The shrines of every God in Achaea have been destroyed by the opening strike of the Tsol'teth, including every master shrine. This is, of course, a calamity, but never fear!

The splinters of essence from the shrines are scattered across the planes of Achaea, and shall manifest upon the prime plane periodically. There is a worldwide message when this happens. Each splinter is formed from the essence of one of the Gods (and will have an appropriate description so you know which it is). These splinters of essence can be collected by mortals in one of two ways:

1. If you are a member of the God's order that the splinter belongs to, you may GATHER ESSENCE in the splinter's room to collect the essence. This is twice as fast as the alternative.

2. If you are not a member of the God's order, you may SUBVERT ESSENCE in the splinter's room. This takes twice as long as GATHERing.

So, the burning question. What use is this essence you can gather, and why should you care?

Two reasons: Firstly, rebuilding the master shrines is of vital importance for combatting the Tsol'teth forces. Secondly, without shrines, no new essence can be gained for your Gods. I shall leave you to determine why that may be a problem.

If you have gained essence, you may AVATAR RELINQUISH at the shattered remnant of a master shrine, strengthening it. Note that subverting halves the amount of essence gained from a splinter; it is in the best interest of orders to go after splinters of their own God's essence if at all possible.

But what if you're not too worried about the Tsol'teth eradicating the cities of Sapience and the Gods losing all ability to gain essence? These things happen! Well, maybe this will catch your interest...

Upon claiming a splinter of essence, the claimer shall assume the form of a divine avatar. Imbued with the splinter of essence, they become something greater than mortal; or even dragon. If you are a member of an order, you will always become an avatar of your own God. If you are not, the splinter shall define your form.

Avatars have very high stats, can wear nothing (no armour, no artefacts, etc) and have very high base resistances. They can also not assume dragonform, for why become something lesser. Each avatar has a custom in-room and look description based on the God they're an avatar of.

However, it's not just a fancier dragonform! Every God has a unique miracle that their avatar (or one who holds their essence) can perform. A short example:

A member of Scarlatti's order subverts essence. Regardless of who that essence belongs to, they'll become an Avatar of Scarlatti. This is just to avoid rp conflicts in cases such as a member of Aurora's order becoming an Avatar of Sartan, etc. However, that person will gain the miracle based on the essence they gathered. So said person might have subverted a splinter of Aegis' essence, in which case they'd have 1000 Aegis essence, and access to the miracle granted by Aegis. They could then go subvert a splinter of Babel's essence, in which case they'd then have 1000 Aegis essence and 1000 Babel essence, and access to the miracles granted by both Aegis and Babel. They could continue doing this until they had access to all miracles in theory!

Of course, its not quite that simple. Each use of a miracle will drain the essence you have of that particular God. If you exhaust your reserves of all the essence you've gathered, you will lose your Avatar status. Of course, you will also be unable to use that essence to strengthen the master shrine; using essence for miracles and reparation of said shrines must be carefully considered!

Additionally, if a person slays an Avatar, they shall immediately claim all of that Avatar's essence, becoming an Avatar if they are not one already, or simply gaining the essence reserves of their slain target if they already held said status. Naturally, being an avatar is grounds to be attacked at any time, by anyone. You may see who is currently an avatar (and whether logged in or not) by using AVATAR WHO.

The rest of the avatar commands can be found under the AVATAR command, but only once you have become an avatar of a God. We'll also not be disclosing what each miracle does. You'll have to use them to find out!

Penned by My hand on the 15th of Aeguary, in the year 724 AF.