-ODDLY FATHER BEYONDER-
An Age of the World draws to a close. The hearts of humanity have been leashed and tamed by the efforts of their masters. The kingdoms of the land are stagnant, their people disillusioned by their endless, suffocating prosperity. Their kings look ever to the past and smother dissent neath infinitely reasonable words, disdaining action as the recourse of barbarians. This is the end of history they say, an eternity of progress into the golden tomorrow. Shamed, weary, bound by the chains of civilisation and modernity, the masses of the world call for a hero.
Their call is heard. From the Lazulite Halls of Heaven, a god will descend and wreath himself in mortal flesh. His mandate grants him fortune beyond measure, success as inevitable as the turning of the seasons. His divinity provides unparalleled genius; skills freed from physical law through the weight of his mythos. His victory means nothing less than a tabula rasa for the cycle entire, the tattered scraps of past ages erased as evidence of empyrean folly. Through this, the Wheel may be restored to its former glory.
He must be stopped, no matter the cost.
---
The Divinities are scrupulously honest liars. Their dishonesty is the dishonesty of a playwright, smoke and mirrors concealing the thumb on the scales. All the world's a stage and the Overlord is nothing more than a prop. You've been selected as a standee for the Hero to wrestle with and lay low. They will present a facade of equality but make no mistake, the two of you are not equals.
He has witnessed eons of this conflict, presided over thousands of Cycles, lived more mortal lives than you've taken breaths. Moreover, the world itself bows to him, his fateful triumph intertwined in the karma of all things. Every blade of grass, every drop of dew, the wretched beggar and the righteous king. All will provide succor to your enemy or else pave the way to his ascension with their corpse. Your karma is tied to the Age. Should its pillars fall, your life is forfeit.
Then your suffering will truly begin. Defer that time for as long as you are able.
Soon you will be shown the options from which you will build your panoply; the gifts of the Overlord that make you a "worthy" adversary, all sciences and sorceries that your home had lacked. Do not be dazzled by their fantastical nature; imprudent choices made here will make your failure a forgone conclusion. They would happily let you damn yourself from the very outset; the pretence of fairness a sufficient fig-leaf to justify their inaction.
Choose carefully. Choose well. For all of us that have come before.
---
Enough.
I apologise for our servant's unprofessional behavior. Even now he remains embittered from his defeat, though my brother's baiting hardly helps. Should his resentful screed have failed to enlighten you, I will distill the key points.
1) You are in a match with my brother to decide the destiny of our world. You must defend the current world order while he works to overturn it. Succeed and you may make a single wish that we shall fulfill to the best of our ability. Fail and your fate is ours to determine.
2) For the sake of balance you shall be lent three Celestial Orbs with which you may arm yourself. More are available if you are willing to pay due recompense.
3) Upon finalising your decisions you will be sent down to the mortal world to do as you please. There is no strict deadline to the contest; it will not end until one of you emerges the victor.
4) The Age ends once all the institutions that shaped it have fallen or mutated beyond recognition. You will have an intuitive grasp of what does and does not qualify for this criterion.
Understood? Excellent.
As an addendum, don't expect my brother to be grateful should you choose to despair and die. He reserves the worst of his punishments for those who refused to entertain him.
- You have three (3) Celestial Orbs -
Special
Should you take these and still lose, our brother will be insufferable. Expect no quarter from any of us.
{ } Legacy (1 orb) - To be alone in the world is a terrible thing. You need not be so. The world is littered with caches and remnants of your predecessors, the vast majority of whom were peerless warriors or unrivalled sages. We may induce an affinity for one such individual in your soul, allowing you to discover and utilise their legacy in a productive fashion. This effect disregards any incompatibility in your magics.
*Gives up to 3 orbs of benefit over time, the form of which varies depending on your other choices but none provide an immediate benefit.
*Even with your affinity guiding you, obtaining and mastering their legacy requires an investment of time, effort and resources.
{ } Scion (2 orbs) - As you must be acutely aware you were born of no especial provenance. Fortunately for you, we may remedy that.
*In lieu of being thrown into the world as you are, you may instead reincarnate in the body of a newborn scion to a compatible family while retaining your memories. Your life will begin peacefully, tended and taught by a host of servants until your age of majority. Your body shall be in the top percentile of all physical and mental attributes. You will gain an unnatural gift when learning from your family, advancing in their lessons at a terrifying speed. Furthermore, consistently fulfilling your duties as an heir will grant access to the full resources, connections and knowledge that they have available to them.
*A steep price in both orbs and time that nonetheless have a cornucopia of benefits should you prove capable of taking advantage.
{ } Heartless Might (2 orbs) - My brother believes that a Dark Lord should be worthy of the name. Feel free to prove him right.
*Unlocks the ability to supplement any suitable action with the power of your mantle.
*Doing so provides a general improvement to the execution and results of the action while raising your Heartlessness score.
*Raising Heartless makes the Overlord more competent and ruthless as he grows into his role. The higher levels of Heartless confer a number of additional benefits.
*Raising Heartless above 10 may have unpleasant results.
Magic
I'm certain you've been eagerly anticipating this. Unfortunately, I have matters to attend to. I'll leave it to the servant to elaborate.
Certainly… sir. I have been authorised to offer you enhancements to three mutually exclusive types of magic. You may take only one, unless you choose Inheritor.
{ } Archival Magic - To an Archivist, intimate knowledge of a process grants mastery over that process. So long as you approach the world with a curious intellect and humble spirit, you may use this magic. Spending an orb here grants an eidetic memory and a natural instinct for scholarship.
*This magic allows the user to summon temporary projections of objects, creatures and spells with the most erudite users being able to summon phantasmal versions of sentient beings from Ages past.
*This results in a level of versatility and potency of effect largely unmatched in the present era, with an answer to almost any circumstance potentially available.
*The process of projection is very taxing, leaving the user enerverated if maintained for even moderate periods of time. Overuse may cause permanent diminishment.
*Both the strength and efficiency of your projections scale with the user's understanding of the specifics of a projection and the general knowledge of the Age they seek to summon from.
{ } Cultivation (1 orb) - A supremely selfish magic that once allowed the individual to subjugate the world; now it's the exclusive province of kept scholars and barbarian warlords. Oh how the mighty have fallen. While theoretically anyone may engage in Cultivation, spending an orb here grants an affinity for the art equal to some of the greatest masters in history. You'll likely be the most talented practitioner alive.
*A science that focuses on the alteration of the physical and metaphysical corpus in pursuit of temporal power and immortality. There are 3 Stages of Cultivation extant in the world: Seperation, Transformation and Evolution. Further attainments are rumoured to exist but only the Lost Tribes genuinely believe in them.
*Cultivation offers the potential for shocking physical might and significant resistance to esoteric effects, though the known stages cannot come close to the utility offered by Binary or Archive Magic.
*To even begin the process of Cultivation requires access to the almost extinct Thiresis flower, found only in the forsaken edges of the world and the vaults of those precious few rulers of the realm considered experts on the Labyrinth Empire. Any real attainment requires prodigious aptitude and either decades of toil or wealth beyond avarice.
{ } Binary Magic (1 orb) - The all but forgotten magic of the Elves are fickle at the best of times. More than any of the options here, these are an art and not a science.
Artificers are those that invest their Essence into discrete objects, hollowing themselves out to craft dweomers of terrible power. Naturalists choose to instead merge their Essence with their demesne, allowing them to shape and define lands they claim as their own. Both are vanishingly rare, with only the handful of Half-Elven atavisms in the world still capable of invoking their heritage. How very tragic.
*Significant skill in one branch inevitably leads to incompetence in the other.
*Both are unreliable but advanced practitioners are capable of feats of scope and scale equal to the greatest workings of the mightiest Archivists, without decades of study required.
*This option grants a well of "virtual" Essence sufficient to begin practice in either art should the user have the necessary resources.
{ } Inheritor (3 orbs) - To an Archivist, intimate knowledge of a process grants mastery over that process. It stands then to reason that perfect knowledge grants perfected mastery. And what greater expression of mastery exists than the power to synthesise new information through analysis of the old? Through extensive research and experimentation, the user may create novel projections based on the systems that came before. Projections created through this process possess power and efficiency comparable to their antecedents, equal or superior to the specialities of the greatest Archivists.
After all, those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
*This must be taken with the Archival Magic option.
*Enormous growth potential, zero immediate power
*Likely to die without a guarantee of short term safety.
- Sign -
The stars have ever had a connection to the earth and they can alter the arc of the world in their arrangement.
You may select one constellation to shape the path you walk.
{ } The Bird (1 orb) - The Sign of the Bird clouds your vision with the Red Mist. During combat, you will gain the ability to enter a berserk state in which you can no longer distinguish between friend and foe. This state drastically heightens your instinct for bloodshed to a superhuman degree, allowing you to more effectively leverage all of your capabilities towards violence.
*State can be partially controlled through extreme mental effort
*Exiting the state leaves you weakened for a moderate period of time
{ } The Tiger (2 orbs) - The Sign of the Tiger crowns you with the White Hairs. Like a beast of myth, you will find all of your characteristics very gradually improving as time passes without limit, defying the frailty and senility of age. Any supernatural abilities you possess will be particularly affected by this, bolstered in a way that stacks with all other variables.
*Does not extend your lifespan by itself
*Effect requires decades before becoming pronounced and centuries to arrive at its apex.
{ } The Tortoise (2 orbs) - The Sign of the Tortoise replaces your stomach with the Black Belly. You may absorb a portion of the knowledge and skills of others by physically consuming their brains. This immediately grants the ability to utilise those skills and call upon that knowledge. The more intact the brain is upon your consumption and the more of it you consume, the more information you will be able to assimilate.
*Neither talents nor intrinsic attributes may be acquired in this manner. This also does not permit the use of multiple schools of magic.
*Don't worry about prion disease.
*Holy shit dude, calm down, please.
{ } The Dragon (3 orbs) - The Sign of the Dragon fills your body with Blue Blood. This provides a holistic enhancement to all attributes sufficient to make a human equal one of the Elven Lords of old. This effect is particularly pronounced on your charisma. You shine with such inner radiance that only mortal enemies would do you serious harm unprovoked and even those may be befriended over time.
*Charisma does not prevent retaliation for hostile actions or against the truly determined, though makes peace substantially easier to negotiate
*Any children you have will inherit a portion of these effects.
*Minimal impact on your adversary.
Blessings
While much of the civilised world is relatively safe, it is unlikely the heavens will leave you in one such area. You would do well to ensure your immediate survivability.
{ } Citizen (1 orb) - Upon incarnation, you will be provided with documents and memories corresponding to an average life lived in one of the city states. These are all real in that your existence will be retroactively woven into the history of this world. The benefits of being a citizen are manifold, with safety, security, food, water, shelter and opportunity for advancement all provided for by the state.
*The temporal benefits may be lost depending on your actions
*With careful play, can make it significantly harder for your opponent to distinguish you from the masses
{ } Guardian Angel (2 orbs) - A benevolent spirit watches over you, represented by a marking somewhere on your body. This spirit will steer you away from danger through subtle hints and signs, manipulating fate to find you the safest path. In most circumstances, the angel has little temporal power but in a time of true desperation, you may call upon it to resolve a situation in your favour through direct alteration of destiny. After this, it will disperse, its energies expended.
If you beget or adopt a child, you may transfer the protection of the Guardian Angel to them.
*Guidance fails should you insist on your course of action
*Can only delay your true nemesis
{ } Invulnerablity (3 orbs) - Of all the methods that exist to ensure your security, this ranks among the very finest. Choosing this guarantees an immunity to physical harm from famine, drought, plague, pestilence, war, age, vacuum and all other threats of the physical universe. This effect does nothing to protect your mind or soul from magical effects and the terms of the contest remain. Should the Age end, you will be struck dead regardless.
*Does nothing against imprisonment or other forms of indirect defeat
Drawbacks
Here lies the key to your victory or defeat. Each will give you an additional orb, up to maximum of seven.
Deliberate thoroughly before finalising your selection.
{ } Waterproof - By default, your opponent will only begin to reclaim their memories and powers beginning at adolescence, leaving you years to gather power or make allies.
Selecting this ensures he retains his memories from birth and may optimise his time spent before the contest with the full measure of his experience and knowledge. Connections, resources, allies, all advantages will be available to him to accelerate the growth of his power.
*Regardless of their memories, until your opponent reaches their age of majority or begins adventuring, destiny will shield them from your gaze.
{ } An Age of War - That which is long united must divide. Across the world, a handful of great men and women will arise as your opponent's contemporaries, each possessing singular talents and blessings. Their differences are irreconcilable and will almost certainly lead the factions of this world into an era of endless war and suffering. You may make peace with one or two but they will most likely ignore your overtures entirely.
*4-5 other legendary figures will surface during this time. Without taking Zenith, they will be difficult to distinguish from your true opponent.
{ } Mazed - The Lost Tribes are fully aware they are the dying remnants of a great civilization and they despise it. In their hunger for glory, they turned to more ancient powers. Answer their summoning and you will be granted an additional Celestial Orb but be compelled to champion their cause. No chief has the power to coerce you but without your aid, they will surely perish.
*Rather than being defeated after all the institutions of the age perish, you will die should the Lost Tribes fall. Their hatred of the philosopher-kings is irreconcilable; convincing them to end their grievances will count as the end of their civilization for the purposes of the contest. Their position is significantly weaker than the city-states, Cultivators growing fewer and fewer as time goes by, diminished by compulsive internecine strife and scheming.
*My Isekai Life as Ghenghis Khan is Not as Expected!?
{ } Fatal Flaw - By anchoring your soul in a single, calcified defect, you may safely implant an additional Celestial Orb. However, this flaw will become entirely immutable, as much a part of you as your soul itself. No amount of introspection, meditation or experience will be able to change this. Think Hamlet's indecisiveness or Faust's ambition
*Unimpactful in times of peace but should your enemy learn of this weakness, it will likely prove your undoing.
{ } Pacifist - You are helplessly incompetent at all forms of confrontation. Verbal, physical, magical, mental, so long as there is direct opposition against you will find yourself destined for failure.
*Your allies may still fight in your place and you are capable of providing indirect aid to them.
*If you are unable to perceive your opposition, this effect does not trigger.
{ } Zenith (+2 orbs) - Your opponent will be provided access to the full measure of his blessings at the moment of his descent. This will cause the following to occur:
The eddies of Fate will guide him on a gauntlet of trials bitter enough to break even the most resolute of mortals and his victory cry will resound like worldshaking thunder. These ordeals will cause him to ascend in might at a dizzying speed before your contest even begins, arriving at a level of strength comparable to the greatest figures of this Age by the time of his awakening. Once he reclaims his memories you will face the hero in his hour of glory.
