SoL 30

Eret and his team of hunters managed to track down and find Khaos, and then also beat her into the ground and drag her to Atlantis for Pandora. Pandora broke every bone in Khaos’ body so she could no longer move and rewrote her body’s anatomy so she would regenerate in a different form then her normal body. As Khaos’ regeneration was fueled by Pandora’s new machine she could only watch herself turn into a tree and slowly lose all sense of self as even her brain was regenerating into tree. The process was so jarring even Kiala was somewhat shocked at what happened. Pandora named the tree Yggdrasil, and it contains the power of every aspect and its roots reach deep into ichor pits created by Wa’s machinery. This tree grows avatars and demigods as fruit, over the years as it grew ever larger by being constantly fed power the rate of production continued to increase. The bodies of dragons and striders are eaten by the Mahane and those Mahane travel to Atlantis via the dream gates to pour the power into the ichor pits so that more demigods and avatars can be made from the tree.

Sozrushatel and Stikhiyn were the first two dragon lords to arrive with their forces, bringing both of their armies with them. Krylo, Krovsokol, and Kamentsoy received imperial orders to stop dicking around with colonization and get to work on destroying everything. Despite all of our preparations, it did not go spectacularly well. Sozrushatel alone defeated the entire pantheon that was weakened from its losses to Angra. Stikhyn’s mechanically enhanced troops slaughtered Jinko 16 to 1 and his dragons tackled Inaji’s ships out of the sky.

The Crimson order was almost completely wiped out by Krovsokol who took the field personally after Aetharas killed some of the blood dragons. Krovsokol revealed himself to have abilities similar to Aetharas and can hyper analyze the powers of other people and target them in bizarre ways.

Brahma died defending the gate and Sozrushatel has taken over Svarga as the new guardian of the gate. Jehovah deployed the emergency four horseman, which wound up destroying Divus and Akhetaten in their ride as they indiscriminately destroyed everything around them like a traveling nuclear explosion that couldn’t be turned off. Before they could reach Svarga the second wave of Drakon arrived with the now recovered and healed Voynaye and Mertven. The horseman of war was defeated by Voynaye and the horseman of Death by Mertven in a titantic battle east of Svarga. Making it a giant crater just like when Voynaye fought Angra. The other two horsemen were wiped out by Sozrushatel and Stikhyn.

In the following six months the next wave came bringing with it the new dragon lord of earth that replaced Bahamut and Lesderevo the dragon lord of the forest. The two were the direct opposition to Song Yi’s control of the world and she’s been somewhat occupied trying to keep them from destroying the underworld we used for shelter from the dragons.

The Vua Cai were hit particularly hard by this as their trade empire collapsed and people fled to the dream realm in mass to seek shelter from the dragons, eventually as the dream world reached maximum capacity people were sent to the caves that run beneath the whole nation.

Jehovah was defeated by Vsemo who overtook his role as gate guardian, and Naomi lost all of her powers for as a result. She almost died fighting but was dragged off by Genevieve by force. Only Zhang and Genevieve still have their powers. Eventually Jehovah and brahma respawned through the Osiris loop though Pandora had them reaped to pieces soon as she got her hands on them and removed them from the loop forever. She and Lucifer found this cathartic. Many other gods were defeated during the Drakon invasion but they just respawned as normal as all temples had been moved underground to protect them.

Death toll below:

Saiko – Died fighting Stikhiyn in wave 1
Oki Konzi- Died fighting Stikhiyn in wave 1
Rikuto- Died aboard the Runtsquad ships when Stikh attacked them
Daisuke – Died aboard the Runtsquad ships when Stikh attacked
Maximos – Died 20 years later
Inaji – Died fighting Stikhiyn in wave 1
Johann Shento – Died during Krovsokol’s raid on the underground
Emilia Fortunato – Died in a battle with Krovsokol’s monsters
Aetharas – Killed by Krovsokol 40 years later
Tatu Kuu – Died fighting Sozrushatel in wave 1
Ryoka Hanzo – Died during the fall of Adelaide
Yukari Zhang – Died In a skirmish 8 years after wave 1
Zelmyra – Died when Lesderevo overtook the forests
Nohea – Died with the honorbound against Sozrushatel’s forces
Lucas – Died fighting Sozrushatel’s forces 3 years after the first wave
Idonea – Died fighting the mechanical army of Stikhiyn during the invasion
Saint Ezra – Died to the four horsemen destroying Divus
Magnus – Died in battle against Krovsokol
Kaisa – Died fighting against Krylo who had hunted her down
Swain – Died 4 years into the war when he was found by Krovsokol
Eliza Rackham – Died to Robert McCammon and the feral vampires
Aiko – Died to Robert McCammon and the feral vampires
Aiyana – Died to the forces of Krylo
Leyti – Died in the first wave since she was a vanguard member
Kainoa –  Killed by Lesderevo since he couldn’t go underground
Ishikawa – Died of old age a decade or two later
The Entire Honorbound – Died as vanguard in wave 1

Every nation on the surface has fallen, any that stood their ground were wiped out immediately by Voynaye’s army who got replacement troops from Vechnost’s city, the cosmic striders turned out to be the strongest of any breed and singular members could kill demigods and avatars one for one. There is no civilization left above the underworld except for the still-hidden Atlantis that works to produce armies for us.

The war continued for twenty years but eventually fizzled out and left the Song Empire as a series of ruins, the continent became controlled by the Drakon as their full forces came down to bear on the continent. Losses were high. Atlantis kept producing demigods and avatars but they just aren’t enough to take down the Drakon from our weakened state. It finally ended when Vsemo captured Song Yi and sealed her away in an unknown prison, with the loss of the divine empress the nation had officially fallen.

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5,000 Years Later

After Drakon wiped out the Song Empire it receded into myth as the underworld closed all of its entrances and trapped the survivors underground to protect them from the striders with only brief excursions for resources being made with the help of mystics who could open cave entrances temporarily for raiding parties to travel to the surface and try to bring back necessary resources. With Song Yi gone life was hard as the infinite resources of her powers ceased and the caves had to be carved out by hand often. Her power still echoes through the underworld as spirits know she is still alive, but they work to stop the new dragon lord of earth from destroying the cave networks that have moved even deeper under the ground then before.

As time passed and the Song Empire was forgotten to time as eras rose and fell above the earth, leaving Drakon to contend with the nefarious Rasstroystvo who was in league with Lucifer, much the same way we dealt with Lucifer and Asmodaeus three eras ago. There are stories, legends, among the striders of an old enemy that waited and plotted their demise.

During the 1st era of Drakon’s control over the continent they contended with a monster of the likes they had never conceived of before, two creatures plagued their empire and grew ever stronger. A great black Lion and Fox that only grew more powerful as time passed and could never be truly defeated. Eventually the striders of Vechnost embarked on a quest to find the secrets of these monsters, still remembering the war with the song empire, eventually learning the secrets of mysticism to seal the two akuma.

Thousands of years later, dragon nations warred for territory and contended with apocalypses orchestrated by Lucifer and Rasstroystvo. Creatures of incredible power creeped out of the earth to assist from time to time, but remain forgotten myths of eras long past. The Dragon Lords remain vigilant but many of their followers barely understand the Song Empire ever existed. They aren’t so stupid as to think it was all a myth, but they don’t really understand what that war was.

Meanwhile deep below the earth, a nation composed of only demigods and avatars grew. Humans becoming nothing more then cattle under Pandora and Wa’s great engine of creation. Yggdrasil grew so large that it encompassed all of Atlantis and only Pandora and her assistants live there anymore, picking the fruit that contain life and sending them through dream portals.

With the exception of reincarnated individuals, gods, and a few elite chosen few who had grown old truly understood the terror of the world above. Just as Drakon’s memory of the Song Empire weakened, so did the underworld forget what the Drakon were truly like. Many of its new citizens grown from the tree of Yggdrasil had never encountered a dragon and merely had old tales to go by, with the exception of the raiders who occasionally went above ground.

In the underworld without Song Yi to unify everyone people kind of kept to their own little groupings even if united by technicality. In the underworld it had its own era as battles for power went on here and there. As of today Naomi is the ruler of the pantheon.

The culture of the Song Empire has changed over the eras. Even with Song Yi gone the martial law style of rule remained in place for a few centuries and with Pandora being responsible for most of the population we receive, religion no longer centers on the worship of paragons of an aspect but more like a chain of command. New gods are made on an as-needed basis as new armies are made that require an officer to command them. While the entire empire is very focused on making a massive military to fight Drakon, there is still quite a lot of civilian culture. No society can dedicate every body it has to being a soldier, many are farmers and craftsman to make weapons and armor and so many of the more civilian minded gods are still around.

Over time mortals had power wars in the underworld and there is an intense competition between cults even if the gods tend to all get along fine enough. Lucifer stated that with so long to go before we take action it would be best to allow these games to take place, we can just unite them fully once its time to actually make ready. In the meantime all these reincarnating demigods could use the practice and experience of clan warfare and politics. The way the underworld was expanded is actually very similar to a game board in order to encourage this kind of lifestyle for them, and no wars ever truly got out of hand because the gods are smart enough to still be buddies and Naomi hard stops anyone who takes it too far.

However, a new tournament now occurrs at the annual Senshi-Con. There is a standing rule that you can’t enter the same champion into both the team and individual arenas. Team tournaments are broken into squad, platoon, and batallion matches. Once again you can’t enter the same people into two events. Senshi-con is also now hosted in the dream realm where there is enough space for these kinds of tournaments, and makes healing even easier. While there aren’t any real restrictions in the tournament, dream denizens who oversee the event tag people out and replace them with a dreamed corpse to clutter the battlefields which prevents it from being truly lethal like the Jakaal regionals.

A similar tournament considered the amateur league happens six months apart from senshicon at the Aetas University where it is more like a sport and it doesn’t go past squad combat. These arena games are quite popular entertainment events and serve as training grounds as well. We also see other forms of entertainment competition between cults like Songstone and a much less violent sport similar to soccer.

With all the magic available another popular game exists featuring powerful artifact cards that can contain and summon monsters created through the power of various different gods, Shento most notably. These monsters are capable of retaining memories and being trained but all have animalistic intelligence and a sort of standardized size so no one summons anything particularly huge. As a joke the game’s publishers rolled out an edition with all overly cute and non-violent monsters, this actually sold more copies then any other expansion ever had. It turned out people liked having adorable pets that didn’t need food and could be stored away at will. One of the rarest cards is an otter that can swim through air, Con Lai may or may not be responsible for it becoming so rare.

As of now roster updated characters can no longer be power blessed, it is assumed that with the vast wealth of power you now have access to that you just bless every single champion you have and their stats account for that when they’re drafted up to save me the extra step when every player inevitably power blesses every single one of them and give them all artifact armor and weapons. Only the position of high prophet is relevant anymore. Regular prophets don’t show up in the champion roster since we’re dealing with some crazy stuff now that we wouldn’t bother making seasoned warriors become prophets. Its just assumed you have prophets in every platoon. Most champions have a personal platoon at minimum, many will command even larger forces.

Shento

I’m not making cards for all those new critters, the board is cluttered enough as it is.

The Archon line hit a snag in the concept, you aren’t a champion aspect and can’t physically control other people even if they exist by your power.

The Aasimar didn’t take long to hit a snag. As it turns out putting a team of champion aspects together causes problems, the aspect is naturally inclined to leadership and when several of them group up with similar authority and are told to work together they…don’t. Aetharas was the most suboordinate champion and he was still somewhat of a rogue element within the cult and did his own thing most of the time. Two aasimar died in battle with Drakon and another two were murdered by the fifth one who ate them and went solo. He later died in skirmishes with striders as well, the race sort of fizzled out quickly as they kept not getting along.

The blood tomes are actually a rousing success and now you hang out with Haval (new god, he’s down below), Vedahl, Mammon, and Lucifer who do similar things. Always keeping an eye on Drakon and manipulating them from afar with little hidden doses of power. You can’t help but remember the exact situation you were in with dark magic, now you are the angra plot twist.

All the other projects really just culminate in giving bonuses to rolls during army combat.

In general the blood nation has lost a lot of prevalence since we have so many demigods and power cheating engines now that black magic seems kind of…pointless. Though the population is still huge and a favored hangout for anyone with morph aspects (expect furries, all the furries). However, Ailani has instead become a super powerful political player due to her machinations and her reach extends far beyond just your cult. She never really succeeded in replacing you mostly because she pissed off the wrong people who were more intelligent then she thought. Notably Genevieve.

Ailani never quite outgrew her power lust even if the chances of usurping you diminished greatly thanks to Pandora and the grand pantheon we have now. She rules over the entire blood domain as the high prophet and queen. She eventually got married to one of the demons under Vedahl’s command as it was the best option she could find to pursue her dreams of power. She utilized the marriage to have children over time to expand a close knit family she could control and utilize to her advantage, marrying her kids off into every other god’s cult to establish a massive network even if just to collect gossip to keep tabs on what everyone is up to.

 

Kiala eventually stopped her monster making since Pandora was just plain better at mass producing war assets and is often found in Atlantis helping tend to Yggdrasil and guiding the Mahane to it. She is mostly a normal healer and research assistant for Pandora these days and eventually used Yggdrasil to make her own harem of demigods instead of politically marrying much to Ailani’s chagrin.

 

 

 

Eztli left the service of Ailani’s guard to focus his efforts on leading the new demigod roster of the Crimson Order and spends most of his time helping them train and prepare. He is still notably a minion of Ailani’s grand schemes however, albeit it is much less obvious then before if you don’t pay close attention. Even if he isn’t as powerful as his brother Jadus nor many of the other demigods he is one of the few who understand the grand scheme of politics and the surface world. His ability to lead is more valuable then his ability to fight which isn’t all that bad in the first place. His skill as a swordsman has improved greatly over the millenia of training the crimson order and regularly fighting demigods more powerful then himself.

Jadus is less of an idiot ever since Genevieve stole his powers from him when he annoyed her, he eventually got them back but after centuries of being powerless he grew as a person a bit more, relying on his sister Inaji to help him find some of his way. He’s still not the most creative of fighters but his personality has changed from an arrogant asshole to one of a more world weary and wise man. Granted he gets high off of Ryner’s stash too often and sometimes his sage advice is complete nonsense.

 

 

He’s back. After so much time he’s gotten to do his retirement bit, raise kids, grand kids, great great great great great great grandkids, and live out his days peacefully on the hippy pipe. Well that’s enough of that, closure achieved, time to kill some dragons. Ryner returns as the true king of Vampires and despite being just a vampire guy, he’s still one of the most fearsome warriors in the world now that he’s gotten his skills back up while training in the underworld in preparation. Not much character entry needed, he’s still the same guy.

 

 

Perhaps one of the strangest additions to the roster, Hala is the current leader of the orc tribes. She was formerly the concubine of the chief who died in a dispute with a vampire. She somehow seized power, and exploited the fact that she’s weirdly pretty for an orc to make political maneuvers that got more dangerous people to advocate for her. While she couldn’t fight anyone else on this roster even if they were blindfolded with their limbs tied up, she has one thing they don’t. See after 5,000 years the orcs, who were made to breed quickly, number in the tens of millions and she is capable of convincing them to do about anything. Despite seeming like a beautiful young orc she’s a direct friend of Ailani, and that should give a clue to how vicious Hala can be with her resources. She expends orcish lives like chicken feed and uses them to outnumber and muscle through power struggles. She will gladly deploy a million orcs on a suicide mission if it benefits her, and while our army of demigods can individually match orcs, the sheer number of them make them a real threat in a war. The rallying cry of the orcs can be so loud it echoes through the entire underworld from one side of the continent to the other, and Hala has used them viciously to claim territory and expand her influence. In the coming days of war, it is expected she will be a major player.

Named after the memory of the deceased vampire lord, she is one of Ryner and Lhin’s kids. Honoring her namesake, she is a savage warrior and Ryner wonders if that name is cursed to make people lunatics. Anna Dracula stays close to mom and dad in the armies of Shento instead of going to Naomi’s army though is technically under the control of Naomi if she should wish to exert her hive powers on the angel. Anna’s hemomancy doesn’t quite keep up with Jadus but it is powerful, and her wings are angelic thus faster then most other vampires with flight. Her regenerative powers are also very high as with many members of the blood cult though not quite as good as Anna Goethe’s. She is a powerful warrior though feels like she has a lot to prove to keep up with the demigods who surround her. She has the unique ability to gain power from blood a lot better then any other black mage though, by feeding on people she grows ever stronger and hopes to one day surpass the likes of Jadus.

One of the Yggdrasil demigods with the blood aspect, Romhilde is a relic of an older age of Shento’s fledging cult. Just when we thought it was all paladins, mystic orcs, and civilized vampires we get a violent psychopath hellbent on making civilized life hard for her master as she makes scenes of blood and gore out of people who really don’t deserve it. Romhilde is an exquisitely talented killer though, trained by Rei Daiheb for a few centuries she can turn an armored target into a pile of limbs in seconds. Instead of the traditional power of hemomancy she has the ability to turn her body into a bloody mist and traverse in this form, she often chooses to travel into people’s lungs and then reform to explode them.

Con Lai

After about two years underground the economy rebooted because martial law had come to an end. The Vua Cai were quick to jump back into what they were good at, though they are no longer the richest cult. Instead they are the government, and all finances are dealt with by them. They mint the coins, run the banks, and handle trade disputes. Technically they have all the money as the Imperial treasury is in the dream realm where robbing it is basically impossible and all its protectors don’t really care about or understand money enough to be convinced to help a heist. The dream realm has become a sort of theater for entertainment as well, other denizens with powers like Van to project the dream realm run places with lifelike plays.

The Vua Cai have grown enormously not only as the government itself but as the second most important cult for civilian entertainment which is crucial for keeping people sane with their new eternally reincarnating life spans. Am Nhac still has the number one spot in that regard but the Vua Cai hang out with him regularly to provide entertainment media. They have also distributed a special drink that puts people to sleep immediately, which allows people to hang out in the dream realm when they have down time and watch some dream TV or something.

Meanwhile the Shinobi house continues to train itself and spy on other houses. They also function as investigators for financial fraud and are some really scary IRS agents. The biggest shinobi clan is under the rule of Fujin but the Vua Cai edition is still around.

Van Tien and Hei Song is actually one of the few relationships still intact after all these years. Over time she became far more intelligent and with Pandora’s help unlocked the secret to her reality bending powers in the physical world. Everything is a dream to her and with the exception of Con Lai and Moja Kuu (below) she might be the most powerful member of the dream realm. However, her pranks have gotten much crueler by intention. She roams the surface world with Hei and preys on Drakon, she has become a mythical creature just like Mali Saengdao had been along with many other monsters of older eras. Drakon doesn’t really believe she exists nor do they know the truth behind her identity, but she can often be found tricking the people of Drakon who wander too far from their groups into their deaths. Legends similar to that of the sirens float through Drakon culture, yet many still foolishly follow the naked girl to their doom. While she hasn’t actually joined the military efforts, she is still out there making the wilderness quite dangerous for Drakon.

Nane Kuu gave up her expeditions into the nightmare realm when Drakon broke the shrine that held Milenkosi and Song Cao without knowing what was in there. Now that Milenkosi is in the nightmare realm the place is too dangerous for her to travel to. Now days she spends her time among the other three sleeping lords who live in the physical realm looking to bolster the denizen’s military forces. She’s also gotten way better at being funny and does stand up comedy on the side.

 

 

Sanyar has replaced his former master as a sleeping lord and is widely considered one of the most powerful dream denizens. He also has the largest understanding of the physical world thanks to his time with Yukari and the gang. He acts as the primary teacher for younger denizens to understand how the physical world works and more importantly the social culture of the Song Empire. Sanyar also owns an absurdly large mansion in the physical realm filled with things ranging from priceless pieces of art to a used napkin collection. Even with his master gone, he still feels the need to own all the things he can. He constantly frustrates the Aetas museums that he won’t turn over the priceless artifacts for public display.

Kamari Barid is still around and one of the most powerful warriors in the Vua Cai, he has time to hone and refine his skills over the thousands of years he has lived in the underworld. He remains slightly overshadowed by Van and the others but he is still nothing to be brushed off. He still works primarily for Nane Kuu and is a primary commander of the Vua Cai forces that sneak above to the surface when they need to bring back supplies.

 

 

Considered to be the most powerful of the sleeping lords, Moja’s power in the physical realm allows them to walk into an alternate but parallel existence. A dream within the world that only Moja can access and interact with, rendering them untouchable. They can also pull others into this realm and create giant rifts that plunge whole miles into this intermediate dream realm and then open it to the dream realm if they so desire. Within this half real half dream dimension, Moja can leave people trapped or engage them in single combat while ignoring all others in the real world. Moja lacks raw destructive power like Tatuu or Baridi had, but this dimensional rifting is capable of leaving whole armies trapped and unable to escape or interact with the world. It has the downside that anything in this half dream can interact with Moja while they are in it so he likes to make a point of eliminating problems inside of it but he can just pull his minions or just other nearby champions into the realm to deal with problems for him. While his denizens lack the raw power of Tatuu’s his following is absolutely massive and he sneakily hides many of them within his rift between realities. Most people he sends into the parallel dimension find themselves surrounded by his army.

The second most powerful sleeping lord in terms of pure destruction, Tano’s powers don’t really seem related to the dream realm at all like the others. Its just pure explosive power, along with an ability to make her denizens become supercharged. She notably commands a lot of people with explosive abilities like Baradi and her personal team can act as artillery because of this mix. As an alternative to just destroying things, she is also capable of putting people into comas that they can’t escape unless they somehow escape the dream realm they get trapped within or she lets them wake up. She can also grant insomnia that has slowly killed people as their body starts to suffer side effects from lack of sleep, or alternatively just prevent tiredness entirely for her own allies.

Not quite a sleeping lord but a remnant of Tatuu Kuu’s army. Following the tradition of Tatuu Kuu’s minions, he’s excessively powerful for the mundane task he had been originally assigned, but now just works as a denizen commander almost on par with the sleeping lords. He’s twenty feet tall and dominates areas with his presence and with his size can take on dragons in a fist fight. He can also warp reality to create constructed armies from his dreams with a limit on how many can exist at a time but no discernable limit on how man times he can keep replacing any that fall, giving him a permanent supply of minions even if he should be caught alone.

 

A demigod of sleep from Yggdrasil, she’s one of the few non-denizens left on the Vua Cai roster and commands what has become of the marines. Her power is to track people through the dream realm, allowing her to find anyone who is asleep in the world and she can also project herself into dreams without being in the dream realm. In general she’s a bit of a cocky bitch, despite her power not being that combat savvy she is still a pure demigod of immense physical strength and regenerative abilities. She is 1400 years old and has extensive combat training to back up her attitude.

 

Lin Sun

While Abalam is the god of knowledge, the Aetas still technically own the university because they had the most infrastructure for it already in place and Abalam is busy maintaining the black Library. Though he shows up as a guest lecturer from time to time. The university is the only place of higher learning in the underworld, because of dream portals there was no need to have more in other locations and so everyone opted to just make a big super university. Its size is colossal and is easily its own city, complete with roads and restaurants along with housing for its students. This is largely because with the extremely long life spans everyone has almost everyone in the population eventually seeks out the university just because there is nothing else to do some times.

The university has an important law of neutrality from all faction disputes, while it hosts a junior division of the combat tournaments with teams from various other cults open combat outside of the arena is so strictly forbidden that it can result in a ten year suspension. Xiaoli happens to be very good at predicting and finding people who violate the rules before it even happens and is conveniently there to witness it so that no one gets away with it.

The huge super university is home to many secrets as professors from all the different pantheons have their own labs to do stuff in, more then once some horrible experiment got loose and caused a whole lot of trouble. Thankfully a student population of all demigods, many of them combat veterans who got bored of training and just came to do book learning to pass time, can easily deal with a rogue experiment.

The actual city of the Aetas is separate from the university even though this city is responsible for most of the logistics and supplies to the university. However, in this separate city is where you can find the time chambers and time capsules that were made to preserve people who were tired of waiting for thousands of years to invade the surface.

Lin Xiaoli has hit a sort of stagnation in his power growth, because of the reincarnation loop he seems to have stopped gaining powers entirely and has become locked to those that he has. Though it might also be related to the fact that in these years Lin Sun hasn’t screwed up and gotten his people killed or anything. He is still an ancient figure of wisdom and well known throughout the underworld as one of the oldest champions around.

 

 

Vris got promoted, not only does she hold the master key to the Aetas Library but she also has the keys to the Black Library of Abalam. While the black library turns out to only work on humans and striders as it is connected to the laws of the swarm so doesn’t work on Dragons, it has rendered her selectively omnisicent. She knows about many of the affairs of the surface as she reads the books in the black library and keeps tabs on the entire underworld. Other then playing the part of super-librarian alongside Abalam she is the revered queen of the elves. With their population significantly massive now days, her status as the origin of them has given her a lot of attention.

Daniel Haggard is still around and works as a professor at the university while nothing else is going on. He particularly specializes in teaching demigods how to wield their powers since he has a mimic aspect and extensive experience with almost every power after all these years. This has extended into making him quite a proficient warrior since no matter what aspect he copies he has previous experience using it and after utilizing so many different ones he’s become very creative in applying anything he gets ahold of and is a master of utilizing his surroundings, and his opponent, against people. He hangs out in the crimson wing of the university where power is most frequently studied.

The Lord General of the Aetas and commands the entire Honorbound Division of 16,000 personally. She is actually Lucas reincarnated via the Osiris loop as a demigod. However, as with all reincarnations, she was born from two parents anew but got into the body of a very lucky baby. Her father is Lu Tao, the jade strider, and her mother is Astrid the time valkyrie. As with Siduri, because of her dragon aspect she started to inherit a lot of powers. She has the powers of Love, War, Death, and Time.

Since Astrid is her mother she’s technically now the grandchild of Lin Sun, yet at the same time kind of not really since we know its Lucas. Though before she made the pilgrimage to Osiris she grew up as a normal child and retains a lot of her personality before discovering who she was and takes greatly after her father Lu Tao.

As a demigod she can project emotions into people. She tends to use this as a method of bolstering her forces morale by force and can still combine it with the war aspect field buffs. It has resulted in the Honorbound becoming a terrifying force that is immune to morale shocking and capable of freakishly high success rates. Her time aspect has given her precognitive abilities similar to Eret but she lacks Pandora’s power up and has split her power through several aspects so isn’t quite as precise as Eret. As a strider demigod Scarlet has the incredible physical strength you would expect and since she directly oversees much of the Honorbound training in the chamber she has combat training equivalent to 500,000 years and is a strong contender for the title of the greatest swordmaster in the underworld. Despite having the training to defeat even aspects of mastery and precognitive abilities she still has never won a sparring match against that bastard Eret.

Since Lin never helped Vris with her experiment, she went and found another god to help her have a child. She chose Abalam, and Aikala was born a demigod of knowledge twice over. Her memory is as powerful as Vris’ and she has the abilities of Naberius to read minds and remove or implant memories. She is physically strong enough to get by but doesn’t begin to compare to the other warriors of the era. However, she did learn literally the entire library of magic at the university and has become so powerful as a wizard that only the high prophet of Hystalfar can compete with her. Despite lacking the magic aspect, her in depth knowledge of it and years learning it have allowed her to become attuned to its abilities. Unlike most other champions on the roster she doesn’t command a military unit, she is the Dean of the university.

A demigod of time, Son Zhaohou was born from Yggdrasil. He shares the same powers as Astrid and can freeze time around himself as he pleases. It comes with the limitation that while he can still move he can’t make anything else do so, so he can’t physically hurt anyone until time resumes and the blade cant penetrate their flesh that is frozen in time for example. The difference between him and Astrid is he actually enlisted into the Aetas military which is why he’s here on the roster but she isn’t. Zhaohou is a close friend of Lin Xiaoli and Lin Scarlet, though he commands his own platoon as he never joined the honorbound in the time chamber. Despite his powers he didn’t really desire to get stuck in there for hundreds of years. He has a lot more personality then the honorbound as a result and is quite a friendly figure, often found hanging out with Seiyomi and that gang as well. In combat he mirrors a lot of Seiyomi’s feigned arrogance style of combat, possibly because he was trained by Seiyomi for a long time. Tricking people into over committing to an attack then stopping time to perfectly position his swords so they kill themselves falling onto them.

He’s not a demigod but an ordinary elf. He got onto the roster because of his sheer power as a mystic, coming respectably even with the champions of Raven. He isn’t quite up to par with the Song kids but that’s an unfair comparison. His power comes from his spirit infusion and blessings. He can command the world around him and often serves as one of the primary directors in making the underworld bigger or tending to the underworld forests that we depend on for survival. He has an obsession with history and often is found badgering Vris for more stories about the world he missed out on getting to see, a world where the sun shines and the sky is endless.  He has been to the surface on raiding expeditions and spends his times above ground skulking around trying to find ruins or other archeological finds to tell him about the world’s history. His military company are a little dedicated to discovering and preserving history more so then combat though they are capable if they get into a fight on the surface.

Sima Wa

Kagayakashi is the only city to survive the Drakon invasion, mostly because it just moved itself deep underground. Its mobility has been compromised since then as it was built in a massive cavern and utilizes the cavern for structural support since it didn’t plan on moving anytime soon. It has two major districts, the forge and the public. The reason for this is the forge produces so much waste that is toxic for people to breath, just the smoke from burning things to power the forge suffocates the cavern and makes it uninhabitable to anything that needs to breath. In this chamber only Jinko can live and work, but the automated production lines are massive. Able to easily produce a thousand jinko per day, though they have been slowed down since we don’t need to make that many anymore and space is a little tight as it is right now. The only way into the forge cavern is via a giant dream portal that prevents the smog from escaping and allows goods to be shipped out. The public chamber is where the organic champions live and where festivals are held.

The city is surprisingly far away from all other cities in the underworld due to the potential environmental damage down here but dream gates make the distance easy enough to traverse. Kagayakashi still hosts the Iron Fist tournament, which is sort of a local style tournament just as the Crimson Fist is. People who make it to the semi finals get to go to Senshicon for the nationals.

While Inaji died during the first wave against the Drakon invasion, she reincarnated through the Osiris loop some time later. She would later die again, and reincarnate again, and repeated doing this enough times that she just has Adin keep the keys to her house so she can get her stuff back each time. These days runt squad is long gone since everyone is a demigod or a super jinko anyways, though she still tends to find herself doing civil engineering projects around the underworld to make the place cozier.

 

 

Roku still lives on and far outlived his core thanks to several breakthroughs allowing us to recharge them and sustain the life of a jinko indefinitely until the core is actually destroyed. He continues to manage an operations team that raids the surface for supplies now and then. He still tends to keep to himself and without his partner Rikuto to fight alongside he has become a bit of a loner ever since then. As the oldest surviving jinko (that isn’t in Inaji’s gun) he can often be found dispensing stories and advice to the younger ones who revere him.

 

Satsujin is a demigod who can lay claim to being Inaji’s younger sister, or older if you count the fact that Inaji has died and been reincarnated. A member of the new breed of warriors made by Wa with the most advanced buryoku of all time, custom built by Inaji. Satsujin has a vast array of technologically empowered arsenal. Her swords can cut through stone and her other robotic additions come armed with flamethrower, utility tools like grapplers, can become a jetpack, and of course a cannon.

She’s around eight hundred years old as we come out of the time jump and is a champion of the Iron Fist tournament, totaling 4 consecutive wins and 9 total. She has enough physical strength without her tech to throw a horse 20 meters, and with her mechanical enhancements can crush elemental steel.  Her regeneration isn’t that great but the armor she wears suffices to mitigate that problem. She might not actually be the greatest of the Kagayakshi warriors in terms of combat skill, but she’s one of the smartest and most adept at command. She also has a few wins at Senshicon during the batallion matches. Commands a Batallion.

The end result of the project Fang. It was eventually deemed impossible to actually create a true rival to Song Fang artificially, this was as close as they got. Tsuyoi is at least physically powerful and can match the raw strength of Song Fang though lacks the speed and definitely doesn’t have the baalsword that once enabled Fang’s greatest feats of strength. Though try as hard as they like, Tsuyoi isn’t very compact, he’s nine feet tall and is rather audible when he moves. But hey, he can still snap a dragon’s neck if he gets his hands on them. His jinko core requires so much upkeep that when dormant he has a special charging station where energy cores are expended in bulk to power him back up.

A modern jinko shell for a modern age. It was inevitable that Sima Wa would try to replicate the firepower Inaji’s weapon had, and though that has proven difficult without putting a death+war jinko god in it, some weapons come respectably close after all this time of teching up. Rafaiko is a sleek frame with the advancements of technology he was built for speed, his physical strength benefits from project Fang’s attempt to compress strength into smaller and smaller shells so he can actually wield his own weapon. He primarily acts as a heavy gunner but has the speed and agility of a shinobi, he carries a backup pistol and combat knife as well. Commands a platoon of anti dragon specialists with big guns.

 

Another super modern Jinko, Yoru is is basically the second coming of Takeshi and then ramped up to eleven. His frame is another successor of project Fang and unlike Rafaiko sacrificed sleekness for raw power. Yoru is incredibly strong yet still agile and quiet, trained as a shinobi for a hundred years and another hundred trained with more traditional jinko martial arts he is a fearsome direct combatant and despite being built for stealth and assassination he has the physical strength to contend with striders and the martial training to stand his ground when stealth is not an option.

Yoru commands a platoon of other stealth built frames.

 

From Wa’s many projects to build super armor suits, why fight with demigod powers and artifacts when you can just have a giant robot suit? Kyarotto has some of the greatest advancements in wearable armor technology, her favored suit is ten feet tall and carries cannons, machine guns, a giant axe or three, and can wrestle a dragon. Her secondary suit is fourty feet tall and is basically a mech, she did much of the design work on both herself along with help from Inaji. While the suits might work better as jinko frames, she’s proven an extraordinary enough pilot to earn her spot on the roster despite the fragile fleshy shell she inhabits.

 

Other New people and champion updates

The current divine empress and the most powerful of all the gods. She governs the kingdom of heaven, a special dimension where her new kingdom lays. Ever since the fall of Jehovah, Pandora helped in ascending Naomi over a century of effort since her aspect was so hard to activate. Naomi has become so powerful she has gained omniscience over the angels as she fullfils her aspect to control a hive mind. She still likes to take the form of her old self and use the stone wings as a go-to weapon but she is capable of a variety of other tricks including omnipresence. Her old husband Zhang passed away a long time ago out of pure desire to succumb to age despite the ability of the pantheon to preserve him. She allowed his wish and let him die quietly in bed surrounded by his family.

Genevieve eventually got to heaven while still alive just as Galahad had done before. With Naomi as the new goddess of heaven she decided Genevieve had definitely earned it, and took her there while she was still alive and gave her a lot of powers to make up for how shitty her life has been and sticking it out even after finding out Jehovah was a dick. After coming to terms with the fact that Jehovah is a dick Genevieve eventually accepted help from Wa and Pandora to alter her abilities to the manifestation aspect so she could expend her powers. However, after some choice blessings from Naomi, Genevieve not only stopped being in constant pain but revealed how powerful she really was once she could focus on not exploding. Many demigods have had their powers taken from them by Genevieve as part of a legal trial process and over 5,000 years she absorbed a lot of power. Her power level is half that of Song Fang’s, which makes her the most powerful non-ascended black mage in the world. In the recent millenia she has become known as the Angel of Eden despite not being an authentic angel she can still create wings for herself with the manifestation aspect and has genuine angelic properties such as her blood breaking enchantments and blessings, and the ability to take a spiritual form or incarnate at will. She currently still rules as the high inquisitor and does detective work around the underworld for criminal prosecution, as well as handling imprisonment and stealing powers to keep them imprisoned.

It wouldn’t be clever of Naomi to just ignore her new position of power as Divine Empress and not exploit the resources it gave her accesss to. After Zhang’s death Naomi had an experiment of having children again without the marriage attachments, even if she didn’t enjoy it particularly much the results were unbelievably powerful. Each of these angelic children are also born as demigods, it turns out if you mix those two you get super angels. Because they are angels they can operate as if they were gods and forego the need for followers, allowing them to incarnate and respawn as desired. As demigods they’re broken on their stats page. These angels are part of how Naomi has kept the position of Divine Empress despite Pandora and Lucifer creating most of the population with Yggdrasil. Each one of them can take on full fledged gods single handedly.

Teaming up with Sima Wa, she made a tech angel. Saint Haziel’s wings appear as constructs of light on command, as well as many other things she can do to with powers to manifest light based constructs atop of her metal kinesis. Haziel’s body is partially angelic and partially forged by Sima Wa with celestial materials of heaven ingots. As you might expect, this made something ridiculous. Her body is considered near indestructible because of its celestial unobtanium construction paired with her angelic powers. Similar to Jadus, her regeneration comes from self metal-kinetics.

 

Asher descends from Vedahl and is a very unnatural mix. While the other children came out fairly “together” Asher looks more like a chimera. He can wield hellfire and as a member of Vedahl’s clan has an uncanny ability to tempt people into stupid decisions. He is an effectively sinister manipulator and with his superior physical powers makes for a daunting warrior. His swords have a very strange property that they make people want them, a lot. He can offer to trade them and people often don’t have the sense of mind to realize that while they are elemental steel from Sima Wa, they aren’t anything more then that. He just goes and gets a cheap replacement each time.

 

What if we had angels, that were on fire? Even if Jezebel is technically descended from Pele, you’d swear this was Sima Wa’s idea. Jezebel is the angel that comes through the fire and flames, while Asher has hellfire Jezebel has more fire. She’s invulnerable to any fire based damage and is healed instead. She can summon as much of it as Ragara. While her talent with pyrokinetics isn’t as great as Daezra or Krylo her immunity to it is unique since she can cover herself in fire which subsequently heals her giving her a very efficient regeneration method. Especially if she just sets everything around her on fire and stands in it. Her weapon has one terrifying property, it thinks blood is flammable. A single hit from her can make people explode. It also instantaneously melts metals that it comes into contact with so parrying her strikes is also a bad idea.

Found in the reincarnation loop born as a demigod and immediately ascended by orders of every possible figure of authority in the underworld. Marshal Devadas is the ultimate god of war and every other god of war is his suboordinate, his authority is considered second only to Naomi. He had his signature armor rebuilt by Sima Wa out of celestial materials and with a bunch of upgraded features and is often found hanging out with Sima Wa’s team as they pursue military technology together to better the army in preparation to reclaim the gates.

 

 

The most powerful god of war by a wide margin now days, even if Devadas is the highest authority Ishtar is the one with the most power and largest following. That sex cult really paid off in the long run. Ishtar is more focused on running the sex thing then her army now days since not much is going on, though she keeps her forces training and on standby for the day they’re needed especially when Lucifer told her the day was approaching. She is also the mother of a very large quantity of demigods from almost every other god in the pantheon.

 

Still a sex icon and very powerful demigod with his dragon aspect. However, after a hundred or so years of monotony in the underworld he entered into the time capsule and was only recently awoken to prepare for war and spends his days training with Lu Tao. Since he sealed himself in time so early he hasn’t really changed much over all this time and doesn’t have that jaded personality many of the others have developed. Even with all this time spent away, he’s still one of the strongest demigods.

 

 

The son of Lu Bu, a legendary warrior of the era before Drakon, Lu Tao is an often underappreciated strider. Surrounded by demigods many thought he’d retire early or kill himself and reincarnate once he realized how hopelessly outmatched he was by people like Siduri. Instead he just got better at fighting and reminded us that even normal striders are very powerful. Our population of demigods merely levels the playing field between us and the Drakon’s basic footsoldier, the dragon masters are still on par with our gods and the lords are a whole other league. He traveled the underworld and trained with every cult’s warriors over thousands of years and learned every possible style he could and worked out until he could wield even more powerful weapons. After all that was done he still had a thousand years to hang out and wait for something interesting to happen.

 

 

The new god of magic, after 5,000 years they had time to truly master the craft and now the idea of a battle wizard can exist. Though magic always has a trade off in comparison to black magic, they have far more limited resources to cast with and all of their spells take preparation and casting effort unlike the innate powers of black or dragon magic.

Hystalfar tends to stay incarnated and runs the magic wing of the Aetas university which has seen become the largest and most accomplished place of higher education and many gods utilize its grounds for such things since it is a neutral ground absent from power wars.

The old 4th Avatar of Si Da from the crusades, Daelaran was found in the reincarnation loop a century or two into the life of the underworld. Born as a demigod from Yggdrasil, she acquired ascension with the help of Pandora who just happened to need a new army commander and with Raijin gone Daelaran was a good fit to replace him.

 

 

 

As the demon armies grew new princes and princesses were required to command them especially with the loss of so many in the recent wars. Ragara is a descendant of Abaddon himself and was a minor officer in the legion until Lucifer started looking around for some new big shots. Following the Wa tradition for the title of destroyer, a tournament was held and Ragara won.

She is particularly adept with hellfire and can create vast pillars of hellfire around herself capable of reducing miles around her to ash, an ability she definitely inherited from Abaddon’s abilities. She’s a tad aggressive as a person and tends to want to solve a lot of her problems violently but that’s to be expected.

All of her powers are pretty much “make things explode” for simplicity. She has Van Djao’s ability to make just about anything in front of her sustain damage though she’s not quite as powerful as the former avatar. When the destructive gaze isn’t enough, just bomb them the old fashioned way. As with everyone else around these days, she’s quite sufficiently trained in basic combat techniques.

 

 

 

He reached the avatar state and then ascended due to Pandora deciding he would make a good commander given his long military experience. Daezra was always the greatest pyrokinetic among humans through skill over power and now he has power. He controls a vast demonic army and is on standby for the “scorched earth” tactic that may need to be utilized. During the downtime his cult tend to be firedancers at festivals for entertainment. His cult is structured more like an authentic military and are crucial for Sima Wa’s forges to keep working given the lack of fuel down here.

 

Osiris didn’t even know he was in the loop, apparently he snuck into it a long time ago and Yggdrasil respawned him as a demigod. With his power ramped up to demigod levels instead of human levels, we suddenly remember how stupidly overpowered he is. Wukong can literally hold up a mountain one handed, hell with one finger. His staff was rebuilt by Sima Wa and weighs 1,200 tons, plus it extends. Wukong might just be the most physically strong character in Ascension history now, easily beating out Song Fang by a wide margin. He has enough physical strength to be a nonpoint, there is nothing he can’t lift bro. He can shapeshift into almost anything though he can never transform his tail. He can transform each of the 84,000 hairs on his body into another form, animate or inanimate. He is invulnerable to fire, cannot drown, can immobilize others, open any lock by pointing at it with his finger, and can jump from our continent to Drakon, or orbit if he prefers. He can draw a circle with his staff that creates an impassable barrier, and has a flying cloud he can ride on. Seriously I just copied his powers from the book and I still omitted a few.

Obviously Pandora quickly made him a full blown god and gave him a massive army, though perhaps a little too hastily because Wukong is more often then not a playful joker who runs around with Seiyomi or messes with people in Drakon alongside Van Tien. Its hard to get Wukong to be all that serious but when he does buckle down he is an enormous force in battle. Notably though, he lacks serious regenerative abilities and his martial skills while advanced don’t quite keep pace with the people who actually spent 5,000 years training. Thankfully as an ascended being he can just respawn now instead.

Another new god that popped up when the legions needed a new officer. Haval is a spooky figure and can speak to people without incarnating from within sufficiently dark shadows. If he is inhabiting a shadow, it becomes pitch black and while it can be dispersed by direct light cannot be seen through no matter how much nightvision you use. Haval tends to be a manipulative god, due to his youth he has a harder time wrapping his head around the whole plan to swarm thing and in the underworld politics is an avid player of the game. He coincidentally has a very deep and scary voice, and likes to haunt people from the dark corners of their home and convince them to do things for him. He can often be found convincing members of Drakon to do shady things and haunting their least inhabited abodes. His shadow magic he gifted the world is a great source of mystery to Drakon as they do not have darkness aspects naturally. He tends to roll with the Shento plan of scattering his magic to the world and letting them slowly weaken the surface in preparation for the coming apocalypse and is often found with Shento discussing what fun ideas they should make the poor fools do next for the exchange of magic.

Her ability to manipulate shadow extends to include turning herself into shadows. She will often traverse the world as such an entity reminding us of Rei or Halima’s methods of transport. She acts as an agent of Haval among the surface and seduces people with promises of shadow magic into working for her master, though more often then not this is just reminding people to obey the deals they made with Haval and help haunt their asses.

 

 

 

After some rehabilitation and a few centuries of imprisonment Izumi finally got her sister to stop being all “whoo Angra!” and all that. However, with a few thousand years to be a goddess again instead of just popping out of a shrine she’s become more familiar with the job and plays a fairly important position in the underworld providing false suns to allow things to grow since Song Yi is kind of missing. She’s come to appreciate the war a little better and has raised an army of her own demigods as well out of necessity. She is once again one of the most popular gods since she seems like a nice person to just about everyone and her warriors are very mellow and hold themselves to a strict honor code.

Amaterasu’s high prophet was an elf she met and happened to like the cut of his jib. Solai is a gentle person who tends to get along with everyone. His abilities as an elf aren’t particularly of interest, but he’s the high prophet not necessarily Lord General. Though his high prophet status gives him sun lasers and weapons. He leads one of the main peacekeeping forces of the underworld, often trying to resolve disputes before they turn into vicious power struggles and keep everyone’s mind on the end game goal that awaits them. Telling them that when the day comes we all need to band together and remember we are allies against Drakon and must engage in jolly cooperation.

With Song Yi gone Raven is once again the most powerful shaman, pulling ahead of Hei and Akuhiko since she deals with both kinds of spirits whereas they stick to one each. She’s one of the major civilian gods and deals mostly with keeping life stable as possible as a part of the agricultural team that keeps the food growing down here. She is often sought out for advice and for would-be shamans to be trained though her prophets tend to do most of those classes until we get to an advanced level. Unlike most other gods, she does not set up her teaching in the university despite the benefits of its neutral ground. Instead her people live far away from most of the underworld’s population in remote areas where it is peaceful and quiet.

Patli is a natural born demigod, with Raven as her mother and Fujin as her father. She has the aspect of wind as her default aspect but her power as a mystic is what really defines her, with her spirit infusion giving her shapeshifting abilities. Patli is kind of the stereotypical druid cranked up to eleven. She often takes the form of a great horned, frankly demonic looking, werewolf for combat of equal size to dragons. She has a variety of other forms she likes to take and is highly adaptable because of it. Her magic is based on natural elements and while this makes her extremely diverse she is also extremely situational and has to make the best use of what is around her instead of just summoning a favored element. Though if there happens to be an ongoing lightning storm it is time to run away, as she can make every single lightning bolt hit the exact same person repeatedly which while comical is also extremely painful and likely lethal. She’s not as powerful as the Song family or her mother and is limited to what she has available but she is quite clever about it.

She’s had a hard time with Song being gone but not dead, she’s never really sure if she should move on or not as each century passes. Upon it being pointed out to her by Naomi that Song would have put up with it she opted to keep the married status, which makes her the technical highest authority since she was married to the real divine empress. Though she has deferred the position to Naomi since Naomi is better suited to it and a stronger person overall. Izumi was never much of a warrior, her appearances in combat usually had to do with her being overwhelmingly more powerful then anyone else and now that everyone sort of reached that level as well, she has just taken to a civilian life and tends to her fox spirits that Seiyomi has been producing.

The art ninja is still around and can actually be found hanging out with Sanyar and his painting collection surprisingly often. While he isn’t anywhere near as powerful as the demigods or even his closest counterpart, Rei, Izumi focuses on civilian matters instead of military and so Takano isn’t needed to be a great warrior. Though his ability to summon an ink dragon is still somewhat notable. For the most part he can be found keeping the fox spirits out of trouble or apologizing on their behalf when they get into trouble.

 

 

Over the millenia Hei Song has developed into one of the most feared warriors in the underworld. As the leader of the Jakaal she gets a lot of practice time with the elite division. While every military unit has been practicing for thousands of years off and on, only the jakaal actually still maintain the tradition of killing each other in training. Their numbers grew with the presence of the Osiris loop which made death less scary, and with the increase in recruits and recurring members Hei is the leader of the most dangerous individual fighters in the underworld. Her own skill is only matched by Lin Scarlet who has 10x the years on her but the formal military training isn’t quite the same as the jakaal pit. However, she still finds time to roam the surface and mess with people alongside her wife Van Tien, since as a spirit she doesn’t need to sleep she has a lot of time to tend to her family as well as her military.

The second strongest warrior of the entire Jakaal, Alakira is the daughter of Van Tien and Hei Song. She’s technically a dream denizen and dark spirit hybrid, created on accident after spending the night in the dream realm together they accidentally got Van to dream Hei as pregnant and then they had a kid. Since she isn’t a demigod like her parents, she has had to work hard to become a notable warrior. Her battlelust is seemingly insatiable, even after thousands of years in The Pit she still keeps fighting at every opportunity. While the honorbound have millenia of military training, Alakira has millenia of “full contact” training. Full contact being completely lethal, as The Pit does not leave losers alive. She also notably has no dark spirit like most jakaal, instead Van arranged for her guardian to be a dream denizen. Not just any dream denizen, Mili Kuu the second sleeping lord. As a result, Alakira’s regeneration has reached unbelievable limits and as long as Mili doesn’t let her die she has been able to reform from even being burned to ash and wields the signature blue fire of the denizens that has explosive properties. It is the most powerful regeneration ever seen, likely because its based on Mili’s dream powers and it doesn’t respect the boundaries of anatomy. Combined with her mother being Van Tien, Alakira can also pass in and out of the dream realm at will but not create portals. So functionally speaking its personal teleportation that just involves her glowing blue. The real curiosity though, she once made the trip to Osiris as is tradition but never told anyone who she once was. She doesn’t even show her face to anyone except her family (the song family and grandma con lai). This has made several people nervous, because her love of violence is so strong that she must have once been someone terrifying and she’s for all intents and purposes immortal unless another dream denizen fights her, because even a death aspected demigod couldn’t kill her. When she’s not training in the pit she can be found in grandma Con Lai’s realm dreaming of armies to fight, awaiting the day she can go to the surface and terrorize the world instead of train.

He’s a lot older and wiser then he once was and is still the leader of the senshi. Unlike their jakaal counterparts, the senshi spend more of their time practicing mysticism over combat and personal patience and calm. This has left their order well suited to all this spare time they have these last five thousand years as they are masters of patience on par with the honorbound. Aku is constantly frustrated that he has no way to even know where his mother is let alone rescue her, so he just meditates a lot. He’s somewhat drifted apart from his old friends, Ailani is always busy and Yukari’s reincarnations are in and out all the time. Eztli spends all his time with the crimson order and so on. Though Adin is still his best friend.

Seiyomi is often thought of as an oddity because he’s still just like he was when he was young. Instead of developing the jaded sage wisdom most others did in five thousand years, he remains a merry prankster and fun guy. As a fox spirit his nature is so ingrained into him that he doesn’t seem to outgrow it. He has propagated the fox spirit race since he is one it seems his children are too, in a repeat of history just like his mother he dates out of his league and considers Pele to be his girlfriend these days. He was once the champion of Songstone but no one wanted to play with him because they were all convinced he was cheating with those topdecks so he stopped playing.

Adin is one of the scarier senshi around, her ability to wield the fragment of otoroshi has only become stronger and she can pull people out of the reincarnation loop with it. She isn’t really much of an elven hero anymore as they have other figures to idolize and she just kind of ignores her own race and is only found in the elven areas when she visits mom for holidays. She has lost her once youthful partying nature and now has her own family and husband. As an elf she is well suited to longevity and life down here in caves as one of the senshi leaders.

 

 

Reincarnated by Yggdrasil, Hayashi is a lightning demigod. Though instead of joining any of the established pantheon armies he joined the Senshi led by Akuhiko, which he considers the only faction that would still be adherent to the philosophies of Raijin. His abilities to travel as lightning have returned to him, but now he can also just outright strike people with lightning from range or project 1-second clones of himself like Gaetan once could. In general he lives with the Senshi and is a very calm and gentle person despite his reputation as a warrior. He only fights if absolutely necessary and will often just leave a conflict instead of fight it since few opponents can catch up to him once he turns into a lightning bolt and travels elsewhere. He is almost a pacifist except those few times he is provoked enough to actually resolve a dispute. He has adapted well to the long lifespan he now has, he was always a patient and calm individual and now those traits help him well. Scarlet tried to recruit him into the honorbound but he declined and instead joined the Senshi, preferring their calmer more mystic orientated lifestyle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both Ranno and Menes, along with Osiris and Anubis for that matter, are pretty much busy all the time working on the reincarnation process constantly. While they have delegated the work among other followers as well, only Ranno can actually perform the ritual that restores their memories and is a reminder of the young Eret, all she does is sit in the temple and deal with people who want something from her all day. Fortunately she has been given a lot of servants to help make her day a bit easier to cope with.

As the leader of what remained of Taiyo, Fujin now houses the shogunate and the demigod samurai army. They actually specialize in archery and calvary over the fancy sword most people associate them with and with Fujin’s powers they are really mean archers. Fujin has suffered the loss of Song Yi harder then most other gods. She had been a motherly figure to him after Taiyo fell and he had come to depend on her for a familial comfort he lacked with Raijin and everyone else from Taiyo dead. He has spent all five thousand years riding the winds looking for any clue to Song Yi’s presence and has little of the composure of the other elder gods as he became desperate. He is often found with Izumi or the Song kids, as he really was an adopted member of their family. Even if he is ancient his personality has never really indicated such and he misses Song Yi’s strength and has broken down once or twice over his inability to save or find her as he feels he is duty bound to do after all she did for him.

Fujin’s chosen Shogun happens to be a jinko. Many jinko are already culturally aligned with old fashioned taiyo culture and Mitsunari is post-project Fang so he is quite powerful. His right hand man happens to be an orc blademaster as well. Mitsunari is primarily a leader before a warrior even if he does keep up his training, he is a wise mellow jinko who is most often found dealing with logistics and paperwork rather then training all his forces like some other military lord generals.

 

 

People really expected him to sneak off to Drakon or something especially after Song Yi killed his brother and then failed to defeat Drakon. Though he has instead stayed loyally within the pantheon, seeming more interested in getting to the hive swarm then becoming a dragon master. He isn’t the most powerful of dragons and learning that he is a creation of Pandora like the other dragon gods was enough of a curiosity to keep him around longer just to talk to her. He also kind of likes Song Yi after being her sword for so long. He actually brings winter regularly to the underworld which is surprisingly vital as many of the crops down here expect winter as part of their natural life cycles and we don’t have Song Yi to cheat agriculture as hard anymore. Since he controls the winter manually we never have a winter that is too long either. Not to mention snowball fights and sledding are an appreciated time of year to break up the monotony of things down here, as well as keeping people prepared for the fact that winter does occurr on the surface and without being ready for it entire armies could drop dead invading Russia – I mean Drakon.

Known as the winter knight, Josephina was originally a member of the Vikings who was trying to keep an eye on Ao Shun to make sure he was loyal and not planning to sell us out to Drakon. In time they became friends and he earned her trust so much that she officially became his chosen champion. Her abilities favor the cold in a strange way. The colder her body temperature gets the more powerful her regeneration gets and the lower anyone elses does. Not to mention she can cryomance just like Kaisa. She favors direct weapon combat over using her powers but her approach to a battle is preluded by a freezing blizzard that can easily inflict frostbite.

 

Responsible for central heating down here, she is another civilian focused god and doesn’t house an actual army. That is more of Daezra and Ragara’s thing if we want to bring the fire to a war. She is also the mother of the fox spirits despite not being their patron god, since she is dating Seiyomi. She has a close relationship with the Song family because of this and was always a loyal friend to Song Yi. She also brings us a lot of volcanic ash from near the surface which is vital to agriculture down here.

 

 

The second most powerful member of the pantheon politics, Lucifer is actually kind of liked now days. After five thousand years everyone has sort of come to understand him as we exist in the exact same situation he has since the dawn of our history. This is a damned nightmare, and fighting a world of enemies that you can’t really beat is a daunting prospect that leaves many of us to do strange things. Along with Shento and Haval, Lucifer is still one of the primary manipulators on the surface, keeping secrets from Drakon now and tempting them into dangerous decisions that ever so slowly work toward preparing them for his next apocalypse attempt. People have even compared him to Song Yi, his sheer tenacity even in the face of failure after failure. Yet he still gives it everything he has to try again.

She mostly tends to Yggdrasil and other mad science projects with her new assistant Kiala. Pandora has been disallowed from truly trying to rebuild the swarm’s hive powers for fear of loss of individuality which is the thing many are trying to preserve for themselves instead of just going through the gate to the swarm. She comments on how much harder that makes our job but Naomi reminds her that she can be obliterated within seconds if necessary. Her latest projects these days are on trying to create a machine that can find Song Yi’s prison, and curating the demigod aspects to build proper militaries for the gods to command. Many of her secrets have been shared with the pantheon which has been a help to the current state of both technology and demigod powers we have at our disposal.

She remains the wife of Shento and her undead force is still unfairly massive and often tend to the low skill labor of the underworld. Even if death is cheap now that we have Osiris she has an awful lot of corpses as people still do die and leave bodies behind. Though her force isn’t as strong man for man it even outnumbers the orcs, largely because orc bodies are a part of the undead army. There are entire caverns just filled with corpses standing in formation for thousands of years waiting to be needed as otherwise they would take up too much space in our underground world. She made peace with Ishtar at long last and even starting attending Freyja’s hot spring nights.

 

Still easily the most powerful deathspeaker though that doesn’t give her much to do during these years. She entered into a time capsule made in the Aetas to await war or the next expansion pack for songstone when the meta gets stale. She appears every now and then and then goes back into the time chamber to await interesting events.

 

 

 

Even in a world filled with demigods and other super warriors, Whately remains noteworthy. Yet he still never trains, he spent a few centuries studying magic out of pure curiosity and then went back to loafing around. He didn’t even learn useful magic, his favorite spell makes things foggy just to make himself seem spookier. He can often be found playing Songstone in local taverns and is actually one of the top players. His other hobbies include not doing his job as a deathspeaker and hunting down criminals in the underworld who need dealing with if he’s feeling bored enough.

 

She’s actually the most powerful of the demon princes now days. The problem is she found that a lot of people are tempted to go to the surface and see it and she keeps letting them do so which has put our secrecy at great risk multiple times. Her sex cult is also quite popular as with immortality and these stretches of time sometimes orgies are all you really have to do and Ishtar doesn’t do the really experimental stuff that people tend to turn to as they get bored with the same thing for thousands of years. She still doesn’t get invited to Freyja’s hot spring nights though.

 

 

He’s basically the darker half of the police whereas Amaterasu is the lighter one. When problems need dealing with while skipping over due process, they seem to just quietly disappear. Because of his tendency to be unnoticed in these actions and silence problems entirely, people live in a sort of constant paranoia that Nergal might come in the night with no warning or indication that they have gotten his attention. It doesn’t help that he never gives reasons before or after he does what he does, so no one understands what he rules he governs himself by are. Yet, as usual, without him chaos tends to spread and his job seems absolutely vital to maintain peace and prevent power struggles. Ailani keeps a close eye on him.

We know what his powers are now, he can create stealth fields in an area that prevent sound or light from escaping and it appears normal. This lets him loudly dispatch of people without anyone outside the field knowing what he did. The field is also inescapable, if someone runs through it from the inside they just hit a wall. This is actually how Malati died, you can’t teleport out of the field either. The catch is he can’t move the field so he can’t sneak people into a location just make them undetectable once they are there. Atop of that he’s actually a well trained warrior and has been praised by Devadas. He helps Nergal police the underworld in secret.

 

She has shifted from the quiet city ruler to one of the major military gods. Mostly because after the martial law of Song Yi’s reign Freyja never really demilitarized her Valkyries again and instead kept them in combat shape given that they are natural warriors. Since valkyries are always born with wings like angels they play a vital role in Devadas’ combat strategies because dragons can also fly. Also since cannibalism is no longer a barrier of entry she’s been more willing to participate. Though it did take her a century to get out of her depression after Hel and many of her daughters died and she’s a lot more composed now days as she remains solemnly aware she is about to send legions of her daughters to die as soon as we invade the surface. Though she is still one of the sillier gods, even with the weight of everything that is happening weighing down on her she has been at this for longer then we have been underground in the first place and knows how to deal with it. Her hot spring nights are actually very important now days as its a major way to solidify alliances and make coordinated moves, this has positioned Freyja as one of the major political forces in the underworld. Despite how silly hot spring nights really are as they don’t actually discuss politics that often, having a bunch of tight friends through these hangouts has left a lot of people willing to work together with her.

Aphrodite has become the most powerful of all the civilian gods, while Raven and others work on the agricultural things that are vitally important people still tend to need Aphrodite to keep sane sometimes. After Lucas helped her cult learn how to be empath psychologists she rolled that out and might as well be considered the goddess of mental health now too. Not to mention love is a huge motivating factor for a lot of people when there is no outright war to be dealt with and her constant tendency to push social issues onto the pantheon make a lot of people happy with her. She is also one of the oldest gods in the pantheon and despite her seemingly incompetent nature at times she has the experience to run things properly no matter how she might behave on a day to day basis. Not to mention her alliance with Freyja’s hot spring crew has given her access to people who keep her in power in case anyone should try to militarily mess with her.

Eret is still around of course but now he’s ancient and still an asshole, just slightly calmer. Because he told Drakon about the gates and caused the invasion they think he’s on their side and he has freedom to walk around their continent as a member of Vechnost’s nation. Krovavi even gifted him the power of a dragon so he became a cosmic and time strider as a result which has only expanded the list of powers at his disposal. He hasn’t sold out the underworld to Drakon which leads many to think he’s on our side, but Abalam points out Eret stole his own book from the black library as well as those of his little team and can escape godvision very easily now thanks to help training with Rei. In a way he has become the new Asmodaeus, no one can truly fathom his motives or goals and seems to always have schemes in motion with his ability to see through time. Many higher ranking people are well aware of how dangerous he is now and are very paranoid of talking to him. Eret holds the title of the strongest warrior in the underworld by a wide margin. Neither Scarlet nor Hei Song can beat him and his cosmic dragon powers have given him raw power he didn’t once have to couple with his infinite skill. He stopped participating in Senshicon tournaments stating that he has come to realize that for all of Pandora’s skill we have yet to produce a warrior he is even challenged to fight. Much to Pandora’s frustration he won’t let her study him and the cosmic aspect, she’s so close to calling him a traitor but at the same time if she went after him he might just turn around and sell out the underworld to Drakon and we’d be screwed. Something he is very aware of, and leaves him capable of getting away with anything since at any time he could destroy our whole world yet hasn’t so no one can truly say he’s betrayed the empire. It doesn’t help that he’s never told or revealed to us what his powers as a cosmic strider are, a trump card in his pocket that no one knows the answer to. Just to compound the existing problem, Eret is the only person in the underworld that would know if Eli was back and since he stole his own black library book we don’t know if Eli is back or has been back several times or not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eret’s pirate crew for the most part are listed as his property in Drakon and regularly follow him on his adventures. When he is in the underworld they tend to break off and tend to various other things to amuse themselves. Locust remains sought out for his wise speeches which annoys him endlessly that people seem to have generally figured out he’s smarter then he looks. Much to the Vua Cai’s frustration Rei has free reign to walk around wherever she wants and so far any attempts to help her have an accident have failed miserably. Orion is often found as a guest lecturer for various militaries on how to stop sucking at killing big overpowered things. Thandar just roams back and forth between Eret’s adventures and the Aetas. Sahar is an unpredictable mess of events as she does whatever she feels like, she could probably take over Ifrit’s position as she is clearly the most poweful Djinn now but she prefers hanging out with her friends. Many other Djinn we have consider her their queen though, even if she’s never around.

---

Meanwhile on the surface

The new dragon lord of earth that Vsemo rose to power after the death of Bahamut. Gorakamen rules over the lengdon mountains and technically has the power to collapse the underworld at any time he just doesn’t have the spiritual attunement Song Yi and Bahamut did so he doesn’t know its even there. It is a major factor to consider should we ever reveal ourselves and they deduce where we’re hiding and a lot of Devadas’ plans focus on dealing with the need to evacuate at the same time as we return. Which is a lot harder then it sounds, as there are the logistics of food to keep in mind.

 

Drakon is basically in the state we were in back when it all began. A stable civilization who has to deal with Lucifer and Rasstroystvo’s crazy schemes. As it turns out, Rasstroystvo is really gung ho on the idea of joining the swarm and he’s actually been on our team. This is why despite how worried we were about him he never actually messed with us during the invasion and Kischnik only harassed Drakon assets. Now days Khischnik can be found skulking around the underworld from time to time before going to the surface to cause trouble. Our underworld has given him a mysterious ability to disappear and reappear around the continent much to the annoyance of Drakon.

Stikhym rules what was once Si Da, with Sozrushatel in Svarga, Vsemo in Solus, and Voynaye taking up residence in what was once Hale’a as a vigilant guardian. They know we’re not totally extinct due to the surface raids but they don’t really understand how far from extinct we are. As far as they know there are just stragglers of the old world fighting for survival and not a real threat, just roaming barbarians who come out to grab some stuff now and then.

They refer to us all as demons and caution their people from dealing with such dangerous otherworldly creatures. The general understanding that we’re not dragons and thus inferior has never quite gone away but the concept of demons definitely stands out to them more then normal humans. Striders and Whelps are particularly frequent prey for the strange events and hauntings of our gods. Legend has it that the gate Vsemo guards is the path to the demon world and must never be opened, the ones who appear to Drakon are remnants of an invasion force that was defeated twice over the millenia.

Because they never really considered us of much threat they don’t actually recognize our names or cultures, and certainly not faces even among the eldest dragons that were there during our time. As such people like Van Tien who make excursions to the surface go unrecognized, they might recognize Song Yi, Lu Tao, or Siduri who once had their attention but those three aren’t exactly roaming around up there.

Drakon adventurers travel the land in search of treasures to bring back to their dragon lords, while most of the easy ruins of our cities have been picked clean, they never know when they might stumble across an artifact or some other priceless object. This is something Shento, Lucifer, and Haval like to exploit. Often littering black artifacts into their world to manipulate things. In the grand scheme, a few hundred black artifacts in their possession won’t make much difference anyways especially since we never make the really good stuff for them to acquire, just good enough to tempt a strider. Sometimes a strider finds its way into the underworld while exploring, they’re never heard from again and none of our entrances can fit a dragon whelp.

A growing team of radicals who call themselves the Black Order discovered the legends of black magic and try to attack and eat striders or slaves to gain power to fight back against the dragon. They’re pretty insignificant even by our old standards but they do occasionally annoy Drakon with their pirate style attacks.

A far more dangerous legend is harder to pin down. Even sealed away Milenkosi is very powerful and plagues both us and Drakon. People see the great black lion in their dreams, and then die in their sleep. It is often hard to tell if they died of natural causes or Milenkosi, though we know for sure its Milen because people are getting pulled out of the reincarnation loop when this happens. It happens maybe once or twice on our end a year which isn’t too bad considering the size of our population but the fact that even sealed away Milen is powerful enough to do that is worrying. They associate strange dreams with he legend of Milenkosi and believe he leads the Vua Cai, a name they know but don’t really understand. They think its a demon army led by Milenkosi.

While each dragon lord is incredibly powerful, they still tend to build their cities as massive super structures instead of spreading out over the land. This gives us a lot of terrain to work with that they aren’t closely watching, but it makes actually hurting their assets very difficult since they are well guarded by almost their entire population.

Krovsokol still lurks around our continent and captures some of our surface raiders to do experiments on, his grand champion Elvira is the riskiest person to be found by since she would know many of our champions from her time with us during the Angra war.

We don’t have their champion roster because we haven’t been up there for five thousand years and Eret is spectacularly unhelpful. Its also hard to tell who among them are actually going to turn out to be roster carded champions, that and I’m too lazy to card every single dragon lord since you’re definitely not going to fight every single one at once.

<- Senshicon double elimination tournament

For awhile there, a huge number of jinko, demons, and Si Da citizens all went missing.

Given it could be procrastinated no longer, Lucifer and Pandora showed up in Hale’a personally to talk with everyone else. Pointing out that thanks to “that damned Eret kid” they were out of time to really keep doing things the way they liked. Drakon has approximately two more months before they land, while they don’t have the naval supplies to make a single mass exodus Con Lai has given them a direct portal. If removed then we can expect them to make shipments every six months to a year of their forces. Due to Voynaye’s injuries against Otoroshi, Sozrushatel and Stikhiyn are coming first.

Vsemoguschiy also appeared at the grand meeting of the gods out of nowhere and issued a final offer. If we surrender and assimilate into Drakon they will take us to their continent and leave their own people here to guard the gate with an exile imposed on the continent that no one is to go there ever again or risk immediate war with the full Drakon Empire. This is their solution to guarding the gates from us. Obviously “assimilating into Drakon” means you’ll work under the lords as their minions. But it is still an opportunity to avoid war.

Lucifer, by proxy of Eret and Sahar, has control of Atlantis now after Adrelemech was removed by the armies of Hell, Sima Wa, Saldis, and Shento. Pandora claims that Atlantis can hide from Drakon and Jehovah’s horsemen alike and buy more time to prepare. Obviously they still want to go through the gates though as their end-plan.

Lucifer’s party wants to unite the continent to smash through Jehovah before Drakon can get here in full force, claiming once the gate is open we’ll be safe. Though the exact details of what happens over there is still unclear as even he doesn’t know anymore how the swarm empire is doing.

Another party wants to use that same united strength to fight back against Drakon, while we have the homefield advantage we might stand a chance if Lucifer helps out instead of trying to sneak through the gate every time Drakon hits the eastern side of the continent.

Ao Ji and Ao Shun are totally down for surrendering to Drakon since they are dragons and get a pretty sweet deal out of that. They aren’t all that attached to you guys anyways.

Eret is willing to go any which way but points out any option besides surrendering to Drakon will take the full force of Song’s Empire to be united for it. Which is difficult given people aren’t in agreement of what to do. Throughout the meeting everyone was constantly annoyed that he was the catalyst for the situation they were now in.

Raven in particular would prefer to stand our ground and fight and several others agreed with her position that this is home.

While all this was expected the oddest twist was Pandora and Lucifer pledging to call Song Yi their new imperial leader, if she would take them they will serve her. Even going as far as Pandora revealing what she is doing on Atlantis. With the help of Wa she built a massive machine that will build an army every day, if Song Yi accepts Pandora as one of her own then Song will gain access to a massive army since this also includes Lucifer’s demons.

In the end Song Yi was surrounded by people lobbying her to try and get her to go with one party or another, all in the midst of Con Lai and Sima Wa revealing Eret’s information to her and giving her an identity crisis just like Naomi.

Song Yi disappeared for a week afterwards to think things over leaving the empire in a state of anxiety. When she came back she summoned everyone to talk over what she’s going to do. She intends to open Brahma’s gate whether Brahma likes it or not, those who want to go can go. If they’re right then if they travel through that gate for long enough they’ll eventually find the swarm somewhere out there and get home the long way around that prevents the swarm from immediately breaking through Jehovah’s gate. Those who want to surrender to Drakon can do so, those who want to go through the gate can do that, and those who want to stay here also can. But until the empire is secure enough to make decisions that split everyone apart they need one last stand against Drakon to protect Brahma’s gate for those that want to leave and to ensure Drakon doesn’t try to show up and murder everyone here on this continent once people leave.

Since Vsemo would not accept letting people leave through Brahma’s supposedly less dangerous gate, Drakon is coming in force and Song Yi has gone full blown war tyrant in response. Summoning every army this side of the world to either serve her or be wiped out to prevent backstabbing.

Song does not intend to let up on this plan unless everyone else or at least a large majority agrees what to do. Since obviously unanimous consent to any of the options couldn’t be reached within two days she’s decided to go with plan knowing full well how many people are going to die. Reminding us of the old Song Yi, she beat Indra down when he argued that he wouldn’t give her his forces and they would not allow the gate to open as long as they could. When he continued to make a point of why he disagreed with this plan she forced the reluctant Freyja to reap him.

While her plan does leave more people to make more choices for themselves in the end, for the short term no one gets any choice. They fight for her or she kills them on grounds of treason since they can’t become unanimous on going through a gate, which gate, surrendering, or staying and fighting for the continent. Ao Ji wanted to surrender to Drakon before fighting against them since that was a clearly good deal for him. So she killed him too and once again forced Freyja to be the one to do the reaping.

Its become clear Song is no longer that popular as a leader but she has too much power to defy anymore. She intends to give everyone an out that they want in the end but unless everyone unanimously says one answer or another this is the only plan that doesn’t result in this continent’s extinction she can find since the inevitable infighting particularly with Lucifer means there is no way to survive the dragons that are coming.

She has forced Aphrodite to give up the locations of Neith and Inuit along with sending Shento and Wa to Atlantis to work with Pandora on the army maker. She has enlisted Nergal to keep an eye on peoples loyalties and demanded the demons and dream denizens come out in force so she can start working on the military that they have. She also beat Anubis to within an inch of his life and prepped him to be reaped unless he got the horsemen from Jehovah to help out. Meanwhile Eret and his team were sent around the place to hunt down the other descended and missing gods throughout the continent. Notably Pandora has had them specifically looking for any remnant of Khaos for her project.

Despite her offers to change the plan and her tyranny if everyone can agree on a decision, even after she’d started murdering people and forcing a mass conscription, such an agreement has yet to be reached. At the very least she prevented a civil war spawning from the disagreement, even if it means now the continent has to go up against a much more serious Drakon.

She has suspended the entire economy and several wealthier groups who protested aren’t doing so well now. Instead she’s had everyone start establishing a massive chain of command as the entire population of the continent is now a part of the military. Non-combatants now act as logistical support. Despite the destruction of freedom and the world economy she kind of solved world hunger and poverty within a few weeks.

Shento:

Atlantis taken, buryoku made, Aasimar made, Hystalfar ascended.

You’ve been moved to Atlantis to work on Pandora’s big project and all your future expenditures of power have become limited to the project to get it done quickly. Its made to mass produce avatars/demigods, it already produces five per day and within the year it will be producing a hundred per day barring any unforeseen complications. While this bodes well for war with Drakon, it definitely means after all is said and done Lucifer will be unstoppable.

Ailani rules in your place over Si Da, though as the high prophet that was already kind of the deal but at least she keeps you up to date with what you’re missing over there.

Lin Sun:

Pandora built an engine in Atlantis that she described with a bunch of sciencey words that you didn’t get but basically it feeds you power, power which you’ve been commanded to put into direct use making more/bigger time chambers to assist with raising the army up.

Freyja is kind of in the ‘stay here’ crew in regards to the gates. Her father has given her too many horror stories and atop of that she’s a bit distant from the scarier parts of this war as she usually just sits in her own territory to mind her own business. That and she’s becoming scared of Song after being forced to reap people as what she could tell was a loyalty/obedience test.

You make some rings and a shield.

In the Aetas land the place is being turned into somewhat of a full military camp because of the importance of the time chambers to mass producing armies quickly. The overall academic atmosphere of the place has been somewhat disrupted by the presence of so many soldiers and Osiris’ people setting up shop in the city to further speed up the reincarnation loop through your time chambers.

Sima Wa:

With the current martial law in place your resource problems seemed to have been fixed as huge shipments show up to be weaponized every day. The access to Pandora’s assistance has resulted in the buryoku and riko shugi weapon projects finishing their research way ahead of schedule.

Kagayakashi has become a central arms factory being used to mass produce the tools the empire needs to survive even just the first wave of the Drakon that is coming.

Con Lai:

In your quiet days the dream realm has been mobilized mostly under Tatuu Kuu in response to the mass conscription. As well as locking out the portal gates that were made for the fire nation to delay the Drakon approach.

Nohea was the best mystic of the lot but Kalena is the most promising warrior among the time chambered elves. As a youngster she trained with the honorbound though was more so just playing with the shiny metal sticks. Upon leaving the chamber to learn about the world she became rather inspired by Adin. Despite Adin’s insistence that she isn’t really associated with the elves, many of them still admire and envy her as the elf that truly lived.

Kalena is a member of the Honorbound now, having gone back into the chamber to formally complete her training. She has two spirits who have decided to follow her around, one that infused her body comes from the sky and gives her control of wind and lightning. The one in her sword is a classical force amplifier and lets her imitate the strength of people far mightier then her.

Kalena is a rather serious personality due to her time growing up in the time chamber along with her second visit to gain the Honorbound title. She was somewhat shocked when she actually met Adin at senshicon. Adin is the greatest elven warrior, daughter of Vris, and a senshi yet still is far more light hearted then Kalena. She expected Adin to be more like Hei or Kaisa and instead found someone who seemed a little too carefree. Not to mention Adin’s other habits were a bit of a shock. Kalena is still inspired by the elven champion but was still confused by Adin’s behavior not to mention friendship with the princess of black mages Ailani.

Zelmyra is particularly young among the elves, she completely freaked out in the time chamber and they had to take her out. Despite being born in there she couldn’t handle being trapped in there and Lucas decided she was at tremendous risk of permanent psychological damage and had her removed far earlier then others. She would instead grow up in the wild lands since she also disliked being underground and apparently developed claustrophobia after the time chamber thing.

She actually wandered off and lived with the orcs for awhile and then disappeared into the woods once again for a year. Finally being seen again in Freyja’s territory with the vikings and settling down there for a little while. In time she wandered her way back home to the Aetas and the commanders found a particular use in hiring her as a scout for some of the less-then-angra level crisis that happens around here. She remained employed as sort of a mercenary and wouldn’t settle into becoming an Aetas member for awhile until she really got to know Vris, her grandmother.

In her adventures she picked up a spirit guardian as well, the one in her body is rather rare and is akin to the black mage morph aspect. Its called a savage spirit and it gives Zelmyra the power to shapeshift her body into animals with roughly the same mass as her give or take. She isn’t really mystically inclined and is something closer to the champions of the last era who simply had a spirit and hoped the spirit was happy with them. While she lacks mystical prowess her lifestyle has gained her enough favor with spirits that she can pass through the wild lands favorably even without hearing them.

He originally served Isis before her death and worked very hard to collect all her books and scrolls. With the death of the other magicians Hystalfar feared all would be lost and personally shipped every book from her city that was becoming emptier and emptier all the way to the Aetas for preservation.

Hystalfar isn’t as pretty as the other apprentices of Isis but he is the most experienced. Most haven’t really noticed him as other gods had access to more powerful champions but Hystalfar was actually born a magic aspect. With the death of Isis most who studied her magic find themselves powerless, but Hystalfar remains one of the last wizards in the land.

While he doesn’t exactly throw fireballs its more so that he has a huge array of slow acting utility tricks. Vris read through every book he brought to ensure they would be preserved and in that duration Hystalfar proved to be able to help keep the place running while she was occupied with reading a whole other library and she’s made him sort of her vice-mayor as a result. He shares her love of books and history and the two of them have become quick friends.

Hystalfar doesn’t really do combat very well now that Isis is gone his more offensive powers are too weak to keep up with the other warriors of the era, but he is a great scholar and excavator and has taken up a position at the university as a professor.

Guess who his uncle is? Daniel is one of the Aetas university graduates, he has been considered for a position at it as a novice professor as well since he didn’t exactly take his degree and wander off but instead stayed here since he’s not really got much money or anywhere to go what with a student’s income and all.

However, he has a different power then his uncle and instead has the mimic aspect. While its a particularly powerful aspect his abilities with it are weak, he only activated his black magic abilities for science and never really took to Kaisa’s serial killing cannibalism to become stronger with it so he doesn’t quite compare to Eleazor.

She’s back but she’s left the Aetas and developed a lil bit so I thought I’d throw her in here. After the battle with Otoroshi and her spirit’s death she’d been in a bit of a  disaster having even attempted suicide at one point. Lin’s attempts to be comforting amounted to insulting her mother and telling her to go outside more often as far as she could tell.

After being forcefully dragged outside by Yukari and “introduced” to Siduri and Seiyomi she was offered by her friend Akuhiko to come to the Lengdon mountains where the Senshi reside. She was always a strong mystic and a decent warrior, and so she joined the strange and mysterious mystic/warrior organization.

She stands out with her new spirit guardian, despite it being a bit on the darker side she remains with the Senshi instead of the Jakaal. Their training seems to have helped her find a sense of inner peace even with all she’s been through and as a result she has gotten along with her mother better though Vris is somewhat annoyed she no longer lives in Aina but far away in the inaccessible mountains of the Senshi. There isn’t even a dream portal to the mountain range. She’s not quite a senshi elite yet, but she’s  on her way since her new spirit is even stronger then her last one, though it doesn’t function the same way forcing her to start learning to fight more defensively. Though she still does manifest its power in her hands allowing her to remain to her favored fist styles of fighting. While her debut of the new powers at Senshicon didn’t take her past round one (she was matched against Anna) she’s still become something of interest and now like Hei people tend to become uneasy around her.

We already loosely know her, she’s the one studying human humor at times and also known as “the green one” at times. She’s a bit of a curious one and spends a lot of her time investigating things of interest and keeps wandering off to the nightmare realm for science. Nane reminds of us of Alice Mainer since she can summon things to her from the dream realm, though as a sleeping lord she is far better at it and can pull whole platoons to herself. Like Tatu she has access to a private army filled with some weirdly powerful denizens.  She is quite capable of controlling her minions and often summons the one that she needs to accomplish something to act as if she had a huge list of powers. She can often be found roaming between multiple worlds always poking curiously at the rules of them. Van Tien finds her an amusing person mostly because like her Nane seeks out the mysteries of humor and is just as bad at being funny as Van is.

Mezzy kept wanting the roster update, so here’s an early version. Expect a future update including the replacements for other areas.

He’s a lil simple as they spent so much time giving him ways to punch things and take a lot of damage that they forgot to really do much else with him. The first of the heavy jinko, standing in at 7 feet tall and weighing a fuckton. He doesn’t really do aerial combat but he can run around at surprising speeds with his bulk and just crash through things.

He is also a student of Saiko’s dance class and hangs out with Daisuke quite a bit.

 

 

One of the human followers that came to the city in the wake of Inaji boosting the city’s general popularity. He was actually a guard for a merchant caravan that was coming through from Akhetaten’s southern sector and is a former resident of Thykenae. He’s wound up working for the city since then and they decided to test some of the heavy ass armor on him and he reminds us a lot of the Sanika.

 

 

 

The male twin of Shento + Saldis. Here in the heart of Si Da, a land where black mages could be made just by living here for long enough, the children of the king and queen are born as avatars instead of demigods. Still within one step of godhood and as we saw with Fang and Tai Ket avatars can definitely see gods.

Magnus is the blood avatar to join Si Da’s 100 avatars, that are really more like 50 right now given the whole Otoroshi thing. The ranks are being replenished bit by bit at least. His hemomantic powers border on mildly absurd and stronger then Jadus since Magnus is specialized to a single aspect.

He also has a slightly less potent style of Shento’s ability to create species, and is surrounded by a swarm of his own monsters, his blood magic can also be used to more explosive ends.

The other twin, Helandrea is about a foot taller then her bulky brother coming in at 9 feet. Though Helandrea looks slender and fragile she’s still an avatar with disproportionate physical endurance and strength. She’s been added to the prophets of Saldis known as the deathspeakers and controls her own undead army Saldis gave her, though she can also animate the dead just like her mother and doesn’t need divine intervention to do such a thing.

Helandrea’s powers allow her to do something very unique she likely got from her father’s side, she can heal the dead. This allows her undead forces to last a lot longer and because of this she was put in command of a particularly heavy division of the undead. She has more bone dragons and golems then any other deathspeaker thanks to her power allowing her to maximize their use.

Its everyone’s duty to make some more kids to help repopulate this world, that and demigods are apparently awesome. Also deep down Izumi never said it aloud but she wanted to actually be there for the kid thing, though Aku and Hei both readily call her mother she wasn’t even alive when they were “conceived”.

Seiyomi is a bit of an oddity but makes sense if you think about it. Because Song is basically a spirit, Izumi’s child was a kitsune. Technically a fox spirit shouldn’t be a possible child even for Izumi but Song makes that a happen. A demigod kitsune spirit turns out to be a possible thing it seems, and freakishly powerful.

Seiyomi can be either an adorable white fox or a handsome young man, just with a tail and fox ears. While all kitsune are natural tricksters, Seiyomi’s abilities are absurdly powerful and his tricks aren’t illusions but minor utility powers he can use. Such tricks he’s demonstrated include creating physical clones with little to no striking power but when struck they reveal themselves to be whatever mundane object he made them out of. He actually uses this power to carry stuff a lot. If you see two of him walking around town, the one carrying everything is the fake. He’s managed to swap opponent weapons with sticks, make trapholes, and his favorite is making push doors become pull doors. While these abilities may not seem powerful, keep in mind he just stole a warrior’s weapon right out of their hand from ten feet away and then tricked the god that blessed it into thinking the other guy still had it. He’s almost as powerful as the ascended Rackham with just that trick alone and he has a huge array of other “tricks” at his disposal. He’s an unfairly talented mystic, likely because he’s literally a spirit just like his brother and sister. He also has access to the moonlight walk power of Izumi. Obviously he has a spirit blade given who his mother is, though the unique thing is the blade is himself. Like Song Yi he doesn’t have a handle for his weapon since he projects it himself and just has hovering light weapons.

Seiyomi can be easily mistaken for comedic relief as in combat he seems to just be making a joke of the fight with his powers but he’s still a demigod of immense physical power and he is one of the most prodigal swordsmen ever seen, something which he inherited from Yi. Having your sword replaced with a stick and your opponent replaced with a rock might seem silly, but having no weapon and not knowing you’re about to be hit from behind by someone who can throw a house makes for a surprisingly dangerous enemy.

He seems more powerful then most other demigods when you stack him up against the others only Siduri has been able to beat him but not consistently. Even Inaji can’t touch the guy as he stole her own gun from her. Though this is largely because he can’t gain any more power, he’s a spirit so he can’t have an infusion or blessing. The others still have some more room to gain power through such mechanics, but Seiyomi has already capped out and all he has left is to refine his raw skill and gain more power stat and will never really be capable of ascension.

He is typically easy going and a little playful, often found around his older brother and sister training with either the senshi or jakaal to better his sword skills. He sometimes appears cocky, though he’s actually very careful and uses feigned arrogance to infuriate his enemies with his tricks in order to bait them into making mistakes. Sometimes just outright enraging them so Hei can take over, combat with Seiyomi can be one of the most frustrating things to deal with. Through Hei he met Van Tien, who really really likes him. To the point that Hei felt uncomfortable and inched out of the room. Unfortunately for Van, Seiyomi isn’t particularly impressed with her brand of mean comedy as compared to his sillier style and she has her mother’s dating skills.

Its pronounced (kuh-ee-no-ah). With Ao Ji and Ao Shun off to Divya Samrajya Song Yi has a distinct lack of ultra powerful being to use as her personal couch, something she’s grown accustomed to. So she opted to find a big scary spirit to fill that void in her life. Kainoa is one of the spirits that became physical as a result of the ascension and is quite large, that water on his back is a small waterfall. He’s the size of a small castle fort. He’s been a major factor in Song’s ability to control and grow forests for awhile now, but with the recent job opening of being her personal companion/couch he’s become a bit more prominently noticeable as that huge wooden spirit she rides around on from time to time.

Kainoa himself is a peculiar personality, despite being a more primordial spirit he’s one of the ones that can speak with us directly as opposed to some weird language only mystics have any hope of translating. He’s very old, older then this era at least and an excessively patient creature. He speaks in slow extended words that can rumble the forest floor and demonstrates a disposition towards being a forest hippy. He’s kind of an ent really, just a really big friendly one.

Shentu Wo: 17,134 Power, 28,812 Followers
Sima Wa: 10,327 Power, 8,279 Followers,
Kikai Senso: 34,721 Power, Next Form Progress: 92%
Lin Sun: 9,406 Power, 8,278 Followers
Con Lai: 26,030 Power, 12,541 Followers

SoL 28: Stories from before the great tragedy

 

Adrelemech vs Eli

The attack on Atlantis by the fire nation has been marked as a success. The pirates are dead or scattered, Eli and Vassago’s deaths have been confirmed by Zhang. Though, it would seem the four pirate lords managed to flee the destruction after their king fell. Adrelemech claims Atlantis for the fire nation, though notably has not figured out how to control the city and it just continues sailing east without any real way to stop it. Notably, the illusion that protects the city still remains in place even after Eli’s death since it is actually the power of Angra that keeps it active.

With the pirates scattered general lawlessness has seen a surprising upturn as they have no real method of self sustaining now that Sahar and Eret has disappeared. Along with their farms Eret had once set up for them. The mass destruction of the recent battle with Angra has stretched forces thin to patrol the world to protect from these higher quality criminals then the average bandit but at least they aren’t as organized as they used to be.

 

Voynaye vs Angra

The battle between Voynaye and Angra was colossal, facing inevitable defeat Angra utilized his final move, over 60 million people around the world (including drakon colonies) died when Angra resurrected Otoroshi. See SoL for a bit more detailed play by play.

Deaths:

Ira, Vo Kim, Takeshi, Teozix, Giza, Joacheim, Tena, Hayate, Halladora, Oydis, Eira, Mach Tong, Su Shento, Isis, Clayton, Arima, Sonu, Raijin, Saint David, Galahad, Vinasa, Hasin Bava, Harvey Ayala, Jakobe, Samyaza, Nila Bhatt, Crocell, Shen Rai, Tuyet Yen, Ifrit, Zaeed, Jawahir, Galila, Ayesha Ishmael, Bastet, Horus, Sihet, Hatshe, Bahamut,  Maquilla, Helaku, Kachina, Shiye, Mechislav, Oksana, Borislav, Feofie, Chuvak, Quetzalcoatl, Uragiri Mono, Angra Mainyu

Critically Injured:

Amaterasu (now captured), Krovsokol, Elvira, Song Yi, Voynaye, Voingos, Indra, Prince Ezra, Hei Song, Ao Shun, Lucas, Vedahl, Adin va (her spirit guardian is dead) Jinko (not really critically as their cores are recovered so they just need their bodies back) Rikuto, Miyukai, Kikai,

Honorable Mentions:

MVP: Voynaye, tore Otoroshi in half. Fatality.
Naomi: Highest dps, highest kills, highest AoE, i dunno why i bother writing this one
Kaisa: 2nd place non-god kills
Saiko: Top non-god DPS, 3rd place for kills
Whately: 4th place for kills
Lucas: Somehow didn’t die
Kamari Barid: Top 10 non-god DPS via AoE spam
Krovsokol: Showed up to help in person, no one really expected that to happen.
Crocell: Most people un-brainwashed. (he had a megaphone from Am Nhac and went around the battlefield shouting “forget everything you know about Angra”)

In the wake of this battle the world seems to be filled with misery and gloominess. So many died it cannot be expressed how depressed everyone is even in victory despite my fondness for writing tragic stories of lore.

As a final swift kick to the dick, during the battle a series of bombs and pirate attacks went off at the palace of Yaosai. Forcing Song Yi to leave mid fight and re-seal the Akuma within before being able to return. In all this chaos, Lucifer has disappeared from his prison. While he is a descended demigod, its not like he ever needed to use his powers in the first place.

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The fellowship of the lamp actually found something important on their quest. They had to do a lot of side adventures and death defying stunts as well as talking to a creepy quest giver. After completing the quest to bring her what she claimed was her ancestor’s spear she gave them directions to finding a library hidden away in the ruins of Ofrior Riki. Deep under the mountains they found a single book laying on a pedestal among rows upon rows of empty shelves. The book was full of strange symbols terms they don’t really get but to Vris this was clearly the journal of a mad scientist. Someone who toyed with the laws of nature, signed by someone named “Pandora.” A large chunk of pages appear to have been intentionally taken out.

It does prove to Vris that Angra was artificially created by Jehovah himself in an attempt to accomplish something referred to as “capturing data samples”. The book later goes on to specifically mention in order to use the powers of a djinn they had to make a lamp. They were unable to bind what they were trying to make to a simple object, eventually settling on using a human. 47612310 or “310” was the first human they experimented on. The log continues to detail information about the human, it was an adult female from an empire Vris recognizes to be one that used to be where Si Da is now. As experimentation went on, the adult eventually killed herself in what is described as “An impressive display of determination to die. They inhaled until their own lungs tore, since their limbs were bound down tight.” It mentions 310’s link to Angra gave them a form of immortality within the hive.

The log comes to the conclusion that Angra’s powers are too closely drawn from their own science, and in order for experiments to continue a younger host will be required. Fortunately, the destruction of the first lamp simply took away his dimension but his other powers were still functional. He was kept in a secure location as not to be damaged during this vulnerability until they could find him a new lamp. Several pages have been intentionally removed around this section. Using Angra’s power to resurrect 310 they were able to transfer the role of the lamp to a new subject and then remove 310 from the hive before killing them again. Evidently they need the lamp person to be alive in order to remove the lamp status from them.

The log refers to the child they chose as 47612311, then calling him “311” from there on out as shorthand. Aren’t they a creative lot. This time they selected an incubating infant male so it would not be able to kill itself as it adapted to the circumstances it would be born to wield. It details their experiments to control Angra and how it tended to act erratically with its new lamp. Also the side effects of being used as a lamp, 311’s personality began to mirror Angra or Angra began to mirror 311, they’re not sure who started it. As he grew up, 311 showed signs of rebellion and tried to kill his handler, the author of the log, multiple times. 311 displayed an ability to understand Angra on an innate level, likely due to their connection as djinn and lamp. They were able to, sometimes forcefully, question 311 about details of Angra to better add to their data.

One day, 311 escaped the lab. This is noted in the log as a rather bleak day as they also had control of Angra still and the djinn went on a rampage. Eventually, they had to destroy 311 when he attacked Jehovah on some quest of vengeance. With the death of the lamp, Jehovah was forced to destroy Angra as its rampage would not stop since no new orders could be delivered to it. They noted this was a disastrous side effect that 311 was required to give the orders regardless of Angra’s link with the hive, a footnote mentions more research is required on whether or not the emperor could control it without 311.

Just as all hope seemed lost for the experiment, it details both Angra and 311 were not truly dead. Angra was made from the science of the old world and its eternal hive mind, his consciousness and his power remained in place as long as his creator, Pandora, was also alive. Along with Jehovah, Brahma, Lucifer, Ra, Anubis, Amaterasu, Osiris, Neith, Odin, and his young son Thor who were also pieces of the eternal hive. Because of their innate affinity 311 also shares this link that prevents them from suffering a true death. It is even theorized if they took Angra to the old world he could be added to the empire, but they would withhold from that for now as not to present a meaningless gift that had yet to accomplish its task to the emperor. While he could not be summoned anymore, they had access to his consciousness and power, so with great aggravation they had him resurrect his own lamp.

The exact words in the journal are “which somehow fucking escaped again.” It details a moment of hindsight from the author’s other experiments and refers to a different journal but doesn’t go into detail. As the log ends, they are trying to capture 311 again in order to transfer the lamp to someone more cooperative while removing 311 from the hive link, but the kid keeps eluding them as well as harassing their base camps. They don’t have any other name for 311, but they left a drawing to help identify him.

Despite the known death of both Angra and Eli, all of Angra’s magic remains in place. It seems that if the journal is correct, as long as Jehovah and Brahma live Angra will not truely die but remain banished once again until someone uses just a little too much dark magic again. The same applies for his lamp, and once someone uses just a little too much dark magic the two of them could return once again to begin the cycle anew.

The log provided great detail to the history of Eli as well. By becoming a member of the hive via Angra he learned the language of the old world that allowed him to drive people mad, and this connection was also the reason he was the only person in the world with such an in depth understanding of dark magic despite lack of study. As an unwilling lab rat, he developed his hatred for the gods that made him and so the legend of the demon pirate began.

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As five years pass and a new era begins

Asmodaeus died mysteriously two years after the battle. People are still wondering where Lucifer and Nergal are.

The balance of power within the empire has begun to see strange shifts. Without the help of Horus to administrate for her, Song has found her power over the empire in a potential conflict. With the titanic proportion of deaths during the final battle with Angra resulting in Saldis gaining an undead legion strong enough to take control of the empire. Though she has not made any official move to do so, the politics clearly play around knowing she is a potential rival for the title of Empress if she were to gain support. She has claimed the position of queen of Si Da with her husband and reigning king Shento, a perhaps surprising marriage likely made for political reasons.

Song Yi’s powers have diminished significantly with the death of so many spirits during the battle of Angra, including her own spirit blade. While she can reform it from any spirit, the fact that it was destroyed meant the death of millions of spirits at once not even including the ones that died from the other aspects of the battle. Her omniscience and omnipresence has weakened and the world is struggling to revitalize itself due to the lack of spirits to regrow the terrain that had been destroyed.

Because Song Yi prevented the demons from killing Voynaye while they had the chance when he was dying after the battle with Otoroshi and even made sure he recovered enough he honored her as a fellow warrior. An honor that included Sozrushatel, the dragon of renewal, coming to help fix things up a bit as the entirety of Divya was basically a series of craters and dirt after the battle. He has been helping to restore it alongside Ao Ji and Ao Shun.

Anubis has taken over as reigning king of Akhetaten. The nation is still reeling from the death of Horus, Isis, and Ifrit though maintains a large powerbase. However, at one point strange events occurred in the land of Akhetaten after a few years passed. The prison of Apophis was broken into by an unknown faction seemingly led by a bunch of creepy people in dark hoods. Without Neith or Bastet it was difficult to respond in time, but by the time they did the snake god has been gutted and many of its bones had been taken. All that remained were a few bones, its skull, and some useless organs. Even it’s skin was taken. With the death of Apophis the snake cult has become notably more active, which is concerning. Espionage experts are still after them, and they’ve found the organization is undergoing some sort of civil war.

With the death of Bahamut Altepetl’s province has been taken over by Raven, whose appointment seems to have earned her enough followers to prevent her from descending. She proves to be an effective leader with her wisdom and prophecy abilities. While as a normal god she wasn’t spectacularly relevant anymore, as an administrative ruler she shows a side of her that people can respect. Opting to maintain her public image by directly leading Altepetl as the grand chief in incarnated form despite the cost to her power by staying physical.

Krylo holds a vast territory in what was once the Jade Empire that the fire nation lays claim to and still continues to expand bit by bit though instead of pursuing direct conflict Krylo prefers to turtle and build up his resources. Adrelemech on the other hand is a bit more aggressive but has been occupied by his new holdings of Atlantis and hasn’t been seen in many years.

Krovsokol’s colony expansion continues as his mad experiments continue to abduct people from Song’s Empire as well as wildland villages and now preys occasionally on the new Divya province. So far no one has really considered it profitable to go into a direct conflict against him so he sits cozily uncontested and gets away with his kidnappings and science experiments.

 

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Along their quest the fellowship of the lamp also found a strange oasis in the western half of Si Da. Among the dark and dreary woodland of the Si Da, there was a place where life was vibrant and green surrounding a lake. There were a surprising amount of dead demons and Si Da natives here. It turned out to be the hidden sanctuary of Aphrodite, who they let remain in the woods and simply reported she was found to the higher ups.

It appears she spent her time learning the arts of mysticism out in the woods, though her oasis spirits were separated from the wild lands. Just as when Divya blew apart a chunk of the forest to cut off Song Yi, Aphrodite seemed fully aware that if her sanctuary wasn’t touching the wild lands Song Yi wouldn’t be able to find her.

After Song Yi was declared a traitor by Amaterasu she stayed with the black pantheon tentatively, mostly on the reassurances of Asmodaeus. When she tried to leave to find Song Yi post-resurrection her entire cult was destroyed by Nergal causing her to descend before she could even attempt it.

Scared of the demons, and scared that Song Yi would be angry with her if not outright murderous given the changes in her personality she went into hiding instead. Apparently Aphrodite knows the location of Neith and Inuit but has refused to divulge the information.

After the battle of Angra, people went to find her again and asked her to come back. Everyone was dead or dying and they felt she could be a bit useful right about now. Even though she was a descended demigod and didn’t know how much she could help she eventually relented to their badgering and came back to visit.

Lucas seems to be unhealthily infatuated with her after seeing her just once. Aphrodite herself seemed a mix of relieved and offended at Song Yi’s lack of interest in seeing her again. At least she wasn’t trying to kill her, but she would have liked at least a little bit of friendliness after supporting her on the black pantheon. While Song did talk to her and was welcoming, she was hoping for a little more enthusiasm.

For awhile Aphrodite was lurking around Altepetl with Raven to further her mystic arts, which has been a source of mild annoyance to Ishtar because Aphrodite is vastly prettier than her and drawing attention away from the sex cult. Eventually the cult of Aphrodite was reestablished in the wake of the massive destruction at the last battle, the world needed to recover both emotionally and in terms of population. Song told Aphrodite to just get back to it already.

Aphrodite’s main temple was rebuilt in Divya Samrajya to help with reconstruction efforts there. It actually wasn’t hard to get her enough followers to ascend her again, as it turns out people are pretty willing to worship the super pretty goddess whose name they already knew with just a little PR help. Naomi had to meet with and awkwardly apologize to Aphrodite for calling her a whore and then blowing up her cult in Thykenae.

Despite still being a bit of well…herself, Aphrodite is still a truly veteran goddess and proves valuable in an age when so many others are dead. On the black pantheon her mannerisms were somewhat awkward and annoying and resulted in her being written off as an idiot but as it turns out in nations where the primary basis of civilian life isn’t the consumption of other people’s corpses she’s quite good at what she does. She makes people happy and gives them hope, and recognizes social issues that most haven’t even considered yet. She still occasionally says stupid shit or derails conversations at pantheon meetings with her own strangely opinionated arguments but it can’t be denied that she is valuable to the empire.

Ishtar took some pretty deep gambles with the little power she has as her cult is still expanding, investing heavily into some of her champions in the hopes of being able to compete with the other heavier hitting cults. Giving all of them spirit blessings or encouraging them to use black magic, then blessing their weapon, then giving them champion blessings on top of that to create Divus style warriors who just have a diverse collection of powers to use on the battlefield. While its not as potent as power blessing them to do the thing they already do better, she’s trying to experiment with diversity to make her warriors harder to find a way to counter.

People still kind of see her as a bit odd for running a sex cult, even going as far as to make her greatest champions active participants in it (they sometimes act as prostitutes). However, it turns out that people are actually quite willing to pay to use those services with such awe inspiring figures. Some have even traveled from other ends of the empire just to hire out champions like Leyti or try to get into the orgies Siduri is often involved with. The cult of Ishtar holds an idea that all of their warriors are likely to die soon given how these wars have been going, and they should enjoy what they can while they can. While a bit hedonistic, it does help for morale. She did have a major impact in the final battle with Angra and technically her work started before the time hop but it was easier to list it here because oh god the roster updates.

Siduri is the offspring of both Ishtar and Bahamut, and reveals a mechanic previously not officially known though Tess pretty much called it sixteen times. Lin almost tapped into it but Freyja has the “only makes valkyries” clause. Full blooded demigods once born are fully grown and have inherited some of the intelligence of their parents. This is why the chance of two gods making a child successfully is so weirdly low. Gods like Ishtar and Aphrodite have a higher chance though, so does Zaeed for obvious reasons.

Siduri is a ridiculous mix of aspects. It reads as “Dragon of war, sex, earth, and lies” and Shento is already all over that one trying to figure out how one person can have that many. This was also so bizarre it even got Voynaye’s attention, because Siduri is an authentic war strider in Drakon’s eyes. Not only that, but the most powerful war strider in existence, they have never seen a demigod strider before. It would take a whelp to overpower him.

As you might guess, a dragon strider demigod is not your average champion. He has geomancy as one of his obvious abilities. His war aspect gives him powerful buffs to his armies and his deception aspect isn’t obvious but he could easily be a minion of Asmodaeus. Only Shento was able to actually tell what it was doing, Siduri is very very good at lying. With the exception of the best masters of sense motive, its almost impossible to tell when he is lying or not. He convinced someone that a rock was their own child once during a test to see how good it was. Rehema had to come and fix it too because that test subject was about to expand his house with an extra bedroom for the rock.

Finally the sex aspect seems to mix with the lies aspect and starts doing weird shit. Shento and Isis were able to definitively prove Siduri is a male. But anyone who looks at him sees whatever gender they’re most attracted to, which gets weirder when you learn that all of his anatomy is interactable to whatever version they see including to those who like both. Yet those not attracted to one of his two sexes won’t see it. They stuck him in an orgy and they might as well have had Eli in there because no one was seeing the same thing happen, even in mid three-way men couldn’t see Siduri’s male genitalia or actions of using it on a woman and just saw lesbians making out. Whereas the females couldn’t perceive males utilizing all available orifices correctly and just saw either a missing person or whatever their fantasies wanted. Reality seems to break when you put Siduri in an orgy basically. Siduri himself describes it as if he’s experiencing parallel universes at the same time.

Moving along, as a dragon demigod of war his physical capabilities are enormous for being technically five years old. He’s way stronger then the average strider and has regeneration just short of Anna’s level. Unlike Anna he is not weak to fire. Since he was already super powerful, Ishtar definitely went all in on Siduri. Giving him the high prophet blessing, he’s her son anyways, and asking for Song to give him spirit infusion in exchange for any favor she could return. He also has a spirit blade in the form of a spear of earth made in memory of his father Bahamut.

His spirit infusion was selected by Song as a volcanic spirit from Pele’s mountain. Enabling his geomancy to include lava, or to turn stone into lava, which gets pretty dangerous pretty quickly.

His spear of Bahamut is made of a solid piece of stone, and weighs a lot obviously. When it is stabbed through either stone, dirt, or other similarly earthy things it seems to open a portal within about two hundred feet and come out wherever else there are similarly earthy elements. However, it can create more of itself when it does this allowing it to create dozens of other spears that can come out all at once in other places at full length of the original spear.

Personality wise Siduri is surprisingly calm for his age but other then his lack of overabundant energy he’s very reminiscent of Zaeed. He drinks a lot but instead of chugging mugs of ale he sips glasses of finer qualities, instead of cheesily picking up women he pulls a more James Bond style of interaction. He tends to enjoy the sex aspect of Ishtar’s cult and given his ability to be on all points on the gender spectrum at the same time, most others are enthusiastic about the fact that he enjoys it as well. He is overtly seductive almost all the time just in his body language and tone of voice to the point that its very hard to tell if he’s hitting on someone or not. Most assume he is always hitting on everything at all times. He spends a lot of his time learning with Hayate and other warriors as Ishtar believes he needs to train as a warrior considering how powerful he is, all that he’s missing is training. The other half of his education is carried out by Raven’s cult since Song demanded he learn mysticism in exchange for the infusion he was given. He seems to have taken to hanging out with the Honorbound and Elves as his buddies since they all have a relatable experience of being created and honed for specific purposes by their gods. Adin would have been excluded since she grew up the normal way but he and her have all too similar vices to ensure they came together.

As a full blooded demigod Siduri has one other unique talent, he can see all gods regardless of prophet status. His birth caused a lot of other gods in the pantheon to look at each other awkwardly and consider if they should have some orgies or something because “holy crap Ishtar’s kid is OP as shit.” Sima Wa looked over at Shento and did some eyebrow wiggles. Then the rest of the roster update (though Con Lai was trying before Siduri).

An older more known champion of Ishtar revisited as she got more powers from Ishtar to help with the war effort. Leyti is actually the strongest champion she has now as Leyti has survived battles with the undead, Angra, and Drakon and gotten quite good at keeping herself alive.

With her weapon being replaced by a Kagayakashi quality one, the blessing remains the same though as a blizzard controlling weapon. Though the upgrade now allows it to be weaponized even more and is now reminiscent of Song’s blizzard albeit not as powerful.

Taking a cue from the Hale’a pantheon, Ishtar outsourced the champion blessing to Raijin so she’d have something other then a war buff. After Raijin’s death the blessing has been taken over by Indra.

The result has the peculiar effect of letting her wield lightning, but she has combined it with her blizzards to make every individual snowflake a conductor. Getting caught in her blizzards can be much more fatal then you would normally expect snow to actually be.

Her guardian spirit has gifted her with a massive ethereal thunder jaguar that is easily seven feet tall on all fours. Unlike others who utilize projections that make brief commanded attacks, the jaguar is permanent and shares a mental bond with Leyti so they can fight in perfect sync for extended durations. She shares her health and stamina with the jaguar which means damaging one can weaken the other, on the other hand it means both are abnormally resilient and the jaguar can also wield her other blessings itself.

 

 

Were it not for the fact that Siduri has the dragon tag this would have been the most powerful of the true demigods. Jadus holds both blood and metal aspects and is abnormally potent in his abilities. A more powerful hemomancer then Eztli and having the power of metalkinesis to match it. His body is actually made of metal itself which he can warp and contort to do as he pleases with. His control over metal is so strong and precise that he can not only move it, but manipulate it. With a wave of his hand he is able to separate ore from rock, smelt and purify it, and temper it just by manipulating the metal content. He has been able to build full jinko shells in just six hours, since he can make every instricate part and place them with precision.

As another effect from his combined aspects, his body cannot be physically damaged by metal. Get knocked through a wall sure, but no sharpened metal can break his skin, which is also metal so as you might guess its pretty hard to find weapons that can cut through him. Since his metalkinesis is so strong he can just rebuild his body, he is considered as having the highest level of regeneration in the empire short of actual gods. Though technically he has to be conscious and make an active effort to do that, otherwise he has no regenerative abilities.

On the bloodier side of things he actually has the ability to heal others if he can touch their blood. He has sometimes stabbed people to heal a broken limb, but still counts. He’s also got the power of blood magic familiarity like Johann as a natural talent. His physical strength is a match for Ryner and Anna atop all of that. Though he shares the weakness to fire and has a perpetual concern about drowning even though his metalkinesis lets him levitate his own body.

In personality, he’s a bit arrogant and takes on danger haphazardly and has a hard time recognizing that for all his power he is still vulnerable to some things. Anna’s blood projected weapons are not metal and thus were able to hurt him, and spirit blades also bypassed his metal defense. It was actually Aeth that wound up putting him in check to realize he wasn’t the chosen one to defeat all others as he was beaten so bad it was reminiscent of Song Xiao vs Song Yi. Despite these setbacks reminding him he’s not the best thing ever, he’s still fearless which translates to cocky and stupid.

Combat trainers have noted he has one major flaw. He’s not very adaptable at all. He will often triple down on a single strategy even if it has already failed twice and despite the incredibly vast applications his powers could be put to he just repeatedly does the same things that should work. He could make almost anything with his two kinesis powers but just sticks to stabby things or slashy things. He’s not terribly creative and just tries to completely overwhelm his opponents with the tried and true methods. This is a large part of how he got his ass handed to him by Aeth, and Aeth didn’t even use fire to do it.

Something went wrong when Sima Wa tried to have two kids at once. Jadus got both aspects, and Inaji was born with neither. She is actually an abnormality that has no detectable aspect whatsoever. She has the strength and regeneration of a demigod, but no powers at all and struggles to fight even lower tier opponents like Haunani and Daisuke.

This quickly reflected itself in her personality being the opposite of Jadus. She was timid and shy initially, also perpetually trying to find some way to not be a disappointment, fearing that the shadow of her incredible brother will end up leaving her lost and forgotten member of the family. A necessary sacrifice to make someone as powerful as Jadus. She left home and made the trek up the mountain to Yaosai in attempt to both prove and find herself, thinking that maybe by following a Lengdonian tradition she’d make her parents a little proud at least and maybe find some direction in her life.

Over time she did finally display one unique talent though. She got both of her dad’s creative streaks and is far more clever and inventive then anyone else ever seen. Forced to rely on her own wit, she honed her mind until it was actually relevant. Eventually finding a way to contribute in her own fashion. With gear and a big fucking gun.

By studying the design philosophy of Rikuto, she designed many of her own weapons and gadgets she comes armed with, including the most powerful portable firearm ever seen. It hits like a Divya cannon yet she can carry it herself. She has hit striders only to watch them become a shower of gore and proven her weapon can shoot down an airship or a dragon with a few well placed shots. Along with completely blowing apart fortified castle walls. Even Saiko got a little jealous. Inaji’s primary weapon is powered by weaponized energy cores, lots of them that she makes herself. Enabling her to use such a massively overpowered weapon with a surprisingly good fire rate.

She carries grapple launchers, smoke grenades, flash grenades, along with regular explosive grenades, and even managed to recreate the Sanika scout blastpacks that give her the ability to go airborne. Flamethrowers, smaller firearms, combat knives, and much more. She specifically chose to train under Rikuto and only Rikuto. Saying the methods Hayate and other such teachers impart are for those who have a fighting chance, Rikuto taught her how to fight dirty. Despite the fact that she was born handicapped in a world where every edge is needed, turns out her sheer ingenuity and cleverness has put her back in the game.

Even without the help of Song Yi, she attracted a spirit guardian to herself who was also small, handicapped, and unappreciated. It was one of the long forgotten tekno spirits from the ruins of Divya, but since its her personal spirit she can utilize its powers in more then one way and has taken a fondness to the spirit who shares a similar stunted start in the world. While it doesn’t do anything hugely impressive as a weak spirit, it doesn’t need to. She has used it’s ability to hear her and make small shifts to operate her engineered arsenal for her. Allowing her to create remote controlled explosives, turrets, and automated control over her grappling weapons so they can actually grapple things properly instead of bouncing off or being yanked out when she actually puts her weight on them.

Ever since she really came into her own skillset and learned how to make the most of herself through sheer dedication she has become a lot more confident and outgoing. After some time passed, she even was able to beat Jadus in combat and now has a legion of loyal jinko who revere her incredible mind. Founding her own team, “The Runts” A team made up of several other less then champion jinko that she has armed and trained herself. Though Rikuto wound up joining her team as her second in command, but thats the only champion level one on the crew. She has a small fleet of three airships crewed by her Jinko team at her disposal that she custom built herself, creating two extremely agile and fast ones along with her super heavy freighter she hauls half her lab around in. Her private workshop/warehouse is located in Kagayakashi on the outskirts of the ever expanding city and in very short time has become a monument to the weaker jinko that celebrate her as a celebrity icon and inspiration. She also hired Daisuke to be her in-house painter that runs a tattoo/paint shop out of the warehouse as a side business for other jinko. He also runs the front counter for her shop where she sells more civilian minded inventions to the population.

Even though she is one of the weakest champions in the pantheon and certainly the weakest of the demigods full or half, her only limit is her creativity and that is a limit she’s repeatedly shattered ever since Sima Wa gave her a hammer and anvil to play with. She currently resides in the province of Divya Samrajya helping to rebuild it and re-found the tekno jagara under the name Tekuno, which is technically a clan under the control of Kagayakashi. She keeps badgering her metallic dad to move Kagayakashi to the new nation where they can build more freely due to the lack of spirit building laws.

She even managed to convince a lot of gods in the pantheon to give her one blessed item to add to her gear list and now reminds us a lot of Marshal Devadas. She is quickly becoming fairly famous around the empire, a level of fame she’s exploited to open franchise shops in other capitals to sell her stuff that she ships out from Kagayakashi.

She’s a highly independent individual, despite still officially associating with Kagayakashi and Sima Wa she often tends to work mostly of her own accord on her own projects. Sima was always a bit encouraging of her doing her own thing and taking initiative, and since then she’s largely worked on her own projects instead of waiting for official cult business to come up.

Inaji’s Blessed Items:
Song Yi Ring: Spirits love her
Pele Blastpacks: Can propel herself through the air
Izumi shirt and pants: Pants of illumination
Freyja revolver: death aspected, Headshot execution style
Ishtar Ring: Small scale Illusion projector
Am Nhac Necklace: And the winner of American Idol is…
Jehovah’s goggles: Enemy/loot radar – Vegeta what does the scouter say?
Shento tattoo: More regen more betta
Fujin engine on airship: Red means fastaaaa

Child of Con Lai and Zaeed. Van Tien is a full blooded demigod and shares similar traits with Siduri. However, instead of being a weirdly attractive dragon kid, Tien is a weirdly horrifying dream kid. Her power over the dream realm nearly rivals her mother and she is often found lurking over the portal network as an ominous guard to remind people not to start trouble, and keep an eye out for any peculiar would-be assassins. As well as just messing with people for the sake of it.

Van takes an odd pleasure in her frightful appearance, likely related to the fact that she chose that appearance herself. She has sometimes appeared as other things, but she definitely likes looking spooky. She prefers forms like giant spiders and snakes to creep people out. Weirdly enough though, other then their appearance they aren’t actually all that terrifying. They are more of a merry prankster then anything else and aren’t violent at all. However, one day she walked outside the dream realm and lost their shapeshifting powers and became a human for once.

Once she was in the physical world people finally figured out that she was a female, and could not convince her to do anything she should do. She can create illusions, which are actually dreams tied to the dream realm though cannot be physical. People think she can read minds somehow though in reality as the princess of the dream realm she just knows every dream they’ve ever had and can tap into the information that their subconscious has released to her. Another ability is to create temporary dream portals at any time. She can simply walk off into the dream realm at will and take people in or out with her. Though she does need to personally know where she’s going for that to work.

Her other power, known as “waagh” is not well understood even by analysts Shento and Isis. She seems to be able to do almost anything if she doesn’t know she shouldn’t be able to. She only lost her shapeshifting because she learned in the physical world people couldn’t do that. She used to walk around on walls and ignore all laws of gravity until someone explained it to her, then she suddenly stopped being able to do it no matter how hard she tried. She once actually pierced Jadus’ metal skin with a metal weapon, which baffled everyone, simply because she didn’t know that his powers meant she shouldn’t be able to do that. The same could be said of her former ability to breathe underwater and walk around without noticing that water is denser then air, she only learned that was wrong when she accidentally drowned someone and had it explained to her that humans can’t do that. She also has operated broken machinery because she didn’t know it was broken and once had a self-reloading crossbow she was playing with that only worked for the same reasons as all the above. There are various other instances of this, but as far as anyone can tell she can warp reality and treat the physical world as the dream world only as long as she doesn’t know about the rules of the physical world. There is a specific limitation though, she cannot affect things with more way more power then herself. For example, she can’t reality warp Excalibur or individuals with just way more power then her. Its a weird thing that her own obliviousness and apparent stupidity makes her unbelievably powerful, and in her special case knowledge is definitely not power. People are not sure if she should be educated or left as a wandering, but powerful, oblivious idiot.

She has very little understanding of humans. While she doesn’t mean anyone any real harm some of her “pranks” can be absolutely vicious as she finds their deepest darkest insecurities. Crafting images of dead husbands, children, or sometimes that one uncle who touched them a little too much. Usually her goal is as simple as to get someone to walk into a tree or fall off the dock, and instead just obliterates the psyche of someone entirely. Sometimes if not traumatizing, she accidentally tempts people with something really important to them and leave them depressed for the rest of their life as they learn what that one thing that’s always been missing in their life that they never knew what it was, is in fact something out of their reach. Usually she hits the mark just right and doesn’t traumatize someone and just gets them to walk into a tree as planned and they shrug it off but every now and then breaks someone on accident. She just wants to be silly and have fun, and only annihilates people’s will to continue living on accident every now and then. While not as deadly or horrifying as Eli, its…kind of close sometimes.

There is another practical application to her powers though, since it is a direct vision to the dream realm it has the ability to be a phone. She can see through to the dream realm and find anyone in it and then talk to them, its not quite the Alice portal but its pretty useful sometimes. Especially when she makes the portal to Con Lai and suddenly public prophet phone.

As a full blooded demigod, despite her seemingly innocent nature she can throw a horse over her head. She’s not as physically strong as Siduri or Jadus but even a strider would have trouble dealing with her strength and regenerative abilities, though she has no combat training so its best to keep her away from such confrontations.

She notably has a habit of never wearing clothes, apparently inheriting the “why do I have to do x human thing” from her mom and her dad’s general personality as a whole. She decided she didn’t like the feeling of being trapped in a second skin. She was almost convinced into wearing clothes, but then someone walked off the dock while staring at her and she realized she could mess with people just by showing off her body. Considering how obscenely beautiful she is, it causes a lot of distractions.

She has only one friend, Hei Song. It turns out that because she is used to seeing people’s deepest darkest fears and secrets while also being partially made of nightmare stuff herself, Hei Song’s aura doesn’t offset her. Originally Hei Song found her annoying but then she kept following the dark spirit girl around and Hei eventually caved to at least having one friend that could hang out with her again. This is probably not the best friend for Van to have though, as this friendship is a large part of how she keeps accidentally horrifying people with her innocent pranks. In the end the duo don’t really make a good match, one is a playful trickster and the other is a serious warrior. But they’re the only two that could stand each other for longer then a week, so now they hang out a lot. Van once declared it her mission to make Hei smile, then when she saw that smile Ailani and Hei tend to do and she decided she didn’t want to make Hei smile anymore.

Some people poked some fun at the fact that the time god’s demigod child came into existence as a rather older gentleman. He could easily be in his fifties or sixties at first glance. Even Freyja found it a little funny, but Xiaoli looks that way for a reason. He was born wise, and is the third person we’ve ever found that can see into the future. He’s actually a reminder of the past, a shadow of what once was and a warning of mistakes made. He has the powers from past Aetas members, while not quite as powerful as the authentic versions that does add up to a lot of abilities.

 

Thandar and Velius’s telekinetics, Kahl Jung’s manifestations,  Johnathan’s area vision, Naberius’ memory eating, Andelko’s raw strength, Kinzoku’s metal skin, Halveti’s fire and metal, Mazaki’s regeneration, Mililani’s psychometry, and Eret’s prophecy.

While he doesn’t have the precognitive super precision that Eret does, as a demigod who can see gods regardless of prophet status his visions are not cut off by divine presence in them. Instead of seeing the results of every tiny little decision and their many realities like Eret, he simply sees the omens of the future and watches them change as time passes on, giving him a method of warning before tragedy strikes or when to stay the course. Though it isn’t super precise and does occasionally go awry when people do weird things. The future is always in motion after all.

His pale flesh looks more like skin then not but it is still metallic like Kinzoku’s. While it will break under enough pressure, such as getting chewed on by a dragon, it is still a strong layer of defense especially if he wears armor on top of it.

He wields a peculiar weapon that hasn’t been seen in decades. An urumi sword, or a whip sword as you might think of it. It is somehow magically animated and practical for him to use, though it still takes great skill. A reminder of the old days, its an exact replica of the weapon once wielded by Song Shan-Tai and has the stamina leech effect from Captain Yuan Zi’s staff.

Xiaoli was also the only demigod born with combat skills fully in place. While many took quickly to learning them, only Xiaoli was a master of martial arts the instant he appeared. Notably though, his styles are also indicators of the past. Knowing Lengdon’s style, particularly Song Shan-Tai and Yuan Zi’s, the Mao Yachi tribal methods, along with Mazaki’s guard training and even Eret’s pirate fighting style.

Xiaoli is more then just a time aspect who drew from the previous champions, he is an echo of Lin Sun’s history. He only has the abilities of those who died or left him, not the still living members. It could hardly be argued all of those death’s are actually Lin’s fault, Song Yi was the one who led Shan-Tai and the rest to death at the battle of Doi Cho Len, but it is still a notable trend in Xiaoli’s ability set. A manifestation of his previous endeavors to mirror his own inner struggles and tendency to dwell on his failures and dead friends. Xiaoli isn’t a beacon of hope for the future but a haunting reminder of the past. A entity that reminds of us of what once was, and what mistakes were made. The weight of that is why he was born an older man.

Despite this dark origin born from Lin’s psyche, Xiaoli isn’t walking around badgering Lin with “remember the time you fucked that one thing up?” He tends mostly to lurk around as an observer of ongoing events and spends time engaged in long complicated conversations with Vris. His wisdom comes from a willingness to learn alongside the weight of what created him.

She just couldn’t resist. Mali was sentenced to death and she was the only executioner willing to do it. She ate that time avatar and reached the avatar state herself. Kaisa’s avatar form is obviously not compatible with the coat as it doesn’t possibly fit on her strange form. She’s over nine feet tall now, a size even more noticeable because she hovers everywhere she goes now with her total cyrokinesis that includes her own body.

As an avatar Kaisa is extraordinarily powerful, her range of control over ice has extended to include her own frozen veins. Her abilities have expanded so far that she can create blizzards as well as her more direct more potent ice magic. Her body is very difficult to damage now as her regenerative abilities haven’t been checked in on since she first put the coat on, as an avatar of ice she literally can’t die as long as the environment around her is cold and/or wet. So she opts to summon blizzards and flash freeze the environment around her before fighting. Obviously she doesn’t like fire.

As an experiment she tested her abilities and found she could make it hail ice javelins and cause mass death by impalement. Even she didn’t know it would be that strong and some members of the Aetas accidentally died when they didn’t take shelter quickly enough. Waste not the dead, she ate them too. She’s still the Kaisa we all know and love, just way stronger now and Sam unlocked the achievement [Avatars are my Minions] first.

Lucas is running around in a mild panic to remind Lin of her psych evaluation. If Kaisa can’t wear the coat, why does she need the Aetas when she can destroy the honorbound single handedly?

Milenkosi returns as an Akuma after the attempt to resurrect him by Van Tien. It went the same way as Song Cao. There is a notable pattern that without Angra any attempt to bring back the dead keeps doing this, and making true immortals that even death gods cannot destroy.

He is currently sealed deep within the mountain after the destruction of the palace alongside Song Cao.

 

 

A mysterious figure who has recently been spotted around the continent here and there. No one knows who she really is or what her powers are. Though he has been spotted before no one paid much mind to the goth kid.

There isn’t much to say as she’s still a largely unknown player, but this was the person who rewarded the fellowship of the lamp with the information of Angra’s lamp, freed lucifer, and was seen at the death of Apophis. Sheridan uncovered that she is somehow involved with the snake cult though likely indirectly. In his spy work he found some of them have been talking to her, but the most he can figure out is that she was talking to them and arranging for them to do some work for her. The fellowship of the lamp suspects they probably shouldn’t have done that quest for her.

Unfortunately, Sheridan disappeared one day and hasn’t been seen since. Other members of the spy network that get close to her keep going missing as well. She also seems to dodge every attempt to lay a trap against her and always has the upper hand.

Eret and his team seemed to have survived Atlantis, but have been completely missing for years. Then one day the Akiuja of Shento spotted Eret for the first time in years, he was one of the black enigma’s bodyguards. This explained why every attempt against the enigma has failed, Eret was able to see them coming. He walked within inches of the Akiuja obviously trying to hide the fact he was doing so from the others he was with and discreetly held up a hastily scribbled note,
“ATLANTIS PRISON = PANDORA
NO ELI NO HOPE
DESCEND YI BEFORE TOO LATE”

---

Shento

Crocell was instrumental in the battle of Angra, despite his death he was able to return Ailani and Johann with the command “forget everything you know about Angra”. This has left the two of them mentally confused as to what is happening and what they missed. Especially given they were standing right next to Angra when that happened. They’re home but took some effort to re-adjust. Ailani is already right back at it again at taking control of the cult and re-establishing her power. Hei Song is happy Ailani is back at least.

The new wife wants a kid too, she’s jealous of how everyone else has these demigods and she still doesn’t. Since you’re married to her she figures its only reasonable you give her one, and she wants you to lineage it into a death aspect like her. In all not that insane of a request.

Si Da has seen better days, ever since you and Saldis took power over it the demons have been at a bit of a distance. While Vedahl, the new queen of hell, is still a member of the black pantheon she seems a little wary of the new leadership not being members of the demon team. With demons hanging out more so in hell then the city, the population is a bit low after the battle with Angra since Asmodaeus deployed just about everyone.

Anna’s time in the time chamber with Jadus backfires pretty fast, he became able to beat her once he realized his hemomancy can beat hers. It was sad it took him this long to realize that actually, so hey look he adapted! Just didn’t get taken down a peg as intended.

Emilia’s response about the glamor vampires is to not even try. As the king of Si Da we’d be lucky if every glamor vampire reporting to Carmilla every move we made was the only problem we had. The entire legion of Asmodaeus is still here in the city. Not to mention Nergal certainly has agents here, along with with goddamned Lucifer. There is no way the glamor vampires are even on the spectrum of problems we have to deal with right now. She’s gonna need some more funding.

On a more somber note. Kiala and Johann seem a bit depressed that their mother died. She wasn’t even at the battle, she was just standing outside watching and from halfway across the world Otoroshi’s eyes passed over her and she fell over dead. Eztli and Ailani have notably been just fine, Eztli has also picked back up since Ailani came home and his sense of purpose came back.

Since you’re married to her now, even if a political arrangement, Saldis personality becomes a bit more notable to you. She’s still mad that Ishtar is alive and actively encourages Vedahl to one up her with the weird sex fueled army gimmick at every turn. Otherwise Saldis is actually not a bad match and you two have been getting along kind of fine, she’s also a mad scientist. If not the original of the campaign judging by Halveti. While your two sciences don’t really meet much as one requires things to be alive and the other requires things to be dead, it makes for relatable dinner conversation. Saldis is a powerful administrator of her populace and became leader not just for the range of her military. She uses the undead to do manual labor for the populace which increases food production which increases population, which fuels the black magic engine along with her corpse work force. She is rather heavily dedicated to the progression of black magic and has actually revealed something about her techniques. When entire armies got up and walked away from battlefields like the mountain battle of Angra, they took their corpsey selves to the avatars of Si Da to be eaten before it was too late as she wants to ascend more of them to replenish the god roster. Kind of like the Mahane, you start to realize the two of you actually have a lot in common. Empire building, mad science, death and black magic efficiency exploitation, and judging by her rage at Ishtar for making her kill her own daughter (Raji) she’s also a bit of a family person. Ailani has taken a liking to her almost instantly, though Kiala notably seems wary of someone replacing her mom full time instead of just the Sima Wa one off type of thing.

Lin Sun

Obviously Kaisa is a problem, she needs to eat people to survive and if you don’t find things to feed her she just kills random people that she happens across who aren’t wearing Aetas badges. She also doesn’t accept mahane blood shakes because she just doesn’t like them. She’s taken to visiting Si Da to hang out with their surviving avatars now and then to be among her peers, which also might not be good news.

Vris nearly killed Adin with bear hugs after Adin survived the encounter with Otoroshi thanks to her spirit dying to protect her from its sight. Adin has entered a severe depression with the death of her spirit guardian though, so severe she wasn’t even sleeping around as she normally does to cope and tried to commit suicide. She was last seen six months ago in the kitchens getting food, other then that she rarely leaves her room. The only people she lets see her are Vris and Yukari. Vris has become less effective as a high prophet because of this as well, she spends most of her time trying to figure out how to help her daughter and the depression has begun to infect her as well while she watches her child go through this. Mystics have had to regularly sweep the Aetas temple for dark spirits because they are drawn toward Adin, she is a powerful mystic as showcased by her former spirit guardian and her depression is a magnet to the dark spirits.

Lucas in the meantime has been regularly visiting Divya Samrajya as a guest therapist helping Aphrodite’s cult to learn the fine art of empathic psychiatry. That and we think he has the hots for Aphrodite ever since he saw her in her demigod state pass through the Aetas city.

The Heathen Hammer was stolen from the Aetas by Eret and his team at one point fairly early on, around the two year mark. No one knows how, even Eret shouldn’t have known how to get that thing so smoothly but he did. It has become notable that with Emilia gone to Si Da with Shento and Zhi dead, counter espionage efforts around here are dependent on the shinobi in Adelaide who aren’t really dedicated to that as they’re more so trying to spy on people. However, as Shento once cautioned, the hammer turned out to be a major reason Aina wasn’t growing very well. With it gone more spirits were willing to come hang out and bring good fortune, really now its just Kaisa that keeps them wary. Follower numbers have picked up dramatically since the loss of the hammer oddly enough and the elves have become even more powerful as mystics with the increased population of spirits.

Not to mention the increase of the elven population was still going on so you have a lot more of those now.

With so many dead and with Adin and Kaisa potentially being written off the roster be sure to pick how you want to look for roster replacements.

Con Lai

Weird things have been noticed around the dream realm ever since the creation of the Milenkosi akuma. No new nightmare denizens have been born since then, the old ones are still around but Nane Kuu has noticed no new ones popping up. It was Van Tien who figured out why, there is a new realm. The nightmare realm can be accessed by sleeping lords, yourself, and Van but it is a dark and terrifying place. While Milenkosi is sealed away it is evident the nightmare realm is his and the dark denizens of this place are hostile to others who enter. Though these denizens are young and not terribly powerful, Nane Kuu was able to just ignore them and smack their bitch asses away if they tried to attack her.

Yukari has been regularly visiting the Aetas city because of Adin’s depression and has been trying to find some way to fix her friend. Even becoming so desperate as to ask her father if he could do anything as the master of comforting people, or even just seducing her and maybe getting Adin back into normal. Because of this Yukari’s training has been slowed a bit since she’ll ditch out of lesson plans to go visit Adin. She still blames herself for the Rei incident as well and seems a little ashamed whenever near you or the denizens which would also help explain her tendency to leave the domain to find other things to do.

Kamari has been exploring the dream world of his own accord since little interest was taken in him he’s been free to do as he pleases. While he met Van Tien, they didn’t really get along that well. Kamari is a refined man of worldly travels and Van Tien is an idiot that just looks for laughs here and there.

Van Tien herself has been a bit moody, having realized how her powers work and that people keep lying to her to exploit those powers. She doesn’t like how people treat her as an idiot and keep her an idiot because of them, and though the effects of her abilities are powerful she’s come to realize every time she uses them everyone around her is snickering with “I can’t believe she didn’t know that doesn’t work.” Being an idiot oblivious to things was one thing, it was fun being too stupid to know what was wrong. But knowing you’re an idiot and always being exploited is upsetting.

Be sure to pick replacement plan for the open roster slot.

Sima Wa

General population of non-jinko and civilian worship has increased thanks to Inaji who has traveled around the world with the Kagayakashi flag and increased public awareness and interest in the city of invention. Though it has also slowed other projects as new accommodations have had to be made for more human dwellers within the city who take up more space and resources then jinko. It is likely this temporary downturn in production will lead to a future upswing though once things are stabilized and the work force has expanded.

While the death of Takeshi was a major loss as he was one of the most powerful jinko warrior to ever exist, hardly anyone has noticed. A few of the higher ranking members have been affected but Takeshi was so reclusive and silent that his absence around the city is barely relevant.

However, the death of Teozix is a much more extreme effect. The leader of the jinko, heralded as the wisest of them all, was a heavy loss. There is a distinct lack of guidance for jinko without him as all the others are warriors and builders. Inaji is also more of an inspirational personality then a guiding one and she lives in Divya now anyways. With no wise men available, prayers have increased quite a bit.

Other stuff

Hei Song is now the sole leader of the Jakaal. With this new position she’s been a bit busier then normal and expresses some level of grief for the death of Ira.

With the death of the Senshi leader as well, Akuhiko has taken over for them.