- Location
- UK
I am confused. Is this because of SG-1's time travel shenanigans? I don't remember why the Scholar and the Fisherman are known legendary figures.
Endless Pantheon: Visions of the Pantheon (Stargate / Dresden Files)
- Thread starter Todeswind
- Start date
- Location
- usa
Yes time travel. There was an episode where they went back to before the rebellion and were leaders in it.
ecs05norway
Zenryoku Zenkai!
Look up the episode Moebius, if you haven't already.
This is apparently taking place in the post-Moebius timeline.
This is apparently taking place in the post-Moebius timeline.
- Location
- UK
I've seen most of SG-1, but it's been a few years. I've forgotten a lot of the details - I vaguely remember them going back to the time of Ra, but not what they did there.
- Location
- Germany
The chapter might be, but the story itself actually it takes place in all the timelines, which is why the Big Dragon himself hates SG1, because they do/did/done/will do all these timetravels without giving a damn about the risks and consequences of timetraveling
At this point, however I'm looking forward to moment where somebody realizes the sheer recklessness of SG1 and actually cares about this shit, because while I might love the original SG1 to death, in the current setting, some of their actions go from foolishly reckless to 'could somebody please already shoot these guys before they make things even worse' and already I feel they are given to much leeway in the setting as it is with their actions
Had a thought. We know that Daniel is the Scholar. Jack is the Fisherman. Sam is the Architect. But Teal'c? Well, he also has a title. One he proudly proclaimed, and claimed, in the show itself.
He is the Shol'va. Think about it. He isn't just A shol'va. He was always credited as THE Shol'va.
And another thought. The Mantles of those 4 - they appear and start a rebellion against the Goa'uld. Then, three are killed. Then, they appear again! This time successful in the revolt. They, being mortals, die in time. Then, in 1969, they reappear for a few days. Then, again, 30 years later, they are back, making more trouble!
He is the Shol'va. Think about it. He isn't just A shol'va. He was always credited as THE Shol'va.
And another thought. The Mantles of those 4 - they appear and start a rebellion against the Goa'uld. Then, three are killed. Then, they appear again! This time successful in the revolt. They, being mortals, die in time. Then, in 1969, they reappear for a few days. Then, again, 30 years later, they are back, making more trouble!
Tjenenyet I
Todeswind
Begrudgingly thread marking.
- Location
- Ry'leth
Tjenenyet was living in a state of near perpetual terror. She'd never been a particularly well connected goddess - her husband's decision to sell her as part of his terms of surrender to Heka had been as close as she'd likely come to power or relevance in the goa'uld courts. She lacked beauty, guile, or a fertile womb to make her of strategic relevance - a fact that she'd weaponized to protect herself from involving herself within the politics of the Goa'uld pantheons.
Ambition was a game for those with resources and armies. One could live for millennia in obscurity while "great" empires died for glory. She'd been the consort of three Lords this far, and had been expecting to be claimed as the spoils of victory by whomever defeated Heka. She was only one of many sub-lords, but she was afforded greater lattitude by her new concubinadge than her previous arrangement.
In fairness "consort" was a title of political convenience rather than one of physical or emotional obligation. She'd never warmed the bed of any Lord to which she'd been attached. Tjenenyet had a superb talent for brewing drinks stiff enough to rob even a god of his potency, if not of his will. Once inebriated to the degree that memory was beyond recovery she only needed to wait for the next day to tell her husbands of their "magnificent performance" in bed to meet the obligations of a wife. Their egos sated, she then went about her business in peace.
She'd even gone out of her way to select hosts that, while striking, did not appeal to the standards of physical beauty favored by the Goa'uld Lords. One only needed to choose a host slightly beyond the favored preferences of one's Lord to avoid their potential lust without the added lubrication of alcohol.
Given her most recent husband's perverse hobby of raising humans from childhood to mold them into perfect disposable enjoyments, she'd not even had to even expend that much effort. Heka was content to ignore her as long as she oversaw his mine and brewed enough beer for his armies. But since the sudden change to his mantle and the constant state of war in the Kindom of Nekheb, a summons to the palace from her reborn husband was inevitable.
Or at least it ought to have been. Tjenenyet understood that the coronation was not something that made sense for her to attend. The Winter Queen held no love for Tjenenyet or her former husband Montu, but she'd expected a summons out of mere formality just to demand her pledge of loyalty.
But it never came. She wasn't even in disfavor with the court of the Lord Warden. She was nothing within it. Disfavor would be an upgrade because she could at least beg pardon for the offense she'd committed. Heka hadn't ever been an especially invested patron, but he'd at least pretended that she and the other sub-lords of Nekheb were part of his dominion.
But not only was he actively disinterested in Tjenenyets dominion as of late, he'd tasked Jaffa with the role of ensuring the proper quotas of naquadah, grain, and beer as though it were unmonitored. Her immediate inclination had been to slay the Jaffa in question for having the unmitigated gall to ask her to account for the lack of production but she'd been unwilling to risk a close quarters confrontation with the heavily armed and armored Unas shock troops they'd brought with them. The brutes were too stubborn to realize that they were dead until after disemboweling the one who killed them.
It was boded ill that the Jaffa of Heka's inner circle felt comfortable addressing her as an equal. Generals within Jaffa armies were afforded greater familiarity than was traditional for an inferior interacting with their God, but Tjenenyet had never ever seen the degree of horrifying casual comfort with which the inner circle of Heka's Jaffa warriors seemed willing to treat her with. Simply put, they weren't afraid of her divinity. They met her eyes without even pretending to look away from her.
She wasn't entirely confident that she'd be able to administer corporal punishment upon the armies of Heka without the Generals' consent. Given that she was outnumbered by Jaffa soldiers by 35,000 to one on her outpost that left her in a more precarious position than she would have cared to be in. What in the name of the ancestors was Heka thinking?
She sat in her throne room feeling entirely superfluous to the flow of conversation as she listened to Jaffa generals from the Third and Ninth fleets got into a discussion of their planned advance into Chrono's territory. Her presence was a required formality, but she couldn't help but feel wholly out of her depth as the warriors discussed the nuances of supply chains and long term logistics in a way that bored her to tears. She envied the younger broods of Jaffa - those young enough to have been spawned after the mortal limitations of the Terms were imposed upon them. Those old enough to have been spawned when the Goa'uld first began the Empire had been forced to learn the nuances of modern warfare techniques through trial and error. Upstart gods could stand upon the teachings of their progenitor without fear.
Tjenenyet had never been relevant enough to require her to learn any particular degree of talent for warfare or logistics. Even at the height of her power, as a goddess granted the ability to manipulate the universe at her fingertips, the King of Gods had relegated her to the role of celestial beer mistress. So she stood next to the table, saying little and doing her best to maintain the illusion that she was keeping track of the seemingly random details with which the Jaffa troubled themselves.
At least the human auxiliaries of the Third Fleet seemed to hold the proper degree of reverence for her craft if not for her station. The fair haired human soldiers and their leather clad commander had thoroughly availed themselves of her cellars, imbibing the beer, wine, mead, and liquor she'd been stockpiling for the past thousand years. She didn't appreciate their Asgardian nickname for her palace but having somebody appreciate her was enough to tolerate them calling her "the beer mistress of Valhalla."
She was willing to tolerate many such indignities given the human General's near religious devotion publicly embarrassing the Jaffa Generals by demonstrating how much cleverer she was than they were. Given the rudeness with which the Jaffa had been treating her, watching someone inflict the same idignity upon them was greatly refreshing.
"This will not work, Generalfeldmarschall Tor'kal." The General shook her head emphatically. "You will lose many soldiers for virtually no gains."
The Jaffa commander's eye twitched. "I have fought campaigns for longer than your entire society has lived General Winter. And I assure you that we will be victorious."
"Und if you are not pig-headedly determined to win that victory at the cost of the blood of thousands we can take that fortress two weeks later without loosingk nearly as many men, munitions, or putting ourselves in a place where our opponents can easily tell from where our attack has come. I tell you that mortars from the tree line paired with a rapid insertion of forces is far superior to a brute assault." She tutted her tongue irritatedly. "We have no need to blindly rush through the Eye of the Gods."
"The planet is too well guarded for us to arrive by ship. We'd be blown to pieces by the defense satellites unless we bought a fleet and I can't safely do that without opening us to Moloch's counter offense from our last advance." The General disagreed emphatically. She was utterly butchering the Goa'uld language, her words punctuated with her native tongue seemingly at random. The Human auxiliaries of the Third Fleet were extremely capable warriors, but they conceptually seemed to struggle with the idea of people not innately understanding their own native tongue.
"Generalfeldmarschall Tor'kal, we have no need of either." The human general scoffed. "The Furlings assure me that they can get our troops into place without difficulty and they have agreed to tolerate Iron in their realms for the duration of our passage."
"You are too willing to trust the Furlings." The Jaffa General replied, a slight snarl to his voice that Tjenenyet felt justified. She knew that there were furlings allied with the armies of Heka but she had been blissfully spared of their presence thus far. The faster the assault was planned, however, the faster these interlopers would leave her world.
Tjenenyet spoke in a firm tone. "The Furlings do not lie. If they offer safe passage, they mean it."
And if they were lying, it would still get them off Tjenenyet's world.
The human grinned wolfishly at the goddess before looking at the Jaffa General. "I promise you Generalfeldmarschall Tor'kal, you can trust in the word of the Furling as soundly as you can trust in my own."
Tor'kal's eyes narrowed. The Jaffa seemed to regard the human the same way one might a pet viper, safe only when kept under observation and treated with deadly caution. He replied with ice in his voice. "Indeed."
"I believe that concludes today's buisness." Spoke the General in charge of the Ninth Fleet, cracking his staff on the ground twice. "We will reconvene in four hours to discuss this further."
Tjenenyet's blood boiled as the collected Jaffa and auxiliaries left the table without first asking her leave to depart, but she couldn't address the insult without admitting that she was insulted. And she couldn't politically afford to make a fuss given how unsure she was of her standing within the court of Heka.
She blinked in realization as it hit her that she was not alone in her throne room. The human general was still standing next to the table, nursing a mug of beer in one hand as she tapped a pair of leather gloves against her shoulder with the other. Tjenenyet growled in annoyance. "Was there something you required?"
"I have never met a god before." The woman replied in a voice of measured calm. "I am in no hurry to end the experience. I have many questions I was hoping to answer."
Tjenenyet blinked. "You want to… ask questions of your God."
"I want to ask questions of a god certainly. I'm at least willing to entertain the concept of your divinity after having sampled your brew." The human replied glibly enough that Tjenenyet sincerely considered the idea of slaying in spite of how pleased she felt it would make Tor'kal.
"You try my patience mortal." Tjenenyet crossed her arms, allowing her eyes to flash.
"Yes, I have seen this before. I have seen the powers you claim, they did not prevent us from defeating Nirrti when first we came to Himmel." She waved away the Tjenenyet's display of power as she drank more beer, smacking her lips in satisfaction. "As I said, the beer was already more impressive. I want to know why the Lord Warden scares the rest of you."
"I am not afraid of Heka." Lied Tjenenyet, unable to convince even herself.
The human snorted into her mug. "Clearly you are not a goddess of deception."
"You realize that I can kill you with a wave of my hand?" The Goddess curled her fingers around her hand device, flaring the weapon brightly.
"Mortals can kill me without much effort, oh ye Goddess of the Brew. We're fragile creatures." She held up her mug. "And I think you would not do me the disservice of killing me before I've had the opportunity to finish this. Wasting something of this quality would be a grievous sin."
Tjenenyet laughed. "Are you attempting to flatter me into allowing you to live?"
"I had hoped." Replied the human as she shook her tankard. "Or at least to allow me to drink another stein before you slay me."
Tjenenyet rolled her eyes, grabbed a waterskin full of the brew, and refilled the human's vessel. "Be glad that you amuse me."
"If the brew continues, I shall play your fool for as long as I may." The woman waggled her brows exaggeratedly.
"You are mad, mortal." Tjenenyet spoke, her voice softening in exasperated amusement. A metallic ring of laughter chimed in her tone in spite of herself. "I will satisfy your curiosity if you satisfy my own."
"Oh?" The human cooed in surprise. "And what can this mere mortal offer her better?"
"Your icon marks you as a devotee of Kali or Ganesha… perhaps even Brama or Sura, but your men walk around speaking in tongues of the Asgard while serving the Pantheon of Ra." Tjenenyet reached over to pinch the red armband over the woman's black, leather coat. "Exactly which God did my Lord Heka offend or entreat to enlist your services?"
"Deutschland kneels before no one save the Führer." The woman balked at her suggestion. "We are not bound by the superstitions of old or the foolishness of the Far East."
"And yet you find yourself in the presence of a Goddess. Are you perhaps foolish to continue to dismiss our divinity as mere superstition." Tjenenyet drank from the waterskin. "While fighting in the armies of a God."
"We fight for Himmel, not for your Zaubergottkaiser." The woman shook her head. "Our alliance is one of necessity, not of choice. Without the aid of the Warden's Jaffa, Himmel would be a province of Moloch's realm. Given the relative indignities of serving the Warden versus serving Moloch, I will gladly subordinate myself to Reichsprotektor Zaubergottkaiser."
Tjenenyet couldn't find any fault in that logic, though historically subordinating oneself to Heka rather than Moloch could be at best described as a lateral move for human females in his service should they catch his attention. The fair haired woman in front of Tjenenyet seemed likely to soon discover the folly of her hubris in serving him.
She shrugged it off, it was not her place to correct the mortal's misapprehensions. She'd figure it out eventually and it was really no affair of hers what happened to the chattel. "Very well - then I will answer your question as best I may."
"Danke schön." Replied the human general.
"We don't fear Heka." Tjenenyet chose her words carefully, opting to go with a measured truth rather than an outright lie. "Not any more than we fear any man in power. What we fear how ambition can over-reach the limits of even great men and how those of us who are less than he can get swept up in its wake."
The woman smiled sadly. "You sound like my Pater. He often spoke of the mision to Himmel as such. 'A grand design in which we were swept.' But we flourish in spite of the winds of fate taking us in directions we'd never anticipated. Should not the gods flourish as mortals do?"
Tjenenyet took another swig from the waterskin, finishing the brew within. "Mortal, you are too young to truly understand the winds of fate. It is easy to ride the swell when one cannot live till the breaking of the waves and get swept up in the undertow."
"Then I should learn from my elders - over another brew perhaps!" The human held up her empty mug hopefully.
Tjenenyet laughed. "Come foolish mortal. You have amused me enough to open one a cask of something worth drinking."
"This was not sufficient for your taste?" The woman queried reverently.
"That swill?" Tjenenyet laughed. "Child - that was brewed by one of our apprentices barely a year into his training. He was barely old enough to be allowed to sip his own brew. Let me know you what a master of the craft can produce with millennia of skill behind it."
"My men will never forgive me if I don't at least ask if they can join me." General Winter looked out the door to a cadre of grey uniform wearing soldiers.
Tjenenyet rolled her eyes. "Only if you promise to leave offerings at my temple commensurate with this indulgence."
"Dear Lady Tjenenyet, if imbibing this ambrosia is your sacrament, you may well convert all of Himmel before I leave here." Winter replied.
Tjenenyet smirked. Perhaps something productive could come from today after all. The woman pocketed her gloves in her black leather greatcoat, pulling at the neck of it to allow hot air to escape the constricting garment. It was obvious that she'd dressed for effect rather than practicality, there was no sane reason for someone to be wearing that much clothing on a desert world. Tjenenyet's own choice of clothing consisted of a wig, jewelry, and a sheer wrap around her waist more as a demonstration of opulence than a functional garment. The Himmelites seemed to have a particular aversion to nudity that she found impractical in chattel.
General Winter seemed to realize the futility of wearing the garment under Tjenenyet's uncredulous gaze, pulling the leather from her shoulders and laying it across the back of a chair. Her grey uniform underneath was heavily stained from sweat, thought that too was quickly evaporating now that it was no longer confined beneath the black leather. "I confess that I am accustomed to this heat. I was born on Himmel, even at the height of summer it never gets this warm."
"You are too familiar with your betters, General Winter." Tjenenyet replied in equal parts amusement and anger.
"A german woman is forced to interact with the likes of a Goddess to find her betters, my Lady Tjenenyet." The woman pulled a pair of spectacles from her pocket, covering her eyes with shaded glass to protect from the sun's glare. "I am unaccustomed to meeting my betters to even know how one should act. Surely you understand the situation?"
Tjenenyet let out a throaty laugh. "My, but you are the arrogant one."
"Arrogance is the provenance of lessers. I am General born of Himmel - not some quivering Judenratte." The woman snorted.
"Judenratte?" Tjenenyet queried, unfamiliar with the term.
"My apologies, I am still learning the Goa'uld language…" She thought about it. "I speak of one of the lesser breeds from the old world. The followers of Moses, undesirables who we've done our best to rid ourselves... "
"What do you mean, "rid yourselves?" Tjenenyet spoke in a voice of utter horror, memories flashing back to doors coated in Lamb's blood.
"I was not involved in the mechanics - mind you - but my understanding is that they had a very sophisticated process in place for removing the vermin." Winter shrugged. "I would imagine that there are a few remaining pockets of them who the Fhurer was unable to take when he conquered Earth, but they should be nothing but a memory now."
"You… you tried to kill the disciples of Moses." Tjenenyet repeated the phrase in uncomprehending panic. "And felt the need to brag about it while under guest protections in my palace?"
"I do not understand the confusion. What are you doing!" General Winter yelped in surprise as Tjenenyet screamed, grabbed her forcefully and shoved her hand into the General's mouth to prevent her from talking further. Tjenenyet contined her forceful grip on the general, even as she bit the goddess' fist, looking up at the ceiling as profusely apologizing. "She means no offense! This error in judgement will be corrected immediately! I do not presume to touch that which is not mine! Please do not associate me with this madness!"
The General extricated herself from the goddess as she continued to babble up at the ceiling, offering every apology and prostration she could think to throw skyward. Tjenenyet was one of the few who remembered what happened in Egypt when the slaves had rebelled under the banner of Moses. She was extremely unwilling to draw the attention of the entities with which Heka had recently aligned himself.
"Du Flachwichser! Why did you do that?" General Winder spat out the naquadah laced blood before gargling with beer to wash the taste from her mouth.
" I will not repeat the mistakes of Ra's arrogance! You are no longer my guest! Your people are not my guests! I offer you no hospitality in my home! If you ever speak a word that would risk bringing the rage of Moses down upon my kingdom, I will end you in worse ways than you ever imagined coming from Moloch." Tjenenyet blasted the ground in front of the woman as her men rushed into the room with weapons drawn. "Leave my palace - and know that you must beg supplication if you ever wish entry again. Beg it from me and apologize to the spirits of those you've taken from the Children of Moses. Do that and you will be welcome in my house."
General Winter looked utterly betrayed as Tjenenyet aimed her hand device at her. "Leave. Now."
Her soldiers had the presence of mind to drag her away even as she shouted insults at the goddess, cursing her for having insulted a "proud german woman." Tjenenyet thumbed the control device on her wrist, locking the doors after the departed before activating the communicator to speak with her Lo'tar. "Itu."
"Yes mistress." Replied her servant immediately.
"Cut off the Human auxiliaries from the Third Fleet from all alcohol entirely." Tjenenyet spoke words she never believed she'd find herself saying.
"Mistress?" Her Lo'tar queried, unwilling to disobey but baffled at the order. It went against her very nature.
"Just do it." She spoke firmly, deactivating her communicator. If the Himmelites were willing to risk the judgement of Moses after just a few beers, she didn't dare find out what might happen if they were properly drunk.
Ambition was a game for those with resources and armies. One could live for millennia in obscurity while "great" empires died for glory. She'd been the consort of three Lords this far, and had been expecting to be claimed as the spoils of victory by whomever defeated Heka. She was only one of many sub-lords, but she was afforded greater lattitude by her new concubinadge than her previous arrangement.
In fairness "consort" was a title of political convenience rather than one of physical or emotional obligation. She'd never warmed the bed of any Lord to which she'd been attached. Tjenenyet had a superb talent for brewing drinks stiff enough to rob even a god of his potency, if not of his will. Once inebriated to the degree that memory was beyond recovery she only needed to wait for the next day to tell her husbands of their "magnificent performance" in bed to meet the obligations of a wife. Their egos sated, she then went about her business in peace.
She'd even gone out of her way to select hosts that, while striking, did not appeal to the standards of physical beauty favored by the Goa'uld Lords. One only needed to choose a host slightly beyond the favored preferences of one's Lord to avoid their potential lust without the added lubrication of alcohol.
Given her most recent husband's perverse hobby of raising humans from childhood to mold them into perfect disposable enjoyments, she'd not even had to even expend that much effort. Heka was content to ignore her as long as she oversaw his mine and brewed enough beer for his armies. But since the sudden change to his mantle and the constant state of war in the Kindom of Nekheb, a summons to the palace from her reborn husband was inevitable.
Or at least it ought to have been. Tjenenyet understood that the coronation was not something that made sense for her to attend. The Winter Queen held no love for Tjenenyet or her former husband Montu, but she'd expected a summons out of mere formality just to demand her pledge of loyalty.
But it never came. She wasn't even in disfavor with the court of the Lord Warden. She was nothing within it. Disfavor would be an upgrade because she could at least beg pardon for the offense she'd committed. Heka hadn't ever been an especially invested patron, but he'd at least pretended that she and the other sub-lords of Nekheb were part of his dominion.
But not only was he actively disinterested in Tjenenyets dominion as of late, he'd tasked Jaffa with the role of ensuring the proper quotas of naquadah, grain, and beer as though it were unmonitored. Her immediate inclination had been to slay the Jaffa in question for having the unmitigated gall to ask her to account for the lack of production but she'd been unwilling to risk a close quarters confrontation with the heavily armed and armored Unas shock troops they'd brought with them. The brutes were too stubborn to realize that they were dead until after disemboweling the one who killed them.
It was boded ill that the Jaffa of Heka's inner circle felt comfortable addressing her as an equal. Generals within Jaffa armies were afforded greater familiarity than was traditional for an inferior interacting with their God, but Tjenenyet had never ever seen the degree of horrifying casual comfort with which the inner circle of Heka's Jaffa warriors seemed willing to treat her with. Simply put, they weren't afraid of her divinity. They met her eyes without even pretending to look away from her.
She wasn't entirely confident that she'd be able to administer corporal punishment upon the armies of Heka without the Generals' consent. Given that she was outnumbered by Jaffa soldiers by 35,000 to one on her outpost that left her in a more precarious position than she would have cared to be in. What in the name of the ancestors was Heka thinking?
She sat in her throne room feeling entirely superfluous to the flow of conversation as she listened to Jaffa generals from the Third and Ninth fleets got into a discussion of their planned advance into Chrono's territory. Her presence was a required formality, but she couldn't help but feel wholly out of her depth as the warriors discussed the nuances of supply chains and long term logistics in a way that bored her to tears. She envied the younger broods of Jaffa - those young enough to have been spawned after the mortal limitations of the Terms were imposed upon them. Those old enough to have been spawned when the Goa'uld first began the Empire had been forced to learn the nuances of modern warfare techniques through trial and error. Upstart gods could stand upon the teachings of their progenitor without fear.
Tjenenyet had never been relevant enough to require her to learn any particular degree of talent for warfare or logistics. Even at the height of her power, as a goddess granted the ability to manipulate the universe at her fingertips, the King of Gods had relegated her to the role of celestial beer mistress. So she stood next to the table, saying little and doing her best to maintain the illusion that she was keeping track of the seemingly random details with which the Jaffa troubled themselves.
At least the human auxiliaries of the Third Fleet seemed to hold the proper degree of reverence for her craft if not for her station. The fair haired human soldiers and their leather clad commander had thoroughly availed themselves of her cellars, imbibing the beer, wine, mead, and liquor she'd been stockpiling for the past thousand years. She didn't appreciate their Asgardian nickname for her palace but having somebody appreciate her was enough to tolerate them calling her "the beer mistress of Valhalla."
She was willing to tolerate many such indignities given the human General's near religious devotion publicly embarrassing the Jaffa Generals by demonstrating how much cleverer she was than they were. Given the rudeness with which the Jaffa had been treating her, watching someone inflict the same idignity upon them was greatly refreshing.
"This will not work, Generalfeldmarschall Tor'kal." The General shook her head emphatically. "You will lose many soldiers for virtually no gains."
The Jaffa commander's eye twitched. "I have fought campaigns for longer than your entire society has lived General Winter. And I assure you that we will be victorious."
"Und if you are not pig-headedly determined to win that victory at the cost of the blood of thousands we can take that fortress two weeks later without loosingk nearly as many men, munitions, or putting ourselves in a place where our opponents can easily tell from where our attack has come. I tell you that mortars from the tree line paired with a rapid insertion of forces is far superior to a brute assault." She tutted her tongue irritatedly. "We have no need to blindly rush through the Eye of the Gods."
"The planet is too well guarded for us to arrive by ship. We'd be blown to pieces by the defense satellites unless we bought a fleet and I can't safely do that without opening us to Moloch's counter offense from our last advance." The General disagreed emphatically. She was utterly butchering the Goa'uld language, her words punctuated with her native tongue seemingly at random. The Human auxiliaries of the Third Fleet were extremely capable warriors, but they conceptually seemed to struggle with the idea of people not innately understanding their own native tongue.
"Generalfeldmarschall Tor'kal, we have no need of either." The human general scoffed. "The Furlings assure me that they can get our troops into place without difficulty and they have agreed to tolerate Iron in their realms for the duration of our passage."
"You are too willing to trust the Furlings." The Jaffa General replied, a slight snarl to his voice that Tjenenyet felt justified. She knew that there were furlings allied with the armies of Heka but she had been blissfully spared of their presence thus far. The faster the assault was planned, however, the faster these interlopers would leave her world.
Tjenenyet spoke in a firm tone. "The Furlings do not lie. If they offer safe passage, they mean it."
And if they were lying, it would still get them off Tjenenyet's world.
The human grinned wolfishly at the goddess before looking at the Jaffa General. "I promise you Generalfeldmarschall Tor'kal, you can trust in the word of the Furling as soundly as you can trust in my own."
Tor'kal's eyes narrowed. The Jaffa seemed to regard the human the same way one might a pet viper, safe only when kept under observation and treated with deadly caution. He replied with ice in his voice. "Indeed."
"I believe that concludes today's buisness." Spoke the General in charge of the Ninth Fleet, cracking his staff on the ground twice. "We will reconvene in four hours to discuss this further."
Tjenenyet's blood boiled as the collected Jaffa and auxiliaries left the table without first asking her leave to depart, but she couldn't address the insult without admitting that she was insulted. And she couldn't politically afford to make a fuss given how unsure she was of her standing within the court of Heka.
She blinked in realization as it hit her that she was not alone in her throne room. The human general was still standing next to the table, nursing a mug of beer in one hand as she tapped a pair of leather gloves against her shoulder with the other. Tjenenyet growled in annoyance. "Was there something you required?"
"I have never met a god before." The woman replied in a voice of measured calm. "I am in no hurry to end the experience. I have many questions I was hoping to answer."
Tjenenyet blinked. "You want to… ask questions of your God."
"I want to ask questions of a god certainly. I'm at least willing to entertain the concept of your divinity after having sampled your brew." The human replied glibly enough that Tjenenyet sincerely considered the idea of slaying in spite of how pleased she felt it would make Tor'kal.
"You try my patience mortal." Tjenenyet crossed her arms, allowing her eyes to flash.
"Yes, I have seen this before. I have seen the powers you claim, they did not prevent us from defeating Nirrti when first we came to Himmel." She waved away the Tjenenyet's display of power as she drank more beer, smacking her lips in satisfaction. "As I said, the beer was already more impressive. I want to know why the Lord Warden scares the rest of you."
"I am not afraid of Heka." Lied Tjenenyet, unable to convince even herself.
The human snorted into her mug. "Clearly you are not a goddess of deception."
"You realize that I can kill you with a wave of my hand?" The Goddess curled her fingers around her hand device, flaring the weapon brightly.
"Mortals can kill me without much effort, oh ye Goddess of the Brew. We're fragile creatures." She held up her mug. "And I think you would not do me the disservice of killing me before I've had the opportunity to finish this. Wasting something of this quality would be a grievous sin."
Tjenenyet laughed. "Are you attempting to flatter me into allowing you to live?"
"I had hoped." Replied the human as she shook her tankard. "Or at least to allow me to drink another stein before you slay me."
Tjenenyet rolled her eyes, grabbed a waterskin full of the brew, and refilled the human's vessel. "Be glad that you amuse me."
"If the brew continues, I shall play your fool for as long as I may." The woman waggled her brows exaggeratedly.
"You are mad, mortal." Tjenenyet spoke, her voice softening in exasperated amusement. A metallic ring of laughter chimed in her tone in spite of herself. "I will satisfy your curiosity if you satisfy my own."
"Oh?" The human cooed in surprise. "And what can this mere mortal offer her better?"
"Your icon marks you as a devotee of Kali or Ganesha… perhaps even Brama or Sura, but your men walk around speaking in tongues of the Asgard while serving the Pantheon of Ra." Tjenenyet reached over to pinch the red armband over the woman's black, leather coat. "Exactly which God did my Lord Heka offend or entreat to enlist your services?"
"Deutschland kneels before no one save the Führer." The woman balked at her suggestion. "We are not bound by the superstitions of old or the foolishness of the Far East."
"And yet you find yourself in the presence of a Goddess. Are you perhaps foolish to continue to dismiss our divinity as mere superstition." Tjenenyet drank from the waterskin. "While fighting in the armies of a God."
"We fight for Himmel, not for your Zaubergottkaiser." The woman shook her head. "Our alliance is one of necessity, not of choice. Without the aid of the Warden's Jaffa, Himmel would be a province of Moloch's realm. Given the relative indignities of serving the Warden versus serving Moloch, I will gladly subordinate myself to Reichsprotektor Zaubergottkaiser."
Tjenenyet couldn't find any fault in that logic, though historically subordinating oneself to Heka rather than Moloch could be at best described as a lateral move for human females in his service should they catch his attention. The fair haired woman in front of Tjenenyet seemed likely to soon discover the folly of her hubris in serving him.
She shrugged it off, it was not her place to correct the mortal's misapprehensions. She'd figure it out eventually and it was really no affair of hers what happened to the chattel. "Very well - then I will answer your question as best I may."
"Danke schön." Replied the human general.
"We don't fear Heka." Tjenenyet chose her words carefully, opting to go with a measured truth rather than an outright lie. "Not any more than we fear any man in power. What we fear how ambition can over-reach the limits of even great men and how those of us who are less than he can get swept up in its wake."
The woman smiled sadly. "You sound like my Pater. He often spoke of the mision to Himmel as such. 'A grand design in which we were swept.' But we flourish in spite of the winds of fate taking us in directions we'd never anticipated. Should not the gods flourish as mortals do?"
Tjenenyet took another swig from the waterskin, finishing the brew within. "Mortal, you are too young to truly understand the winds of fate. It is easy to ride the swell when one cannot live till the breaking of the waves and get swept up in the undertow."
"Then I should learn from my elders - over another brew perhaps!" The human held up her empty mug hopefully.
Tjenenyet laughed. "Come foolish mortal. You have amused me enough to open one a cask of something worth drinking."
"This was not sufficient for your taste?" The woman queried reverently.
"That swill?" Tjenenyet laughed. "Child - that was brewed by one of our apprentices barely a year into his training. He was barely old enough to be allowed to sip his own brew. Let me know you what a master of the craft can produce with millennia of skill behind it."
"My men will never forgive me if I don't at least ask if they can join me." General Winter looked out the door to a cadre of grey uniform wearing soldiers.
Tjenenyet rolled her eyes. "Only if you promise to leave offerings at my temple commensurate with this indulgence."
"Dear Lady Tjenenyet, if imbibing this ambrosia is your sacrament, you may well convert all of Himmel before I leave here." Winter replied.
Tjenenyet smirked. Perhaps something productive could come from today after all. The woman pocketed her gloves in her black leather greatcoat, pulling at the neck of it to allow hot air to escape the constricting garment. It was obvious that she'd dressed for effect rather than practicality, there was no sane reason for someone to be wearing that much clothing on a desert world. Tjenenyet's own choice of clothing consisted of a wig, jewelry, and a sheer wrap around her waist more as a demonstration of opulence than a functional garment. The Himmelites seemed to have a particular aversion to nudity that she found impractical in chattel.
General Winter seemed to realize the futility of wearing the garment under Tjenenyet's uncredulous gaze, pulling the leather from her shoulders and laying it across the back of a chair. Her grey uniform underneath was heavily stained from sweat, thought that too was quickly evaporating now that it was no longer confined beneath the black leather. "I confess that I am accustomed to this heat. I was born on Himmel, even at the height of summer it never gets this warm."
"You are too familiar with your betters, General Winter." Tjenenyet replied in equal parts amusement and anger.
"A german woman is forced to interact with the likes of a Goddess to find her betters, my Lady Tjenenyet." The woman pulled a pair of spectacles from her pocket, covering her eyes with shaded glass to protect from the sun's glare. "I am unaccustomed to meeting my betters to even know how one should act. Surely you understand the situation?"
Tjenenyet let out a throaty laugh. "My, but you are the arrogant one."
"Arrogance is the provenance of lessers. I am General born of Himmel - not some quivering Judenratte." The woman snorted.
"Judenratte?" Tjenenyet queried, unfamiliar with the term.
"My apologies, I am still learning the Goa'uld language…" She thought about it. "I speak of one of the lesser breeds from the old world. The followers of Moses, undesirables who we've done our best to rid ourselves... "
"What do you mean, "rid yourselves?" Tjenenyet spoke in a voice of utter horror, memories flashing back to doors coated in Lamb's blood.
"I was not involved in the mechanics - mind you - but my understanding is that they had a very sophisticated process in place for removing the vermin." Winter shrugged. "I would imagine that there are a few remaining pockets of them who the Fhurer was unable to take when he conquered Earth, but they should be nothing but a memory now."
"You… you tried to kill the disciples of Moses." Tjenenyet repeated the phrase in uncomprehending panic. "And felt the need to brag about it while under guest protections in my palace?"
"I do not understand the confusion. What are you doing!" General Winter yelped in surprise as Tjenenyet screamed, grabbed her forcefully and shoved her hand into the General's mouth to prevent her from talking further. Tjenenyet contined her forceful grip on the general, even as she bit the goddess' fist, looking up at the ceiling as profusely apologizing. "She means no offense! This error in judgement will be corrected immediately! I do not presume to touch that which is not mine! Please do not associate me with this madness!"
The General extricated herself from the goddess as she continued to babble up at the ceiling, offering every apology and prostration she could think to throw skyward. Tjenenyet was one of the few who remembered what happened in Egypt when the slaves had rebelled under the banner of Moses. She was extremely unwilling to draw the attention of the entities with which Heka had recently aligned himself.
"Du Flachwichser! Why did you do that?" General Winder spat out the naquadah laced blood before gargling with beer to wash the taste from her mouth.
" I will not repeat the mistakes of Ra's arrogance! You are no longer my guest! Your people are not my guests! I offer you no hospitality in my home! If you ever speak a word that would risk bringing the rage of Moses down upon my kingdom, I will end you in worse ways than you ever imagined coming from Moloch." Tjenenyet blasted the ground in front of the woman as her men rushed into the room with weapons drawn. "Leave my palace - and know that you must beg supplication if you ever wish entry again. Beg it from me and apologize to the spirits of those you've taken from the Children of Moses. Do that and you will be welcome in my house."
General Winter looked utterly betrayed as Tjenenyet aimed her hand device at her. "Leave. Now."
Her soldiers had the presence of mind to drag her away even as she shouted insults at the goddess, cursing her for having insulted a "proud german woman." Tjenenyet thumbed the control device on her wrist, locking the doors after the departed before activating the communicator to speak with her Lo'tar. "Itu."
"Yes mistress." Replied her servant immediately.
"Cut off the Human auxiliaries from the Third Fleet from all alcohol entirely." Tjenenyet spoke words she never believed she'd find herself saying.
"Mistress?" Her Lo'tar queried, unwilling to disobey but baffled at the order. It went against her very nature.
"Just do it." She spoke firmly, deactivating her communicator. If the Himmelites were willing to risk the judgement of Moses after just a few beers, she didn't dare find out what might happen if they were properly drunk.
ecs05norway
Zenryoku Zenkai!
... oh dear. And perhaps now she's finally going to gather up the courage to go and tell Heka - or at least Harry - what's been going on?
I'm not surprised she freaked out so badly, big G is pretty terrifying.
Shippou
Kitsune Trickster
Judging from Kanan's interactions with the sword of the cross I would say not.
The swords of the cross came into existence after the goauld had been kicked off the planet.
Shippou
Kitsune Trickster
Yeah but the voice heard quoted the First of the Ten Commandments if that wouldn' Ring a bell for him nothing would. Besides Kanan literally narrated that Egeria deliberately left gaps in the Tokra genetic memory, which or less correspond to what she knew of the Semitic tribes of the time.
They were also out of egypt when the Ten COmmandments got given so who knows? It could go either way.
Shippou
Kitsune Trickster
... do you even read the bible?
They'd crossed the sea and we're well beyond Egypt's borders by the time the Commandments were given, does Mt. Sinai ring any bells?
And besides that wouldn't have been the only time the Commandments would have been said and spread around.
That's, uh, that's what I said.... do you even read the bible?
They'd crossed the sea and we're well beyond Egypt's borders by the time the Commandments were given, does Mt. Sinai ring any bells?
And besides that wouldn't have been the only time the Commandments would have been said and spread around.
My point is we don't know enough about what the goauld know and don't know to know for sure that the Tokra don't know about the Children of Moses, even though it's quite possible.
...That's a lot of not knowing. :lol
Ba'al I
Todeswind
Begrudgingly thread marking.
- Location
- Ry'leth
Set concurrent to God's Blood
-------------
Ba'al moved his fingers along the tools in front of him. Simple knives, made from silver. There had once been a time where he would have imbued them with his own power, blessing them so that the could cut beings of spirit and ectoplasm as surely as they harmed mortal flesh. But those times were gone, relics of the distant past.
For, you see, Ba'al was not a god.
Not by any metrics that mattered. It was a fact that he was increasingly forcing himself to reconcile with as the Lord Warden's legends were verified by multiple, reputable sources. He wore the face of a god. He wore the clothing of a god. He commanded the armies of a god. He held the holdings of a god. He owned the plundered wealth of a god. He even was worshipped as a god.
But Ba'al was not a god.
Ba'al needed to stop thinking of himself as a god. If he approached the coming conflicts with the warden like a god, expecting the universe to just bow down before the powers he no longer had access, it would destroy him as surely as any of his servants or slaves. There might once have been a time where he thought of technological tools as prosthetics, stop gap measures to replace that which he'd lost. But he knew the truth - they know were the sum of his power.
Ba'al was weak. Ba'al was not a god.
Unfortunately, any man with sufficient knowledge and resources could now match or beat him. Technology and ritual were agnostic paths to power. They were the weapons that separated a man from a king. A Goa'uld without power or pantheon was just a serpent wrapped around the neck of a man. And men, even men with the wisdom of the Goa'uld, one day would die.
Ba'al was mortal. Ba'al was not a god.
The thought incensed Ba'al, filling his mouth with the sour taste of loss. Ba'al flung a knife across the room, letting the artificial gravity turn the object into a shimmering blur. It was hard to say if he was hearing the squelching thud over the scream or the scream over the squelching thud, but the slave bound to the wall made a horrific noise as the blade struck. Ba'al ignored the creature's pleas for mercy, selecting another dagger from the table - prayers screamed begging for mercy from her god.
Ba'al was not merciful. Ba'al was not a god.
It writhed on the wall, pinned in place by a wall of artificial gravity, weeping in horror. The slave, an uneducated wretch from some backwater world of Ba'als empire, had no frame of reference to understand the mechanics of the devices that bound him. To him, the power was simply will and power. In truth, Ba'al was supplementing with technology and ritual that which he could no longer enforce by word and deed.
Ba'al wasn't omipotent. Ba'al was not a god.
That the woman was in the oubliette for blasphemy was an irony not lost upon Ba'al. The woman had uttered that most dangerous of libel against her god, truth. There would come a day where Ba'al could afford to allow his chattel to speak truth, but not in a time of war. Not with so many gods claiming the right to rule his worlds by divine mandate. Especially not now that there was a Goa'uld who had the power to justify that claim. Allowing dissent in his dominion risked chaos in his realm. He could ill afford civil war or peasant revolutions at the moment.
Ba'al's resources were limited. Ba'al was not a god.
His war with Quetesh left him in a precarious position. If he pulled Jaffa back to quell slaves it would afford an opportunity for either the Warden or Apophis to move against him - neither of whom he could reasonably expect to defeat in an outright conflict. Ba'al would be forced to retreat his forces to his hold-fasts beyond the range to which he could expect the fleets of either Apophis or the Warden to travel. He didn't have the luxury of losing the Naquadah resources - not if he didn't plan on subordinating himself to one of the two. Ba'al couldn't be everywhere.
Not any more - Ba'al was not a god.
War between the Goa'uld was an unusual proposition, logistically speaking. Few Goa'uld held empires that retained a substantial degree of geographic continuity. The Gate Network allowed for the colonization and rule of fragmented chunks of the galaxy, ironically complicating the ability for larger Empires to actually defend themselves. Ba'al had no shortage of military assets, but he couldn't feasibly defend his borders, repel Quetesh's offensive, and deal with peasant unrest on his major population center. He could manage two - but not three.
Sadly, Ba'al was not a god.
So, this heresy would have to be discovered and destroyed. As long as you caught it early, he could keep control over his realm. The Canaanite pantheon was a shadow of what it had been, and their sister pantheons of Akkadia and Mesopotamia hadn't fared much better. His aid to Ninlil might well have made the difference between life and exile along with Kothar-wa-Khasis and Dagon. A System Lord who had once made the galaxy tremble with the fear of his will and control of the elements, retaining an empire of shadows purely as payment for indulging a jilted lover.
Because Ba'al was not a god.
There was no point in hearing what the creature had to say at the moment. It still had hope - it would lie. For now, the process was more valuable than the results. In truth, hunger and time were far more effective tools do gain information than pain. Pain was an ineffective way to derive information. It was, however, a useful tool in discouraging others from adopting the behavior that required its implementation. It mattered not if retribution was truly divine or just apostolically horrific in its application - known tales of divine vengeance spread faster than half-known whispers of doubt. For men knew that a god's retribution was to be swift and terrible.
However, Ba'al was not a god.
Whispers were growing like a tide as of late. The Lord Warden's network of spies and apostates were legion and dastardly determined to spread his "truth." It was a truly masterful network, the cells were all self-radicalized. They had no guiding unified doctrine beyond "the Warden rewards good acts" and offered astonishingly little in the way of either spiritual or material rewards for worshipping him. In point of fact they emphasized that the Warden offered them far more hardship than protection. But, given that the Lord Warden could apparently re-shape reality to conform to his will the prospect of being treated as an equal by a cosmic force of the universe had an unfortunately seductive appeal to the hopeless and dispossessed. To those who had nothing, the god who promised to just acknowledge their personhood could command their loyalty or at least spark their dreams.
Yet Ba'al was not a god.
Ba'al flung another knife into the meat of the slave's leg, picking up a phial of healing liquid and pouring it across the open air to slow the flow of blood from her wound. It wouldn't do for her to bleed out in seconds. He needed to keep her alive for at least another ten hours or so. He found that the screams helped his thinking and the slave had a very pretty voice when she was in pain. Ba'al was a connoisseur of pain.
But Ba'al was not a god.
He wondered if the slave had known who the Lord Warden had once been. Some fools who worshipped Heka's rebranded form of godhood did, most did not. He didn't blame those who were unable to reconcile the Lord Warden with Heka of all people. The protector of Women and Orphans? Ha! If a Furling had not declared point blank that Heka was the Lord Warden, Ba'al would never have believed it. Moloch's most trusted confidant? The protector of Thoth? Betrayer of Anubis? An advocate for the people? It beggared belief. The man supped at Moloch's table. For him to become a god of children was an offense to the very idea of godhood. Heka was now divine. Heka was powerful. Heka was loved.
And Ba'al was not a god.
Ba'al had met gods, creatures, and beings of such power as one could not conceive else one risked devolving into utter gibbering madness. He had not been a god of Justice, Time, Punishment, or Death, and was thus saved the existential horror of watching over a prison full of creatures capable of annihilating all that he held dear but the power that was leached from him at all times went to the inexorable task of undoing the damages that had been done by his kind so very long ago. The combined might of the gods stolen to break the power of things so much greater than they.
And for that, Ba'al was not a god.
Fools did not follow the winds when they were moving across the seas, battling with oars and anchors just to stay in place forever while they watched others speed across the open seas. Heka had plotted his fates along a course that Ba'al could no longer follow, no matter how desperately he might have wished to travel it as well. It was obvious even to the blind that Heka had sold himself to the Queens of Winter and Summer. Apparently the madness of Egeria had been as catching as the folly of Thoth. No, Ba'al would not subordinate himself to becoming a Furling lickspittle just to take back the power that had once been his. Ba'al would find another way to make his mark upon the universe.
Ba'al could not be a god - so he would have to become something else entirely.
There were many routes to power and a man of patience and cunning could find them all. The High Council of System Lords were united as they had never previously been. The sudden rise of rival factions to their own within the Goa'uld could not be tolerated. Apophis' claim to Delmak was in direct conflict with Her'ur's divine right to the planet. The heir of Ra was a coucil member in good standing, such arrogance could not be tolerated. The Hellenic pantheon hadn't deigned to send member to meet with the coucil in several sessions - claiming that they needed to focus on protecting their borders against Chrono's expansion. It wasn't ouright seditious, like the sudden rise of Bast's military expansion into Chronos and Apophis' territories, but it was close enough to warrant examination. Ba'a wasn't overly confident in Chronos' loyalties either. The sub-lords sent to observe allegations of war crimes and the use of banned weapons against Heka's forces had a curious habit of dying before they could reach the High Council of System Lords.
And then there was Moloch. Ba'al tossed a particularly unpleasant, serrated knife at the slave as he considered his sibiling. Ba'al hated Moloch. The sadistic bastard had a capacity for cruelty that Enlil should have killed him for in infancy. Ba'al regretted ever having allied with Dagon and outsting the patriarch of the Akkadians, but it was too late to take it back. So the kingmaker was now a pathetic vagrant and the only member of the attempted coup with any power to speak of was a lunatic who didn't seem sure if he wanted to eat or fuck his chattel first, then spent the next ten millenia doing both. Ba'al mused over his hatred of such needless cruelty as he picked the next knife.
His rage at Moloch was second only to his disappointment as his fingers slipped on the knife, sending it too far down and into the slave's heart. She died with a sudden jerk of agony, crimson blood pouring out from the wound. Ba'al pinched the bridge of his nose, resting his elbow on the back of his left hand as he exhaled slowly through his nostrils.
"Jaffa!" Ba'al growled in a curt bark of frustration. "Kree!"
"Yes Lord Ba'al." Replied an armored figure, summoned from the hall in an instant to kneel before him.
"Take this away and resurrect it in the Sarcophagus. I want it back before me within the hour." Ba'al pulled long black gloves from his fingers and tossed them onto the table in irritation. "And get a servant in here with tea. I am in need of it."
Since his time on the worlds of Lord Yu Ba'al had found himself virtually addicted to the drink. He'd even purchased several slaves from the world of Lady Xiwangmu when his forces had found him, sending his Lo'tar to a stall at random so he could be sure they weren't hidden assassins. He'd tried to have them train some of the slaves bred from semite stock, but unsurprisingly none of them seemed to have the talent for it as those taken from the blood of heaven who'd been trained for the tea ceremonies since birth.
The Jaffa took the slave's body from the room, leaving Ba'al alone with his thoughts as the god tapped a button on the wall to open the window. This planet was a wide metropolis of two story buildings made from mud spreading out from the tall ziggurat from which Ba'al ruled. They were an agrarian society, simple people who raised wheat, corn and pigs. Pigs weren't a particularly effective food stock and they were a nightmare to keep healthy but he could be at least reasonably sure there weren't any lingering servants of Moses among a population fed primarily on pork. He had no wish to complicated his already tenuous rule with that faction. Several of the Caanaite gods not clever enough to learn the Lesson of Mt Caramel had attempted to start colonies with populations taken from the devotees of Moses three thousand years prior. Ba'al made sure to add those worlds to the list of banned addresses after his probes were able to get through the spatial distortions to assess the preliminary damage assessment.
It had been a targeted insult a those who had defied the exiled Lord Dagon. It did not end well. You could still hear the unending screams of the Jaffa if you opened a gate to the world where one of Mot's sub-lords tried to take the blood of Samson. Suffice it to say, meddling with the blood of Moses was a mistake.
Fools did not learn from their mistakes.
Ba'al was not a god, but he was most definitely not a fool.
The old ways weren't working any more. He was bleeding the death of a thousands cuts, surrendering world after world to upstarts who had never known him as anything other than an equal. The new gods believed that it was pure luck that they did not command all that he owned, and it was hubris of the highest order to deny that they were correct.
Ba'al was Ba'al. Come hell or high water the universe would still tremble before him.
-------------
Ba'al moved his fingers along the tools in front of him. Simple knives, made from silver. There had once been a time where he would have imbued them with his own power, blessing them so that the could cut beings of spirit and ectoplasm as surely as they harmed mortal flesh. But those times were gone, relics of the distant past.
For, you see, Ba'al was not a god.
Not by any metrics that mattered. It was a fact that he was increasingly forcing himself to reconcile with as the Lord Warden's legends were verified by multiple, reputable sources. He wore the face of a god. He wore the clothing of a god. He commanded the armies of a god. He held the holdings of a god. He owned the plundered wealth of a god. He even was worshipped as a god.
But Ba'al was not a god.
Ba'al needed to stop thinking of himself as a god. If he approached the coming conflicts with the warden like a god, expecting the universe to just bow down before the powers he no longer had access, it would destroy him as surely as any of his servants or slaves. There might once have been a time where he thought of technological tools as prosthetics, stop gap measures to replace that which he'd lost. But he knew the truth - they know were the sum of his power.
Ba'al was weak. Ba'al was not a god.
Unfortunately, any man with sufficient knowledge and resources could now match or beat him. Technology and ritual were agnostic paths to power. They were the weapons that separated a man from a king. A Goa'uld without power or pantheon was just a serpent wrapped around the neck of a man. And men, even men with the wisdom of the Goa'uld, one day would die.
Ba'al was mortal. Ba'al was not a god.
The thought incensed Ba'al, filling his mouth with the sour taste of loss. Ba'al flung a knife across the room, letting the artificial gravity turn the object into a shimmering blur. It was hard to say if he was hearing the squelching thud over the scream or the scream over the squelching thud, but the slave bound to the wall made a horrific noise as the blade struck. Ba'al ignored the creature's pleas for mercy, selecting another dagger from the table - prayers screamed begging for mercy from her god.
Ba'al was not merciful. Ba'al was not a god.
It writhed on the wall, pinned in place by a wall of artificial gravity, weeping in horror. The slave, an uneducated wretch from some backwater world of Ba'als empire, had no frame of reference to understand the mechanics of the devices that bound him. To him, the power was simply will and power. In truth, Ba'al was supplementing with technology and ritual that which he could no longer enforce by word and deed.
Ba'al wasn't omipotent. Ba'al was not a god.
That the woman was in the oubliette for blasphemy was an irony not lost upon Ba'al. The woman had uttered that most dangerous of libel against her god, truth. There would come a day where Ba'al could afford to allow his chattel to speak truth, but not in a time of war. Not with so many gods claiming the right to rule his worlds by divine mandate. Especially not now that there was a Goa'uld who had the power to justify that claim. Allowing dissent in his dominion risked chaos in his realm. He could ill afford civil war or peasant revolutions at the moment.
Ba'al's resources were limited. Ba'al was not a god.
His war with Quetesh left him in a precarious position. If he pulled Jaffa back to quell slaves it would afford an opportunity for either the Warden or Apophis to move against him - neither of whom he could reasonably expect to defeat in an outright conflict. Ba'al would be forced to retreat his forces to his hold-fasts beyond the range to which he could expect the fleets of either Apophis or the Warden to travel. He didn't have the luxury of losing the Naquadah resources - not if he didn't plan on subordinating himself to one of the two. Ba'al couldn't be everywhere.
Not any more - Ba'al was not a god.
War between the Goa'uld was an unusual proposition, logistically speaking. Few Goa'uld held empires that retained a substantial degree of geographic continuity. The Gate Network allowed for the colonization and rule of fragmented chunks of the galaxy, ironically complicating the ability for larger Empires to actually defend themselves. Ba'al had no shortage of military assets, but he couldn't feasibly defend his borders, repel Quetesh's offensive, and deal with peasant unrest on his major population center. He could manage two - but not three.
Sadly, Ba'al was not a god.
So, this heresy would have to be discovered and destroyed. As long as you caught it early, he could keep control over his realm. The Canaanite pantheon was a shadow of what it had been, and their sister pantheons of Akkadia and Mesopotamia hadn't fared much better. His aid to Ninlil might well have made the difference between life and exile along with Kothar-wa-Khasis and Dagon. A System Lord who had once made the galaxy tremble with the fear of his will and control of the elements, retaining an empire of shadows purely as payment for indulging a jilted lover.
Because Ba'al was not a god.
There was no point in hearing what the creature had to say at the moment. It still had hope - it would lie. For now, the process was more valuable than the results. In truth, hunger and time were far more effective tools do gain information than pain. Pain was an ineffective way to derive information. It was, however, a useful tool in discouraging others from adopting the behavior that required its implementation. It mattered not if retribution was truly divine or just apostolically horrific in its application - known tales of divine vengeance spread faster than half-known whispers of doubt. For men knew that a god's retribution was to be swift and terrible.
However, Ba'al was not a god.
Whispers were growing like a tide as of late. The Lord Warden's network of spies and apostates were legion and dastardly determined to spread his "truth." It was a truly masterful network, the cells were all self-radicalized. They had no guiding unified doctrine beyond "the Warden rewards good acts" and offered astonishingly little in the way of either spiritual or material rewards for worshipping him. In point of fact they emphasized that the Warden offered them far more hardship than protection. But, given that the Lord Warden could apparently re-shape reality to conform to his will the prospect of being treated as an equal by a cosmic force of the universe had an unfortunately seductive appeal to the hopeless and dispossessed. To those who had nothing, the god who promised to just acknowledge their personhood could command their loyalty or at least spark their dreams.
Yet Ba'al was not a god.
Ba'al flung another knife into the meat of the slave's leg, picking up a phial of healing liquid and pouring it across the open air to slow the flow of blood from her wound. It wouldn't do for her to bleed out in seconds. He needed to keep her alive for at least another ten hours or so. He found that the screams helped his thinking and the slave had a very pretty voice when she was in pain. Ba'al was a connoisseur of pain.
But Ba'al was not a god.
He wondered if the slave had known who the Lord Warden had once been. Some fools who worshipped Heka's rebranded form of godhood did, most did not. He didn't blame those who were unable to reconcile the Lord Warden with Heka of all people. The protector of Women and Orphans? Ha! If a Furling had not declared point blank that Heka was the Lord Warden, Ba'al would never have believed it. Moloch's most trusted confidant? The protector of Thoth? Betrayer of Anubis? An advocate for the people? It beggared belief. The man supped at Moloch's table. For him to become a god of children was an offense to the very idea of godhood. Heka was now divine. Heka was powerful. Heka was loved.
And Ba'al was not a god.
Ba'al had met gods, creatures, and beings of such power as one could not conceive else one risked devolving into utter gibbering madness. He had not been a god of Justice, Time, Punishment, or Death, and was thus saved the existential horror of watching over a prison full of creatures capable of annihilating all that he held dear but the power that was leached from him at all times went to the inexorable task of undoing the damages that had been done by his kind so very long ago. The combined might of the gods stolen to break the power of things so much greater than they.
And for that, Ba'al was not a god.
Fools did not follow the winds when they were moving across the seas, battling with oars and anchors just to stay in place forever while they watched others speed across the open seas. Heka had plotted his fates along a course that Ba'al could no longer follow, no matter how desperately he might have wished to travel it as well. It was obvious even to the blind that Heka had sold himself to the Queens of Winter and Summer. Apparently the madness of Egeria had been as catching as the folly of Thoth. No, Ba'al would not subordinate himself to becoming a Furling lickspittle just to take back the power that had once been his. Ba'al would find another way to make his mark upon the universe.
Ba'al could not be a god - so he would have to become something else entirely.
There were many routes to power and a man of patience and cunning could find them all. The High Council of System Lords were united as they had never previously been. The sudden rise of rival factions to their own within the Goa'uld could not be tolerated. Apophis' claim to Delmak was in direct conflict with Her'ur's divine right to the planet. The heir of Ra was a coucil member in good standing, such arrogance could not be tolerated. The Hellenic pantheon hadn't deigned to send member to meet with the coucil in several sessions - claiming that they needed to focus on protecting their borders against Chrono's expansion. It wasn't ouright seditious, like the sudden rise of Bast's military expansion into Chronos and Apophis' territories, but it was close enough to warrant examination. Ba'a wasn't overly confident in Chronos' loyalties either. The sub-lords sent to observe allegations of war crimes and the use of banned weapons against Heka's forces had a curious habit of dying before they could reach the High Council of System Lords.
And then there was Moloch. Ba'al tossed a particularly unpleasant, serrated knife at the slave as he considered his sibiling. Ba'al hated Moloch. The sadistic bastard had a capacity for cruelty that Enlil should have killed him for in infancy. Ba'al regretted ever having allied with Dagon and outsting the patriarch of the Akkadians, but it was too late to take it back. So the kingmaker was now a pathetic vagrant and the only member of the attempted coup with any power to speak of was a lunatic who didn't seem sure if he wanted to eat or fuck his chattel first, then spent the next ten millenia doing both. Ba'al mused over his hatred of such needless cruelty as he picked the next knife.
His rage at Moloch was second only to his disappointment as his fingers slipped on the knife, sending it too far down and into the slave's heart. She died with a sudden jerk of agony, crimson blood pouring out from the wound. Ba'al pinched the bridge of his nose, resting his elbow on the back of his left hand as he exhaled slowly through his nostrils.
"Jaffa!" Ba'al growled in a curt bark of frustration. "Kree!"
"Yes Lord Ba'al." Replied an armored figure, summoned from the hall in an instant to kneel before him.
"Take this away and resurrect it in the Sarcophagus. I want it back before me within the hour." Ba'al pulled long black gloves from his fingers and tossed them onto the table in irritation. "And get a servant in here with tea. I am in need of it."
Since his time on the worlds of Lord Yu Ba'al had found himself virtually addicted to the drink. He'd even purchased several slaves from the world of Lady Xiwangmu when his forces had found him, sending his Lo'tar to a stall at random so he could be sure they weren't hidden assassins. He'd tried to have them train some of the slaves bred from semite stock, but unsurprisingly none of them seemed to have the talent for it as those taken from the blood of heaven who'd been trained for the tea ceremonies since birth.
The Jaffa took the slave's body from the room, leaving Ba'al alone with his thoughts as the god tapped a button on the wall to open the window. This planet was a wide metropolis of two story buildings made from mud spreading out from the tall ziggurat from which Ba'al ruled. They were an agrarian society, simple people who raised wheat, corn and pigs. Pigs weren't a particularly effective food stock and they were a nightmare to keep healthy but he could be at least reasonably sure there weren't any lingering servants of Moses among a population fed primarily on pork. He had no wish to complicated his already tenuous rule with that faction. Several of the Caanaite gods not clever enough to learn the Lesson of Mt Caramel had attempted to start colonies with populations taken from the devotees of Moses three thousand years prior. Ba'al made sure to add those worlds to the list of banned addresses after his probes were able to get through the spatial distortions to assess the preliminary damage assessment.
It had been a targeted insult a those who had defied the exiled Lord Dagon. It did not end well. You could still hear the unending screams of the Jaffa if you opened a gate to the world where one of Mot's sub-lords tried to take the blood of Samson. Suffice it to say, meddling with the blood of Moses was a mistake.
Fools did not learn from their mistakes.
Ba'al was not a god, but he was most definitely not a fool.
The old ways weren't working any more. He was bleeding the death of a thousands cuts, surrendering world after world to upstarts who had never known him as anything other than an equal. The new gods believed that it was pure luck that they did not command all that he owned, and it was hubris of the highest order to deny that they were correct.
Ba'al was Ba'al. Come hell or high water the universe would still tremble before him.
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- Location
- Argentina
That instantly makes him way more dangerous that 90% of the other snakes.
Ammit I
Todeswind
Begrudgingly thread marking.
- Location
- Ry'leth
Unas do not dream, not as men do. They hunger, they think, they aspire for glory, but they aren't prone to fantasies or self deception. An unas might dream of food or a particularly glorious hunt but always with the literalist understanding of the world around them that governs the brutally pragmatic violence of their day to day interactions. They were delightfully uncomplicated creatures, really.
Those few moments in which the unwaking mind operate were full of simple concerns - thoughts about the hunt, urgest to perpetuate the species, and brief, rational moments of fear regarding predators and the sorts of creatures that devour one in one's sleep.
Men, however, are creatures of perpetual contradictions. They live in a constant state of self-delusion even in their waking hours. Given the opportunity for fear and hope to run unabated, their minds cycle into visions more vast and impossible than the darkest depths of the Lands of Sun and Snow. Sleep, therefore, was one of the more unpleasant necessities one had to endure in order to have a human host.
Goa'uld do not sleep even if their host body must.
Four hours a Goa'uld in human form was forced to endure the violent, lunatic, psycho-sexual madness that lay on the fringes of a mortal's mind. Some Goa'uld would imbibe substances to suppress the unwaking minds of their host, using liquor or complex psycho-suppressant chemicals to absolve themselves of the deeply unpleasant journeys their host's brain forced them to take daily. It was not without cost - regular use of harmful substances forced the Goa'uld to spend those unwaking hours actively healing the damage done to their host.
Ammit had never bothered with the process. Not because she had any particularly vested interest in keeping the sanity of her shell intact but because she'd always found the sheer insanity of the visions to be a brisque break from the tedium of just sitting for hours and waiting. Moreover, her hosts' minds seemed quite determined to create battle scenarios more dangerous and deadly than those she fought in her waking hours. Humans were a skittish breed as a rule - prone to trauma in the event that they saw something particularly violent or horrific and equally prone to bring those traumas with them into sleep.
Weak Goa'uld feared the dreams of their hosts. Ammit was many things. Weak wasn't one of them.
Killing nightmares wasn't a perfect method of practicing combat - physics didn't always operate as it ought in the world of dreams - but it was a delightfully brisque practice for the delicious violence she rarely got to indulge in her waking hours. Ammit had quite entirely forgotten how much she loved nightmares till the first night she'd fallen asleep in her new host body and had been treated to a most magnificent display of violence.
It was only moments after Ammit situated herself between the cool, silken covers of her new bed - an alien concept since she'd abandoned human hosts an age ago - that her eyes closed and she was whisked into the delirium of sleep. The sensation was always jarring, the sleeping mind of the host forcibly dragged the Goa'uld into its visions. To Ammit's relief, she was an independent entity rather than stuck riding behind the eyes of her host. That was never a guarantee and Ammit always found it deeply unpleasant not to be in control of her body.
They were in a war zone, the smell of smoke and blood as fresh upon the air as a fresh charnel house - though the pervasive scent of rot seemed incongruous with how recent the violence around her seemed. The skies sparked and rumbled with the distant thunder of explosions, choking the skies with inky grey-black smoke and the echoes of screams of people turning into cinders.
It made Ammit nostalgic for times long past.
It was a city, or rather had been a city at one point. The rubble and smoking iron husks of war machines littering the ground around her seemed to have crushed the pretense that any civilization can last for more than moments. Ammit could recognize but not read the writing on the street signs around her - though they were all readable in spite of that. Her host was not similarly limited in interpreting where they were "Leningrad."
Ammit looked down at herself, idly noting that she was wearing clothing and a cloak similar to those favored by her human host. Her hands looked vaguely human, though the dark green-black of the scales covering what would normally be the pink or brown meat of manflesh let her know that at least some of her sense of self was allowing her to manipulate the dream.
She tested her limits, turning her hand into a tentacle and then back into a normal hand. Her dream body responded to her will near instantaneously, bending to her will in an instant. Nanami must have been a particularly imaginative woman, it took a creative mind to bend that quickly to a new concept of reality.
"Good," Ammit spoke, her voice feeling high pitched and childish by comparison to what it had once been. "I am at least able to act."
"Get down!" Hissed a terrified woman from the ground. She was hazy to the point of being translucent - a vestigial memory of terror populating the periphery of the dream. "Get down or they'll see you!"
"They?" Ammit looked around her, perceiving little through the smoke and rattling projectiles. She battled away the woman's hands as she tried to drag her down to the ground. "Get off me vision."
"They'll see -" The memory sobbed, translucent hands passing through Ammit as the demoness ignored the woman's whispered pleas of terror. The long forgotten terrors of this thing were of no consequence to Ammit. It was only an ancient shadow of forgotten fear - nothing more.
It was probably someone that Nanami had met once. A terrified woman who she'd only met in passing who'd been able to leave an impression on Nanami's mind but not enough for the vision to do more than a single, unhelpful action. It would not be dissuaded from it's blind panic. It's tiresome attempts to make Ammit cower like prey grew to be too much for the goddess to tolerate.
She pulled the blade from her waist and stabbed the memory, silencing its terror as the ephemeral shadow burst into the void from whence it came. She sheathed the blade, leaning on the shattered window frame, looking out at the chaos in idle amusement. This was all too well founded for this to be some idle flight of fancy. A memory? Possibly - though probably a distant one, the first world hadn't seemed this violent when they'd been there except in response to the Lord Warden.
Her lip twitched upward in amusement. The Lord Warden - the man who consumed a god. If she had not gazed on the truth of the man's soul she would have called it a lie. The sheer absurdity of it - a man with a mind powerful enough to consume a god. Her high-pitched voice rumbled with a throaty chuckle that had no business coming out of her girlish vocal chords. Heka had gotten what he wished for most in life, a magical host with enough power to make the System Lords quake in fear, and had been crushed by that very man's personal power.
He had given Heka a Soul and used that to condemn him to eternal hellfire. Blessed blood of Apep - it was no wonder that he was loved and despised by the courts of fairy.
It was little wonder that Anubis' throne had judged him worthy. It was like looking at her brother in a mirror - the sheer brutal refusal to accept that any battle couldn't be won, no matter the odds. The willingness to do anything to win a fight. The near pathological devotion to his own code even if the rest of the universe would call him a monster.
Unlike her brother, though, Ammit believed she could keep the Lord Warden on this side of sanity. He trusted her - even listened to her. She would be able to shape him into a proper god.
And if she couldn't, trust was as dangerous a weapon as any other. It had, after all, been the key in slaying or capturing Anubis each time she'd been forced to deal with her brother since his descent into madness.
"Men, gods - they all die someday." Ammit murmured to herself as she watched men shambling along the ground at angles that seemed… wrong, for the movement of mortal men. Her eyes narrowed as she watched them crawl across the rubble, trying to reconcile their unnatural movement with possible options. Her lip curled in disgust as she realized what had been done.
How could she not? It had been the Goa'uld who'd created the very magics that were being corrupted in front of her. The flesh and shade of a recently departed servant of the Goa'uld could be mummified and preserved to allow them to continue serving the living even as their soul passed on to the next world. Letting the shade continue the unfinished works helped a particularly devoted soul unburden themselves of guilt in passing on to what came next.
It was an honor reserved for men and women of particular greatness and unique devotion.
Some necromancer had the sheer cheek to pervert the rituals used to allow the priesthood, scholars and soldiers of the Goa'uld to serve the dead after death into a weapon. Broken bodies without any sort of care or preparation to them were dragging themselves across the battlefield. Men without legs were dragging themselves across the jagged ground, trailing their organs along the earth next to shambling men with bodies burst and broken with projectiles weapons. Their forms, immune to pain, forced themselves along the ground with a hateful rapidity born of unnatural sorcery.
Someone was preventing these men's shades from passing on to their proper rest. These things were not ritually preserved artefacts of a man's life's work - they were broken slaves, weapons of flesh. A sentiment apparently shared by Warden Nanami as she appeared out of thin air, casting beams of green flame from the tips of her fingers than rendered necrotic flesh to ash.
The monsters grew in number as the woman's fear started to corrupt the memory. At least Ammit hoped this was a corruption of the memory. If, in fact, a necromancer of sufficient power existed to raise this sort of army the System Lords would need consider approaching the Asgard about having the First World removed from the protected planets treaty to cleanse it from orbit.
She killed tens, then hundreds, then thousands, of the shambling creatures. No matter how many of the bodies she killed there were always more - so she killed them in a perpetual burning mass of charnel. Ammit watched the violence in keen interest - wondering what would break first, the illusion or the woman's will.
Other creatures started charging from the depths. Ghouls, Ogers, and vampires of every flavor. Ammit was quite certain that a cavalcade of creatures like this would not, in fact, be reasonable for a single wizard to fight in her waking hours, but dreams were blessedly free of the limits of the flesh.
They were unfortunately still limited by the mind. Just as the endless armies of monsters seemed at the verge of breaking, a single man started approaching her. The crowd of monsters fled him as he approached, his slow gait almost lazy. He looked almost as emaciated as the corpses he was raising, his eyes wild and full of madness. He was wearing a cloak sewn from what looked remarkably like the sewn together faces of men and women, a suspicion that was confirmed as he grew close enough for Ammit to see the swatches scream breathlessly, their terrified eyes helplessly darting back and forth.
He raised his hand and the mound of charnel beneath the her host congealed into a single mass of necrotic filth, a gigantic hand steeped in the energies of death as it closed around her body. She struggled against the hand, screaming. "Kemmler! You son of a bitch! Today is the day you die for good."
The man's rasping laugh actually sent a chill into Ammit's spine, it was an empty terrible sound. "Child - death is but an illusion reserved for the weak of spirit and purpose. I will make you the same offer I have made your fellows. Cease this foolish resistance, join me and I will allow you to learn the true magic."
"Just kill me already." The young woman snarled. "Because I'm never joining you."
"Kill you child? Why would I do that when you are so valuable to my allies?" The wizened crone of a man pulled a small stone from his pocket and caressed it. There was a thunderous booming sound in the air and the smoke--choked skies were suddenly masked by a massive, steel snowflake. "Your buisness on Buyan is not yet finished child."
"No," Nanami screamed, begging the old crone for mercy. "Kill me, please no - please have mercy. Kill me."
"Dear child." The man's voice stroked that last word with disgusting glee. "I know the value of flesh. I am not one to waste it."
"Please don't do this." Nanami shuddered, her fear devolving into blind terror. The landscape around them broke and cracked as horror overtook her. The hellish landscape grew more bleak, screams after screams echoing through the streets. There was an omnipresent sense of terror across the landscape as the shambling dead filled every corner of the landscape. Women, children, even infants, it was an entire planet full of glassy eyed corpses.
Nanami had failed and she was certain that her failure had doomed every living thing on the planet.
"Yes," Purred the warlock. "See my victory. See my total conquest. I have achieved the glory of the GODS! I am a GOD! Bow before your GOD."
"Dunno about calling yourself that, friend." Replied Ammit as she jumped out the window, gliding down across the air to land in front of the nightmare. "I can think of some better plans for your long term survival."
"Another Warden." Purred the dream-construct. "Older - but he takes all types of the weaker sex."
"Did… did you just make fun of my age and gender as though age were a negative factor to knowing how to defeat you?"Ammit looked up at her host in incredulity. "Did this moron actually exist or is this just some weird fantasy?"
"That's Heinrich Kemmler!" Screamed the woman in horror. "Run! Run before Koschei gets here."
"Calm down woman, we can…" Ammit froze in annoyance as the illusionary staff of Kemmler collided with the side of her head. It didn't hurt - it was, after all, just a dream but Ammit was not in the habit of being interrupted. Her eyes glowed bright green as she turned on the tiny man and snapped his staff. "We are having a conversation."
The man looked at the shattered haft of his staff in befuddlement before tossing a ball of fire at Ammit. Ammit didn't bother moving out of its way as she looked up at Nanami. "See - this prick has no actual power here. He's just bluster."
"He comes back, he always comes back!" Hissed the woman as the city descended down from the skies. "I can't - they always come back."
"Warden Nanami, you are a damn Wizard. Use your brain. What happens if a necromancer doesn't have a drummer?" Ammit continued to ignore Kemmler as he tried, and failed, to immolate her.
"They - they go away?" Nanami replied in confusion from inside of the giant hand made from corpses. "What does that have to do… ooooh!"
Ammit nodded as the thought solidified in the Wardens head and began to affect the dream. "That's right. I don't hear a damn drum either."
Ammit grabbed Kemmler by the throat, crushing his larynx and pinning him to the ground as Nanami freed herself from the pile of corpses. "Get over here and cut off this prick's head."
"He'll just come back." Nanami shook her head as she walked over to the gurgling necromancer. "There's no point. We'd just have to do it again."
"Sure, but this was really fucking easy." Ammit replied breaking the man's nose out of sheer spite. "He's not much without the corpses."
"But he is… this… this makes no sense." Nanami blinked in confusion. "This - none of this is how this actually happened."
"Of course not." Ammit replied. "This is a dream."
"I'm dreaming?" Nanami said the words slowly, as though she knew they were true but coudn't tell why they were true.
"What you're doing now is wasting time." Ammit broke the man's jaw for good measure. "I mean I'm happy to keep breaking bones if that's what you're into, but I feel like we can use this time better."
Nanami nodded and sliced off the man's head with a snicker-snack of her enchanted blade. Ammit picked up the head and punted it has hard as she could. Unburdened by any rules of physics it tumbled across the sky, growing to an impossible size and colliding with the city of Buyan in a massive burst of atomic energies that rained down starlight and rainbows across the ground. Where they landed the city went from a horrible hellscape to a placid cityscape.
"Come on kid," Ammit felt her bones shifting into a serpentine form as she forced her illusionary body into a shape more akin to her serpentine body only large enough to ride. "Hop on."
"Where are we going?" Replied Nanami as she climbed atop the goddess.
"Anywhere we damn well please kid." Ammit purred. "Anywhere at all."
And with those words the Eater of the Dead took off the ground, slithering through the skies as easily as she might have wriggled through a pool of water.
Those few moments in which the unwaking mind operate were full of simple concerns - thoughts about the hunt, urgest to perpetuate the species, and brief, rational moments of fear regarding predators and the sorts of creatures that devour one in one's sleep.
Men, however, are creatures of perpetual contradictions. They live in a constant state of self-delusion even in their waking hours. Given the opportunity for fear and hope to run unabated, their minds cycle into visions more vast and impossible than the darkest depths of the Lands of Sun and Snow. Sleep, therefore, was one of the more unpleasant necessities one had to endure in order to have a human host.
Goa'uld do not sleep even if their host body must.
Four hours a Goa'uld in human form was forced to endure the violent, lunatic, psycho-sexual madness that lay on the fringes of a mortal's mind. Some Goa'uld would imbibe substances to suppress the unwaking minds of their host, using liquor or complex psycho-suppressant chemicals to absolve themselves of the deeply unpleasant journeys their host's brain forced them to take daily. It was not without cost - regular use of harmful substances forced the Goa'uld to spend those unwaking hours actively healing the damage done to their host.
Ammit had never bothered with the process. Not because she had any particularly vested interest in keeping the sanity of her shell intact but because she'd always found the sheer insanity of the visions to be a brisque break from the tedium of just sitting for hours and waiting. Moreover, her hosts' minds seemed quite determined to create battle scenarios more dangerous and deadly than those she fought in her waking hours. Humans were a skittish breed as a rule - prone to trauma in the event that they saw something particularly violent or horrific and equally prone to bring those traumas with them into sleep.
Weak Goa'uld feared the dreams of their hosts. Ammit was many things. Weak wasn't one of them.
Killing nightmares wasn't a perfect method of practicing combat - physics didn't always operate as it ought in the world of dreams - but it was a delightfully brisque practice for the delicious violence she rarely got to indulge in her waking hours. Ammit had quite entirely forgotten how much she loved nightmares till the first night she'd fallen asleep in her new host body and had been treated to a most magnificent display of violence.
It was only moments after Ammit situated herself between the cool, silken covers of her new bed - an alien concept since she'd abandoned human hosts an age ago - that her eyes closed and she was whisked into the delirium of sleep. The sensation was always jarring, the sleeping mind of the host forcibly dragged the Goa'uld into its visions. To Ammit's relief, she was an independent entity rather than stuck riding behind the eyes of her host. That was never a guarantee and Ammit always found it deeply unpleasant not to be in control of her body.
They were in a war zone, the smell of smoke and blood as fresh upon the air as a fresh charnel house - though the pervasive scent of rot seemed incongruous with how recent the violence around her seemed. The skies sparked and rumbled with the distant thunder of explosions, choking the skies with inky grey-black smoke and the echoes of screams of people turning into cinders.
It made Ammit nostalgic for times long past.
It was a city, or rather had been a city at one point. The rubble and smoking iron husks of war machines littering the ground around her seemed to have crushed the pretense that any civilization can last for more than moments. Ammit could recognize but not read the writing on the street signs around her - though they were all readable in spite of that. Her host was not similarly limited in interpreting where they were "Leningrad."
Ammit looked down at herself, idly noting that she was wearing clothing and a cloak similar to those favored by her human host. Her hands looked vaguely human, though the dark green-black of the scales covering what would normally be the pink or brown meat of manflesh let her know that at least some of her sense of self was allowing her to manipulate the dream.
She tested her limits, turning her hand into a tentacle and then back into a normal hand. Her dream body responded to her will near instantaneously, bending to her will in an instant. Nanami must have been a particularly imaginative woman, it took a creative mind to bend that quickly to a new concept of reality.
"Good," Ammit spoke, her voice feeling high pitched and childish by comparison to what it had once been. "I am at least able to act."
"Get down!" Hissed a terrified woman from the ground. She was hazy to the point of being translucent - a vestigial memory of terror populating the periphery of the dream. "Get down or they'll see you!"
"They?" Ammit looked around her, perceiving little through the smoke and rattling projectiles. She battled away the woman's hands as she tried to drag her down to the ground. "Get off me vision."
"They'll see -" The memory sobbed, translucent hands passing through Ammit as the demoness ignored the woman's whispered pleas of terror. The long forgotten terrors of this thing were of no consequence to Ammit. It was only an ancient shadow of forgotten fear - nothing more.
It was probably someone that Nanami had met once. A terrified woman who she'd only met in passing who'd been able to leave an impression on Nanami's mind but not enough for the vision to do more than a single, unhelpful action. It would not be dissuaded from it's blind panic. It's tiresome attempts to make Ammit cower like prey grew to be too much for the goddess to tolerate.
She pulled the blade from her waist and stabbed the memory, silencing its terror as the ephemeral shadow burst into the void from whence it came. She sheathed the blade, leaning on the shattered window frame, looking out at the chaos in idle amusement. This was all too well founded for this to be some idle flight of fancy. A memory? Possibly - though probably a distant one, the first world hadn't seemed this violent when they'd been there except in response to the Lord Warden.
Her lip twitched upward in amusement. The Lord Warden - the man who consumed a god. If she had not gazed on the truth of the man's soul she would have called it a lie. The sheer absurdity of it - a man with a mind powerful enough to consume a god. Her high-pitched voice rumbled with a throaty chuckle that had no business coming out of her girlish vocal chords. Heka had gotten what he wished for most in life, a magical host with enough power to make the System Lords quake in fear, and had been crushed by that very man's personal power.
He had given Heka a Soul and used that to condemn him to eternal hellfire. Blessed blood of Apep - it was no wonder that he was loved and despised by the courts of fairy.
It was little wonder that Anubis' throne had judged him worthy. It was like looking at her brother in a mirror - the sheer brutal refusal to accept that any battle couldn't be won, no matter the odds. The willingness to do anything to win a fight. The near pathological devotion to his own code even if the rest of the universe would call him a monster.
Unlike her brother, though, Ammit believed she could keep the Lord Warden on this side of sanity. He trusted her - even listened to her. She would be able to shape him into a proper god.
And if she couldn't, trust was as dangerous a weapon as any other. It had, after all, been the key in slaying or capturing Anubis each time she'd been forced to deal with her brother since his descent into madness.
"Men, gods - they all die someday." Ammit murmured to herself as she watched men shambling along the ground at angles that seemed… wrong, for the movement of mortal men. Her eyes narrowed as she watched them crawl across the rubble, trying to reconcile their unnatural movement with possible options. Her lip curled in disgust as she realized what had been done.
How could she not? It had been the Goa'uld who'd created the very magics that were being corrupted in front of her. The flesh and shade of a recently departed servant of the Goa'uld could be mummified and preserved to allow them to continue serving the living even as their soul passed on to the next world. Letting the shade continue the unfinished works helped a particularly devoted soul unburden themselves of guilt in passing on to what came next.
It was an honor reserved for men and women of particular greatness and unique devotion.
Some necromancer had the sheer cheek to pervert the rituals used to allow the priesthood, scholars and soldiers of the Goa'uld to serve the dead after death into a weapon. Broken bodies without any sort of care or preparation to them were dragging themselves across the battlefield. Men without legs were dragging themselves across the jagged ground, trailing their organs along the earth next to shambling men with bodies burst and broken with projectiles weapons. Their forms, immune to pain, forced themselves along the ground with a hateful rapidity born of unnatural sorcery.
Someone was preventing these men's shades from passing on to their proper rest. These things were not ritually preserved artefacts of a man's life's work - they were broken slaves, weapons of flesh. A sentiment apparently shared by Warden Nanami as she appeared out of thin air, casting beams of green flame from the tips of her fingers than rendered necrotic flesh to ash.
The monsters grew in number as the woman's fear started to corrupt the memory. At least Ammit hoped this was a corruption of the memory. If, in fact, a necromancer of sufficient power existed to raise this sort of army the System Lords would need consider approaching the Asgard about having the First World removed from the protected planets treaty to cleanse it from orbit.
She killed tens, then hundreds, then thousands, of the shambling creatures. No matter how many of the bodies she killed there were always more - so she killed them in a perpetual burning mass of charnel. Ammit watched the violence in keen interest - wondering what would break first, the illusion or the woman's will.
Other creatures started charging from the depths. Ghouls, Ogers, and vampires of every flavor. Ammit was quite certain that a cavalcade of creatures like this would not, in fact, be reasonable for a single wizard to fight in her waking hours, but dreams were blessedly free of the limits of the flesh.
They were unfortunately still limited by the mind. Just as the endless armies of monsters seemed at the verge of breaking, a single man started approaching her. The crowd of monsters fled him as he approached, his slow gait almost lazy. He looked almost as emaciated as the corpses he was raising, his eyes wild and full of madness. He was wearing a cloak sewn from what looked remarkably like the sewn together faces of men and women, a suspicion that was confirmed as he grew close enough for Ammit to see the swatches scream breathlessly, their terrified eyes helplessly darting back and forth.
He raised his hand and the mound of charnel beneath the her host congealed into a single mass of necrotic filth, a gigantic hand steeped in the energies of death as it closed around her body. She struggled against the hand, screaming. "Kemmler! You son of a bitch! Today is the day you die for good."
The man's rasping laugh actually sent a chill into Ammit's spine, it was an empty terrible sound. "Child - death is but an illusion reserved for the weak of spirit and purpose. I will make you the same offer I have made your fellows. Cease this foolish resistance, join me and I will allow you to learn the true magic."
"Just kill me already." The young woman snarled. "Because I'm never joining you."
"Kill you child? Why would I do that when you are so valuable to my allies?" The wizened crone of a man pulled a small stone from his pocket and caressed it. There was a thunderous booming sound in the air and the smoke--choked skies were suddenly masked by a massive, steel snowflake. "Your buisness on Buyan is not yet finished child."
"No," Nanami screamed, begging the old crone for mercy. "Kill me, please no - please have mercy. Kill me."
"Dear child." The man's voice stroked that last word with disgusting glee. "I know the value of flesh. I am not one to waste it."
"Please don't do this." Nanami shuddered, her fear devolving into blind terror. The landscape around them broke and cracked as horror overtook her. The hellish landscape grew more bleak, screams after screams echoing through the streets. There was an omnipresent sense of terror across the landscape as the shambling dead filled every corner of the landscape. Women, children, even infants, it was an entire planet full of glassy eyed corpses.
Nanami had failed and she was certain that her failure had doomed every living thing on the planet.
"Yes," Purred the warlock. "See my victory. See my total conquest. I have achieved the glory of the GODS! I am a GOD! Bow before your GOD."
"Dunno about calling yourself that, friend." Replied Ammit as she jumped out the window, gliding down across the air to land in front of the nightmare. "I can think of some better plans for your long term survival."
"Another Warden." Purred the dream-construct. "Older - but he takes all types of the weaker sex."
"Did… did you just make fun of my age and gender as though age were a negative factor to knowing how to defeat you?"Ammit looked up at her host in incredulity. "Did this moron actually exist or is this just some weird fantasy?"
"That's Heinrich Kemmler!" Screamed the woman in horror. "Run! Run before Koschei gets here."
"Calm down woman, we can…" Ammit froze in annoyance as the illusionary staff of Kemmler collided with the side of her head. It didn't hurt - it was, after all, just a dream but Ammit was not in the habit of being interrupted. Her eyes glowed bright green as she turned on the tiny man and snapped his staff. "We are having a conversation."
The man looked at the shattered haft of his staff in befuddlement before tossing a ball of fire at Ammit. Ammit didn't bother moving out of its way as she looked up at Nanami. "See - this prick has no actual power here. He's just bluster."
"He comes back, he always comes back!" Hissed the woman as the city descended down from the skies. "I can't - they always come back."
"Warden Nanami, you are a damn Wizard. Use your brain. What happens if a necromancer doesn't have a drummer?" Ammit continued to ignore Kemmler as he tried, and failed, to immolate her.
"They - they go away?" Nanami replied in confusion from inside of the giant hand made from corpses. "What does that have to do… ooooh!"
Ammit nodded as the thought solidified in the Wardens head and began to affect the dream. "That's right. I don't hear a damn drum either."
Ammit grabbed Kemmler by the throat, crushing his larynx and pinning him to the ground as Nanami freed herself from the pile of corpses. "Get over here and cut off this prick's head."
"He'll just come back." Nanami shook her head as she walked over to the gurgling necromancer. "There's no point. We'd just have to do it again."
"Sure, but this was really fucking easy." Ammit replied breaking the man's nose out of sheer spite. "He's not much without the corpses."
"But he is… this… this makes no sense." Nanami blinked in confusion. "This - none of this is how this actually happened."
"Of course not." Ammit replied. "This is a dream."
"I'm dreaming?" Nanami said the words slowly, as though she knew they were true but coudn't tell why they were true.
"What you're doing now is wasting time." Ammit broke the man's jaw for good measure. "I mean I'm happy to keep breaking bones if that's what you're into, but I feel like we can use this time better."
Nanami nodded and sliced off the man's head with a snicker-snack of her enchanted blade. Ammit picked up the head and punted it has hard as she could. Unburdened by any rules of physics it tumbled across the sky, growing to an impossible size and colliding with the city of Buyan in a massive burst of atomic energies that rained down starlight and rainbows across the ground. Where they landed the city went from a horrible hellscape to a placid cityscape.
"Come on kid," Ammit felt her bones shifting into a serpentine form as she forced her illusionary body into a shape more akin to her serpentine body only large enough to ride. "Hop on."
"Where are we going?" Replied Nanami as she climbed atop the goddess.
"Anywhere we damn well please kid." Ammit purred. "Anywhere at all."
And with those words the Eater of the Dead took off the ground, slithering through the skies as easily as she might have wriggled through a pool of water.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
D'aww, how cute.
(my perception may be a bit warped here)
(my perception may be a bit warped here)
