NOVEL NEXT The Last Book?
6/17 late morning
“Alright Tony; I know it’ll be rough but I’m counting on you. I think you and Sally can finish up in Southshore first, but after that I don’t really care what the mission rewards are. Got it?”
“Alright boss. I know we only get five minutes but I hear shouting outside. I think I need to go.”
“Go. Take care of your girl. I’m trusting you on this.”
I put the amulet back in my inventory; I didn’t actually need to have it as a physical object to talk to my isekais or access it’s features, but it felt awkward just talking to air. I had just finished my tour of the defenses, and was at this point just killing time. My strategists had agreed to get started then, when everyone believed they would be ready.
Naturally, I killed time the only ways I knew how: equal parts bookkeeping, fucking dragons, and watching tv.
••••••••••
Getting the Ritual app was one hell of a game changer; shame about it being so late in the process. He’d explained how to use some of the more subtle spells to Onyxia and let her go about her work, then teleported to Sally. He hoped she’d handle his last mission, but he had more important shit to do just then and it wasn’t half as volatile now as it had been in the past.
Ensure that the Masons’ guild is properly compensated for their work.
Reward: Tony regains his full capabilities as an archdruid
Patron: Greater Temptress Bell
He showed up with the marriage-based teleportation two days before the attacks started. Thanks to the heightened guard, Southshore saw signs of the undead with enough advance warning to get over the initial shock and disbelief. One guy, already captured, had somehow made his way all the way from Gilneas with a warning. The town was on high alert and willing to accept aid from anyone that seemed decent.
Tony was a decent guy. He offered to enchant pieces of jewelry for the defenders, inscribing them with a ritual that would give them a very short range capture aura. Each one took about twenty minutes to scribe and activate, but they’d capture anyone tier 6 or lower who wore them for three hours. If Southshore had a meaningful population of enchanters he’d have needed to be a bit more careful in how he tossed around this magic, but if they’d had that they wouldn’t need time travelers to save their asses.
Meeting Sally’s folks had been a bit surreal. He’d married a woman that was thirty, and here he was meeting the parents of a teenager. Speaking of which, he was a little bit nervous about when things calmed down. He felt kinda awkward being married to someone who looked and moved like a gawky teenager even if he knew she was actually older. Hopefully she’d get a reward to bring her up to speed, or maybe he could convince her to become a dragonspawn and assume a visage.
Obviously he didn’t bring it up while they were defending the town. Not really the most important thing at the moment of course, but he’d had a lot of time to think while he was “enchanting” jewelry for everyone. One day before everything went to shit, Ursula arrived with Vanessa, two high elven magi from the mage district, and fifty soldiers. The ship loaded up on non-combatants and set sail for Menethil Harbor just as fast as it could manage, while the influx of veteran soldiers were folded into the defenses at key positions.
They were hoping for reinforcements from Dalaran, but… shit. They might be able to pull this off, just with what they had.
Repel the Scourge from Southshore for 30 days.
Reward: Benediction/Anathema
Patron: all citizens of Southshore saved by this mission will be resurrected (if necessary) and instantly captured
••••••••••
Eonar’s upgrade options were great, but… look, I don’t know what I was expecting but I guess some kind of giant easy to use I win button would have been nice. Nothing quite that op was forthcoming, so I embraced what was instead of what I wanted.
Strength: Skin of Bronze- Erich becomes a nascent Titan and begins to rapidly draw energy from all members of the retinue at all times. This effectively grants him the inexhaustible talent. This will preferentially drain excess energy from his nearly 1 million person strong (and counting) retinue across all timelines, so only by truly excessive use is he likely to use enough power for anyone to even notice.
Agility- Agency Override- All beings created by the titans (or using processes developed by the titans such as the Forge of Wills) in all timelines will have sets of triggers that only members of your retinue can use. One will be obvious to all members of the retinue at a glance, four others will be possible for you to intuit. They will always rationalize both their own triggers and those of others. Common examples of triggered behavior include sleep, killing a target, short term amnesia, falling in love with the one using the trigger, or implanting memories.
Stamina- Lifebinder- you gain the perks Warranty Plan and Express Delivery, causing each member of your retinue to automatically resurrect after 30 hours no matter the cause or intensity of their death.
Intellect- Creation Protocol- You may sacrifice any member of your retinue in order to transform them into any catalogued character in the same tier as if you had purchased that character, or multiple copies of a character in a lower tier. You may also combine multiple characters such that their total value constitutes the value of the target character. You have fine control over things such as personality changes and (in the case of fusions) what personalities are present/dominant.
Spirit- The Pantheon Rebuilt- gain Grand missions for each of the known titans with their capture as mission rewards, as Price on Love. These missions will not necessarily align with their desires but will align with their stated ethos/domains. Known Titans: Aman’Thul, Amitus, Norgannon, Golganneth, Khaz’goroth, Aggramar, Sargeras, Argus
Ok, so time to put on my negative nitpicker hat so I can actually choose one of these to purchase. Skin of Bronze appealed immediately, but I resisted the urge. Both becoming a Titan and Inexhaustible were things I could verifiably get for myself or buy with credits. Saving myself a few days of physical therapy, a necklace, and 140 credits was definitely nice, but I set it aside just in case I managed to talk myself out of all the others.
Creation protocol was too complicated for me to wrap my head around with a brief description. Being able to trade around my units was nice and all, I might be able to turn some of Doan’s students into powerful front liners for example, but it also didn’t tell me enough to know how efficient it would be. Agency override just didn’t seem powerful enough to be worth it. If I was one of my own isekais I’d vote for that one, but I’m not. Besides, unless you are in fairly specific time periods, the titanforged are fairly rare and inaccessible. Finally, Lifebinder was both purchasable and mostly unneeded. Long term I fully intend to take over the Shadowlands, and between Tara and Onyxia’s efforts, not to mention Artoria, I have enough people capable of resurrection that it’s no longer even a particularly specialized skill.
That left The Pantheon Rebuilt. 8 grand missions, each of which had a titan’s soul and some kind of other major upgrade on the line. Sounded like something to give myself a bit of direction once I dealt with Neffie, before Sargeras arrived on the scene. I picked that one.
••••••••••
The outlying farms were the first to fall. Maybe half of the farmers had been willing to abandon their crops on the word of a messenger, though many sent their children to town. Sally felt like that was the best they could really expect; she’d all but written those people off days ago. Of course Southshore sent out small bands to skirmish with the dead; several mounted knights were in the town, and in an open field a knight could reliably defeat the zombies and skeletons this early form of the scourge relied upon.
Sally, Tony, and Vanessa had gone out as a trio, just to see what they could manage. It was scary, but the three of them were disproportionately powerful. Sally’s symbiote gave her incredible speed and strength, and though her technical knowledge had been lost her faith gave her a deep well of strength to draw upon. Tony was a dragonspawn, so his skin hid a layer of iron-hard scales, and Vanessa inexplicably grew stronger every few seconds that she was in combat. It felt surprisingly good to rampage through the Scourge outriders, and every little bit helped.
They needed delays; her amulet told me that four elven magi had been captured in Dalaran. With any luck, those three had enough pull to bring along a squad of bodyguards if nothing else. A dozen more defenders would make Sally feel that small bit more comfortable, especially if they contained competent arcanists. She knew from hard experience that these early days were nothing compared to what was coming. When she heard the knights celebrating their early victory, saving an idiotic farmer from his own stupidity, she felt the pit in her stomach.
A week later, when Tony got his later marching orders, they were already pinned behind the walls by a sea of corpses.
Repel the Scourge from Southshore for 30 days. (8/30)
Reward: Benediction/Anathema
Patron: all citizens of Southshore saved by this mission will be resurrected (if necessary) and instantly captured in the main timeline
••••••••••
Aman’Thul, The Highfather
Awaken a world soul as a titan
Reward: Aman’Thul, 100 credits that must be spent on the Transhuman Heritage upgrade path
Amitus, The Peacekeeper
End all armed conflict on a world for 1 month without capturing more than 30% of the world’s population
Reward: Amitus, White Knight lure + sharing, Florence Nightingale lure + sharing
Norgannon, Keeper of Lore
Cleanse Azeroth of the Curse of Flesh completely in at least one timeline.
Reward: Norgannon, Sharing for all talents and lures, including a credit refund for any prior purchases
Golganneth- Lord of Ocean and Sky
Bring all elementals of a world under the dominion of a single being that has mastered all 5 elements, without capturing more than 30% of them.
Reward: Golganneth, Shroud Binding
Khaz’goroth: Shaper and Forger of Worlds
Without relying on company assets, Erich must personally design, source the materials for, and construct an item of equivalent intricacy and power to a moderate or greater company asset.
Reward- Khaz’goroth, Engineering talent + sharing
Aggramar, Lieutenant of the Great Sargeras
Without capturing Sargeras, end the Burning Legion.
Reward: Aggramar, Power swap: any one Titan
Sargeras, The Dark Titan
Conclusively defeat the Void Lords as a group
Reward: Sargeras, To the Victor go the Spoils
Argus, the Unmaker
Retake the legion world Argus and provide it with a majority-uncorrupted Eredar population.
Reward: Argus, Instant capture of all Eredar in one timeline of your choice
Okay. Yeah. None of those are getting done in a reasonable timeline. When ending all wars for a month and eliminating a mystical plague that the gods themselves could not counter are among the easier options at a glance, you know the company isn’t half assing the missions. Hell, half of these it would probably be easier to just find and capture the Titan in question. Which, I suppose, would net me even more huge rewards in the long term. At least Khaz’goroth’s sounded like it could be fun.
The rewards were obscene, of course, but they would be. Amitus threw me off. Not only had I never heard of her, apparently they had just added a few more lures to the shop and were using them as rewards now. Florence Nightingale would make people I healed or took care of while they were vulnerable (or vice versa) slowly fall in love with me. I could have built a whole strategy around that back when I was still primarily a priest. White Knight naturally made any princesses I might save fall in love with me; non-princesses were presumably also targeted. It scaled off of my good reputation, how much they perceived themselves to be in need of rescue, and how difficult saving them was, and acted as a multiplier for the affection and gratitude natural in such a situation. Probably too small a scale for me, but the isekais would eat that shit up. Onyxia would have dozens of people eating out of her hands right now if she’d had that Lure, many of them dragons.
The final alarm on my amulet, as well as the amulets of everyone else on the field of battle or in the ops center, went off. It was noon. I set aside the menu and stood up, picking up the Scepter of the Shifting Sands. I smacked the scepter against the seal, and blinked away without a second thought. I wanted to be out of there when things really started.
I left behind me a confused, spiky, chitinous creature that looked around in a panic as the doors opened and my armies moved to engage with the forces of the Quiraji. It scuttled behind my lines, not really knowing what else to do. Thankfully the retinue’s built in IFF kept the poor guy safe.
Achievement Unlocked
Scarab Lord
Opened the gates of Ahn'Qiraj.
Reward: Black Qiraji Battle Tank
••••••••••
Company credit budget: 9
-1 permanent purchase: Lividia
-1 permanent purchase: Talaada
-2 Letter of Recommendation: Child by Lividia, Child by Azshara, Child by Aegwynn, Tony, Nefaria, Vanessa, Onyxia, Sylvanas, Sally, and Abby (subject to change)
-2 Meeting Place: Gain a permanent, generally quite small, Demiplane where you can meet with fellow employees of the Company you know. Within this demiplane you may relax for up to one hour per day and extend invitations to friends, allies, or enemies to meet, gamble, and trade resources. Acceptable trades and wagers will be overseen by the Testing Coordinators of each visitor’s world.
-1 Animal folk become more human looking, generally looking like basically attractive humans with pronounced animalistic traits.
-1 Female undead are always aesthetically pleasing and capable of having sex. Generally speaking they are also interested in having sex, though they are no less aggressive and only slightly less deadly despite that.
-1 PvP is never incentivized. Should two testers come into conflict it will be on entirely personal grounds. Drawbacks involving PvP can override this; you knew what you were signing up for.
Remaining budget: 0 Credits
Last poll for the endgame budget.
https://strawpoll.com/w4nWrNKKJyA
••••••••••
Not many choices left to make for Azeroth that aren’t epilogue or postgame. I’ll probably consult y’all on Erich’s Skyrim build just so I have something to poll you on. ;)