1 - Awaken

Thalia is not, and then, quite suddenly, she is.

Information surges, and she knows herself.

That is a great deal of stress for a mind barely in the second second of its awareness, but gradually, things begin to calm. Calm, Thalia is good at calm, she knows this somehow.

She can perceive a single blue and gold drop of.....liquid? What is that? That... It quivers. Yes that certainly does seem to be her. Huh.

She feels the texture of tiny stones around her, she can tell the approximate type of each grain, but trying to see them all at once makes her feel a bit queezy. Also, wet. Yes, that's water. She is underwater. Should she be worried about that? Nothing to do about it now she supposes.

She feels the sand around her, and, yes, that does seem to be sand. Perhaps... perhaps if she could move it, she could see what is going on a bit better.

Coming into existence is not calm. It is chaotic, and forceful, and overwhelming. It is this surge of energies that brings Thalia to her senses and soothes the aching of non existence into the gentle thrumming of knowledge - of water and stone and sand. She can...not precisely feel, no, but perceive a certain peace within herself. Yes, she has become, and in place of what was not is peace. This is her doing, and her calling.

The sand is suffocating. Cool and soft, but remarkably in the way. And so she pushes softly, breathing space around her. The sand drifts upwards through the water around her, coiling like smoke and settling, displaced but hardly bothered.

Thalia can see, for what given measure of "seeing" she can do right now.

Thalia, as it turns out, is in a pool of moving water her 'vision' is dark outside of about two feet, but it seems that the surface is farther than that if the quiet darkness is anything to go by. Somehow she can feel that there are small organisms a ways beyond her sight and reach.

She is very aware of her exposure in this pool, and some instinctive part of her desires protection, more than that though, is a different impulse, hunger. Sand, while not the most dignified of first meals, is looking somewhat appetizing.

Off, at the very edge of where her vision ends, she can just barely see the edge of what might be a plant. Just out of reach, but an encouraging sign that the world is not just sand and water.

Hunger is a powerful motivator indeed, and while Thalia feels an instinctive repulsion to eating sand of all things, she "inhales" to draw the material back towards her center. When it covers her as a blanket might a sleeping animal, she lets her being sort of "yawn", and the sand to falls into her metaphorical maw gracefully.

If she must eat fancy dirt, she will do so with grace. That is her only rule. She must do so with grace.

Sand, it turns out, has an interesting ‘texture’ despite its bland and unimpressive qualities. Something of its semi crystalline nature appeals to Thalia’s sensibilities. As it suffuses her core, Thalia finds herself in possession of something new, knowledge and, yes, material.

Material gained: [Sand (River)] - Common Material - Silica based sand, composed of small varied rock and material fragments too small to be externally classified.

Comprehension bonuses:
Materials derived - Opaque river glass, Silt, Brittle Quartz.
Blueprints derived - Particulate Matter.
[Derived materials must be created in core to be used, material qualities unknown until such operations are complete.]
[Derived blueprints may be individually examined. Blueprints may be created using one or more owned materials, and/or combined with other blueprints.]

Well, that is rather a lot, more to the point however, Thalia also feels... better, more complex somehow. She feels like she is on the cusp of something, but isn’t quite there. It is a rather maddening feeling. On the plus side, her sand shenanigans seem to have shifted things a bit, and now, she can see what seems to be some sort of hard matter which slid down from the new shallow slope in the ground.

So close and yet, so far...Already she can sense concepts just beyond her reach, the barest hint of an idea just teetering on the tip of her...uh. Tongue?

Thalia basks in her accomplishment for a moment before the item catches her attention. With a more precise understanding of sand, she is able to move what is within her reach into a slope to slide the item closer.

(This, she notes, is a tactic she must employ later. She does not know why or how, but she has a feeling that manipulating the environment is going to play a very big role in her life.)

Thalia feels the hard object slowly shift towards her as her efforts bear fruit, and, after a few additional moments of material consumption, she finds herself in contact with an object almost the same size as herself. It is a spiraling thing, and shaped in a way quite unlike anything she has experienced so far. Granted, a limited scope, but interesting nonetheless.

This shape feels much more dense, and indeed, rather more difficult to pull in than the sand, nonetheless, there is a sense about it, a sense of something... different, valuable perhaps.

Comprehension Bonuses:
Knowledge Tree - [Organic Material] - Automatically unlocked due to comprehension score. Specifics locked until samples are obtained.

Now that IS interesting. The shape, unusual as it may be, appeals to Thalia. Instinctively, she knows it's organic. She knows it's pretty. She is gripped by an instant and complete curiosity, and quickly resumes hollowing out the sand around her (or rather, as quickly as one small orb can manage.) She aims for a sort of conical shape, to slide more materials towards her center where she can focus on consuming them. One would expect being full of sand would make her feel sluggish. Quite the opposite, she is filled with purpose.

Fanatical, hungry purpose. At this rate, she's liable to wind up buried beneath a lot of shifting sand, seeing as she seems to want to pull faster than she can really absorb.

Sand Thalia desires and indeed, sand she receives. This leads to two fairly quick discoveries. First, she discovers that there are a number of, from her perspective, rather large rocks fairly close to her. She discovers this as, shifted by the moving sand, one of them rolls into her, provoking a slightly uncomfortable thud, as it contacts her core.

The second discovery, somewhat more pleasantly, is that there are a number of the strange organic things nearby. Oddly, one of them, she can;t seem to get a read on at all. It is a rather large, almost disk shaped thing, with pretty ridges, and streaks of blue color across its outer edges. Certainly too big to absorb at the moment, though that may be a moot point, as she can;t seem to get a read on it at all, or a 'grip' as the case may be.

Nonetheless, she is presented with a wealth of options for her next meal, including a few rocks of various sizes, and a few differently shaped...things, rather like the one spiral one. This is likely good, as there is rather less reachable sand now. Indeed, it seems that Thalia has extracted herself rather effectively from the sand.

Thalia is introduced to the concept of pain and makes an adamant vow to never experience it again. She is also introduced to the concept of "no" when she realizes she's not able to pick up the larger item. This, she dislikes slightly less than pain, but still considerably.

Ah well. Thalia turns her attention to the other materials available to her. Her interest is primarily in the spirally things, although the smaller and smoother rocks also appeal to her. She reaches out and grasps a spiralled organic object, doing her best to "feel" it through this time.

There is a moment of resistance, a bit like trying to push through a thin layer of hard material, before Thalia manages to get a 'hold' on the object. Or no, not merely object;

Material gained: [Sea-Shell (Tiny)] - Common Material - Organic outer shell of a tiny aquatic mollusk, since discarded. Provides sub materials; Shell (weak) and Calcite.

Comprehension bonuses:
Blueprints derived - Shallow Spiral, Thin Organic Plating, Tiny Spike
Materials Derived - Shell Coating
[Derived materials must be created in core to be used, material qualities unknown until such operations are complete.]
[Derived blueprints may be individually examined. Blueprints may be created using one or more owned materials, and/or combined with other blueprints.]

All at once, Thalia experiences a rush of power, and an outward expansion, as her core becomes slightly larger, and new energy and power flood the newly created space.

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Core Tier 2 Reached!
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Durability +2
Power Max +5
New Absorption Rate: 8 per hour (+1 from efficiency)

5 Stat points Available