“Um, so, the Plantation of the West was chartered about fifty years ago by the king’s…grand-uncle, I think? Uncle, grand-uncle, something like that. He was king at the time, anyway.”
“Uh-huh. And what’s his name?” I asked. On the surface, Pacifica was giving me a history lesson while she dried herself out by the campfire — the first step in my education about the world I'd be waging my war across. A hundred feet below, I was scratching notes into a cavern wall. I needed to get something to actually write with, at some point.
“Who, the old king or the new king?”
“Old king, but I’ll take the new king’s name if you’ve got it."
“Pieter III was the old king, and Otis Tadeusz is the new king,” she said. “Anyway, the Western Plantation Company founded the first of the Free Cities at Reineplatz, and that’s where the House of Masters meets.”
“And they run the colony?” I said, to which she nodded. “Are they elected, what’s the situation there?”
She shrugged. “I don’t really know how it works. Every town has an an assembly, but they just handle local stuff. The Cities all have assemblies too, and they elect one of their burghermeisters to go and speak in the House of Masters for them and vote on the city’s behalf. It’s all rich people business, I dunno. Wasn’t ever going to be me, just like it wasn’t ever going to be Mom or Dad, so they didn’t tell me much. Always chores to do, anyway.”
“I’ve been told farming is hard work,” I said neutrally. I was trying to slow-roll the ‘your parents are total shitheads’ thing: I knew she’d come to terms with it eventually, but pushing that sore spot too much would just hurt. “So, what’s the nearest Free City to here?”
“That’d be Oranjeburg,” she said quickly, with the enthusiasm of someone who was finally confident that they knew the answer to a question. “It’s down the river a ways, we go there to hand over the harvest.”
“Hand over? Not sell? What, is it like taxes?”
She shook her head. “The planter’s agents take the pipeleaf and sell it for us back in the old country,” she said. “They take a commission, of course. We won’t see the money for this year’s harvest ‘til next year, at the earliest, what with the length of the sea voyage.”
“Seems like a better deal for the agents than it is for the farmers,” I said. “So, pipeleaf, huh? Do you grow anything else?”
“Not really.” She shrugged. “We keep chickens, and Mom has a garden, but pipeleaf makes so much more money.”
I was no expert, but it sounded like we were dealing with a pretty classic colonialism situation around here. Cash crops — some sort of fantasy equivalent to tobacco or marijuana, I assumed from the name — rather than subsistence goods, grown for export back to a distant metropole. Novel forms of government. Steep inequality, existing hand-in-hand with unprecedented economic opportunity. Violent displacement of indigenous populations. I didn’t like this tune, but at least I knew how it went. There was revolutionary potential here for sure — and unlike in my own world’s history, I wasn’t going to let a bunch of rich slave-owning shitheads capture the movement and use it to consolidate their own position.
----------------------------------------
While I was getting a lesson in recent history from Pacifica, the goblins were starting me on a more comprehensive curriculum. Like, back-to-the-beginning-of-time comprehensive. They’d referred me to Abzu, who was definitely the oldest goblin present, wrinkled and white-haired. Abzu was an initiate of a cult lodge, some kind of priest-historian if I understood correctly. His lodge, the Nine Coils, safeguarded various mysteries related to the history of the world and of goblin-kind. It was one such mystery that I was currently being initiated into — the goblin creation myth.
Declining help from the younger goblins, Abzu had slowly and carefully made his way down to my core chamber, where he now sat on the same stone outcropping I’d raised as a seat for Pacifica scarcely an hour ago. “In the beginning,” he began, voice raspy with age, “there was water. We had different shapes then, and lived differently, swimming in the embrace of the Mother. She was in the waters. She was the waters. Her movements stirred the currents, and her sweat was the ocean’s salt. In her great wake we lived and loved and fucked and killed, and we were beautiful and free.”
The world changed as Abzu spoke. It was as though I was no longer in my cramped, soggy cave, walled in by the limestone ghosts of dead oceans, but instead surrounded by those lightless, primordial waters. Abzu’s voice thrummed with real, urgent emotion: his was not some dry recitation of scripture, but an outpouring of living history, living grief, living anger. The old goblin continued to speak.
"Then came the Sun, radiant and embarqued, and the first dawn sundered the primordial abyss. Arrogant was the Sun, above all other things that were or would be. He spoke his law, which was light, and the waters became the sea. They were given surface, that he might tread our crowns underfoot. All became beneath. Above us, the Sun set the Heavens, and proclaimed them his dominion.
The Mother’s rage was great. Against the thief Sun, who had stolen half of infinity for himself, she cast the first waves, the first storms. In our numberless legions her children, lovers, siblings rose all, in our countless splendid forms, against the hateful Heavens and their gods. We waged upon them the first war.
We lost.
The gods slew the Mother, and her lovers, and her siblings. From her corpse they made the world, to feast upon for all eternity. The hateful light of the Sun branded us: his fires twisted our forms and spoiled our beauty. We, the Mother’s children, were made [Monsters].”
I could feel the anger, the indignity, the terrible grief of that ancient defeat in Abzu’s voice as though it had happened yesterday. Moving with the slowness of age, he rose from his seat and walked forwards to lay a hand upon my core. If I’d still had a neck, every hair on it would have been standing up.
"Listen closely, child, and I will tell you now a name that you must never repeat under the open sky, nor anywhere the light of sun, moon, or star may touch you. I will tell you the name of our fallen Mother, who loves us even in death, who brings forth the fruits of the earth and the beasts of the field to feed us, who wakes the strength in our blood.
The name is this:
Tiamat.”
A jolt went through me, my heart-body throbbing. The azoth in the air moved at that name. I felt as though I had glimpsed the shadow of some great leviathan as it vanished into the depths. I knew, viscerally, that I was now privy to a powerful secret - one worthy of the title “mystery.”
More tangibly, my experience bar also ticked upwards slightly, which was cool. Definitely made me want to learn more about the mysteries, if I could get XP from it.
“This is only the first of the mysteries, but deeper initiations require preparation,” Abzu said, suddenly businesslike, dispelling the atmosphere in an instant. “There are certain observances, certain preparations that are required. I will come to you again when I have gathered and done what-all is needed.” Without further ado, or any word of farewell, he turned to leave.
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“Um, okay,” I said. “If there’s anything I can do to help, just let me know! I might be able to get you whatever materials you need!”
Without looking back, he waved a hand dismissively. “In time, perhaps. For now, leave it to me.”
“Alright. Uh, thanks again for teaching me!” I called after him, awkwardly. Man, I was so bad at reading old peoples’ emotions. Was he annoyed at me? Bored? Like, what was the vibe?
Well, I thought that had been pretty cool, at least, and not just because I got experience points from it. I was excited to learn more, as soon as Abzu would teach me. In the meantime, I still — seriously, girl, get your act together — had skill points I needed to spend. I pulled up my character sheet and got to browsing.
The unpleasant experience of azoth exhaustion had driven home for me that my azoth supply was currently the tightest bottleneck in my process. As such, this time, I tried to focus my investigations on skills that would give me more azoth, or let me use less of it. As I looked, I began to notice recurring themes — clusters of skills that all did very similar things, differentiated by how they influenced your dungeon mythos. One such skill cluster caught my eye because of its relevance to my azoth problem. It was composed of skills that allowed me to draw strength from deaths, presumably of adventurers, within my domain. [Mulch] allowed me to directly devour corpses, refilling my azoth pool and temporarily buffing the growth of [Plant] and [Fungus] minions based on how strong the slain creature had been. [Sacrificial Pyre] required my minions to do, as the name suggested, sacrificial fire rituals, but it seemed to offer more azoth per corpse than [Mulch] did — especially if the sacrifices were alive when the fire started. Yikes. [Solemn Ossuary] passively generated azoth from graves within my domain, and didn’t care about the power of the slain creatures, only the quantity of bones I had in storage.
There were a bunch more skills in this vein, and I knew I needed at least one of them. The nature of the vendetta I had set myself on meant that my new life in this fantasy world would unavoidably be a violent one. I felt like I didn’t have enough information to really assess the relative utility of my different options — not enough information about the skills, and not enough information about the challenges I’d be facing. However, I also had a feeling that the size of the numbers involved might be a lot less important than how my choice would shape my growing mythos. [Solemn Ossuary] seemed like a low-investment, high-payoff option, but it would flavor my mythos with things like [Death], [Ritual], [Silence], and [Eternity]. Was I really a solemn custodian of the fallen, warehousing them in eternal rest? No, I wasn’t. The prospect felt viscerally unappealing. I fundamentally didn’t give a shit about the dead. They were dead. Who cared? My concern was, and would always be, for the living. [Mulch] was closer to what I wanted — the efficiency of nutrient recycling appealed to me, as did the refusal of any dignity in death to my foes. Anyone who stood between me and revenge was nothing but fertilizer. Still, I was a little hesitant to add [Hunger] as a core component of my mythos, and [Abundance] and [Plants] both felt a little bit earth-mother-y in a way that didn’t appeal to me.
Eventually, I found a skill that intrigued me: [Bloodwoken Land].
[Bloodwoken Land]
Blood shed in this accursed place will hasten the coming of the evil that lurks within. The land itself cries out in warning - how much more blood will you spill? How much more? Gain a small additional azoth pool. This pool cannot respire azoth normally. Regain a very small amount of azoth in this pool when living creatures die, or blood is spilled by violence, within your domain. Azoth from this pool counts triple when used for Summon- or Animate-keyworded skills. Shifts mythos towards [Blood], [Curse], [Death], [Doom].
“Triple” was both a big and a refreshingly specific bonus, and the implication that other skills existed that would allow me to directly summon entities or animate constructs was exciting. More than that, though, the skill’s description resonated with me. How much more, indeed? How much more could I take, how much more could this world take, before something had to give? How long until the sins of Heaven and humankind bore their bitter fruit?
If I had my way, not long. Now I just needed a Summon or Animate-keyworded skill, preferably something that could turn the tides in a major battle, in order to take full advantage of my secondary pool. There were more than a few options: I immediately discarded any that required a lengthy ritual, specific facilities, or much in the way of material components. I was looking for something flexible and versatile. Something practical. When I found it, I knew immediately that it was what I needed.
[Raise Zombie]
Keywords: Animate
Raise a corpse as a necromantic construct. It will follow your commands to the best of its ability. Construct intelligence is very limited. Corpse decomposition rate slowed. Repairs some damage to corpse. Reanimation speed is somewhat slow.
Yeah, that’s right. Get up, fuckers, we’ve got work to do. No rest for the wicked. We’ll see how long a delve on my dungeon lasts when the dead adventurers start snacking on their former allies. Plus, this gave me a way to fight back against attackers other than just dropping my ceilings on them or opening pitfalls, both of which were costly in terms of azoth.
[Raise Zombie]’s note that it repaired some damage to the corpse as part of the reanimation process made me think that there were probably some corpses that would be too mangled for the skill to do anything with. That, in turn, got me thinking about the fact that [Bloodwoken Land] didn’t actually care about the bodies — just that things were bleeding, and dying. I sensed an opportunity to double-dip. Adventurers or minions die, [Bloodwoken Land] triggers, I [Raise Zombie] the useful corpses and feed the rest to another skill. But which one?
As had informed my choice of [Raise Zombie], I wanted something flexible, something I could use in a hurry and without much prep work. That led me, once again, back to [Mulch]. I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to be a chthonic fertility goddess, between [Mulch] and [Fertile Caverns], but surely only two skills wouldn’t lock me into that niche. Besides, as I’d said before, something in the ruthless efficiency of the skill spoke to me. I went ahead and picked it up. That was three skill points spent out of six. Good work, me! Halfway there!
As an inaugural experiment, I tested whether the squashed corpses of the five adventurers and two goblins buried underneath the floor of my first tunnel were still viable candidates for [Mulch]. The soil briefly churned, roots thrashing like piranhas as the corpses were decomposed into raw azoth that seeped outwards through the soil. Looks like they were! That was gratifying. Seven corpses’ worth of mulch ticked my azoth pool up a little, but not by much. Hopefully, in practice, this would be enough juice for at least a couple zombies. I made a mental note to test [Raise Zombie] once a suitable corpse presented itself.
As I’d been hunting for an azoth-replenishing skill that suited my tastes, I’d come across a few other skills that intrigued me, but didn’t directly address my azoth bottleneck. One in particular, though, stood out as a snap pick, and it was at this point that I went back and acquired it. I either hadn’t noticed it when I was looking previously or, more likely, hadn’t qualified for it due to not meeting some stat or level threshold until now. The skill was an upgrade of [The Heart Speaks], and was named in a similarly straightforward fashion: [The Heart Whispers].
That’s right, baby. Volume control. I could now use [The Heart Speaks] to converse with the denizens of my domain in supernatural whispers that were inaudible to anyone but the individual I was speaking to — or just in regular whispers, if I wanted. The practical applications of this skill were endless. I could command my minions without alerting adventurers to their presence or telegraphing my plans. In combination with [Walk and Talk], I could even run multi-threaded, personalized command channels to each member of a squad of monsters, without making a racket or distracting them as they tried to filter out orders aimed at their teammates. I could make snide remarks about people with no risk of them overhearing. I could even do horror-movie shit to parties of adventurers, spooking one member of the party with whispers only they could hear, sowing discord and distrust… heck, I could even yell in the party rogue’s ear at a crucial moment when they were trying to disarm a fiddly trap.
Plus, it looked like [The Heart Whispers] was a prerequisite for several other, more advanced skills, such as the intriguingly-named [Corrupting Whispers]. Fools, you made the mistake of setting foot in my dungeon! You will put on the choker and the cat ears! Your dark mistress compels you!
Well. Probably not actually — mind control was a firm ethical no-no. But it was funny to think about, at least.
Speaking of thinking about things, a thought had occurred to me as I’d watched [Mulch] in action. It seemed like matter could be broken down into azoth, and I guessed from [Spontaneous Generation]’s existence that azoth could be shaped directly into matter. I’d used [Dungeon Domain] to directly transmute one kind of matter to another, changing limestone into something that looked more like basalt. Rather than merely influencing matter that already existed, could I use it to create matter from scratch using nothing but raw magical energy?
Between [Mulch]ing those corpses and my natural respiration, my azoth pool had refilled to about a third at this point. I’d wanted to accumulate as much as possible for when the humans came to retrieve Pacifica, and had resolved to not spend any in the meantime, but I was tempted to break that resolution now. A third of my pool was enough for a small experiment. If I really could create matter from nothing… I might just be able to complete my mysterious question-mark-filled class quest. How, you ask? Simple.
I was going to create my first boss arena.