-There is a situation developing,- Briggs /informed me blandly.
With the Markspace, I didn’t need to be present somewhere to help guide my own nation, and actually normal elves didn’t much like the idea of a monarch in a castle or other imposing place, like, oh, a Pyramid, sitting inside it and reigning over them from it.
A ruler who was always out and about doing stuff whimsically, but still had the power and skill to direct the nation, resolve problems, all the while lending their personal power to tasks which were both useful and could be on the quirky side? That was highly admirable.
The Shaden immigrants thought so as well, from the other end. From their standpoint, I was incredibly hard-working and disciplined for an elf, and sheer competency, as opposed to always flitting about here and there, impressed them the most. I was very unlike the royal family whose power in Deepearth had all but collapsed as the Shaden began to leave the subterranean realms for the surface in droves, which naturally forced the buried kingdom itself to collapse inwards, drawing in its borders quickly as it bled thousands of elves by the month.
No one had any sympathy for his plight, and it was plain to all the elves coming to Eistree that I was anything but dependent upon their power, that if they flarked off I wouldn’t care or stop them in the slightest… and that I had a clear vision and ability to take them to a brighter day.
Loyalty among those under me wasn’t something small.
I was currently working on the last Pyramid of Eistree, something that would basically put the entire northern banks of Eisen Bay under a Pyramid’s Domain, granting me a level of control over the environment and magical defenses that only Eismoor had about its cities… and that was because those cities had Pyramids, too.
This Pyramid would be called the Birch Pyramid, because I was making it all white with black streaks simply out of whim. The roses that grew on and around this one would be all white and black, too.
If I subtly turned this into a major dairy region in the future with moo-moo cows, I could be forgiven, right?
-Go on,- I /told Briggs, not stopping on my work.
-That peace conference in Helcard just collapsed rather violently,- he /told me carefully. -Someone came in, blew through the security in a one-sided massacre, and somehow made off with all the delegates and their retainers from both sides, disappearing without a trace.-
I had to blink at the sheer chutzpah of that kind of a move. -Third party involvement. Neither side is going to be responsible… although the warmongers would happily blame one another, and King Ristoegath will definitely take a lot of finger-pointing. What kind of fallout?-
-The Mick and his party were coming into the harbor, and there are Delphan and Siricilan ships going at it enthusiastically. Parts of Helcard are on fire, as it’s nominally a Delphan holding. They ‘ported ashore, their mission only half-successful, by the way.- He took a grim breath. -The intruders took both imperials.-
I didn’t interrupt what I was doing, but I did curse silently. -Oh, that won’t settle things down much. This basically screams Delphax, or one of His minions. Not that this conference was being taken at all seriously by either side.-
Brucall had been the one to request the Mick’s help at the peace conference. There was a legendary Artifact out there, the Banner of the Pax Mundia, that had been hung at great diplomatic events in the far past, enabling warring sides to set aside emotions and come to terms successfully. It had been present at the great council centuries ago where Siricil and Delpha had first set up boundaries for their empires after Siricil drove the Delphans out of their nation, but it had been lost long ago.
Neither Emperor Magni or Empress Cleossa had deigned to appear at the conference, but they had sent their children as at least token representatives of their wills. Magni had sent his younger daughter Chyrilsa, and Cleossa had sent Brucall’s younger brother Onswerd. Neither had the power to truly represent their nations and thus actually come to terms, but being in attendance still kept up appearances.
Queen Maunia of Eismoor, Magni’s former wife and thus mother of Chyrilsa, had probably bent someone’s ear somewhere in this process, too. For all that she wasn’t involved much in the raising of her children, she wasn’t going to abandon her daughter to something that felt like Immortal games.
-Aye, even the Mick feels they were just going through the motions. However, the priest of Oroyosam was plainly an Immortal move, and the Mick had some interesting comments about the current ruler of Thasophyt.-
-That is the only remaining settlement of Sythia that has managed to retain any semblance of its prior culture, as I recall?- I /asked archly, never having been there.
-Along with possessing the oldest records on the island as its longest settlement. The prior treaty council was held there, and so all records involved with it were, too. Their job was to go there and gain access to those old records, using them as the basis for a new treaty conference based on prior agreements.-
Not a bad strategy, on the face of it. They came to terms once, they could do so again. -And things did not go smoothly?- I /inquired.
-Well, it seems that the government there is no longer a theocracy. I believe Sythia fell because it began following Entropic gods, correct?-
My Sims were likely the only beings who had managed to retain clear and true memories of the nation that had been wiped so cleanly away from mortal history that only its name and general location remained. -Correct? Quarizon led the condemnation, while Anapexis took pity on the few faithful and sent them into the Hollow World.-
-Well, the Mick noted that the Ninefold Web of Wisdom looked to be an awful lot like an Entropic Mystic philosophy known as the Dark Web, the Pharaoh Arkenpetoh XVII was a monk who didn’t interact with anyone, and the wife of the current Pharaoh looks an awful lot like the wife of the previous sixteen Pharaohs, plus she happened to be a werespider. An extremely powerful werespider with Clerical powers.-
-Ugh.- Well, that would set him and his people off, no question. -I’m assuming things got explosive once they deduced that.-
-Well, that, and the natives kidnapped the priest with them, had him all webbed up in their larder,- Briggs /went on with some amusement. -Yeah, things got pretty explosive. Laurentine actually had to shrink most of the library down and stuff it into a Tapestry before they got out of there, then they had to beat feet before the army moved on their ship down in the port, Summoning up some Elementals so they could get out of there at low tide before the army there could take the ship.-
They could have just bailed, but that would have left the Aetlan ship and crew at the mercy of the natives, which, if they had association with Entropics, likely would not have ended well for anyone concerned.
-Just in time to return to a crapshow.- With Immortal fingers all over the place. -Are we going to need to get involved?-
-It would really disappoint the Mick if things elevated to our level, but he gives no promises. He’s pretty sure the Patron of the werespider priestess was her mother, by the way she talked about it. Are you familiar with Mother Spider?-
I blinked. -Yes, and so are you. You do remember who you killed at the heart of the Bug Garden, right?- Said area still being used for Karma harvests for troops on an ongoing basis, and one reason why our elites were just that damn good.
-That was her? Well, now.- Briggs was definitely interested now. -Why is that one involved in this mess?-
-The Dark Web is a Mystic Tradition from Thanatos. Mother Spider is one of the weakest of all Immortals, because her Truename got out somehow. It is Arakne Progenos.-
I’d never made a Rune of it, because it was too widely known to be able to leverage it properly. The Name still had power over her, able to neutralize her Immortal immunities, but being so widely known by other Immortals meant the greater powers wouldn’t work on her. Truenames often relied on scarcity of knowledge to function properly.
-The Mick and his people are dying to get their feet wet with an Immortal, especially an Entropic,- Briggs /told me cheerfully.
-Get them an Entropic Dreadskull, just to be on the safe side, although they shouldn’t need it.- We’d killed enough Entropic Avatars and Fiends to have a small supply of the things now.
-Will do. Pursue this to the end?- Briggs /asked.
-Yes. They all need tempering, and his team is the best. Let them lead the way.-
They were probably supposed to go to the High Plateau of the Isle of Kheper first, following some breadcrumbs an Immortal, likely Oroyosam, was dribbling out for them.
Nah, that wasn’t going to fly. There was work to be done, first.
The first thing that happened is that his team and the Venture, with Briggs aboard, returned to Thasophyt, which was ostensibly a completely neutral party to the fighting going on. Without much fanfare at all, the marines landed, and they went after the Clerics and Mystics espousing the philosophy of the Ninefold Web with rather impressive levels of violence.
The descendants of ancient Sythia weren’t defenseless, but they didn’t have anywhere near the magical or martial prowess of their forebears, basically coasting along in life and all their ambitions being siphoned away by the tenets of the Web and its passivity leeching at the spirit of their culture.
They freely called on undead, had werespider senior monks, and their philosophy was a rebranded Entropic conversion doctrine. Briggs’ direct attack on them shocked the Hell out of both the Delphans and Siricilans, who had basically opted to leave the Thasophytes alone, knowing they’d go along with whoever the eventual winner was.
Briggs didn’t much care about their neutrality, and he wasn’t there to conquer. He was there to eradicate a corrupt religion that had taken down an entire culture.
Once they found out undead and werespiders were involved, the Forsaken couldn’t be held back, and were plenty happy to butcher their way through the temples and monasteries, finding out exactly the kind of shit those mystics and priests were pulling on the people, and putting everything to the sword… after showing off a lot of it to a lot of civilians who didn’t want to learn about the falsehoods concealing the beings preying on them, but didn’t have a choice in the matter.
Very importantly, the ones who could get away from the carnage ran.
And the Mick and his people had followed.
This was the trail that led up to the plateau, and the trail of kidnapped Imperials. There had been a temple to the Mother Spider there, behind rather too many werespider monks, and a Portal to another world, and then another, and another…
The Marklink had spazzed out. Not because the connection wasn’t there, but because time was shifting.
Every Portal they went through increased passing time by a factor of ten. By the second one, they could only understand anything from Sama or Briggs with extreme patience and concentration. By the third world, even they were just too damn slow. A curt word would take minutes to sound forth, so drawn out that even thoughts were unintelligible.
Now they were here, five Portals through, and time was traveling one hundred thousand times faster than the Prime Plane.
And… the amount of negative energy had increased tremendously. All of them had Death Wards on their Oathrings, protecting them from both the necroic energy in the air and the Portal’s attempt to transform them to adjust along with the new worlds by turning them more and more undead.