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.
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.
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