It had taken time to settle in, to orient himself towards the painful mundanity of this husk-realm, all but empty, worlds like glittering trash-heaps atop a fusion-torch pyre. But there was nothing quite like a capable opponent to reify his focus, light a fire in his spirit to burn away all that was feeble and unnecessary.
Classic Dien, never missing a chance to throw some shade at the universe. So much wasted space! What matter exists is bleakly banal, not a speck of supernal glory to be seen. If the Voyaging Realm is representative, the Foremost preferred not to live on planets. It's slightly surprising Dien's not making a bee-line for a Realm. Maybe the Industrial's not organic enough for a Shard of the Surgeon, but the Accursed knows the Voyaging's got enough megafauna. I'm curious what he'd make of Aobaru too, but perhaps that's best left a hypothetical, since the answer's almost certainly 'something horrifying'.
Every Hero, after all, needed a Tyrant to overcome.
Literally Heroic resolve is impressive as always. Dien's narration is neat, but this line in particular hammers home the regret about picking him. A Maker might've succumbed to despair, been disheartened by the immense discrepancy between what they are and what they were. Dien's first interlude posits as much. A Hero can't help but rise to the challenge. Still wonder who started calling them Destroyers instead, their caste has the most contrast between the two names.
Dien clicked his tongue as he felt one of his Feeder Suns extinguished. It did not take a Hero of his formidable intellect to deduce that the aptly-named Lord Hunger was the cause. Frustrating, but not unexpected. He had felt the Cursebearer's Pressure battering at his own not minutes ago, though - in no small part because of those Suns - his own was the greater, and likely to remain that way. Seventeen Ringwastes fully assimilated and another two hundred eighty-nine in various stages of completion: his findross-absorption schedule promised exponential progress, and it would not be long before he could move onto methods more elegant and effective than the full-scale exploitation of populated systems.
Hey, at least he approves of Hunger's name! I suppose it makes sense. Hunger's a primal drive, up there with fear in terms of nature's strongest goads. That Hunger was able to cut through and annihilate a sun in minutes is gratifying, but the scale of this conflict is daunting and proves the truth of Dien's earlier assertion: initiative is crucial.
We know the outline of how orcs work, so Dien's
pyramid sun scheme is somewhat comprehensible. Humans in the Manifest Realm are said to be the source of findross; by rendering systems into biomass, he can harvest the findross of their inhabitants by funneling it to him through the sun somehow. He probably knows what properties allow for findross production in the first place, allowing for optimization. It's possible the herbivore Hunger noted is a custom creature engineered for just such a purpose, Dien's unlikely to have created an ecosystem to improve his ring's ambiance.
Anyway, the 'waste' suffix is in keeping the original AST. There was an Orcwaste, an Elfwaste, even a Legendwaste. The first denoted terrain stripped of all findross to empower orcs, which is pretty much what Hunger observed here. The upshot of this is that the Green Suns have to be linked to Dien in order to empower him; he's aware the instant Hunger destroys one. It's possible Hunger (or Gisena) could locate him through that connection. It's probably routed through the Astral, since that's how the Human Sphere handles FTL. Letrizia's knowledge might be relevant there? The Astral could also be where all that extra material came from, assuming Dien gives so much as the vestigial shadow of a fuck about conservation of mass.
Other thoughts: Dien is exploiting 'populated systems', so we should seek out the most populous. Hunger knows the headcount of the Republic's worlds well at this point, and Dien's Pressure as good as announced that he sees humans as a resource. That could hint at where the Surgeon's set up shop. And though it was a while back, he was able to sense the substance of Gisena's Graces through his Ring's power over blood. Since the only people actively using findross in the galaxy should be Gisena, Dien's experiments, and various Shards, if Hunger can search for concentrations of findross on a celestial scale he could both expedite the party's reunion (Aobaru was right, you never split the party) and generate leads. A Ring of Essence would be better at this, but you play the hand you're dealt.
The more stars that fell beneath his sway, the greater his personal power became, reserves of findross swelling to reinforce his Astral gradient and physical frame. Along the way he'd extinguished more than a few rival Shards; in terms of opening position he'd been more than fortunate, his advantages of valor and circumstance sufficiently overwhelming that their defiance had been wholly inadequate. How uninteresting!
You could say that all the stars in the sky are our enemies! References aside, Dien continues to have absolutely no chill. Is this truly the best use of resources? Does he have no regard for other Shards, to inclination to rebuild what was lost? It's one thing to dismiss former glories, another to steamroll the closest thing he has to peers. He really is inhuman, though with a tone genial enough that you can almost forget the sheer scope of the horror he's perpetrating. An Apocryphal proc lamenting the lack of interesting adversaries is peak irony, though. Are there any Ruhuk Cursebearers? I can imagine Dien cheerfully taking the Apocryphal Curse; he reminds me a bit of Jiko, Priest's MHA character.
Etrynome had been critical in providing the terraformation infrastructure necessary to enact his plan in weeks rather than years, but the day would come sooner rather than later when Ceathlynn of Amarlt turned against him. He had kept Armament and pilot occupied and isolated, building the tools that he used to build the tools that eventually delivered the final product. Nonetheless he expected both would catch on quickly enough if they had not already done so, and he doubted they would tolerate his wholesale reconstitution of native Republic populations. Perhaps he could buy a few weeks more of loyalty with a genuine offer of augmentation, subversion absent even on the Astral or sub-molecular levels... ideally she would accept and then slay Lord Hunger on her misguided personal crusade, or at least weaken the man for a few days.
That less than a week can yield relevant gains is a bad sign. The diegetic implementation of the recent Wishes means Hunger's burned out on the Praxis, so we can't afford to take time to grind. The next Pillars session will offer ample picks, but that's weeks (?) away, and who knows how bad things'll be by then. Still good to know that Ceathlynn'll eventually wise up, realize she's being kept in the dark and fed bullshit, and rebel against Dien. It'll probably be too late to matter, but he's such a hypercompetent monster that every snag in his plans is cause for rejoicing. Unfortunately Catherine was disillusioned with the Republic, adrift in the universe and looking for purpose. In other words, ripe for someone like Dien to swoop in. He's even a doctor; she gets to advance the limits of
human Heroic knowledge again!
Even in spite of such relentless efficiencies as Dien had pursued, it was no foregone conclusion that he would grow past the ability of Lord Hunger to defeat. Beginnings were fragile times, for life most of all, and Dien in his current state was little more than a nascent shell compared to the Foremost glory of the Surgeon. An inconvenient Progression-type Cursebearer was just the sort of foe capable of cutting him down before his prime, whether through sheer thoughtless might or some spectacular feat of sudden advancement.
Yeah, unfortunately for all his power Hunger's still taking his first fragile steps as a Cursebearer. It's unclear what kind of relationship the Foremost had with the Accursed, but multiple Cursebearers had to have been affiliated with them at some point. Dien's audacity continues to impress, he's undaunted the prospect of an enemy Progression-type without underestimating the threat. Would seeing Haeliel's Favor give him any second thoughts? How would a Hero relate to the Seraph of Heroism, whose justice is such a far cry from the valor they epitomize? The idea of an orcish ally is a tantalizing prospect, but Jotarun and Dien are both walking war crimes.
Thus he had not been negligent with contingencies. All manner of clone and spore and infective data-carrier had been seeded throughout Republic space, not merely within his own sphere but all systems adjacent or which practiced trade - or any remotely physical form of contact - with the societies under his covert or open control. Some projects had been designed for aggressive growth, others for stealth and resilience. It was unlikely for any one strategy of Lord Hunger's to address them all, though the miracles of a Rank gradient would surely sift the vast majority away, in the absence of Dien's own shadow to protect them.
Honestly, I struggle to imagine a version of this quest where Hunger has no Rank. Astral interactions are ubiquitous and we've had Ranked enemies ranging from Avecarn to an Armament. Hunger's backstory would have changed, with the war against the Tyrant featuring different horrors. No overwhelming Pressure to warp the world against the plucky band of rebels, though a broken Soul Evocation could've achieved a similar effect. He probably would've wound up with Defensive Rank at minimum no matter what won; Battle Magic hasn't shown up, but we've had opportunities to unlock the Imprisoner. Hunger's a Progression-type, all magics are theoretically open to him.
Deep-tunneling programs carried seedling spores through the Astral to distant systems throughout the galactic rim, well beyond the conventional reach of the Human Sphere; should he perish here, there was no reason another iteration could not arise in the void of deep space and muster a calamitous wave to avenge him. He would flee with his consciousness if he could, but he very much doubted that a Cursebearer worth their salt would, in event of victory, fail to dispatch him in every way that mattered.
Man, now I'm hearing Dien's narration in
this voice. Orcs and mushrooms are both fungi, so it's easy to imagine a version of this exchange where the speaker's holding a gun to Dien, who'd probably tell him the true name of god is I.
That tangent aside, what do the Astrals think of Dien using their realm to spread his spores far and wide? They're aligned with the Republic, but soon there's not going to be a Republic to be allied to. The Makers apparently conquered the entirety of the Astral, and now their Shards are waking. Probably not a pleasant surprise for the folks upstairs, if they hate their Implements so much. Hunger did mention a lack of attacks against Novakhron, but attributed it to them gearing up for something bigger. Perhaps not picking Extinction Burst could pay dividends in another department? Astral politics are a black box, but Hunger can guarantee he'll be gone within twenty-five hundred years, likely much sooner. The Shards are here to stay.
This despite the depth of his network; he had spared every means not to underestimate his foe. Bio-modded infiltrators spanned every major Republic settlement, and were making inroads into the Empire; these would maintain a facade of normalcy to Lord Hunger while securing Dien's control over relevant polities.
Once again, the Association makes out like a bandit while the Sphere's preeminent powers are bled dry. Though with our luck, the Spider'll turn out to be running the show in their corner. Dien's level of preparation's pretty terrifying too. It's looking like we'll need Artful Thorn upgrades by the bucketload to get rid of him. Rather than tracking down all his contingencies, 'simply' stab the Form of Dien Bravo to death. The man's basically two 40k factions rolled into one and lightly sprinkled with JoJo references. Without gratuitous overkill, he'll die harder than Bruce Willis.
At the next stage of conversion were factory-worlds, planets directly conquered and re-written into productive engines churning out implements of expansion, restoration and war. Many lesser Heroes he'd budded across these planets, an army swelling by the billions every day, honed against themselves in the manner of Heroic warfare such that only the most able would survive; the findross of the weakling consumed by the Orkhor, and the Orkhor's by the Warlord, and so on up the cosmic chain until viable lieutenants started to materialize. Planetary-wide countermeasures ensured that, outside of the systems themselves, cursory examination of a factory world would reveal nothing untoward to optical or Astral observation.
Fascinating that the appropriate terminology managed to persist however far into the future the Manifest Realm is. Gisena could likely tell us, but Gisena's not in the business of delivering unnecessary exposition. The thread's really earning that 'scales like DBZ without the breaks' tag, though. The final boss of the original AST would barely qualify to be one of Dien's lieutenants. Jotarun didn't even have Rank in the double digits! Standards have fallen, orcs aren't getting proper nourishment. And huh, orcs ate Joanian humans because people were the source of findross? Somehow that penny just dropped for me. Not so different from Dien, despite the scale and sophistication of his setup.
The fewest and most critical were his Incubator Realms: impossible to hide, the scale and ambition of these future Ringwastes and their Feeder Suns simply too vast to practicably cloak with his current means. These he had to hope that Lord Hunger would not stumble upon - or produce at such a rate that the Cursebearer would be unable to scythe them down in time. Hopefully the Praehihr, lacking any other examples in his immediate vicinity, would believe the project a one-off.
He's shit out of luck there. As an Apocryphal Cursebearer, Hunger's professionally cynical. It's fortunate that Dien doesn't know what Curses Hunger has, though I'm sure he's curious. Our other apparent advantage is that at no point in his musings does Dien mention the other party members. He got his intel from eating Republic personnel; Hunger's stunt to create artificial difficulty by engaging the Fifth Fleet alone has thankfully left Versch and Nova off his radar.
In a battle of cosmic resources, there was nothing so crucial as initiative, and so Dien had prioritized speed above all else, even to the point of his personal diminishment. Much of his own reserves he'd fed to one project or another, succoring otherwise-unviable candidates whose functions were critical to the broader vision. It was disgraceful and unnatural to so-compromise empirical selection, but necessity demanded and - like any good Hero - Dien would do anything to win, no matter how much he enjoyed a good fight. It was ironic that in his present state he would be wholly incapable of putting up much of a fight against Lord Hunger, despite his superior gradient. The gulf between their physical attributes and combat techniques was likely too vast, given his opponent's access to at least the Royal Praxis.
His present weakness is promising, though Hunger's reliant on a stolen Republic ship for transport. If we get lucky and can trace him through his Feeder Suns, catching and Sealing him early could cut the head off the snake. Hunger's Rank would do the rest, though even at this veritably embryonic stage effort would need to be spent cleaning up the mess. Dien's social Darwinism seems to be a personal quirk, but the ruthless pragmatism's the defining trait of orcs. They're like an entire species comprised of Catherines! What did Foremost Heroes even
do in peacetime, other than prepare for war?
Parasites and skinchangers; factories and nodes; like the tendrils of a vast and inescapable forest he had taken root in this Sphere, and it would take a fire of galactic proportions ever to burn him out. He possessed self-propagating assets across every phylum of organization and scale, every strategic niche fostered and exploited.
'The Surgeon'll give us so many picks,' I said. 'Lots of artificial adversaries for us to farm, won't that be fun? We'll have the moral high ground too!' That take has... aged poorly. As ever, hindsight's 20/20. Hunger's charisma is virtually useless against an enemy like this. Sure, he could rally any human polity that doesn't block his messages on account of being a memetic hazard against the orcish hordes, but anywhere Dien's spent time will have a populace biologically incapable of betraying him.
Would it be enough to face this enemy, this Praehihr who would yield for nothing, whose Progression was as shocking as Dien's preparations were thorough? Would enough of his projects mature, come to useful fruition, before he was hunted down and killed like a dog by that murderous blade?
Perhaps. But even if he fell, his plots undone, all his works unraveled, banished to oblivion beyond even the reach of memory... Dien smiled.
It would be one hell of a fight.
Hunger's Progression has been absurd enough that this actually being in question is crazy. Just goes to show that the real god-stat is Apocryphal mitigation, which ought to be prioritized over any amount of power. Contests of escalation with a Crowning Curse can only ever purchase a temporary reprieve. Definitely having some buyer's remorse regarding Breaker of Suns winning over Shoguness, and not just because of the lore the latter would've offered. Dien is an entertaining adversary despite his enormous killcount, but the perspectives of other Shards would be interesting. We've yet to see one of the
ithilyor in the flesh! Given our strategic situation it's greedy, but Heavenly Tomb would be a boon with all these Shards running around. If they won't cooperate on their own, into a cell they go! Once defeated, Dien could be subverted within Pillars and then tasked with unraveling all his contingencies.
They were supposed to be striking the enemy's flank, supporting Hunger's push towards the Republic capital with a two-Armament incursion of their own. But, Aobaru mused, no plan ever survived contact with the enemy, much less... whatever the horrific conspiracy was that they'd encountered here. Gisena had outright slain the first man they'd come into contact with, blasting him with supernal fire to briefly reveal tendrils of something unspeakable before a wave of Nullity had rendered it mundane ash.
Aobaru's PoV remains a refreshing injection of normalcy in a universe of unremitting escalation. Dien's handiwork resembles a genestealer cult from the outside; hopefully we won't have to go full Exterminatus to burn out his contingencies. Speaking of which, Gisena casting fireball's a new trick. But she's been off-screen for a bit and we did take Temporal + Vanquisher's to maximize her growth rate, so getting something like Evoker's Panoply in addition to progress on Make Whole is logical. That's one reason I don't want to nuke the Azure, apart from the sour taste of retroactively rendering the Temple arc pointless and all the reasons Hunger would disapprove in-character. Broken Kaleidoscope's a tremendous burst of power, but we'd be sacrificing everything Gisena might craft with her Ring going forward as well.
"Go. Stay in Novakhron. Don't leave Totality." Gisena's command had been brisk, frost overtaking her voice as soon as they'd touched down on this world, a field of Nullity like a shimmering veil drawn across her face. "Letrizia, you and Aeira don't leave that cockpit."
Gisena's masking up, I see. Better not inhale any spores! Six feet of social distancing wouldn't protect a baseline human, but with a Rank gradient all things are possible. It's easy to forget that thanks to Companions of the King, the kids aren't that far behind Hunger himself. It makes Ranking up a productive activity, though even with the Conqueror's Nimbus multiplier I'm not optimistic about overtaking Dien. Maybe his billions-strong armies of freshly minted Heroes count as an audience?
It was unlike Lady Allria to be so serious, but she offered no explanation, merely stood unsmiling at the air around them, eyes a brilliant emerald. It was a different shade than Novakhron's green-and-gold; the Apocryphal Armament's autumnal plumage a hue deeper and richer that seemed almost impossible to replicate with physical means. Always it had been the unbreakable bulwark of their formation; not even Letrizia and Verschlengorge's long experience sufficed to overcome its supremacy in raw power.
He was biased, being Novakhron's erstwhile pilot. But it had been more than borne out in their actual battle performance! The only other explanation was that he was some sort of genius in warfare... which, now that he thought about it, didn't seem that unlikely...
When the most ordinary member of the party's the Chosen One, you know things have gotten complicated. Aobaru's still grappling with the responsibility he was entrusted with, and who knows how seeing the Shards will change his view of the task? And we still haven't met Aobaru's terminator either. Say one thing for the last Apocryphal decision point, at least selecting Seram would've consolidated our problems into a single person.
"No," Gisena muttered to herself, eyes darting between objects only she could perceive. "Anyone who could make something like this, wouldn't be restricted to working with findross alone. Our individual Rank should protect us against anything wholly corporeal, but the populations here... Kids! Change of plan. We need to get into contact with Hunger and Adorie as soon as possible. And not just because we miss them!"
I failed to consider what picking the Surgeon would look like from Gisena's perspective. Since this version bailed with her Final Grace before things got bad she didn't have to watch Jeanne die, but one thing I've never accused Lady Allria of is lacking imagination. She could picture what's happening back home, just prefers not to. 'Suddenly, orcs' is not a welcome surprise, though since she's deduced the connection between the Manifest Realm and the Foremost she's probably at least considered the possibility as far back as the Mizuku debacle. Did Hunger ever fix that kid's face? Quickwater's blurb implied the potential to mass produce Surgecrafters, which'd be neat. Sadly we never have enough downtime to do science.
Just like that, the unease on her features was gone, and the mockingly cheerful Nullity Sorceress returned. Had she even actually been caught off-guard, Aobaru wondered, or had she merely adopted that expression to impress upon them the severity of the situation? Ever since she'd gotten that temporal Grace, it was becoming even more difficult to tell, and her facade nearly impenetrable even before.
For once I'm going to err on the side of optimism and say this was genuine alarm on Gisena's part. If any stimulus could elicit that reaction, it'd be this. Broken Kaleidoscope being an option at all testifies to her sincerity.
It was hard not to observe the Nullity Sorceress, he thought with chagrin. She was so stupefyingly, transcendentally pretty that the eye could not help but rest unconsciously on her, the rest of humanity bleakly dull in comparison. Hunger truly had superhuman will to resist her wiles on a regular basis. Or perhaps they were just extremely discreet?
Aobaru shouldn't sell himself short, that he retains enough wherewithal to crush on Adorie despite interacting with Gisena's a testament to his will. But yes, Gisena remains a superstimulus. Remember when she broke the minds of those Republic scouts by accident? I'm not sure she finished the Veil of Grandeur equivalent, though the sanity of our teammates suggests she did. If we're pairing off the party, Aeira and Letrizia get along well, but the true OTP was and remains Versch/Devouring Enemies.
"What are our options?" Letrizia asked, Verschlengorge's smiling fangs bared in anticipation. "Anything faster-than-light requires either magic or Astral travel, but we don't even know which system they're in right now."
Speaking of our boy, there's a smile worth protecting. Still sad Maw of Night wasn't an option for that build vote. We've been told Armaments only reach their full potential with a
Praehihr pilot, but realistically speaking are we ever going to vote to get into Novakhron's cockpit? Hunger took on a big responsibility bringing new life into the world, especially an entity that'll have to suffer the Apocryphal Curse, so Nova deserves some attention. But there's never enough of Hunger to go around, even with Pillars. Always some new crisis in need of stabbing.
"We have three," Gisena articulated, raising her fingers in a lecturer's stance. "First, we could hunker down and try to create a Grace that can communicate with him. This isn't the Realm of Evening, so it may take as long as a realtime week for me to finesse something workable. Second, we try and seize the Republic Emergency Broadcasting system located in the sector capital. That should give us an indiscriminate line to every major Republic world and has good chances of reaching Hunger, but could be sabotaged by sufficiently determined interference - here or in the Astral Realm. Finally, we try to track them down manually, hijacking the fastest vessel we can find and relying on Nova's Pressure gradient to draw us towards him."
An Emergency Broadcast would alert Dien as well, though he likely won't remain ignorant of them for long anyway. He knows more about Astral interactions than we do and can sense Rank, which is troublesome. The hyper-logarithmic scale of Rank means Nova's much stronger than the kids, though maybe Sharpbright can channel their collective Pressure to reunite the party faster? Between A Promising Lead, On The Trail, and Gisena's own analysis we ought to have an angle to pursue by the time that happens. Just spitballing for now, but the findross singularities in Dien's Feeder Suns could be exploitable by Gisena; why destroy what she could hijack? Orcs naturally convert it into physical prowess, but Makers have a multitude of uses for findross.
"No path seem strictly better than the others," Aobaru said. "So, are we going to vote here, or are you just going to decide?"
"As if there's a difference," Gisena smiled, batting her eyelashes coquettishly. "We'll do all three, of course! I'll work on the Grace while you kids find the fastest vessel you can and push towards the sector capital. If that works, wonderful! If not, we'll have to track them down manually. Let's go, kids. Time is of the essence. This enemy has already defeated humankind in another realm, and it was much less sophisticated then... but, so was I."
I too remember the good old days when Jotarun
having Rank was considered an outside context problem that we had to plan around. Hunger's going to kill his kind by the bucketload if Dien's home-grown armies aren't nipped in the bud. Seram has done well for himself, but if Hunger survives the next five-hundred years his tasks are going to make the Highwayman look like a cakewalk.
