Endless Blue - Week 46 - Orbs of Krakenkind

Archeology

Orbs of Krakenkind

Particularly potent relics of a time when the Elder Squids hunted the waters of the Endless Blue, each Orb of Krakenkind is a sphere about one foot in diameter.  Its out layer has a thick, unyeilding texture, like slathered on shellac, that taints the viscous goo entrapped within its confines with a hue of molten amber.  Suspended in the tacky inner mucus is a free floating darkness, barely visible through the occluded sebaceous muck.  This suspended mass, untethered to the Orb's outer veneer, weighs heavily despite the surrounding ocean pressures.  This un-anchored center of gravity makes holding either sphere balanced a difficult task, and no matter what the depth it is taken to it will always pull downward with a negative buoyancy.

An Orb of Krakenkind when first discovered.

The whirling, swirling, twirling miasma of oily, waxy oozes has no perceptible pattern to its internal  flux, seeming to be an eternal current of featureless ichor and bile.  Only once its ancient powers are activated does the thick curtain of scum part and a huge iris, rippled with golden hues of color and tensed lengths of muscle.  Smack dab in the center of that constantly refocusing iris gapes the terrifying waved shape of a Kraken's pupil.  It stares directly out, its penetrating gaze constant in a single direct no matter which direction the Orb is turned.

An Orb of Krakenkind once activated.

History

Evidence of the existence of any of the Orbs of Krakenkind is mostly supposition and vagaries, accumulated through the telling and retelling of mythical folklore.  True evidence of the primordial subsistence of such artifacts is generally cited as the work of fevered dreams or broken minds.

Despite eloquent theories and plausible rationalizations, there are in actuality only a single pair of Krakonic Orbs.  The matched pair of orbs forever point in opposite directions.  As one always gazes into the past and the other peers into the future, they can never look at each other.  Attempt to turn the first in the direction of its mate will cause the mate to move, much like magnets with the same polarity.  If the mate is constrained or has more force pushing on it to keep it from moving, the first cannot turn at all.  A very literal example of irresistible force meeting immovable object.

When in use, the iris of the eyes sheds a glow that matches the Era of history being viewed.  Only the Cardinal, Bronze, Golden, and Verdant/Verdigris eras can be scryed through the Krakonian Orb of Past and conversely only the Indigo, Violaceous, and Livid ages can be spied through the Krakonian Orb of Future.  Moments of the Cerulean Era ares split between the two eyes as is fitting the time the investigated incidents occurred.  Once activated, the pupil then dilates from the infamous w-shape into a round portal in which the time and place may be observed.

Historians assert one of the Orbs must have been used to prophesy the unification of the Kraken species and ascendancy into the occupying empire that dominated the Fluid Nations.  How else, they argue, could such a fickle, uncooperative race put aside their instinctive tendencies and put the needs of the whole over the interests of the one without direct evidence of beneficial results?  To see is to believe, and before the Kraken Empire held sway over the Known World no one would have foreseen their alliance.

Campaign Use

Relics that predict future events pose an incredible boon to those that can auger their messages, and seeking out such means of prognostication would be highly sought after.  The quest to find just one Orb of Krakenkind is but the start of a longer adventure, involving the unique properties of the Orbs to seek out its mate.  The eye that looks back through time can leave glimpses of the places where the other Orb once stood, or the eyes that spies forward may leave tantalizing hits of where the adventurers need to head next.  But even with just a single Krakonian Orb the possibilities unbounded by the limits of time.

Powers

Constant

- The pupils of either Orb will always point away from its partner's location.  At far distances the shift in direction the eye focuses is hard to gauge, but the closer the two come in proximity the greater the movement.  This is sort of a reverse compass, a load-stone effect pointing diametrically away from the object of desire.

Invoked

- Either Orb of Krakenkind can activate the following divination spells at will, but can only affect targets in periods of time appropriate for the particular eye: locate object, clairaudience/clairvoyance, scrying

- Either Orb of Krakenkind can activate the following divination spells oncer per day, but can only affect targets in periods of time appropriate for the particular eye: legend lore, divination, find the path

- Either Orb of Krakenkind can activate the following divination spells oncer per week, but can only affect targets in periods of time appropriate for the particular eye: discern location, foresight

Resonating

- The closer the two eyes come to each other, the clearer the prophecy that they reveal becomes.  To hold both eyes in either hand is believed to grant the bearer omniscience of history and future to the finest detail.

Curse

- The more the possessor indulges in the auguries of the Krakonian Orbs, the more malformed their minds become.  Slowly they lose their familiar personality quirks and stark taking on a distant, yet territorial mindset. Thought by though, the mind of the holder become more like that of a Kraken, driven by the same primordial urges of avarice and hunger that made the species feared across the seas of Elqua.  With both orbs in his possession, the holder begins a slow, horrifying metamorphosis, losing all connection with their piscean form and transmogrifying into a dread squid in both body and mind.  With this remaking of a lone individual into a massive Kraken, the Orbs complete their most insidious purpose -- the ressurection of the Kraken race.  The newly transformed Kraken's first impulse will be to sequester the orbs away in seperate but equally devious hiding places until the hubris of a new questor seeks out their terrible powers.

Suggested Means of Destruction

The eyes must be made to look at each other.
Both of the Orbs must be smashed at the exact moment as the other, while the act is replayed through its own dilated pupil.
The Orb must be hatched in the nursery of a non-extinct Kraken.