While technically these characters have been here the whole time and haven’t changed, due to current events I thought we’d get a refresher on them since most players have long since forgotten what Altepetl has going on.

The master of the entire Altepetl pantheon. He is seen as a particularly kind god. Adopting strays to form his nation’s pantheon, while he could have likely had a much more prominent nation he decided to adopt the remnants of destroyed nations and give them a place to call home. Each successive apocalypse has left many gods at the risk of being forgotten forever, Bahamut prevented that for almost all in his care and adopted the ruins of nations that stood to become pagan tribes in the wild lands.  Because of his past history with the topic, he is particularly spiteful towards Lucifer and his multiple world ending attempts to achieve his goals.

If Bahamut is the king Pele is the queen. She’s been living in her volcano for so long Bahamut isn’t even sure if she’s younger or older then him. Unlike most of the strays he adopted, Pele was doing fine on her own. However, she agreed to join his pantheon and add the volcanic mountain to his territory anyways.

Pele is thought of very highly even amongst other nations. One of the kindest gods in the land and despite her beauty she is thought of more as an old woman. Natives refer to her as Tutu Pele out of both respect and affection, which means “Grandmother Pele”.

She is primarily known for the sex goddess part. By a very large margin. So much so that this explains why Altepetl is so bad at military conflict and no one is sure how she became their war goddess in the first place. Blame 3500 B.C. mythology.

She is so prevalent as a sex goddess that her cult’s major feature is literally prostitutes. Offerings at her temples are traded for sex with her priests and priestesses. She has become so prominent within their culture that it is actually not considered infidelity to lay with a member of her church.

I didn’t even make that up. In ancient Mesopotamia there actually was a church of Ishtar whose major feature was its “sacred prostitutes.”

Known for being both a friendly prankster, wise, helpful, and mysterious. The Raven is thought to be a spirit of the wild lands that became a god over time.

What is known for sure about her is her ability to foresee events as her major power. While it isn’t as accurate as Eret’s power, The Raven is not restricted to mortals.  What stands out most though is her ability to communicate with spirits and control them. Whether it is actual control or simply their willingness is unknown. Her cult is capable of delving deep into the wild lands far better then any other group in the world, and that includes the Jakaal/Mao Yachi.

Unlike most sea gods, Sedna does not control any great leviathans. She has power over many of the smaller and less monstrous aspects instead. She also cannot produce storms but she can calm them.

While most sea gods tend to wield great destructive power, Sedna is instead an aspect of guidance and calm. Preferring to help her people rather then hinder her foes.

Altepetl’s fishing culture is quite healthy thanks to her, all Altepetl seagoers cast a piece of metal into the ocean in tribute to her before they take to the seas.

The Great Eagle, known for controlling the winds with a single beat of his wings and watching the world from above with his eagle eyes. While we know he is intelligent he doesn’t have the ability to speak human languages, even if he can clearly understand them.

He mostly hangs out and polices the nation’s borders in case of invaders.

A massive creature whose pure intent is to protect the nation from its enemies. It will incarnate any time any where to protect Altepetl. However, it is not particularly powerful compared to other godlike beings. It usually warded aggressive spirits from the wilds away or small pagan tribes.

Similar to Roc the Quetzalcoatl cannot talk, while it seems to understand simple language and commands it is more like an animal then anything else. Just a particularly smart one.

In summary the Altepetl pantheon easily showcases its weakness in conflict. It is a nation built around keeping their head low and living with the land around them. Were it not for Bahamut the nation would just be more wild lands. They are composed of dozens of small tribes who loosely come together under the pantheon, but no national governing method.

While you wouldn’t necessarily call the nation peaceful, warring tribes and their tribal heroes are actually quite fierce, they aren’t going to last long against organized militaries and far more confrontational god aspects.

Even their war goddess is really just known for sex. Pele is known for the warmth and security of the fire, as her volcano is stable and doesn’t really catch anyone by surprise. Bahamut is also known as basically that one god who picked up all the orphans in the aftermath of huge wars.

This is why they’re so afraid of everything going on around them. Ofrior and Thykenae just got eradicated, and those guys had real armies alongside very powerful gods. If they come under attack by any nation, they know they’re just banking entirely on Bahamut to route them off while they escape into the wild lands.

It is unknown who first suggested whatever this dark super-ritual is, but they somehow got the entire nation to get in on it and keep it on the down low. Were it not for Asmodaeus’ attempt to recruit them from within he would have never discovered the colossal altar they’re building. No one else in the world seems to know its being built, because its on the far side of the volcanic mountain.

Shentu Wo: 99 Power, 644Followers
Sima Wa: 298 Power, 959Followers
Lin Sun: 112 Power, 223 Followers
Con Lai: 284 Power, 339Followers

Battle Report: Technical Success?

Valkyries sent by Freyja joined the battle. They primarily engaged the Shinigami.

Vithanyalai, Co So, and both YuDai Nao and Shento’s original temples destroyed bombarded to pieces before the fight even started, due to the location of Sekai Taki Song’s forces could not move far enough south to protect it.

The plan changed slightly, or perhaps dramatically, when Dyaus Pita pseudo-incarnated using every ship in the fleet to transform into his body and create a super-ultra-mighty-morphin mech avatar of himself.

Carmilla and Sarnai took over a few Taiyo ships instead to try and sail to the northenmost point of the islands engagement and begin evacuation to the lengdonian mountain range.

The locustening Did a lot of damage throughout the course of the battle, constantly diminishing Dyaus Pita’s avatar but after Ryner and clan were beaten back by Sun Sanika Locust was injured in the ensuing skirmish.

Ryner and clan under attack by Sun Sanika, who were prepared for vampiric enemies. After Halima provided Ryner a shadowy form that could survive the sun weapons Ryner pushed back and fought along the coast to protect their assets from Taiyo and Sanika assault after rescuing Locust from the Sanika.

Kharis makes executive decision to reroute the Goethe clan to fly with her, part of major boarding team into the depths of Dyaus. Halveti killed in the process.

Song Yi’s ice plan went out the window the instant Dyaus incarnated. Taiyo military engaged her forces along the southern range of Lengdon, Song Yi held a defensive line to provide an evacuation landing point on the eastern coast of the mountains.

Ningi No Mikoto engaged Tsukoyomi, managing to barely win. Valkyries reaped him

Izumi a part of boarding forces on the Dyaus avatar, worked separately from Kharis to cause external damage by moving around the body in the moonlight.

Marshal Devada injured by nameless soldier who got a lucky hit in after Devada defeated Mara. Sanika suddenly pushed hard to retrieve their commander and retreat him before he could be finished off.

Izanagi and Izanami reaped by Shen Rai

Forneus killed by Ryujin.

Murugan defeated by Song Fang, reaped by Shen Rai

Shen Rai defeated by Dyaus Pita, respawned in Sthan Thi.

“The Heretic” appeared, shooting sea monsters that attacked it, Dyaus Pita, Ryujin, Abaddon, and Izumi indiscriminately.

Eret teleported to Carmilla and Sarnai somehow and helped guide them through until they were safe enough. Commanded Halima to assist Ryner. Disappeared before anyone could ask what the hell he was doing here.

Goethe brand fish food™ (killed by leviathan after an Akasiya tore his wings off and threw him into the ocean)

Teijin defeated by Wukong and reaped by Izanagi

Wukong defeated by Hotaru, reaped by Valkyries

Abaddon major part of fight against Dyaus Pita, but wound up defeated in the end and reaped by a shinigami.

Sea calmed long enough for boats to sail from Doi Cho Len to the eastern tip of Lengdon by Zeus. Who threw a hail mary lightning bolt from mount olympus right into Ryujin, stunning him for a week.

Eli Pierce appeared and caused a shitload of problems. Drove the Shinigami to chaos. 80% of all the shinigami dead. 70% of Valkyries also engaging them dead.  Ningi No Mikoto has not moved, spoken, or blinked since the incident, was also stabbed and sent to respawn in Sthan Thi. Izumi has been curled up in a ball in Yaosai as well and killed the first three people to enter her room and check on her. Several hundred more afflicted by Eli, but Su Pinpua has been able to cure them.

Raijin and Song Y i engaged in duel, Raijin won and critically injured her. Raijin driven mad and killed by Eli, Song Yi extracted to Yaosai by Izumi.

Remnants of acidic blood ooze was in those ships when Dyaus incarnated and being present in an avatar of a god while it was both created and destroyed has given it sentience. It has fed and grown from the locust swarm on shore that fell when he did, providing it valuable metal. It then fled into the wild lands to add to the roster of monsters that lurk within. No one was really paying attention at the time but in hindsight it was noticed, Ra not happy about that.

The Heretic and the rest of Eli’s following disappeared to the south.

Sarnai “abducted” by Rei and moving south toward Divya Samrajya on an unwilling adventure.

Total count:
All of Fluffy and Kyle’s shit is dead with the exception of Tena Xueqin, who is now with Lengdon for the time being.
Abaddon, Halveti, Teijin, Forneus, Mara, Goethe, Song Leng, Song Shan-Tai, Izanagi, Izanami, Tsukoyomi, and Murugan dead

Fujin, Raijin, Ryujin, Dyaus Pita, Marshal Devada, Song Yi, Shen Rai, and Ningi No Mikoto defeated.

Raijin Izumi and Ningi No Mikoto driven insane

Song Fang and Kharis missing.

387,000 of Song Yi’s troops dead. 1600 Sanika Dead, 146,000 Rajput dead, 800 of Shogunate dead, 87,000 taiyo troops dead. 70% of Valkyries dead (roughly 80 remain). 80% of Shinigami dead (roughly 130 remain).

Special note: After nearly a decade and a half of constant campaigning as the brave and noble vanguard, this battle’s losses finally marked the end of a legacy. Coupled with emigration during the initial integration with the jade empire in Act I, 3% of the entire Lengdon population remains. All that remains is Song Yi, Izumi, Song Cao, Song Xiao, possibly Song Fang. A handful of citizens remain, and you guys are still kind of a part of it. Due to how close to home this battle was there were many volunteers to march to the battle. For the first time in 7,000 years, the sun-kissed forges grow cold, and the mountain city lays quiet.

Doi Cho len evacuated to Lengdon, but now near uninhabitable for black mages.

Final Summary: Objective completed, Doi Cho Len civilians saved. Cult of Shento not really losing too many members in the battle and one of the evac ships got dragged down, needs to pick new temple location though. Everyone on both sides just want to go home now. Except that one boat full of lunatics that charged off to the south.

Everything else:

Shento

With everyone being evacuated to the northern point of the island Dracula was able to peer into the many aspects of its people. It turns out the blood aspect is extremely rare (which explains why Shento is the only one with it), as are death ones obviously. He found some healers though that he offered to join, his sales pitch of them being needed in wartime went well, the cult now has more healers. He also found a few people with interesting aspects but they’ve so far proven not strong enough to matter even if they do use them. His most relevant find was someone with the aspect of water who he conscripted into helping the war time evacuation plan via boat before he got whisked away by Milenkosi to safety.

In deciding a new location, he is pretty sure Kagayakashi would be a good place. Its well defended, lots of production, and combining the blood and forge cults could allow for the city having a loooot of power to play god so to speak. Atop of that, with some help from Machera’s governance, a district could be made for the vampires. Only kagayakashi could build a city shrouded in permanent darkness without costing way too damned much. While this would make Kagayakashi no longer mono-religious it could stand to become the new face of the entirety of Si Da. Kind of like how no one cares about Albany compared to New York. Sure one’s the capital but everyone doing interesting shit was over in the other city. The problem with Kaga is that food is a bit harder to come by, its average citizens include Senshi. hard to feed on them.

So Sthan Thi seems pretty good alternative if feeding issues can’t be dealt with due to the oblivious nature of people in the multi purpose city. More food, more space, more protection for the blood cult to continue its strange work.

Alternatively, Dracula also really likes Yaosai. Its a city inside of a mountain. There is no sunlight there, and its population is now gone. Plenty of room to expand. That being said he wouldn’t dare ask to move a predatory blood cult into the sacred mountain just days after its queen lost almost everything.

The recruiter back with the Mao Yachi hangs out, Eret has gone “on vacation” according to Lin Sun.

Carmilla turns out to be a really good recruiter while everyone is gathered in one place and panicked. While several followers were lost in the evac attempt, the net change is +120 followers.

Ryner has gone to Yaosai after the battle and is currently a guest in Song Yi’s palace.

Lin Sun:

Vris was already hurrying back. Following increased due to PR effect of being the incarnated god on the throne personally. Tends to draw attention. Naberius wanders dream realm, Milenkosi has yet to find Abalam again, but someday maybe. Mao Yachi situation still kind of the same, while it looks promising they’re all still descended from the same mother. Without dracula’s help they will have to mate outside of the tribe to avoid incesting everywhere. Lykopis has been trying to consider what to do with that one.

Quan Yin arrives at the gates of Sthan Thi to everyone’s surprise. No army, no backup, just herself. She came to pay respects to the deceased Guan Yu and has requested that they give her his weapon to take home.

Mental tabs: Well Rei lost Eret on day 1, and the last vision you had of him was him traveling with Sahar and her friends…onto a ship. A big ship…with black sails and Eli’s personal pirate flag. Once he set foot on it you could no longer keep track of anything thats going on with him. he would be detectable again DURING THE BATTLE OF DOI CHO LEN, as he was put on one of the ships to use his visions to help steer the boats away from disaster. He almost got eaten 6 times, and then disappeared again. He would later reappear in Divya Samrajya, right there in the middle of eastern enemy numero uno’s territory. He has apparently become some sort of eco-terrorist lately. Its getting harder and harder to keep track of him though, Eli’s ship has made things a bit fuzzy when trying to scry on him. She may have dragged him into one hell of an adventure, the likes that could rival even yours in life with your adventuring party.

The elves are doing alright but most are still too young to say much about. These updates haven’t been skipping time very much recently.

Naberius after about a week or so did actually come across Abalam with Milenkosi’s help. He took the madness from Abalam to try and help his master return to normalcy. This worked but Naberius went instead insane. In his conversation with Thandar, Naberius said he was of sound enough mind, and he did indeed hold a conversation without problem. He killed himself two days later. Abalam is back though, more on that in the general section.

Vris actually knows a loophole into freeing Sahar. Even if Eli has her sword, Ifrit is the king of Djinn and the only entity in the world that can break ownership. More so he frees Djinn from their artifacts permanently though, this turns them mortal. Effectively she would become a person with a mana pool and a lot of crazy abilities, but she’d never be able to replenish it again and could be actually killed.

Despite being on an adventure Eret is still a high prophet and still was able to tell you an omen that in ten years “Something big is coming.” He cannot tell what it is though because without Naberius he can’t see that far into the future and is relying on his non-prophet ability of vague sensations and omens to tell you that information. Whatever “something big” is, its not a god or his abilities wouldn’t have worked. Do with that information what you will.

Shady shit:

Lucifer points out that humans historically blow things out of proportion and sensationalize local news when they have nothing else to occupy their minds. With the war to the south east and west not touching home anymore, the people of Sthan Thi have become too complacent and don’t really have a common focus of the enemy as much as they should. They are living normal civilian lives, and normal civilian lives gossip and retell stories again and again. The entire Aetas could have collapsed if what Eret did got out, especially that early into your temple’s career. Besides, you demanded the aetas have a diet of at least 60% people. Those people have to come from somewhere. He’s done this three times so far and learned from his failures each time. While humans are the key to their own evolution, that key comes in the form of destroying each other. Nergal’s work cultivates human evolution carefully instead of letting the nation devolve into a state of total anarchy as people just try to eat each other left and right. That is also what the Aetas do with Eret’s help, they take out problematic people before they become a problem and time it to manipulate public perceptions. The last time he let them run free, Mankind discovered black magic and definitely didn’t help the propaganda war when they started wildly jumping on anything they could. If Nergal hadn’t removed those people, people might have demanded or attempted to eat Eret and gain his immense power. Without Nergal, the illusion of civility within a nation of cannibals would fall apart. Without him, the nation becomes small teams of cults trying to eat each other all the time for more power just like the pagans in the wild lands.

There is a vague hint in his tone that this demonic method of social stabilization goes deeper and darker, but investigating any further would not be beneficial to your ability to sleep at night…well if you slept. There is also a subtle mention that you should probably not talk to Song Yi or Izumi about this if you want to prevent the country from falling apart overnight, especially just before the paladins invade.

Con Lai:

The people of Thykenae that get caught in the dreams do seem very intrigued. As the exodus begins towards the north many do seem to intend to seek out  the offered sanctuary.

Alice finally reached the Divus imperium Sticking to her current orders she targeted smaller churches to avoid it being too busy to avoid killing priests. After summoning Baridi and destroying one she disappeared into the night. Within a day She had to summon Milenkosi and warp out. Sarah flew over the Imperium until she was found and then she and Athalia just ganked her. Alice is currently incapacitated as she was stabbed clean through by Athalia before she could escape and is barely still alive.

So far despite An Lahn’s bait, no paladins have actually crossed the border into Si Da yet. They seem curiously patient for how fanatical they are, it is likely they have a calender plan of some sort. Especially with how currently the bulk of their focus is on the Thykenians.

The temple is expanded to be even more massive as ordered.

Blood vault stuff is really just a room that sam blesses yes.

It turns out the dream realm is host to a lot of strange native denizens like Baridi and Milenkosi. Some weird, some wonderful, some bizarre, and some horrifying. Though they are closer compared to animals then anything else, sentients like Baridi appear to be rare. Some dwell within the temple, others roam the realm. But none have enough power so far to pull off the stuff Baridi does. So far you’re not really sure what causes something to be as powerful as Baridi and further investigation might be needed to cultivate your own breed of creatures within the realm.

Jin zhang’s powers awaken after being force fed power by his mean and uptight boss of a god. He’s also added some more recruits to his little team.

Sima Wa:

Its only been a week since the last update, Lo’c has yet to make any progress on determining individuality that can be reported with significant results.

When is the city not ready for a siege?

Valks flew off to DCL, Freyja and the vikings are still settling in a bit.

Machera has been working poor arachne overtime and instead of arming the city is arming the land surrounding it. If the paladins come, the steel city has no walls. She prepares instead for a guerilla campaign the instant they enter the borders to harass their numbers down before they actually reach the city.

Bad news is SOMEONE (Eret) taught Eli how to incarnate himself. The good news is that he now refuses to take his godlike form again. So basically he has willingly weakened himself because he hates his god form. On the other hand, now people can talk to him directly without going insane so he can communicate without Sahar.

Asmodaeus reports that Altepetl is up to some shady shit. He’s gleaned they’re intending to do something with a mass sacrifice, like a sacrifice on an unprecedented scale. That thing they were building last update? Its a giant ziggaraut for this ritual and only for this ritual. He’s not totally sure but it seems like the gods of their pantheon themselves are involved in this plan. Giving Ishtar’s recent increase in power he suspects that they are getting desperate with Thykenae and Ofrior basically falling apart and are scrambling for something to keep them from being the next in line as an already weak nation. They’ve probably got about a year to go before the ziggaraut is done at this pace, and he’s not sure what ritual they’re trying to invoke, but the scale of this is just impressive. He recommends sending ambassadors if you have no plans to stop them, because whatever it is you don’t want to be on the receiving end of a dark ritual of this magnitude.

Abalam’s reappeared in Sthan Thi. Amaterasu was in for quite a shock when he walked out of her bookshelf and just shuffled off to the main city. When asked about what he was willing to talk to about he declared that he could not remember what he learned since Naberius took it from him somehow, which is strange given that Abalam should be a god. He worries he might have died too many times while he was locked away and reverted to a demigod state. Though he as also stated of what he could remember, he could only remember that Eli showed him things that weren’t maddening because it was grotesque, but because it was like an alphabet of a language far beyond even his comprehension. Eli is trying to tell people something, but no one can understand what he’s trying to say. Even Sahar who can withstand the madness cannot comprehend the alphabet he’s trying to show people. He also remembers, Eli didn’t just come and drive him nuts. Eli took a book before he left, but only Naberius would know which book that was since he took Abalam’s memories. The black library’s doors await at the crossroads for any who would like to go, he will let them be able to find it. Abalam says he won’t be going back himself for awhile though, too many bad memories. That and the paladins are still lurking around the area. Abalam has taken to residing with Milenkosi in the dream realm for now, as he still has the heeby jeebies and would like to spend time with the cuddly lion to relax for a bit.

Vris has been working on some side projects and come across very peculiar information. In almost every culture there is a legend of a fire breathing dragon. We have otoroshi the death dragon, shenlong the storm dragon, Ao Kuang and Ryujin the sea dragons, Bahamut the earth dragon, where is the fire dragon? We already uncovered that Ifrit is actually a Djinn and he’s a decent stand in for a fire dragon but there should be an authentic one somewhere right? However, this is mostly historical stuff and is just a curiosity of hers. But if some heroes were to be interested in an expedition to the black library to do some research, that’d be super cool too.

After Zeus threw the lightning bolt across the world, well Divus noticed. Thykenians are scrambling to cross the wild lands and make it to Si Da’s borders before the inquisitors and templars arrive. Machera pointed out this means that the paladins, while powerful, aren’t going to take on an entire army, their gods, and their heroes at once. So they at least have some upper limit on how dangerous they are. Abalam has noted that Thykenae would reach the crossroads long before they reached Kagayakashi, but evacuating them with the black library could give away its location to Anahita. If Divus discovered the way in, they might also discover how to use its vast resources against the black pantheon. Nergal points out that Song Yi is broken and will not be back in Sthan thi for some time. If she were here obviously she would demand the library be risked for the people who risked premature exposure to help win the war in Doi Cho Len. But she’s not here, and the votes could be collected by Amaterasu anonymously.

While nothing big has happened yet, the Jade emperor seems to be under some degree of suspicion and observation since he didn’t lend any help to the battle of Doi Cho Len. Yuwen Hu points out he had rallied troops but the emperor insisted they stay out of this one. If they become too much more suspicious of him there could be problems. Aphrodite notes that if we extract him now we have a piece of propaganda, we would have the jade emperor publicly known to have joined the black empire. But if we do that we would definitely lose his help in the Jade Empire which has already been crucial, despite the risks of him being discovered.

The Cult of Madness or The Mad Ones

It finally happened. Eli made a friend. Not just one, but four! He decided that at long last he had companionship, so he should make them all his champions. But she’s made a good sales pitch and some people are starting to join his cause. While for now he has very few followers, they at least get a mention. Technically only one of them has a champions blessing cuz he has a budget and not enough followers to just hand them out willy nilly (its Rackham).

She has a lot of names now days. The Mad Djinn, the mad prophet, the mad queen, that hooker looking girl. She once traveled with the party back in their adventuring days only to strike out for adventure once the ascension happened, considering herself retired. Then Eli found her and forced her to join his cause.

Ability wise as a Djinn wielding a sword that makes wishes of her, her boundaries are not well understood. She is known to enjoy teleportation, fire, and explosions. But other then that she seems to practically make up her abilities as she goes. Recently she’s been getting pretty good at the whole illusion thing though.

The man who commands Eli’s old ship while the pirate was wandering around as a god. After the Ascension the ship fell to the crew’s first mate. John Rackham has the power to pillage, despite the will of the spirits he can wield anyone’s spiritual weapons even against their own aspect’s god. For some reason once he steals it they can no longer remove any blessings on it. There are gods paying power per session upkeep for items he stole.

His sword is hydrokinetc, it used to belong to poseidon’s high prophet. His dagger was stolen from Saint Titus’ left gauntlet, and finally his coat was stolen from some random person with  a scrying spirit in it. The scrying spirit can find other spiritually imbued artifacts, meaning he has loot radar.  In all Rackham is quite a bit more light hearted then his master, but don’t underestimate his capacity for cruelty. He’s still a pirate.

Remniscent of Rei Siwang, but with darkness. Halima’s champion powers allow him to instill darkness, more accurately blindness, onto everyone around him or just certain people. He can move through shadow and move the shadows themselves, affecting reality by contorting what it casts on the walls. Beware your own shadow, it just might stab you in the back.

Halima comes from Akhetaten, the awakening of Ra was an eye opener for him. And he decided that his pantheon sucked for trying to mislead their people. Then he decided Divus sucked…and Thykenae…and Si Da. Fuck it, rollin with the mad god. Burn them all.

Also known as the girl with the dragon aspect. Laylah’s abilities are extremely powerful, so much so that one would think she is a god herself. Her ability…is to seed life back into destroyed areas. Scary right? Under her influence entire forests can regrow and the ecosystem can stabilize. Oh and she can do this to a city to pretty much destroy it within 1 month as the wild lands come to claim it. Okay so maybe it is scary.

She never really thought much about gods and wars until the god wars started and she had to put up with all of it. The spirits she represent are furious with the destruction and the bold move to destroy the wild lands. She is the greatest enemy of Divya since the Akuma.

You know its not good when a new character enters the game who has a constellation named after him. Orion the Cosmic Hunter, he shoots arrows that will fuck you up. That is all you need to know. He once shot Neith’s arrow out of the air, caught it, and then shot her in the head with her own arrow.

His motivations are much simpler then his angsty cohorts. He was just out of challenges to hunt. So might as well hunt gods and champions right?

Raza is an entity with powers similar to Eli. People cannot perceive Raza appropriately. He is not invisible, they step around him. He’s not silent, he can shout in your ear and make it hard to hear your conversation. But people just cannot react to him and no one can truly remember his passing. Since being blessed by Eli he’s become able to modulate the power of this ability. He can stand there and talk to you, but make it impossible for you to attack him. Fortunately his abilities have one limiting factor, if he touches you then you can react to him. Limiting his ability to just start killing people left and right. He acts more like a messenger and spy then an assassin.

In all the mad champions aren’t actually that dangerous to Si Da compared to the paladins or Devada’s legion. They are just a total of six, and maybe a handful of pirates who decided to roll with them using pitchforks and torches. Sahar and Orion are the only ones who represents a real martial threat, and Rackham a threat through power (he has a large arsenal). But you just know they’re going to show up at an inconvenient time and ruin well laid plans as long as they’re running wild and free.

Jin Zhang eventually successfully manifests his power after being forced to by his mean boss. Turns out he has the aspect of mastery. He is a master at every skill possible. Archery? Can shoot a hummingbird out of the air. Sword fighting? He knows every possible style ever invented. Cooking? Get that man some herbs and watch him make food to bring even a god’s mouth to water. While he lacks the physical power of other black mage heroes and isn’t “the best” at everything, he is pretty adaptable to any situation. Master ninja, master chef, master debator. Just you watch him cite his sources and provide examples  without missing a beat. In all Jin Zhang is really good at everything. This has annoyed the shit out of many people because he’s so lazy, yet now has the skills of people who dedicate their whole life to their craft. That poor painter had never been so demoralized as when he saw the drunk and lazy Jin half ass a work of art so incredible it has been bought for a huge sum of money after a bidding war between the Jade and Taiyo emperor’s. The dollar signs in Gremory’s eyes practically popped out of his skull.

Shentu Wo: 86 Power, 524 Followers
Sima Wa: 176Power, 959Followers
Lin Sun: 167 Power, 223 Followers
Con Lai: 216 Power, 339Followers

Sima Wa: Espionage RNG Number 4-Shade has acquired an intact power core, complete with trapped tek spirit that just produces electricity forever. Currently traveling north to bring it home.

Automatons are being edumacated. As per research queue, unique model concepts are being explored by Lo’c. Though he has also begun a side experiment. All the current Jinko are being equally treated and educated, all born at roughly the same time with the same world experiences. He is having them carefully monitored to see how much variation there is in their personalities and skills. Does a unique body require a lucky soul, or do they transplant the soul of another one that has proven itself into it? So goes Lo’c’s experiment. Fuck that apostrophe clusterfuck of a name.

Teozix begins to take the role of educator despite his inferior body and model design.

Elements acquired for collection essence of: Moon, sun, phoenix fire, hellfire, destruction (it blew up in your face already but at least he tried), Teijin (no one knows wtf this does not even the guy who figured out how to make it), and a “lucky gold ingot”.

The steel gauntlets for ryner have been made

Shento:

Lin sun: Aided by the luck god and rolling a nat 15 out of 15, Vris the detective manages to actually find out the full readout of what each paladin does. Though all paladins have two abilities. The first comes from their aspect blessing, the second comes from their holy weapons.

Zachariah’s Aspect posses the power of equality. Everyone within approximately a mile becomes equal to a mere man. In mechanics terms, he can turn anyone and everyone level 1. While they keep their powers and aspects, the power and control over it they have diminishes. Most importantly, it works on gods. This is why Thykenae won’t pick that fight, as he strips them down into mortals with only the most basic of abilities. This does however impact those around him on his side as well.  Zachariah has two entirely different weapons. His wings can grow seemingly endlessly and the feathers can be animated. The other weapon is his two handed sword, it’s blade can turn into pure white light at which point it starts to do weird shit. Capable of expanding to massive lengths and exerting enough destructive power to blow right through buildings. Zachariah’s equality ability does not affect Divus blessings from Jehovah, but it will strip angels or holy weapons blessed by angels as well. Meaning it works on everyone but the seven paladins, Jehovah, and Moses. No one is sure how it would impact other kinds of beings though, for example no one knows if Milenkosi or Baridi is vulnerable to this as whatever the hell they are is  a mystery in itself. So in summary: Makes you a starter character, tentacle rape, and a bigass lightsaber.

Vris has since determined two things. One: according to the Djinn while Zachariah can possibly kill Eli himself, depending who draws first, he does know how to do it even without his super powers. Second: On the note of capturing its possible that even though his equality power is some bullshit, that only removes raw power. People who do not need their powers to fight might still be able to handle him.

Naomi’s wings are her most known power. They were originally one massive chunk of stone, this was declared to be her weapon. She has absolute control over this thing, and can move its fragments as she pleases. The level of force they output is unknown but so far no shield (or giant stone temple) has even slowed them. She shaped the stone into those decorative obelisks that float around her to make up her “wings” but they break into even smaller fragments when she wants to. In truth she can fly because she forced fragments of this stone weapon into her body to alter her physical abilities. She uses this total control over them to imitate things like super strength and the shards in her body are what hold her up when she flies. Her aspect powers on the other hand are rarely seen, because its rarely needed. With Jehovah’s aspect she got the ability of extreme regeneration, which is how she was able to not die when embedding her own weapon into her body. If you cut her head off or something she’s not getting back up from that, but she can still shrug off a lot of damage.

Saint Isaac, wielder of a death aspect blessing can obviously kill anything. His weapon is a massive scythe that can ignore any material, spiritually empowered or not. It doesn’t actually break them, just passes through them. Granted if the blade hits something its going to die, his victims often have no wounds because of this weapon’s unique properties. His aspect ability is very similar to it, he is incorporeal at will. However, his weapon is always incorporeal and so he cannot block/parry, and his body must be corporeal in order for his weapon to be effective, his corporeality is somehow tied to whether or not he is actually there.

Saint Eleazor seems mundane at first with no significant powers beyond his wings, but his weapon can copy any spirit’s abilities it sees. Meaning if you have a magic weapon, he has that weapon too. His aspect abilities are also the same thing, while copycat powers are not unheard of, Eleazor can also copy blessings and their power level. If he is looking at his target he not only copies their powers and stats, he also gains a full understanding of everything their abilities can do. He has sometimes found out how to do things with people’s powers they didn’t even know they could do, killing them with it before they could ever try to use this new and fantastic technique. Notably his power has a limitation, he has to be looking at the target constantly to maintain it.

Saint Athalia ‘s aspect blessing gives her the ability of mass teleportation. She can move up to an entire Inn and all its residents over huge distances. Its not enough to throw a whole invading army somewhere, but the seven paladins don’t need to fly if they’re in a particular hurry. Her twin swords can teleport as well. Either to her hand or to wherever she wants them to be within a certain range. She has been seen to make them appear right inside someone, ending the fight pretty quick.

Saint Sarah’s aspect blessing gives her the power of omniscience. She knows where every black mage within a hundred miles are at all times. Not only that, if she knows the exact mage she wants to find, she knows where they are no matter where in the world(s) they might be. Though she needs more then a rough description to go off of, the limits of it aren’t well understood. The more famous someone is though the more likely it is she can keep tabs on them. Her weapon is actually a bow that fires an arrow of pure white light. Once fired it splits into dozens of itself, all of which explode. Carpet bomber basically. Fortunately she can’t fire the arrows as fast as a normal archer, they take about ten seconds to replenish in her hand to be fired again. She can actually transform the white light from an arrow to any other weapon, but she’s known as the paladin’s archer as thats her favored use of it. But in close combat she will likely turn it into a more appropriate weapon.

Saint David’s weapon has the ability to create clones of itself and by proxy Saint David. While they last for all of maybe two seconds, David’s aspect power is basically super speed. While the laws of physics are reduced for him, he is still subject to inertia and cannot run at his absolute top speeds without a bit of a running start and the willingness to have to put a lot of effort into slowing down, but thats only if he wants to start breaking the sound barrier or something. While his movement speed doesn’t turn him necessarily so fast he becomes invisible in combat (granted he’s still moving faster then anything else you’ve likely encountered), his sword arm does. He can attack with his weapon, especially with his brief clones, fast enough to replicate Machera’s abilities. Albeit shorter range.

Vris has begun to head home after learning what both Sarah and Athalia’s abilities are. And she’s putting some hustle into it too since Zaeed’s taking off to the east.

Lucifer does actually divulge what the secret meetings are about Quy On’s continued membership. He’s the first dark god on the roster, and leaving him on it could be…awkward. Also a bit of a PR problem. They would have asked Song but she ran off already.

Thandar does practices. Eret already sold out some viking conspirators to Nergals “super happy fun time team”. They have suddenly gone missing.The problem with getting Thykenae’s assistance to the east is time. Its a long trip even for gods, and if some specific gods were to rush ahead of the others and the nation they might be noticed…and you don’t want him to notice you.

Freyja doesn’t actually know where to find Tyr, the pantheon is so shattered that their individual followings are not able to find each other. Since each one is in hiding. Not all of them even know that Saint Sarah can still find them.

Con Lai:

Gremory has expanded the network and works to do so always, as it means more money for him, but it wasn’t really worth noting that a few more merchants have joined the guild of greed. Alice still traveling. Milenkosi actually can’t manipulate the dreams of that many people at once, thats your thing. It is assumed you did so. The Vua Cai inquisitors are actually growing thanks to the works of An-Lahn, who has received information from Vris that he should not dare leave Sthan Thi for awhile. Sarah, and by proxy Naomi, are watching him. Baridi and Eret hang out too much during his trip to the dream realm. Jin Zhang has actually built a pretty good band of misfits already. The jakaal nature of his training has enabled to recruit other misfit types of the proper caliber. Its a small team full of weirdos but they’re pretty good. Milenkosi actually manages to extract his whole priority list except artifacts and all purpose worshippers, while the civilians are left on the island still all the HVT’s on the list are out.

Milenkosi points out “Grabbing raji” and “be safe” contradict, so he’s just gonna not do that for now since “be safe” has an above all tag.

Freyja and the vikings are traveling toward Kaga to seek shelter, unsure of where their missing friends have gone they have been assumed to have left in the night due to grudges against Si Da. They are not incorrect…technically. However, they have no time to investigate as they would prefer to minimize the time they are moving and thus the chance of a paladin finding them.

Loki has renounced his position as a god, incarnated, and declared himself a champion of Divus. Thor and his followers were more resistant and are now dead.

Mastema recalled to travel the world with Quy Ong. Asmodaeus reports the discovery of an amazing artifact from the southern wild lands, it somehow amplifies the power of the god it is devoted to. So far no one else has noticed that Ishtar’s powers have mysteriously increased…a lot. Altepetl has begun mass construction progress with the help of Bahamut’s cult, whatever it is its massive and stone. He also discovered what Altepetl has for a military is pretty shit. It has some impressive heroes though.

The praeliators have joined up with the migrating vikings on the road to Kagayakashi.

Jade Empire has come under suspicion from the eastern world due to its lack of doing anything about the army skirting its borders. However, Quan Yin has entered Si Da lands. What she’s up to nobody is sure yet, but she’s traveling straight toward Sthan Thi, though she is alone. Wukong on the other hand has left Shenlong’s perimeter and headed toward Sekai Taki.

Taiyo has called several clans to Sekai Taki to prepare for battle with Song Yi’s forces. Raijin and Tsukoyomi are also present and an army of shinigami possibly two or three thousand strong.

Shentu Wo: 332 Power, 497 Followers
Sima Wa: 184 Power, 819 Followers
Lin Sun: 147 Power, 173 Followers
Con Lai: 148 Power, 291 Followers

Sima Wa: Ira given the fiery war axe, Cataegis has the kagayakashi ring, locust has left Eret to travel with Song Yi. Shade reports back only to be told to go right back to where he came from.

Get to know:
Am Nahc is a pretty chill dude. He just hangs around and plays music, he is largely interested in the people among the city. He has been working with Zaeed to host a festival in Sthan Thi to cheer people up to distract them from thinking too hard about so much of their military suddenly mobilizing. While gods know whats going on, to many people without godlike worldly presence most things are just rumors and hearsay. So its easy to keep them distracted and not thinking about how half their pantheon is off to get into trouble. In all, this showcases Am Nahc’s greatest usefulness alongside with Aphrodite he keeps the civilians not freaking out over events they loosely hear about from far away lands.

Quy Ong is a strange man, he often does that weird thing where a person refuses to speak in anything but rhymes. Everyone finds him a little aggravating but not enough to punch him. Though he reveals what his real talent is, he does exactly what everyone thought Lucifer does. He makes deals with mortals that usually go awry, giving them what they want but at a cost they are usually not prepared for, preying on desperation. He is very clearly a dark god.

The city is armed fairly quickly, since Kagayakashi produces weapons for the military anyways it just held onto some of the extra stock and spread it around the city. This turns out to be so stupidly easy for a city whose whole job is to make weapons that it doesn’t slow robits research. The first of the Automatons are done (see roster update).

Shento: Ryner has joined Song Yi’s march. His lieutenant has become named.  Blood plague needs more specifics. Lot of roster updates.

Lin Sun: The experiment of putting Eret in the dream realm turns out to be okay. While the realm has infinite possibilities…it also has nearly no possibilities. Because no matter how many dreams are had or how the realm shifts around him, those dreams have zero impact on the future events. As it turns out when every event can spawn 5 events that spawn 5 events that spawn 5 events he overloads, but when every dream has 10 possibilities, then people wake up and go on their merry way, it turns out to be way less then 5 to the power of X. He can survive longer in the dream realm then anywhere else as it turns out. However, it also turns out he cannot predict the future of the physical world from the dream realm unless Con Lai expends 60 power to let him do so (per prediction).

Thandar shows off and tests his powers a little bit. Turns out he can get from Sthan Thi to Kagayakashi very quickly…because he and Andelko flew there with his telekinetics. Time blessed area in the Mao Yachi works out, Lykopis is thankful despite exhausted and in a lot of pain. A single Aetas is going with the army because they reaaaaally want to see Yaosai, the fortress of Lengdon. You know…that one place that predates the jade empire and has a library. The aetas knight may have creamed himself when he learned that actually existed.

You are really lucky you thought to have Zaeed help because that let you reroll…something. Intel wise Vris actually did find out something useful. While she didn’t find out a way to bypass Eli because the Djinn could not grant wishes affecting gods, in this case granting the knowledge of countering Eli. Vris was able to wish for the knowledge of how to find that information. It turns out there is someone who knows, and all Vris has to do is go find and ask that person a long fetch quest for the macguffin. See lore update.

Arachne the cast member everyone forgot gets back to work making forests really goddamned hard to pass through outside Kagayakashi.

Heisi brings up a point about the Eleni job. See Eris is a thykenae goddess..and if they swap sides…While she’s bad for Eret she’s still capable of spawning wars, and had she not been recalled to Thykenae, Divya Samrajya would be invading Taiyo instead of Doi Cho Len.

Con Lai: Alice is traveling, long walk. So temple destruction won’t begin for another update or so. Same note applies to Milenkosi. Though the mass dreams of safety across the Thykenae empire has had a very dramatic impact very quickly, their desperation and fear has turned them to considering the idea a lot easier then usual.

Saint Naomi while unable to hurt anyone in the dream realm definitely tried. The instant An Lanh Tien tried to mess with her she was able to resist it. Her zealotry is rooted deeply enough even her sleeping subconscious turns to “purge the heretics” pretty quickly. Unfortunately due to the stipulation that you chose the door not 1500 points of dream realm, she doesn’t enter the dream realm every night so sleep deprivation isn’t getting far. However…Eret’s guardian Naberius who heard about this project has brought a point to your attention. Naberius’ power is to steal the memories of people, entirely. If you could bring him to Naomi or Naomi to him (or really anyone at all) he can remove everything. Instead of breaking her faith, Naberius can just make her forget who she is and what she stands for. Though that would involve capturing her alive and physically.

The dream world prison is created. This took all of 10 seconds, now if only you had some prisoners.

Rest of the shit:

The army begins marching. This is a long trip to make on foot with so many people, will be a little while. The Divya fleet is also still moving, same problem as the other army, takes forever to get around when you are in large numbers. Amaterasu has been having secret meetings with Ra and Lucifer in Song Yi’s absence.

Aphrodite has redirected herself to Thykenae to offer them sanctuary, though the rest of her apostles are still in Ofrior. Some Ofrior clans have been contacted, Freyja and her high prophet offered to fight for the black pantheon if they gave actual sanctuary as deep as Kagayakashi for the crippled nation. As it turns out they heard about the paladins, and are distinctly aware that they may be next on the chopping block considering they tried to invade Divus recently. They’d really rather not be alone in small clans out in the snow when, as the prophet revealed to the apostle of Aphrodite, Saint Sarah has the power to find and locate people. Thor’s followers are a bit more stubborn, the rest haven’t been found yet.

Zeus however gave aphrodite a warning to take back to Amaterasu and by proxy the rest of you. There are seven paladins, and now that Jehovah has gotten serious they have real champion blessings instead of just a fancy weapon. But if Jehovah gives up his illusion entirely about the worlds limitations and his crew, his pantheon has a few hidden gods within it he has never revealed from his “holy kingdom”. Zeus, Shenlong, Ryujin, Brahma, and Odin know about it, but have never seen anything relating to them. No one knows what they do or what Jehovah is hiding.

Shade brought back important intel about Dyaus Pita’s latest advancements. Ships that fly through the air instead of sea, armed with the cannons the Divya navy is famous for but now not restricted to sea. The protoype was recently finished and they’ve started mass production.

Doi Cho Len has started to move its population inland and northward to avoid the potential damage of the ships assault given Vithanyalai is likely a major target alongside Co So.

The Jinkō tetsu raifu are complete, while so far only ten have been produced the fact that ten identical machines have been produced all with their own consciousness and self awareness proves the project has been successful. Some of the senshi masters have begun the process of teaching these new beings how to function. While they awaken fully capable of mobility and rapid comprehension, they do not know any languages or basic socially required skils. They are like infants in some regards. Infants with metal walking bodies and spiky bits.

Goethe: All dem stats

Carmilla: Has gained the distinct ability to control unmodified humans near her regardless of eye contact. It appears that if they haven’t gained their aspect abilities yet the base template of human is something she can hypnotically take control of. Note, most champions use spiritually empowered weapons thus would be vulnerable. Though people with aspect blessings are not.

Kharis
One of Ryner’s newest recruits, as could be expected of him he does tend to lean toward recruiting females. However, Kharis is especially interesting because she fed…a lot…on the journey to the Lengdon mountains.  Her vampiric powers increased to the point that she gained a unique physical feature, wings. Ryner is now quite anxious to see dracula again to get an analysis done, but there is a possibility that while vampirism blocks out the ability to become a black mage, there might still be more “aspect” shenanigans within the vampire species.

“Why do you have wings? I didn’t get wings. Why do you get wings?! I want to fly too!”  -Ryner when he realized she had wings.

Devadas is the leader of all Sanika legions and one of Divya Samrajya’s champions. His armor was forged by Dyaus Pita and blessed by Agni. His Kulina powers were bestowed to him by Indra, and his saber holds a spirit from the domain of Kali. He was basically a “lets put all our eggs in one basket” kind of deal. As the Sanika have always done, he is armed to the teeth with objects from the Tekno Jagara, his just happen to all be from the gods except for his minor utilities like his farcall unit. He led the Sanika at the battle of Sthan Thi and was the commander responsible for taking the first wall. He was actually one of the generals Song Yi took control over when she first led the crusade as Imperial Warlord.

Warfare aside, Devadas is well loved by his people. A former heir to a Vansa, he renounced his title, lands, and holdings upon joining the Kulina. While this is not required nor even common, he did so anyways. He stated he would serve his nation above all else and not let the politics of the Vansa stop him from doing his duty. Had he died pointlessly in his first battle this would all be for naught. But he has risen to become one of the most powerful members of the entire military. As a Kulina his declaration of service earned him the attention of Indra himself. Later earning the favor of Dyaus Pita, Agni, and Kali as well over the course of his career after his many deeds helped him rise to the top.

And since everyone who reads this is going to ask if they could kick his ass, he’s on Machera’s level.

Captain Chandana Raji, while she is a hero and definitely of interest she’s not spectacularly powerful. However, between the divination of Eret, memories from Halveti, and the assistance of a few other unknown Aetas within the temple, they’ve managed to pinpoint that Chandana Raji is the missing daughter of Saldis and Tai Ket.

The Rivals Who Never Met

Lo’c pounded his anvil over and over until he felt the sudden give that could only mean he broke through the material. It took him about four hits each time to smash his pre-shaped stencil. It made it vastly easier to get the precision he needed to create the gears his designs used. He looked up from his work as he heard footsteps coming down the hall. Machera strode in, he gave a comically awkward salute in an attempt to show respect. He wasn’t used to be noticed before, social skills were not his thing. Machera ignored the silliness of the gesture, “Progress?”

The huge man scrambled over toward the corner of the room, knocking some things over in his haste. “The designs have assisted in its mobility, and we have found ways to bestow it simple consciousness. But the problem is the lack of reflexes, it takes too long to understand and react to things.” he threw a piece of scrap metal at a prototype’s head, it failed to dodge or react until after it had already been hit. “They can do simple tasks, but they can’t fight yet. They’re also a little innocent, like children. Don’t think they’d want to fight.”

Machera moved closer over towards the barely cognitive automaton. “What is your name?”
The machine responded, “I am Villet. Who are you?” it had a naturally inquisitive tone. A few others were lined up in a row near it, all of them were silent and allowed Villet to speak for them. Machera ignored its question, “Why do you not move when things come toward you?” The automaton answered, “Why should I?” Lo’c chuckled heartily, “See? little guy’s like a kid. I’ve been having me help manage the forge, keeps it hot for me and tells me when metal is heated enough.” Machera ignored Lo’c and continued to question Villet, “Because otherwise you might become damaged.” Villet responded, “But I am fine. Nothing but a little de-”

Machera grabbed one of the swords floating behind her and cleaved the automaton in half. It fell over and in a panicked voice it called out, “What happened? Why would you do that?” It’s legs were not attached anymore, so they didn’t move. It scrambled with its hands and tried to push itself backwards into the wall to get away from Machera, “No, no stay away! Stay away!” The high prophet advanced on it, grabbing a hammer from a nearby table. Lo’c fidgeted, “Uh…boss?”

Machera proceeded to hammer its artificial skull in. It  didn’t scream, it didn’t seem to feel pain, but it kept begging, “Stop, why are you hitting me?” and its voice slowly started to fade and then it fell still. Machera stood back up and turned to look over at the others that were lined up, their brightly lit eyes looking at their fallen brother expressionlessly. She threw the hammer at one, it ducked and covered its head. Cowering into a ball on the floor. With that she turned to Lo’c, “They have reflexes. They just need fear.” there was an awkward quiet as she left, Lo’c looking down at the hammer she’d handed off to him in her departure. The murder weapon. He wasn’t sure how to feel about watching what was one of his only friends down here get smashed to pieces, but he definitely was not going to speak out against Machera’s actions…especially when they produced results. Machera called back, “Tell the animators to make sure they can feel pain.”

On the other side of the known world, Basu Rohan shuffled down the metal halls that surrounded him. Pipes running embedded into the ceiling to stay relatively out of the way. The robed and slightly hunched figure continued to perform his inspection, after some hours he finished. Making his way up the stairs, the sound of his footsteps changing as the ground beneath became a wooden floor. He waved an all clear to begin the test, staying right where he was. He was confident it would work this time, or at least that it would fail safely.

A few moments later the hiss of steam could be heard, followed by a tremendous roar. Flames below the ledge illuminated the entire room, and the room was quite vast. The chains along the edge of the machine that suspended it in the air and began to slack, audibly clinking as each link in the chain folded into one another and the entire platform rose. Basu called out “Begin test number one!” and pressed his fingers against his ears to block out as much sound as possible. It helped but the sound of the explosion practically kicked him in the chest, and the entire machine shook as the massive cannon fired into the ocean nearby. The resulting splash of it hitting the water was visible even from what must have been a few miles away.

Basu asked, “How much did the ship move?” a response came, “About two inches!” The tekno jagara took a moment to consider this information. “Okay lets scale this up, fire all three.” The airship let loose all three of its cannons at once, Basu could feel the deck below him shift backwards. He didn’t have to ask before they called out, “Five!” he shrugged, “Good enough. Dyaus will be pleased with this prototype I’m sure. Send for Marshal Devada.”

“Do you want the engines left on?” Basu pondered and then decided, “Yes, run out the fuel it has on board. See how long it lasts.” Soon Dyaus’ new Sanika army would be ready. Basu was sure this machine would be the key to conquering the world, and his ticket to a promotion.

Shade sat on a ledge in the upper shadows of the building, he had been watching the whole time. “Well this isn’t good.” he thought to himself.

Locust Leaves Lasting Recollections

Eret scanned the thousands of possible futures. Locust was on his knees to even out the height, hands on his hips waiting. Eret kept looking, he had to find a way to hit Locust in the mask but he could not find any courses of action through all of time that would let him land that hit. He kept looking when he heard, “DODGE” and before he realized that came from the present he felt Locust hit him in the forehead and knock him over backwards.

He rubbed his head, “Hey! You didn’t say you would hit me…hey why didn’t I know that was going to happen?” Locust stated, “I didn’t think about it, I just did it. No matter how many futures you can see a person’s reflexes will always pick the option based on what you start to do. You can’t find a way to hit me can you? Because no matter where you throw your fist, no matter how you try to cheat and grab some dirt or a rock, I always move out of the way too fast.”

Eret nodded, “I…literally cannot hit you.” Locust imitated the nod, “Right. Because no matter what you choose to do, I will react too quickly for your body to find a way to keep up. This is why you walk into walls too. You don’t need to keep processing visions all the time you know, sometimes all you need to see is whats coming right at you.” This time Eret saw the future ahead of time, and managed to duck just as Locust said “DODGE” only to realize as the vision finished, and so did the reality, that Locust just re-angled his hit to still catch Eret right in the forehead once again.

“No amount of foresight will prepare you for that. Sometimes you have to live in the moment, and only experience can give you those skills. You physically lack the body and experience necessary to touch me, but Thandar who cannot see the future would definitely get a hit in even without his power.” Eret nodded, he kind of knew this already but Locust’s practical teaching methods were kind of fun, kind of like playing in the dirt. Just it stung a little. Suddenly Eret froze as he heard the voice of his god. Sadness fell over his features and Locust cocked his head curiously. “Uh, you’re to join Song Yi’s campaign to the south east.” Eret tried not to reveal his disappointment that ‘Uncle Locust’ was going away again.

Locust thought for a moment before saying, “I see. Well then, I have to go soon as they’re marching by the morning.” he looked around, Thandar was watching them intently. Eret knew Thandar would try to replicate the way Locust played with him out of jealously of Locust’s apparent skill at befriending the high prophet. Though as Locust said, practice and all that.

Locust interrupted Eret’s thoughts, “Time to live in the present Eret. Quick, find a future in which we ditch Thandar for awhile.” Eret processed several futures…and then realized what Locust’s plan was. He paused, looking over the future and saying, “I’m not sure we should…” Locust punched him in the forehead again, “In the present Eret, come on lets do this!” Eret scrambled and found one, calling over to Thandar, “There’s an Aetas guardian who will be in the audience hall soon who has details about the Mao Yachi ever since Lin Sun blessed the area. There’s a complication that we need to deal with, could you-?” Thandar just nodded and got up to go deal with it. That was actually true, and it would keep him busy for awhile. Thandar assumed Eret didn’t want to stop playing with Locust, partially true, so didn’t pressure Eret to come along to deal with it.

Locust suddenly stood up and ushered Eret toward a nearby wall, “Come on come on.” “Should we really-” “In the present Eret!” suddenly he threw the child prophet straight up the wall and managed to land them perfectly on the ledge where Eret teetered dangerously. Eret didn’t know it until now but he didn’t like heights. He kept trying to check futures to make sure he didn’t fall but before he could finish Locust had leaped up the wall and tackled him off the top. Doing a bit of a flip before landing on the road outside rather smoothly and putting Eret down on the ground.

“Come on lets go see the city.” Pushing Eret forward. He knew Eret had trouble walking at anything resembling a decent pace, especially out here in unfamiliar territory. That’s why he forced the child to hustle. “There you go, come on!”

For the next hour or so they wandered around the city, Locust erratically changing plans and directions several times, making it nearly impossible for Eret to keep up with his visions and the actual events around him. He was getting better at it though over time. He didn’t feel comfortable doing this, but Locust had been so fast and insistent Eret got himself in too deep. He could stop it, he could just ask to go home, but did he want to? He was anxious and trying to read the future closer but Locust kept making that harder and harder.

Eret finally stopped walking and just stood there. Locust looked back at him, “Eret? Come on we need to keep moving or else-” Locust saw it. Eret was sort of awkwardly standing there trying to figure out how to say what he wanted. Locust could tell Eret was looking into the futures to try and figure out how to say it without embarrassing himself, which provoked a thwap upside the head from Locust. “Where?” Eret stammered something unintelligible and just pointed awkwardly.

An hour or so later Locust was standing in front of Naberius, “You know how long we were gone don’t you?” The demon nodded. “If you take those memories from him, I will personally kill you. Do you understand?” Naberius wasn’t intimidated, “It doesnt work that way. I just clean backwards until-” Locust grabbed the taller demon by the throat and demonstrated remarkable strength until he forced the demon onto their knees. Andelko didn’t do anything about it, most people figured him for a mindless brute. But Andelko understood enough to know to sit this one out. Locust glared, as much as his metal plate of a face could, down at Naberius. “Then take a lesson from every warrior that surrounds you and get better at what you do.” Naberius was about to respond but Locust let them up, Eret wandered in, “Uh…whats going on?” The child seemed unsure of himself and what he had walked in on.

Locust pat the kid on the head, “Saying my goodbyes. Its a Senshi thing. You ready to go visit the dream world? I heard theres a talking lion there.” Eret smiled and nodded, the kid was oddly quiet right now. Thandar appeared from the inner areas of the temple, “Come along. I’ll take you to the gate at Con Lai’s temple before me and Andelko head to Kaga.”

Eret saw the future and immediately said, “I’d like Kinzoku to take me.” Thandar looked over and had a suspicious tone to his voice, “Whyyy?” Kinzoku was also curious about that decision. Eret walked over to Kinzoku and hissed at her, “Now please.” She didn’t really delay, but Thandar followed along, “Whats going on?” Locust was already out the door and he waved back, “Have fun everyone I’m off to war. Let it never be said Locust doesn’t keep his promises though. Told you I’d get you laid before I left.”

Thandar’s response, “WHAT?!”
Kinzoku sprinted off with Eret towards Con Lai’s temple and Locust sprinted off the other direction. Before Thandar could figure out who to chase Andelko put a hand on his shoulder. Andelko didn’t talk, but his grip was tight enough that Thandar realized he wasn’t going to get anywhere from here. He sighed defeated, “I fucking hate that guy.” Naberius strode up next to him, “Relax, you might be angry now but in a year you won’t really care. It’ll still mean the world to Eret.” With that the demon went off to follow Eret to the dream world to conduct their experiments.

Good news and Bad news

Vris uncorked a bottle, she had found this surprisingly quickly. She muttered thanks to Zaeed, because remember those six other Djinn he took with him when he let his friends keep Sahar? Turns out he hadn’t sold all of them. What came out was a drunken and busty woman who seemed confused as to where she was. “Ohh hey theresh. I’m Hiba!” she seemed a little excited, “I am at your service my master…or do you prefer mistress? you’re not the kind I usually ‘service'” she made air quotes in the air around the last word. “But if you’re interested I don-”

Vris didn’t have time for this. “I wish to know how can someone kill the god of madness Eli Pierce. Can you do that?” The girl paused and her eyes glowed momentarily as she gained the knowledge through the wish, “I have bad news.” she answered. Vris nodded, “Yeah I knew it. Oh well. Do you know how I might get anything useful? Can I wish to know where to find a Djinn or person that might know how to kill him?”

Hiba hiccuped and replied,  “You have to actually say the words ‘I wish’. I’m not allowed to grant implied wishes anymore…”  Vris rolled her eyes, “I wish to know who knows how to kill Eli Pierce, the god of madness.” Hiba’s eyes glowed bright yellow again, “I have good news!” Vris’ features brightened with excitement, “Really? Who?” Hiba smiled and looked so pleased with herself, “There only mortal man in the world who knows with absolute certainty, they’s to the west. His name is Zachariah.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”

A Good Nights Sleep

The dream realm was generally a quiet place. Baridi coasted around on the outskirt of mortal dreams, peering in out of curiosity. She could tell which one were lucid and which ones weren’t. The ones that weren’t couldn’t remember or really see her. They could but their mind wasn’t conscious enough to process a reaction, they were too distracted by their dreams.

Baridi then however came across something that was peculiar to her. When people dreamed they couldn’t form legible text unless they were lucid or directly reading it in the dream. She found one dream though, a dream where papers, books, and scrolls were everywhere. The scribbles on them looked sharper then any other dream, as she picked one up she read it and realized it had real text. But she could tell the dream was not lucid.

She ventured in deeper, she couldn’t quite understand what she was seeing but it didn’t phase her. She knew it couldn’t hurt her so whatever strange thing she was looking upon was of no concern in this realm. She made her way over toward a lone figure, one she singled out as the dreamer. There was something wrong though, they were curled into a ball whimpering. She was fairly certain they were crying as well, she called out to Milenkosi. The poor creature looked like it needed him to take them away from a nightmare desperately.

As the great lion appeared out of nowhere and gazed upon the crying figure he approached. Nudging them with a great paw, his glowing golden light was soothing enough to draw their attention. “Do not fret, you will be okay. Come, come let me take you away.” the figure sniffled but put up no resistance to being dragged away from their nightmare, the things they saw even Milenkosi had never seen before. Humans and their weapons of war he assumed, perhaps torture tools guessing by this figures reaction.

As they left behind the strange dream Milenkosi let the man rest in front of Con Lai’s temple. Their terrified friend just curled up into a ball in the grass, resting next to the comforting glow of the lion. It asked, “Where am I?”. Milenkosi responded, “This is the temple of Con Lai. Goddess of dreams, fear not your nightmares will not haunt you while you are here.” The great lion could feel the poor tortured soul calming down now that it was away from its nightmares. “Who are you? Are you Con Lai?” it asked. Milenkosi shook his head as Baridi was off looking into more dreams for fun, “No no. I am her prophet, I am Milenkosi. Who are you?”

The figure paused as it seemed to try and remember, “My name is Abalam.” The dream lion just nodded sagely once again, lazily resting his head in the grass, “It is nice to meet you Abalam. You may explore the temple if you wish, or you may remain with me until you awaken.” The creature called Abalam nodded again, “I think I will stay here, you are warm.” The lion purred as he was stroked by his rescued friend. “Very well then, let us enjoy the misty air together. Sleep well my friend.” Together they lay there peacefully, until Abalam awoken and was removed from Milenkosi’s side. The lion hoped the poor fellow wouldn’t need rescuing again.

Lo’c Thua

The Masutomaindo

Lo’c Thua is the winner of the first masutomaindo event. Black magic has warped him into a very large and grotesque creature, but still he works his forge dutifully deep within Kagayakashi where others aren’t so inclined to stare.  Lo’c Thua is exceptional gifted working the forge however, also proving himself capable of advanced designs and engineering. He won Masutomaindo by producing a new framework of bodies for the automatons that utilized engineering concepts instead of loose ‘lets add magic’. Making them more repairable and also easier to animate.

He has no apprentices, friends, or family as far as anyone can tell. He resides in the depths of Kagayakashi where the hottest forges are kept to work tirelessly. He seems to be able to withstand huge amounts of stress to both his body and fatigue, as a black mage he has no notable powers. Instead he has his incredibly durable physique and bloated form.

Whats worse then a swarm of all consuming insects? A swarm of metallic insects that can produce more of themselves the more metal they consume. They still can’t eat stone though. They can also now regurgitate what they don’t wish to consume, allowing the swarm to keep on tearing things apart just for the deconstructive nature of it. While the insects that he can’t store in his body eventually die, limiting how much he can store, they can replicate rapidly once let loose. So he can’t consume tons upon tons of metal to keep an apocalyptic swarm on permanent stand-by, but once he gets started in a major area he can single handedly bring cities down if no one can find a way to stop him. Finally, his swarm can return to him to increase his physical abilities for a short duration. Most importantly, most of Divya tek has a metal base. Dyaus Pita won’t be happy to learn about this.

Much of Kagayakashi was shocked when Locust received the blessings of a champion, given how unpopular he is.

Su Pinpua’s champion level powers give her a reputation among the old civilizations as some sort of necromancer the likes of Saldis. In truth her abilities don’t quite control or animate the dead, but she makes it very hard for those around her to die. Able to regenerate people from even the woodchipper-rule as long as their head stays intact (she needs them to have a brain to save them), she no longer needs to be touching someone to apply her abilities. She is limited in scope of how many people she can keep healing at once, and the more she focuses on the less potent her healing is. But a small phalanx line with her behind it doesn’t really need to bother with the shields.

Thandar’s powers as a champion have left behind his crude and primitive shockwave abilities, just as he left his Ofrior home. Now he’s just telekinetic, capable of refined control over his environment in a variety of ways. His strength with it is enough to lift a house, and his precision capable of catching arrow volleys in mid flight and redirecting them.

Andelko’s abilities haven’t really changed much, he is interested in arm wrestling hercules right now though.

Halveti
Saldis’ Experiment

Halveti was found surviving in the southern wild lands at what remains of Saldis’ lair. A patched together collection of corpses given life, he wields the power of two black mages. In one hand he holds pyrokinetic abilities, in the other control over any metal he touches. He has joined the Aetas in the wake of being recovered, slightly dazed due to serious amnesia as a result from Naberius “interrogating” him. He is loyal by pure merit of having nowhere else to go, he could not survive in any other nation and its nice to be around people instead of rotting bone golems. Thandar has currently deployed him to assist Song Yi, figuring his metal control that injured Kinzoku could help in the upcoming conflicts. Also wanting to keep the unstable and aggressive newbie far away from Eret for now. At least he fixed Kinzoku before he left so she is operable once again.

The Seven Paladins of Divus

While the last seven may have died horribly, Jehovah has found their replacements. The Divus Imperium seeks to always have seven paladins if it can. However, the new roster is vastly more powerful then its predecessors. Up until now all pantheons blessed their champions with weapons of extreme power and capability. Jehovah has broken this tradition and given up the illusion that this was all that could be done. He has bestowed each paladin with an aspect champion’s blessing. Jehovah’s aspect.

One of three new gods to sit on the black pantheon, an ascended avatar of Si Da. His domain isn’t particularly exciting but he is popular amongst the people as basically the patron deity of entertainment. For now he tries to avoid the pantheon’s politics, expressing more interest in continuing his pursuit of art and the way of civilian life.

Quy Ong is something of an enigma, no one knows exactly where he came from. Just one day he showed up and was clearly a god so he got a seat. Quy Ong was thought to be a chaos aspect were it not for the fact that his followers don’t create enough possibilities to harm Eret. So he has taken the title lord of change, since it isn’t quite chaos but definitely wherever he is involved things become different. Settling into the Pantheon he has refrained from taking a political side just yet, for now he merely watches and absorbs the ongoing affairs.

Roster Updates

Shentu Wo: 658 Power, 467 Followers
Sima Wa: 191 Power, 794 Followers
Lin Sun: 263 Power, 143 Followers
Con Lai: 90 Power, 286 Followers

Black Pantheon Politics:
Lin Sun: Mao Yachi mention wanting dracula’s help in repopulation. They need all descendants to share the mao yachi bloodline that only Lykopis has, but she can only be pregnant with one child at a time. Let alone how to make more from those children. The man that that was recovered from Saldis’ lair has had his memories taken by Naberius to figure out who they are. Apparently they are a creation of Saldis, an attempt by her to fuse two dead black mages together to create a black mage with more then one ability. Relatively successful. He also has many memories of Saldis herself while she was alive and discussions with her. She has a daughter, fathered by Tai Ket, she left behind in Divya Samraja where she would have a less hectic life. Born away from Si Da the daughter was not born a black mage, so she was able to live among the people there. The memories of Saldis also reveal a lot about the life of the bone queen, she had been mass producing undead golems, which the Aetas found in her lair. Had she lived her plan was to use her undead army to colonize the southern wild lands with a land of the dead and declare herself an empress. She was involved in many experiments to defy and manipulate death as well, ranging from the transfer of consciousness to elixirs of youth to keep her from aging. Locust has arrived at the Aetas temple and started hanging out. Thandar has noticed despite the Aetas leaving the temple to go get work done the food budget hasn’t changed any.

Lucifer explains that despite being the master of demons he can’t actually control Abalam or get him to open the door. No one can get that door open but Abalam and if Abalam should die the library would disappear forever. The only person who might be able to get it open it would be his mother Anahita, who wants to kill them all. Her ability involves a form of truesight, so she might be able to see where the door is even if Abalam hasn’t shown it. The risk of that is that as stated, Anahita hates them all and currently Divus has no idea where the door is to have her look in the first place.

The challenges of wisdom have yielded some recruits to the Aetas at higher standing then normal but no true heroes of the realm.

Shento: Ryner has acquired two new recruits with the help of the Aetas, its slow going but its progress considering how small it is at the moment and the conditions Eret put on his recruiting. The potion progress is still the same as last time, the problem is that blood loses its magic rapidly. Just as black magic requires the recently dead or dying’s blood, the idea of turning blood into potions has the same limiter. Other then the time vault, there is currently no way to preserve that magic from decay.

The battle with the sea monsters has gotten silly. Combined with the new powers of Su Pinpua, there has yet to be a monster that can hurt them. Johann was sitting on the beach bored while Su Pinpua read a book  and lazily kept the vampires extra healed if necessary. Further compounding to the problem of their boredom, Sarnai proves to be an effective witch. So much so that she just turned the sea spirits right around. Without Ryujin’s direct focus on them, she turned out to be capable of convincing them to just go home. Lessening the severity and frequency of the attacks entirely. However, the source of this is a call from Ryujin himself. Even if Sarnai can turn some of the sea spirits around for now, the attacks won’t stop until Ryujin stops trying to find a way to destroy the island nation.

In questioning Aphrodite specifically what she can do. She reveals that she has no way to help in conflict, what she does is help people find each other, keep the people happy and her following generally offers assistance to lovers in difficulty. Helping them get past family hatreds, poverty, and distance to be with each other. Though, she is more popular then anyone else in your pantheon. She might even be more popular then Amaterasu, and if the PR figurehead were to be replaced by another PR figurehead who is constantly in league with Song Yi…well she’s just saying. In conflict she has little to offer other then her name, but her name is very powerful among mortals.

Con Lai:”Get to know”
Milenkosi: Is really content in life. He just likes to sleep a lot as you might expect of a large cat.
Gremory: Money. He likes money. He doesn’t even need to buy things, but as an incarnation of a greed demon he can’t help himself.
Alice: Motivated by power, and not the socio-political kind. She left the Divus Imperium because the spirits never blessed her with powers she desired, causing her to turn to black magic. As if a cruel joke, her powers turned out to be summoning the power of others.
An-Lanh Tien: Motivated by a form of patriotism. He believes firmly in what the black pantheon stands for and has been fighting for Si Da’s liberty from other nations for a long time.
Jin Zhang: The pleasures of existence. He likes to drink, smoke, fight, and fuck. This is his lifestyle and whoever provides it he will work for. Being able to drink smoke fight and fuck while sleeping and being awake just further enhances this lifestyle.
Baridi: Is mostly driven by curiosity, she is still young and has yet to really settle into any higher purpose or motives.

Recruiting goes well, Jin Zhang and Alice have started to form up their teams but so far none of their members are considered heroes of the realm.

Sima Wa: Shade away on recon, reports that almost all of Divya’s navy is sailing along the southern coast. The navy is massive and fields metal ships without sails. His prediction is that they’re moving toward Doi Cho Len. Lo’c Thua recruited as Masutomaindo.

Song Yi requests Locust join her army that heads to the Lengdon mountains. Sthan Thi requests a proper main road be built between the new city of Kagayakashi and Sthan Thi. Abaddon and the praeliators request shelter at Kagayakashi so they might position to better protect Si Da from western invasion while Song Yi and her army march south east.

Rest of stuff was covered in ascension chat directly already.

Aphrodite’s followers have gone to Ofrior as requested, seeking to establish some diplomatic relations. However, they’re still walking right now along with just looking for the Ofrior people that are in hiding.

Song Yi has assembled some of the great heroes of the realm, lead on a march through the wild lands to the Lengdon mountains. She’s concerned about this whole naval movement and Ryujin’s current work and is preparing forces near it as possible in case they’re needed. Herself, Izumi, Hotaru, Shen Rai, Song Fang, Ningi No Mikoto, Mara, Rei Siwang, and Forneus will be going. She’s specifically asked for Locust to come as well, given there is a fleet of metal ships out there, but is otherwise open to more volunteers. Amongst the heroes an army of 500,000 now march through the wild lands to the lengdonian mountains. Three quarters of the entire Jakaal will be going as well. After the announcement, Teijin and his clan joined. Even if they give her a hard time usually, it seems they have shut up for now and marched behind the warlord. In her absence Sthan Thi’s defenses are weak and Kagayakashi is requested to build a proper road between the two cities so that its forces might help in an emergency with so much of the armed forces missing and to shelter the Praeliators as they move north from their normal home as to protect the empire from potential western invaders. Abaddon has also come to take residence at Kagayakashi.

More information about the Altepetl excavations have returned from Asmodaeus and Mastema. They found what remains of Saldis’ lair. Fortunately the Aetas already took everything of use. The tribal nation has continued to collect artifacts and history, but he also discovered they were using what they discovered in ancient ruins to blueprint their own construction efforts, becoming less and less nomadic and becoming gradually more modernized.

Thykenae experiences internal chaos. Inquisitors from Divus arrived and began murdering Aphrodite’s worshippers and tearing down her temples. Calling Thykenae weak for deceiving their people into believing she still was on their side. While it is technically an invasion and many who forgot to commune with the gods are resisting the Divus invasion it is an absolute mess right now.

The Jade Empire has made no moves to stop Song Yi and her army from marching to the mountains. The wild lands are out of their protected reach and they’re still just trying to feel this one out as they’d rather ignore the world changing around them and try to get their lives back on track for now…at least under their current emperor’s plan.

Mechanics patches
–Champion/prophet blessings, curse/blessings etc. costs increase by 100 per identical  you already have active in the world and take maintenance of 20 power per update. High prophets do not count towards either but you can only ever have one of those at a time anyways.
–Answering prayers is no longer a direct read and answer session as there are too many. You can simply pick how much power you put into answering prayers you answer per update. Answering prayers yields more follower retention, with a small chance to gain additional followers. It is automatically assumed you answer the more important prayers first and ignore the dumber ones.

A meeting of champions

Eret bounced excitedly in his chair, Thandar rubbed his head knowing he was going to be upset by something by the end of the day. Even he hadn’t foreseen that it would take all of five seconds. Locust showed up in the front door with four young and barely clothed women in tow behind him. They were all giggling and bubbly, waving toward Thandar and Eret playfully. Two of them had symbols of Aphrodite hanging around their necks.

Thandar stared in disbelief, “Please don’t tell me-”
“Relax they’re prostitutes. I figured Eret is almost thirteen now and-” Thandar interrupted by shouting at Locust, “Why in all the god’s names would you bring not just a prostitute, but four prostitutes to a twelve year old child?!” Locust didn’t seem particularly phased by the shouting. The girls behind him did though, cowering backward, some inching away not sure what to do now. The Senshi stated, “Well you never let him leave, so I thought I’d bring life’s experiences to him instead.” Kinzoku giggled, she found this kind of funny. Thandar shot her a glare, “Get those whores out of here. Eret will-”

“Will what?” It was Locust’s turn to interrupt. “Grow up, go outside, meet a nice girl? Go on a few dates, meet her parents, fall in love, have children? You have him surrounded by guards every hour of the day, you would scare off any woman that even came close to him for the rest of his life and any woman that wasn’t scared of the constant guards you definitely wouldn’t want him seeing in the first place. Even if you get past all of that, how the hell is he supposed to have a relationship? You’re wiping his memories every week or so so he doesn’t fall over dead. He’s getting older Thandar…he needs to grow up just as much as anyone else.”

Thandar just stared feeling a cross between blinding rage and depression at the same time. He muttered after a few moments, “Just…just get them out of here okay?” Eret was sitting in his chair staring at the floor while Thandar argued with Locust. There were some futures where he could stop the arguing, but none of them would end with Thandar understanding Locust as well as he was starting to, or Eret for that matter. The former viking of Ofrior was loyal, noble, and a good brother-like figure. But Locust was one of the few people in all of Sthan Thi who Eret could talk to that remembered Eret was a person too.

Locust turned and looked back at the girls who looked a bit frightened by the earlier yelling, “Go on for now, I doubt anyone’s going to be in the mood after that.” And so they left, Locust made his way toward the steps and climbed them to stand before Eret’s chair. An Aetas guard reflexively moved a spear in the way, unsure of what to make of this encounter that was going on. Locust’s horrifying maw opened and then chomped down on the spear without having to slow his stride at all. The Senshi pet Eret on the head, “Oh cheer up, I’ll get you laid by the time I leave here for sure. Even if I have to knock Thandar’s ass out.” Eret giggled and Thandar glared, “You can tr-” Eret ended that argument, “He’d win.”

Thandar blinked and just stared at Eret in disbelief. In truth, Eret knew Thandar could beat Locust because of his new powers, they specifically gave him an answer to Locust’s abilities and cheated past Locusts’ more advanced combat skills. But Eret also knew that Thandar didn’t need to know that.

“Where is Ryner? I thought he was here too.” Locust asked. Eret answered for him knowing Thandar was having an emotional crisis right now, “It is daytime, he is hiding from the sun, and my audience hall…” he glanced out over the room, “Has windows in it.” True enough there were streams of sunlight coming in to keep the place nicely lit. Locust rolled his shoulders, “Well then later tonight. We’re all champions now eh? We need to settle the-” Eret interrupted with prophecy once again, “Ryner wins.” It was Locust’s turn to be disappointed, even if he didn’t realize Eret had lied about him winning earlier. Eret just shrugged, “Sorry. If it makes you feel any better Machera beats Ryner so at least your boss could avenge you?”

Locust grumbled, “That bitch would trip and fall on the stick in her ass if she ever got into a fight.” he sighed and pat Eret on the head some more, “Come along then, I’d say today is a day off.” “Actually I already finished-” “Day off. Uncle Locust is here and wants noodles. Show me the kitchens!” Thandar was about to snap indignantly at Locust for making demands of the high prophet but Eret just giggled and hopped out of the chair and made his way down the nearby hall to the inner facility with Locust in tow.

Thandar knew he could trust Locust, if nothing else that man…thing would never let Eret be hurt. He debated just staying in the audience hall and getting some work done to avoid having to deal with Locust’s presence. Until Kinzoku asked, “Does Locust know about the back door?” Thandar shrugged, “I think so. Why?” “Those girls from earlier are walking through the gardens.” Thandar sprinted off down the hallway to catch up to Locust and Eret.

Thykenae Threatened

The week had been quiet. The empire of Thykenae was calm ever since the crusade, they’d been taking it easier. There had been a few issues here and there, and the border. The first sign that this was going to be a bad day came from a scouting party. One of its members sprinted into the garrison and ran straight to the captain, even out of breath managing to report before he was even told to. “An army is on the horizon!” The captain looked up with a jolt, “How many? Do they bear any flags?” The scout took a moment to take a deep breath, “A few hundred at most sir. It appears to be the Divus Inquisition.”
“Fuck.”

Runners had been dispatched towards the inquisitors, looking to question why they were there. It would be some time before they would return, and far ahead of the inquisitors a winged figure flew over the garrison. Over the walls, and over the city. Saint Naomi didn’t have time for this. Of all the seven paladins she had the second most bizarre wings, instead of white feathered and birdlike, hers were floating shards of polished stone only loosely close to each other in wing shape. Though they tapered similarly to feathers at least. She approached the temple of Aphrodite and hovered in the air above it. The people below gazed up in awe as her holy light radiated from those remarkable wings. She didn’t move, just stood there in mid air as if there was ground below her.

Her voice called out, her shout able to carry across perhaps the entire city as if empowered by her god, which was likely the case. “Your oracles deceive you, your pretend gods deceive you, and they have made heretics of every last one of you for it. The one true god can no longer tolerate this mockery. Ares has fallen to the black pantheon, Chronos has fallen to the black pantheon, the spartans have died to the black pantheon, Hades has died to the black pantheon, Hermes has died to the black pantheon, and Aphrodite…spread her legs to the black pantheon. Your oracles do not tell you, they do not wish you to know your gods die, your soldiers die, and worst of all they have made traitors and pagans of every last one of you.”

Her wings broke apart and the stone shards flew down toward the temple below. People screamed as dust and debris shot out of the structure, statues collapsed and in no time the wings made quick work of the place, reducing it to rubble in less then two minutes. Dust poured through the streets, undoubtedly some oracles inside must have died. Saint Naomi just watched from above as her wings reformed around her in their decorative positions. Her voice called out to them again, “To worship that whore is to worship the demons of the north. She cries out Lucifer himself’s name every night as she lays in his bed. Every temple is to fall, every oracle who lied to you is to die.” there was a pause as people watched from below, waiting for her to fly off or finish her statement. She ended very simply, “Bring me the oracles. Bring me the acolytes. Bring me the damned.” she didn’t need to put a threat at the end of that, people scurried to betray friend and family to the paladin without a moments hesitation.

By the time the inquisitors that supported her arrived in the city, they did not have to question very much at all, but they did anyways. They left every oracle, acolyte, and follower of Aphrodite crucified on every possible street corner they could fill. Several homes, pieces of art, and people were left destroyed in the city from Naomi’s purifying rampage. Men and women alike bled naked in the daylight for all to see. The inquisitors had spared their children though, taking them back home to Divus when they left. Some Thykenian hero had challenged Naomi, once they were known all throughout the land even as far as Ofrior Riki. The black mages they’d defeated, the monsters they’d slain, meant nothing. Naomi ended them without even seeming to notice they were anything more then a man.

Saint Zachariah flew over the city of Athens, each paladin had gone a different way but as first paladin it was his job to destroy the relics of Aphrodite in the Thykenae capital. The inquisition was moving through the land one city at a time, but Zachariah was going to strike at their heart long before the inquisition would reach it. He had no backup, no inquisitors, just a purpose and a message. Mount Olympus towered over the city, reaching into the clouds where he assumed the gods were hiding like cowards. Zachariah’s passing over the city was quite obvious, of all the paladins his wingspan was massive, easily fifty meters when he was in full flight. He cast an ominous shadow over the realm below him.

Zachariah found it, the biggest temple of Aphrodite in the whole land. He descended towards it, spotting a familiar face along the steps between two statues. He landed gracefully and as he folded in those massive wings they seemed to shrink down. The feathers were strangely long and matched his cloak, really Zachariah looked like just a mass of super long feathers with a helmet and shoulder plates popping out of it. He took the moment to humor his greeting party, “Stand aside Heracles.”

Hercules scowled, “This matter is not yours to deal with. It is ours, Divus has its own problems does it not?”
“Stand aside.”
“Do you know who you’re talking to paladin? I don’t even know your name, and you would think to -” he was interrupted quite rudely, the angelic paladin stepped calmly forward until he was right in Hercules’ face, armored helmet just barely away from touching the man’s nose. “I am Saint Zachariah, first paladin of the one true god’s holy light. Tell your father I bring a command from Jehovah. You will send your warriors north, you will send every man who can hold a sword and every woman who can boil a stew. You will repent for your heretical worship, and every false god and soldier you have will march. If those soldiers are not north by the next full moon, I will personally kill every last one of you pagans and leave this land to be claimed by the wilds. We will hone our skills on your people. We will kill every hero in your land, we will destroy every temple and every statue until you are all but forgotten. I am marching an army to fight a land that creates false gods which have beaten yours, do not think for even a moment I fear your pathetic pantheon. I will crush Zeus myself, we will crucify Gaia and leave her to dry in the sun. We will collapse the entirety of Mount Olympus from its very base and topple your pantheon into the ground so that they can look up from their hands and knees and see their true salvation that is the one true god. I will deliver them to the holy gates of his kingdom for judgement, and then when I have finished reducing your heretic world to ash – I will fly to the north to do what you could not. Now repent your defiance, turn around, walk into that temple, and bring me every heretic in there. Alive. Then you will nail them to the walls for all to see the punishment of their sins. Repent Heracles…or I will send you to his holy gates for judgement here and now.”

Hercules paused, it felt like those few seconds were an eternity as Zachariah stared him down. Finally he asked, “Where are they to meet your army?” To which Zachariah replied, “They will not. This is not a crusade, this is your nation’s penance. We forgave your failures, but this black worship can only have one atonement. Your nation will march and it will fight until it is dead to the very last man.”

“The people didn’t know, it is-”
“Their faith gives your gods their power, your false gods are constructs of its nation. It deceived itself, hid from the truth it knew to escape its sin. You can die fighting against your traitors and your enemies, you can die to let your redemption enter you into legend, or you can die to me here and now.”

At last, he wordlessly turned to enter the temple and began the solemn work of catching and crucifying his own people while the paladin and all of Athens watched. No other heroes stepped forward, no god descended Olympus to end this madness. Whether they were prophets, oracles, or just visitors – as people tried to flee the temple and get around Hercules the crowds that watched would catch them and shove them back toward the temple. Hercules had the humiliating task of chasing them down  as they tried to find a way out and dragging them back to be nailed against the wall. Zachariah simply stood there and watched while the whole city looked on in terror.

Desperation goes by another name.

Hercules and Perseus made their way through the wild lands tentatively. The oracles told them this is where they would find the help they needed. But it was only a general sense of location, there was still some rummaging to go through to figure out exactly where it was. A few monsters lay in their wake, it was of no concern to heroes such as themselves.

Eventually they found a small hut in the woods.  The door was ajar and the light of a fire poured out of the small crack. The sound of a woman humming could be faintly heard, a song which they did not recognize. The two exchanged a nervous glance, eventually Hercules took the lead. He was about to push the door open when he thought better of it. Instead clearing his throat and knocking politely. The humming stopped instantly.

Perseus spoke first, “Excuse me? We need help, we were-”
Before he finished the thought the door creaked open. A woman stood before them clad in tattered clothes that must have once been the luxurious fabrics of a court lady. She just stood there and seemed to be waiting for them to finish the thought. Perseus continued, “We know its strange. But still we would ask, what would it cost Thykenae to enlist your help miss…?”
“Sahar.”