The Power of Ten

I watched and I worked, and the days rolled by. It was only six days to Map all of Australia, giving the Aussies some unwelcome news about what was down below them,

Legion was out of it for twenty days, and it would have been a month if Binding Theurgy hadn’t come through, my Warlock Magic reaching Wrath Mastery/5 and Warlock Caster Level/5, qualifying as a Ten Warlock and so enabling a slew of new Theurgic Classes. The extra Wrath built up to +10d6 once I gained my Chasuble of the Heavenshrouded, and could really help with the Burning during our rides together.

It was difficult. Using the Wrath of Heaven in an Atonement process like this required me to really, really hurt someone I loved, for protracted periods of time, and given the close contact, there was no way I couldn’t feel the pain.

I could also feel the Sin burning off them, which was a huge incentive to keep doing it. Being able to hug the most huggable person on the planet for hours and hours certainly wasn’t part of it, nuh-uh.

Even Shvaughn didn’t dare jump in and make an appearance while this was going on, or she likely would have been severely cooked in mid-Pactjump.

Undead were dying by the millions per day, mostly in gulagzones and now Japan, which was hosting a lot of Juniors eager for Levels as they worked to clear the islands.

While Africa had a bloody history in some areas, it didn’t have nearly the Shroudzones of the other continents, and those were also falling fast as the tribes and clans there found common ground in extinguishing the undead, and not falling behind in the power race. The strongest of them headed urgently for Russia to get in on the final fight.

South and Central America’s Shroudzones were also eroding fast, after the parties trying to reserve them for themselves were removed by one means or another, or at the very least demoted to just another force doing the job. They often weren’t happy at the new situation, but it turned out Shvaughn spoke the language of how to deal with them pretty well, and the examples she made of them, drawing liberally from their own conduct, heartily encouraged them to play nicer, at least if they survived.

As an aside, there were lots of Cartels involved in such things, who often had Shoul ties. Morningsuns and friends (and they had a LOT of friends) would happily cross the Atlantic to visit those people and discuss religious matters with them.

With golden plasma. They got rather good at taking out key elements of the leadership and factions there, with Shvaughn’s informed help after she Consumed a bunch of them. They shattered the cartel structures, spurring fights for domination and control that only helped the Good Work along.

The local governments didn’t much like it, and the people certainly had to keep ducking, but the Churches of a magic world had a lot more martial strength to them than in a normal world, and they were plenty happy to ignore secular authorities often bought off by the cartels and pursue extralegal means against them, just like the Dark Churches were doing.

It was also a lot harder to hide with Divination magic around to track killers down, too.

Pawlie Blakhamar located the first cephalid base under North America, and Sir Pellier, the Traveling Knights, and a bunch of other grim people went down and took it out. The MountainHamar of the Void Brothers promptly went looking for the one or two deeper in the Strata, even as his peers were doing the same on the other continents.

The cephalid base deep in the Strata in Europe was also part of the controlling intelligence directing the Templars there, and that organization’s European branch fell apart once the Elder Brain was cooking in its Purified Spawning Pool. Granted, the Templars had already been largely gutted by the teams hunting them down after some of the disasters they triggered, but once no longer receiving instructions they couldn’t disobey beamed into their heads, they went hiding, hoping nobody would find them, including their inhuman masters.

We believed that there were cephalid colonies under China, India, and the Middle East, but they seemed not as eager to come into Africa. Maybe it was because the dark elves were concentrated there.

So much work to do, and the ancient and elder evils that had been lurking in the shadows for all this time were rudely awoken to the fact that a great number of very powerful humans had suddenly evolved out of literally nothing in basically no time at all and were really bringing the hammer down on their opinions about these things.

It was a total shock to them. They were aware that dire things were happening on the surface, and they were trying to burrow deep and stay beyond the evils even more dangerous than themselves... not that such a thing would have worked. When the Shroud killed a world, it killed it all, and it didn’t matter how deep you wanted to hide, it would find you eventually, hunting remorselessly and inexorably until every spirit of the world, on the world, or in the world, was dead.

We couldn’t afford to be much more merciful to these things, as they could literally plague the planet for millennia. Humanity was in a position to do something about this while the EE’s were weak... there were too many ways for them to exert extinction-level events after Shroudfall on humanity if they deemed humanity too strong, which it now was. They certainly had the means and power to tear apart human society with mind control, plagues, mutation, and the like, so we had to get them NOW.

Teams were regularly being pulled off the Russian border just to deal with these special circumstances that were popping up, but nobody complained. When they were pulled, there were things to fight, and those things had to die.

They were also a major break from the undead, and REALLY good Karma.

My Staff Clavus finished up his Staff of Battle upgrades, and started on Slot Dreizehn, which would make him solidly +V and basically end what I wanted to do with him for now. That would be fifty more days of Naming Karma, meaning I stopped by a Shroudzone and pretended I was a Melee shattering skulls wildly for a few minutes every day. Einz would harvest a few with his Shells via TK, and directed the Naming Karma into Lore.

The champions and powers of the mortal races were moving with more energy and drive than they’d ever had. Armies of basically superhuman men and women were getting stronger yet, and while the pessimists watched with flat eyes at what their power meant for the rest of the world, particularly with the great advances of science and the great equalizer of gunpowder and easy firearms access going away in favor of much more individual-favored magic, for now, there were enemies of all the mortal races here to fight and pay attention to, helping keep everyone roughly together instead of competing with one another.

How long it would endure after the Shroud came down was a different story, as the gods didn’t like boring Good societies grabbing an early win...

Ah, well, I could only watch the progress going on, and hope for the best afterwards.

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Binding Theurge Levels One through Five basically completed most of my basic Warlock Kit. Yes, there were many, many more Masteries to take, building up and diversifying the functions of the Wrath, Ward, and Whims.

Most of the those functions I had covered by spells, the only difference being Warlock invocations and Spell-like Abilities were Cantrip-like and could be used endlessly, never running out of ammunition.

Like that, my Melee/6, Scout/6, Vizard/6, Archer/6, and Noble/6 Levels passed by, and my Pyramid construction did the same.

The Shroud did pull a few interesting tricks. I couldn’t master the Crystal Dragon, which was a bit of a bummer, gender-reliant like it was for non-Amazons and non-Hags, but a Feat called Crystallized Damage Reduction came out of left field. It converted a lesser form of Damage Reduction, such as /silver, /cold iron, or /Good, to /-. It would only convert up to 5 points of it... but that meant I could convert my DR/Silver from Warlock Ward right to DR/-. Sure, in casual use, there was no difference (how many creatures could actually punch DR/Silver or Cold Iron, really?), but at the high end, it was just plain better.

Then it adapted a Soul Magic Feat, Heart and Soul, to Heart and Spirit, giving me additional Soak equal to my Ki Pool... which was pretty sizable at this point. I wasn’t too proud to take it.

Then Discipline in Focus restored the doubling effect of the Skill Focus and Skill Affinity Feats at Ten that I’d been missing. Kisskiss, mwa! More Skill mods was not a bad thing, ever...

Giving me a Stunning Fist pool I could use through a Staff was nice... I think? I just shrugged and took it, because I couldn’t do much else with it.

Scout/6 was Improved Evasion, which made me mostly invulnerable to any area-effect attacks that could be dodged, dropped in Hard to Fool for my Talent, rolling twice for Sense Motive checks (must like my Truth focus?), and Way of Shadow III to max out my Sneak Attack dice at +6d6 total... then started on the Deadly Sneak Attack Mastery, counting 1’s as 2’s and upping the average damage per die... less than half a point.

Good use of a Mastery, that, yeppers.

Vizard/6... blew three Feats on Roll with It: Power Feat 1/3 Levels, increase an existing DR by 2/-. And I just got some DR X/-. Huh. In three days I went from being a punching bag (which admittedly very few people could actually hit) to being able to ignore someone smacking on my perfect skin with a baseball bat.

Magic invulnerability effect ftw!

Uh-huh. And then some more Deadly Sneak Attack Mastery Wuv raising the average damage/die almost half a point per SA die. +3 to some situational damage, yay.

Archer/6 seemed to acknowledge the fact that I might be using my Autobow in the future to get back some ki, as Weapon Mastery/2 ticked over for crossbows and magical ranged attacks. The Teamwork Feat Threatening Shot let me effectively flank from up to thirty feet away if I had a ranged attack, which could be very useful situationally, and Discipline in Saves restored the doubling of Saving Throw Feat Modifiers at Ten and higher Levels.

Archer rounded out with Way of Zen III now, removing up to -6 of penalties when shooting (it raised the floor, not the ceiling), and Deadly Sneak Attack Mastery/3, 1-3’s as 4’s on them d6’s, another glorious half a point per die raise...

Noble/6 was more direct and blunt. Legendary Leader allowed me to pick another Stat to add to my unused Leadership score, along with Charisma. Intelligence went on the stack.

Commanding Leader/1 was more intended for Warlords, and all the work I hadn’t done in that area because it wasn’t my damn specialty or job... but I was still going to have to get better at it, since my Warlords weren’t coming with me. It built up a bank of command power equal to my Leadership Score/5 (Level Ten + Charisma of +15+Int of +20), allowing me to grant a reroll to any ally who failed a mental Save or morale check instantly if they were close by... and my Blessed people or those I was Warlording in Allegiance were always close by.

Warlording was based on Attack Bonus and had numerous Feats and Masteries associated with it, so I wasn’t going to be stellar with it, even if I had the Intelligence to do well. My Leadership was a pretty impressive 45 now, which rippled through the Allegiance noticeably.

Briggs took note of that Feat intently.

Of course, if it started putting in Warlord Levels, that was something else... but no, my next five were all Servant Theurge, the union of Pact and Artifice magic, and simply added more Masteries and a few more Invocations to the mix...

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“We believe we can clear the other drow cities, although we will need to sequester afterwards.”

“All of them?” I asked archly. That was... impressive.

“Well... Hulgulthu and Z’harak’nok will probably have very little that can be salvaged at all.”

The City of the Darkening Deeps and the City of the Old Ones were basically devoted to Aberrants or demonic forces closely allied with them, and had interbred with them for generations. Legion likely didn’t want to Consume any of them, as the minds and the souls of those involved were likely irreparably twisted by the occult energies and psychic infestations associated with such creatures.

Vivifying them was the best we could do.