Twelve houses. One devoured.
Nobody here produces anything. They only take.
The one law everything rests on
New slime never appears. Not once, not ever. Every drop that exists today has always existed. It only ever changed shape and owner.
Which means you can only grow at someone else's expense. You get bigger by making someone smaller.
Nobody here produces anything. They only take. Every war comes down to an argument about whose body one particular drop ends up in.
Everything else follows from that.
Chronicle
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Age I
In the beginning the mass was one thing and had no shape.
Holding shape is hard work. Most of the slime in the world doesn't hold it and never did. It's just mass: it sits in the low ground, it runs along the cracks, it wants nothing.
Thirteen powers managed to hold. That's their one real achievement. Not strength, not magic. They simply didn't run back into the puddle.
Age II
It started with Lysis. Hermetia learned to take things apart. She could pull a foreign drop out of a mixed body and give it back its separateness. She saved thousands that way.
Someone watched her work and understood something simple. If the process runs one way, it runs the other way too. You don't have to pull a drop out. You can put one in.
Devouring already existed, but it got you nothing. Now it turned out you could eat a name. And when you do, its power becomes yours.
They tested it on Fulgur. Several of them ate, by an arrangement all of them later denied. Every one of the twelve houses has a piece of Fulgur in it now. That's why they spark sometimes. Nobody talks about it.
Age III
Three hundred years of war mixed everything. There are almost no purebloods left. Everyone else lives in percentages: some Pyros, some Pelagos, one drop of something their ancestors would rather not discuss.
Everyone lived with that just fine until Aurexis ran the Census. He read out the composition. Publicly, by name, drop by drop. Whose grandfather got eaten and by whom. Whose blood doesn't match the crest on the gate.
Aurexis has never lied once. He just said the truth out loud. Three wars started in one day. He never touched anybody.
Now it's the time after the Census. Everyone knows what they're made of, and nobody has forgiven it.
Every power has its own name
The name is older than any Slimearch and older than the houses themselves. A house is named after the power, not after whoever runs it. People say “house of Pyros.” Ignivar is just the one holding it right now. Slimearchs come and go. Pyros was there first.
They consider themselves first. Among themselves they argue about who's firster.
Expansion. They look down and they don't hide it.
They don't fight in the open. Not because they can't.
Not an alliance. Just three who don't belong to any bloc.
Between blocs it's war. Inside a bloc it's an alliance with a crack in it. The three outside don't get touched, because everyone needs them.
Who hates whom
Every arrow is a grudge from the record. Hover a house. Astraeus and Hermetia hate nobody. Kairos hates nobody either, but all twelve hate him, and it's the only thing they agree on.
Lumen shows composition
Aurexis stood up and read out the composition. Publicly, by name, drop by drop. Who is made of what. Whose blood doesn't match the crest on the gate. He can't lie. It's a property of Lumen.
“I'll tell you what you're made of. What you do about it isn't my part.” — Aurexis
Nobody has been read yet.
How they mix
Pick two powers. The record says what comes out. Some never mix at all. Some do, and the noble houses cull the result.
A glass crust. Best shape retention of any mix.
The thirteenth · devoured
Slimearch Keraunos — the bolt of Zeus
First to hold shape. Faster than any of them. The only one who could walk through any territory, because borders didn't hold him.
That's why they ate him. If it works on him, it works on anyone. They split him between several, by an arrangement all of them later denied. The twelve have been sparking ever since and pretending not to notice.
He's putting himself back together. Slowly, a drop at a time, out of the ones carrying him.
secret 3 of 1,200
Supply by house · wave one
The split is uneven, and it comes out of the lore rather than out of thin air. Lithos ends up the rarest of the ordinary houses: the boring unpopular tribe that there's the least of.
Mint details
Now it's the time after the Census. Everyone knows what they're made of, and nobody has forgiven it.