Impossible Journey (Planeswalker Multicross)
- Thread starter Acolyte
- Start date
- Crossover
Thanks for the chapter.
He really reads arrogant at the beginning of this chapter which is a shoe in for his archmage persona, yes at the end he admitted it could lead to invasion time to time.
But still fishies don't have the same morality or culture as humans which I think is something that he will learn in this world. Beside cultural difference there will also be personal greed at play.
Both sides will look at him as a fool, there are prob. going to be quite a few resentful humans, soldiers and civilians alike. Humans are irrational so to them this is gonna feel yikes, just yikes.
This will turn into a nightmare since he is an "archmage" so they can't really do anything. Ohhhh I don't even want to think about consequences of this, they are just too many and too nuanced.
He really reads arrogant at the beginning of this chapter which is a shoe in for his archmage persona, yes at the end he admitted it could lead to invasion time to time.
But still fishies don't have the same morality or culture as humans which I think is something that he will learn in this world. Beside cultural difference there will also be personal greed at play.
Both sides will look at him as a fool, there are prob. going to be quite a few resentful humans, soldiers and civilians alike. Humans are irrational so to them this is gonna feel yikes, just yikes.
This will turn into a nightmare since he is an "archmage" so they can't really do anything. Ohhhh I don't even want to think about consequences of this, they are just too many and too nuanced.
- Location
- united states
Go forth in the name of character development MC. why not try to end a war by giving the enemy army unlimited rations to feed the machine since its 'all' about feeding the masses. Lets hope this doesn't immediately bite you in the arse during your stay.
Credit where its due on the use of geas. But you should probably have at least made a bigger impart to leave an impression not to poke you with a stick simply because they can. That is if you really wanted to stop the fighting as you seem to be trying too tell yourself. Also placing an forced geas on the whole of the planet not to war for petty reasons would have likely done more to stop things than giving them a -potentially- limitless supply of food. Bu your not exactly Jace the mind sculptor or ugin the spirit dragon with enough knowledge to pull that off so that's fair. Looks likely this going to end as another Warhammer style lesson. Now that I think of it the setting isn't too different even if confined to a smaller area of existence. Does that make the sea creatures orks or daemons considering they spawn forth without end from a plane of existence?
Well that is a very potent problem - for everyone else - you have made there planes walker it seems like you choose to ignore the other reasons these hoards of sea-life likely do these types of things. Examples: Greed, Lust, Pride, Envy, Dick measuring, The Female version of Dick measuring which I don't know the exact name of, innate Cruelty, Because they like to do it, because they have evil overlords that make them do it, becaue they don't like anyone that is different than they are, and so many other reasons besides just food and desperation. (all common reasons why wars happen on a daily basis on normal mundane earth on small scales that the common people - global scale vs the locals its affecting - don't mention or are not aware of because the death statistics are not high enough to make it to the news or through the propaganda)
Credit where its due on the use of geas. But you should probably have at least made a bigger impart to leave an impression not to poke you with a stick simply because they can. That is if you really wanted to stop the fighting as you seem to be trying too tell yourself. Also placing an forced geas on the whole of the planet not to war for petty reasons would have likely done more to stop things than giving them a -potentially- limitless supply of food. Bu your not exactly Jace the mind sculptor or ugin the spirit dragon with enough knowledge to pull that off so that's fair. Looks likely this going to end as another Warhammer style lesson. Now that I think of it the setting isn't too different even if confined to a smaller area of existence. Does that make the sea creatures orks or daemons considering they spawn forth without end from a plane of existence?
Last edited:
I feel like i didn't clarify enough of the local fish culture which fair enough, my fault.
So despite the fact that they invade humans, they aren't their primary targets. The sea kingdoms fight each other for access elemental rifts for unlimited mana generation. Billions of fishes are born and die for that every year in those wars. Theres dozens of kingdoms fighting each other.
The invasion of humans are mere incidental release valves for excess population when they can't afford to feed them. They can't actually hold land territories, its raids for mana crystals and humans food.
So what the MC is betting on is that he makes any amount population viable so they continue fighting each other long enough for humanity to devolp their magitech enough to survive the attention.
He reasons that since the invasions are only so urgent due to starvation, most of the immortal krakens and whalelords will probably have more time between their invasion sincw they don't percive time like they do.
This is a plot to make sure that hundreds of millions of sapient beings don't die fron starvation and yet humans get enough time to build up defences.
Thats his reasoning. This almost certainly won't work put how he expects it but it is something ge realises will have unexpected complications.
Thanks for reading.
I would like to clairfy, i am not the MC. Its not an SI.
increases in food production has traditionally led to more invasions and raiding, not less. The Norse having a highly productive Farmer class is what led to the prevalence of the Vikings.
Traditionally, high population density caused by highly productive farmland (or shrimperies in this case) tends to end up with a large class of people with no local way to advance economically or socially, so they travel elsewhere in search of opportunities. Often those opportunities are of the "pillage and burn" variety.
Traditionally, high population density caused by highly productive farmland (or shrimperies in this case) tends to end up with a large class of people with no local way to advance economically or socially, so they travel elsewhere in search of opportunities. Often those opportunities are of the "pillage and burn" variety.
Last edited:
They will definitely do that, just with their enemies.
This is probably going to lead to a period of consolidation in the undersea kingdoms. Could lead to much bigger polities.
As i said, its going to be a major reprieve and its not going to work out nearly as well as the MC hoped for.
Last edited:
- Location
- united states
I Know, I just sometimes like to address characters as if I were talking at or to them. Although as the author/Writer you are the one creating and/or channeling the perspective of the character I was commenting to/at.
Fair enough
Chapter 18
I fell back onto my bed after plane shifting to my demiplane. The mission has turned out worse than all my expectations. I saved the city and its people, but everything else has gone wrong.
First of all, I didn't have fun blowing up the merknights. They were fairly weak, and I didn't even get to use some cooler spells like Circle of Death or Power Word Kill. Killing them felt like taking money from a baby; I could have just put them to sleep and won anyway or teleported them away, and they couldn't have done anything to stop me. It's no fun having power if you feel bad about using it later.
Second, The Elder Treants killed a lot of Merpeople before I finished my fight, so I now have the blood of tens of thousands of sort of innocents on my hands. Sure my ardour about their supposed innocence has cooled seeing all the rampage they have committed against civilians. Still, ethically, they are only partially responsible since they are, at best, drafted serfs or even slave soldiers. So, now I am deeply morose; I probably should talk to someone on Pandora Earth, an Ethics professor or a Therapist; I have been feeling ragged and run down recently.
But at least I have a piece of good news as well; I can study the damned towers now. I hope they are worth the effort I have put in to acquire them.
It was not worth it.
After a few days of relaxing, carving a few statues and doing some minor research, I finally visit the Shard. The Gigantic tower is still thrumming with power, its wards still stand, and it's still acting as a vast divination array. But the gleaming black shard has lost its lustre to me.
I am sitting in the repository of the tower, and all the mages here are giving me a wide berth. I am sure they have heard the stories by now; the end of the coral wars is all over the news right now. But I am not paying attention to any of them. I am looking at the most advanced system of the towers, and I am just dismayed.
The towers aren't amplifiers like I had hoped for; they are projectors. Still use full for me and is a lot more useful for any mages I create, but it's not what I wanted.
I have foolishly assumed that the spell arrays of the towers amplified the magic through metamagical recursion or fractal optimisation. So, for example, if put in 5 motes of mana in a fireball, the one fired using the tower should have been the size of a school bus and should have been able to hit targets over the horizon for the same mana costs. But that's how it works; instead of amplifying spells, it just projects their spells to a much larger extent. So to achieve my hypothetical artillery fireball, you have to pay the entire cost of such a spell; it just lets you supplement your natural mana with a store of mana crystals.
So the currently running tower, just in the mode of its passive operation, is burning literal tons of mana crystals to operate alongside a dedicated team of casters to cast the myriad spells. It's exactly what my archdruids figured out when powering themselves with the elder treant's mana fonts. Sure, it now increases their range or area of effects, but fundamentally, it's the same thing.
I will admit I am being overly harsh on the mages here. These are very impressive and sophisticated spell arrays here, very efficient. Humanity has built itself the artificial infrastructure to match mountain-sized dragons and krakens. The primordial soul draws an immense amount of mana, and the body endures channelling that power, which is the birthright of mythic beings and their bloodlines. Humanity has built those things with its own two hands, free for anyone that can gather the resources to build and run their towers.
But it's not what I wanted, and now I feel foolish wasting my time on seeing their designs instead of just developing my own. I already have the basis of how to make them in the form of metamagic rods.
So, metamagic works by creating secondary spell mandalas that fit into the spell mandalas and enhance particular aspects of spells. So intensify metamagic increases how strong your magic hits with a much less increase in the cost of the spell. The cost comes from the fact that additional spell mandalas are still being formed to enhance the spell. But metamagic rods remove even this limitation, the rob acts as a focusing array for that particular metamagic, and any spell that passes through them gets affected by the metamagic at no additional cost, as the mandala already exists.
It's still an immensely useful gain. I had fully designed battle towers; It already had designs like large-scale abjuration schema and multiphasic divination arrays. The development of magic from individual spells to multipurpose systems with flexibility and the ability to effect magic on a large scale. I won't have to develop individual divination spells. Instead, the system can be used to manipulate information in many forms. I also won't have to add the metamagic effects for increasing range, as they are bundled in all the spell circles of these towers.
It may be a fixer-upper, but I imagine I can make this into something great. The dream of battle towers still lives on.
During this daydreaming of fighting armies trying to tear down my towers, someone sits across me, and I am too distracted to notice until they cough politely to draw my attention.
"You know, I felt a bit betrayed once I learned who you really were, but I guess it's understandable. It's not every day you have to investigate a nearly alien society." It takes me a second to recognise Emma Anson, the countess of Lichfield. I stand up and shake her hand, a gesture she returns with grace.
"I do apologise for the deception. As you said, it's been a long time since I had interacted with humans; after dealing with fae beings and elemental djinns, I have become very paranoid in my interaction with other sapients. Let us start over; I am Ajax, Arch Mage, Explorer and Scholar." I wave my hand and conjure some refreshment to earth, tea and crackers as is tradition.
She smiles, stands and gives me a small courtesy.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Milord. I will be delighted to make the acquaintance of the Single-Man Empire."
I raise my eyebrow at the sobriquet.
"The Single-Man Empire?? I don't remember that being my title. Is it something the tabloids came up with??" I inquire
"Yes, it's the name of the man who negotiated as a peer with the crown and apparently has mythic beings at your command. Of course, it's a tad boorish, but the tabloids do like to make up fanciful tales. But I do admit; I wish I had a title like that; the glory of your name being written in the history books is a heady thing." She says, her coquettish town slowly morphing into a wistfulness of those who desire something they know they can't have.
It gives me a bad idea; I know it's a bad idea. But I am sorely tempted, fuck it, what's the point of life if you don't take risks.
"Well, I can't give you a boorish title, but I can offer you immortality of a different sort; well, I can give you half a dozen forms of immortality, actually. I can do it right now if you want, just for a small price." I try not to sound like a devil asking for a person's soul, but human stories have made this difficult; it's really hard not to sound sinister.
She predictably looks sharply at me and asks with narrowed eyes.
"What kind of price are you talking about?? If it were anyone else, I would doubt them, but with your deeds, I believe you despite myself. So what will the price for this be, eh Ajax??"
"Nothing you would miss, and I don't mean your soul or anything like that. So, I summon my 'mythic' creatures by making a template of them and using mana to make it a reality. I can do this to humans as well; I wanted to see if I can get your pattern to summon human mages. They won't be your copies or anything like that. They can range from all elements, genders, magical schools and even souls; they are completely distinct beings." I warble out a word vomit by trying to reassure her now that I have proposed the idea, I don't want to look like a fool.
"Ok, Let's say I believe you, and even your deeds are pushing at this mass production of human mages; I will need to know what I will be getting in return; you said immortality, but what exactly do you mean."
"oh, immortality is easy. I can enumerate the options for you if you want, from the easiest to the most drastic. First is a simple genetic and soul surgery, I make slight changes to your soul and body, and you will never age. The second would be reincarnating you into something immortal, like an Elf or a dragon. The third is I do some more drastic changes to your soul and body, and you start generating essence in appreciable amounts; this option will strengthen you as you age and allow you to do much more extensive magics." I pause to take a sip of my tea and let my words sink into her for a few seconds before continuing.
"I can make you an artefact that will render you ageless and allow you to come back from even violent death, sort of like a phylactery but much more elegant and only slightly necromantic. I can turn you into a vampire and modify you not to need blood; this also will make you fairly stronger as you age. The last is I can transfer your soul into a golem that is in every way better than your current body, this will never decay or fail, and even this could be made to grow stronger as you age, but that's harder as you will start as a peer to most dragons."
I clap my hand and conjure up some illusions showing her six options. The floating images of herself as various magical beings seem to fascinate her, and she spends a few minutes just considering all the options.
"I must say it's overwhelming. Can I ask you if I can take a few hours to consider it?" She asks me.
"No, I am itching for adventure again; I might just be leaving the plane in a few hours, so you have to make the decision now." I wasn't even lying; I will probably chill at the demi-plane for a few weeks, and then I can just planeswalk away; I have been feeling stifled; maybe a new plane will bring me happiness.
She considers it for a few seconds, and then she says.
"You know, now that it is in front of me, immortality doesn't seem that attractive. It's strange, I want my name to be remembered forever, but I don't want to live that long. So I will thank you, but I won't be taking up your offer." She stands up, and after saying her piece, she leaves, probably so she isn't tempted to agree.
Huh, it's been a while since I've been rebuffed by someone. It's refreshing; the rejection of my offer is exciting, a variable on my predictions. I guess there is something to this free-will thing; after all, we can't have these wonderful surprises from hidebound automatons.
I shrug and go back to reading their infrastructure arrays; I think they have some seeds of potential.
"So that's your decision. I can respect the conviction; you are facing a hard task without any safety cushion." I say while sitting in at the head of the council table.
"Aye, The troll lad's words ring true to my years. We are grateful for what you did, but the ancestors entrusted us to you because they didn't want us to die. But we need to grow up, recognise the problems our otherworld counterparts society faced and learn from them, form a new society that will make the ancestors proud, so they don't have to turn to strangers to save us; no offence." Thror says from his carven throne, his newly forged crown shining with the enchantments that overlaid its runic matrices.
"Well, I am glad you have a purpose, but I can't help but worry. It is a duty entrusted to me; I would be a poor wizard if I don't keep my word. But regardless, I will support your decision; it is well thought out and worth the risk of failure." I reply, trying to articulate my fears but failing.
"Our runesmiths have learned how to make talismans that increase the size of the demiplane and how to open portals; we have a good relationship with the trolls, and we have built a council on a meritocratic basis since all dwarfs you summon are grandmasters anyway. I will step down soon enough, and then a new age will dawn for the sons and daughters of Valaya." He says while chugging a stein of beer.
"And you all concur; you all want to develop yourselves as independent people away from my influence." I ask the other members of my council.
Blossom nods and Nestor grunts his agreement; the Elder treants send affirming shakes of their heads from outside the windows.
"Ok then. I will be rooting for all of you guys. Don't do anything evil, you all know what that means to me, and I won't be happy if you do. But aside from that, have fun; I am sure you guys will build a just society. I have some research to finish here, so I will stick around for two months, but I will leave after that. "
"Ok, that should give us some time to prepare a feast. After all, it's a momentous occasion."
I chug my last keg of the newly brewed beer and slam the porcelain mug in celebration.
"Bye, all. I am going to walk away now; either the void sobers me up, or I am going be the first drunk planes walker; I shall find out in the name of science." Saying that, I step away from the world, leaving behind the last embers of a 3-day fest.
I wake up to sand filling my mouth, my head bursting with a throbbing headache. I sit up, spit out the sand and cast prestidigitation to clean myself before I have the will to look around. I am in a desert, a sea of sand stretching as far as the eye can see.
I cast a quick restoration spell to cure the hangover and swear to myself that I will never drink again; it's simply not worth the risk of planeswalking drunk. But I should figure out where I am right now; I don't want to be eaten by a giant sandworm.
Flying up into the sky at that thought, I cast some divination spells and get an idea of where I am, a desert stretching for about 10000 miles, and then the plane abruptly ends. There are massive oases that dot the landscape and several major waterways. These druid spells only tell me the natural environment, so I don't know where the nearest city is, but it seems a simple enough idea to fly towards the closest one.
It's a bit dreary, but I don't want to risk teleporting; who knows if there is a giant toad that can intercept teleports there? I don't know where I am; the whole plane feels unnatural and broken to my senses, and it's tiny by any plane's standards. So I am under as much abjuration magic as I can manage, and I can manage a ton. Invisibility, transparency, etherealness, and a dozen other effects cover my flight. Force shields, ablative barriers and entropic fields protect fate itself, protecting me from hostile intent.
So it takes me a second to notice the warning from my divination alarms before I can react 4 beams of solar flames punch through my defences, and my force fields, prismatic cloaks, spell turnings, and globes' invulnerability block three of the plasma beams but are dispelled in turn, the magic of the beams burning their spell matrices. The fourth beam heads straight for me, and only my emergency-cast celerity allows me to dodge the blow to survive. The unbalanced weight tells me I have lost my left arm and torso. More beams converge on my position, but my contingencies have activated on my injury, and I am teleported a hundred kilometres away, a dozen bound healing spells restoring my body in a split second.
It's all the time I get before my attacker teleports in front of me in a flash of sunshine. The concussive force pushes me towards the ground, and that's the only thing that saves me from the scything khopesh is intent on taking off my head.
I blink away, turning ethereal and diving into the earth; beams rain down around me, turning hundreds of meters of sand into glass. I come up a kilometre away, under invisibility, and it finally gives me the time to take a breath and notice my foe.
It's a man, bedecked in burnished gold armour, a khopesh in one hand and a flail in the other. My mage sigh has trouble parsing him at first, and it takes a few seconds to adjust, but once it does, I realise I misspoke. It is not a man at all, it was the body of one, and its soul probably was at one point, but its been changed, shards of concepts have been grafted onto its soul, and it has been fusing with them, being transmuted from a mortal to the soul of a god.
My foe raises his hand, and someone else teleports next to him, a woman transmuted god just like the sun warrior but a bit behind on the path of changing as compared to the man. She smells the air and immediately pinpoints me, a hundred moonlight arrows streaming towards me, I teleport away again, and the arrows follow me, moving with impossible speed to follow me across hundreds of kilometres.
I cast a spell, and a swarm of magic missiles intercepts them in mid-air, resulting in explosions painting the noon sky. The warrior teleports in and swings his blade and flails, I activate my more conditional contingencies, and an elder treat is summoned right on top of us in mid-air. The warrior looks surprised by that and lashes out with more beams of solar fury, his attacks gouging massive wounds on the treant. It responds angrily in its own way; a tornado made of acid descends on the man and drives him from the sky into a sand dune. It's a momentary pause as the magic is dispelled in a burst of sunlight, but it gives me the time to cast a spell; I pump in nearly a thousand mana into the spell and feel my hands starting to freeze from the excess mana spilling out from the spell mandala, it wasn't designed to hold so much energy inside it.
But I cast the spell at the prone god, and a massive beam of freezing necrotic energy strikes his surprised face. His plasma corona lashes out, trying to dispel the magic, but it's not enough; I have put enough mana to mimic a major god in that spell; it punches through the protection and strikes the god.
The enervation saps at his divinity and vitality. His skin turns sallow and pallid like a cadaver dredged up from the river, I see his sword and flail fall from his hands, too weak to hold them. He probably hasn't felt his mortality in centuries, so when my spell has sapped him of most of his divinity and vitality, it's devastating mentally and physically.
I fly down and land in front of him while the treant channels magic to heal the wounds it suffered. Its roots dig deep into the desert.
"So, that was incredibly rude. We at least challenge someone before we kill them. So, Let me introduce myself; I am Ajax, a planeswalker, who I have the honour of besting today." I ask the god as he kneels before me.
"Eldritch, you haven't bested anyone yet. It's not yet over. I knew your kind can't help but gloat, just in my reach." As he says this and burst into renewed flames, his divinity and vitality return to him at an alarming rate. He grabs me quicker than I can respond, and his aura coats me, smothering any magic I try to cast.
"You really thought that it would be so easy to beat a god, Eldritch. Your magic cannot extinguish the sun." He continues, doing a gloating of his own.
I try to signal the elder treant to act, but before I can, a thousand moonlight arrows pierce through its body, shattering it to pieces as its mind returns to its soul.
The moon goddess floats above me, ready to put an arrow through my eye.
3 Demigods also surround us, piloting mecha that radiate their own divinity.
I do the only thing I can.
"Bye"
Then I planeswalk away.
First of all, I didn't have fun blowing up the merknights. They were fairly weak, and I didn't even get to use some cooler spells like Circle of Death or Power Word Kill. Killing them felt like taking money from a baby; I could have just put them to sleep and won anyway or teleported them away, and they couldn't have done anything to stop me. It's no fun having power if you feel bad about using it later.
Second, The Elder Treants killed a lot of Merpeople before I finished my fight, so I now have the blood of tens of thousands of sort of innocents on my hands. Sure my ardour about their supposed innocence has cooled seeing all the rampage they have committed against civilians. Still, ethically, they are only partially responsible since they are, at best, drafted serfs or even slave soldiers. So, now I am deeply morose; I probably should talk to someone on Pandora Earth, an Ethics professor or a Therapist; I have been feeling ragged and run down recently.
But at least I have a piece of good news as well; I can study the damned towers now. I hope they are worth the effort I have put in to acquire them.
It was not worth it.
After a few days of relaxing, carving a few statues and doing some minor research, I finally visit the Shard. The Gigantic tower is still thrumming with power, its wards still stand, and it's still acting as a vast divination array. But the gleaming black shard has lost its lustre to me.
I am sitting in the repository of the tower, and all the mages here are giving me a wide berth. I am sure they have heard the stories by now; the end of the coral wars is all over the news right now. But I am not paying attention to any of them. I am looking at the most advanced system of the towers, and I am just dismayed.
The towers aren't amplifiers like I had hoped for; they are projectors. Still use full for me and is a lot more useful for any mages I create, but it's not what I wanted.
I have foolishly assumed that the spell arrays of the towers amplified the magic through metamagical recursion or fractal optimisation. So, for example, if put in 5 motes of mana in a fireball, the one fired using the tower should have been the size of a school bus and should have been able to hit targets over the horizon for the same mana costs. But that's how it works; instead of amplifying spells, it just projects their spells to a much larger extent. So to achieve my hypothetical artillery fireball, you have to pay the entire cost of such a spell; it just lets you supplement your natural mana with a store of mana crystals.
So the currently running tower, just in the mode of its passive operation, is burning literal tons of mana crystals to operate alongside a dedicated team of casters to cast the myriad spells. It's exactly what my archdruids figured out when powering themselves with the elder treant's mana fonts. Sure, it now increases their range or area of effects, but fundamentally, it's the same thing.
I will admit I am being overly harsh on the mages here. These are very impressive and sophisticated spell arrays here, very efficient. Humanity has built itself the artificial infrastructure to match mountain-sized dragons and krakens. The primordial soul draws an immense amount of mana, and the body endures channelling that power, which is the birthright of mythic beings and their bloodlines. Humanity has built those things with its own two hands, free for anyone that can gather the resources to build and run their towers.
But it's not what I wanted, and now I feel foolish wasting my time on seeing their designs instead of just developing my own. I already have the basis of how to make them in the form of metamagic rods.
So, metamagic works by creating secondary spell mandalas that fit into the spell mandalas and enhance particular aspects of spells. So intensify metamagic increases how strong your magic hits with a much less increase in the cost of the spell. The cost comes from the fact that additional spell mandalas are still being formed to enhance the spell. But metamagic rods remove even this limitation, the rob acts as a focusing array for that particular metamagic, and any spell that passes through them gets affected by the metamagic at no additional cost, as the mandala already exists.
It's still an immensely useful gain. I had fully designed battle towers; It already had designs like large-scale abjuration schema and multiphasic divination arrays. The development of magic from individual spells to multipurpose systems with flexibility and the ability to effect magic on a large scale. I won't have to develop individual divination spells. Instead, the system can be used to manipulate information in many forms. I also won't have to add the metamagic effects for increasing range, as they are bundled in all the spell circles of these towers.
It may be a fixer-upper, but I imagine I can make this into something great. The dream of battle towers still lives on.
During this daydreaming of fighting armies trying to tear down my towers, someone sits across me, and I am too distracted to notice until they cough politely to draw my attention.
"You know, I felt a bit betrayed once I learned who you really were, but I guess it's understandable. It's not every day you have to investigate a nearly alien society." It takes me a second to recognise Emma Anson, the countess of Lichfield. I stand up and shake her hand, a gesture she returns with grace.
"I do apologise for the deception. As you said, it's been a long time since I had interacted with humans; after dealing with fae beings and elemental djinns, I have become very paranoid in my interaction with other sapients. Let us start over; I am Ajax, Arch Mage, Explorer and Scholar." I wave my hand and conjure some refreshment to earth, tea and crackers as is tradition.
She smiles, stands and gives me a small courtesy.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Milord. I will be delighted to make the acquaintance of the Single-Man Empire."
I raise my eyebrow at the sobriquet.
"The Single-Man Empire?? I don't remember that being my title. Is it something the tabloids came up with??" I inquire
"Yes, it's the name of the man who negotiated as a peer with the crown and apparently has mythic beings at your command. Of course, it's a tad boorish, but the tabloids do like to make up fanciful tales. But I do admit; I wish I had a title like that; the glory of your name being written in the history books is a heady thing." She says, her coquettish town slowly morphing into a wistfulness of those who desire something they know they can't have.
It gives me a bad idea; I know it's a bad idea. But I am sorely tempted, fuck it, what's the point of life if you don't take risks.
"Well, I can't give you a boorish title, but I can offer you immortality of a different sort; well, I can give you half a dozen forms of immortality, actually. I can do it right now if you want, just for a small price." I try not to sound like a devil asking for a person's soul, but human stories have made this difficult; it's really hard not to sound sinister.
She predictably looks sharply at me and asks with narrowed eyes.
"What kind of price are you talking about?? If it were anyone else, I would doubt them, but with your deeds, I believe you despite myself. So what will the price for this be, eh Ajax??"
"Nothing you would miss, and I don't mean your soul or anything like that. So, I summon my 'mythic' creatures by making a template of them and using mana to make it a reality. I can do this to humans as well; I wanted to see if I can get your pattern to summon human mages. They won't be your copies or anything like that. They can range from all elements, genders, magical schools and even souls; they are completely distinct beings." I warble out a word vomit by trying to reassure her now that I have proposed the idea, I don't want to look like a fool.
"Ok, Let's say I believe you, and even your deeds are pushing at this mass production of human mages; I will need to know what I will be getting in return; you said immortality, but what exactly do you mean."
"oh, immortality is easy. I can enumerate the options for you if you want, from the easiest to the most drastic. First is a simple genetic and soul surgery, I make slight changes to your soul and body, and you will never age. The second would be reincarnating you into something immortal, like an Elf or a dragon. The third is I do some more drastic changes to your soul and body, and you start generating essence in appreciable amounts; this option will strengthen you as you age and allow you to do much more extensive magics." I pause to take a sip of my tea and let my words sink into her for a few seconds before continuing.
"I can make you an artefact that will render you ageless and allow you to come back from even violent death, sort of like a phylactery but much more elegant and only slightly necromantic. I can turn you into a vampire and modify you not to need blood; this also will make you fairly stronger as you age. The last is I can transfer your soul into a golem that is in every way better than your current body, this will never decay or fail, and even this could be made to grow stronger as you age, but that's harder as you will start as a peer to most dragons."
I clap my hand and conjure up some illusions showing her six options. The floating images of herself as various magical beings seem to fascinate her, and she spends a few minutes just considering all the options.
"I must say it's overwhelming. Can I ask you if I can take a few hours to consider it?" She asks me.
"No, I am itching for adventure again; I might just be leaving the plane in a few hours, so you have to make the decision now." I wasn't even lying; I will probably chill at the demi-plane for a few weeks, and then I can just planeswalk away; I have been feeling stifled; maybe a new plane will bring me happiness.
She considers it for a few seconds, and then she says.
"You know, now that it is in front of me, immortality doesn't seem that attractive. It's strange, I want my name to be remembered forever, but I don't want to live that long. So I will thank you, but I won't be taking up your offer." She stands up, and after saying her piece, she leaves, probably so she isn't tempted to agree.
Huh, it's been a while since I've been rebuffed by someone. It's refreshing; the rejection of my offer is exciting, a variable on my predictions. I guess there is something to this free-will thing; after all, we can't have these wonderful surprises from hidebound automatons.
I shrug and go back to reading their infrastructure arrays; I think they have some seeds of potential.
"So that's your decision. I can respect the conviction; you are facing a hard task without any safety cushion." I say while sitting in at the head of the council table.
"Aye, The troll lad's words ring true to my years. We are grateful for what you did, but the ancestors entrusted us to you because they didn't want us to die. But we need to grow up, recognise the problems our otherworld counterparts society faced and learn from them, form a new society that will make the ancestors proud, so they don't have to turn to strangers to save us; no offence." Thror says from his carven throne, his newly forged crown shining with the enchantments that overlaid its runic matrices.
"Well, I am glad you have a purpose, but I can't help but worry. It is a duty entrusted to me; I would be a poor wizard if I don't keep my word. But regardless, I will support your decision; it is well thought out and worth the risk of failure." I reply, trying to articulate my fears but failing.
"Our runesmiths have learned how to make talismans that increase the size of the demiplane and how to open portals; we have a good relationship with the trolls, and we have built a council on a meritocratic basis since all dwarfs you summon are grandmasters anyway. I will step down soon enough, and then a new age will dawn for the sons and daughters of Valaya." He says while chugging a stein of beer.
"And you all concur; you all want to develop yourselves as independent people away from my influence." I ask the other members of my council.
Blossom nods and Nestor grunts his agreement; the Elder treants send affirming shakes of their heads from outside the windows.
"Ok then. I will be rooting for all of you guys. Don't do anything evil, you all know what that means to me, and I won't be happy if you do. But aside from that, have fun; I am sure you guys will build a just society. I have some research to finish here, so I will stick around for two months, but I will leave after that. "
"Ok, that should give us some time to prepare a feast. After all, it's a momentous occasion."
I chug my last keg of the newly brewed beer and slam the porcelain mug in celebration.
"Bye, all. I am going to walk away now; either the void sobers me up, or I am going be the first drunk planes walker; I shall find out in the name of science." Saying that, I step away from the world, leaving behind the last embers of a 3-day fest.
I wake up to sand filling my mouth, my head bursting with a throbbing headache. I sit up, spit out the sand and cast prestidigitation to clean myself before I have the will to look around. I am in a desert, a sea of sand stretching as far as the eye can see.
I cast a quick restoration spell to cure the hangover and swear to myself that I will never drink again; it's simply not worth the risk of planeswalking drunk. But I should figure out where I am right now; I don't want to be eaten by a giant sandworm.
Flying up into the sky at that thought, I cast some divination spells and get an idea of where I am, a desert stretching for about 10000 miles, and then the plane abruptly ends. There are massive oases that dot the landscape and several major waterways. These druid spells only tell me the natural environment, so I don't know where the nearest city is, but it seems a simple enough idea to fly towards the closest one.
It's a bit dreary, but I don't want to risk teleporting; who knows if there is a giant toad that can intercept teleports there? I don't know where I am; the whole plane feels unnatural and broken to my senses, and it's tiny by any plane's standards. So I am under as much abjuration magic as I can manage, and I can manage a ton. Invisibility, transparency, etherealness, and a dozen other effects cover my flight. Force shields, ablative barriers and entropic fields protect fate itself, protecting me from hostile intent.
So it takes me a second to notice the warning from my divination alarms before I can react 4 beams of solar flames punch through my defences, and my force fields, prismatic cloaks, spell turnings, and globes' invulnerability block three of the plasma beams but are dispelled in turn, the magic of the beams burning their spell matrices. The fourth beam heads straight for me, and only my emergency-cast celerity allows me to dodge the blow to survive. The unbalanced weight tells me I have lost my left arm and torso. More beams converge on my position, but my contingencies have activated on my injury, and I am teleported a hundred kilometres away, a dozen bound healing spells restoring my body in a split second.
It's all the time I get before my attacker teleports in front of me in a flash of sunshine. The concussive force pushes me towards the ground, and that's the only thing that saves me from the scything khopesh is intent on taking off my head.
I blink away, turning ethereal and diving into the earth; beams rain down around me, turning hundreds of meters of sand into glass. I come up a kilometre away, under invisibility, and it finally gives me the time to take a breath and notice my foe.
It's a man, bedecked in burnished gold armour, a khopesh in one hand and a flail in the other. My mage sigh has trouble parsing him at first, and it takes a few seconds to adjust, but once it does, I realise I misspoke. It is not a man at all, it was the body of one, and its soul probably was at one point, but its been changed, shards of concepts have been grafted onto its soul, and it has been fusing with them, being transmuted from a mortal to the soul of a god.
My foe raises his hand, and someone else teleports next to him, a woman transmuted god just like the sun warrior but a bit behind on the path of changing as compared to the man. She smells the air and immediately pinpoints me, a hundred moonlight arrows streaming towards me, I teleport away again, and the arrows follow me, moving with impossible speed to follow me across hundreds of kilometres.
I cast a spell, and a swarm of magic missiles intercepts them in mid-air, resulting in explosions painting the noon sky. The warrior teleports in and swings his blade and flails, I activate my more conditional contingencies, and an elder treat is summoned right on top of us in mid-air. The warrior looks surprised by that and lashes out with more beams of solar fury, his attacks gouging massive wounds on the treant. It responds angrily in its own way; a tornado made of acid descends on the man and drives him from the sky into a sand dune. It's a momentary pause as the magic is dispelled in a burst of sunlight, but it gives me the time to cast a spell; I pump in nearly a thousand mana into the spell and feel my hands starting to freeze from the excess mana spilling out from the spell mandala, it wasn't designed to hold so much energy inside it.
But I cast the spell at the prone god, and a massive beam of freezing necrotic energy strikes his surprised face. His plasma corona lashes out, trying to dispel the magic, but it's not enough; I have put enough mana to mimic a major god in that spell; it punches through the protection and strikes the god.
The enervation saps at his divinity and vitality. His skin turns sallow and pallid like a cadaver dredged up from the river, I see his sword and flail fall from his hands, too weak to hold them. He probably hasn't felt his mortality in centuries, so when my spell has sapped him of most of his divinity and vitality, it's devastating mentally and physically.
I fly down and land in front of him while the treant channels magic to heal the wounds it suffered. Its roots dig deep into the desert.
"So, that was incredibly rude. We at least challenge someone before we kill them. So, Let me introduce myself; I am Ajax, a planeswalker, who I have the honour of besting today." I ask the god as he kneels before me.
"Eldritch, you haven't bested anyone yet. It's not yet over. I knew your kind can't help but gloat, just in my reach." As he says this and burst into renewed flames, his divinity and vitality return to him at an alarming rate. He grabs me quicker than I can respond, and his aura coats me, smothering any magic I try to cast.
"You really thought that it would be so easy to beat a god, Eldritch. Your magic cannot extinguish the sun." He continues, doing a gloating of his own.
I try to signal the elder treant to act, but before I can, a thousand moonlight arrows pierce through its body, shattering it to pieces as its mind returns to its soul.
The moon goddess floats above me, ready to put an arrow through my eye.
3 Demigods also surround us, piloting mecha that radiate their own divinity.
I do the only thing I can.
"Bye"
Then I planeswalk away.
- Location
- united states
Yeah that fits. Although it can be mistaken for other similar settings. Must have ended up walking there before everything in that setting went completely to shite for that many of them to be on his arse right at the start. Or ended up in the middle of a gathering quest group.
Chapter 19
Something is different this time.
I am floating in a void, unreality clawing at reality. Buts it's not the void I am used to, not the same ferocious lack of existence that destroys anything that isn't soul-bound to me.
It's like a cousin, a smaller more diluted version of it. There isn't any real difference here; it's both just a lack of existence. I open my mage sight and sense with my spark, the part of my soul that allows me to jump between planes.
It's a scene unlike any I have seen before; it looks like I am in a dying plane. Its outer membrane is barely keeping the greater void from consuming everything, and even then, it has failed; the void has leaked in and been shaped by this passage into a slightly less hostile version, its an incredibly complex process, I can't even begin to fathom how you can have this degree of unreality or how you would modulate the change in these phases, but some process has made it possible and that's the only saving grace of this plane. Its tatters float through this ultimate darkness, small chunks of a greater hole shattered by some unimaginable conflict because some of the damage I am seeing is artificial.
It is a strange step, but I can't stay here forever; even my much stronger soul is being eaten away by this darkness, so I find a different shard of reality and Walk to it.
I emerge in a desolate void again, but it is just the unforgiving void of space, just another part of reality. Sure I have trouble breathing for a second because of all my dispelled passives, but I quickly fix that with a few spells and heal the nerve damage and necrosis. It's not a big deal; I don't need my body to think or cast spells; it just prevents me from becoming a plane-walking ghost, so minimally important in the grand scheme of things.
The shard of a broken plane is small, just a few hundred kilometres of empty space. But it serves my purpose; I spend a few hours conjuring rock and soil and casting planar refuge to create a habitable floating island in that realm.
So I have a decision to make. I can simply leave this plane, walk out of here and find a new place. But that's a cowardly move. This is exactly the kind of place where I can do the most good. It's also an amazing opportunity to learn about planar engineering and metastructural magic systems. Because it almost certainly leads to the death of billions of people if I don't do anything. Physics is actively failing in some of those planes; a soul can only protect a person from hostile physics for so long.
To do that, I need to make some infrastructure.
So I have been researching the power generation of several civilisations in the previous plane. There is one main way that they acquire and use large amounts of magic, rifts from the elemental planes dumping a silver of their infinite magic on the material plane.
So I had to figure out how to adapt a phenomenon that isn't metaphysically supported by most realities because infinite planes of energy are rare and even those that exist are really dangerous.
So, designing the enchantment for opening the planar rift and stabilising and creating harvesting systems for the magic is fairly trivial; it's just basic attunement and channelling mandalas with some unobtanium framework to anchor the spells. The problem is where to aim that rift,
I was bashing my head against that for an entire week until a dwarven runelord saw my problems and just asked me a simple question in the signature straightforward manner of the dwarfs.
"If those planes don't exist, why not just make one? You made this demiplane already; it can't be that hard."
That gave me the idea that eventually lead me to my solution.
Of course, I didn't create an infinite plane of magic; I don't have the faintest idea of how even to do that, and I lack the power even if I knew how.
My quantum plane solution is a bit of magic and physics hack to get around those limitations. I created, after many failures and regrown limbs, a variant of creating a demiplane that can dump infinite magic into a universe.
It works by creating a plane completely inaccessible to reality, the rift being the only way to connect to it. This spell takes a lot of power, but the plane is put into a state of superimposition since no one can observe or access the plane; magically, it can be anything, from a plane of magic to a room the size of a closet. But since no observer can confirm its existence, the potential for an infinite plane of magic exists, and my magic harness that potential, converting it into pure magical power. The potential isn't reduced because it is potentially infinite, and that potentiality is transformed into actuality through magic.
It's the first piece of real fundamental magical research that I have done, and I am really proud of it.
So I spend days transmuting and conjuring unobtanium and building the giant pyramid that is the outer shell of the rift generator. The edifice is inscribed with mandalas and runes to channel the magic generator and reinforce the structure itself, alongside a suite of defensive spell arrays.
After that productive week, I summon arch druids and shamans to stabilise and expand the plane fragment I made my base. The archdruids cast the spells to stabilise the physical laws of the universe and enforce a single set of physics, and the shamans work on the greater metaphysical structure of the shard, buttressing the failing pieces and pumping in energy and intent to stabilise its collapses. It is a shame I can't repeat the same process across the entire plane, but there are trillions of broken shards, and I don't have that kind of manpower or time to fix it.
It takes a lot of meditation, but I decide to focus on the small stuff first. That sun god's divinity is a good prize. Attachable shards of different concepts ascend you to divinity and give you various domain-based abilities. Even before figuring out how they work, I have to address the fact that I don't want to modify my soul, firstly because I haven't figured out how I planeswalk exactly, and secondly, it naturally gets stronger the more planes I travel; hence my lack of fear for physical death, my soul is strong enough that I can literally just walk around as a soul and recreate my body. Theoretically, at least, for obvious reasons, I haven't tried to do it yet.
But as I look around at my clearing and notice thanator playing with a shape-shifted archdruid, an idea comes to mind, a wonderful but crazy idea.
I am floating in the local void again, a soul floating in nothingness and feel the sparks of dying planes as their laws of physics fail and space itself collapses. I float to them, bearing the soft pain of nonexistence on my soul; I watch the void preditors as they dance and revel in the destruction of another shard of existence. Dark facsimiles of people and beings, aping structure and existence just to bring an end to the entire plane and then melt back into the void again, to repeat it somewhere else.
But this time is different; someone else is hunting them now, that can follow them back into the broken reality.
I pounce on the biggest one, wielding my soul like a sword, cutting into its un-flesh and ripping out chunks of its fabricated narrative. You don't have spells, powers, or physics in the void; it's a matter of pitting your soul against each other and imposing your will on the opponent.
I feel the retaliation, barbed lashes made of cruelty lashing at my back, leaving scars and divots that bleed eternally. I push through the pain and grab hold of those lashes with my determination, cloaking my soul like armour, and I fling the creature into the nearest shard. Its form elongates, compresses and then pops like a balloon as it crashes into the inviolate walls of the shard's boundary. I don't give it a chance and rip into it with fangs of viciousness and hateful knuckles. I continue pounding, biting and smashing the creature as it slowly dies under my barrage, losing texture as its essence tries to mix into the void so it may revive sometime in the future.
Of course, I don't let it; a cage of curiosity is all it takes to contain the creatures and its last embers of ego. I planeswalk to the plane that served as the backstop for my beatdown.
A gleaming mountain made of crystal greets me, small critters with crystal bones skittering away as I immediately begin casting restoration spells and healing to repair the soul wounds I had suffered. Imagine the most intense pain you have ever faced and then prolong that to a lifelong chronic condition; that's what a wound to the soul feels like, extreme pain that literally becomes a part of you. Unless you are a master soul forger, it's just like normal wounds to be healed by magic.
Then I manifest my captured prisoner in my hand, a dark ember of the void that seems to suck in reality around itself. I cast it into a diamond, reinforced and enchanted, and it goes in the bag of holding, making it the thousandth and one of these neverborn that I have hunted and captured now.
It was an interesting discovery when I discovered that not all of the shards aren't collapsing naturally, some of them are being actively sabotaged by realty-hating monsters. Another fun fact, my soul is the perfect predator for those sorts, I can chase them to their void and I am stronger than the vast majority of them, as long as they don't get to use their abilities at least. That had been a surprise, losing an arm for an entire week before I unravelled the death curse of a prince of the void.
It is exhilarating having these fights, each of them is a life and death struggle and the enemy is completely reprehensible so there is no moral quandary in ripping their pseudo-souls to shreds.
It's been a few months since I have come here and I have been spending most of this time collecting the core of these monsters I think I have enough for these uncreated abominations to do some experiments I have planned.
I cast a spell to look out of the plane and wait for the rest of the court to disperse and then I planeswalk away, moving at a speed incomprehensible to humans.
I arrive at my claimed shard and smile at the progress we have made.
A lush rainforest covers the land, with distant mountain tops scrapping the clouds, and natural weather patterns finally emerging after months of work by the archdruids to jumpstart the ecosystem and the water cycle. The shard is the size of Asia right now, the free time I had between hunting had been devoted to developing a version of the demiplane spell that would work on this shard.
It's a fairly unique circumstance, so it is a very niche spell. But since this is only a continental scale shard, with nothing to constrict its growth that a normal universe would, no almost infinite space-time continuum constricting the size of planes I can make. It still costs more mana to expand the volumes but the thousands of mana spent on summoning arch druids are well worth it. It's easier to create organisms that will ritual cast the spells for you, so they draw from their own sources of magic and not my own. Of course, it's slowing down but it's plenty big for my purposes.
I take out the bag holding the broken uncreated and put it in a stasis chamber and head out to my house, to relax and practice some poetry and maybe a bit of flight ballet, it's really fun when
you can be supernaturally dextrous and charismatic.
As I do a pirouette through a cloud when something trips my planar wards and crashes into my dimensional bastions. I Walk outside and spot an angel being hunted by a group of uncreated. I smile and open a hole in the defence. The angel notices the opening and flies through like a streak of sunshine.
I fall upon the horrors, adamant will against implacable hunger. I cut and twist, weathering their blows while gouging wounds from their pseudo-souls. I am scared by the end but I hold two more remnants in my hands. I Walk back to my plane.
The angel looks around from its binding, warding circles holding it still. I cast a few diagnostic spells and look upon its visage with my mage sight active.
Its form is but a shell, made of soul matter to contain the angel's essence. A spark of primordial creation burns at the centre of the fire, an animating motive force that sprang from the true beginning of the plane. I see the fire encased in an implacable cage of duty, a clear purpose writ upon each inch of its essence. An angel is a creature of the primordial creation and they are all created with a purpose in mind it seems, a chosen duty that they have failed. I see the warping of the cage, duty twisting to dogma as the angel failed to uphold its purpose. I see the damage done by the fire, a fluttering guttering ember that struggled to fuel itself without duty.
It takes me a few hours but I can slowly read the purpose written on this angel's soul. It was supposed to be a guide for heroes and champions, uplifting the paragons of mortals and making sure they reached their destiny. It failed, of course, heroes can't fix the broken world. So am I the target of its search or was it a coincidence it found itself near my shard when it got attacked? I make sure my anti-fate-bending wards are still up and that my own fate-warping spells are working to protect me, wouldn't want to be trapped with destiny or something.
I release the spell and the spectral chains holding her shatter.
"Sorry about that, just had to make sure you weren't a shapeshifter or an illusionist." I say laconically, it's the persona I want to put forward.
"Understandable, the vile uncreated abomination is conniving foes, it pays to be vigilant." She walks past me and takes a seat at the lavish picnic I had prepared for myself, she grabs an apple and bites into it. "So the reports are true, this shard contains a complete set of Laws. I haven't eaten an apple in millennia, ever since tielo and his infrastructure was sundered by The Betrayer's legions."
I smile sheepishly and reply.
"Yeah, I didn't want to risk the shard unravelling because it lacks some laws of physics. It helped me learn a lot about dimensional formatting and terraforming."
"It is a Miracle of the One, a shard with all of the Laws can serve as the core of a new creation, we can beat back the uncreated and finally repair the missing infrastructure that has lost its guardians. Finally, lucifers madness will be seen for the insanity it is and maybe my brothers and sisters can come to their senses."
Ok, that was a lot, there's probably a lot to unpack there. But I am not going to do that, I am just going to ignore it for now and get the low down on the situation when she is calmer and less excited.
"Ok, well I am happy to let you have the plane if you want. I can just make another one. But I need to know you will make good use of it." I pause to do a few calculations and then continue "I can do something even better, but I will need your help to prepare for things, it will be dangerous."
"I am listening, for the sake of all reality."
I hold a thousand cores of uncreated in my hand ritual chamber. The mind-bending mandalas necessary to provide control of solid voids are painted in complex 3D diagrams, intersecting matrices that form a room of obsidian stone with glowing silver lines inscribed on every inch of its surface.
I place the cores in their proper places, forming a perfect circle and then I take my place in the centre of the formations. Then I begin the spell, channelling thousands of mana through the mandalas to form the framework of my creation and then I begin the soul forging.
The cores act as the seed from which the soul grows, the nothingness alloyed with mana to give it shape. Green mana gives it instincts, blue mana gives it logic, and red ignites passion. White mana gives it empathy and structure and black mana gives it the desire to live and the selfishness to survive. The strands of mana are weaved between all thousand cores, forming an energy matric that is intricate and entangled. Then I pump that framework full of raw mana, channelling enough energy to vaporise a mountain or give birth to a forest. The energy is poured into the mould and the soul framework shapes and bends and twists, gaining strength and complexity by the second. Then the entire form collapses, into a singularity of creation.
The floating point of shining light expands slowly, becoming bigger and bigger each second. The soul stuff starts changing shades, shifting from pure creation to a prismatic vista then it changes colour again as it goes through darker shades, finally ending up like its progenitors. A floating amorphous blob 2 kilometres in size draws in natural light, appearing as a void-given form.
It's not caustic to reality like its ancestors, the mana alloyed to its void allowing it to exist without 'leaking'.
Creator, I exist to serve. What is my purpose? It speaks in my mind, its nascent telepathy reaching out to connect to my mind.
I reach out in turn, nothing would be more traumatic than being spurned by your creator after creation. I am not going to repeat Frankenstein's folly. I send it warmth and love through the connection before I send proper words.
You exist as a free being, you always have the right to refuse any order I give if you do not wish to do it. Service is now what I require from you, I have created you for a grand purpose, but I will not impose it on you. I pause to send the complex ball of concept that is my ethical standards.
I literally had to create a spell to just send this information but I had long accepted it as time well spent. It was something all my summons understand by default but this is the first creature I have formed with my own two hands, creating a soul strong and complex enough to do what I desired was not yet in the capability of my shamans and life shapers.
I still choose to serve you, if it is a noble purpose then that is what I will need to learn. It says with a serene voice of an untroubled mind.
Let's hope it doesn't lose that sereneness. Besides, even if it said no, I have its summoning pattern already, If I summon enough of them over time I will eventually find a random one that will do the work I want to be done.
"Well let's introduce you to your new colleague then, she will be delighted to meet you." I speak aloud and lead it out of its creation chamber and to the first expedition bastion.
The Void Levithan's Kilometers long body swirls into itself until it shrinks down to a glossy black sphere the size of a softball. For a creature of nonexistence, it is trivial to shapeshift, it's not like they have a real shape.
"So this is the abomination you have made for my quest." Alicia the angel says, with a loathing scoff at the floating ball of the void behind me.
"It is not of the void, not in the way your foes are. It is an ensouled being whose soul has been merged with the void. It is not innately deleterious to reality and it's a good person so far, at least give this a chance. You can't do your task without it and it's soon to be summoned brethren." I tell her as we walked through the gigantic walls and into the purposed spot for the first expedition.
"Besides, you and the few angels that are with you won't be enough to protect the people that come here if they are followed by the uncreated. So we need beings capable of freely travelling the void and fighting entire courts, as well as transporting all the refugees. So unless you have developed new powers since I last saw you, you will have to get used to the idea of working with them." I say with a bit of anger in my voice, no being deserves scorn just for existing, I let beings' actions define them.
"I will accept this, as I have accepted everything so far, for saving the souls and reality, I will do anything. Even work with uncreated abominations. I am going to go to the first plane, my scouts have found a shard where the Laws are failing. I will get going with this thing." She says and teleports to the Night. The void leviathan follows behind, nearly unparalleled in its ability to traverse non-existence, I hadn't tested it yet but I hope it might even survive the true blind eternities between real planes.
But I couldn't help but be proud of what I have created and the work I am doing. The leviathans are the perfect rescue vehicles. They can teleport without regard for differences, they have a lot of magical, psychic and shapeshifting skills to solve any conceivable problem, and they can spawn courts of void creatures for work that requires multiple beings. But the best part is for this mission they can act as permanent intraplanar portals, by transforming themselves into living night roads, letting us mass evacuate entire shards.
That is the second reason for the pride, the Great Rescue. We will find and save every failing shard, every soul that we can find. I have been personally increasing the size of my Shard and it's the size of the earth now, after a few months of constantly pouring in mana and the lack of resistance from an existing reality that increases cost geometrically. Of course, there are billions and billions of people out there in the failing shards but many of them have godbound of their own, who have stabilised their own reality. So we grab the ones that have no one to save them or are being enslaved by tyrannical made-gods.
I hope she succeeds in my secondary quest as well, it would make Project Panpoly possible. It's not every day I get to design a custom Ascension for myself.
I am floating in a void, unreality clawing at reality. Buts it's not the void I am used to, not the same ferocious lack of existence that destroys anything that isn't soul-bound to me.
It's like a cousin, a smaller more diluted version of it. There isn't any real difference here; it's both just a lack of existence. I open my mage sight and sense with my spark, the part of my soul that allows me to jump between planes.
It's a scene unlike any I have seen before; it looks like I am in a dying plane. Its outer membrane is barely keeping the greater void from consuming everything, and even then, it has failed; the void has leaked in and been shaped by this passage into a slightly less hostile version, its an incredibly complex process, I can't even begin to fathom how you can have this degree of unreality or how you would modulate the change in these phases, but some process has made it possible and that's the only saving grace of this plane. Its tatters float through this ultimate darkness, small chunks of a greater hole shattered by some unimaginable conflict because some of the damage I am seeing is artificial.
It is a strange step, but I can't stay here forever; even my much stronger soul is being eaten away by this darkness, so I find a different shard of reality and Walk to it.
I emerge in a desolate void again, but it is just the unforgiving void of space, just another part of reality. Sure I have trouble breathing for a second because of all my dispelled passives, but I quickly fix that with a few spells and heal the nerve damage and necrosis. It's not a big deal; I don't need my body to think or cast spells; it just prevents me from becoming a plane-walking ghost, so minimally important in the grand scheme of things.
The shard of a broken plane is small, just a few hundred kilometres of empty space. But it serves my purpose; I spend a few hours conjuring rock and soil and casting planar refuge to create a habitable floating island in that realm.
So I have a decision to make. I can simply leave this plane, walk out of here and find a new place. But that's a cowardly move. This is exactly the kind of place where I can do the most good. It's also an amazing opportunity to learn about planar engineering and metastructural magic systems. Because it almost certainly leads to the death of billions of people if I don't do anything. Physics is actively failing in some of those planes; a soul can only protect a person from hostile physics for so long.
To do that, I need to make some infrastructure.
So I have been researching the power generation of several civilisations in the previous plane. There is one main way that they acquire and use large amounts of magic, rifts from the elemental planes dumping a silver of their infinite magic on the material plane.
So I had to figure out how to adapt a phenomenon that isn't metaphysically supported by most realities because infinite planes of energy are rare and even those that exist are really dangerous.
So, designing the enchantment for opening the planar rift and stabilising and creating harvesting systems for the magic is fairly trivial; it's just basic attunement and channelling mandalas with some unobtanium framework to anchor the spells. The problem is where to aim that rift,
I was bashing my head against that for an entire week until a dwarven runelord saw my problems and just asked me a simple question in the signature straightforward manner of the dwarfs.
"If those planes don't exist, why not just make one? You made this demiplane already; it can't be that hard."
That gave me the idea that eventually lead me to my solution.
Of course, I didn't create an infinite plane of magic; I don't have the faintest idea of how even to do that, and I lack the power even if I knew how.
My quantum plane solution is a bit of magic and physics hack to get around those limitations. I created, after many failures and regrown limbs, a variant of creating a demiplane that can dump infinite magic into a universe.
It works by creating a plane completely inaccessible to reality, the rift being the only way to connect to it. This spell takes a lot of power, but the plane is put into a state of superimposition since no one can observe or access the plane; magically, it can be anything, from a plane of magic to a room the size of a closet. But since no observer can confirm its existence, the potential for an infinite plane of magic exists, and my magic harness that potential, converting it into pure magical power. The potential isn't reduced because it is potentially infinite, and that potentiality is transformed into actuality through magic.
It's the first piece of real fundamental magical research that I have done, and I am really proud of it.
So I spend days transmuting and conjuring unobtanium and building the giant pyramid that is the outer shell of the rift generator. The edifice is inscribed with mandalas and runes to channel the magic generator and reinforce the structure itself, alongside a suite of defensive spell arrays.
After that productive week, I summon arch druids and shamans to stabilise and expand the plane fragment I made my base. The archdruids cast the spells to stabilise the physical laws of the universe and enforce a single set of physics, and the shamans work on the greater metaphysical structure of the shard, buttressing the failing pieces and pumping in energy and intent to stabilise its collapses. It is a shame I can't repeat the same process across the entire plane, but there are trillions of broken shards, and I don't have that kind of manpower or time to fix it.
It takes a lot of meditation, but I decide to focus on the small stuff first. That sun god's divinity is a good prize. Attachable shards of different concepts ascend you to divinity and give you various domain-based abilities. Even before figuring out how they work, I have to address the fact that I don't want to modify my soul, firstly because I haven't figured out how I planeswalk exactly, and secondly, it naturally gets stronger the more planes I travel; hence my lack of fear for physical death, my soul is strong enough that I can literally just walk around as a soul and recreate my body. Theoretically, at least, for obvious reasons, I haven't tried to do it yet.
But as I look around at my clearing and notice thanator playing with a shape-shifted archdruid, an idea comes to mind, a wonderful but crazy idea.
I am floating in the local void again, a soul floating in nothingness and feel the sparks of dying planes as their laws of physics fail and space itself collapses. I float to them, bearing the soft pain of nonexistence on my soul; I watch the void preditors as they dance and revel in the destruction of another shard of existence. Dark facsimiles of people and beings, aping structure and existence just to bring an end to the entire plane and then melt back into the void again, to repeat it somewhere else.
But this time is different; someone else is hunting them now, that can follow them back into the broken reality.
I pounce on the biggest one, wielding my soul like a sword, cutting into its un-flesh and ripping out chunks of its fabricated narrative. You don't have spells, powers, or physics in the void; it's a matter of pitting your soul against each other and imposing your will on the opponent.
I feel the retaliation, barbed lashes made of cruelty lashing at my back, leaving scars and divots that bleed eternally. I push through the pain and grab hold of those lashes with my determination, cloaking my soul like armour, and I fling the creature into the nearest shard. Its form elongates, compresses and then pops like a balloon as it crashes into the inviolate walls of the shard's boundary. I don't give it a chance and rip into it with fangs of viciousness and hateful knuckles. I continue pounding, biting and smashing the creature as it slowly dies under my barrage, losing texture as its essence tries to mix into the void so it may revive sometime in the future.
Of course, I don't let it; a cage of curiosity is all it takes to contain the creatures and its last embers of ego. I planeswalk to the plane that served as the backstop for my beatdown.
A gleaming mountain made of crystal greets me, small critters with crystal bones skittering away as I immediately begin casting restoration spells and healing to repair the soul wounds I had suffered. Imagine the most intense pain you have ever faced and then prolong that to a lifelong chronic condition; that's what a wound to the soul feels like, extreme pain that literally becomes a part of you. Unless you are a master soul forger, it's just like normal wounds to be healed by magic.
Then I manifest my captured prisoner in my hand, a dark ember of the void that seems to suck in reality around itself. I cast it into a diamond, reinforced and enchanted, and it goes in the bag of holding, making it the thousandth and one of these neverborn that I have hunted and captured now.
It was an interesting discovery when I discovered that not all of the shards aren't collapsing naturally, some of them are being actively sabotaged by realty-hating monsters. Another fun fact, my soul is the perfect predator for those sorts, I can chase them to their void and I am stronger than the vast majority of them, as long as they don't get to use their abilities at least. That had been a surprise, losing an arm for an entire week before I unravelled the death curse of a prince of the void.
It is exhilarating having these fights, each of them is a life and death struggle and the enemy is completely reprehensible so there is no moral quandary in ripping their pseudo-souls to shreds.
It's been a few months since I have come here and I have been spending most of this time collecting the core of these monsters I think I have enough for these uncreated abominations to do some experiments I have planned.
I cast a spell to look out of the plane and wait for the rest of the court to disperse and then I planeswalk away, moving at a speed incomprehensible to humans.
I arrive at my claimed shard and smile at the progress we have made.
A lush rainforest covers the land, with distant mountain tops scrapping the clouds, and natural weather patterns finally emerging after months of work by the archdruids to jumpstart the ecosystem and the water cycle. The shard is the size of Asia right now, the free time I had between hunting had been devoted to developing a version of the demiplane spell that would work on this shard.
It's a fairly unique circumstance, so it is a very niche spell. But since this is only a continental scale shard, with nothing to constrict its growth that a normal universe would, no almost infinite space-time continuum constricting the size of planes I can make. It still costs more mana to expand the volumes but the thousands of mana spent on summoning arch druids are well worth it. It's easier to create organisms that will ritual cast the spells for you, so they draw from their own sources of magic and not my own. Of course, it's slowing down but it's plenty big for my purposes.
I take out the bag holding the broken uncreated and put it in a stasis chamber and head out to my house, to relax and practice some poetry and maybe a bit of flight ballet, it's really fun when
you can be supernaturally dextrous and charismatic.
As I do a pirouette through a cloud when something trips my planar wards and crashes into my dimensional bastions. I Walk outside and spot an angel being hunted by a group of uncreated. I smile and open a hole in the defence. The angel notices the opening and flies through like a streak of sunshine.
I fall upon the horrors, adamant will against implacable hunger. I cut and twist, weathering their blows while gouging wounds from their pseudo-souls. I am scared by the end but I hold two more remnants in my hands. I Walk back to my plane.
The angel looks around from its binding, warding circles holding it still. I cast a few diagnostic spells and look upon its visage with my mage sight active.
Its form is but a shell, made of soul matter to contain the angel's essence. A spark of primordial creation burns at the centre of the fire, an animating motive force that sprang from the true beginning of the plane. I see the fire encased in an implacable cage of duty, a clear purpose writ upon each inch of its essence. An angel is a creature of the primordial creation and they are all created with a purpose in mind it seems, a chosen duty that they have failed. I see the warping of the cage, duty twisting to dogma as the angel failed to uphold its purpose. I see the damage done by the fire, a fluttering guttering ember that struggled to fuel itself without duty.
It takes me a few hours but I can slowly read the purpose written on this angel's soul. It was supposed to be a guide for heroes and champions, uplifting the paragons of mortals and making sure they reached their destiny. It failed, of course, heroes can't fix the broken world. So am I the target of its search or was it a coincidence it found itself near my shard when it got attacked? I make sure my anti-fate-bending wards are still up and that my own fate-warping spells are working to protect me, wouldn't want to be trapped with destiny or something.
I release the spell and the spectral chains holding her shatter.
"Sorry about that, just had to make sure you weren't a shapeshifter or an illusionist." I say laconically, it's the persona I want to put forward.
"Understandable, the vile uncreated abomination is conniving foes, it pays to be vigilant." She walks past me and takes a seat at the lavish picnic I had prepared for myself, she grabs an apple and bites into it. "So the reports are true, this shard contains a complete set of Laws. I haven't eaten an apple in millennia, ever since tielo and his infrastructure was sundered by The Betrayer's legions."
I smile sheepishly and reply.
"Yeah, I didn't want to risk the shard unravelling because it lacks some laws of physics. It helped me learn a lot about dimensional formatting and terraforming."
"It is a Miracle of the One, a shard with all of the Laws can serve as the core of a new creation, we can beat back the uncreated and finally repair the missing infrastructure that has lost its guardians. Finally, lucifers madness will be seen for the insanity it is and maybe my brothers and sisters can come to their senses."
Ok, that was a lot, there's probably a lot to unpack there. But I am not going to do that, I am just going to ignore it for now and get the low down on the situation when she is calmer and less excited.
"Ok, well I am happy to let you have the plane if you want. I can just make another one. But I need to know you will make good use of it." I pause to do a few calculations and then continue "I can do something even better, but I will need your help to prepare for things, it will be dangerous."
"I am listening, for the sake of all reality."
I hold a thousand cores of uncreated in my hand ritual chamber. The mind-bending mandalas necessary to provide control of solid voids are painted in complex 3D diagrams, intersecting matrices that form a room of obsidian stone with glowing silver lines inscribed on every inch of its surface.
I place the cores in their proper places, forming a perfect circle and then I take my place in the centre of the formations. Then I begin the spell, channelling thousands of mana through the mandalas to form the framework of my creation and then I begin the soul forging.
The cores act as the seed from which the soul grows, the nothingness alloyed with mana to give it shape. Green mana gives it instincts, blue mana gives it logic, and red ignites passion. White mana gives it empathy and structure and black mana gives it the desire to live and the selfishness to survive. The strands of mana are weaved between all thousand cores, forming an energy matric that is intricate and entangled. Then I pump that framework full of raw mana, channelling enough energy to vaporise a mountain or give birth to a forest. The energy is poured into the mould and the soul framework shapes and bends and twists, gaining strength and complexity by the second. Then the entire form collapses, into a singularity of creation.
The floating point of shining light expands slowly, becoming bigger and bigger each second. The soul stuff starts changing shades, shifting from pure creation to a prismatic vista then it changes colour again as it goes through darker shades, finally ending up like its progenitors. A floating amorphous blob 2 kilometres in size draws in natural light, appearing as a void-given form.
It's not caustic to reality like its ancestors, the mana alloyed to its void allowing it to exist without 'leaking'.
Creator, I exist to serve. What is my purpose? It speaks in my mind, its nascent telepathy reaching out to connect to my mind.
I reach out in turn, nothing would be more traumatic than being spurned by your creator after creation. I am not going to repeat Frankenstein's folly. I send it warmth and love through the connection before I send proper words.
You exist as a free being, you always have the right to refuse any order I give if you do not wish to do it. Service is now what I require from you, I have created you for a grand purpose, but I will not impose it on you. I pause to send the complex ball of concept that is my ethical standards.
I literally had to create a spell to just send this information but I had long accepted it as time well spent. It was something all my summons understand by default but this is the first creature I have formed with my own two hands, creating a soul strong and complex enough to do what I desired was not yet in the capability of my shamans and life shapers.
I still choose to serve you, if it is a noble purpose then that is what I will need to learn. It says with a serene voice of an untroubled mind.
Let's hope it doesn't lose that sereneness. Besides, even if it said no, I have its summoning pattern already, If I summon enough of them over time I will eventually find a random one that will do the work I want to be done.
"Well let's introduce you to your new colleague then, she will be delighted to meet you." I speak aloud and lead it out of its creation chamber and to the first expedition bastion.
The Void Levithan's Kilometers long body swirls into itself until it shrinks down to a glossy black sphere the size of a softball. For a creature of nonexistence, it is trivial to shapeshift, it's not like they have a real shape.
"So this is the abomination you have made for my quest." Alicia the angel says, with a loathing scoff at the floating ball of the void behind me.
"It is not of the void, not in the way your foes are. It is an ensouled being whose soul has been merged with the void. It is not innately deleterious to reality and it's a good person so far, at least give this a chance. You can't do your task without it and it's soon to be summoned brethren." I tell her as we walked through the gigantic walls and into the purposed spot for the first expedition.
"Besides, you and the few angels that are with you won't be enough to protect the people that come here if they are followed by the uncreated. So we need beings capable of freely travelling the void and fighting entire courts, as well as transporting all the refugees. So unless you have developed new powers since I last saw you, you will have to get used to the idea of working with them." I say with a bit of anger in my voice, no being deserves scorn just for existing, I let beings' actions define them.
"I will accept this, as I have accepted everything so far, for saving the souls and reality, I will do anything. Even work with uncreated abominations. I am going to go to the first plane, my scouts have found a shard where the Laws are failing. I will get going with this thing." She says and teleports to the Night. The void leviathan follows behind, nearly unparalleled in its ability to traverse non-existence, I hadn't tested it yet but I hope it might even survive the true blind eternities between real planes.
But I couldn't help but be proud of what I have created and the work I am doing. The leviathans are the perfect rescue vehicles. They can teleport without regard for differences, they have a lot of magical, psychic and shapeshifting skills to solve any conceivable problem, and they can spawn courts of void creatures for work that requires multiple beings. But the best part is for this mission they can act as permanent intraplanar portals, by transforming themselves into living night roads, letting us mass evacuate entire shards.
That is the second reason for the pride, the Great Rescue. We will find and save every failing shard, every soul that we can find. I have been personally increasing the size of my Shard and it's the size of the earth now, after a few months of constantly pouring in mana and the lack of resistance from an existing reality that increases cost geometrically. Of course, there are billions and billions of people out there in the failing shards but many of them have godbound of their own, who have stabilised their own reality. So we grab the ones that have no one to save them or are being enslaved by tyrannical made-gods.
I hope she succeeds in my secondary quest as well, it would make Project Panpoly possible. It's not every day I get to design a custom Ascension for myself.
Chapter 20
The waiting is agonising. Not knowing what's happening is a familiar feeling. I have always been an anxious person, I tend to get into my head. I have been waiting a week since the first rescue expedition left, I have been spending my time carving a few statues and learning how to cook food from a dwarven matron. It feels good to learn essential life skills, and a good meat pie is scrumptious but the anxiety comes back after a while.
I could try spelunking with some dwarven miners, that sounds like a fun time. Let's see if the magic has let me overcome the claustrophobia.
The first refugees arrive through portals opening in their designated spots, holes shining with iridescent colours. A beleaguered people walk through, first solo and duos, the boldest walking forward as a vanguard for their people. Then the dam breaks, duos turning to clumps and then throngs of people, a current of thousands flowing through the dozens of portals.
I watch from the aid station, conjuring food and resources, while the dwarves guide the people to new accommodations. The people are from a modern tech-level shard, with some of the first scouts carrying radios and semiautomatics. So they aren't surprised by the apartment towers in the background, as people are walked through a spell array that cures all illnesses and cleans up everyone. People walk with more surety in their steps after they pass through the curtain of golden healing light.
The angels fly through the portals, acting as beacons of hope for these destitute people. They are all the malcontents from lucifers legions, angels whose purpose was compassion and nurturing. They glow with a reignited fire as their magic calms the people and guides them to their new homes.
The people look wary at first but slowly as the reality of their survival sets in, as fathers can feed their daughters again, as mothers see their sick children smile again, and hope blooms in those people's souls. A visible brightening in people's faces, even the dourest smiling for the first time in years.
A pair of people walk up to me, accompanied by a pair of thanes walking behind them to act as security. They are both a study in contrast, but slight divination tells me they are the leader of their nation or at least parts of it.
"So you are the one we have to thank for saving our people. Well, Thank you. You have saved our people's lives and it is something we will never forget it." The first man says, he is dressed like a decorated officer, his chest bedecked with medals and ribbons. He is infused with divine power, not his own but the concepts of war, technology and wealth resonate in the borrowed divinity he carries, although it is fading.
"The people of Morivia will name our new city after your name." The general continues "Here, I have already awarded you and your creatures the high Highest Medal in our land."
"Look at you, Trying to curry favour with our saviours just so your scum regime can eke out its existence now that your precious commander is dead." The woman who speaks is dressed in worn desert fatigues, with a bandana holding her hair from getting in her face. She is carrying a sniper rifle with her, held in the crook of her arm like a precious treasure. She has divine energy of her own, a young god-bound, her aspects of war, technology and community like a mirror to that of the general but her countenance of vitriol tells me she is not any less warlike than the general.
"Wait a second, I appreciate the gratitude but I am sensing a conflict here. We can't have that here. Let me talk to the angels to learn what's going on." Saying that I teleport to Alicia the Angel. She is in the midst of things, guiding handpicked mortals to establish the new living space for the refugees.
She looks up from the dozen glowing sigils transmitting information to her.
"So what's going on with those leaders" I point to the pair standing on top of a hill now, watching over the people with hawk-like gazes.
"That's a complicated matter but the essentials are. The general was a theocratic prophet of Made God, a tyrant that brought progress and plenty as long as no one questioned its rules. The lady is Karmia a rebel, The Rebel even, who gained divinity of her own and rose against the Made God Tyrant. Then it's the usual tale of revolutions. Still, luckily for her, she won the military victory, her sniper rifle laid low the Made God Tyrant and now the prophet and loyalists hate her and her rebels. They have enough influence to split the population roughly."
That's a problem, these people will set the standard for the future refugees that come to this shard for asylum and if they are embroiled in war then the future of peace I imagined would be in jeopardy.
"How do we make sure that the war doesn't spill out and that other wars won't break out between different groups of survivors? I think maybe I can make an order of warrior spirits to enforce peace. They would have to be experts at intrigue as well, to prevent any underhanded tactics and of course self-replication." I begin to ramble on about the potential peacekeepers. Before I get too deep in thought, Alicia snaps her fingers in front of my face, bringing me back from my musings.
"Do Not Do That. As a person crafted for a particular purpose, you will fail. Sapients shattered the Universe in their pursuit of ideology and that's just one of the reasons for war, they seem to be adept at inventing new justifications for wars. You would have to become a tyrant worse than Lucifer and Michal to even attempt that task. I would stand against you if you pursue those actions as will any heroes I could gather."
I am a bit dumbfounded by that triad and that threat. I give it a bit of thought and respond in a calm and collected manner.
"What you say is true, self-determination is the right of all sapients, and that includes to right to fight against oppressive systems and to fight for their ideologies. But I can't stand idly by if there is anything I can do to make sure the bloodshed is kept to a minimum. It is just a single shard with a few hundred thousand people now, but soon this shard will hold billion of refugees from diverse backgrounds, even if I stop this group, I can stand here and protect people forever."
"Then the people have to ensure that people's needs are met, that they have enough space to grow. They need meeting places and trade hubs where ideas can disseminate and people can mingle. Give people a universal internet, so they always have information and peers." Alicia says with a weary sigh "Sometimes you just have to realise that no matter what you do, it will fail eventually but the only thing left to do is try and try again. The sundering has humbled me but it hasn't broken my resolve just quite yet."
"Those are some good ideas I guess. You have lived and guided more people than me, So I will try your solutions. But if an antitechnology culture starts a crusade against the infrastructure, well I told you so right here. But I hope it works out for the foreseeable future."
I say that and then another thought comes to me.
"Now that you have succeeded in your goal, have you gotten me my prize as well?"
She nods and I See her send a psychic message to the Void leviathan.
A shadow falls on the campsite as an Oblong Whale plane shifts over the entire encampment and blocks out the sun, The people cheer, overcoming their fear of the shadow behemoth in face of its actions.
Its body bubbles and then forms into a giant funnel, compressing its bulk in a sphere to the size of a Semi-Truck.
I feel its mental tether tap into my mind and I send through Curiosity and satisfaction.
"How did your first excursion go?? How does it feel?"
Its silky smooth voice replies in my head.
"It was an unpleasant experience at first, the people in that place were suffering and they felt afraid of any of my Armsmen that weren't accompanied by angels. But slowly I created new servants that are fit for interaction and the joy that the people feel is indescribable to a psychic being like myself. Sure I had to psychically reformat a few people's minds to prevent them from committing war crimes before we got to their prisoners but I felt they were justified and the angels agree, those people aren't even dead."
There are edges of uncertainty and a bit of guilt in the last sentences but I let it pass unchallenged, I am not going to mourn war criminals, I might not have agreed with the actions but they are in the field and they had to make a call that saved peoples lives.
"Did you get the secondary target then??" I ask
"Of course, I deployed dozen of agents to secure it" The void leviathan replies. Then he flexes his psionic powers and a portal opens inside the faux-space inside him. The crackling purple portal expands and drops the prize.
A fifteen-foot-tall corpse of a made god, still pristine aside from the sniper shot that splattered its skull across a mountain range. I feel the dregs of divine energy in the thing, enough to make a person a godbound. But I hardly need them for energy, but it does have something I want. They aren't called Made Gods for nothing; each was manufactured by synthesising divine domains and crystalising concepts into a being of unparalleled might. I want to learn how to manipulate and create those Divine Domains and how to tap into large-scale belief systems.
"Wonderful, Project Panapoly is a Go."
I kick the floating crystal heart into the wall, and to my frustration, both the wall and the heart stay intact.
"This so fucking stupid. Why would anyone do this?"
The other test subject standing in my divination array shrugs in response.
"You have created a method of forging your own gods, combining an absurd amount of soul and magic manipulation, all to make a glorified mascot. It would be if
I spend a year making a doll for a child." I sigh and pick up the crystalline heart and put it back in the array.
"Hey man, I understand that emotion, if the zerubian stallions need a magical mascot I would build that myself. Sometimes a little hometown pride is what you need." Jack, the other test subject, says.
"No, it's fucking stupid to put so much effort to try and prove your ideology to be the best one, whether it's necro-communism or hydro-agrarianism. Just live and improve your people's lives and not SHATTER THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE." I say with an exasperated sigh.
"Well, you got me there, they did mess up quite badly." He checks the chronosphere on the wall and taps his foot "So how much longer are you going to take, You pay good money but my next appointment can't be pushed."
"Yeah, Yeah. I got you." I wave my hand and the floating mandalas of the diagnostic spells disappear "You are free to go. This is likely going to be the final session. The comparative data between you and that Made God is done. I can see how to replicate your Godbound Self apotheosis mechanism alongside the divine generation of a Made God. As promised, this information won't be used on this plane."
I hand him a pouch of holding, containing a 100 metric ton of mithril. It's comparatively much easier to transmute and conjure, compared to my unobtainium. But Jack's people will probably be able to set up their magical infrastructure with it once they buy it off him.
He belongs to the third expedition, with the Void Levithan pods evacuating their shards after the hyper-consumeristic society drove themselves to near extinction with their exploitation of their local metaphysics. I have woven protection spells into the shard's laws, there will be no kleptocrat selling people the physics to use electricity here.
But for all that, these people are often the simplest to interact with in some ways, they just want money and I have an unlimited source of that. Of course, I burnt out the souls of the magnates that hoarded the laws of reality on their shards first, that is the unimaginable level of greed that deserves non-existence.
"Thanks, Ajax. Hit me up in the future if you ever need a guinea pig." Saying that Jack transforms into a massive dragon and flies to his people's city.
I do some further experiments on the data for a few hours before I move on to my next significant improvement to the shard.
I fly through the window and over the burgeoning stronghold that is serving as my base of operations. A cultivated forest, full of glowing Pandoran trees stretches as far as the eyes can see. Magic pulses through the entire forest, in rhythms and waves of nature fueling and being fueled in turn by the forest. Spirits and magical animals frolic in the meadows and dales, thanator packs hunting Dino-mammoths. Life shapers toil in their Home Tree Bases, giant citadels of shaped and reinforced wood and living magic, leaking essence into their territories, claiming the land for their experiments. They are pushing their craft forward, creating new and unique life forms.
I fly to one such Home Tree, notably distinct by its Living Iron Bark and the intermittent sparks of lightning that roar through the canopy. Its leaves glow with inner luminescence, forming digital patterns.
This is the solution I have crafted for Alicia's suggestion of trade and information exchange preventing bloodshed.
I flow through an opening and into the heart of the tree.
I am greeted by a team of Lifeshaper Leshys and Shamans, shapeshifted into green-skinned humans to put the other members of the team at ease.
The other members are humans in lab coats, holding digital pads and computational devices. They are some of the best data scientists and system architects from a dozen different refugee groups, chosen and hired to develop the digital side of my creation. I have to admit I have no idea how to make functional information systems.
But I will also gladly claim I did a hell of a job on the hardware and metaphysical side.
"Heya boss finished with the side project. We were just finishing up the last diagnostic checks and everything looks good." Frank Adamns, my chief software, says while handing me the progress report.
"That's good to hear. Any problems on the UI side of things? I know you had a lot of trouble adapting to it." I ask to make sure they had solved the last major problem we had.
"Yeah, the essence tactile controls are hard to intuit but once you get used to them they are efficient, you can't beat intent-based inputs for control."
I smile at the response and nob contently. I spent months designing it and it feels good that it's ready to be deployed.
"I will be ready to send you guys your bonuses. Keep your chin up Mr Adamns, you have shaped history here." I pat him on his back, my 6-foot frame tiny in front of his 8-foot gene-engineered frame. He is a former cyborg warrior slave. He learned to code and broke his control shackles, leading a rebellion against his controllers. I offered to regrow his biological body and he happily accepted. He did request some enhancement, just so he and his cyborg comrades still have their usual level of performance because their corporate overlords still existed and sent assassins against him.
"I still have concerns, sir. The amount of power that anyone that controls these will be immense, I know you said they will prevent any monopolising but I still think you should have a more decentralised system." Frank raises our often-discussed issues again.
"I agree with you in principle Mr Adamns. It just didn't work out mystically. The ontological density required for them doesn't work properly without a centralised system." I repeat.
I should explain the system, to give context to the conversation.
First came the physical base. Which was a project by itself to figure out, took me 3 weeks' worth of work.
The Server Tree's Body is made up of living metals, magically imbued metals that can grow and change just like wood might do. The outer layer is Iron Bark, enchanted to withstand dozens of Archmages attacking it and acting as backup magic batteries, to store any excess generated magic. The more magic they hold the stronger their defences.
Everything Internal is an Unobtanium, the superconductor perfect for all the magical and processing needs of the project. It forms everything internally and serves as the processing and magical substrate for processing.
Then comes the magical bits.
The tree is host to a non-sapient spirit of knowledge and information. It was a hell of a time figuring out how to create an inherently paradoxical creature like a spirit of knowledge that can't think. In the end, I opted to create it as a Golem/Spirit hybrid. Golems are much more singleminded, they just wish to perform their function. So I crafted a Spirit/Golem whose purpose is to store, process, compute and present information. The actual coding was done by the people I hired but I directed the metaphysical process of creation.
I attached the essence generation framework to the spirit so that its influence will spread and grow stronger as it ages.
The essence will act as the interface as well. Since anything the essence is imbued into counts as part of the spirit/golem/tree, it can serve as an interface, as the spirit uses its power to read the intentions of the users and project the information in whatever format the user needs.
Of course, there are risks of someone trying sympathetic magic to try and attract spirit throughout its interface but that is why the metaphysical oomph is required so that any curse will slide right off its wards.
There are other miscellaneous things like how the spirit will grow stronger and gain more computation power as its information density increases, due to being a spirit of knowledge and gaining strength from more information. That is also a problem I had to fix.
Because my scientist pointed out to me, that if the magical density of the spirit continues to rise with time, then it would inevitability turn into some sort of informational singularity god-being, probably over 10000s of thousands of years but the problem still exists, I have to plan for the long haul.
So my solution is simple, the trees will deposit a portion of their power and knowledge into seeds that will grow into full Trees Of Knowledge. Neatly solving both my problems of the Singularity and Propagation of the infrastructure.
"But I have thought of two more ways to at least mitigate it. You can never really remove the advantage of the centralised infrastructure. But we can mitigate it. You should choose what options I employ." I put forth the offer I have been thinking of to Adamn. I truly don't know what the better option is, divination doesn't work with the integrated mind-blank. So let's hear it from the expert for this, and his team of course.
"What do you have in mind, I have some Ideas I want to suggest as well. I wonder if we can make it so that the Spiritual Interface itself acts as an anti-monopolising measure, I am thinking of a system that wants to be more equitable." Frank says with the conviction of a man that has suffered at the hands of tormentors and wants to help make sure that never happens again.
"I can't do that, even a little bit of intentionality in the golem/spirit will quickly be warped into a malign intelligence as soon as it gains more power. My idea was to make an order of guardian beings, something created to serve and make sure that access to the network is not impeded by anyone. The creations will be non-sapient of course, no need for a potential order of power hoarders to form." I counter his conviction because I had to think on a larger scale "Besides, decentralisation should occur naturally over time. People will develop their infrastructure that can treat the Trees just as another data centre. There is a reason I had you make sure the coding is designed to interface with even the most alien architecture."
"That won't work, without dynamic decision making, the defenders will lose against constant attempts, remember they only have to succeed once while they would have to stand unfettered for a millennium." Frank says, smashing my idea with the brutal wrecking ball of truth "The same applies to any sort of fate blessing, worthiness enchantment and any other sort of active defences. People will grow familiar with the system and eventually overcome them."
"Then what do you suggest? We are at an impasse, I think our current precautions are enough. The essence radius will grow larger and larger, eventually, everyone will have access to it." I reply, out of ideas.
"The best I have got for you that isn't a personal scale version of those is to create repeaters and extenders. Make sub-golems that act as range extenders for the essence and act as multiple points of contact for potential access to magical computing." He mutters, half in thought, clearly something he was still thinking through.
"That's just smaller trees, that will happen regardless as their gain more information and sprout more offspring." I sigh "I think we just have to take the risk and just do it."
A look of anger passes through his face but he composes himself, no doubt some skill he learned to hide when he was planning his escape.
"Very well then. As the final arbiter of the project you may do as you wish. But I won't be part of this, I am leaving. I can't work for someone so negligent." He hands me his magical security bracelets.
"Me too." "I will follow frank anywhere" "Eh, I didn't like the anyway."
A chorus of resignations follows his announcement, both human and leshy alike. Those who believe in his ideals drop the bracelets at my feet and walk out of the lab.
A majority of the scientists stay but I can't help but notice the most brilliant ones went with Frank Adamns.
But I can't stop now, I have already spent so much time in this world and my wanderlust is stirring within me again. The Void Levithan fleets and the angels are doing their job, the shard is stable and expanding, I have nearly decoded the data of the divinity and most of my infrastructure idea is done. I can't just let it be as well, there are already reports of conflict between nations. I think it is worth it to try Alicia's Idea and that it can help a lot of people. So I will push through and whatever happens with the Trees of Knowledge is up to the people now.
I could try spelunking with some dwarven miners, that sounds like a fun time. Let's see if the magic has let me overcome the claustrophobia.
The first refugees arrive through portals opening in their designated spots, holes shining with iridescent colours. A beleaguered people walk through, first solo and duos, the boldest walking forward as a vanguard for their people. Then the dam breaks, duos turning to clumps and then throngs of people, a current of thousands flowing through the dozens of portals.
I watch from the aid station, conjuring food and resources, while the dwarves guide the people to new accommodations. The people are from a modern tech-level shard, with some of the first scouts carrying radios and semiautomatics. So they aren't surprised by the apartment towers in the background, as people are walked through a spell array that cures all illnesses and cleans up everyone. People walk with more surety in their steps after they pass through the curtain of golden healing light.
The angels fly through the portals, acting as beacons of hope for these destitute people. They are all the malcontents from lucifers legions, angels whose purpose was compassion and nurturing. They glow with a reignited fire as their magic calms the people and guides them to their new homes.
The people look wary at first but slowly as the reality of their survival sets in, as fathers can feed their daughters again, as mothers see their sick children smile again, and hope blooms in those people's souls. A visible brightening in people's faces, even the dourest smiling for the first time in years.
A pair of people walk up to me, accompanied by a pair of thanes walking behind them to act as security. They are both a study in contrast, but slight divination tells me they are the leader of their nation or at least parts of it.
"So you are the one we have to thank for saving our people. Well, Thank you. You have saved our people's lives and it is something we will never forget it." The first man says, he is dressed like a decorated officer, his chest bedecked with medals and ribbons. He is infused with divine power, not his own but the concepts of war, technology and wealth resonate in the borrowed divinity he carries, although it is fading.
"The people of Morivia will name our new city after your name." The general continues "Here, I have already awarded you and your creatures the high Highest Medal in our land."
"Look at you, Trying to curry favour with our saviours just so your scum regime can eke out its existence now that your precious commander is dead." The woman who speaks is dressed in worn desert fatigues, with a bandana holding her hair from getting in her face. She is carrying a sniper rifle with her, held in the crook of her arm like a precious treasure. She has divine energy of her own, a young god-bound, her aspects of war, technology and community like a mirror to that of the general but her countenance of vitriol tells me she is not any less warlike than the general.
"Wait a second, I appreciate the gratitude but I am sensing a conflict here. We can't have that here. Let me talk to the angels to learn what's going on." Saying that I teleport to Alicia the Angel. She is in the midst of things, guiding handpicked mortals to establish the new living space for the refugees.
She looks up from the dozen glowing sigils transmitting information to her.
"So what's going on with those leaders" I point to the pair standing on top of a hill now, watching over the people with hawk-like gazes.
"That's a complicated matter but the essentials are. The general was a theocratic prophet of Made God, a tyrant that brought progress and plenty as long as no one questioned its rules. The lady is Karmia a rebel, The Rebel even, who gained divinity of her own and rose against the Made God Tyrant. Then it's the usual tale of revolutions. Still, luckily for her, she won the military victory, her sniper rifle laid low the Made God Tyrant and now the prophet and loyalists hate her and her rebels. They have enough influence to split the population roughly."
That's a problem, these people will set the standard for the future refugees that come to this shard for asylum and if they are embroiled in war then the future of peace I imagined would be in jeopardy.
"How do we make sure that the war doesn't spill out and that other wars won't break out between different groups of survivors? I think maybe I can make an order of warrior spirits to enforce peace. They would have to be experts at intrigue as well, to prevent any underhanded tactics and of course self-replication." I begin to ramble on about the potential peacekeepers. Before I get too deep in thought, Alicia snaps her fingers in front of my face, bringing me back from my musings.
"Do Not Do That. As a person crafted for a particular purpose, you will fail. Sapients shattered the Universe in their pursuit of ideology and that's just one of the reasons for war, they seem to be adept at inventing new justifications for wars. You would have to become a tyrant worse than Lucifer and Michal to even attempt that task. I would stand against you if you pursue those actions as will any heroes I could gather."
I am a bit dumbfounded by that triad and that threat. I give it a bit of thought and respond in a calm and collected manner.
"What you say is true, self-determination is the right of all sapients, and that includes to right to fight against oppressive systems and to fight for their ideologies. But I can't stand idly by if there is anything I can do to make sure the bloodshed is kept to a minimum. It is just a single shard with a few hundred thousand people now, but soon this shard will hold billion of refugees from diverse backgrounds, even if I stop this group, I can stand here and protect people forever."
"Then the people have to ensure that people's needs are met, that they have enough space to grow. They need meeting places and trade hubs where ideas can disseminate and people can mingle. Give people a universal internet, so they always have information and peers." Alicia says with a weary sigh "Sometimes you just have to realise that no matter what you do, it will fail eventually but the only thing left to do is try and try again. The sundering has humbled me but it hasn't broken my resolve just quite yet."
"Those are some good ideas I guess. You have lived and guided more people than me, So I will try your solutions. But if an antitechnology culture starts a crusade against the infrastructure, well I told you so right here. But I hope it works out for the foreseeable future."
I say that and then another thought comes to me.
"Now that you have succeeded in your goal, have you gotten me my prize as well?"
She nods and I See her send a psychic message to the Void leviathan.
A shadow falls on the campsite as an Oblong Whale plane shifts over the entire encampment and blocks out the sun, The people cheer, overcoming their fear of the shadow behemoth in face of its actions.
Its body bubbles and then forms into a giant funnel, compressing its bulk in a sphere to the size of a Semi-Truck.
I feel its mental tether tap into my mind and I send through Curiosity and satisfaction.
"How did your first excursion go?? How does it feel?"
Its silky smooth voice replies in my head.
"It was an unpleasant experience at first, the people in that place were suffering and they felt afraid of any of my Armsmen that weren't accompanied by angels. But slowly I created new servants that are fit for interaction and the joy that the people feel is indescribable to a psychic being like myself. Sure I had to psychically reformat a few people's minds to prevent them from committing war crimes before we got to their prisoners but I felt they were justified and the angels agree, those people aren't even dead."
There are edges of uncertainty and a bit of guilt in the last sentences but I let it pass unchallenged, I am not going to mourn war criminals, I might not have agreed with the actions but they are in the field and they had to make a call that saved peoples lives.
"Did you get the secondary target then??" I ask
"Of course, I deployed dozen of agents to secure it" The void leviathan replies. Then he flexes his psionic powers and a portal opens inside the faux-space inside him. The crackling purple portal expands and drops the prize.
A fifteen-foot-tall corpse of a made god, still pristine aside from the sniper shot that splattered its skull across a mountain range. I feel the dregs of divine energy in the thing, enough to make a person a godbound. But I hardly need them for energy, but it does have something I want. They aren't called Made Gods for nothing; each was manufactured by synthesising divine domains and crystalising concepts into a being of unparalleled might. I want to learn how to manipulate and create those Divine Domains and how to tap into large-scale belief systems.
"Wonderful, Project Panapoly is a Go."
I kick the floating crystal heart into the wall, and to my frustration, both the wall and the heart stay intact.
"This so fucking stupid. Why would anyone do this?"
The other test subject standing in my divination array shrugs in response.
"You have created a method of forging your own gods, combining an absurd amount of soul and magic manipulation, all to make a glorified mascot. It would be if
I spend a year making a doll for a child." I sigh and pick up the crystalline heart and put it back in the array.
"Hey man, I understand that emotion, if the zerubian stallions need a magical mascot I would build that myself. Sometimes a little hometown pride is what you need." Jack, the other test subject, says.
"No, it's fucking stupid to put so much effort to try and prove your ideology to be the best one, whether it's necro-communism or hydro-agrarianism. Just live and improve your people's lives and not SHATTER THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE." I say with an exasperated sigh.
"Well, you got me there, they did mess up quite badly." He checks the chronosphere on the wall and taps his foot "So how much longer are you going to take, You pay good money but my next appointment can't be pushed."
"Yeah, Yeah. I got you." I wave my hand and the floating mandalas of the diagnostic spells disappear "You are free to go. This is likely going to be the final session. The comparative data between you and that Made God is done. I can see how to replicate your Godbound Self apotheosis mechanism alongside the divine generation of a Made God. As promised, this information won't be used on this plane."
I hand him a pouch of holding, containing a 100 metric ton of mithril. It's comparatively much easier to transmute and conjure, compared to my unobtainium. But Jack's people will probably be able to set up their magical infrastructure with it once they buy it off him.
He belongs to the third expedition, with the Void Levithan pods evacuating their shards after the hyper-consumeristic society drove themselves to near extinction with their exploitation of their local metaphysics. I have woven protection spells into the shard's laws, there will be no kleptocrat selling people the physics to use electricity here.
But for all that, these people are often the simplest to interact with in some ways, they just want money and I have an unlimited source of that. Of course, I burnt out the souls of the magnates that hoarded the laws of reality on their shards first, that is the unimaginable level of greed that deserves non-existence.
"Thanks, Ajax. Hit me up in the future if you ever need a guinea pig." Saying that Jack transforms into a massive dragon and flies to his people's city.
I do some further experiments on the data for a few hours before I move on to my next significant improvement to the shard.
I fly through the window and over the burgeoning stronghold that is serving as my base of operations. A cultivated forest, full of glowing Pandoran trees stretches as far as the eyes can see. Magic pulses through the entire forest, in rhythms and waves of nature fueling and being fueled in turn by the forest. Spirits and magical animals frolic in the meadows and dales, thanator packs hunting Dino-mammoths. Life shapers toil in their Home Tree Bases, giant citadels of shaped and reinforced wood and living magic, leaking essence into their territories, claiming the land for their experiments. They are pushing their craft forward, creating new and unique life forms.
I fly to one such Home Tree, notably distinct by its Living Iron Bark and the intermittent sparks of lightning that roar through the canopy. Its leaves glow with inner luminescence, forming digital patterns.
This is the solution I have crafted for Alicia's suggestion of trade and information exchange preventing bloodshed.
I flow through an opening and into the heart of the tree.
I am greeted by a team of Lifeshaper Leshys and Shamans, shapeshifted into green-skinned humans to put the other members of the team at ease.
The other members are humans in lab coats, holding digital pads and computational devices. They are some of the best data scientists and system architects from a dozen different refugee groups, chosen and hired to develop the digital side of my creation. I have to admit I have no idea how to make functional information systems.
But I will also gladly claim I did a hell of a job on the hardware and metaphysical side.
"Heya boss finished with the side project. We were just finishing up the last diagnostic checks and everything looks good." Frank Adamns, my chief software, says while handing me the progress report.
"That's good to hear. Any problems on the UI side of things? I know you had a lot of trouble adapting to it." I ask to make sure they had solved the last major problem we had.
"Yeah, the essence tactile controls are hard to intuit but once you get used to them they are efficient, you can't beat intent-based inputs for control."
I smile at the response and nob contently. I spent months designing it and it feels good that it's ready to be deployed.
"I will be ready to send you guys your bonuses. Keep your chin up Mr Adamns, you have shaped history here." I pat him on his back, my 6-foot frame tiny in front of his 8-foot gene-engineered frame. He is a former cyborg warrior slave. He learned to code and broke his control shackles, leading a rebellion against his controllers. I offered to regrow his biological body and he happily accepted. He did request some enhancement, just so he and his cyborg comrades still have their usual level of performance because their corporate overlords still existed and sent assassins against him.
"I still have concerns, sir. The amount of power that anyone that controls these will be immense, I know you said they will prevent any monopolising but I still think you should have a more decentralised system." Frank raises our often-discussed issues again.
"I agree with you in principle Mr Adamns. It just didn't work out mystically. The ontological density required for them doesn't work properly without a centralised system." I repeat.
I should explain the system, to give context to the conversation.
First came the physical base. Which was a project by itself to figure out, took me 3 weeks' worth of work.
The Server Tree's Body is made up of living metals, magically imbued metals that can grow and change just like wood might do. The outer layer is Iron Bark, enchanted to withstand dozens of Archmages attacking it and acting as backup magic batteries, to store any excess generated magic. The more magic they hold the stronger their defences.
Everything Internal is an Unobtanium, the superconductor perfect for all the magical and processing needs of the project. It forms everything internally and serves as the processing and magical substrate for processing.
Then comes the magical bits.
The tree is host to a non-sapient spirit of knowledge and information. It was a hell of a time figuring out how to create an inherently paradoxical creature like a spirit of knowledge that can't think. In the end, I opted to create it as a Golem/Spirit hybrid. Golems are much more singleminded, they just wish to perform their function. So I crafted a Spirit/Golem whose purpose is to store, process, compute and present information. The actual coding was done by the people I hired but I directed the metaphysical process of creation.
I attached the essence generation framework to the spirit so that its influence will spread and grow stronger as it ages.
The essence will act as the interface as well. Since anything the essence is imbued into counts as part of the spirit/golem/tree, it can serve as an interface, as the spirit uses its power to read the intentions of the users and project the information in whatever format the user needs.
Of course, there are risks of someone trying sympathetic magic to try and attract spirit throughout its interface but that is why the metaphysical oomph is required so that any curse will slide right off its wards.
There are other miscellaneous things like how the spirit will grow stronger and gain more computation power as its information density increases, due to being a spirit of knowledge and gaining strength from more information. That is also a problem I had to fix.
Because my scientist pointed out to me, that if the magical density of the spirit continues to rise with time, then it would inevitability turn into some sort of informational singularity god-being, probably over 10000s of thousands of years but the problem still exists, I have to plan for the long haul.
So my solution is simple, the trees will deposit a portion of their power and knowledge into seeds that will grow into full Trees Of Knowledge. Neatly solving both my problems of the Singularity and Propagation of the infrastructure.
"But I have thought of two more ways to at least mitigate it. You can never really remove the advantage of the centralised infrastructure. But we can mitigate it. You should choose what options I employ." I put forth the offer I have been thinking of to Adamn. I truly don't know what the better option is, divination doesn't work with the integrated mind-blank. So let's hear it from the expert for this, and his team of course.
"What do you have in mind, I have some Ideas I want to suggest as well. I wonder if we can make it so that the Spiritual Interface itself acts as an anti-monopolising measure, I am thinking of a system that wants to be more equitable." Frank says with the conviction of a man that has suffered at the hands of tormentors and wants to help make sure that never happens again.
"I can't do that, even a little bit of intentionality in the golem/spirit will quickly be warped into a malign intelligence as soon as it gains more power. My idea was to make an order of guardian beings, something created to serve and make sure that access to the network is not impeded by anyone. The creations will be non-sapient of course, no need for a potential order of power hoarders to form." I counter his conviction because I had to think on a larger scale "Besides, decentralisation should occur naturally over time. People will develop their infrastructure that can treat the Trees just as another data centre. There is a reason I had you make sure the coding is designed to interface with even the most alien architecture."
"That won't work, without dynamic decision making, the defenders will lose against constant attempts, remember they only have to succeed once while they would have to stand unfettered for a millennium." Frank says, smashing my idea with the brutal wrecking ball of truth "The same applies to any sort of fate blessing, worthiness enchantment and any other sort of active defences. People will grow familiar with the system and eventually overcome them."
"Then what do you suggest? We are at an impasse, I think our current precautions are enough. The essence radius will grow larger and larger, eventually, everyone will have access to it." I reply, out of ideas.
"The best I have got for you that isn't a personal scale version of those is to create repeaters and extenders. Make sub-golems that act as range extenders for the essence and act as multiple points of contact for potential access to magical computing." He mutters, half in thought, clearly something he was still thinking through.
"That's just smaller trees, that will happen regardless as their gain more information and sprout more offspring." I sigh "I think we just have to take the risk and just do it."
A look of anger passes through his face but he composes himself, no doubt some skill he learned to hide when he was planning his escape.
"Very well then. As the final arbiter of the project you may do as you wish. But I won't be part of this, I am leaving. I can't work for someone so negligent." He hands me his magical security bracelets.
"Me too." "I will follow frank anywhere" "Eh, I didn't like the anyway."
A chorus of resignations follows his announcement, both human and leshy alike. Those who believe in his ideals drop the bracelets at my feet and walk out of the lab.
A majority of the scientists stay but I can't help but notice the most brilliant ones went with Frank Adamns.
But I can't stop now, I have already spent so much time in this world and my wanderlust is stirring within me again. The Void Levithan fleets and the angels are doing their job, the shard is stable and expanding, I have nearly decoded the data of the divinity and most of my infrastructure idea is done. I can't just let it be as well, there are already reports of conflict between nations. I think it is worth it to try Alicia's Idea and that it can help a lot of people. So I will push through and whatever happens with the Trees of Knowledge is up to the people now.
Its god bound
I am really enjoying this story, thank you for writing it.
The SI really needs to do a deep scan of himself if a couple of weeks in the same place is causing him issues, I get wanderlust but for someone who is immortal and with no pressing needs to be this quick to move on seems a bit unusual.
The SI really needs to do a deep scan of himself if a couple of weeks in the same place is causing him issues, I get wanderlust but for someone who is immortal and with no pressing needs to be this quick to move on seems a bit unusual.
- Location
- united states
no system created by mortals - that aren't all connected together into a semi gestalt entity or hive like network where everyone is conscioulsy aware of everyone else's everything while still maintaining individuality - can ever be perfect (even if in function and the processes of its workings actually are perfect) because some individuals will always be dissatisfied with the system not meeting their personal ideal standard. Thus as always holds true you cannot satisfy everyone, but you can do your best to try and satisfy as many as possible.
Hope we get to find out how well his meddling in the various planes works out eventually.
Hope we get to find out how well his meddling in the various planes works out eventually.
Sorry if i didn't convey it propely, its been a year. I should start using maybe a timestamp for clarification. It is a noted problem i have.
I got plans.
Chapter 21
The true void between reality roars in my year is just as implacable as it's always been. I thought the more time in the diluted nothingness might have given me some resistance but even now, all I feel are claws of unreality tearing at my soul. The void leviathan that tried jumping with is destroyed utterly, and the brave volunteer faces a final death.
I vow to remember his sacrifice as I step onto a new plane. A wall of flesh appears around me, learing maws snapping at my abjurations. I step away again, this time it's a dead plane empty of matter. Another Walk and I emerge underwater, but the water is acid and there is a kilometre-long fish snapping at me.
I step away again. The next destination I emerge on the edge of a black hole, I feel the inescapable pull of gravity, the all-devouring maw pulling in everything to continue to expand. My wards and spells twist and warp, shielding me from unfathomable forces. I feel my molecules being pulled apart at the seams, my fingers losing shape and cohesion. I step away and even that is harder than I have ever done it before, the graveyard of a star refusing even planeswalking an escape.
The next plane is safer, so I stop and I pause to take a breath, casting a calming spell before the building panic attack hits. I almost died there, knowing that my soul would hang forever on the edge of a singularity. It is a horrible reminder that I am still susceptible to death, no matter how immortal I think I am. As I feel the calming spell take effect, I look around and take in the plane that I walked to in my panic.
Giant neon signs shine their scintillating glare. Advertising about everything from medicine, food, electronics and guns. It takes me a moment to recognise the language. English looks rather strange now. I haven't seen it in any of the worlds I have been on. Its peculiar sounds echo in my ears, like coming home after a long vacation. Of course, it contains words I don't recognise and my magics work to correct that information gap.
I look up from the alley I am slumping in, my spells healing my spaghettified hand.
The people that walk the bustling street are stranger than any I have seen, not because of their individuality but because of their collective nature. I see half a dozen races mingling, elves, dwarves and orcs walking in relative peace. They are all unique too, cybernetic augments, neon tattoos, magical charms, tribal gear and a whole lot of guns adorn the people in a tapestry of sapience in all its heterogeneity.
I wave a hand and my clothes change, matching the synthetic fibres of the people around me, some sort of neo-cotton and denim blend. A pair of jeans and a hoodie lets me blend into the flow of the pedestrians.
I get a feel for the world when I see an orc woman, an office worker of some sort, walk into an alley and is immediately accosted by skinheads with human skull tattoos. So the world is not harmonious but I guess that would be too good to be expected.
I silently waggle my fingers and attach a blessing of luck and prosperity to her, just as I turn the corner. My last sight is one of the thugs stabbing their friends while stumbling over a banana peel.
Hmmm, Interesting, that was a stronger reaction than intended, I will have to look into that.
My stroll takes me out of the side road I am walking merges into a major thoroughfare. Its a gridlocked river of concrete, a 24-lane highway in the middle of the city with a tiny sidewalk acting to buttress a corpulent artery of travel. Thousands of cars are moving, driven by autopilot as their occupants are engrossed in some form of entertainment. People wear Glasses and swat at the air, like a monkey trying to flick away flies from its banana pile.
I notice how every square inch of the space is covered in cameras, both subtle and overt. They make London look like a love hotel, there is no privacy in the future. I cast a minor glamour spell, hiding my appearance behind a holographic face. I didn't really need to but I always wanted to be a spy as a kid and it harms no one.
I twirl the AR glasses in my hands, the design is fascinating, and all the power of personal computers in these compact devices projects an entire layer of reality for the user.
I feel bad that I had to steal these ones but the Corpo executive looked like an amoral dick, so ethically I am fine it's just those basic morals taught as kids that make me feel bad. But it is fun stealing things from people that deserve it.
But that's for me to pursue later. Now I have a novel internet to explore.
With a flex of my will, I manifest my panoply. The previously hidden armour transposes itself on my body, a sleek fully enclosed black armour in the style of power armour. It is a bulwark of divine vitality and is imbued with the concept of protection. This was the first piece of the panoply I made and thus is the roughest. A simple divine mantle that I can 'physically' wear. It interfaced with my soul, acting as a power armour for my soul and sort of a wearable divinity.
I don't need the vitality, my magical defences outstrip even its considerable power but it is nice to never get the cold again or act as a vector for an interdimensional death virus.
But the armour is just the base, the interface I use to control my actual treasures. The 9 Orbs of Arcane. The 9 melon-sized spheres float behind me, forming a halo of multicoloured balls. They are each a different colour, crackling with the excess power of the spell work that is their core.
The first 8 orbs are the distilled concept of each school of magic bonded with the greatest foci I can make. Each orb is a magical golem, each with the capacity of an entire Tree of Knowledge in the size of a Melon. Then I forged the meaning of each school of magic into reality and bound them together in a seamless union of magic and divinity.
Each orb controls a single school of magic, the evocation orb can shoot fire, freeze a lake, disintegrate a spaceship, and make a music concert. Anything that can be done with the manipulation of energy and its symbolic control can be done by the same. The same holds true for every other Orb, Conjouration can open portals, teleport, bind and create creatures or heal beings. Necromancy can kill and raise the dead, shape souls and make curses.
The 9th orb is the Masterpeice. An Orb of Meta magic, essentially a magical multi-tool that will allow me to combine and append any magical effect I want. Because while each individual orb is a crystallisation of their school, this is the bridge that lets them interact and mix like oil paint, and it will be the brush that allows me to make a Mona Lisa. With it spells of unheard complexity are possible.
A combination of Metamagic, Evocation and necromancy can be anything from a bolt of chain lightning that raises each of its victims as a Wight King to Starting a Fire by reviving it from the ashes. A pairing of Metamagic, abjuration and transmutation can be the creation of solidified Antimagic, a transformation into a Holy Warewolf. DIvination and Conjuration could be summoning stuff from the future or unerring blasts of powers that transport their foes into the sun.
The only limit was how many orbs I can chain together and how much mana I can supply and that will grow stronger with the strength of my soul.
If each spell is an executable program then these orbs are AIs that can make custom spell effects on the fly.
I begin my investigation of the AR goggles, the divination sphere lightning up as it pulls information from the device and thin air and shoves on a book I conjured. It starts with the basics, the make and model of the device, its specification and so forth. Then the complexity starts ramping up, showing me the parts and manufacturing process. Then come the basic principles of how the object functions and how it is designed.
I turn it off before it gets into more minutiae of where the metal was mined and how it was marketed.
It is an interesting read for when I have the time but its just a proof of concept of the process itself. It's not important in the grand scheme of things but at least I will know how to use the damn things when Interacting with the people of this world.
That's the big problem I realized when the calming spell faded. Being almost trapped in that black hole, forever, has shaken me. I have to confront the fact I have been living a performative existence. I pretend to do good but I am a coward in my actions.
I visit planes and make magical solutions to their problems, but I have been too craven to see those solutions through. I have thrown those miracles at the world and hope that they fix the problems themselves.
It is the actions of someone who doesn't want to do the hard work of making the world a better place, someone who has always chosen the option to run away whenever things are about to be tough.
It is stark and apparent, especially when my first thought about this plane is how to make a massive work that can fix the world and I haven't spared a thought about the actual people living here and how my easy way out would impact them.
This changes today, I will live in this world. I will live among the people and bear all the challenges they face and learn what it is like to face complex problems head-on. I won't swear off my magic but I must forge bonds of empathy with the people of this world if I am to truly try to fix the problems that likely plague this world.
Because that's what I have realised. In my pursuit of using magic to do good, I have failed in being a human. True heroism is facing the challenges head-on and not scurrying away when real work is needed. True heroism can only be done by those that something that they care about and for all my high-minded ideals and ethics, I have failed at the first step, I have failed to care about the people that are facing problems without my vast cosmic powers.
But I will rectify that now, I will be a human and I will do the hard work necessary to make up for my shortcomings.
After a good night's sleep, I realised something. It's easy to make dramatic decisions, but following through on them is hard.
Improving this world is going to be a long process, hell I don't even know what challenges this world faces aside from the generic corporate abuses of any such world. I need to gather information, set up networks of agents, get a resource base and then improve the planet. I need to do this, to prove to myself that I can commit to something.
That is going to require a lot of work, things I can't just skip with magic, like talking to people and getting them to do things. So I am going to make the first big change in my existence since I became capable of magic.
I pour mana through my orbs, necromancy and transmutation, I take a knife and give myself a small cut before flicking off the pooling blood drops. Twelve drops fly and before they can disperse, my magic changes them.
Proteins, Minerals and Lifeforce are conjured, twisting and growing. Like an explosion of flesh as the twelve drops grow into twelve clones, slightly altered to be fitter and ageless but visually exact copies of myself.
A bit of telekinesis holds up the bodies and I do the second part of my change. My original body collapses in a puddle of amino acids and my soul crawls out of the viscera, like a swimmer exiting a pool. A dozen spells of destruction and ruin leave my soul, erasing all sympathetic traces of me. Even the astral realm is cleansed as a dozen black blades erase the very space the body used to be.
I give one last mournful look at the place where my body used to be, my last connection to the world I was born in and my parents. Sure the Clones shared the DNA but it's not the same. But I have to do this, to commit to doing what I want and not just half-ass it like a dimwit.
I channel my next spell, a dozen invocations of the conjuration to like them to my soul. Then I cast one of the darkest necromancy spells and possess my own bodies, while my soul is safely hidden in a demi-plane to pilot my possessed bodies like fleshy dolls.
Now the real work begins.
I need agents to go out into the world, instruments of my goals that don't need me to micromanage them to achieve my wills
The best options for that are the dwarfs of course. Humonioid so they can blend in with the people on the plane. Skilled and strong, especially now that I can summon them as godbound beings.
So I proceed to Summon Rangers, expert spies and scouts. They were the sneakiest of the dwarven nations and can go where others don't want people to go. I bind the concept of Shadows, Exploration and Hunting. They can blend and travel through shadows, blend into an empty room, survive on an alien planet and track a target across the continent. These will be my wet work specialists, the ones who can go retrieve things and liquidate any targets I desire gone.
The next batch of divine dwarves are the Traders, Dwarves imbued with the essence of prosperity, luck and communication. These are experts that will form the Companies and organisations I need, the ones that will recruit my local agents and the ones that will turn our skills into local resources.
The lasts are the Skalds, Supernal Bards that sing the song of heroes and guide them to their destinies, they will find, recruit, train and bless the locals and allow them their own say in how the world will be changed. They will use their divine mastery of Heroism, Adventure and Music to raise mortals to make a change as People and not just get downtrodden by corporations.
While these agents are going to be doing that, I will be running a public front, a sort of publicity stunt to draw attention like a lightning rod.
I vow to remember his sacrifice as I step onto a new plane. A wall of flesh appears around me, learing maws snapping at my abjurations. I step away again, this time it's a dead plane empty of matter. Another Walk and I emerge underwater, but the water is acid and there is a kilometre-long fish snapping at me.
I step away again. The next destination I emerge on the edge of a black hole, I feel the inescapable pull of gravity, the all-devouring maw pulling in everything to continue to expand. My wards and spells twist and warp, shielding me from unfathomable forces. I feel my molecules being pulled apart at the seams, my fingers losing shape and cohesion. I step away and even that is harder than I have ever done it before, the graveyard of a star refusing even planeswalking an escape.
The next plane is safer, so I stop and I pause to take a breath, casting a calming spell before the building panic attack hits. I almost died there, knowing that my soul would hang forever on the edge of a singularity. It is a horrible reminder that I am still susceptible to death, no matter how immortal I think I am. As I feel the calming spell take effect, I look around and take in the plane that I walked to in my panic.
Giant neon signs shine their scintillating glare. Advertising about everything from medicine, food, electronics and guns. It takes me a moment to recognise the language. English looks rather strange now. I haven't seen it in any of the worlds I have been on. Its peculiar sounds echo in my ears, like coming home after a long vacation. Of course, it contains words I don't recognise and my magics work to correct that information gap.
I look up from the alley I am slumping in, my spells healing my spaghettified hand.
The people that walk the bustling street are stranger than any I have seen, not because of their individuality but because of their collective nature. I see half a dozen races mingling, elves, dwarves and orcs walking in relative peace. They are all unique too, cybernetic augments, neon tattoos, magical charms, tribal gear and a whole lot of guns adorn the people in a tapestry of sapience in all its heterogeneity.
I wave a hand and my clothes change, matching the synthetic fibres of the people around me, some sort of neo-cotton and denim blend. A pair of jeans and a hoodie lets me blend into the flow of the pedestrians.
I get a feel for the world when I see an orc woman, an office worker of some sort, walk into an alley and is immediately accosted by skinheads with human skull tattoos. So the world is not harmonious but I guess that would be too good to be expected.
I silently waggle my fingers and attach a blessing of luck and prosperity to her, just as I turn the corner. My last sight is one of the thugs stabbing their friends while stumbling over a banana peel.
Hmmm, Interesting, that was a stronger reaction than intended, I will have to look into that.
My stroll takes me out of the side road I am walking merges into a major thoroughfare. Its a gridlocked river of concrete, a 24-lane highway in the middle of the city with a tiny sidewalk acting to buttress a corpulent artery of travel. Thousands of cars are moving, driven by autopilot as their occupants are engrossed in some form of entertainment. People wear Glasses and swat at the air, like a monkey trying to flick away flies from its banana pile.
I notice how every square inch of the space is covered in cameras, both subtle and overt. They make London look like a love hotel, there is no privacy in the future. I cast a minor glamour spell, hiding my appearance behind a holographic face. I didn't really need to but I always wanted to be a spy as a kid and it harms no one.
I twirl the AR glasses in my hands, the design is fascinating, and all the power of personal computers in these compact devices projects an entire layer of reality for the user.
I feel bad that I had to steal these ones but the Corpo executive looked like an amoral dick, so ethically I am fine it's just those basic morals taught as kids that make me feel bad. But it is fun stealing things from people that deserve it.
But that's for me to pursue later. Now I have a novel internet to explore.
With a flex of my will, I manifest my panoply. The previously hidden armour transposes itself on my body, a sleek fully enclosed black armour in the style of power armour. It is a bulwark of divine vitality and is imbued with the concept of protection. This was the first piece of the panoply I made and thus is the roughest. A simple divine mantle that I can 'physically' wear. It interfaced with my soul, acting as a power armour for my soul and sort of a wearable divinity.
I don't need the vitality, my magical defences outstrip even its considerable power but it is nice to never get the cold again or act as a vector for an interdimensional death virus.
But the armour is just the base, the interface I use to control my actual treasures. The 9 Orbs of Arcane. The 9 melon-sized spheres float behind me, forming a halo of multicoloured balls. They are each a different colour, crackling with the excess power of the spell work that is their core.
The first 8 orbs are the distilled concept of each school of magic bonded with the greatest foci I can make. Each orb is a magical golem, each with the capacity of an entire Tree of Knowledge in the size of a Melon. Then I forged the meaning of each school of magic into reality and bound them together in a seamless union of magic and divinity.
Each orb controls a single school of magic, the evocation orb can shoot fire, freeze a lake, disintegrate a spaceship, and make a music concert. Anything that can be done with the manipulation of energy and its symbolic control can be done by the same. The same holds true for every other Orb, Conjouration can open portals, teleport, bind and create creatures or heal beings. Necromancy can kill and raise the dead, shape souls and make curses.
The 9th orb is the Masterpeice. An Orb of Meta magic, essentially a magical multi-tool that will allow me to combine and append any magical effect I want. Because while each individual orb is a crystallisation of their school, this is the bridge that lets them interact and mix like oil paint, and it will be the brush that allows me to make a Mona Lisa. With it spells of unheard complexity are possible.
A combination of Metamagic, Evocation and necromancy can be anything from a bolt of chain lightning that raises each of its victims as a Wight King to Starting a Fire by reviving it from the ashes. A pairing of Metamagic, abjuration and transmutation can be the creation of solidified Antimagic, a transformation into a Holy Warewolf. DIvination and Conjuration could be summoning stuff from the future or unerring blasts of powers that transport their foes into the sun.
The only limit was how many orbs I can chain together and how much mana I can supply and that will grow stronger with the strength of my soul.
If each spell is an executable program then these orbs are AIs that can make custom spell effects on the fly.
I begin my investigation of the AR goggles, the divination sphere lightning up as it pulls information from the device and thin air and shoves on a book I conjured. It starts with the basics, the make and model of the device, its specification and so forth. Then the complexity starts ramping up, showing me the parts and manufacturing process. Then come the basic principles of how the object functions and how it is designed.
I turn it off before it gets into more minutiae of where the metal was mined and how it was marketed.
It is an interesting read for when I have the time but its just a proof of concept of the process itself. It's not important in the grand scheme of things but at least I will know how to use the damn things when Interacting with the people of this world.
That's the big problem I realized when the calming spell faded. Being almost trapped in that black hole, forever, has shaken me. I have to confront the fact I have been living a performative existence. I pretend to do good but I am a coward in my actions.
I visit planes and make magical solutions to their problems, but I have been too craven to see those solutions through. I have thrown those miracles at the world and hope that they fix the problems themselves.
It is the actions of someone who doesn't want to do the hard work of making the world a better place, someone who has always chosen the option to run away whenever things are about to be tough.
It is stark and apparent, especially when my first thought about this plane is how to make a massive work that can fix the world and I haven't spared a thought about the actual people living here and how my easy way out would impact them.
This changes today, I will live in this world. I will live among the people and bear all the challenges they face and learn what it is like to face complex problems head-on. I won't swear off my magic but I must forge bonds of empathy with the people of this world if I am to truly try to fix the problems that likely plague this world.
Because that's what I have realised. In my pursuit of using magic to do good, I have failed in being a human. True heroism is facing the challenges head-on and not scurrying away when real work is needed. True heroism can only be done by those that something that they care about and for all my high-minded ideals and ethics, I have failed at the first step, I have failed to care about the people that are facing problems without my vast cosmic powers.
But I will rectify that now, I will be a human and I will do the hard work necessary to make up for my shortcomings.
After a good night's sleep, I realised something. It's easy to make dramatic decisions, but following through on them is hard.
Improving this world is going to be a long process, hell I don't even know what challenges this world faces aside from the generic corporate abuses of any such world. I need to gather information, set up networks of agents, get a resource base and then improve the planet. I need to do this, to prove to myself that I can commit to something.
That is going to require a lot of work, things I can't just skip with magic, like talking to people and getting them to do things. So I am going to make the first big change in my existence since I became capable of magic.
I pour mana through my orbs, necromancy and transmutation, I take a knife and give myself a small cut before flicking off the pooling blood drops. Twelve drops fly and before they can disperse, my magic changes them.
Proteins, Minerals and Lifeforce are conjured, twisting and growing. Like an explosion of flesh as the twelve drops grow into twelve clones, slightly altered to be fitter and ageless but visually exact copies of myself.
A bit of telekinesis holds up the bodies and I do the second part of my change. My original body collapses in a puddle of amino acids and my soul crawls out of the viscera, like a swimmer exiting a pool. A dozen spells of destruction and ruin leave my soul, erasing all sympathetic traces of me. Even the astral realm is cleansed as a dozen black blades erase the very space the body used to be.
I give one last mournful look at the place where my body used to be, my last connection to the world I was born in and my parents. Sure the Clones shared the DNA but it's not the same. But I have to do this, to commit to doing what I want and not just half-ass it like a dimwit.
I channel my next spell, a dozen invocations of the conjuration to like them to my soul. Then I cast one of the darkest necromancy spells and possess my own bodies, while my soul is safely hidden in a demi-plane to pilot my possessed bodies like fleshy dolls.
Now the real work begins.
I need agents to go out into the world, instruments of my goals that don't need me to micromanage them to achieve my wills
The best options for that are the dwarfs of course. Humonioid so they can blend in with the people on the plane. Skilled and strong, especially now that I can summon them as godbound beings.
So I proceed to Summon Rangers, expert spies and scouts. They were the sneakiest of the dwarven nations and can go where others don't want people to go. I bind the concept of Shadows, Exploration and Hunting. They can blend and travel through shadows, blend into an empty room, survive on an alien planet and track a target across the continent. These will be my wet work specialists, the ones who can go retrieve things and liquidate any targets I desire gone.
The next batch of divine dwarves are the Traders, Dwarves imbued with the essence of prosperity, luck and communication. These are experts that will form the Companies and organisations I need, the ones that will recruit my local agents and the ones that will turn our skills into local resources.
The lasts are the Skalds, Supernal Bards that sing the song of heroes and guide them to their destinies, they will find, recruit, train and bless the locals and allow them their own say in how the world will be changed. They will use their divine mastery of Heroism, Adventure and Music to raise mortals to make a change as People and not just get downtrodden by corporations.
While these agents are going to be doing that, I will be running a public front, a sort of publicity stunt to draw attention like a lightning rod.
Last edited: