The First Fansus
The Fansus, known in-universe as the Mansus, the House of the Serpent, and the Sea-Dragon's Palace is the main setting in which the world of the Fansus occurs, and differs greatly from the House of the Sun from the world of Cultist Simulator
Appearance
The Fansus shares several traits with the Mansus of canon, surrounded by a Wood and located beneath the Glory. Many portions of the Fansus have fallen into disrepair as a result of the War of the Doors and subsequent clashes between the Hours.
The Lower House's largest remaining landmarks of note are the Breach and the Plumbing. After the Lower Doors were destroyed and the lowest levels of the House collapsed in the fighting, the Hour of the Caladrius drilled the Breach to allow mortals access to the Middle House as well as forcefully purge the accumulated buildup of Nowhere. The Plumbing likewise was installed through the ruins of the Lower House to replace the byzantine and unfathomable vital functions of the House's "body" destroyed in the fighting. At some point these labyrinthine chambers became the demesne of the Snow-Stained, but its peculiar relationship with time makes it difficult to determine exactly when this began.
The left side of the Mansus has largely collapsed, save for several "islands" of rock suspended in the air by webbing. This ascent, the "Shattered Stair", is what was left after the Great Serpent tore the Hall of Silence, the realm of the Dead, out of the Fansus and suspended it between the House and the Histories in the form of the Moon.
Existing both separate and as a part of the Fansus is the Clocktower, the domain of the Vizier. The Clocktower is visible anywhere in the Fansus, and depending on the time displayed upon its face, one may determine which Hour currently holds dominion over that area. The Clocktower is also instrumental in the flow of time, and thus it is heavily protected to preserve the integrity of the time-stream.
The roof of the House on the left side is dominated by the Glassgarden, grown by the Apple-of-the-Eye to bask in the light of the Glory. The right has been claimed by the Engineer, Name of the Engine of Cycles. She has turned the area into the Array, covering it in strange machinery that harnesses the Glory's power in an effort to slake her master's insatiable hunger.
At the Summit of the House lies the Gate of Crowns. Through this Gate all true Hours ascend as a Rite of Ascension. Their names are proclaimed by the holy Gate as they enter, and as they emerge they take on new names as they grasp Godhood.
History
At the beginning of the world, there was always the House. First came the Gods-from-Stone, and they were followed by the Gods-from-Light. It was the First from Light, The Spark, that encouraged the other Hours to join him in a grand expedition into the worlds beyond the House they had always known. He was followed by the Gods-from-Stone The Maker, The Mirror, The Butterfly Hatching and The Elder Sister, as well as his fellow Gods-from-Light The Apple-of-the-Eye and The Caladrius. In the Histories they discovered the Fair Folk, who were amazed and awed by the strange beings so far beyond themselves. Upon discovering these creatures so beneath themselves but fascinating and precious all the same, the Hours chose to dedicate themselves to the education and development of new forms of life.
For a time, the Hours equally shared in their mentorship and in some cases parentage of the Fair Folk. But as the Fair Folk began to gravitate to the worship of the Butterfly and the Elder Sister, the inspiration came to the Spark and the Maker to create for themselves their own race to nurture. Using the shared form of most Fair Ones as a model, the Maker sculpted without rest for six days straight. On the seventh day, the Maker's creation opened their eyes. In the loving embrace of their father, the First Men were born.
The other Hours at first were split on these strange, fleshy creatures their brother had created. They had no magic, no inherent power of their own. They could not store the power of the Hours like the Fair Ones could, nor did they know how to come and go from the Hours' House as they pleased. Where, therefore, lay the Value of these man-creatures?
But what man lacked in power, they more than made up for it in their fathers' gifts. Like the Spark that inspired their creation, they possessed an insatiable hunger for knowledge and discovery. And like the Maker that had crafted their flesh from clay, they soon learned they had endless potential for improvement. They demonstrated the ability to craft and invent new tools for themselves, just from what they had seen the Fair Ones use.
And when that failed to impress, humanity demonstrated its ability to evolve.
Like the clay that had spawned them, humans could be reshaped and molded in the Hours' images in ways the Fair Folk could not. After a thorough examination by the Spark and the Caladrius, the Gods-from-Light proclaimed that humanity might someday reach heights comparable to the Hours that spawned them. This spurred the interest of the other Hours, who with few exceptions chose now to embrace the newborn race as their own. The Fair Folk, some with goodwill, some with resentment in their hearts, came to be known as the Cousins of Humanity.
As the Hours experimented with and laid the foundations of the society of their new race, they made a saddening discovery. Where first it had been assumed humanity simply did not know how to enter the House, the Hours eventually realized the First Men were totally incapable of it. Born from the clay of the Histories, their flesh did not possess the ability to cross the Sea of Sleep and enter the Mansus. It seemed that never would they be able to join their gods and masters in the wondrous House they could only imagine from the tales of the Cousins and Hours that had experienced firsthand.
The Hours sought to harness the power of Knock the Principle of Travel and Opening, to bestow the First Men with the ability to pass into the House. First they implored the Butterfly Hatching, whose primal nature ruled over the Rupturing of the World's Skin. But she rebuffed them. The Butterfly wanted only new sensations, new wonders. She would not burden herself with the repetitive task of tearing holes for humans to pass through each time they wished to come and go from the House. Besides, the other Hours saw the damage her power and idle whims could inflict on the fabric of reality. It was obvious: to rely on her was to court disaster.
But humanity's potential attracted the attention of another, chillier Hour of Knock. The Dolomedes, the enigmatic Hour of Balance and Exchange, was at last lured from its lair in the Hall of Silence by the newly created Value the Maker had wrought. The Great Spider offered the First Men a bargain: it would weave between the material worlds and the House a great bridge. Through its power humanity would, for a few hours every day, be allowed to leave behind its bodies of flesh and ferried across this bridge to explore the House of the Gods. All it asked in exchange... was themselves.
Now and forever the First Men, their children, and the lines of all the children born down through the ages would surrender the everlasting life the Maker had bestowed upon them at their creation. They would be susceptible to injury, they would age and be made to bear the marks of time. And, at a time the Ferryman found convenient -or should they suffer sufficient bodily harm- their physical bodies would perish, and their spirits would reside in the House forever. Some would be permitted to wander the halls and be with their gods forever. Those whose souls had taken on qualities of interest to the Spider, however, would be Claimed by it, and would reside in the Hall of Silence forever.
Some Hours balked at this deal. Others approved. Some bade the First Men negotiate a better deal, for the loss of one's immortality was no trifling thing. None were given the chance to argue their piece. The First Men's decision was unanimous. The promise of the House's wonders, of spending an eternity there, was a temptation they could not resist. Before any protest could be raised by their mentor-gods, the First Men accepted the Spider's Bargain.
Some say humanity's greed that day planted the seed of Grail, of a Principle of Desire so strong it overcomes all reason.
The bargain struck, the Dolomedes became known to mortals as The Ferryman, who continues to sail to and from the Mansus transporting dreamers and the Dead to this day.
For quite some time, all was well. The disappointment half of them bore for the First Men's willingness to bargain away what had been gifted them aside, all were satisfied with the promise humans continued to show. As the Gods-from-Light predicted, with their newly-formed connection to the House humans could be remade in the image of the Hours.
Empowering them with slivers of their own power, the Hours found that mortals could be made into beings that were quite above the humans they once were. Now bearing a sliver of power themselves, they regained their indefinite lifespans while retaining the ability to cross between the worlds. These beings would become the first Long. Both Hour and Long rejoiced at this discovery. An end to age! Soon, no longer would humans need fear being Claimed by the Spider. While humanity celebrated what they saw as the end of a great danger and dedicated itself as a whole to Ascension, the Ferryman was watching. And it was not pleased. With the limitless patience of the unfathomably cunning, it bid its time, crouched in wait for the perfect reason to enforce the terms of its Contract as it saw fit.
The first cracks in the heretofore steadfast relationships between Hours would form not long after the Maker created its first Name. From the Long, a man of impeccable character emerged. A will of iron, a cunning like no other, and a creative mind primed to invent. He was the ideal candidate, and it was with pride both Maker and Spark elevated him, to the point his name carried almost as much reverence as their own when spoken.
One of it's mortal followers actually murdered her sibling in a bid to take the great honor for herself, and was cursed with the wretched form of The Cuckoo for her trouble. After this incident, the Hours became more wary of mortals and the Maker went so far as to never make Names again.
The dual discovery of the ability to bestow immortality to mortals and kill them prematurely did not please the Ferryman. By bestowing mortals the ability to travel to and from the Mansus and preventing them for reaching the age the spider would collect them at, the Ferryman felt its fellows had conspired with humanity to cheat it. Incensed, it declared that the deal with humanity was null and void, and set itself to claim all of what it had been owed: humanity itself.
Just when it appeared as though war between the Hours was inevitable, it was at this time The Great Serpent descended from the Glory. Siding with humanity against the Ferryman, the Great Serpent battled the great spider for the souls of mankind. At the climax of their battle, the Serpent demonstrated its mastery of the principle of Knock -a power that before had only belonged to the spider- by tearing the section of the Mansus that was home to the Spider and suspended it halfway between the worlds. Bested both physically and at its own principle, the spider finally yielded to the Serpent.
Victorious over the elder Hour, the Serpent demonstrated great wisdom by offering an olive branch to the spider in the form of a renegotiation of its contract with humanity. The Spider would continue to oversee the transportation of mortals to and from the Mansus, but would never again attempt to interfere in the uplifting of mortals by the other Hours. In return, souls that died prematurely either through accidents or at the hand of another would be subject also to the Dolomedes' judgement, and it would be able to negotiate new deals with mortals on an individual basis.
After demonstrating both great strength and restraint in its dealings with the Ferryman, the other Hours accepted the supremacy of the Great Serpent, who came to be revered as the Hour of Hours. In the stories of mortals the Mansus gained a new name in honor of its new king: The Sea Dragon's Palace, the House of the Serpent. The Moon, the chunk of Mansus-stone torn from the House remains visible to both worlds to this day, both a monument to the Great Serpent's power as well as a warning to those that would have broken its holy peace.
The Serpent laid the first code of conduct among Hours, and placed upon the Fourth History a truce that no Hour would invade it, so that the Great Serpent's personal demesne would be forever used only as a neutral ground, for the wise serpent knew that if the Hours brought their great power to bear against one another, it would only end in ruin. The Hours established The First City to serve as their meeting ground, and relaxed their grips somewhat on the mortal world.
The peace was not to last, however. Ever a free-spirit, the Great Serpent one day decided to explore Nowhere, and did not return intact. What did return were two Hours; the Hour of the Snake Tail with Appendages, a God-from-Nowhere, and the Hour of the Bright-Delver, a God-from-Blood. To the Snake-tail, reality itself was pain, and it sought only to destroy all that restricted it. To the Delver, reality was beautiful, and the world and the Glory should be available to all to make the world even nicer.
The disappearance of the Great Serpent was felt throughout the Mansus and the Histories. Some Hours felt that their ability to experiment with the world and steer the Histories in the direction they felt they should be going was restricted unduly by the Serpent, and were eager to "rectify" this perceived wrong with the 21st Hour now absent. The Anaconda, which would now become the Hour of stealth, ascended to take up the responsibilities of the Great Serpent and keep the peace.
Relationships between the gods became strained as the tensions mounted, particularly between the Hours of the Maker and the Anvil. The Maker had ever been dedicated to its work to find perfection in its creations, but this obsession deepened as time went on, to the point it no longer seemed to care for the ultimate well-being of those it modified. The Anvil however was dutiful and unyielding in its purpose, and grew disturbed by the lengths its friend seemed willing to go to in pursuit of perfecting its craft.
These tensions grew to a head when a dispute between the Snake-Tail and the Anaconda blossomed into a full-scale war as both Hours used the dispute as a excuse to vent their pent-up frustrations upon each other. The Hours that opposed the war and sought to maintain a sense of order took the names The Doors, while those that sought an upset to the status-quo -by violent means if necessary- became known as The Keys. It is during this time a new Hour The Peacock, emerged from hiding within the Wood and aligned itself with the Keys, for reasons the Snake-Tail and the bird kept to themselves.
For a time the Hours waged bloody war, greatly damaging the House and destroying many of the Gates through which both mortal and god accessed its halls. The battle only ended when the mortals the Snake-Tail and Anaconda had originally fought over were all killed save one. The Hours put down their weapons and ceased their fighting, but the damage to both the Mansus and their relationships with each other had been done.
All was not well, however. The War of the Doors had damaged the fabric of reality, making navigation of the Lower House difficult if not impossible. These rifts shined like a beacon to Nowhere, and new Gods-from-Nowhere emerged. Among them was The Insidious, which began to spread its malign influence throughout the Wood. Also FNORD.
Tensions again began to rise as a previously unheard of phenomenon began to manifest among the Long: defection. En masse many of the seemingly-devoted servants of the Hours of the House began to turn away from their masters, and pledge themselves to the fledgling Hour of the Peacock. Heedless of the complaints of his fellows, the great red bird continued to preach to the congregations of the other gods, luring them away with promises of unparalleled delight and what was described as an "unnatural charm". As the Peacock's power grew to levels unprecedented, inquiries were made as to the origin of this young Hour.
It was the Cuckoo, the oldest shame of the Maker, who finally came forth with the truth of the Young Upstart's true nature. In a shocking act of callousness never seen before or since, the Cuckoo had gathered together and slaughtered the sum total of her cults in the waking world, luring them to her with promises of pleasure and delivering only pain. All in the pursuit of creating a God-from-Blood. The Cuckoo succeeded, and while the infant Hour's guard was lowered immediately attacked and murdered it, seeking to take its power for her own and dominate the other Hours. She was the first to learn the horrifying truth: that the death of a Hour would lead to the creation of a new God-from-Nowhere. Rising again almost as quickly as it was slain, this not-Hour now knew nothing of death, and existed now only to spread its terribly warped notion of joy to the rest of the world. A Broken-Bird.
Some Hours moved to set themselves against this rising monstrosity, but by the time the truth was known, the damage had been done. The Peacock had amassed a wealth of stolen power from the other gods, its forces' numbers swollen innumerably by vast hoards of Long dominated by the Peacock's power and put under his control. This group came to be known as The Choir Unceasing for the unending, obscene cries and otherworldly music they made. Many Keys aligned themselves with this rising power, and for a time the unholy alliance of the Keys and Nowhere reigned dominant over the Upper Mansus.
This came to a head when the Keys' power grew so great as to reach into the Third History, a world in which the power of the Doors had been all but supreme. Across the sea from the empires of the Doors, the Keys leaked into the minds of the people of the Americas, supplanting their gods and leading them into the throes of their bloody worship. Fearing that the Keys would amass enough power to re-ignite the War of the Doors should they gather any more power, the Doors sent the forces of man across the sea to destroy their cults and take the wealth of the native people for their own. This plan failed disastrously when one such conqueror, Hernan Cortes, decided he would rather take power for himself rather than be subordinate to an ungrateful empire far across the sea. With the support of the other conquerors, he donned a golden crown and proclaimed himself the Golden King of the New World.
Shocked and incensed by this affront to their power, both the mortal empires and the Hours of the Doors moved to crush Cortes with their full might. But these efforts were again thwarted as the Hours of the Keys reemerged, offering Cortes unimaginable power in return for his aid. Desperate for allies, the King accepted and the newfound alliance successfully drove the re-claimers from the New World.
The Doors however rallied and managed to turn the tables on the Doors once again however. The Cuckoo, eager for revenge on the Peacock for escaping her, used her unique ability to imitate the other Hours to lure the Golden King into a trap. When the Keys brought Cortez to the Mansus, the Doors lured him instead into a trap.
The Apple-of-the-Eye gave up one of its many titles - The Golden City, El Dorado - that would give Cortez the power he sought, but would also tether him in place, preventing him from leaving his corner of the Mansus. The treasure was placed within the territory of the Peacock and the Keys, so that what was meant to be their ultimate weapon would become their downfall.
While this was happening the Anvil - who had come to be regarded as one of the foremost Doors alongside the Anaconda - approached the Maker for aid. In the name of their old friendship, the Anvil implored the Sculptor aid it once more in the construction of a device that would be instrumental in breaking the Nowhere-Key alliance. Although they'd drifted apart over the years, the Hour of crafting could not resist the temptation to make a one of a kind creation.
Using their power, the Maker and Anvil crafted a gate of living, molten gold, ever-flowing and constantly renewing itself so that it would not be able to be destroyed. The doorway to a prison worthy of gods. The Gilded Gate.
The plan worked flawlessly. Cortez eagerly took the bait, binding himself and his armies to the treasure laid out for him by the Glorious Lie. As he joined with the Golden City and ascended to Hourhood, but in the process bound himself there, and became unable to ever truly leave it. He became a shadow of what he sought to become, Old Tarnished. Convinced that the Keys were the ones that led him to make this terrible mistake, he set armies and all his newfound power against them will all his rage behind them. Simultaneously, the Maker and the Anvil completed the Gilded Gate to bar Cortez from blindy rampaging through the House... with the Maker trapped on the other side.
The Anvil had come to believe the Maker was too dangerous to be allowed to walk the Mansus free, and imprisoned it alongside the other violent Hours behind the Gate. Its heart utterly shattered at this ultimate betrayal, the Maker turned and threw itself into the fray, as the Alliance of Keys turned into a bloody free for all as their corner of the Mansus was consumed with war. The Keys beside the Maker and the Peacock relented and fled, returning to their demesnes while the latter were left to fight behind the gate. The Choir Unceasing was overpowered and slaughtered, forced into hiding with the Broken-Bird in the High Rooms of the House, and there he remains.
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