During the flight back to the Fang Hollows, something unexpected happened.
***
Notoriety: Progressed from OBSCURE to RISING.
***
Sable’s first reaction was, of course, excitement—another boost to her experience gain helped nearly every aspect of her future plans.
The emotion shortly snapped the other way: worry. She didn’t want her notoriety raising too fast. It was a far more dangerous stat than her hoard. The more people who knew about her—and saw her as the threat she was—the harder it would be to skate by without dragon hunters tracking her down.
What had caused it? She’d just been flying along, headed for the Fang Hollows to continue her experience farming. She hadn’t done anything.
Though, obviously, her reputation would sometimes grow without her direct intervention. Sometimes the threshold for stages would pass while Sable was out and about. Maybe even sleeping.
The terrifying first idea Sable had was that news of her had spread to a kingdom that mattered—that somehow the humans had heard of her, or the orcs, or anyone capable of mustering a significant dragon hunting force. And while she couldn’t discount that possibility, she calmed herself, because other events seemed more likely. News of her probably hadn’t leaked to some human king or similar, and thus spread to the populace, because he would surely keep it a secret, not wanting enemies to come hunt and steal his prize.
So, more likely, it was that news of Gadenrock had hit the general population of Skatikk, or some other goblin city. The leadership had known Sable had burned the city to the ground, but at a guess, they hadn’t informed the rest of the citizenship. But they finally had, and likely in dramatic fashion—and also while promising Sable would be leading the Bonecracker Tribe into Rustspike territory to claim their enemy’s land for herself, which meant, effectively, their own gain.
Such a thing would bring a reasonable spike in notoriety. That had been the plan from the start, when it came to Gadenrock.
She check on the stat. She knew doing so produced powerful urges, but Sable was just soaring along in the sky, right now—no risk.
***
~ Notoriety ~
Your notoriety is RISING. In backwater tribes the name of a rising tyrant spreads like wildfire, each utterance accompanied by chills running down spines. A city, reduced to black ash for nothing more than refusal to serve a despot. The dark ages, they say, have returned once more. Even extinction cannot quench the evil of the great serpent beasts. Had they truly believed it would?
This is just the start, a resigned populace knows. So much more is to come. A sentiment you will gladly prove correct.
[ 25% REDUCTION TO EXPERIENCE GAIN ]
***
Sable shivered as the message bombarded her. It was hard to describe just how enticing it sounded. A reputation like that. To be so feared.
Even if she planned on cultivating a fake notoriety, she could indulge in the glow the reputation brought.
But to more relevant matters. Twenty five percent. As with her hoard, that meant an effective fifty percent boost, because she’d been at a fifty percent reduction, before.
So, greatly appreciated, but nothing staggering. She wondered whether the next upgrade would take her to zero percent, or whether it would pivot into the positives—because that seemed where it was heading.
How big would the boosts become? A hundred percent? Five hundred, when the entire world knew and feared her? She figured such powerful bonuses would be all but necessary to survive the hostile attentions of entire kingdoms.
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Arriving back to the Fang Hollows, Sable continued her hunt. She didn’t plan on filling the last two spots of her thrall. Better to save them for later. It was certainly sentimental, even foolishly so, but she didn’t like the idea of dismissing Granite and getting someone stronger. So she would save the other slots for down the line. With luck the number would expand—five seemed pretty small.
Another few hours into cleaning up wyrms, mirebeasts, and other nightmarish ravine-lurking creatures, the fruit of her labors manifested.
***
[Path: [Frostfire Sorceress] advanced from Level 6 to Level 7.]
[Skill gained: [Spellbound Claws]]
***
***
[Spellbound Claws] - Magical augments are twice as potent when applied to your claws.
***
Huh. That was an interesting one. Based on how she had a [Sorceress] class, she had figured her primary strategy would be staying well and away from her enemies, pelting them with spells.
Though that didn’t entirely fit the image of a dragon, did it? To some extent, when strategically useful, she should do so—but not always, it seemed. Even a sorceress dragon ought to be able to tussle with her physical implements.
Also, it tied in beautifully with her [Arcana Specialty - Enchant]. Sable had already wanted to focus on the branch of magic because of how useful enhancing her minions could be, as well as the wards, illusions, and mind-influencing effects, but now she had twice the reason to hone that skill.
Roman had mentioned spells could be formed with multiple key-runes. Doubling up ‘enchant’ with ‘frostfire’ to apply a devastating frostfire enchantment onto her claws seemed like it would be a beautiful addition to her combat kit.
Unfortunately, Sable was far from capable enough to design her own spells. She could maybe fumble through getting something half-way working using runes she’d already learned, but it would be a horrendous waste of time and mana.
So, the skill would need to be shelved for the short term. Or at least the full use of it. Sable did know a basic strength enhancement, the same she had put on Aylin. So she applied it to her claws, intrigued at how the spell shimmered across the bone-white material, glistening to her magical senses.
A short encounter later, she verified that she had even more devastating slashing power than usual. The opponents already hadn’t been difficult, so she wouldn’t say the upgrade was necessary, but still nice to have. And once she made a frostfire enchantment to put on, she expected to have a potent weapon for enemies who weren’t a walk in the park—as the hivemother hadn’t been.
As she hunted, she considered her future.
The Rustspike campaigns. She needed to confront the dilemmas there. She’d been shying away from the brutal reality of what it meant to carve herself an empire, but she couldn’t do that any longer, not with the event looming so close on the horizon.
Warfare. Could she participate in it and not hate herself? It was an unsettling question, but mostly because the answer wasn’t difficult. She could.
But she needed justifications. First and highest priority was that she would bring peace and prosperity to her people—that would be what forgave, in some part, her tyrannical rule, and the destruction she would bring on those who resisted. Through violence, she would improve the lives of her subjects, however much they feared and hated her for it.
Secondly, she wouldn’t jump to extremes. Her first effort would be diplomacy—as in, the draconic kind; intimidation and fear—but if that failed, then she would conquer her enemies in the way that created the least destruction.
Sable suspected that meant razing high-ranking leaders and dispatching the opposing party’s classed. She wouldn’t melt droves of ‘common folk’ to accomplish her goals. If the leaders wanted to throw their lives away by refusing her, then it would be their lives that were, indeed, thrown away.
And Sable didn’t consider that an easy decision. She didn’t want to kill people. But a monarch of any sort needed to deal in such terms. It simply wasn’t avoidable. She could hope her reputation would solve everything, but she knew it wouldn’t; running an empire meant trading in human lives. Even the most revered leaders of history had done horrible things of that ilk.
And maybe that was a gigantic justification, but those were what Sable was looking for.
She hoped such actions wouldn’t be common. She had plans for how to increase her reign of terror—the distance her reputation could go toward reducing the likelihood of conflict.
Though the biggest ones came with their own moral quandaries. She had access to mind-control, enchantments, and other such influencing spells. It spawned its own moral debate: was subjugating sapient minds, and similar, in order to minimize death and destruction morally just? Or was self-autonomy an inviolable right, worse even than killing—worse even than mass killing, which such an evil could prevent?
Sable admitted to herself that little of what her future held would be ‘morally just’. She was dealing in shades of gray, or even shades of black. Maybe the ‘morally just’ action was to roll over and accept her death. Not literally, but effectively: by keeping to herself, not subjugating peoples, and earning her own hoard through dungeons and similar.
Such a path, she knew, would mean death. There were too many disadvantages to her existence. Someone powerful would come hunting her, and she wouldn’t stand a chance. So she needed her own power, and she needed a lot of it, and she needed it fast. Kingdom conquering was the only way she could imagine accomplishing that.
Ultimately, she needed to be a boon to her conquered peoples, even if they didn’t know what she was doing. If she didn’t lose sight of that, then she could live with herself.
She hoped.