By some - most, even - metrics, the world of Eise comfortably fit within the criteria for a deathworld designation.

Monsters, large and small, ravening and cunning, ephemeral and solid, all that and much, much, much more, all called the world their home, and they tended to outnumber the thinking races by quite a great margin.

Every kind of natural disaster one could conceivably think of, several reserved solely for the worlds on the magical end of the spectrum, and a few entirely unique to Eise.

Elder races who each embodied one of the mortal sins, their half-breeds that, more often than not, inherited the sins without the counterbalancing virtues, or even worse combined the sins of their parents in new, interesting - in a macabre sense of the world - and not uncommonly monstrous ways.

Cases in point:

Ogres - gluttons whose feeding was literally orgasmic for them

Woodland Nymphs - So consumed with pride and envy that they inflict prolonged torture, drawing out the kill for as long as possible, for the ‘crime’ of accidentally spotting them in places with no cover and when they did nothing to hide their presence in the first place.

Trolls - slow, stupid, stagnant, and psychotically violent, not because they lacked the capacity to reason, but because they were too lazy to care about anything other the bare necessities of survival and a good, bloody scrap.

All-pervading and pervasive magic that, just by its presence and existence induces constant and inconsistent changes on everything. And, that is just when the tides of magic are calm and predictable. The entire endeavor exacerbates, escalates and explosively eradicates expectations of how elements effect, in times of turbulence. And, don’t even start me on torrents.

And finally, there are the dungeon cores. The pseudo-intelligent reality marbles - almost never actually marble shaped - that, over their limited area of influence exert near-total control of anything and everything, and are completely and utterly devoid of any thought beyond their sense of self, their vims and their wants. So, yeah, nigh-godlike and completely and totally psychopathic and sociopathic, mega- and mono-maniacal entities.

Thankfully, the all-prevailing magic allows for rather high standards of living, Natural disasters can be predicted, and in limited ways dealt with on a more successful end of the trans-universal bell curve than the gross average, Elder races have their virtues to go along the sins, and there are, even if in much smaller numbers then their fallen counterparts, wholly virtuous descendent species, the most populous race - humans - came into existence entirely independently from the divine paradigm, and are thus free to choose where they lie on the virtue-sin scale on an entirely personal and personalized level, and for all the myriad troubles and dire danger that they bring forth, dungeon cores are also nigh-inexhaustible, perpetually-selfrenewing resource generation nodes in their own rights.

In the end, even if the positives do not, quite, outweigh the negatives, they do grant just enough to push Eise out of outright Deathworld-ity.

With the sole exception of the exiled mountain and the surrounding woeful wildlands, that is.

The former seat of the most advanced and prosperous civilization upon the face of Eise, and the surrounding ~250 square miles constituted more than enough cause to qualify any planet for a spot right up there besides Catachan and Arrakis.

Wreathed in the perpetual, multi-millennia-lasting, exceptionally violent, ragingly tumultuous mana tempest, home to more dungeon cores per acre than the rest of the world combined can account for, with terrain that can change from sky-piercing cliffs to an inland sea in literal hours, temperatures variance that places frozen gasses and gaseous metals side by side, and guaranteed mutation of anything and everything living, with no rhyme for viability, survivability, nor even vitality of the end product.

You could not even properly call it hell on earth, for not even hells could strive to be so dismal.

And, despite all that, there were places of habitation within the wildlands.

Well, only one could truly lay claim to the prestige, or rather insanity of being found actually within the bounds of the wildlands, all the rest were huddled at the very edges of the wildlands, just deep enough to where the conventional contemporary means could counter the effects of the wildlands to if not exactly comfortable nor particularly safe levels, then at least to where it was survivable, if you did not stay for too long, and the mages kept weary eyes and ready spells to deal with the ever-shifting cornucopia of troubles and tribulations that the wildlands constantly spewed forth.

The one place truly within the wildlands was another matter entirely.

It was a… well, it was not quite secret, or, at the very least, it was not meant to be kept a secret.

It was just that the rest of the world knew nothing about it, not even that it existed.

The town was located some good fifty-sixty miles in the interior, nestled against a steep, crescent-shaped hill, which was, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, the only stable area within the woeful wildlands, besides the exiled mountain itself.

And, it was hardly what one could call a proper town.

While the towns on the outskirts were all of the rugged, frontiersman-like nature, none were anywhere close to as, well, primitive and hewn from the wilds, as the town upon the crescent hill. There were no streets, no proper shops, no buildings whatsoever whose primary purpose was not residential.

The severe difficulty in finding proper building materials clear out in the wildlands meant that at best, the buildings could not be described as anything but ramshackle, makeshift and jury-rigged. More a collection of half-buried shacks and dug out dens, than anything else, truth be told.

All it had going for itself was population.

The one defining feature of the town, besides the surrounding hill, was a tall, crystalline pillar, more or less smack dab in the center of the valley.

It was multifaceted, glittered in all the colors known to sophont life, and, upon a head-to-the surface level of inspection, apparently grown in such a fashion as to have internal structures of the crystal form dwarven runes.

It was so obviously magical, that one would need to be blind, deaf and insensate not to notice so. It was, correctly, assumed that the pillar was the reason for the area’s stability and safety.

What was incorrectly guessed was that the pillar was some kind of surviving artifact of the ancient Hanzakrrak, maybe some kind of security or protective array.

It was a fair and sensible guess, given the limitations of the knowledge of the ones who had found it.

Firstly, whether or not the pillar was an artifact could be debated back and forth for a long, long, long time, without coming to a definite answer. Secondly, the pillar, or rather what the pillar was a fragment of, was quite a bit older than the entire dwarven race, much less the Hanzakrrak; it was, truth be told, older than even the elder gods. And finally, it was not grown to contain the runes, quite the reverse - the ancient dwarves had discovered runes by trying to imitate the internal structure of the crystal.

It was not a mistake any dwarf could or would have ever made.

A dwarf would know immediately what they were dealing with.

Unfortunately, the dwarven race at large was almost completely wiped out from the face of Eise, and what few remained could not be paid - and that was saying rather a lot when talking about the greediest denizens of the world - to approach the wildlands.

The social, cultural, and psychological stigma of being members of the race that broke the world remained, and reigned supreme.

Thus the site, and fallout region, of their racial fall from grace was not something any, even the most wretched and profane, of the dwarf-folk could bear to approach.

The first settlers, or at least some of them, did have knowledge of something of the same nature to the pillar. An extensive amount of it even.

Again, it really was an understandable mistake for why they failed to deduce the connection.

After all, everyone knew that dungeon cores were small. Most commonly barely bigger than an average sophont’s knucklebone. While there were several bigger, no one had ever heard of a dungeon core bigger than a fist-and-a-half.

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A ten and however much more was buried - only three and three quarters extra feet if you really must know - by four and a half feet tall pillar of a core was quite literally inconceivable for any denizen of Eise.

Especially since the pillar was so gosh-dang inert. All it did was passively stabilize and pacify the arcane currents in the given area surrounding it.

Everyone knew that the one thing the dungeon cores were not was impassive.

As was so often the case with what ‘everyone knew’, it was a complete and utter load of bovine excrement that someone molded into vague shapes based on a load of unsubstantiated inferences and highly biased assumptions, and then started shouting to the world loud and long enough.

Something like 93% of the shards of the ancient crystalline formation that the ancient dwarves had named Zakkrrah - The hearth of the mountain, were indeed completely and utterly dormant.

Not that anyone but an omniscient narrator or someone receiving information directly from the system could have known that bit of trivia.

London felt somehow cheated.

Somewhere in the back of their subconscious, there was a sickly kid that had found escape from the shackles of their frail body vial living vicariously through heroes and heroines of mass media, especially that of the fantastical kind. Thus they’d expected, at the very least, some kind of pizzazz, something flashy and magical and transcendental from learning how to open their senses to a new and magical world.

As was all so often in life, the reality was much more mundane and prosaic.

All it took, as it happened, was for them to mentally query for the system to open up their interface menu, which, while not exactly easy for a complete neophyte, was hardly all that difficult once one has already figured out which mental muscles needed flexing to interact with the system.

Status information

Personal controls

Magic controls

Influence

Communication

And apparently go to ‘Personal controls’ from there and follow up three more steps until they arrived at the option that would allow them to set up and enable their senses.

Or, in their specific case, since they were in something of a hurry, and since frankly London found dealing with the tedium of going from menu screen to menu scream boring and bothersome, let Arky just jump them straight to the options they wanted.

“So, any reason you couldn’t have done all of that already?”

> It has to do with how we as an existence are set-up. In the simplest possible terms, you have administrative access. I can neither open the personal interface nor finalize any decisions, those options lie solely under your purview. What I bring to the table is the ability to effectively multitask and interact with the system on an operational level, thus speeding up functions at a level that will never be available to you. I cannot do anything without your say-so but in return, you cannot operate at anything even approaching optimal efficiency without my aid. That is the dichotomy of our actuality.

“Hey, Arky, you don’t have to sell me on anything, I’ve already agreed to our partnership. So, I just confirm, and we are face to whatever the heck we have with the rest of the world?”

> My apologies Mal. I was not trying to ‘sell’ you on anything. I was merely attempting to offer clarifications. As for the sensory input, I have set up the options to a level I estimate just slightly beyond your comfort zone, but well within the tolerable parameters. Is that acceptable?

If they’d still had the capacity to do so, London would have scowled at the ‘beyond comfort zone’ part, but despite all the evidence to the contrary - which, now that they thought about it, did not, in fact, exist, score one for them! - they were fully smart enough to realize that Arky had set things up in that manner to help them acclimatize to the new circumstances as fast as possible. After all, no pain, no gain. Or something in that general mien.

Or, at the least, they chose to believe so. If there were some dark and suspicious lines of thought swimming in the darker parts of their consciousness, well, that was just the nature of the beast.

Show them a man - or, they guessed, an elf or dwarf, or orc, or whatever other fantasy races might occupy their new setting - without irrational paranoia, and they would show you a…

Hell, and damnation! They could not use unicorns as an example of something impossible and unachievable anymore!

On the plus side, they could probably spawn unicorns, so there was that.

>Mal is everything well? What do unicorns have to do with opening our awareness?

“Nothing, nothing. Sorry Arky, I’ve just gotten lost on a mental tangent. So, everything is set-up? Than engage!”

>... Acknowledged.

There was no transition.

One instant, there was nothing but the void, the system screen, and Arky’s mental presence.

The next, they were almost overwhelmed by the sensation of weak sun rays hitting their surface, and going deeper, reflecting, refracting and refocusing in a zillion different strands.

By the sense of rocks, big and small, grains of sand, and some kind of flour, by the grasses, and mosses and ferns and fungi, by the roughly hewn rocks and planks, by the few bits of metal, and leather and fabric, and… and… Hell, there was so much stuff and material it would take hours just to find and note everything.

By the sound and images of a large crowd - over three hundred - of pointy-eared beings of all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages, all clamoring and murmuring and susurring around the clearing right in front of their crystalline spire of body, and the five other people there.

There was a bear of a… whatever he was - tall, exceedingly broad-shouldered, tawny skinned, and with wild white hair sticking up in a slicked and greased mohawk, waving a spear that was at least nine feet long from tip to bottom, on one side of her.

Across from him, was another tall individual, significantly shorter than their apparent adversary, but still easily amongst the tallest people around, and where the hulk with the spear was almost grotesque with the size of their bulging muscles, this one was sculpted like an adonis. All whipcord sinew and taut muscles in perfect proportions, moving sensually beneath their teak brown skin. And their... his - London was pretty sure a beard and mustache were indications of masculinity - facial features were just as gorgeous. Their glossy blue-black hair was gathered at the nape, into a shortish tail, thin, firm mouth was encircled by a slightly mussed van dyke of the same color and glossiness, and their eyes were a blazing hawkish yellow. The only imperfect feature was his crooked nose, obvioulsy broken at some time past, and imperfectly set, but even that only gave him an air of intriguing roguishness and danger. He was armed with a much shorter spear in one arm, a leather and wood targe on the other, and a Quiverfull of other short spears strapped at his hip.

In between the two obvious combatants were the other three.

Facing London and Arky was a… Well, a Gandalf.

Well, not Gandalf. The gray pilgrim would never let himself go that much. This was more of a Radagast.

An ancient wizard in any case.

His white hair and beard went all the way down to his knees, although the top of his head was bald as an egg, and his ears were notably longer and pointier than those of everyone else… No, actually, there were a few folks with equally long, or pointy ears in the crowd, but none that London could detect whose were both.

And he was obviously a wizard since he held up one of the remaining two figures - both female - spread eagle in the air, by pointing a long and gnarled staff at her.

The other one was exchanging worried looks at the suspended one and glaring in impotent fury at the old guy.

As for the remaining two, they were backed up, almost to the pillar, and were the very picture of a fantasy artist’s depiction of elven maids.

The two of them looked so much alike - and wasn’t a simultaneous 360-degree vision upon every axle a new and unique experience - that they had to be closely related.

Both were perfectly lithe and slim, with an inherent elegance to their baring that was present even in their current, less than dignified, situation.

Their eyes were the purest icy blue, fierce with the furry they were both casting upon the old man… Elf… Wizard…

And their hair, ye gads.

While not as long as the wizards - whose was, after all - it was still impressively long, and even more impressively styled with series of thin, tight braids radiating around their scalps for a few inches before exploding back into thick manes held in places by beads and other small ornaments.

What was the most impressive thing about the hair, though was it’s peculiar shading. The… girl… the one magically held up by the wizard felt younger, more callow, to London though it really was difficult to say for certain. The fact that the other one was just ever so slightly curvier seemed to indicate she was older.

Anyway, the probably younger one, had a stripe of wine-red hair going from the top of her head to the hairline above her left eye, that gradually shaded ever so darker the further it progressed away, until it became so dark it was almost black.

Her elder sported auburn stripe that went from her temples and across the very top of her head and strawberry-blond locks everywhere else.

“So, what do we have here Arky? And what species even are all these folk? Almost no three of them look like they came from the same mold.”

> Of the 381 persons here present, 16 are full-blooded elves, that includes Einya and Fenna, the two sisters immediately in front of us, 23 individuals who are of elven descent, but too far mutated by the wild magic, to be considered any particular species, Jaes, the hulk and Sevron who is also the town headman, the one you have been referring to as the wizard, are among that number; all the rest are a melange of mutated elven and elven-half-breed descent. I will go more in the circumstances beyond that later, at our leisure. Right now, the situation that is unfolding before us goas thus: Einya, the elder of the two sisters has had, at various points in time, flirted and hung out with both Jaes, who is the mightiest warrior here, and Itasku, that is the guy with shield and javelins, who is the best hunter, and extracted various favors and gifts from them. In the vernacular you are familiar with, she was ‘stringing them along’, though honesty does compel me to note that she has never actually ever promised either of them anything she did not deliver. Itasky, who has something of an inflated sense of self, due to his status as the best hunter and the handsomest male, decided to press his suit, to which Jaes who was with Einya at the time took offense to that and claimed that Einya was ‘his girl’. Einya tried to de-escalate, but as neither was listening to her she has quite savagely rebuffed them both, which naturally enraged both of them. Enter Fenna who decided to ‘save’ her sister by blasting them with magic. Fenna has nowhere near as much control as she likes to think she does, and her wildly flung spell almost caused a significant amount of damage to both of the would-be suitors, and a number of onlookers who were gathering due to the commotion. It would have, had the headman Sevron not arrived in time to dispel it. You need to understand that we and this town are located in the most inhospitable area on the planet, and the best warrior and the best hunter are much more important to the survival and the wellbeing of the entire population than either of the sisters or at least that is what Severon stated. Also, from his point of view, the one most in the wrong is Fenna, for her irresponsible and outright dangerous usage of magic, and striking the first blow. So, his solution to the entire problem is to force Einya to chose one or the other, and he is threatening Fenna’s life if Einya refuses to comply. It is not a bluff either.

“Ach, fock me sideways, through the eye of a needle and up the goddamn periscope. This is shit straight out of some hack's script for a soap opera…”