BECMI Chapter 464 – A Feast for the Future

“An isekai Heaven, where farmers can play at being fighters, and fighters can play at being farmers?” I mused aloud. “That might have a very good effect of keeping a lot of people in fighting trim even in the afterlife, able to pursue all sorts of dreams that they could not while they were alive.”

“Indeed,” Dame Adama agreed with a knowing smile. “And as always, in the end, someone is going to muck up the afterlife and the slow evolution of souls back into the cycle for their own very, very, surely more important than the Grand Cycle of Souls reasons.”

“Well, of course. Breaking up a fun afterlife to inflict the horror of those being punished for the sins on the just and honorable is only right and proper, after all,” I nodded cool understanding.

“Such perfect understanding of Evil’s view on things. They do so hate being stuck with the short straw, and want to continue their tradition of making others miserable in death as much as they did in life. Alleviating their own misery at the same time, of course,” Haki sniffed aloofly. “It’s like being harvested in the Lakes of Fire for your Sin, reduced to ectoplasmic sludge and deprived of your identity, then agglomerated into Fiends that condense your sins and overwrite your personality, all at the whim of beings as or more Evil than you and more powerful than you, is really a horrible way to end your existence. They’ll do everything they can to share how horrible it is with others out of pure spite!”

“The hypocrisy of their own existence does not bother many Fiends in the slightest,” Chardon noted with a cheerful shake of his handsome head. “But they dwell in Sin, so that should not be surprising.”

“How do the Fiends of this multiverse compare to those of your Primes?” I asked them, curious on their viewpoint on the matter.

“It is almost a reward for service,” Haki immediately spoke up disparagingly. “They are all in service to the Entropic Immortals who make them, of course, and the sacrifice to do so means they don’t have the infinite numbers that make up the Sinful souls of that realm. However, they have power, strength, and Eternal life, such as it is, even if they can get no stronger, and must always knuckle under to the stronger.”

“It is the fate of most of their Immortal Aspirants. Only a tiny fraction actually go on to become true Immortals, as the Entropics have to be wary of their numbers versus the other Spheres, that much is apparent, and the number of Fiends also seems linked to the number of permitted Titans. It does, however, encourage truly epic acts of Evil to earn the attention and right of Immortality,” Dame Adama almost cursed.

“Mmm. I only really know of four ongoing right now on the Far Shore. Most of the recent events have been driven by Immortal Avatars instead.”

“Oh?” I had all of their curiosity. “What horrors befall there, then?” Molniya asked grimly.

“The country of Buraval is run by a lich corrupted by an Entropic Artifact I’ve destroyed in this timeline, and is being threatened by a gnoll raising a horde bolstered by undead slain by his own Entropic Artifact. Briggs and Sama are looking at it as their next target for adventuring action and border conflicts.

“My grandfather almost managed to found an undead nation in Zanzyr back there, until I brought the undead hunters I trained here back there and wiped the ancestral lands clean of his kind. I still haven’t managed to find him, however, meaning he’s likely off-world and protected by an Immortal.

“There IS an entire province in Delpha of monsters, founded by one of the now-Immortal mages of that province, and some seriously wrong-in-the-head magic takes place there. All perfectly legal, as if you’ve the power, you can do whatever you like in Delpha.”

“That always leads to fine and upstanding endings, it does!” Catleya chirped for everyone.

“The most famous ‘success’ that came out of it is merging elves into pegasi to create pegataurs. They also have more beholder eye production facilities than the rest of the Empire combined,” I noted calmly.

“My, such heartwarming and efficient successes!” Helos shook his head.

“Indeed. The last is one I’m wondering exactly how to address. It is centered in the Sheikdoms of Zakarum, where Sythia now begins to rise on this world. There is an Overmagus of Delpha who has come to that land and is setting things up for a rise to Energy. Which would be absolutely fine, but he considers breeding monsters, succoring foul Artifacts, harvesting souls, enslaving natives, and creating undead to all be perfectly acceptable methods towards his goal. The only Immortals who have an eye on him are probably Entropics, waiting for him to rise up and devastate the area, which is already the demesne and hereditary kingdom of an active Immortal of Time.

“I don’t know which of the requirements he’s satisfied, but the ‘be known as the most powerful wizard within a thousand miles’ is probably holding him back for the moment, as there were powerful wizards in the neighboring nations, and he has built up an extraordinary arsenal to prepare for his Ascendance.”

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“You have not moved against him because-?” Dame Adama askedme .

“I only found out about him recently, when aContinental Communehappened to reveal a nation’s worth of tunnels beneath the sands of Zakarum, but they weren’t inhabited by humanoids. It turned out the bastard dug them out himself and has been filling them with armories, breeding pens, undead storage caverns, laboratories, and the like. One of my Sims has been infiltrating the place, finding out what he is up to, and has begun directly thwarting some of his moves, which is only making him more paranoid.

“I have been directly debating really pissing off multiple Immortals by moving on them.”

“This sounds interesting,” Jian smiled, leaning forward. “What are you thinking of doing?” the archer asked with interest.

“I’ve told you that Sythia rose to power, was corrupted, and Fell, cursed by the immortals to never be remembered and reduced to dust. To further emphasize this, the lands it was built upon were covered in sand, because they buried the great river Myah that watered and fed the nation. They then additionally designed and put in place an Artifact which wipes all knowledge of Sythia from those who wander into the desert. As such, all knowledge of Sythia is known only outside of the lands where it existed, and it is the second great magical nation brought low by Immortals.

“Some wonder why Delpha has not followed them into self-destruction, and consider it time.”

The Avatars all looked at one another thoughtfully. “That many Overmagi should indeed dominate the world, and leave little room for other powers to truly rise. It is somewhat surprising the Immortals haven’t taken different steps to do so,” Helos pointed out neutrally. “You have alluded to a conflict between the empires there. Perhaps it will trigger it?”

“Oddly enough, likely from the native side. Events are moving, and Delpha has been dispatching archmagi to Zanzyr to cause trouble. It hasn’t gone as easily as they might have wished, since I have Pyramids up there, and there are ways to tweak them that can severely inhibit the whizbang tactics the Delphans strongly favor.”

“Ah, you’ve been interfering with their teleportations?” Dama Adama smiled.

“Right into prepared chambers where Anti-magic is ready to turn on. They are MOST discomfited. Then we put them into a breathing contest with a gorgon and store away the statue until we have a use for it. The number of raiding Delphans dropped off sharply when none of them came back.

“Of course, if they arrive outside the active Pyramid Domains, we can do nothing, but it did rather limit them to the edges of the country, instead of the core regions.”

“That doesn’t seem to be a problem in this timeline yet, although there are indeed suspicious folk moving around Brightmoor and the neighboring environs. However, I think the too-active Immortal attention in Sythia is making them wary, and they haven’t done anything worse than trying to rile up bandits and start little hidden cults up. The Marked and Oaths of Allegiance really do help in spotting these things,” Thor murmured, frowning. “Your eradication of the beastfolk means no orcs and their kin forming into hordes, but the release of the morlocks and what might be happening with them is worrisome… and I doubt the giants have forgotten what Darkmoor did, either.”

“Aunt Edge is not in danger, Fuzzy. What are they going to do, assault a nation of dragons and try to ford a lava moat to reach her? They’ll all be dead before the second ring of Fangs,” Sif sniffed confidently. “Going around her to reach Brightmoor might be something, and they are certainly a problem if we ever want to expand north… but that’s hundreds of years away, just based on population. The morlocks will be a problem if they grow in numbers, and I believe the wrong kind of Immortals have taken an amused interest in them.”

“A grown morlock has three racial hit die, making them tougher than gnolls and on par with bugbears,” I pointed out calmly. “While they deserve the chance to see if living on the surface can break their savagery and reclaim their human origins, that is going to be a very uphill battle given the type of attention they will attract. I imagine Orcus has already taken a shine to them, if he wasn’t responsible for them in the first place.”

“Ah, not the one we are familiar with. This one glories in the savagery of the beasts, a kindred soul with Klaw and his ilk. A true fondness for lycanthropy and degenerative mutation in him,” Arbor nodded grimly. “He has a fondness for corrupting Druidic Circles we’ve run across in various places.”

“Yes, that is one of his preferred vectors,” I agreed. “Identifying his agents in Drakkunport has been a fairly constant chore. It does not help that some of the Erto tribes consider berserkers who can shapeshift blessed by Grimr.”

“Maintaining control of the Island of the Dawn will be important in the future, I believe. It should not be difficult to do with any successful level of immigration, as we can have people settle in the slower Nested Realms and spread to the Prime slowly as they do. We simply have to manage the populations well. Converting the native tribes should not be difficult, although many will only bow to strength, as is their way,” Lunia remarked quietly.

“Ah, so the island is going to be your foundation. Very good!” I approved.

“Maintaining control of the access Portals to the Nested Realms will be important, and yet should be something fairly easy to obfuscate,” Jian noted quietly. “It is large enough to be self-sustaining for a large population, and has only a few scattered tribes on its borders because of the waves that scoured the shores of the world and rewrote the edges of continents. It is big enough for all of us to establish a core population of our own to carry on our direct legacies.”

“Well enough.” They could certainly give people a lot of help, and the fact they were united under the Church of Morning could only be good for Sif and Thor, although they were going to raise a LOT of Immortal interest in just how much their faith would spread, and how ubiquitous it would be.

Also, Good people doing Good things in a world full of Neutral Immortals who only cared about their own Immortal Projects or pet peoples, and to heck with the big picture. An island would be much easier to guard in many ways than a nation like Brightmoor, but Brightmoor had its own distinct advantages, merely lacking the time needed to grow properly.

In time, everything in time.