more moisture, in the form of snow, than it needs. Excess is sloughed off as regular glaciers, rivers of ordinary ice - or it may produce identical ice masses that are pseudopods of the mother-Glaciure and able to separate and crawl away, reproduced by amoeba-like division.

Shards struck off the surface of a Glaciure may revert to ordinary ice or may remain steel-hard. This latter material is used by many Folk as a superior form of glass. Other material spawled off a Glaciure's surfaces may retain a spark of like, animating as ice slugs or ice beasts, which SEE. Many a Glaciure has, among the tunnels riddling its mass, womb-caverns in which ice slugs and other ice beasts are nurtured. Some ice slugs grow up to form new Glaciures while others become ice beasts. On occasion, an ice beast of colossal size evolves in to a Glaciure.

While great Glaciurs have god-like intelligence, they may not relate to mortal concerns. Many prefer to have intermediate deities deal with those fleshy creatures that crawl about them. These are typical ice / arctic / winter gods and goddesses; some may be ancient Heroes, deified and empowered by the Glaciure to better serve her imponderable will. Others will seem alien, the deified Heroes of civilizations that died out thsands or even millions of years ago, when the Glaciure was young - "and pretty!"

Ice-demons and spirits, Yeti and other arctic-theme creatures, and any local Folk, are all possible servants of the Gaciure. She may control them directly, like marionettes, either permanently (by affixing her will over their own original will) or intermittently, or simply inspire them with dreams and omens. Even wandering adventurers are not immune to being used as tools of such local deities.

A full-grown Glaciure has immense power. She controls weather and climate, project or absorb infinite levels of cold, extend pseudopods of living ice at walking speed - or avalanches at storm-wind speed. She may even animate living statues of ice or create arctic life to inhabit the lands about her or even realms on, under, and within her.


Glaciures, Sculpted

While most Glaciures are "naturalistic," and could be mistaken for normal glaciers by mundane Folk unwilling to admit the existence of Galciures as living beings, some Glaciures have taken a fancy to forms more fantastic. These may emulate models either natural or artificial; some employ creative mortals, both engineers and artists, dreamers and architects, to dream up new, never-before-see forms for them.

Folk tend to assume that Glaciures spend their entire existence in one place. The greater Glaciures find this amusing. When one becomes so great as to assume divine powers, it tends to be able to access similar settings in diverse realms of neighboring universes. Thus, a great Goddess Glaciure is likely to either be "reflected," having similar, parallel selves in different worlds, or to actually exist in several worlds simultaneously, linking them, and serving as a great ice goddess, the divine embodiment of the arctic, in these several similar places simultaneously.

Sculpted Glaciures tend to accumulate features from a range of sources. Being extremely long-lived, even those that do not travel, either across the lands or inter-dimensionally, they are exposed to many ideas. They may combine these in ways their originators would not have thought of.

Items made of glaciure, material cut from the body of a Glaciure, are equivalent in strength to glasstone or glassteel. More common are items made of stabilized ice. While hard and non-melting, this is not quite such fabulous material.

Such Sculpted Glaciure realms include cities, palaces, and gardens sculpted of the living body of great Goddess Glaciures, or boreal forests or chilly cavern systems "decorated" with ice-sculptures maintained by clans of lesser Glaciures. A Glaciure could just as easily, should she wish, sculpt her form into a simulation of a steam-age engine room or a high-tech interior or spacecraft; ice replications of purely mechanical systems might even be functional.

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Apr 4, 2006