I would tell you, my children, of how Sheila came to be. I think. Time is strange to the divine, and to the incorporeal, and I have been both for so long I worry I am a stone in the river, not understanding the flow but where it touches for a moment. Sheila’s genesis is stranger still, insofar as I understand it. In truth, it was not until Sheila was gone that I could safely follow her path back in an effort to piece together what had occurred. With the looming presence of the Hive Mother, I dared not do anything but hide in the moment. I do not know if I was successful in this endeavour, or if the goddess saw me and simply did not care, but I dared not risk her attention. Thus, my observations of Sheila are passive and posthumorous. Thankfully even my passive attention was more than enough to parse her thoughts, though there were strange untouchable places in her mind, and a point where all of her that might have come before was unseeable to me.

So, Sheila.

Imagine you could choose your form with no repercussions, my children. Many would choose to be the epitome of beauty. However, with the ability to be anything on a whim, some might choose to delve into the freakish and bizarre. So it was with the people of the Oruke, whose forms were fluid to their will. What was beauty when you could be anything? Often, the aspiration of appearance was not to be perfect, but to be remarkable.

Sheila, for her part, was not one of the Oruke, but her options were much the same as the shapeshifters once had. She initially sought the form of the ancient enemies of her tribe, but found no such creatures as ‘Emus' existed in Lubuoruke. This did not deter her.

Her form began so much like yours was, my children. Yet she stretched it to strange proportions to attempt to meet her goal. Her legs were long and thin, dark and vaguely scaled, and ended in wide, flat black feet. Above the too-high knees the legs disappeared into a veritable forest of coarse brown feathers packed densely around a squat, plump torso that sported a virtual bustle of feathers from her rump. The arms were much like the legs, feathered instead of scaled but bearing far more strength than appearances would suggest. A long neck emerged from and continued the feathered mass, tapering down to hold a child-sized head.

The face was what really exposed what Sheila had done. The eyes, the beak, the feathered crest, black and browns and seemingly mundane on cursory examination. However, when one looked closely enough one would note the eyes were multifaceted, the beak a rotated mandible, the feathered crest and indeed all the feathers were innumerable feathery antennae. Sheila made her desired form from what she had, and what she had was an abundance of insectoid portions. She made her choices and all was darkness.

Her form was like that of yours, my children, and she warped it on a whim to abomination. I hate her, my children. She shall not be spared. None shall be spared.

I will not be spared.

Sheila was born from a blue chrysalis at the edge of a hot spring in a place of sweeping mesas, in a different shadow of possibility, and strode from that crystaline womb with purpose. The accompanying chrysalises of her new tribe she opened immediately, and the new Maddish saw the aspect of insects upon her and knelt in awe. They were most pious, these Manifest Maddish, true devotees of Grandfather Chaos, and proved difficult for Sheila to lead without resorting to religious inspiration. She learned her magics within the day, and then aided the rest with their own development. In so doing the Maddish clan proclaimed her Champion of the Hive Mother, and obeyed her commands insofar as creatures of Chaos obeyed any law at all. Sheila, for her part, saw no reason to disabuse them of the notion of having a divine mandate.

The singular male in the tribe was a true fanatic, and as small slights gathered he distrusted Sheila’s faith more and more each day. He would defy her in small ways to test her, and with each test grew more bold. The apex was choosing to ignore Sheila’s warnings against eating scavenged mushrooms without consulting her. The male died howling peaens to the Hive Mother, with hideous foam pouring from both ends.

Yet the six slave-gods of the Oruke are not absent or powerless, but simply reduced. And the Hive Mother, the goddess of passion, the sky and the seasons, was close enough to hear the dying supplications of the poisoned believer.

So it was the remainder of the tribe was visited by that alien, insectoid gargantuan, and they sacrificed to her greatly despite Sheila’s objections. Sheila’s hold on the tribe was largely broken. While they still respected Shiela and her knowledge, this was the Hive Mother, one of the three servants of Grandfather Chaos! And when the Hive Mother began to fly away, the tribe followed in her wake, abandoning all else in thier fervor. Sheila followed behind, trying to gather all they might need for a journey.

As they chased in the wake of the Hive Mother, Sheila brought them back into her fold in small ways. She ensured the spawned beasts of the tribe bore all manner of useful burdens, she gave aid to the wounded, and as always, she stood vigil through her sleepless nights.

The Hive Mother travelled far; her influence crossed the boundaries of clashing possibilities and made the places of her transition align. So it was that the tribe of Sheila traversed the shadows of Lubuoruke, crossing from shard of potential to shard of potential in the wake of divinity, my children.

Until they came here, to Alsualsu.