Two Weeks Later
Stella paused in weeding her garden, as she pulled one plant that reminded her of her early studies in botany. A month ago, she thought she’d had a long, weird road to her life. And then her baby—
Not thinking about that.
And then two weeks after that, the moon had almost exploded and the System collapsed, disappeared, gone, poof! The village had been in a bit of a panic, and it didn’t seem that any of their Skills worked anymore. But many had been working all their life and they had picked up some skill along the way. There was still some nervousness about the productivity of the crops, but the headsman had a good head on his shoulders and even if they went through one lean year, they’d just prepare to plant more next year. Already the huntmen and gatherers had tried to upp the amounts their were collecting to supplement their stores.
She finished weeding that one row, then made her way inside for something to eat. The baby—
Not thinking about that.
As she pushed through the door, there was a flash of blue robes and suddenly she was caught in a soft, warm embrace by a young woman.
“Mother!”
Whatever mask Stella had cracked as she let out all of the emotion she’d kept at bay.
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2 A.S. (After System)
Emperor Celeri XXXVII of the Celeri Empire could only sigh as he received the latest reports from his agricultural minister. A second year of hunger had been narrowly averted. Oh it would certainly be lean still, especially for the urban poor, but it wasn’t the regime toppling type of problem.
No, that would be that almost anything else. The end of the System had meant the loss of so many valuable information gathering and domain ruling Skills. And while Emperor Celeri XXXVII liked to think that he had a decent grasp of the skills need to be a ruler, having to replace those Skills with entire bureaus of bureaucrats to gather information and administer his laws was both a huge endeavor to setup and a massive pain once in place. For all the good that the wandering Fell had done in teaching a new form of magic, they apparently didn’t have a particularly complex government and were little use to him, either personally or occupationally.
Already a handful of the frontier provinces had essentially seceded bloodlessly. It was only a matter of time for him to see how much of the empire he could hold together.
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5 A.S.
Aerias scratched away at his notebook while reviewing another report. He signed heavily, again, and stretched, his back popping in all the right places. He was getting along now, at almost 23 months of age.
When the Gobberton empire had been gutted a millenium ago, the remaining Gobberton communities fractured into dozens of smaller independent states, some even being subsumed by other nations. They had not quite flourished as the old empire did, but they had done well.
But the end of the System had done something to them. Aerias didn’t know first hand, he’d been born three years after the fact, but the histories were bad. Every Gobberton in the first month after had later turned out to be sterile. And every Gobberton born after that had been half-sexed, lacking what was needed to carry a pregnancy.
That had set off a demographic crisis across every Gobberton community. Some had collapsed internally when they had been unable to resolve how to continue reproducing. Some had been destroyed by outside forces when they had resorted to drastic measures to continue reproduction. And scant few had solved the problem without bringing their neighbors’ wrath down on them, Aerias’ community included.
At first, in the mad scramble, they had just gone to the nearest non-Gobberton settlements with a chest of gold and paid every female sex worker they could convince to move and have a few pregnancies. That had mixed results. It was outrageously expensive, didn’t quite stablizie the populkation, and wasn’t particularly sustainable in the long term.
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Now they had a multi-pronged approach.
The first was that they continued to lure sex workers with high pay and healthcare, though they were more selective about it and went to greater lenghts to avoid lining the pockets of madams and pimps. While it’d only been five years, it seemed that this group of women outwardly willing to stay long term.
The second, newer approach was as a form of scholarship. The new magic academies and weapon sects were largely out of reach for poorer students with the capabilities to do great there. On the one hand, the Gobbertons could offer short, if intense, six or twelve month working stay to earn enough to attend such a school. Alternatively, although not quite up to the standards of others, the Gobbertons had also opened their own smaller academy to teach female non-Gobbertons.
The last approach undertaken just this year was codenamed Project Spinster. While Gobberton understanding of their new half-sexed biology was still growing, it seemed that female non-Gobbertons did not need to be fertile to carry a Gobberton pregnancy. This had opened up the possibility for older non-Gobberton women who had never been mothers the possibility to do so. The first few rounds were so far promising, though there were a handful of test cases that involved an excess of affection.
Aerias continued to scratch out his notes. With any luck, this might be the first year their population increased.
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50 A.S.
High Priest Torgas closed and locked the door to his office for the final time. Turning with the frailty of age, he handed the worn bronze key to his successor.
“It’s up to you now. Good luck, Frederick.”
Frederick mumbled a hasty goodbye as Torgas ambled away.
It had been a long and successful if bizarre career for him. He remembered the Third War of the Gods and the System Apocalypze. He was well into his twenties and had been an administrator for the church for several years at that point. A crisis it had been no doubt. But in destruction, there was fertile ground for growth.
The public never knew, but the War had ended with the gods dead or dying then. While they hadn’t been particularly involved with the church, let alone the world, in the preceding millennia, their loss was still troubling to those in the know. Admittedly, there were two left that seemed hale and hearty. And they had apparently visited every major temple in those early years. But what they had told them was largely to direct the church to prepare for no gods to support them.
By and large, Torgas liked to think he and his immediate predecessor had succeeded. The gods were dead; long live the gods.
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100 A.S.
“So,” she rasped. “This is the end.”
Her companion, the elf nodded, still young.
“It’s been quite the journey. And a good life. Try… It’s hard to say goodbye, you know.”
“… I do.”
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500 A.S.
Professor Grauxxitruk carefully scraped away at the acculated grime on section 37 as he contemplated what he was seeing. Though they laid quiet before him, the wall enchantments of the dead city of Tarzah were a miracle. How the ancients could have ever enchanted like this was amazing at times.
“Professor! Professor!” A post-graduate student called as she ran up to him out of breath. Grauxxitruk raised an eye ridge as he waited for her to catch her breath, before she held out to him what was in her hand.
He took the aged peachwood amulet from her and gently rubbed a pad across its smooth lacquer face. The enchantments laid into it lay thick like nothing he had ever seen before. Hairfine wire in a pattern so complex it boggled even his mind.
“Where did you find this?”
The walls of Tarzah may have been fit for a paper. But this—this artefact—could start a new age.
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2000 A.S.
“In further news this evening, the first batch of colonists to Caelum successfully arrived today despite ongoing protests from the Church and conservative elements of the public. In a public statement, Cardinal Quixat had this to say:
While the Church was supportive of the educational, scientific and magical goals with the first moon landings last century to investigate the historical home of the Gods, the establishment of a civilian population does little to resolve the crises present here on Ager.
Despite this, the launch had been uninterrupted. Now the population of forty-eight, largely farmers, lumberjacks, and other so-called primitive professions, will start from the ground up in building a self-sustaining colony in the Northern Alldir Grasslands. Projections say that any archaelogical impact will be minimal as, despite the name, no known structures have ever been built there.”
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5000 A.S.
“Much has been written about the so-called Age of the Gods. Indeed, most of the primary and secondary sources closest to that period seem to take at face-value that their existed at the time a so-called ‘System’ by the gods to assist mortals with magic casting.
This is a honk of baloney. If the long arc of history has anything to tell us, it’s that the civilized races become more and more advanced over time, subject to brief interruptions. And yet we are no closer today to understanding how to even implement such a ‘System’ that would be able to accomplish the feats attributed to it. How could such relative barbarians have done such a thing?
It is my proposal that the System was metaphorical or euphemistic name to the educational system provided by the various temples. In this sense, yes, this Educational System was the gods assisting mortals with magic casting by teaching them. Which is not to say that it was limited to the magical sciences. This would of course have also extended to more mundane topics as well, such as farming, swordsmanship and accounting.”
—from a university lecture given by an infamous historian
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