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Stories often follow a series of events, starting with the exposition, and ending with the resolution.
We’ve just finished with the exposition, so now it's time for the next step.
The inciting incident, AKA, what gets the heroes involved in the wider story. In this case, it’ll be the first demonic invasion.
I’ve already given the higher demons the temporary ability to create gateways to Asyke, so that they could let lesser demons out to wreak havoc. Lucifer and Lilith have been informed, and have already begun drawing up invasion plans. They know that even if this one fails, more invasions will occur in the future.
Lesser demons are currently splitting into groups of 3-5, and spreading quickly throughout the central continent.
I’ll also be using the undead, which haven’t been awake until now. I suppose they serve better as an additional threat during and after invasions anyway.
I’ll make sure that my non-demonic races aren’t involved, I don’t want them to be hated any more than they already are.
Let’s get this show on the road.
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Gotou was a hardworking man. He would tend to the graveyards of the kingdom, polishing the gravestones, pruning the trees, watering the flowers, and shooing away animals looking to dig in the yard. It was tireless and thankless work, but it was his.
This day was no different. Wake up, put on his robes, grab a fruit from the basket, kiss his spouse goodbye, and walk to the yard to begin working.
When he got there though, he noticed that the graves had all been dug up. An animal must have gotten to them while he was sleeping.
But all of the graves were empty. No animal would dig ALL of them up, only the fresher ones.
He recalled stories of the undead, tall tales of bodies still moving after death. It was well known that orcs would fight even after dying, and that skaven bodies would slip away unnoticed if left unattended, but when it came to the blessed races, such things were quite impossible.
It had to have been grave robbers. He would have to report this to the church.
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Adachi was a devout follower of the Great Creator. She prayed every day, served the church well, and never strayed from the light.
When she was sent on a mission by the church to hunt demons, she thought it would be hard to find them.
She did not expect a group of them to jump her party in the woods.
“On your left!”
Aoki was swinging his sword wildly, clearly not used to actually using it in combat, when he was toppled by one of the demons striking his left flank with a bladed limb.
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Adachi quickly fired a holy blast at the second demon, which threw it backwards before it could react, but she was still too slow to prevent Aoki’s neck from being severed by the first demon.
Then the second demon lunged at her, and the first threw itself at Sou– the party’s paladin– and before she even knew what was happening, the third demon had slain the archer.
Four holy blasts and a minor healing spell later, Adachi and Sou stood victorious over the three demons, covered in cuts and bruises. One of Sou’s arms had been removed from the elbow by the first demon’s bladed limbs, shortly before it was crushed beneath the paladin’s warhammer.
Then another group of demons ambushed them.
Adachi, in a last ditch effort, used all of her remaining power to destroy the fourth and fifth demons, before passing out, leaving the Sou to fight the sixth and seventh.
She woke up in the paladin’s arms as he carried her to the nearest church to be healed.
She almost didn’t notice that she was missing her arms.
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Over the following weeks, reports of groups of demons kept coming in.
Such numbers would have been thought impossible if the royal scouts hadn’t seen a mob of demons ransack a village to the south of the capital.
As it was, King Kujo was at a loss for what to do.
He wasn’t as strong as an adventurer– mainly having devoted his life to ruling instead of fighting– but he had prided himself on his intelligence. So why couldn’t he think of anything to do against this new threat?
Low ranking adventurers had come back without party members, missing limbs and weapons, having been unprepared against the demons. Even high ranking ones, rare as they were, had been returning to the capital exhausted and less a few body parts.
The strongest known party in the land had gone against a force of what must have been hundreds of demons, and when they came back, they were halved in number.
King Kujo didn’t know what to do.
He could only hope the church did.
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Communing with a god was not an everyday occurrence.
The methods of doing so were well kept, and even when used, they required a god to respond, which they rarely did.
The last time a communication with the gods was tried, it was because a huge golem was approaching the capital city. No god responded, and eventually the church recommended that a group of adventurers destroy it before it could get close enough to pose a threat. While it had worked, the fight destroyed large portions of the forest, and the golem’s body blocked an important trading path.
Since then, nothing had been important enough to warrant bothering the gods.
But this threat was not something that could be handled by mortals.
The gods were needed.
As they began the ritual, they could only pray that the gods would respond.
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Gods were powerful, knowledgeable beings created by the Great One directly. They did not ‘freak out’ like Kaito’s daughter Hifumi suggested. And even if they could, they wouldn’t be.
The gods had changed in their appearance over time, mainly due to the shifting ideas of what they looked like by mortals, and new gods had been born– once again, because of moral beliefs– but throughout the millennia, they had stayed the same in one way. Gods had grown distant from mortals, despite how much they influenced each other. After all, gods were immortal, and mortals lived up to their designation.
But the gods also felt fear.
Fear that the thing would return. That it hadn’t been sealed forever, and was biding its time and gathering its power to strike back.
Kaito had even confessed as much to Akira when she and Nakai visited.
They had warned their followers of the beast, and told them of the races it made, and they smiled as the Dark Ones creations were slaughtered by the hundreds.
But now their nightmares were coming true.
The new creatures that spread through the continent like a disease bore its mark, and the gods were helpless against them. Their power was ignored completely, their agents just a little less helpless than the gods, and they felt its presence push on the edges of the universe.
They could only trust that their creator had an answer.
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