Neat, I haven't read it in a while, I've been letting it build up so I could binge on it. This'll be interesting.
Impossible Journey (Planeswalker Multicross)
- Thread starter Acolyte
- Start date
- Crossover
Chapter 12
My first challenge in this world is that I am flat-out broke, with not a single penny to my name. The gold coins and dwarven-steel blades I have don't exactly sell at the corner shops, not to mention I don't see anyone with weapons around at all, so a bunch of swords and axes might be regulated as well.
The local currency appears to be shards of crystals that are brimming with magic. They also seem to be what is fueling their magic; I learned it when the barista at the cafe put a new crystal into her machine, and to my mage sight, the mandala conjured the coffee without any casters input. I guess that's what you really need: power and direction for the magic, normally that is the soul and will of the caster, but there is no reason it can't be a crystal power the spell mandala to create a single fixed effect. It is how magical enchantments work, but this is like an evolved version of those; in the world of the imperium, magical items are something that takes extensive rituals and time to create, almost perpetual magical matrices that can do amazing things, but they are always going to be that expensive and will always take that much time.
But what this civilisation has done is, they have gone a completely different methodology for crafting magical devices. Instead of creating complex spells bound to objects and or arcane rituals. They decoupled the powering of the device from the equations and just focused on streamlining the enchantment process and designing ever better methods of crafting magical effects. So, because they have access to these mana crystals, they have been able to use it to fuel their exquisitely designed and awesomely efficient magical mandalas and spirit matrices to do anything that magic can do. Ofourcse the initial enchanting, the effect still requires an ensouled being, but that is much easier for a mage to imbue the magical formulae with the metaphysical capacity to perform magic when 90% of the work can be completed by an average if well-trained factory worker.
Honestly, the more is see that coffee maker, the more I want to praise the genius that designed it. Conjuration of the matter is one of the most difficult magical effects, energy-intensive as the universe hates entropy being reduced and fiendishly complex as without a certain affinity to those kinds of magic is just difficult to materialize. Its why the transmutation schools' higher-level spells are the ones I have the most difficulties with; the buff spells are simple enough, but if you ask me to do large-scale material conjurations al true creations or fabrication spell lines, the best I have so far, I have performed is Wall of Iron. Hell, some of my druids are better at that kind of magic than me. Its been one of my major weaknesses and the reason I haven't been able to artificially transmute Unobtanium outside of copying it from the pattern of the tree of souls.
I would love to play with a room-temperature superconductor that is also nearly perfect for enhancing and enchanting. That idea I had about creating gear for self isn't the worst, but Unpbtanium will make it so much more useful if I can have a few rune lords enchant to be nearly indestructible.
But I am rambling inside my head while staring at a cafe from across the street, especially as every normal human is staring at me as being weird. So I decide to move on quickly and figure out how am I going to get some money. Since they have magic already I doubt I can do things like cheat at a casino or heal someone rich for quick cash but there must be something I can do.
As I ponder that thought, I bump into someone, and unfortunately for the other person, I am buffed to the gills with spells, so they go sprawling on the floor. I look up from my musings and cringe a little; I had gotten so used to people just walking around me in a few hours that I have forgotten to pay attention and bumped into what appears to be a local wizard.
She is just as engrossed in her own thoughts as I am, dressed in a dress made of finer materials than the other people I have seen. She has a few more magical devices than others, a magical monocle that is displaying some sort of statistical analysis and a book in her other hand where she is making notes.
"Oh, I am so sorry, I was too distracted y something." I approach her and give her a hand; she takes it and stands up, brushing off the dust from her dress with a simple cantrip.
"I must say, sir; you must be more careful where you walk. You could have hurt someone with your gait. Decked out in buff spells like a war mage in a black zone." She frowns as she critiques me and then looks around. "I will admit, I might be a tad bit lost. Could you inform me where we are? I am running a bit late for an appointment at the shard, and I would like to make it in time."
"I can't help you there, I am afraid; I am quite new to this city, recently moved here. The spells are just there to make me comfortable; I am not used to this city." I dismiss most of my visible spells, so I don't stand out to the local magical users.
"Most peculiar, but I won't judge a frontier man his lack of manners yet. So, where are you from, hong kong, Sydney or somewhere out in the African colonies? You don't sound like a yank." She says, and I try to parse out the basic socio-political structure from her words. There is a frontier and core; frontiers are more dangerous, don't know how much. Same cities as my world, at least with the same names.
"Ah, I am from Sydney just moved here, was tired of fighting, so moved here for some peace and quiet."
"Ah, so you are a veteran of the pacification of Austalia. Admirable, it was a hard campaign; I fought a few battles on the mainland but nowhere as much fighting as in Sydney." She continues, and we start walking; she is leading me toward the gigantic tower as it looms over the city, its magical enchantments shining like the Northstar.
"Hmmm, Yeah, it was very intense. Anyway, so what has you so engrossed? I am a bit of a scholar myself." I am deflecting like crazy now, but hopefully, it works.
"So a soldier-scholar, an admirable quality. My research is about mitigating and harmonising the residual mana haze. It is becoming more prominent as more magical devices come into existence the waste mana is percolating in hidden spots and affecting things like visibility, and there are even reports of unconfirmed health effects." She starts gushing as the topic of her research comes up.
She talks the whole thirty minutes that it takes us to walk to the Shard, and it is honestly fascinating. She is conducting a cross-generational longitudinal study to study the effects of mana haze on humans and then combining disciplines like Chinese Feng Shui and Indian Vastu Shastra into a comprehensive proto-geomantic grid that will channel all the waste mana and then either expel it into the environment or be used for some magical workings that can take that mixture of chaotic elements that make mana haze unusable for normal uses.
She isn't in a hurry; her designs would take redesigning most of London streets, that is the city I am in, but slowly she hopes the principle can be accepted and incorporated into standard magi-architectural studies.
As she finishes her description and we reach the entrance of the Shard, she has a sheepish look on her face, and she turns to me and says.
"Pardon me, sir, I have been rambling on and on, and I even forgot to give even the most basic of courtesy." She holds out her hand and says, " Pleased to meet you, Emma Anson, Countess of Lichfield, at your service."
I freeze; I don't know the dynamics of nobles and commoners in this world. What if I touch her and am sentenced to death for it?
She sees my hesitation and misreads it.
"No need to worry; I am not like those other lords you have probably seen, I had to venture among the people of London, so I am easygoing." She reassures me.
Of course, I take her and introduce myself with a false name.
"Jack Donovan at your service, my lady, It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." My time in the imperium has helped me in dealing with nobles.
"Well, I am going to go to my meeting; it's nice meeting you. " She waves and leaves.
She inserts a card into the door, and the bulkhead opens, and she walks in.
Now that's a problem; the world seems to have pretty thorough magical IDs; how do I blend in? I need to find information. I can't deal with problems if I don't know about them.
I don't miss the magical crow that is following me as I walk away from the tower towards the commoner's part of the city.
The local currency appears to be shards of crystals that are brimming with magic. They also seem to be what is fueling their magic; I learned it when the barista at the cafe put a new crystal into her machine, and to my mage sight, the mandala conjured the coffee without any casters input. I guess that's what you really need: power and direction for the magic, normally that is the soul and will of the caster, but there is no reason it can't be a crystal power the spell mandala to create a single fixed effect. It is how magical enchantments work, but this is like an evolved version of those; in the world of the imperium, magical items are something that takes extensive rituals and time to create, almost perpetual magical matrices that can do amazing things, but they are always going to be that expensive and will always take that much time.
But what this civilisation has done is, they have gone a completely different methodology for crafting magical devices. Instead of creating complex spells bound to objects and or arcane rituals. They decoupled the powering of the device from the equations and just focused on streamlining the enchantment process and designing ever better methods of crafting magical effects. So, because they have access to these mana crystals, they have been able to use it to fuel their exquisitely designed and awesomely efficient magical mandalas and spirit matrices to do anything that magic can do. Ofourcse the initial enchanting, the effect still requires an ensouled being, but that is much easier for a mage to imbue the magical formulae with the metaphysical capacity to perform magic when 90% of the work can be completed by an average if well-trained factory worker.
Honestly, the more is see that coffee maker, the more I want to praise the genius that designed it. Conjuration of the matter is one of the most difficult magical effects, energy-intensive as the universe hates entropy being reduced and fiendishly complex as without a certain affinity to those kinds of magic is just difficult to materialize. Its why the transmutation schools' higher-level spells are the ones I have the most difficulties with; the buff spells are simple enough, but if you ask me to do large-scale material conjurations al true creations or fabrication spell lines, the best I have so far, I have performed is Wall of Iron. Hell, some of my druids are better at that kind of magic than me. Its been one of my major weaknesses and the reason I haven't been able to artificially transmute Unobtanium outside of copying it from the pattern of the tree of souls.
I would love to play with a room-temperature superconductor that is also nearly perfect for enhancing and enchanting. That idea I had about creating gear for self isn't the worst, but Unpbtanium will make it so much more useful if I can have a few rune lords enchant to be nearly indestructible.
But I am rambling inside my head while staring at a cafe from across the street, especially as every normal human is staring at me as being weird. So I decide to move on quickly and figure out how am I going to get some money. Since they have magic already I doubt I can do things like cheat at a casino or heal someone rich for quick cash but there must be something I can do.
As I ponder that thought, I bump into someone, and unfortunately for the other person, I am buffed to the gills with spells, so they go sprawling on the floor. I look up from my musings and cringe a little; I had gotten so used to people just walking around me in a few hours that I have forgotten to pay attention and bumped into what appears to be a local wizard.
She is just as engrossed in her own thoughts as I am, dressed in a dress made of finer materials than the other people I have seen. She has a few more magical devices than others, a magical monocle that is displaying some sort of statistical analysis and a book in her other hand where she is making notes.
"Oh, I am so sorry, I was too distracted y something." I approach her and give her a hand; she takes it and stands up, brushing off the dust from her dress with a simple cantrip.
"I must say, sir; you must be more careful where you walk. You could have hurt someone with your gait. Decked out in buff spells like a war mage in a black zone." She frowns as she critiques me and then looks around. "I will admit, I might be a tad bit lost. Could you inform me where we are? I am running a bit late for an appointment at the shard, and I would like to make it in time."
"I can't help you there, I am afraid; I am quite new to this city, recently moved here. The spells are just there to make me comfortable; I am not used to this city." I dismiss most of my visible spells, so I don't stand out to the local magical users.
"Most peculiar, but I won't judge a frontier man his lack of manners yet. So, where are you from, hong kong, Sydney or somewhere out in the African colonies? You don't sound like a yank." She says, and I try to parse out the basic socio-political structure from her words. There is a frontier and core; frontiers are more dangerous, don't know how much. Same cities as my world, at least with the same names.
"Ah, I am from Sydney just moved here, was tired of fighting, so moved here for some peace and quiet."
"Ah, so you are a veteran of the pacification of Austalia. Admirable, it was a hard campaign; I fought a few battles on the mainland but nowhere as much fighting as in Sydney." She continues, and we start walking; she is leading me toward the gigantic tower as it looms over the city, its magical enchantments shining like the Northstar.
"Hmmm, Yeah, it was very intense. Anyway, so what has you so engrossed? I am a bit of a scholar myself." I am deflecting like crazy now, but hopefully, it works.
"So a soldier-scholar, an admirable quality. My research is about mitigating and harmonising the residual mana haze. It is becoming more prominent as more magical devices come into existence the waste mana is percolating in hidden spots and affecting things like visibility, and there are even reports of unconfirmed health effects." She starts gushing as the topic of her research comes up.
She talks the whole thirty minutes that it takes us to walk to the Shard, and it is honestly fascinating. She is conducting a cross-generational longitudinal study to study the effects of mana haze on humans and then combining disciplines like Chinese Feng Shui and Indian Vastu Shastra into a comprehensive proto-geomantic grid that will channel all the waste mana and then either expel it into the environment or be used for some magical workings that can take that mixture of chaotic elements that make mana haze unusable for normal uses.
She isn't in a hurry; her designs would take redesigning most of London streets, that is the city I am in, but slowly she hopes the principle can be accepted and incorporated into standard magi-architectural studies.
As she finishes her description and we reach the entrance of the Shard, she has a sheepish look on her face, and she turns to me and says.
"Pardon me, sir, I have been rambling on and on, and I even forgot to give even the most basic of courtesy." She holds out her hand and says, " Pleased to meet you, Emma Anson, Countess of Lichfield, at your service."
I freeze; I don't know the dynamics of nobles and commoners in this world. What if I touch her and am sentenced to death for it?
She sees my hesitation and misreads it.
"No need to worry; I am not like those other lords you have probably seen, I had to venture among the people of London, so I am easygoing." She reassures me.
Of course, I take her and introduce myself with a false name.
"Jack Donovan at your service, my lady, It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." My time in the imperium has helped me in dealing with nobles.
"Well, I am going to go to my meeting; it's nice meeting you. " She waves and leaves.
She inserts a card into the door, and the bulkhead opens, and she walks in.
Now that's a problem; the world seems to have pretty thorough magical IDs; how do I blend in? I need to find information. I can't deal with problems if I don't know about them.
I don't miss the magical crow that is following me as I walk away from the tower towards the commoner's part of the city.
Chapter 13
The bird is following me around, and it's annoying. It's not even the same bird; it appears that an entire flock of magically altered birds that are used for surveillance. I guess even in an alternate universe, London can't help being a surveillance state.
I am now considering whether I should just shoot it out of the sky, but I hold my peace because I don't know how damaging what is certainly government property will have consequences. But I guess the birds are smarter than most people; just as they see me tap my mana, they fly away in a cloud of black feathers.
I quickly walk away as the non-mages on the streets are staring at the flock of crows; there is fear in their eyes, so maybe it was the right call not to exterminate them.
After a brisk walk through the sweltering summer heat of London, I get to my destination. A building that is decorated with icons of faith and conquest, one of the oldest libraries in the world. The guildhall library started as a repository of theological texts established by a clerk in the 15th century and later re-established by the London corporation. Its facade has subtly shifted over the centuries as the theology becomes a smaller part of the book collects, but its roots are evident in its flying spires and balustrades.
I can feel the energy gathered in its basements just standing at the door of the building, the private rooms containing ancient bibles and relics, accumulating the faith of the population passively to grow stronger. I guess that's one way of religion to be competitive with mages. The more people and the older your religion, the stronger your clerics will be, and most of the big religions are thousands of years old. So they have a lot of metaphysical weight to throw around.
But I am not here to figure out how to make my own holy relics yet. I shake my head to clear my vision and walk to the librarian, a young woman in professional clothes who appears to be engrossed in a book.
I walk by her, and she ignores my presence, so I guess the advice about it being a public library was true; I should thank that bun seller for telling me the way.
I grab a bunch of reliable history books like the encyclopedia Britannica and other such works that are good at giving short and concise information about all the nominal stuff in the world. 20 edition later, I have the information downloaded into my mind.
But I won't make the same mistake I did last time; the spells act as good sources of information, but I have to take the time to internalise them and turn it into knowledge. So I conjure myself some food and tea, take a seat on one of the recliners in a hidden alcove of the library and get to read whatever suits my fancy; the books were more to add depth to my knowledge and make me more conscious of what facts I do know.
I spend a few hours there learning the history of this world, and it's almost unnerving how similar yet utterly different it is. The broad strokes are the same as in my world, the same kings and kingdoms, the same cultures and religions and the same events have happened. Like a funhouse mirror of a beloved image.
But the details swerve wildly, magic and extraplanar factions making any one event drastically different. For example, the Mongol hordes are literally hordes of centaur people, while half of the Roman-Carthaginian wars were about acquiring access to networks of leylines that girded both territories.
The development of magic is a fascinating topic as well; the earliest recorded history showed mages of terrifying power, savants that invented new styles of magic and forged kingdoms and orders through sheer force of magic. But they are few and far between; the natural affinity that is needed for people to be good at magic without any formal teaching is immensely rare. So there has been a bare handful of such mages over the centuries. Most of humanity's civilisations have been founded by these great mages, but they have all died, mostly through violence. So when the wizard-kings die. The priestly orders rise. Mages that channel their people's faith and rudimentary magic that they learned from their wizard-kings. Groups like the pharos of Egypt and their priestly orders, the rajas and brahmins from India and other groups.
This world is a death world. Beings of massive power, like dragons, giants, and leviathans, control large fractions of the world. Hundreds of races like elves and trolls and elementals and merpeople, the fucking merpeople, ruled large swaths of lands and had their own civilisations.
Humanity evolved to grow dense, most of the NOMs, the local word for non-mages, living in cities with magical enforcers protecting farms and extracting resources before enough of the local magical beasties push them back.
That's how civilisation developed, grew, shrunk and grew again as cycles of newborn empires before some mythic class magical creature pushed them back to the cities.
Until the Spellcraft revolution, the codification and standardization of magic. It facilitates mass training of every single human with even a shred of magical talent and allows humanity to form empires on a massive scale, especially in a colonial sense.
Then came the rise of necromancy and the first world war against the necromancers, and then the awakening of the black dragon and the beast tide surge that burned a hundred cities and killed minions; humanity is still recovering, reclaiming every piece of land they have lost. Even now, humanity is fighting across a hundred fronts against the great shoals of merpeople. The massive vitality and elemental power lead to oceans where a single ocean can outnumber all of humanity. It's a massive war of survival, and the defeated get pushed to the surface, encroaching on human territory, hence the red coral sea war going on right now. But it's something I have to look at later. Now I am interested in the development of magic.
The spell craft has advanced and made humanity stronger. It leads to the invention of modern enchantment, which has led to the creation of the Towers, Resonance Barriers, ISTC and Message repeaters. The four cornerstones of modern magical civilisations. I want to learn all of them because it is the greatest piece of magical artifice I have ever heard of. It will allow me to set up infrastructure on a random world if I ever need to establish civilisation.
Resonance barriers use magical cores of exceptional sizes to project city-scale fields that cause pain to any magical creatures that try to enter a city. Perfect if I ever want to set up a base in the middle of a hostile environment.
The ISTC are massive arrays that allow continental scale teleportation on a massive scale, enough to make it a viable method of MassTransit if you have the magical energy to fuel it. The Message repeaters are basically magical cellphone towers, and I don't need to tell how revolutionary those are.
The towers are my greatest desire, the first time I have desired something so much that I briefly consider just going to war and capturing on for study.
Each tower is the nucleus of a modern city and humanity's only answer to a mythical class creature. A massive magical foci that can even turn the meanest magical missile into a barrage of hundreds of bolts and a single fireball into an artillery spell that can hit something on the horizon. They are floating magical fortresses that can unleash enough firepower to flatten cities and kill mythical dragons. Each tower also acts as the magical headquarters of the mages' flights with all the C&C capabilities and divination support that implies. They also house the mass fabricator engines and enchanter factories in their bowls to support extended campaigns.
It was my dream as a mage to make a difference, and I imagine a floating fortress will be great to help many worlds.
But the problem is how to get it; all knowledge was available to a sufficiently ranked mage and cost a significant sum of Contribution Credits, the formalised system for measuring the importance of a mage to the magocracy.
I can't access that magic discreetly, But I have just met a lady interested in mass magical architecture and of a sufficient rank. She will be my way of gaining this knowledge, my trojan horse for me to pilfer knowledge, and hopefully, I can help some more people along the way.
I am now considering whether I should just shoot it out of the sky, but I hold my peace because I don't know how damaging what is certainly government property will have consequences. But I guess the birds are smarter than most people; just as they see me tap my mana, they fly away in a cloud of black feathers.
I quickly walk away as the non-mages on the streets are staring at the flock of crows; there is fear in their eyes, so maybe it was the right call not to exterminate them.
After a brisk walk through the sweltering summer heat of London, I get to my destination. A building that is decorated with icons of faith and conquest, one of the oldest libraries in the world. The guildhall library started as a repository of theological texts established by a clerk in the 15th century and later re-established by the London corporation. Its facade has subtly shifted over the centuries as the theology becomes a smaller part of the book collects, but its roots are evident in its flying spires and balustrades.
I can feel the energy gathered in its basements just standing at the door of the building, the private rooms containing ancient bibles and relics, accumulating the faith of the population passively to grow stronger. I guess that's one way of religion to be competitive with mages. The more people and the older your religion, the stronger your clerics will be, and most of the big religions are thousands of years old. So they have a lot of metaphysical weight to throw around.
But I am not here to figure out how to make my own holy relics yet. I shake my head to clear my vision and walk to the librarian, a young woman in professional clothes who appears to be engrossed in a book.
I walk by her, and she ignores my presence, so I guess the advice about it being a public library was true; I should thank that bun seller for telling me the way.
I grab a bunch of reliable history books like the encyclopedia Britannica and other such works that are good at giving short and concise information about all the nominal stuff in the world. 20 edition later, I have the information downloaded into my mind.
But I won't make the same mistake I did last time; the spells act as good sources of information, but I have to take the time to internalise them and turn it into knowledge. So I conjure myself some food and tea, take a seat on one of the recliners in a hidden alcove of the library and get to read whatever suits my fancy; the books were more to add depth to my knowledge and make me more conscious of what facts I do know.
I spend a few hours there learning the history of this world, and it's almost unnerving how similar yet utterly different it is. The broad strokes are the same as in my world, the same kings and kingdoms, the same cultures and religions and the same events have happened. Like a funhouse mirror of a beloved image.
But the details swerve wildly, magic and extraplanar factions making any one event drastically different. For example, the Mongol hordes are literally hordes of centaur people, while half of the Roman-Carthaginian wars were about acquiring access to networks of leylines that girded both territories.
The development of magic is a fascinating topic as well; the earliest recorded history showed mages of terrifying power, savants that invented new styles of magic and forged kingdoms and orders through sheer force of magic. But they are few and far between; the natural affinity that is needed for people to be good at magic without any formal teaching is immensely rare. So there has been a bare handful of such mages over the centuries. Most of humanity's civilisations have been founded by these great mages, but they have all died, mostly through violence. So when the wizard-kings die. The priestly orders rise. Mages that channel their people's faith and rudimentary magic that they learned from their wizard-kings. Groups like the pharos of Egypt and their priestly orders, the rajas and brahmins from India and other groups.
This world is a death world. Beings of massive power, like dragons, giants, and leviathans, control large fractions of the world. Hundreds of races like elves and trolls and elementals and merpeople, the fucking merpeople, ruled large swaths of lands and had their own civilisations.
Humanity evolved to grow dense, most of the NOMs, the local word for non-mages, living in cities with magical enforcers protecting farms and extracting resources before enough of the local magical beasties push them back.
That's how civilisation developed, grew, shrunk and grew again as cycles of newborn empires before some mythic class magical creature pushed them back to the cities.
Until the Spellcraft revolution, the codification and standardization of magic. It facilitates mass training of every single human with even a shred of magical talent and allows humanity to form empires on a massive scale, especially in a colonial sense.
Then came the rise of necromancy and the first world war against the necromancers, and then the awakening of the black dragon and the beast tide surge that burned a hundred cities and killed minions; humanity is still recovering, reclaiming every piece of land they have lost. Even now, humanity is fighting across a hundred fronts against the great shoals of merpeople. The massive vitality and elemental power lead to oceans where a single ocean can outnumber all of humanity. It's a massive war of survival, and the defeated get pushed to the surface, encroaching on human territory, hence the red coral sea war going on right now. But it's something I have to look at later. Now I am interested in the development of magic.
The spell craft has advanced and made humanity stronger. It leads to the invention of modern enchantment, which has led to the creation of the Towers, Resonance Barriers, ISTC and Message repeaters. The four cornerstones of modern magical civilisations. I want to learn all of them because it is the greatest piece of magical artifice I have ever heard of. It will allow me to set up infrastructure on a random world if I ever need to establish civilisation.
Resonance barriers use magical cores of exceptional sizes to project city-scale fields that cause pain to any magical creatures that try to enter a city. Perfect if I ever want to set up a base in the middle of a hostile environment.
The ISTC are massive arrays that allow continental scale teleportation on a massive scale, enough to make it a viable method of MassTransit if you have the magical energy to fuel it. The Message repeaters are basically magical cellphone towers, and I don't need to tell how revolutionary those are.
The towers are my greatest desire, the first time I have desired something so much that I briefly consider just going to war and capturing on for study.
Each tower is the nucleus of a modern city and humanity's only answer to a mythical class creature. A massive magical foci that can even turn the meanest magical missile into a barrage of hundreds of bolts and a single fireball into an artillery spell that can hit something on the horizon. They are floating magical fortresses that can unleash enough firepower to flatten cities and kill mythical dragons. Each tower also acts as the magical headquarters of the mages' flights with all the C&C capabilities and divination support that implies. They also house the mass fabricator engines and enchanter factories in their bowls to support extended campaigns.
It was my dream as a mage to make a difference, and I imagine a floating fortress will be great to help many worlds.
But the problem is how to get it; all knowledge was available to a sufficiently ranked mage and cost a significant sum of Contribution Credits, the formalised system for measuring the importance of a mage to the magocracy.
I can't access that magic discreetly, But I have just met a lady interested in mass magical architecture and of a sufficient rank. She will be my way of gaining this knowledge, my trojan horse for me to pilfer knowledge, and hopefully, I can help some more people along the way.
Thank you for reading
Chapter 14
I spend hours pouring over tomes in the library, mostly military campaigns and geographic almanacs, to help me achieve step one of my plan to gain ultimate wizard digs. By the end, I am tired and thirsty but satisfied with the knowledge I have gained.
I leave the library just as the librarian was starting to look at the clock as closing time neared. I nod at her and smile, she gives me an impassive face, but there is a hint of a smile in her eyes. I don't have the time to satisfy my needs because, according to my research, tabloids admittedly, there is a market that is rumoured to be open tonight in a hidden location.
To understand my plan, I must first explain this world's political factions. Three main compacts inform government and ideologies. The Middle faction is the milquetoast centrists that include everyone that isn't part of the other factions; they push for a customised approach to demihuman factions. The Militants are the classic genocider warmongers, they advocate going full murder death kill on the demihuman factions, and any mercy is just a play to preserve forces. The grey faction is the more opportunist one, willing and happy to exploit mages for gains, to the point of selling mages in slavery to demihumans for resources.
Humanity has gained an economic position globally as the standard provider of currency for trade. Humans are the only civilisation that mines the mana crystals on a large scale to power their devices and as a medium of exchange. Because you can absorb a mana crystal to recharge your mana and for ritual magics, every demihuman accepts these for their own uses. This has given the grey faction a lot of leverage for acting as arbitrage for traders of different species.
To facilitate these transactions, they have hidden markets where demihumans and humans can trade and serve as points of informal diplomacy for the minor powers in humanities sphere of influence. It's rumoured you can buy anything there, so that's where I plan to get the resources needed to start my plan.
For that, I need to gather some goods to trade, and I have to adventure. That's new, should be fun.
It's a few hour's flight from London, under heavy anti-divination magics, to my destination. Well into the purple zone, an area of extreme danger, near the border of north wales. It's imaginatively called troll hill.
The lowest level of the magical ecosystem is made of minor elemental spirits that have taken form in the prime material plane. They are called different things worldwide: trogs, goblins and such. Minor spirits are nothing more than an annoyance for even a NOM one-on-one. They die by the thousands every day to feed all the minor predators. As a result, they have an explosive breeding rate, with a clutch of dozens for every female. Usually, it's not a problem because they are often hunted at a similar rate, but they are one of the more fascinating creatures. Of the millions of goblins that are formed every month, certain goblins are born mutated, changed and evolved into higher forms. Things like hobgoblins, ettins, ogres and trolls. The Troll-King Under The Mountain is a primaeval beast, a being that has lived for hundreds and endured against all comers, from human war mages to elven wyld hunts to draconic scions. It bleed rivers of blood and sent thousands of its kids to die, but it survived.
Its troll the size of a house, with wild magic tamed through age and an essence cultivated through eating stronger monsters. Its kingdom is under the mountain, caverns excavated over generations into halls worthy of a Wild King, decorated with the bones of human adventurers who try to plunder his halls in search of HDMs. In spring, he sends his sons out with their teeming hordes to pillage the countryside, clashing with humans whose nations surround his territory. He is not an easy target; his mountain has been soaked in enough troll and trog blood that his essence has seeped into the mountain, so it resists hostile magic, working as a stronghold where the hag witch daughters of the Troll King can work their blood magic.
He is also the weakest Wild King on the British Isles; everything else is either stronger or has the support of the stronger superpowers. But I am not doing it as I did with the Nightgoblins; this time, I have prepared. I have six shamans scrying the entire mountain and six more making weal and woe predictions for all the tactics that my thanes are suggesting. I have hidden our preparation with an upcasted private sanctum to prevent our spells from being backtraced and our approach being hidden. The light planar blurring allows us to displace the forward camp to be out of sync with the prime material and let us hide just at the foothills of the troll kings mountain without being spotted.
I was actually using his essence to cast a curse on him from just a handful of soil from his mountain, but it turns out that all essence has magical resistance and the stronger the creature is, the more resistant it will be. I am intrigued by this essence; I have read about it in my basic research. All old magical creatures have this power that seeps into their body and their lair, it passes on more power to their children, and it makes the creature stronger, tougher and better in all aspects of their species, becoming more of what their species are. The premier examples are dragons, of course, massively powerful magical reptiles whose lineages go back thousands of years and bestow astounding power to true dragons at birth, enough that all but the youngest true dragons are stronger than the greatest mortals mages.
If I can figure it out, it will be possible to add it to my summons, make them stronger and give them an ontological weight, which is imperative for many mystical reasons. But that's for later; I first need to take care of the current king; before I can plunder his knowledge, I need to plunder his vaults.
"We have a strike planned out. The recon spells have given us the information that we need, and the divination spells have punched through the interference to tell us this is the plan with the highest chance of success." Thror walks up to me from the war party that is preparing for the raid.
Its made up of a hundred members, 40 Dwarven thanes in gromril armour bedecked with runic armour and weapons. With 20 Rune Lords ready to dispel magic and rain wrath and ruin. The rest is an even split of archdruids, shamans and life shapers, here to be the magical muscle of the fight.
The teleportation circle crackles with eldritch lightning as the last of the last summon walks through it.
I turn to the screen of the divination spell locked on the arcane mark carried by Thror. Blossom elected not to go with them, so thror is the highest ranked summon. The floating screen shows the view like a drone floating overhead the formation, just as they emerge in the mouth of the cave at the top of the Troll Mountain, its yawning maw welcoming morsel to feed its unending hunger.
The formation is simple; the front line and the flanks are made up of thanes, with thror anchoring the line in the centre, dwarven rune lords and druids make up the centre, already layering defensive spells and powers to protect the entire formation. A dwarven rune is designed to enhance an entire unit of 120 dwarves so that a single rune can boost the entire Warband. Each rune lord casts unique runes, from runes of iron skin, runes of deflection and spell eating, runes of strength and vigour and oath of steel. Each warrior in the unit is pumped so full of magic they start glowing, magical runes manifesting as auric forcefields and iron-sheened skin. The Arch Druids provide different buffs, the ones not easily accessible by runic magic. Spells of Hastes, celestial healing, protection from acid, night vision and air walking. Alongside, Shamans use the spells to weave webs of psychic strings, linking everyone in the unit into a single whole, while webs of vitality link their lifeforce, letting them share all wounds and making the healing much more effortless.
By the time the Magical conflagration subsides, the residents of the mountains notice the arrival. Thousands of the Goblins and trogs charge out of the caves, and a quick cut down, ball lightning and runic explosions slaughter the chaff like a rolling artillery barrage. Spells scythe through the mobs like a farmer harvesting wheat. Druids raise walls of iron and stones, stopping the charge cold, before rune lords blow up the walls, letting shrapnel shred dozens and scores.
The bigger monsters charge out as the ground becomes mud with rivers of flowing blood. Ogres leading units of hobgoblins in crude armour, their blood-tinted metal channelling their vitality in their clubs and hammers. Trolls lumber after them, bigger and deadlier, their essence strong enough to repel the AOE spells, while any damage they do take is healing in front of my eyes.
The clumps of heavier troops actually reach the front line, crashing into the shield wall like barreling avalanche, and are stopped cold by the thane's formation.
The magic of runes makes the dwarves mass significantly more; each is like a stone pillar buried deep into the earth. A thane smashes the first charging ogre with his shield, throwing it back onto the charging troops, the axe smashes down its torso, blazing with magic and fire, and the ogre is cut in half like melted wax. The one next to him smashes the head of a troll that tries to capitalise on the momentary opportunity. Scenes like this repeat across the line dwarves cutting down the goblinoids like chaff.
RIvulets of blood stained the mountain, hundreds of dying beings bleeding their lifeblood onto the rocky soil of the mountain. I feel something thrum through the magical sensor, my mage sight blaring with blood red unlight before all the blood staining the ground is pulled from the ground and streams into a gigantic troll.
The Troll kings stride on the battlefield with an honour guard. Floating hag-witches rinding thrall trolls. Hulking brutes whose minds have been dominated but their frame reinforced with magic.
Runes smiths and archdruids launch spells at the troll king's posse and cut down the frontline, blowing up trolls and hags. But they rise back up again, the bloody earth fueling their regeneration to an unnatural level, the blood magic of the hags using the sacrifice of the fodder to fuel their magic, shooting back at the Warband with dark entropic bolts. The Spells splash against force walls raised by Shamans, the dark coruscating energy melting through layers and layers of shields but running out of energy before they get close. Their follow-up boneshaker curse is slapped aside by a rune lord.
The Honour guard charges as the troll king shout, "It's a feast tonight, kiddos, dwarf meats back on the menu".
His charge gathers momentum slowly but surely, like a great beast of burden enraged at a being poked. His essence-laden land fuels the charge, pulsing power flowing from the land into this warrior with each step; by the time they are halfway to the lines, they have a blood-red aura covering their charging forms.
Thror notices the charge just as it starts and shouts, "Direct Magic won't work, use CC spells, foul their charge. Thanes form up in double layer formation, rune lords runes of warding and slowing, druids turn nature against him. This is the final push, we win this, and we are clear victors over these foul beasts, so brave dawi and valiant leshy, hold for the summoner"
The shield wall shifts like a well-oiled machine, the runes inscribed on the shields glowing bright with magic. The runes of protection, of warding, drew upon the stoicism of the dwarven people and made manifest their collective bonds as magical shields springing up in front of their shield. The shield grows stronger the more Dawi bear into battle, and this formation is perhaps the greatest concentration of runic magics that the DAwi people have ever witnessed since the war of vengeance.
Leshy's don't waste time either; overlapping walls of fire, lave, plants, and iron spring up between charges. Many of them are dispelled before the spell can even cast by the hags riding the thrall sons of the troll king, their foul blood magic decaying the magic of nature wielded by the leshys, but there are a lot more magicians on my warbands side than there are on the trolls, so walls impeded their charge, slowly whittling down their essence armour as the honour guard barrels through walls of iron and stone. Other leshy's, the shamans, cast different spells, those of confusion, auras of fear, entropic shields, fate twisting magics and a dozen other spells, draw from the dreams of the leshy's, bringing them onto reality and ravaging the essence-loaded minds of the trolls further, even as their bodies regenerate from the harm.
But there is a reason the Magocracy hasn't dug out this foe yet because a primal magical creature is almost impossible to defeat in their lair, it is their locus of power, and the troll king proves that in this moment. With a roar that shakes the cavern they are fighting in, every single body of the dead troll rises again, the hundreds killed by Warband walking without a soul animating their body, but instead, the essence in their blood resonates with the anger of the troll king. They will kill their king's enemies even if they have to do it from beyond the grave.
The essence that has saturated the mountain for centuries is violently wrenched from the earth as every scrap of power is fed into the troll king. With a wave of his hand, a tidal wave of the earth is ripped from the mountain and flies towards the shield wall. The wave crashes into the runic shield magic, and runic magic barely holds, with a dozen rune lords reinforcing those shields. But the wave clears the field, and now the troll king is upon them, ready to bash in the heads of the people that disturbed his home.
Thror charges him back, and I put in a dozen prepared spells onto him. He glows with white and green mana as a dozen spells settle onto him, and he surges in size mid-swing. Troll king's stroke is stopped dead by the holy armor draped onto thror, who hits him with an uppercut, his blow glowing with burning flames.
The troll king glows with essence, and he moves with lightning-quick reflexes, an axe of bone-forming in his hand as his blade bites into thror's should. Blood splitters, but the wound is healing and will close in a second.
The fight turns into slugging match, blood being shed by the gallons, bones being crunched and flesh being burnt.
In the end, thror loses, his magic dispelled by the troll king's essence and his body broken by his strength.
But the war is won, and the Warband surrounds their battle, having pacified the trolls and hags. I teleport in and reviver thror, a few motes of white mana enough to return him to life.
Victory is mine as I overcharge a dominate monster spell and punch through his exhausted essence, and he kneels before me.
I leave the library just as the librarian was starting to look at the clock as closing time neared. I nod at her and smile, she gives me an impassive face, but there is a hint of a smile in her eyes. I don't have the time to satisfy my needs because, according to my research, tabloids admittedly, there is a market that is rumoured to be open tonight in a hidden location.
To understand my plan, I must first explain this world's political factions. Three main compacts inform government and ideologies. The Middle faction is the milquetoast centrists that include everyone that isn't part of the other factions; they push for a customised approach to demihuman factions. The Militants are the classic genocider warmongers, they advocate going full murder death kill on the demihuman factions, and any mercy is just a play to preserve forces. The grey faction is the more opportunist one, willing and happy to exploit mages for gains, to the point of selling mages in slavery to demihumans for resources.
Humanity has gained an economic position globally as the standard provider of currency for trade. Humans are the only civilisation that mines the mana crystals on a large scale to power their devices and as a medium of exchange. Because you can absorb a mana crystal to recharge your mana and for ritual magics, every demihuman accepts these for their own uses. This has given the grey faction a lot of leverage for acting as arbitrage for traders of different species.
To facilitate these transactions, they have hidden markets where demihumans and humans can trade and serve as points of informal diplomacy for the minor powers in humanities sphere of influence. It's rumoured you can buy anything there, so that's where I plan to get the resources needed to start my plan.
For that, I need to gather some goods to trade, and I have to adventure. That's new, should be fun.
It's a few hour's flight from London, under heavy anti-divination magics, to my destination. Well into the purple zone, an area of extreme danger, near the border of north wales. It's imaginatively called troll hill.
The lowest level of the magical ecosystem is made of minor elemental spirits that have taken form in the prime material plane. They are called different things worldwide: trogs, goblins and such. Minor spirits are nothing more than an annoyance for even a NOM one-on-one. They die by the thousands every day to feed all the minor predators. As a result, they have an explosive breeding rate, with a clutch of dozens for every female. Usually, it's not a problem because they are often hunted at a similar rate, but they are one of the more fascinating creatures. Of the millions of goblins that are formed every month, certain goblins are born mutated, changed and evolved into higher forms. Things like hobgoblins, ettins, ogres and trolls. The Troll-King Under The Mountain is a primaeval beast, a being that has lived for hundreds and endured against all comers, from human war mages to elven wyld hunts to draconic scions. It bleed rivers of blood and sent thousands of its kids to die, but it survived.
Its troll the size of a house, with wild magic tamed through age and an essence cultivated through eating stronger monsters. Its kingdom is under the mountain, caverns excavated over generations into halls worthy of a Wild King, decorated with the bones of human adventurers who try to plunder his halls in search of HDMs. In spring, he sends his sons out with their teeming hordes to pillage the countryside, clashing with humans whose nations surround his territory. He is not an easy target; his mountain has been soaked in enough troll and trog blood that his essence has seeped into the mountain, so it resists hostile magic, working as a stronghold where the hag witch daughters of the Troll King can work their blood magic.
He is also the weakest Wild King on the British Isles; everything else is either stronger or has the support of the stronger superpowers. But I am not doing it as I did with the Nightgoblins; this time, I have prepared. I have six shamans scrying the entire mountain and six more making weal and woe predictions for all the tactics that my thanes are suggesting. I have hidden our preparation with an upcasted private sanctum to prevent our spells from being backtraced and our approach being hidden. The light planar blurring allows us to displace the forward camp to be out of sync with the prime material and let us hide just at the foothills of the troll kings mountain without being spotted.
I was actually using his essence to cast a curse on him from just a handful of soil from his mountain, but it turns out that all essence has magical resistance and the stronger the creature is, the more resistant it will be. I am intrigued by this essence; I have read about it in my basic research. All old magical creatures have this power that seeps into their body and their lair, it passes on more power to their children, and it makes the creature stronger, tougher and better in all aspects of their species, becoming more of what their species are. The premier examples are dragons, of course, massively powerful magical reptiles whose lineages go back thousands of years and bestow astounding power to true dragons at birth, enough that all but the youngest true dragons are stronger than the greatest mortals mages.
If I can figure it out, it will be possible to add it to my summons, make them stronger and give them an ontological weight, which is imperative for many mystical reasons. But that's for later; I first need to take care of the current king; before I can plunder his knowledge, I need to plunder his vaults.
"We have a strike planned out. The recon spells have given us the information that we need, and the divination spells have punched through the interference to tell us this is the plan with the highest chance of success." Thror walks up to me from the war party that is preparing for the raid.
Its made up of a hundred members, 40 Dwarven thanes in gromril armour bedecked with runic armour and weapons. With 20 Rune Lords ready to dispel magic and rain wrath and ruin. The rest is an even split of archdruids, shamans and life shapers, here to be the magical muscle of the fight.
The teleportation circle crackles with eldritch lightning as the last of the last summon walks through it.
I turn to the screen of the divination spell locked on the arcane mark carried by Thror. Blossom elected not to go with them, so thror is the highest ranked summon. The floating screen shows the view like a drone floating overhead the formation, just as they emerge in the mouth of the cave at the top of the Troll Mountain, its yawning maw welcoming morsel to feed its unending hunger.
The formation is simple; the front line and the flanks are made up of thanes, with thror anchoring the line in the centre, dwarven rune lords and druids make up the centre, already layering defensive spells and powers to protect the entire formation. A dwarven rune is designed to enhance an entire unit of 120 dwarves so that a single rune can boost the entire Warband. Each rune lord casts unique runes, from runes of iron skin, runes of deflection and spell eating, runes of strength and vigour and oath of steel. Each warrior in the unit is pumped so full of magic they start glowing, magical runes manifesting as auric forcefields and iron-sheened skin. The Arch Druids provide different buffs, the ones not easily accessible by runic magic. Spells of Hastes, celestial healing, protection from acid, night vision and air walking. Alongside, Shamans use the spells to weave webs of psychic strings, linking everyone in the unit into a single whole, while webs of vitality link their lifeforce, letting them share all wounds and making the healing much more effortless.
By the time the Magical conflagration subsides, the residents of the mountains notice the arrival. Thousands of the Goblins and trogs charge out of the caves, and a quick cut down, ball lightning and runic explosions slaughter the chaff like a rolling artillery barrage. Spells scythe through the mobs like a farmer harvesting wheat. Druids raise walls of iron and stones, stopping the charge cold, before rune lords blow up the walls, letting shrapnel shred dozens and scores.
The bigger monsters charge out as the ground becomes mud with rivers of flowing blood. Ogres leading units of hobgoblins in crude armour, their blood-tinted metal channelling their vitality in their clubs and hammers. Trolls lumber after them, bigger and deadlier, their essence strong enough to repel the AOE spells, while any damage they do take is healing in front of my eyes.
The clumps of heavier troops actually reach the front line, crashing into the shield wall like barreling avalanche, and are stopped cold by the thane's formation.
The magic of runes makes the dwarves mass significantly more; each is like a stone pillar buried deep into the earth. A thane smashes the first charging ogre with his shield, throwing it back onto the charging troops, the axe smashes down its torso, blazing with magic and fire, and the ogre is cut in half like melted wax. The one next to him smashes the head of a troll that tries to capitalise on the momentary opportunity. Scenes like this repeat across the line dwarves cutting down the goblinoids like chaff.
RIvulets of blood stained the mountain, hundreds of dying beings bleeding their lifeblood onto the rocky soil of the mountain. I feel something thrum through the magical sensor, my mage sight blaring with blood red unlight before all the blood staining the ground is pulled from the ground and streams into a gigantic troll.
The Troll kings stride on the battlefield with an honour guard. Floating hag-witches rinding thrall trolls. Hulking brutes whose minds have been dominated but their frame reinforced with magic.
Runes smiths and archdruids launch spells at the troll king's posse and cut down the frontline, blowing up trolls and hags. But they rise back up again, the bloody earth fueling their regeneration to an unnatural level, the blood magic of the hags using the sacrifice of the fodder to fuel their magic, shooting back at the Warband with dark entropic bolts. The Spells splash against force walls raised by Shamans, the dark coruscating energy melting through layers and layers of shields but running out of energy before they get close. Their follow-up boneshaker curse is slapped aside by a rune lord.
The Honour guard charges as the troll king shout, "It's a feast tonight, kiddos, dwarf meats back on the menu".
His charge gathers momentum slowly but surely, like a great beast of burden enraged at a being poked. His essence-laden land fuels the charge, pulsing power flowing from the land into this warrior with each step; by the time they are halfway to the lines, they have a blood-red aura covering their charging forms.
Thror notices the charge just as it starts and shouts, "Direct Magic won't work, use CC spells, foul their charge. Thanes form up in double layer formation, rune lords runes of warding and slowing, druids turn nature against him. This is the final push, we win this, and we are clear victors over these foul beasts, so brave dawi and valiant leshy, hold for the summoner"
The shield wall shifts like a well-oiled machine, the runes inscribed on the shields glowing bright with magic. The runes of protection, of warding, drew upon the stoicism of the dwarven people and made manifest their collective bonds as magical shields springing up in front of their shield. The shield grows stronger the more Dawi bear into battle, and this formation is perhaps the greatest concentration of runic magics that the DAwi people have ever witnessed since the war of vengeance.
Leshy's don't waste time either; overlapping walls of fire, lave, plants, and iron spring up between charges. Many of them are dispelled before the spell can even cast by the hags riding the thrall sons of the troll king, their foul blood magic decaying the magic of nature wielded by the leshys, but there are a lot more magicians on my warbands side than there are on the trolls, so walls impeded their charge, slowly whittling down their essence armour as the honour guard barrels through walls of iron and stone. Other leshy's, the shamans, cast different spells, those of confusion, auras of fear, entropic shields, fate twisting magics and a dozen other spells, draw from the dreams of the leshy's, bringing them onto reality and ravaging the essence-loaded minds of the trolls further, even as their bodies regenerate from the harm.
But there is a reason the Magocracy hasn't dug out this foe yet because a primal magical creature is almost impossible to defeat in their lair, it is their locus of power, and the troll king proves that in this moment. With a roar that shakes the cavern they are fighting in, every single body of the dead troll rises again, the hundreds killed by Warband walking without a soul animating their body, but instead, the essence in their blood resonates with the anger of the troll king. They will kill their king's enemies even if they have to do it from beyond the grave.
The essence that has saturated the mountain for centuries is violently wrenched from the earth as every scrap of power is fed into the troll king. With a wave of his hand, a tidal wave of the earth is ripped from the mountain and flies towards the shield wall. The wave crashes into the runic shield magic, and runic magic barely holds, with a dozen rune lords reinforcing those shields. But the wave clears the field, and now the troll king is upon them, ready to bash in the heads of the people that disturbed his home.
Thror charges him back, and I put in a dozen prepared spells onto him. He glows with white and green mana as a dozen spells settle onto him, and he surges in size mid-swing. Troll king's stroke is stopped dead by the holy armor draped onto thror, who hits him with an uppercut, his blow glowing with burning flames.
The troll king glows with essence, and he moves with lightning-quick reflexes, an axe of bone-forming in his hand as his blade bites into thror's should. Blood splitters, but the wound is healing and will close in a second.
The fight turns into slugging match, blood being shed by the gallons, bones being crunched and flesh being burnt.
In the end, thror loses, his magic dispelled by the troll king's essence and his body broken by his strength.
But the war is won, and the Warband surrounds their battle, having pacified the trolls and hags. I teleport in and reviver thror, a few motes of white mana enough to return him to life.
Victory is mine as I overcharge a dominate monster spell and punch through his exhausted essence, and he kneels before me.
Chapter 15
I walk into the parlour with a swagger in my step; the establishment is empty, and my contact booked the entire place so that we have privacy.
The Lord Protector is alone, an aura of power flowing from his form, his elemental aura flickering with Ice as one of the strongest mages of the magocracy sits before me, drinking a neat whisky more expensive than most minor lords' estates.
Lord Keith Wolingworth is the due lord protector of the realm and the velveted fist of the queen. The most important man in the British empire who isn't gods chosen leader.
It was hard getting a meeting with him; the wards defending his message address were something that took me the entire day to dismantle. Then convincing him was even harder; he only believed me once the royal fusiliers went and confirmed that the troll under the mountain is dead and his kingdom burnt.
The truth is that anything my mundane sight sees isn't true; my mage sight and true seeing spell let me pierce the curtains of illusions that draped the parlour. The clowning mind magics crash against mind blank, and the illusions part before my sight like mist before the noonday sun.
The man in front of me isn't the lord protector at all; it is a fae-blooded officer of the first mage cabal, the premier infiltration officer of the Magocracy. The building isn't empty at all; an entire flight of war mages cling on top of the roof, draped in invisibility and SEP illusions.
I don't showcase any of this as I walk in; of course, I take the seat opposite the lord protector, without prompting, to play up the part of a reclusive archmage. The Cabal Mage and the Flight both miss as my troops move to their places to be ready to pounce on their entire force in case of hostility; even the golem artillery stationed 5 kilometres away isn't spared. Lifeshapers transformed into bloodlilys, a plant ambush predators with magic and skill that would hide them in plain sight of a mortal, covered by greater invisibility and mind blank and a dozen other obscuring spells, cast by me personally that the sight couldn't pierce the magics or fail in any way. Dwarven Engineers and Rangers are stationed to take out any mage that so much as twitches with their runed antimagic rifles.
"So, you are the Mysterious Raj," the pretender says, mispronouncing the name just like his subject would have " the man responsible for the disappearance of the Troll King Under The Mountain."
He pauses, and a wry smile graces the illusions face, the actor mimicking the lord protector's mannerisms to an unnatural degree.
"I would say that your method of contacting me was quite rude, but I guess I can overlook that in the light of the service that you provided." He continues after taking another drink of whisky; I see a spell breaking down the alcohol before he can become drunk, but I guess he was only playing the character; it wouldn't do to break the masquerade so easily.
"I am indeed the one who contacted you, it was a hassle, but I didn't really have any better options. I didn't want to teleport through the wards of Westminster; I imagine the knights would get prissy." That was the gamble I was going to play, pretend to be an archmage that has been learning magic over the past few centuries and has come back to a very different world, it would be hard to disprove, but I don't think I could ever shake the mistrust that I am some shapeshifted mythic being, but that was fine with my goals, I wanted the specs of those towers, and I am getting them one way or the other.
"So, I found the nearest nuisance and decided to dispose of it as a gift for you and your queen, a peace offering to start our relationship. I thought a minor legendary spirit would make for a good gift." I say that and wave my hand; the mandala blooms into existence for a second before disappearing, far more complex than the ones that these mages can cast, my instinctual grasp of magic letting me learn in a few years what would have taken other decades. As the spell does its thing and the Troll King is there in the parlour, bound by chains of mystic fire that doesn't burn and chains of psychic might that bind him harder still.
The agent pretending to be the lord protector startles, briefly showing his surprise before the stiff upper lip of the lord protector is re-established. His surprise made sense; after all, I put enough blue and white mana in that spell to punch through their wards and summon a being with hefty spell resistance.
"Well, It is a unique gift that much must be said. I will accept it in the spirit it is given on behalf of her majesty. But let's not be rude. We can't exactly start negotiations until proper introductions are made." He nods towards me and makes an 'after you' motion. The Agent is not as good a diplomat as the Lord protector, but it is often the simplest manoeuvres that are the hardest to avoid; and besides, this is what I want to do in the first place.
I smile a beaming grin and nod in acquiescence.
"I am Raj, master of magic, planar explorer and slayer of dragons, maker of gods and chosen of pantheons, the DOOM of Grobi'drazh. I have been absent from this plane for a few centuries; I imagine some mythic or the other probably razed my fortress, I will have to scatter their essence for that, but that's for later. But what is relevant to you is that I am a human wizard; I have been exploring the other planes to grow my knowledge of magic and have recently returned. The World sure has changed in my absence." There is an art to lying; you have to fulfil two conditions. First, your lie shouldn't be disprovable, and secondly, your lie has to be believable. So that's what my plan is, a refuge in audacity. After all, no one can claim to be a plane-hopping archmage without it being true. It was even the truth, which is the best kind of lie.
"You wish to propose a treaty to the queen. Give me your proposal, and I will present it to her majesty on your behalf. If it pleases her, we may have a deal," The Imposter says, insinuating through body language that it may not just be her decision. As if he has the authority to influence it.
"The queen Will be the final arbiter of the treaty, but I have an inkling that your advice may sway her mind. So here is my proposal; I wish to learn the magics that humanity has developed in my absence; I have wandered far from home for too long and ignored the strength that humanity has gained. Well, I would like to rectify that; teach me everything that gives humanity strength, and I will kill any enemy that your wish. You wish for me to hunt a great wyrm for encroaching on Hindu kush or hunt down the yeti emperor and his raiding parties across the arctic, burn down the grove of the Manblight Dryads. Just say the word, and they will be gone; my plundered strength will finally be put to good use, bringing peace and planar stability to my land." I lay out my bait and a subtle threat; these were all mythic monsters encroaching on the magocracy territory, flexing my divinatory skills while also giving humanity the one thing they couldn't do without ruinous cost.
My spellwrought eloquence hits its mark half a country away, the hidden bunker of the lord protector not enough to guard him against that small kernel of hope light in his heart, a curse much worse than any I could cast. But fortunately for him, it was not going to be a vain hope; I will abide by this pact if he will.
A hidden beacon on the cabal agent's lapel transmits a telepathic message to him, and he speaks in response.
"I will convey your offer to the queen forthwith. I have a hunch she will be amenable to this offer.." The imposter hurries to escape from the establishment, his illusion appearing to walk calmly away while he rushes out and disappears in a cyan burst of teleportation.
I stay there a while, eating a very nice steak, and in about half an hour, a battalion of mages come with force cage generators and take away the Troll King, no doubt to pry his core from his insensate corpus.
Then I leave, opening a Gate to my new demi-plane, set up as my new base. I had recently started breaching into the 8th circle of spells, my soul growing in strength to cast more potent spells and my skills at shaping mana and calculating mandalas were finally good enough to do it.
1 Month Later
My demiplane is based on pandora; hundreds and hundreds of motes invested in the spell to make a self-sustaining ecology. During my months spent there, I have grown to love the harsh world and its animal inhabitants. Of course, I have dozens and dozens of life shapers recreating Pandoran creatures to make a whole web of life, but a rudimentary ecology has begun to flourish here.
My council and I sit in the canopy of the singular home tree of the demiplane. Things have changed since we conquered the troll king.
The biggest change is the new member that has joined us.
Nestor The Troll King. I had taken a few hours to make a summoning pattern of the Original before handing him over, and some of his daughters and sons were resurrected for this purpose as well. I let them go after that; their vows of vengeance hold no fear for me or mine.
Now I had patterns for Troll Champions, Troll Hag-Witches and Troll Kings. Nestor was their representative, and he is a kind, calm and curious leader. I don't know him well yet, I have only spent a few days with him since I created him, but the time I spent was pleasant, contemplating philosophical questions raised by magics and hunting food and cooking it in the wild.
Thror had grown more confident in himself and his people. They have decided to make this world and this demiplane their home, as the first outpost of the Second Chance. Now they were busy creating a mountain in the middle of the Demiplane, with conjured metals and stone being carefully arranged by mining guilds to make a natural mountain. I will probably have to spend thousands of motes of mana, so the demiplane is large enough to hold an entire nation of millions of dwarfs. Thror has spent all this time in furious planning, making sure that they wring enough out of me that they can survive on their own for a thousand years if I die out there exploring the planes.
So, I am running on a mana deficit for the first time. Now, normally, I tap my lands for mana every hour, instinctively. My number of connections nets me about a dozen mana of each colour every hour. So I usually am able to stockpile these motes. I have stored thousands of mana inside my soul at this point, in a balance after my misstep in the dwarf world almost cost me defeat. But I have been summoning thousands of dwarfs and expanding the size of the demiplane, so it is leading to a situation where I am low on mana, a few hundred motes at most. But it should stabilise in a few more months; Once I summon the full five hundred thousand dwarfs that Thror wants to start with.
Blossom has been the one to change the least, but even he has grown in power once they and their people took up the task of recreating the Pandoran ecology. I had asked Thror if that was dangerous for his people, but he had waved it off; his people needed the things to keep their warrior skills sharp and their larders full. Bloom was the first Archdruid to breach the 8th circle of Druidry, and soon, their people had followed, alongside the pattern evolving to mirror that inside my soul.
"The projections are looking to be on track; The first Hold will be up in 3 months, and with the help of my esteemed colleagues, it can probably be expedited even more." Thror, as he says
"My People have settled in as well; it is going to be a harrowing journey; building a culture is going to be hard, especially if we don't want to be cultural clones of the others, no offence." Nero says to the others " I want us to be more than brutes, more than disposable pawns of old monsters. But we are not like you; brutality is in our blood. It is pleasing to crush the bones of your foes underfoot and break their skulls. It is a conundrum how to build a peaceful culture that loves violence. I am trying a few solutions you guys suggested; the creator's suggestion of bloodsports is a suitable release valve. The Idea of Mercenary Bands, as suggested by Thror, will likely have to be put on hold until the witches learn how to do interplanar travel. The recreation drugs from bloom are appreciated."
I nod in understanding.
"I hope you figure it out, as per your request; I will not interfere with your development, but know that as long as I live, you can depend on me for any material help I can provide. It is an admirable path you have chosen for your people."
"I appreciate the thought; it's a hard decision, knowing that your people's culture is linked to a pattern in a random wizard's soul. Will they call me a troll president if we have a democracy, or will our children be the ones to change it to a troll botanist? But it is something we are still thankful for; I don't mean to sound unappreciated. We have a chance actually to learn and grow in a secure location with amicable neighbours and a bright future." It's a tricky question his word provoke, making me question Whether using summons is moral.
I shove the question away; I am already using them to an unreal scale; its no time to back out now. I will follow humanity's oldest instinct for me and double down.
The meeting continues like this for a while, more a bunch of friends hanging out and musing on the future than a ruling council, but it is a fun time; once the heavier questions have been dealt with, Blossom tells me about his hobby of growing bonsai trees while Thror tells about a batch of beer he is brewing, Nestor showcases the bodypaint work he is doing on some troll models.
I retire for the night with a sad realisation that I have lost most of my pre-walking hobbies; I don't read anymore or watch movies, and now most of my time is spent on magical skills and research. Don't get me wrong, I love the wonder of magic and discovering new things, but there are only so many hours you can spend tweaking the 3d mandalas for a spell that creates a demiplane and instead accidentally turns the space around you into a kaleidoscope. Maybe I will take up carving again; that's a good skill that I share with some of my master craftsmen; it would be fun to just work on this skill for a bit.
I try carving a small statuette of a thantor, my familiar serving as a very restless model, but I muddle through, it's unfinished, and it looks hideous besides, but it brings me a sense of contentment, so I am pretty happy with it.
Then I move on to what feels like my day job, magical experiments.
The biggest discovery is I figured out what Essence is and how it works. I had to scan quite a few troll kings to find common ground and notice the pattern in their metaphysical makeup. After a battery of divination and necromantic spells, I have a rough idea of how it works, especially after I copied some research that some Haitian mages are doing regarding their ancestor spirits and the loa and its interaction with the living that they ride.
Essence is a mixture of the cast-off shedding of the soul, mixing with potent life energy to make a fairly unique power source.
The soul is a Nigh-indestructible energy pattern that can persist against things like time, death, or myriad other forces. It's often subtly different across all the planes I have been to so far; for example, the Na'vi lacked the ontological organs that allow souls to naturally manipulate magic. But it shares enough similarities that I used the Soul Forging technique I learned from Qyburn and his works to graft those pieces on their souls, so it becomes a natural extension of their souls after the ritual.
The demihumans and monsters on this world are elemental spirits at their most fundamental; some have been adapted to this plane for so long that they are barely different from your average rabbit, but it means their souls are different from a mundane being of this plane. This includes the human, by the way; their entire magical tradition is their soul channelling elemental energy for their affinity planes and using that to enact magic. This means their souls are miniature portals to the elemental planes. This means that often there is leakage of energy the stronger you are and the stronger your magic is, as a higher level of magic requires more elemental mana and more power passing through their souls. This means their souls are constantly shedding power from their souls, slowly making the area more of their elemental preference.
The other part of the puzzle is the physical nature of the creatures. Life force is the magical vitality that all living creatures have; it's what allows a dragon to survive a fall from 1000 meters and allows it to be unaging. Every living being so far has had it on this plane. The Dwarf world had it as well; the Navi didn't. They were all chemical reactions supporting their body. It's a magical equivalent of your internal organs and bones; it makes you tougher, supports your life, and lets you do cool things like bench press a boulder. It is a very physical and personal force, I haven't heard anyone shoot life force bolts, but I am not omniscient, so they may exist. It basically lets you overcome the limits of hard biology.
What happens when this constant outpouring of energy from the soul interacts with the life energy of a living being? Nothing much at first; most beings' life forces and magic are too weak to have any meaningful full interaction. But once you become old enough and magical enough, like elder dragons, giant patriarchs, and titan apes, you begin generating essence. It is your soul's energy uplighting your life force and allowing a metaphysical weight and flexibility it normally lacks.
It lets you grow beyond your limits, letting you do things like soaking an entire mountain and making it a metaphysical part of yourself or letting you imbue it in your children so they become stronger passively.
Unfortunately, I can't use it; my soul is exceedingly efficient; once it gets hold of a mote of mana, it doesn't let it go. So I can't radiate energy like that, and if I modified myself to do that, I would bleed mana like a sieve. So it's out for me. But there is good news, I have isolated it and can add it as a soul-forged graft onto my summons, whether already summoned or ones I will summon in the future. That should make them all get stronger the more they age.
I asked a few of the dwarfs to act as volunteers to roll it out to the entire species, and they haven't shown any adverse effects, no violent decompression of the soul membrane, no cascade collapse of their auric ecosystem, no calcification of the life energy. That last one was the biggest concern I had for it. Dawi souls are metaphysically carved from rock, children of the elemental earth and that affinity could have easily led to the energy turning them into stone; that's what happens when a dwarf uses sorcery according to the lore keepers and their record of the chaos dwarf sorcerers. But so far, the grafts have melded in naturally, and there are no side effects, will probably wait a few months before declaring it a complete success.
I have spent most of my time doing that this past month, but I started two new pieces of research projects for my shaman and arch-druid assistants. These bands of nature spirits have been sent into the wider world to research natural phenomena that I think have merit. They have been diving and locating nodes of mana crystals, the same crystals that humanity processes into their currency and energy source.
They have been observing the natural currents of mana and geographic conditions that lead to the formation of these mana crystal nodes and the process that they undergo to crystalise environmental mana.
It's a major part of my plans to proliferate these towers to worlds under threat to act as hardpoints and centres of civilisation for terraforming new worlds. Gigatons of these Crystals are required to operate these towers annually, and they haven't appeared on any other plane I have been on. So I need to understand how they work so I can replicate or at least substitute them.
That's why the team is a group of shamans and arch-druids. The shamans are experts in binding ephemeral energies to physical actions and vice versa alongside manipulation of high-energy magical infrastructure. At the same time, the Arch-druids are experts in communing with nature and studying natural phenomena and are some of my best spell crafters.
They haven't found any results yet, but I expect the process to take months of observation, so I am not in a hurry.
Just as the leader of this research group finishes their operation reports, sending blooms in my ear, my wards letting it through after a bit of scrutiny. I smile as I backtrace the magic to the Lord Protector's Office. The message is simple but welcome.
"The Queen wishes to talk about your first target. The treaty will be signed there as well."
The Lord Protector is alone, an aura of power flowing from his form, his elemental aura flickering with Ice as one of the strongest mages of the magocracy sits before me, drinking a neat whisky more expensive than most minor lords' estates.
Lord Keith Wolingworth is the due lord protector of the realm and the velveted fist of the queen. The most important man in the British empire who isn't gods chosen leader.
It was hard getting a meeting with him; the wards defending his message address were something that took me the entire day to dismantle. Then convincing him was even harder; he only believed me once the royal fusiliers went and confirmed that the troll under the mountain is dead and his kingdom burnt.
The truth is that anything my mundane sight sees isn't true; my mage sight and true seeing spell let me pierce the curtains of illusions that draped the parlour. The clowning mind magics crash against mind blank, and the illusions part before my sight like mist before the noonday sun.
The man in front of me isn't the lord protector at all; it is a fae-blooded officer of the first mage cabal, the premier infiltration officer of the Magocracy. The building isn't empty at all; an entire flight of war mages cling on top of the roof, draped in invisibility and SEP illusions.
I don't showcase any of this as I walk in; of course, I take the seat opposite the lord protector, without prompting, to play up the part of a reclusive archmage. The Cabal Mage and the Flight both miss as my troops move to their places to be ready to pounce on their entire force in case of hostility; even the golem artillery stationed 5 kilometres away isn't spared. Lifeshapers transformed into bloodlilys, a plant ambush predators with magic and skill that would hide them in plain sight of a mortal, covered by greater invisibility and mind blank and a dozen other obscuring spells, cast by me personally that the sight couldn't pierce the magics or fail in any way. Dwarven Engineers and Rangers are stationed to take out any mage that so much as twitches with their runed antimagic rifles.
"So, you are the Mysterious Raj," the pretender says, mispronouncing the name just like his subject would have " the man responsible for the disappearance of the Troll King Under The Mountain."
He pauses, and a wry smile graces the illusions face, the actor mimicking the lord protector's mannerisms to an unnatural degree.
"I would say that your method of contacting me was quite rude, but I guess I can overlook that in the light of the service that you provided." He continues after taking another drink of whisky; I see a spell breaking down the alcohol before he can become drunk, but I guess he was only playing the character; it wouldn't do to break the masquerade so easily.
"I am indeed the one who contacted you, it was a hassle, but I didn't really have any better options. I didn't want to teleport through the wards of Westminster; I imagine the knights would get prissy." That was the gamble I was going to play, pretend to be an archmage that has been learning magic over the past few centuries and has come back to a very different world, it would be hard to disprove, but I don't think I could ever shake the mistrust that I am some shapeshifted mythic being, but that was fine with my goals, I wanted the specs of those towers, and I am getting them one way or the other.
"So, I found the nearest nuisance and decided to dispose of it as a gift for you and your queen, a peace offering to start our relationship. I thought a minor legendary spirit would make for a good gift." I say that and wave my hand; the mandala blooms into existence for a second before disappearing, far more complex than the ones that these mages can cast, my instinctual grasp of magic letting me learn in a few years what would have taken other decades. As the spell does its thing and the Troll King is there in the parlour, bound by chains of mystic fire that doesn't burn and chains of psychic might that bind him harder still.
The agent pretending to be the lord protector startles, briefly showing his surprise before the stiff upper lip of the lord protector is re-established. His surprise made sense; after all, I put enough blue and white mana in that spell to punch through their wards and summon a being with hefty spell resistance.
"Well, It is a unique gift that much must be said. I will accept it in the spirit it is given on behalf of her majesty. But let's not be rude. We can't exactly start negotiations until proper introductions are made." He nods towards me and makes an 'after you' motion. The Agent is not as good a diplomat as the Lord protector, but it is often the simplest manoeuvres that are the hardest to avoid; and besides, this is what I want to do in the first place.
I smile a beaming grin and nod in acquiescence.
"I am Raj, master of magic, planar explorer and slayer of dragons, maker of gods and chosen of pantheons, the DOOM of Grobi'drazh. I have been absent from this plane for a few centuries; I imagine some mythic or the other probably razed my fortress, I will have to scatter their essence for that, but that's for later. But what is relevant to you is that I am a human wizard; I have been exploring the other planes to grow my knowledge of magic and have recently returned. The World sure has changed in my absence." There is an art to lying; you have to fulfil two conditions. First, your lie shouldn't be disprovable, and secondly, your lie has to be believable. So that's what my plan is, a refuge in audacity. After all, no one can claim to be a plane-hopping archmage without it being true. It was even the truth, which is the best kind of lie.
"You wish to propose a treaty to the queen. Give me your proposal, and I will present it to her majesty on your behalf. If it pleases her, we may have a deal," The Imposter says, insinuating through body language that it may not just be her decision. As if he has the authority to influence it.
"The queen Will be the final arbiter of the treaty, but I have an inkling that your advice may sway her mind. So here is my proposal; I wish to learn the magics that humanity has developed in my absence; I have wandered far from home for too long and ignored the strength that humanity has gained. Well, I would like to rectify that; teach me everything that gives humanity strength, and I will kill any enemy that your wish. You wish for me to hunt a great wyrm for encroaching on Hindu kush or hunt down the yeti emperor and his raiding parties across the arctic, burn down the grove of the Manblight Dryads. Just say the word, and they will be gone; my plundered strength will finally be put to good use, bringing peace and planar stability to my land." I lay out my bait and a subtle threat; these were all mythic monsters encroaching on the magocracy territory, flexing my divinatory skills while also giving humanity the one thing they couldn't do without ruinous cost.
My spellwrought eloquence hits its mark half a country away, the hidden bunker of the lord protector not enough to guard him against that small kernel of hope light in his heart, a curse much worse than any I could cast. But fortunately for him, it was not going to be a vain hope; I will abide by this pact if he will.
A hidden beacon on the cabal agent's lapel transmits a telepathic message to him, and he speaks in response.
"I will convey your offer to the queen forthwith. I have a hunch she will be amenable to this offer.." The imposter hurries to escape from the establishment, his illusion appearing to walk calmly away while he rushes out and disappears in a cyan burst of teleportation.
I stay there a while, eating a very nice steak, and in about half an hour, a battalion of mages come with force cage generators and take away the Troll King, no doubt to pry his core from his insensate corpus.
Then I leave, opening a Gate to my new demi-plane, set up as my new base. I had recently started breaching into the 8th circle of spells, my soul growing in strength to cast more potent spells and my skills at shaping mana and calculating mandalas were finally good enough to do it.
1 Month Later
My demiplane is based on pandora; hundreds and hundreds of motes invested in the spell to make a self-sustaining ecology. During my months spent there, I have grown to love the harsh world and its animal inhabitants. Of course, I have dozens and dozens of life shapers recreating Pandoran creatures to make a whole web of life, but a rudimentary ecology has begun to flourish here.
My council and I sit in the canopy of the singular home tree of the demiplane. Things have changed since we conquered the troll king.
The biggest change is the new member that has joined us.
Nestor The Troll King. I had taken a few hours to make a summoning pattern of the Original before handing him over, and some of his daughters and sons were resurrected for this purpose as well. I let them go after that; their vows of vengeance hold no fear for me or mine.
Now I had patterns for Troll Champions, Troll Hag-Witches and Troll Kings. Nestor was their representative, and he is a kind, calm and curious leader. I don't know him well yet, I have only spent a few days with him since I created him, but the time I spent was pleasant, contemplating philosophical questions raised by magics and hunting food and cooking it in the wild.
Thror had grown more confident in himself and his people. They have decided to make this world and this demiplane their home, as the first outpost of the Second Chance. Now they were busy creating a mountain in the middle of the Demiplane, with conjured metals and stone being carefully arranged by mining guilds to make a natural mountain. I will probably have to spend thousands of motes of mana, so the demiplane is large enough to hold an entire nation of millions of dwarfs. Thror has spent all this time in furious planning, making sure that they wring enough out of me that they can survive on their own for a thousand years if I die out there exploring the planes.
So, I am running on a mana deficit for the first time. Now, normally, I tap my lands for mana every hour, instinctively. My number of connections nets me about a dozen mana of each colour every hour. So I usually am able to stockpile these motes. I have stored thousands of mana inside my soul at this point, in a balance after my misstep in the dwarf world almost cost me defeat. But I have been summoning thousands of dwarfs and expanding the size of the demiplane, so it is leading to a situation where I am low on mana, a few hundred motes at most. But it should stabilise in a few more months; Once I summon the full five hundred thousand dwarfs that Thror wants to start with.
Blossom has been the one to change the least, but even he has grown in power once they and their people took up the task of recreating the Pandoran ecology. I had asked Thror if that was dangerous for his people, but he had waved it off; his people needed the things to keep their warrior skills sharp and their larders full. Bloom was the first Archdruid to breach the 8th circle of Druidry, and soon, their people had followed, alongside the pattern evolving to mirror that inside my soul.
"The projections are looking to be on track; The first Hold will be up in 3 months, and with the help of my esteemed colleagues, it can probably be expedited even more." Thror, as he says
"My People have settled in as well; it is going to be a harrowing journey; building a culture is going to be hard, especially if we don't want to be cultural clones of the others, no offence." Nero says to the others " I want us to be more than brutes, more than disposable pawns of old monsters. But we are not like you; brutality is in our blood. It is pleasing to crush the bones of your foes underfoot and break their skulls. It is a conundrum how to build a peaceful culture that loves violence. I am trying a few solutions you guys suggested; the creator's suggestion of bloodsports is a suitable release valve. The Idea of Mercenary Bands, as suggested by Thror, will likely have to be put on hold until the witches learn how to do interplanar travel. The recreation drugs from bloom are appreciated."
I nod in understanding.
"I hope you figure it out, as per your request; I will not interfere with your development, but know that as long as I live, you can depend on me for any material help I can provide. It is an admirable path you have chosen for your people."
"I appreciate the thought; it's a hard decision, knowing that your people's culture is linked to a pattern in a random wizard's soul. Will they call me a troll president if we have a democracy, or will our children be the ones to change it to a troll botanist? But it is something we are still thankful for; I don't mean to sound unappreciated. We have a chance actually to learn and grow in a secure location with amicable neighbours and a bright future." It's a tricky question his word provoke, making me question Whether using summons is moral.
I shove the question away; I am already using them to an unreal scale; its no time to back out now. I will follow humanity's oldest instinct for me and double down.
The meeting continues like this for a while, more a bunch of friends hanging out and musing on the future than a ruling council, but it is a fun time; once the heavier questions have been dealt with, Blossom tells me about his hobby of growing bonsai trees while Thror tells about a batch of beer he is brewing, Nestor showcases the bodypaint work he is doing on some troll models.
I retire for the night with a sad realisation that I have lost most of my pre-walking hobbies; I don't read anymore or watch movies, and now most of my time is spent on magical skills and research. Don't get me wrong, I love the wonder of magic and discovering new things, but there are only so many hours you can spend tweaking the 3d mandalas for a spell that creates a demiplane and instead accidentally turns the space around you into a kaleidoscope. Maybe I will take up carving again; that's a good skill that I share with some of my master craftsmen; it would be fun to just work on this skill for a bit.
I try carving a small statuette of a thantor, my familiar serving as a very restless model, but I muddle through, it's unfinished, and it looks hideous besides, but it brings me a sense of contentment, so I am pretty happy with it.
Then I move on to what feels like my day job, magical experiments.
The biggest discovery is I figured out what Essence is and how it works. I had to scan quite a few troll kings to find common ground and notice the pattern in their metaphysical makeup. After a battery of divination and necromantic spells, I have a rough idea of how it works, especially after I copied some research that some Haitian mages are doing regarding their ancestor spirits and the loa and its interaction with the living that they ride.
Essence is a mixture of the cast-off shedding of the soul, mixing with potent life energy to make a fairly unique power source.
The soul is a Nigh-indestructible energy pattern that can persist against things like time, death, or myriad other forces. It's often subtly different across all the planes I have been to so far; for example, the Na'vi lacked the ontological organs that allow souls to naturally manipulate magic. But it shares enough similarities that I used the Soul Forging technique I learned from Qyburn and his works to graft those pieces on their souls, so it becomes a natural extension of their souls after the ritual.
The demihumans and monsters on this world are elemental spirits at their most fundamental; some have been adapted to this plane for so long that they are barely different from your average rabbit, but it means their souls are different from a mundane being of this plane. This includes the human, by the way; their entire magical tradition is their soul channelling elemental energy for their affinity planes and using that to enact magic. This means their souls are miniature portals to the elemental planes. This means that often there is leakage of energy the stronger you are and the stronger your magic is, as a higher level of magic requires more elemental mana and more power passing through their souls. This means their souls are constantly shedding power from their souls, slowly making the area more of their elemental preference.
The other part of the puzzle is the physical nature of the creatures. Life force is the magical vitality that all living creatures have; it's what allows a dragon to survive a fall from 1000 meters and allows it to be unaging. Every living being so far has had it on this plane. The Dwarf world had it as well; the Navi didn't. They were all chemical reactions supporting their body. It's a magical equivalent of your internal organs and bones; it makes you tougher, supports your life, and lets you do cool things like bench press a boulder. It is a very physical and personal force, I haven't heard anyone shoot life force bolts, but I am not omniscient, so they may exist. It basically lets you overcome the limits of hard biology.
What happens when this constant outpouring of energy from the soul interacts with the life energy of a living being? Nothing much at first; most beings' life forces and magic are too weak to have any meaningful full interaction. But once you become old enough and magical enough, like elder dragons, giant patriarchs, and titan apes, you begin generating essence. It is your soul's energy uplighting your life force and allowing a metaphysical weight and flexibility it normally lacks.
It lets you grow beyond your limits, letting you do things like soaking an entire mountain and making it a metaphysical part of yourself or letting you imbue it in your children so they become stronger passively.
Unfortunately, I can't use it; my soul is exceedingly efficient; once it gets hold of a mote of mana, it doesn't let it go. So I can't radiate energy like that, and if I modified myself to do that, I would bleed mana like a sieve. So it's out for me. But there is good news, I have isolated it and can add it as a soul-forged graft onto my summons, whether already summoned or ones I will summon in the future. That should make them all get stronger the more they age.
I asked a few of the dwarfs to act as volunteers to roll it out to the entire species, and they haven't shown any adverse effects, no violent decompression of the soul membrane, no cascade collapse of their auric ecosystem, no calcification of the life energy. That last one was the biggest concern I had for it. Dawi souls are metaphysically carved from rock, children of the elemental earth and that affinity could have easily led to the energy turning them into stone; that's what happens when a dwarf uses sorcery according to the lore keepers and their record of the chaos dwarf sorcerers. But so far, the grafts have melded in naturally, and there are no side effects, will probably wait a few months before declaring it a complete success.
I have spent most of my time doing that this past month, but I started two new pieces of research projects for my shaman and arch-druid assistants. These bands of nature spirits have been sent into the wider world to research natural phenomena that I think have merit. They have been diving and locating nodes of mana crystals, the same crystals that humanity processes into their currency and energy source.
They have been observing the natural currents of mana and geographic conditions that lead to the formation of these mana crystal nodes and the process that they undergo to crystalise environmental mana.
It's a major part of my plans to proliferate these towers to worlds under threat to act as hardpoints and centres of civilisation for terraforming new worlds. Gigatons of these Crystals are required to operate these towers annually, and they haven't appeared on any other plane I have been on. So I need to understand how they work so I can replicate or at least substitute them.
That's why the team is a group of shamans and arch-druids. The shamans are experts in binding ephemeral energies to physical actions and vice versa alongside manipulation of high-energy magical infrastructure. At the same time, the Arch-druids are experts in communing with nature and studying natural phenomena and are some of my best spell crafters.
They haven't found any results yet, but I expect the process to take months of observation, so I am not in a hurry.
Just as the leader of this research group finishes their operation reports, sending blooms in my ear, my wards letting it through after a bit of scrutiny. I smile as I backtrace the magic to the Lord Protector's Office. The message is simple but welcome.
"The Queen wishes to talk about your first target. The treaty will be signed there as well."
- Location
- Planet Earth
So... is the MC an Old Spark or New Spark Planeswalker...
He should be capable of shapeshifting, or of changing his form. Since Planeswalkers are more Oversouls or Energy occupying a physical shell, as opposed to just a person with magic.
Like, it would have been cooler for the MC to have become a Na'Vi when he landed on Pandora.
Was definitely funny reading Eywa calling the MC a "Pretender" when she called herself a Goddess, when Planeswalkers(Old Sparks anyway) are by far more Godly than "Gods", and the MC is the only reason she is more than a collection of memories/"souls" inside the tree's/planet.
The Story so far is really feeling like it is being too driven by Violence/Conflict/Action, as opposed to being driven by Adventure, Character Growth, and fun...
Like, I'd recommend reading Dogbertcarrols "With Sprinkles" where Xander becomes a Planeswalker and really properly Munchkins it. Scanning EVERYTHING, not just people and animals. Scanning and learning Spells and abilities, technology, money, buildings, etc... So as a Planeswalker you NEVER need to worry about anything, from Shelter, Food, Water, money, etc...
Would definitely like to see the MC in more laid-back situations. Like the MC in Harry Potter learning their magic, copying their plants, animals, and magical materials. Have fun in Hogwarts, or go Fix-fic(preferably without going murderhobo or needing to kill all enemies instead of outsmarting them).
Or the MC in Stargate, or BtVS, Stranger Things, Mass Effect, DC, Marvel, etc...
He should be capable of shapeshifting, or of changing his form. Since Planeswalkers are more Oversouls or Energy occupying a physical shell, as opposed to just a person with magic.
Like, it would have been cooler for the MC to have become a Na'Vi when he landed on Pandora.
Was definitely funny reading Eywa calling the MC a "Pretender" when she called herself a Goddess, when Planeswalkers(Old Sparks anyway) are by far more Godly than "Gods", and the MC is the only reason she is more than a collection of memories/"souls" inside the tree's/planet.
The Story so far is really feeling like it is being too driven by Violence/Conflict/Action, as opposed to being driven by Adventure, Character Growth, and fun...
Like, I'd recommend reading Dogbertcarrols "With Sprinkles" where Xander becomes a Planeswalker and really properly Munchkins it. Scanning EVERYTHING, not just people and animals. Scanning and learning Spells and abilities, technology, money, buildings, etc... So as a Planeswalker you NEVER need to worry about anything, from Shelter, Food, Water, money, etc...
Would definitely like to see the MC in more laid-back situations. Like the MC in Harry Potter learning their magic, copying their plants, animals, and magical materials. Have fun in Hogwarts, or go Fix-fic(preferably without going murderhobo or needing to kill all enemies instead of outsmarting them).
Or the MC in Stargate, or BtVS, Stranger Things, Mass Effect, DC, Marvel, etc...
A hybrid walker. The walking is old, no ritual. Most of it is new walker but he does have innate magical aptitude and stuff.
He doesn't get the shapeshifting thing, mostly because he has learned dnd magic paradigm. So he can use things like shapechange or transplant a magical bloodline to change shape but its not innate.
This is valid but it is bit of a plan. I have some outline for about 2 or maybe 3 worlds. Thats mostly the conflict time where he learns magic, fights evil and explores world for munchkining.
After that he will be capable enough to actually have more cool adventures.
The reason for not scanning minor things is because he has his minions that can make custom life forms and summon elementals and such if he really needs to do that. He just hasn't had the time to use this capability.
I am actually trying for more obscure and fanfiction worlds, as homage to the fanfics that I have enjoyed.
I am terrible at politics but I can try.
This is before their time. Its the time of henry and his wife carving australia from the shoals.
Chapter 16
It's not the first time I am meeting the empress of a magical empire. But the characters of the two empresses couldn't be more different. Lya was a magical pioneer who created marvels and artefacts and reinvented magic from base principle.
Queen Victoria is the ruler of a centuries-old dynasty, a leader who has led them through war and peace and overseen grave social changes. An ardent social and political operator who is a deft hand at diplomacy. But she is merely a magister, far from the strongest mage in the commonwealth.
Its different political structure from my world, the tangible power and miracles of faith have kept the church of England a fairly important part of the social fabric of the Magocracy. As the chosen representative of the god on this earth, it has given a massive amount of power compared to my own world's monarchy.
So there are expectations of how you are supposed to act when meeting, protocols and traditions. Now, as an Archmage of considerable power, I am exempt from the bowing and scraping, I am not going to do it, and I will disintegrate anyone that suggests that.
So I teleport directly to the front of Buckingham Palace. It's a power play, spending an obscene amount of mana to bypass their wards. I am immediately surrounded by the guards, pointing their spellwands at me, prepared spells ready to be unleashed on me.
There is a crack of thunder, and half a dozen knights appear around me, riding purple griffons crackling with lightning.
"Hail Knight captain, I am not late for my appointment, am I??" I ask faux-innocently. Lightning crackles around the man's sword, the stalwart guardian of the queen knows he can't harm me yet, no matter my much my actions are a breach of the Standard Protocol.
"We were told to expect you, Mage Raj. Come, we shall lead you through the security cordon; we wouldn't want to have any accidents now." The is trying to powerplay me, calling me a mage, the lowest ranked magic user of the magocracy. He also wanted to insinuate their defences could harm me, which was only true as long as I didn't retaliate. He dismounts, and his squad give me an honour guard and leads me down the labyrinthine corridors of the palace; servants scuttle and make way for us and ahead of I hear a herald announce my arrival.
"Of course, we wouldn't want any accidents. Say, that griffon of yours, is it something I could conceivably get access to it? I wouldn't mind a second familiar, something smaller and more fluffy. My current familiar is kind of too deadly for playing with children and the like." I realised immediately after saying it that I had gone too far. A knight's mount is their closest companion, the brother that has carried them through the hardest battles. My goading remarks have hit too close to the mark. I see his knuckle crack as he grips his pommel in a vice grip. His gait has changed; he is walking on the balls of his feet, ready to swivel and dodge in any direction. I am not worried, but I do feel a bit bad; then I remember he has probably committed war crimes for the queen, so I am fine being a dick to him.
"I would challenge you to duel, sir, but I will put duty before honour. But know this, you have made an enemy of Sir Curtis Hughshire by dishonouring my partner."
I just smirk at him; I would love to do some light exercise after this.
Then I walk through the doors to the throne rooms.
The Throne room is an assault on the senses as soon as I step through the climate control and privacy wards. The sound of the gathered audience is like a shockwave filled with the tittering of the socialites and gruff voices of warrior nobles. The sight is what is noticeable; next, an obscenely opulent room festooned with decorations, magic and enough hunting trophies to depopulate a forest.
As I walk into the room, a pall of silence fills the room, the crowd turning to face me. It seemed the queen was one for subtle powerplays; I was not told about the gathering of nobles witnessing this audience.
I shrug; my plan here is pretty simple, and the more witnesses there are, the better it is for me.
Queen Victoria is seated on the throne; her vestments glow with incredible magic. Each crown jewel is the prized artefact of a conquered kingdom, and the gold filigree of her sceptre is mined from a dozen holy mountains.
"I present myself before your highness to ratify the treaty discussed with the Lord Protector," I say with a nod; I am not her subject; I dare to treat openly as an equal to the magocracy; to maintain that facade, I cannot show weakness, they will eat me up alive if I show a bit of deference. The act of the ancient archmage is risky, but I have to follow through on it.
"We have considered your proposal and the advice of our most loyal protector. We agree to this agreement between you and our empire. But we have some questions first." The queen's voice echoes in the hall, and the party quiets down.
"You have promised us much, and you have proved that you have some means of achieving your claims. But a troll king is a gnat before an elder wyrm, and we would be loath to lose an ally so soon." Her magic-enhanced voice rings through the hall, and I realise her play. She wants me to prove myself in front of the cloud. If I fail to deliver, it would be better to know before I fail and provoke a mythic being, but if I succeed, she gets the credit for getting a powerful ally, and no doubt her position is strengthened in front of the nobles milling in the halls.
I nod and grin, for this plays perfectly what I want to do as well; the big play meant to wow the snooty nobles.
I had dug down into the faintly remembered history of my world and chose my diplomatic tactics, and I remember a trivia about kings trying to one-up each other in diplomatic gifts to showcase their wealth and power.
"I will be happy to demonstrate for our gathered audience here and present my gifts to the throne in a single stroke of good fortune; her majesty is wise to give me the opportunity." I say blithely, indicating to her that I know her to play and am willing to play ball as it suits me. She nods her head imperceptibly; to the observers, it may seem like a signal to continue, but I know it to be an acknowledgement.
I grab my bag of holding and turn to face the crowd.
"In the grand tradition of gift giving established by the wise men themselves, I will present three gifts to her majesty and the magocracy."
I reach deep inside the bag and present my first gifts.
So, I worked on my gifts the entire month, spending mana like water to accelerate a slow process of making magical items and constructs. Seeing my actions, my council had decided to surprise me, or thror and blossom decided to surprise me; Nestor didn't want to participate.
So, my dwarves had spent the entire month secretly doing a cultural recovery project. Hundreds of summoned runelords brought their heads together to figure out how to make golems again. The Dawi used to field entire armies of golems, with masters like Snorri Klausson leading entire throngs to slay three separate Everchosen. But due to the war of vengeance, it had been a lost art, with each master targeted by elven assassins to further weakened the dawi. But with an unfathomable amount of ale and more cooperation than ever in history, recovering the Rune of Animation was something they did do.
"I know her majesty is a fan of hunting, but seeing how the prey in these lands is a bit out of range for the hounds, So I decided to gift you some more effective companions." I open the mouth of the bag, and half a dozen Dwarf Steel thanator golems walk out. Each is a perfect replica of the 10-foot tall predator lion-wolf things; even the whiskers move as if they were hair and not impossibly fine dwarven metalcraft.
I look at the animation matrix with my mage sight in appreciation. The Mater Rune of Animation is paired with the Runes of Grungi and Valaya, making the golems into the perfect regenerating killing machines.
They prowl around the room, sniffing at nobles and furniture; no one in front of them dares move, their primal hindbrain screaming at them to raise their mage shield and fight or flee, but decades of comportment training carry most of them through without embarrassing themselves, but one panicked noble accidentally unleash a fireball at the things as one of their tails swished too close to his face. The explosion leaves both of them alive, the mage shield of the mage and the raw strength and magical resistance of the Dwarf steel golems shrugging off the magic with ease. After that bit of a show, I introduce the gifts.
"I crafted these constructs to be completely loyal to your august presence, your majesty. They are based on my familiar, and I feel there is no bigger statement of trust a Mage can make. They are untiring machines of death and the greatest hunters on their plane. I hope they help you hunt down your prey just as they have helped me." I finish my speech and notice the Knight Captain has gone white with fear; my thanators are twice the size of his mount, and they would hunt them by the flock if meeting in the wild; I think he thought my comment about my familiar being too scary to be friendly with children was a joke, but now he realises the magnitude of his mistake.
The Constructs slink low and approach the queen like a cat looking to be petted. Now was my turn to put her on the spot; she could appear to be scared and not let them approach her, showing weakness in front of her nobles, or she could allow my death machines near her.
The Thanators approach and the Queen pats their head like kittens; it seems she has some steel in her spine, yet, good, I want to present all my gifts; I spent a lot of time making them.
"My next gift is a bit more utilitarian, more of a gift for the nation. A living and growing bulwark to protect the people of the empire." I do a bit of showmanship as I walk in front of the crowd, getting them excited. With a flick of my hand, a map of the world appears, with each human territory marked in gold, red and black concentric circles.
"We all know about the dangers of the Wilds and the black and red zones. We learned and adapted to them" I knew most nobles have only gone out in wilds without powerful escorts " But some marauding beings aren't content with that; they lead armies against our bastions, slaughter the NoMs and damage infrastructure. So I made a solution to solve that. No more shall our cities be threatened; no more will they cower in fear."
I pick up my gift, and it floats above my hand, a giant seed bursting with nature's magic.
"This is the seed of an Elder Treant, Guardians of Nature and Father of Forests. They are usually extremely against cities. But I have shaped this one myself. Anyone can bond with it as familiar before planting it, and then it will sprout into a fully-fledged being, a nature spirit incarnated in an arcane tree. It can control plants and animate them as armies to smite humanity's foes, from Mermen to Efreeti. It will bear fruits all year round, which will sprout into treants that can also be bound as familiars, and a few hundred of them in a city can raise armies of their own. Of course, they can't attack humans aside from in self-defence; I have hardcoded that into their essence; we wouldn't want a Mage oppressing his fellows due to this gift." I swish my hands, and the seed floats towards the queen, ending my dramatic yet verbose presentation.
It is actually a collaboration between the Lifeshapers and the Shamans. They were inspired by my descriptions of the Treemen Ancient of Dawi world, Demigod spirits of nature capable of resisting even god and serving as progenitors to cohorts of nature spirits. They decided to recreate that kind of being; this is the first working model.
The life shapers made its body a treant as a base and then improved to the point that they could fist fight dragons and bench press a galleon. They specifically crafted its Minds, so it isn't a person or can even think. It is to serve as a totem for a greater spirit of nature, which was the job of the Shamans. They drew deep into the natural magic and deep into the dream of the forests; there, they gathered the essence of the oldest trees and forged a great spirit of the forest.
They drew forth this spirit to embody it into the lifeshaper's master peace, and the first elder treant was born. I was brought in to graft the soul bits necessary to form essence for this primaeval guardian, and it was complete. I took a pattern for later summoning; you never know, I might have to go to a plane with no forest, and then I wouldn't want to lack access to this demigod of nature.
It stands a gargantuan 100 Meters once it is planted, and its girth is comparable to skyscrapers. Its body is based on the redwood trees, the only plants large and robust enough to house spirits of that power. It can animate trees for kilometres and generally control and grow plants without limits. Its foliage gathers the sunlight and stores it to release blasts of searing light magic to burn any foes.
I also have lied to the queen; it won't be a bond of master and familiar, but more of a symbiotic bond because no human soul could come close to bonding with a spirit of this power. The shamans have crafted the spirit to draw more on its mythos as a guardian, and the human partner will serve to make human cities something like its domain as well, expanding what it considers its remit.
Of course, human cities are going to become mini-forests, if for nothing else but the number of defences it will give them and the enhanced production of being in a treant's presence. It is a beacon of nature magic, and anything in its presence will grow much quicker. This will solve most food trouble of a city and, with magical plants, many other issues as well.
It's a treasure beyond reckoning, valuable beyond measure; A Mythic on the side of humanity that will eventually guard every city with its children. It is an unfathomable boon, and that's why it's a trap.
A treasure so valuable that kingdoms have been brought to their knees for less. The gift is so valuable that every frontier colony will beg for it to protect them from the mermen shoals slavering at their walls. Every noble will struggle and play to be granted the honour of bonding with the seed and making their line the guardians of the empire. The few Archmages that the magocracy has will covet it, and so will the mythics that will know such power is possible to obtain.
This will make it the only option she has is to bond it with someone of the royal family, probably herself and ensure she doesn't let a second power block form around the elder treant's mage. She can't avoid using it because the colonies are under attack, and the treants it will constantly spawn are free troops capable of turning entire fronts of the Coral War.
I have successfully forced her hand with a simple gift, shaping the nature of her empire forever more.
This isn't a power play for fun; I am playing to be an equal partner to the entire British empire. I have to show them I can hit hard and on a scale that will meaningfully hurt them. She will understand this gift to be a demonstration of power and cunning, the actions of an archmage I am pretending to be and am, in truth, if nearly not that old.
The crowd titters and murmurs at the gift and the Queen doesn't showcase any emotion as she accepts the gift and, very pointedly, keeps it in her own hand, despite the aids ready with cushions to hold it.
"My final gift is a bit more personal to me. I have personally handcrafted it, inspired by the most famous stories of your land." I put my hand into the bag of holding, and I feel the entire crowd focus on that, excited and perturbed to see what my next gift is going to be.
I draw forth the sword and hold it aloft in my hand. A Black Blade with a Golden Edge, three runes adorn it, and a visible aura of magic surrounds the blade. It is made in the style of an English broad sword, and it radiates power to the entire room, drawing attention and adoration for the prismatic aura of magic that anyone with sense magic could spend hours deciphering.
This is the gift I made personally; well, I had the dwarfs forge the actual blade from gromril. It's pretty easy; I just had to figure out how to summon the Gromril blades that my thanes wield without summoning the full person.
This is the first time I tried changing a pattern myself instead of it happening naturally, but it was fairly easy because it was a distinct item separate from the creatures. I still can't make any changes to the actual creatures, but I can change their loadouts, as it were, but only to an extent that they remain the same pattern; a thane with an axe or a rifle is fine, a thane with a runic staff is not.
I am pretty proud of the blade I have created; the enchantment on this is very strong, especially after half a dozen failures I had making its predecessors.
The blade is obviously a magical weapon of immense power, so it has the standard features, hitting hard, hitting better and being nigh unbreakable. But the real coup de grace is the spell I imbued onto the blade.
I based this blade on Excalibur, the sword of promised victory and the blade of the once and future king. So I wanted to be thematic with this blade. It took me weeks and weeks of crafting and enchanting alongside dozens of failures to craft it. But I had distilled the essence of Excalibur in this blade.
There is this nifty thing that clerics can cast, a spell or prayer called Divine Favour. It is what it says on the tin, a god's favour on their champion, subtly twisting fate to make them better at everything. The only downside was that it lasted only a little while, and it wasn't very strong at the end of the day, a minor advantage overall. Well, I decided to fix those flaws.
I broke down the spell into its basics and figured out how it interacts with fate, destiny, or probability. Then I isolated those elements and discovered that they only work because gods have a certain ontological weight to them. They let the spell channel a bit of that to enhance themselves; it's a luck transfer spell more than anything else.
Now, what I did to solve that was what is turning out to be my customary solution, throw an obscene amount of mana at it. I gathered hundreds of motes of White, blue and black mana motes and tried to craft a construct that could mimic a god's passive favour. It took a while, and a few mistakes, like when I inverted the spell matrix, and it became a bad luck curse or when the matrix fluctuated just so, and a pair of dwarves playing a dice game got just 1s for a week, and they couldn't stop playing.
But I have succeeded after weeks of work, and the spell is much better than before. It has a spell matrix embedded in the blade, dedicated to twisting fate to favour its wielder forever. The magnitude of the spell was also massively improved when I spent five hundred mana Motes into the spell matrix. It's powerful enough that a person can walk through a rainstorm and not get more than a single drop of rain or a dog winning chess against a grandmaster 99% of the time. It isn't absolute by any means; it can be countered if one plans enough or if one is much stronger than their foes; in my case, I know spells like twisted futures or alter fortune to change fate directly. I am not giving them a weapon that can kill me.
"It can't be wielded by anyone, of course; as I mentioned, it is inspired by the legends." I throw the sword in the air, and an unnaturally strong gust of wind blows it outside the throne room and out of the palace entirely. It lands on the sidewalk, blade first, digging deep into the ground among throngs of tourists hopping to catch sight of the queen. Later investigations would discover that somehow the climate control spells of the palace malfunctioned for a few seconds to produce that gust of wind " There it lies, ready to choose its champion, a person of noble heart, strong morals and sharp mind. A paragon of humanity and a champion of the good. I don't know who the blade will choose or how; it could be decades for all we know, but it will only be drawn by its chosen wielder."
The crowd goes wild; I see a few nobles rushing outside, trying to maintain decorum while competing to be the first ones to draw the blade.
I just smile and take a bow, that of a showman that doesn't have a hint of subservience in it. This is fun; I should play the out-of-touch archmage some more.
The queen looks like she is going to order my execution right there and then. It was the kind of gift that will undermine her legitimacy among the plebs as everyone knew the sword in the stone decided the throne of England, and it would be something that will cause strife among nobles and lure young nobles to be good, to qualify for the blade. The sword will prove its power over time, and any attempt to remove it will be thwarted by luck every time.
"I thank you a third time for your generous gifts; it is a good day for the empire to have made such a generous friend." The queen pronounces, "Now, let's stop dawdling and make merry."
The crowd cheers and hollers, the wine having clearly loosened some lips. I am surrounded by a throng of minor nobles, trying to chat me up and make me more favourable to them. I mostly chat absent-mindedly; I have been to enough university conferences to know how to talk to pompous buffons who have an overinflated sense of egos. I have an eye out for the major houses, the dukes and viscounts and princes as they maintain distance, looking for more information before they make a move. I enjoy the party; the food and drinks are rich.
After an hour or so of mingling, a staff member approached me and invited me to a more secluded meeting with the queen in the private garden.
"You aren't what we expected. An archmage is supposed to be demanding and imperious, not gregarious and flamboyant. You behave as though you want to show off your talent, but whit what we have seen you can make, you hardly need the noble's approval to get what you want. Or ours, for that matter." Victoria says as she pets a fiery corgi in her lap.
I pause and ponder what I want to say, I am not going to be chummy with an autocratic imperialist, but I guess I can be polite at least. It's no fun if you can't banter with foes; I feel like that's what I have been lacking in my adventures so far, a foe that hates me but is witty. Hmmm, thoughts for another time?
"I just like having fun; gazing at awed people's faces brings me gratification. Of course, I am imperious and ruthless for my foes. But I am between allies now, am I not?" I say while squatting down and petting the corgi.
"We are allies." She emphasises "But you have to understand, humanity hasn't created an archmage since Sir Issac newton discovered gravity magic. It would behove us to know what kind of man we have bound our empire with. What can we even teach you? Your artefacts and magics are stronger than any we can create, and you will probably slay a dragon soon, so you hardly need wealth."
There is an entreating air in her words; a peek behind the mask shows a woman that is struggling to deal with a complete unknown. The uncertainty gnaws at her adamant will, a dread building up in her gut despite all my assurances.
I feel a moment of sympathy for her, a sapient to another. Then I remember her armies are committing genocide against half a dozen countries of non-human sapients, and my feelings evaporate. I remember why I made my gifts; poisoned apples. It's a terrible institution made up of evil people that will plunder a nation to benefit their bottom line.
"Don't worry about it. Its mere academic curiosity drives me; I haven't been on this plane for centuries, and I am deeply interested in the development humanity has done for magic and artifice. I am particularly interested in the NoMs; I have been thinking of taking some more disciples, and lack of elemental affinity is no bar to me. Maybe I will raise a Monastry and Tower of my own; we shall see." I muse, lying through enchanted granted skills.
"Before you make any plans, the reason we invited you here in the garden. We will invoke our treaty, a threat to the holding of the empire in Oceana. The shoals of the sea kings assail our shores, and the colonies barely hold on; we wish you to push them back. In return, you will be given full access to the shards archives." Her voice is firm, a queen demanding her due.
I flippantly throw my head back and drink the wine In a single gulp to aggravate her further.
"Of course, It should be a good day's workout; I should be done by the day after tomorrow; tell your tower architects to expect me then. I will push back the mermen hoards." I proclaim and plane shift to my demiplane; it is exciting; I get to test out my Elder Treants In action so soon, and I can really let loose with my destructive magic; I haven't really let loose properly, now is the time to experiment and push my limits.
Queen Victoria is the ruler of a centuries-old dynasty, a leader who has led them through war and peace and overseen grave social changes. An ardent social and political operator who is a deft hand at diplomacy. But she is merely a magister, far from the strongest mage in the commonwealth.
Its different political structure from my world, the tangible power and miracles of faith have kept the church of England a fairly important part of the social fabric of the Magocracy. As the chosen representative of the god on this earth, it has given a massive amount of power compared to my own world's monarchy.
So there are expectations of how you are supposed to act when meeting, protocols and traditions. Now, as an Archmage of considerable power, I am exempt from the bowing and scraping, I am not going to do it, and I will disintegrate anyone that suggests that.
So I teleport directly to the front of Buckingham Palace. It's a power play, spending an obscene amount of mana to bypass their wards. I am immediately surrounded by the guards, pointing their spellwands at me, prepared spells ready to be unleashed on me.
There is a crack of thunder, and half a dozen knights appear around me, riding purple griffons crackling with lightning.
"Hail Knight captain, I am not late for my appointment, am I??" I ask faux-innocently. Lightning crackles around the man's sword, the stalwart guardian of the queen knows he can't harm me yet, no matter my much my actions are a breach of the Standard Protocol.
"We were told to expect you, Mage Raj. Come, we shall lead you through the security cordon; we wouldn't want to have any accidents now." The is trying to powerplay me, calling me a mage, the lowest ranked magic user of the magocracy. He also wanted to insinuate their defences could harm me, which was only true as long as I didn't retaliate. He dismounts, and his squad give me an honour guard and leads me down the labyrinthine corridors of the palace; servants scuttle and make way for us and ahead of I hear a herald announce my arrival.
"Of course, we wouldn't want any accidents. Say, that griffon of yours, is it something I could conceivably get access to it? I wouldn't mind a second familiar, something smaller and more fluffy. My current familiar is kind of too deadly for playing with children and the like." I realised immediately after saying it that I had gone too far. A knight's mount is their closest companion, the brother that has carried them through the hardest battles. My goading remarks have hit too close to the mark. I see his knuckle crack as he grips his pommel in a vice grip. His gait has changed; he is walking on the balls of his feet, ready to swivel and dodge in any direction. I am not worried, but I do feel a bit bad; then I remember he has probably committed war crimes for the queen, so I am fine being a dick to him.
"I would challenge you to duel, sir, but I will put duty before honour. But know this, you have made an enemy of Sir Curtis Hughshire by dishonouring my partner."
I just smirk at him; I would love to do some light exercise after this.
Then I walk through the doors to the throne rooms.
The Throne room is an assault on the senses as soon as I step through the climate control and privacy wards. The sound of the gathered audience is like a shockwave filled with the tittering of the socialites and gruff voices of warrior nobles. The sight is what is noticeable; next, an obscenely opulent room festooned with decorations, magic and enough hunting trophies to depopulate a forest.
As I walk into the room, a pall of silence fills the room, the crowd turning to face me. It seemed the queen was one for subtle powerplays; I was not told about the gathering of nobles witnessing this audience.
I shrug; my plan here is pretty simple, and the more witnesses there are, the better it is for me.
Queen Victoria is seated on the throne; her vestments glow with incredible magic. Each crown jewel is the prized artefact of a conquered kingdom, and the gold filigree of her sceptre is mined from a dozen holy mountains.
"I present myself before your highness to ratify the treaty discussed with the Lord Protector," I say with a nod; I am not her subject; I dare to treat openly as an equal to the magocracy; to maintain that facade, I cannot show weakness, they will eat me up alive if I show a bit of deference. The act of the ancient archmage is risky, but I have to follow through on it.
"We have considered your proposal and the advice of our most loyal protector. We agree to this agreement between you and our empire. But we have some questions first." The queen's voice echoes in the hall, and the party quiets down.
"You have promised us much, and you have proved that you have some means of achieving your claims. But a troll king is a gnat before an elder wyrm, and we would be loath to lose an ally so soon." Her magic-enhanced voice rings through the hall, and I realise her play. She wants me to prove myself in front of the cloud. If I fail to deliver, it would be better to know before I fail and provoke a mythic being, but if I succeed, she gets the credit for getting a powerful ally, and no doubt her position is strengthened in front of the nobles milling in the halls.
I nod and grin, for this plays perfectly what I want to do as well; the big play meant to wow the snooty nobles.
I had dug down into the faintly remembered history of my world and chose my diplomatic tactics, and I remember a trivia about kings trying to one-up each other in diplomatic gifts to showcase their wealth and power.
"I will be happy to demonstrate for our gathered audience here and present my gifts to the throne in a single stroke of good fortune; her majesty is wise to give me the opportunity." I say blithely, indicating to her that I know her to play and am willing to play ball as it suits me. She nods her head imperceptibly; to the observers, it may seem like a signal to continue, but I know it to be an acknowledgement.
I grab my bag of holding and turn to face the crowd.
"In the grand tradition of gift giving established by the wise men themselves, I will present three gifts to her majesty and the magocracy."
I reach deep inside the bag and present my first gifts.
So, I worked on my gifts the entire month, spending mana like water to accelerate a slow process of making magical items and constructs. Seeing my actions, my council had decided to surprise me, or thror and blossom decided to surprise me; Nestor didn't want to participate.
So, my dwarves had spent the entire month secretly doing a cultural recovery project. Hundreds of summoned runelords brought their heads together to figure out how to make golems again. The Dawi used to field entire armies of golems, with masters like Snorri Klausson leading entire throngs to slay three separate Everchosen. But due to the war of vengeance, it had been a lost art, with each master targeted by elven assassins to further weakened the dawi. But with an unfathomable amount of ale and more cooperation than ever in history, recovering the Rune of Animation was something they did do.
"I know her majesty is a fan of hunting, but seeing how the prey in these lands is a bit out of range for the hounds, So I decided to gift you some more effective companions." I open the mouth of the bag, and half a dozen Dwarf Steel thanator golems walk out. Each is a perfect replica of the 10-foot tall predator lion-wolf things; even the whiskers move as if they were hair and not impossibly fine dwarven metalcraft.
I look at the animation matrix with my mage sight in appreciation. The Mater Rune of Animation is paired with the Runes of Grungi and Valaya, making the golems into the perfect regenerating killing machines.
They prowl around the room, sniffing at nobles and furniture; no one in front of them dares move, their primal hindbrain screaming at them to raise their mage shield and fight or flee, but decades of comportment training carry most of them through without embarrassing themselves, but one panicked noble accidentally unleash a fireball at the things as one of their tails swished too close to his face. The explosion leaves both of them alive, the mage shield of the mage and the raw strength and magical resistance of the Dwarf steel golems shrugging off the magic with ease. After that bit of a show, I introduce the gifts.
"I crafted these constructs to be completely loyal to your august presence, your majesty. They are based on my familiar, and I feel there is no bigger statement of trust a Mage can make. They are untiring machines of death and the greatest hunters on their plane. I hope they help you hunt down your prey just as they have helped me." I finish my speech and notice the Knight Captain has gone white with fear; my thanators are twice the size of his mount, and they would hunt them by the flock if meeting in the wild; I think he thought my comment about my familiar being too scary to be friendly with children was a joke, but now he realises the magnitude of his mistake.
The Constructs slink low and approach the queen like a cat looking to be petted. Now was my turn to put her on the spot; she could appear to be scared and not let them approach her, showing weakness in front of her nobles, or she could allow my death machines near her.
The Thanators approach and the Queen pats their head like kittens; it seems she has some steel in her spine, yet, good, I want to present all my gifts; I spent a lot of time making them.
"My next gift is a bit more utilitarian, more of a gift for the nation. A living and growing bulwark to protect the people of the empire." I do a bit of showmanship as I walk in front of the crowd, getting them excited. With a flick of my hand, a map of the world appears, with each human territory marked in gold, red and black concentric circles.
"We all know about the dangers of the Wilds and the black and red zones. We learned and adapted to them" I knew most nobles have only gone out in wilds without powerful escorts " But some marauding beings aren't content with that; they lead armies against our bastions, slaughter the NoMs and damage infrastructure. So I made a solution to solve that. No more shall our cities be threatened; no more will they cower in fear."
I pick up my gift, and it floats above my hand, a giant seed bursting with nature's magic.
"This is the seed of an Elder Treant, Guardians of Nature and Father of Forests. They are usually extremely against cities. But I have shaped this one myself. Anyone can bond with it as familiar before planting it, and then it will sprout into a fully-fledged being, a nature spirit incarnated in an arcane tree. It can control plants and animate them as armies to smite humanity's foes, from Mermen to Efreeti. It will bear fruits all year round, which will sprout into treants that can also be bound as familiars, and a few hundred of them in a city can raise armies of their own. Of course, they can't attack humans aside from in self-defence; I have hardcoded that into their essence; we wouldn't want a Mage oppressing his fellows due to this gift." I swish my hands, and the seed floats towards the queen, ending my dramatic yet verbose presentation.
It is actually a collaboration between the Lifeshapers and the Shamans. They were inspired by my descriptions of the Treemen Ancient of Dawi world, Demigod spirits of nature capable of resisting even god and serving as progenitors to cohorts of nature spirits. They decided to recreate that kind of being; this is the first working model.
The life shapers made its body a treant as a base and then improved to the point that they could fist fight dragons and bench press a galleon. They specifically crafted its Minds, so it isn't a person or can even think. It is to serve as a totem for a greater spirit of nature, which was the job of the Shamans. They drew deep into the natural magic and deep into the dream of the forests; there, they gathered the essence of the oldest trees and forged a great spirit of the forest.
They drew forth this spirit to embody it into the lifeshaper's master peace, and the first elder treant was born. I was brought in to graft the soul bits necessary to form essence for this primaeval guardian, and it was complete. I took a pattern for later summoning; you never know, I might have to go to a plane with no forest, and then I wouldn't want to lack access to this demigod of nature.
It stands a gargantuan 100 Meters once it is planted, and its girth is comparable to skyscrapers. Its body is based on the redwood trees, the only plants large and robust enough to house spirits of that power. It can animate trees for kilometres and generally control and grow plants without limits. Its foliage gathers the sunlight and stores it to release blasts of searing light magic to burn any foes.
I also have lied to the queen; it won't be a bond of master and familiar, but more of a symbiotic bond because no human soul could come close to bonding with a spirit of this power. The shamans have crafted the spirit to draw more on its mythos as a guardian, and the human partner will serve to make human cities something like its domain as well, expanding what it considers its remit.
Of course, human cities are going to become mini-forests, if for nothing else but the number of defences it will give them and the enhanced production of being in a treant's presence. It is a beacon of nature magic, and anything in its presence will grow much quicker. This will solve most food trouble of a city and, with magical plants, many other issues as well.
It's a treasure beyond reckoning, valuable beyond measure; A Mythic on the side of humanity that will eventually guard every city with its children. It is an unfathomable boon, and that's why it's a trap.
A treasure so valuable that kingdoms have been brought to their knees for less. The gift is so valuable that every frontier colony will beg for it to protect them from the mermen shoals slavering at their walls. Every noble will struggle and play to be granted the honour of bonding with the seed and making their line the guardians of the empire. The few Archmages that the magocracy has will covet it, and so will the mythics that will know such power is possible to obtain.
This will make it the only option she has is to bond it with someone of the royal family, probably herself and ensure she doesn't let a second power block form around the elder treant's mage. She can't avoid using it because the colonies are under attack, and the treants it will constantly spawn are free troops capable of turning entire fronts of the Coral War.
I have successfully forced her hand with a simple gift, shaping the nature of her empire forever more.
This isn't a power play for fun; I am playing to be an equal partner to the entire British empire. I have to show them I can hit hard and on a scale that will meaningfully hurt them. She will understand this gift to be a demonstration of power and cunning, the actions of an archmage I am pretending to be and am, in truth, if nearly not that old.
The crowd titters and murmurs at the gift and the Queen doesn't showcase any emotion as she accepts the gift and, very pointedly, keeps it in her own hand, despite the aids ready with cushions to hold it.
"My final gift is a bit more personal to me. I have personally handcrafted it, inspired by the most famous stories of your land." I put my hand into the bag of holding, and I feel the entire crowd focus on that, excited and perturbed to see what my next gift is going to be.
I draw forth the sword and hold it aloft in my hand. A Black Blade with a Golden Edge, three runes adorn it, and a visible aura of magic surrounds the blade. It is made in the style of an English broad sword, and it radiates power to the entire room, drawing attention and adoration for the prismatic aura of magic that anyone with sense magic could spend hours deciphering.
This is the gift I made personally; well, I had the dwarfs forge the actual blade from gromril. It's pretty easy; I just had to figure out how to summon the Gromril blades that my thanes wield without summoning the full person.
This is the first time I tried changing a pattern myself instead of it happening naturally, but it was fairly easy because it was a distinct item separate from the creatures. I still can't make any changes to the actual creatures, but I can change their loadouts, as it were, but only to an extent that they remain the same pattern; a thane with an axe or a rifle is fine, a thane with a runic staff is not.
I am pretty proud of the blade I have created; the enchantment on this is very strong, especially after half a dozen failures I had making its predecessors.
The blade is obviously a magical weapon of immense power, so it has the standard features, hitting hard, hitting better and being nigh unbreakable. But the real coup de grace is the spell I imbued onto the blade.
I based this blade on Excalibur, the sword of promised victory and the blade of the once and future king. So I wanted to be thematic with this blade. It took me weeks and weeks of crafting and enchanting alongside dozens of failures to craft it. But I had distilled the essence of Excalibur in this blade.
There is this nifty thing that clerics can cast, a spell or prayer called Divine Favour. It is what it says on the tin, a god's favour on their champion, subtly twisting fate to make them better at everything. The only downside was that it lasted only a little while, and it wasn't very strong at the end of the day, a minor advantage overall. Well, I decided to fix those flaws.
I broke down the spell into its basics and figured out how it interacts with fate, destiny, or probability. Then I isolated those elements and discovered that they only work because gods have a certain ontological weight to them. They let the spell channel a bit of that to enhance themselves; it's a luck transfer spell more than anything else.
Now, what I did to solve that was what is turning out to be my customary solution, throw an obscene amount of mana at it. I gathered hundreds of motes of White, blue and black mana motes and tried to craft a construct that could mimic a god's passive favour. It took a while, and a few mistakes, like when I inverted the spell matrix, and it became a bad luck curse or when the matrix fluctuated just so, and a pair of dwarves playing a dice game got just 1s for a week, and they couldn't stop playing.
But I have succeeded after weeks of work, and the spell is much better than before. It has a spell matrix embedded in the blade, dedicated to twisting fate to favour its wielder forever. The magnitude of the spell was also massively improved when I spent five hundred mana Motes into the spell matrix. It's powerful enough that a person can walk through a rainstorm and not get more than a single drop of rain or a dog winning chess against a grandmaster 99% of the time. It isn't absolute by any means; it can be countered if one plans enough or if one is much stronger than their foes; in my case, I know spells like twisted futures or alter fortune to change fate directly. I am not giving them a weapon that can kill me.
"It can't be wielded by anyone, of course; as I mentioned, it is inspired by the legends." I throw the sword in the air, and an unnaturally strong gust of wind blows it outside the throne room and out of the palace entirely. It lands on the sidewalk, blade first, digging deep into the ground among throngs of tourists hopping to catch sight of the queen. Later investigations would discover that somehow the climate control spells of the palace malfunctioned for a few seconds to produce that gust of wind " There it lies, ready to choose its champion, a person of noble heart, strong morals and sharp mind. A paragon of humanity and a champion of the good. I don't know who the blade will choose or how; it could be decades for all we know, but it will only be drawn by its chosen wielder."
The crowd goes wild; I see a few nobles rushing outside, trying to maintain decorum while competing to be the first ones to draw the blade.
I just smile and take a bow, that of a showman that doesn't have a hint of subservience in it. This is fun; I should play the out-of-touch archmage some more.
The queen looks like she is going to order my execution right there and then. It was the kind of gift that will undermine her legitimacy among the plebs as everyone knew the sword in the stone decided the throne of England, and it would be something that will cause strife among nobles and lure young nobles to be good, to qualify for the blade. The sword will prove its power over time, and any attempt to remove it will be thwarted by luck every time.
"I thank you a third time for your generous gifts; it is a good day for the empire to have made such a generous friend." The queen pronounces, "Now, let's stop dawdling and make merry."
The crowd cheers and hollers, the wine having clearly loosened some lips. I am surrounded by a throng of minor nobles, trying to chat me up and make me more favourable to them. I mostly chat absent-mindedly; I have been to enough university conferences to know how to talk to pompous buffons who have an overinflated sense of egos. I have an eye out for the major houses, the dukes and viscounts and princes as they maintain distance, looking for more information before they make a move. I enjoy the party; the food and drinks are rich.
After an hour or so of mingling, a staff member approached me and invited me to a more secluded meeting with the queen in the private garden.
"You aren't what we expected. An archmage is supposed to be demanding and imperious, not gregarious and flamboyant. You behave as though you want to show off your talent, but whit what we have seen you can make, you hardly need the noble's approval to get what you want. Or ours, for that matter." Victoria says as she pets a fiery corgi in her lap.
I pause and ponder what I want to say, I am not going to be chummy with an autocratic imperialist, but I guess I can be polite at least. It's no fun if you can't banter with foes; I feel like that's what I have been lacking in my adventures so far, a foe that hates me but is witty. Hmmm, thoughts for another time?
"I just like having fun; gazing at awed people's faces brings me gratification. Of course, I am imperious and ruthless for my foes. But I am between allies now, am I not?" I say while squatting down and petting the corgi.
"We are allies." She emphasises "But you have to understand, humanity hasn't created an archmage since Sir Issac newton discovered gravity magic. It would behove us to know what kind of man we have bound our empire with. What can we even teach you? Your artefacts and magics are stronger than any we can create, and you will probably slay a dragon soon, so you hardly need wealth."
There is an entreating air in her words; a peek behind the mask shows a woman that is struggling to deal with a complete unknown. The uncertainty gnaws at her adamant will, a dread building up in her gut despite all my assurances.
I feel a moment of sympathy for her, a sapient to another. Then I remember her armies are committing genocide against half a dozen countries of non-human sapients, and my feelings evaporate. I remember why I made my gifts; poisoned apples. It's a terrible institution made up of evil people that will plunder a nation to benefit their bottom line.
"Don't worry about it. Its mere academic curiosity drives me; I haven't been on this plane for centuries, and I am deeply interested in the development humanity has done for magic and artifice. I am particularly interested in the NoMs; I have been thinking of taking some more disciples, and lack of elemental affinity is no bar to me. Maybe I will raise a Monastry and Tower of my own; we shall see." I muse, lying through enchanted granted skills.
"Before you make any plans, the reason we invited you here in the garden. We will invoke our treaty, a threat to the holding of the empire in Oceana. The shoals of the sea kings assail our shores, and the colonies barely hold on; we wish you to push them back. In return, you will be given full access to the shards archives." Her voice is firm, a queen demanding her due.
I flippantly throw my head back and drink the wine In a single gulp to aggravate her further.
"Of course, It should be a good day's workout; I should be done by the day after tomorrow; tell your tower architects to expect me then. I will push back the mermen hoards." I proclaim and plane shift to my demiplane; it is exciting; I get to test out my Elder Treants In action so soon, and I can really let loose with my destructive magic; I haven't really let loose properly, now is the time to experiment and push my limits.
- Location
- Planet Earth
I dislike how the MC is coming across as though all of this, all of what he has been and is currently going through, is a game. Or something that exists for his enjoyment. Instead of treating every situation like it is real life, and these are real people.
It comes across like the MC is just a kid dreaming, or with their imagination going wild, while they are on a power trip.
Would like it more if the MC just treated everyone/everything like someone in the real world would. Like... everyday life, people being people, and the struggles are the rare occasions when things go sideways.
Maybe with the MC going from reality to reality, doing the fix-fic thing while doing what they can to improve themselves and maybe make from friends along the way. Or at least try to not make enemies.
It comes across like the MC is just a kid dreaming, or with their imagination going wild, while they are on a power trip.
Would like it more if the MC just treated everyone/everything like someone in the real world would. Like... everyday life, people being people, and the struggles are the rare occasions when things go sideways.
Maybe with the MC going from reality to reality, doing the fix-fic thing while doing what they can to improve themselves and maybe make from friends along the way. Or at least try to not make enemies.
This is deliberate thing. It is part how character grows.
But despite that I mentioned it in the chapter but i will reiterate it. This is the british colonial empire at the height of its power. They have committed or are in the process of committing multiple cultural and actual genocide. Like the MC hates them with a burning passion and rightfully so. So him being a dick to them is justified.
- Location
- Pale Blue Dot
Quite fair. But it might be an idea to show, not just tell. Even if just about the background as throwaway lines when going to push back those mermen.
That will come in time. He is in the heartland for now. Its where they like to keep things looking good. He is leaving for the fringes now.
Thanks for reading.
Chapter 17
Mermen is a gross misnomer applied by humanity to their eternal foes. It is akin to calling every single thing living on the surface a human. But it is humanity's nature to deride and dehumanise any tribe opposed to them, so they feel no empathy for their foes.
Those called mermen by humanity are hundreds and thousands of species of aquatic sapient life, birthed and sustained by deep sea rifts to the plane of water, dumping biomass and energy into this world since time immemorial. From the mightiest Kraken and sea drakes to the meanest guppymen and shrimpeople, all are different creatures with completely alien existences to each other.
But one thing unites them all, the one thing that also unites humanity: power. The unbridled might of the undersea sovereigns brings entire ecologies to heel as those ancient monsters play fight wars against each other in wars where millions of creatures die daily. That is the other thing that connects all beings; they all swim with death as a constant companion, for there is always a bigger fish and a hungrier swarm ready to devour them for food and essence.
Since the recent world wars, times have been unusually fecund for the undersea principalities as more food has been available through planar rifts, and more eggs have survived to adulthood. Now, that is terrifying for the world because when there are too many beings for the local carrying capacity to maintain, great shoals are organised. Massive expeditionary groups composed of the young seek new fortunes and bring new territory into their domain. It solves the problem either way for the monarchs; either enough of them die that the food supply should be secure, or they conquer more territory that brings more food for the population. By that, I refer to civilians of other nations because cannibalism is a significant food source for the various kingdoms and clans that comprise an undersea monarch's domain.
Recently, the Oceania region has been beset by multiple such great shoals, laying siege to the territory of all landbound nations and making sea travel and trade perilous. Each shoal is led by planar royalty and dragon scions, vying to prove themselves superior to their siblings in front of their progenitors. They command millions of fodder and thousands of sea hags or elemental mages.
Now, I am being tasked to put an end to that threat. I am not going to say I am excited about killing that many creatures, even if they are invasive cannibals. The morality of committing what will essentially a genocide is unacceptable. So I have to solve things in a way that minimises the bloodshed and allows me to really let loose; I have been itching to try large-scale magic in combat, to know my spell formulas adjusted to use my mana work properly and; maybe I will admit I do want to see some explosions.
Now, there is a way of threading this needle; it's the standard move of killing their leaders and professional army and routing the cannon fodder. It is not a satisfying answer to me; first, it ignores the consequence of enemies death. Each general is also lord of these shoal's territory, and their death will incite a feeding frenzy, rivals both domestic and foreign, will kill and slaughter to conquer those territories and their food sources. It will indirectly lead to a slaughter that will be 10 times the size I would prevent by stopping them here. It's the trolley problem on a massive scale. Do I save the Oceana colonies and kill millions of mermen as a result, purely because they are human or do I let them continue and hundreds of thousands of humans die, and I break my treaty?
Well, I hate the fucking trolly problem; I am going to make a third path and change things, so I don't have to choose. I am going to need help; I am low on mana, and it's a massive area, so what else to do but call on my creations?
I spend the majority of my mana that night summoning 3 Elder Treants and 3 titans to stand against the leviathans of the sea. Each lumbering giant nods at me in respect and promptly goes to sleep. They are trees; they do not think on the scale of humans, a few years' naps are nothing to them, and millennia is but a year to their perception. If I don't prod them, they could just fall asleep in my pocket dimension and saturate it with their essence until spirits literally start sprouting from the earth. I don't want that, so I send a mental order for them to stay awake for a day or two before they go to sleep.
They shrug in response and open their eyes, the movement shaking their canopies and generating gale-force winds. I feel like this is going to be an annoyance to goad them into battle; I am super glad they have an innate loyalty to me. Otherwise, it is incredibly hard.
I rest for a few hours, spending it meditating on soul crafting, napping in my enchanted bed and gathering what mana I can. I have a light meal of a fruit salad and a hearty dwarf ale to prepare me for my mission. I could just remove my need for food, but it's honestly not worth it because I enjoy having a meal; I still have some rings of sustenance, but it's not something I'm eager to use daily.
I gather a dozen of my Arch druids and hold a meeting, assigning a quartet of Arch druids to each of the elder treants. They will serve as guards and support in case of any emergencies and serve to counteract the weather magics of the sea witches. They will also be tasked with transporting them, a test for their new variation of the Fey gates that allow them to enter and leave my demiplane.
The ArchDruids scramble up the 100-meter-tall forms of the elder treants and find perches in their boughs. I feel them synching their magic with the elders, the mastery of the archdruids helping the demigods shape their powers to an astounding degree, each one now capable of growing a single flower from seed or causing every tree in a forest to bloom. The Arch druids are, in turn, strengthened, tapping into the unlimited reactor of nature magic that is an elder treant, pumping more magic into their spells and invocations.
They prove this new benefit as I command their advance, and three circles of giant mushrooms sprout around our feet. The mushrooms harmonise in a single instant, and a surge of green and grey finds us in a completely different location on the material plane.
There is a city in the distance, a modern metropolis under siege, kilometres of suburbia flattened and burned by scaly invaders and families put to swords. In the distance, a looming tower flashes with scintillating beams of destruction and walls of force, an untouched fortress striking down any creature that dares approach the city's main districts. Hundreds of thousands of NoMs wield wands in defence of their homes, holding off the tide in desperate barrages from behind transmuted barricades and pillboxes. Fireballs and chain lightning flash out from fortified structures of the tower guards, heavier spell wands atop golem engines providing fire support to beleaguered defenders. Mage flights flitter through the air under the defensive umbrella of the tower airspace, returning from deep strikes against the enemies' fortifications and relief missions to outlining towns and outposts that still hold out through unyielding will and a stroke of copious good luck.
The enemy is just as horrid as described, guppy and sigh people swarming, while crab people form the core of the shoal; water is slowly being pushed into the city, allowing the sea knights and crocodilian monstrosities access to the fortification. Constant rain buffets the city, hampering the defenders and hydrating the mermen invaders. In the distance, illuminated by spell strikes from the tower, are the lurking leviathans, gigantic sea creatures acting as carriers and battering rams for the mermen, stressing and breaking the outlying resonance generators that protected the cities and toppling the out forts that line the Sydney bay.
I have to be honest; it's hard to stick to my resolution of treating the mermen as sapient beings worthy of respect. It's all good and fine when I was pontificating in my demesne, but it's a totally different ball game when I can see them butcher people in the street. I hold myself from going old testament on these creatures, but I finally calm myself by repeating my platitudes, it's not their fault; it's the forces of demographics, biology and politics pushing them to these actions. It rings hollow in my ears, but I can't lose myself to berserk anger and hate; that will never end well.
I order the Elder Treants to march towards the bulk of the shoal just as sunlight starts peaking behind us. The battering of the city subsides for the first time in days, and we usher in a spring morning in our wake.
The battle slows as the armies detect our approach, I feel a new spell being loaded in the tower to blast us, but I quickly send divination past their buffers. We come ins peace and all that.
I don't deter the shoal; their response is just as quick but different.
A surge of water and a tidal wave surges towards me and the treants, and atop the crest of the wave ride the knights of the depths, mermen ridding sea horses their barding and lances swirling with ice magic, an aura of abjuration emanating from their shields protect them.
The archdruids respond by halting the mini-tsunami in its track, the power of 3 demigods bent to halt millions of tons of water from crashing against the shins of the treants. The knights look flabbergasted as their charge is halted in such a way. I smile as I see sea witches clutch their heads as they crash against the adamant will and magic of the archdruids. Each of them is one of the strongest spell casters in this world, and they have the magical reserve of demigods at their disposal. Stopping some magical weather manipulation and a few tidal waves is well in their wheelhouse.
The treants stride through the wave, barely reaching up to their shins. The knights try to swarm around their legs, losing blasts of frost and blades of ice striking their legs and glancing at the iron-skinned bark. They realise too late as the displacement of water pulls them under, and the churn crushes their bodies, leaving a bloody trail for the marching titans.
I order them to stop and plant themselves.
This is the secret to their power. The lifeshapers have formed a body that metabolises the natural energies, sunlight, water and environmental mana and adds it to their own prodigious production.
The treants plant their feet, roots stretching kilometres in seconds, tapping into leylines and mana wells. Their canopies glow for a second before they turn crystalline, capturing and absorbing the energy of the sun.
In two minutes, they reach maximum saturation and start using that excess energy. Fruits bloom on their branches and ripen in seconds before dropping onto the ground. So concentrated with magic are they that they sprout into leshys, dryads and shambling mounds sprouting and charging into the forces of the shoal.
It starts like rain, with one or two creatures at first, but it picks up the pace like monsoon rain, with fruits falling fast and hard. Dozens and then hundreds of creatures are born and fight every second.
The elder treants can do this forever, as befitting their title. The fathers of forests march, and their children fight with them.
The clash intensified quickly, with troops from both sides streaming in to achieve victory. The mage tower deploys a pair of flights to investigate and pepper me with messages. I wave them off and send a condensed explanation via illusions; the flight swerves before they can be picked off by opportunists.
I cast a spell to amplify my sound and stun the greater leviathans streaming in towards the fight. The lions shout echoes for dozens of kilometres and shred the weaker inside of the bigger monsters.
I proclaim, "Come face me in honourable combat, dragon scion or forever be marked as a coward who ran away from a human. Know that even if you don't accept, all that will change is that you will die in your command post instead of on the battlefield. So come face me, dragonkin and face castigation."
No one answers; of course, the foes are not stupid enough to challenge the master of three demigods, but that, too, is according to my plan. I cast another spell, Locate Creature, and find the dragon-scion hiding out in the depths of the sea surrounded by its strongest minions. Typical bully, only strong until someone bigger comes along. Not like I can criticise though it's not like I wouldn't do the same thing if I were in his place.
I prepare a spell, something I want to try since forever for my evocation studies, but I never have the time. So I precast this spell, and one of my druid's dimensions doors me next to the princeling.
It's a tremendous creature; a saltwater crocodile the size of a passenger jet with stubby wings and scales of a half-dragon.
It turns swiftly, sensing my arrival in its domain, its body turning despite the water resistance, its magic more than sufficient to move at an impossible speed. Its honour guard of croc people charges me as well, ready to lay down their life for their liege and most likely father.
So I oblige them and cast my spell.
The spell of contagious flame is an ingenious design by Lya, a beam of fire magic that acts as the carrier wave for a second spell form that fires after the first ray has hit its target. Then the second spell matrix triggers and shoots another ray carrying its one spell form. It's incredibly good for clearing target-rich environments and especially so since I put 50 motes of red mana into this thing. Normally the spell can only jump 3 times, but in my hand, it can branch dozens of times.
So the ten beams of fire I launch at the lead guards, and they look dumbly at the hole punched in their chests; then the spell matrices triggers and another 10 die and then another 10 and soon the entire body of hundreds shatters, most dying and the survivors running away despite their father's essence commanding them, that's to do with the cloak of dragon fear I cloak my self in. most of the other chaff become too scared to approach me, and those who reach me are shredded by my defensive spells and my water adapted thantor.
My spells give time for the dragon-croc to respond, and it does so by lashing out with a magic-sheathed tail strike. My contingency spell actives, and I am teleported a hundred meters in its blind spot. I don't give it a chance to turn this time and lash out with duel black mana spells.
A polar ray and enervation lance out and strike the creature, punching through its hide and its spell resistance. When the spell hits the creature, its soul is desiccated and frozen; it slows tremendously as its agility is shattered, and its soul is ravaged to reduce it to an ember of its glory.
It tries to breathe a beam of acid at me, but I impose a wall of force to deflect it; the hit melts thousands of remaining shoals that had surrounded us.
I summon chains of light to bind its snout, and the spell anchors it to the sea floor; the croc is dragged down by the white mana constructs and lays there sullenly.
"Well, kill me then, archmage. Know that I will never submit to you. I will shatter my core if you try to bind my spirit. It was an honourable fight, and I demand an honourable death." His voice is muffled by the closed mouth, but it still echoes for miles.
"I am not here to kill you, idiot. I am here to solve your people's problems that lead to these periodic invasions. I am going to give you a gift, and you are going to say thank you and spread it to all your people and competitors. You can't hoard it; I have already cast the geas for that on you."
I summon the thing I had my life shapers make inside a time-altered demiplane while under permanent haste just so they could finish it last night; it took weeks worth of their effort and strained their souls, but there were successful in their tasks.
The shrimp floats in my hand, happily eating the plankton floating around.
"This is the most efficient mana-to-food converter you will find; if injected with a first circle's worth of mana, it will self replicate till it can serve as hundreds of kilograms of food. You can feed the entire shoal just with the output of your sea witches and your entire kingdom if only 5 per cent of people serve as mana sources. I am giving you one of these mana shrimps because you will serve as an early adaptor and spread it to the rest of the undersea kingdoms." I showcase that by putting a mote of mana into the shrimp, and it drinks it easily, quickly releasing eggs that grow into a full adult in a minute. Sadly due to the rushed nature, it will only work in this world for now, because it can use the ambient mana that is flooding this world to supplement the original spell. It will take a while to develop a universal version.
I also have doubts about this plan; I could easily see these things serving as fuel for huge populations and thus leading to more wars and invasions of the surface. I have tried to mitigate that but having it designed so that it works better the deeper they are, but I am sure it will eventually be used to fuel invasion, not to mention the risk to the ecology it could cause. But the undersea kingdoms are voracious; I doubt they will leave enough to overpopulate.
I haven't figured out how to prevent invasions completely, but it should reduce 90% of them as those are the desperate crusades of starving populations. I imagine humanity will just have to learn to treat them as hostile nations with possible invasions instead of certain enemies bent on eating each other.
Now, let's hope this doesn't go wrong.
Those called mermen by humanity are hundreds and thousands of species of aquatic sapient life, birthed and sustained by deep sea rifts to the plane of water, dumping biomass and energy into this world since time immemorial. From the mightiest Kraken and sea drakes to the meanest guppymen and shrimpeople, all are different creatures with completely alien existences to each other.
But one thing unites them all, the one thing that also unites humanity: power. The unbridled might of the undersea sovereigns brings entire ecologies to heel as those ancient monsters play fight wars against each other in wars where millions of creatures die daily. That is the other thing that connects all beings; they all swim with death as a constant companion, for there is always a bigger fish and a hungrier swarm ready to devour them for food and essence.
Since the recent world wars, times have been unusually fecund for the undersea principalities as more food has been available through planar rifts, and more eggs have survived to adulthood. Now, that is terrifying for the world because when there are too many beings for the local carrying capacity to maintain, great shoals are organised. Massive expeditionary groups composed of the young seek new fortunes and bring new territory into their domain. It solves the problem either way for the monarchs; either enough of them die that the food supply should be secure, or they conquer more territory that brings more food for the population. By that, I refer to civilians of other nations because cannibalism is a significant food source for the various kingdoms and clans that comprise an undersea monarch's domain.
Recently, the Oceania region has been beset by multiple such great shoals, laying siege to the territory of all landbound nations and making sea travel and trade perilous. Each shoal is led by planar royalty and dragon scions, vying to prove themselves superior to their siblings in front of their progenitors. They command millions of fodder and thousands of sea hags or elemental mages.
Now, I am being tasked to put an end to that threat. I am not going to say I am excited about killing that many creatures, even if they are invasive cannibals. The morality of committing what will essentially a genocide is unacceptable. So I have to solve things in a way that minimises the bloodshed and allows me to really let loose; I have been itching to try large-scale magic in combat, to know my spell formulas adjusted to use my mana work properly and; maybe I will admit I do want to see some explosions.
Now, there is a way of threading this needle; it's the standard move of killing their leaders and professional army and routing the cannon fodder. It is not a satisfying answer to me; first, it ignores the consequence of enemies death. Each general is also lord of these shoal's territory, and their death will incite a feeding frenzy, rivals both domestic and foreign, will kill and slaughter to conquer those territories and their food sources. It will indirectly lead to a slaughter that will be 10 times the size I would prevent by stopping them here. It's the trolley problem on a massive scale. Do I save the Oceana colonies and kill millions of mermen as a result, purely because they are human or do I let them continue and hundreds of thousands of humans die, and I break my treaty?
Well, I hate the fucking trolly problem; I am going to make a third path and change things, so I don't have to choose. I am going to need help; I am low on mana, and it's a massive area, so what else to do but call on my creations?
I spend the majority of my mana that night summoning 3 Elder Treants and 3 titans to stand against the leviathans of the sea. Each lumbering giant nods at me in respect and promptly goes to sleep. They are trees; they do not think on the scale of humans, a few years' naps are nothing to them, and millennia is but a year to their perception. If I don't prod them, they could just fall asleep in my pocket dimension and saturate it with their essence until spirits literally start sprouting from the earth. I don't want that, so I send a mental order for them to stay awake for a day or two before they go to sleep.
They shrug in response and open their eyes, the movement shaking their canopies and generating gale-force winds. I feel like this is going to be an annoyance to goad them into battle; I am super glad they have an innate loyalty to me. Otherwise, it is incredibly hard.
I rest for a few hours, spending it meditating on soul crafting, napping in my enchanted bed and gathering what mana I can. I have a light meal of a fruit salad and a hearty dwarf ale to prepare me for my mission. I could just remove my need for food, but it's honestly not worth it because I enjoy having a meal; I still have some rings of sustenance, but it's not something I'm eager to use daily.
I gather a dozen of my Arch druids and hold a meeting, assigning a quartet of Arch druids to each of the elder treants. They will serve as guards and support in case of any emergencies and serve to counteract the weather magics of the sea witches. They will also be tasked with transporting them, a test for their new variation of the Fey gates that allow them to enter and leave my demiplane.
The ArchDruids scramble up the 100-meter-tall forms of the elder treants and find perches in their boughs. I feel them synching their magic with the elders, the mastery of the archdruids helping the demigods shape their powers to an astounding degree, each one now capable of growing a single flower from seed or causing every tree in a forest to bloom. The Arch druids are, in turn, strengthened, tapping into the unlimited reactor of nature magic that is an elder treant, pumping more magic into their spells and invocations.
They prove this new benefit as I command their advance, and three circles of giant mushrooms sprout around our feet. The mushrooms harmonise in a single instant, and a surge of green and grey finds us in a completely different location on the material plane.
There is a city in the distance, a modern metropolis under siege, kilometres of suburbia flattened and burned by scaly invaders and families put to swords. In the distance, a looming tower flashes with scintillating beams of destruction and walls of force, an untouched fortress striking down any creature that dares approach the city's main districts. Hundreds of thousands of NoMs wield wands in defence of their homes, holding off the tide in desperate barrages from behind transmuted barricades and pillboxes. Fireballs and chain lightning flash out from fortified structures of the tower guards, heavier spell wands atop golem engines providing fire support to beleaguered defenders. Mage flights flitter through the air under the defensive umbrella of the tower airspace, returning from deep strikes against the enemies' fortifications and relief missions to outlining towns and outposts that still hold out through unyielding will and a stroke of copious good luck.
The enemy is just as horrid as described, guppy and sigh people swarming, while crab people form the core of the shoal; water is slowly being pushed into the city, allowing the sea knights and crocodilian monstrosities access to the fortification. Constant rain buffets the city, hampering the defenders and hydrating the mermen invaders. In the distance, illuminated by spell strikes from the tower, are the lurking leviathans, gigantic sea creatures acting as carriers and battering rams for the mermen, stressing and breaking the outlying resonance generators that protected the cities and toppling the out forts that line the Sydney bay.
I have to be honest; it's hard to stick to my resolution of treating the mermen as sapient beings worthy of respect. It's all good and fine when I was pontificating in my demesne, but it's a totally different ball game when I can see them butcher people in the street. I hold myself from going old testament on these creatures, but I finally calm myself by repeating my platitudes, it's not their fault; it's the forces of demographics, biology and politics pushing them to these actions. It rings hollow in my ears, but I can't lose myself to berserk anger and hate; that will never end well.
I order the Elder Treants to march towards the bulk of the shoal just as sunlight starts peaking behind us. The battering of the city subsides for the first time in days, and we usher in a spring morning in our wake.
The battle slows as the armies detect our approach, I feel a new spell being loaded in the tower to blast us, but I quickly send divination past their buffers. We come ins peace and all that.
I don't deter the shoal; their response is just as quick but different.
A surge of water and a tidal wave surges towards me and the treants, and atop the crest of the wave ride the knights of the depths, mermen ridding sea horses their barding and lances swirling with ice magic, an aura of abjuration emanating from their shields protect them.
The archdruids respond by halting the mini-tsunami in its track, the power of 3 demigods bent to halt millions of tons of water from crashing against the shins of the treants. The knights look flabbergasted as their charge is halted in such a way. I smile as I see sea witches clutch their heads as they crash against the adamant will and magic of the archdruids. Each of them is one of the strongest spell casters in this world, and they have the magical reserve of demigods at their disposal. Stopping some magical weather manipulation and a few tidal waves is well in their wheelhouse.
The treants stride through the wave, barely reaching up to their shins. The knights try to swarm around their legs, losing blasts of frost and blades of ice striking their legs and glancing at the iron-skinned bark. They realise too late as the displacement of water pulls them under, and the churn crushes their bodies, leaving a bloody trail for the marching titans.
I order them to stop and plant themselves.
This is the secret to their power. The lifeshapers have formed a body that metabolises the natural energies, sunlight, water and environmental mana and adds it to their own prodigious production.
The treants plant their feet, roots stretching kilometres in seconds, tapping into leylines and mana wells. Their canopies glow for a second before they turn crystalline, capturing and absorbing the energy of the sun.
In two minutes, they reach maximum saturation and start using that excess energy. Fruits bloom on their branches and ripen in seconds before dropping onto the ground. So concentrated with magic are they that they sprout into leshys, dryads and shambling mounds sprouting and charging into the forces of the shoal.
It starts like rain, with one or two creatures at first, but it picks up the pace like monsoon rain, with fruits falling fast and hard. Dozens and then hundreds of creatures are born and fight every second.
The elder treants can do this forever, as befitting their title. The fathers of forests march, and their children fight with them.
The clash intensified quickly, with troops from both sides streaming in to achieve victory. The mage tower deploys a pair of flights to investigate and pepper me with messages. I wave them off and send a condensed explanation via illusions; the flight swerves before they can be picked off by opportunists.
I cast a spell to amplify my sound and stun the greater leviathans streaming in towards the fight. The lions shout echoes for dozens of kilometres and shred the weaker inside of the bigger monsters.
I proclaim, "Come face me in honourable combat, dragon scion or forever be marked as a coward who ran away from a human. Know that even if you don't accept, all that will change is that you will die in your command post instead of on the battlefield. So come face me, dragonkin and face castigation."
No one answers; of course, the foes are not stupid enough to challenge the master of three demigods, but that, too, is according to my plan. I cast another spell, Locate Creature, and find the dragon-scion hiding out in the depths of the sea surrounded by its strongest minions. Typical bully, only strong until someone bigger comes along. Not like I can criticise though it's not like I wouldn't do the same thing if I were in his place.
I prepare a spell, something I want to try since forever for my evocation studies, but I never have the time. So I precast this spell, and one of my druid's dimensions doors me next to the princeling.
It's a tremendous creature; a saltwater crocodile the size of a passenger jet with stubby wings and scales of a half-dragon.
It turns swiftly, sensing my arrival in its domain, its body turning despite the water resistance, its magic more than sufficient to move at an impossible speed. Its honour guard of croc people charges me as well, ready to lay down their life for their liege and most likely father.
So I oblige them and cast my spell.
The spell of contagious flame is an ingenious design by Lya, a beam of fire magic that acts as the carrier wave for a second spell form that fires after the first ray has hit its target. Then the second spell matrix triggers and shoots another ray carrying its one spell form. It's incredibly good for clearing target-rich environments and especially so since I put 50 motes of red mana into this thing. Normally the spell can only jump 3 times, but in my hand, it can branch dozens of times.
So the ten beams of fire I launch at the lead guards, and they look dumbly at the hole punched in their chests; then the spell matrices triggers and another 10 die and then another 10 and soon the entire body of hundreds shatters, most dying and the survivors running away despite their father's essence commanding them, that's to do with the cloak of dragon fear I cloak my self in. most of the other chaff become too scared to approach me, and those who reach me are shredded by my defensive spells and my water adapted thantor.
My spells give time for the dragon-croc to respond, and it does so by lashing out with a magic-sheathed tail strike. My contingency spell actives, and I am teleported a hundred meters in its blind spot. I don't give it a chance to turn this time and lash out with duel black mana spells.
A polar ray and enervation lance out and strike the creature, punching through its hide and its spell resistance. When the spell hits the creature, its soul is desiccated and frozen; it slows tremendously as its agility is shattered, and its soul is ravaged to reduce it to an ember of its glory.
It tries to breathe a beam of acid at me, but I impose a wall of force to deflect it; the hit melts thousands of remaining shoals that had surrounded us.
I summon chains of light to bind its snout, and the spell anchors it to the sea floor; the croc is dragged down by the white mana constructs and lays there sullenly.
"Well, kill me then, archmage. Know that I will never submit to you. I will shatter my core if you try to bind my spirit. It was an honourable fight, and I demand an honourable death." His voice is muffled by the closed mouth, but it still echoes for miles.
"I am not here to kill you, idiot. I am here to solve your people's problems that lead to these periodic invasions. I am going to give you a gift, and you are going to say thank you and spread it to all your people and competitors. You can't hoard it; I have already cast the geas for that on you."
I summon the thing I had my life shapers make inside a time-altered demiplane while under permanent haste just so they could finish it last night; it took weeks worth of their effort and strained their souls, but there were successful in their tasks.
The shrimp floats in my hand, happily eating the plankton floating around.
"This is the most efficient mana-to-food converter you will find; if injected with a first circle's worth of mana, it will self replicate till it can serve as hundreds of kilograms of food. You can feed the entire shoal just with the output of your sea witches and your entire kingdom if only 5 per cent of people serve as mana sources. I am giving you one of these mana shrimps because you will serve as an early adaptor and spread it to the rest of the undersea kingdoms." I showcase that by putting a mote of mana into the shrimp, and it drinks it easily, quickly releasing eggs that grow into a full adult in a minute. Sadly due to the rushed nature, it will only work in this world for now, because it can use the ambient mana that is flooding this world to supplement the original spell. It will take a while to develop a universal version.
I also have doubts about this plan; I could easily see these things serving as fuel for huge populations and thus leading to more wars and invasions of the surface. I have tried to mitigate that but having it designed so that it works better the deeper they are, but I am sure it will eventually be used to fuel invasion, not to mention the risk to the ecology it could cause. But the undersea kingdoms are voracious; I doubt they will leave enough to overpopulate.
I haven't figured out how to prevent invasions completely, but it should reduce 90% of them as those are the desperate crusades of starving populations. I imagine humanity will just have to learn to treat them as hostile nations with possible invasions instead of certain enemies bent on eating each other.
Now, let's hope this doesn't go wrong.