--- Cilia Ulein ---
Cilia's newest body was healthy, powerful and smart. It was better than any she had had in millennia, by virtually any metric she cared to name. She should be happy about this, and yet she had to suppress a shudder every time she thought of the body she now wore.
The man whose body she reincarnated into didn't care about the war. He had his own life, and goals he wanted to achieve. Normally, that would be all that mattered. It was one of her most deeply held principles that the current incarnation was in charge, and all older personalities should only provide guidance and make suggestions.
But her goal was simply too important. She could not just accept her death as a learning experience, as she usually did. Not this time. This time, she had to win at any cost. Even if it meant violating her own principles and assuming direct control.
Cilia felt terrible for what she had been forced to do, but there was no other choice.
She moved silently through the treetops, using both magic and skill to remain utterly undetected. She struck, and killed yet another one of the modified ravens that the Shans had spread throughout the forest as advance scouts, before it could take flight and report her presence. She and her team of elite assassins would reach the Shan encampment within the hour.
Her original plan had been miscalculated and ended in disaster and her death. But she had plenty of contingencies prepared in advance, and this minor setback would not stop her for long. She understood now what she had done wrong, and what she needed to do.
It was time to give the Heroes some more Tragic Backstory, and a Wakeup Call.
--- Rhovan, Priest of Kharn ---
"Explosion! Explosion! Explosion!" The junior priests kept chanting as the ritual built up power.
Even after all his decades of experience, Senior Priest Rhovan had to use all of his willpower to refrain from rolling his eyes at their immaturity.
They were conducting a large ritual, to beseech Kharn for aid through divine intervention. The ritual could be used to achieve any number of effects, and his fellow priests were of one mind in making their preferences known.
"Explosion! Explosion! Explosion!" They kept chanting.
When the envoy of House Ulein arrived with the funds and materials for a powerful ritual, he had been delighted. Even though Kharn was a god of war, Oruk insisted that his priesthood should not be involved in wars directly unless they were officially part of a military. Oruk was big on the separation of state and church, and he understood well the political forces behind that decision.
And yet he was unsurprised when the Ulein envoy presented him with a special dispensation to conduct a top secret mission on their behalf. Of course there would be exceptions to the rules, and of course he and his followers were important enough to receive just such an exception.
They were going to do their part and help fight back the Shan invaders!
They had many ways to contribute to the war effort. Kharn was a pragmatic god of war. His domain was immense, and his portfolio diverse. He could bless and strengthen his warriors. He could weaken the enemy in subtle ways. He could manipulate and misdirect. He could summon creatures. He could assassinate enemy leaders with a well-aimed lightning bolt.
And yet.
"Explosion! Explosion! Explosion!"
His fellow priests had a pretty clear and simple preference.
Kharn's followers could be roughly divided into two types of people: There were the fervent and fanatical ones, who were highly motivated and made good foot soldiers, and there were the calm and rational ones, who made good officers.
In Rhovan's opinion, far too many of the former managed to become priests.
"Explosion! Explosion! Explosion!" The chanting sped up, as the ritual reached a crescendo. The energy in the air was almost palpable now.
He continued to lead the ritual without letting on how much the chanting annoyed him. There were some benefits to explosions. Sometimes the simplest solution was the best one. But the advantages were not nearly enough to justify getting this worked up about it. It was just unprofessional.
And yet, it had been his decision to approve of the plan. As the head priest, he could have vetoed it, and asked Kharn for a more efficient form of divine intervention instead. But the others were very emotionally invested in explosions, and he had to acknowledge this as a valid argument in their favor.
Simply put, explosions were great for marketing. They brought in recruits, and that made up for their relative loss in efficiency compared to other, less visually impressive forms of divine intervention. Kharn was a pragmatic god of war, and propaganda was a valid aspect of warfare. Once this mission was declassified, news of their amazing contributions to the war effort would spread quickly and persuade many more people to pray to Kharn.
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"EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION!" They chanted.
They were nearing the climax of the ritual and the air was thick with latent energies, ready to be unleashed. He subtly cast a spell to enhance his voice, and shouted:
"EXPLOSION!!!"
The ritual finished, and all the power that had been building up abruptly vanished.
In the distance, they could see a small pinprick of light in the sky, getting brighter.
--- Kharn, aspect of Divinity ---
The gods did not think like people. They did not even have conscious experience in the way that humanoids understood it. They were just aspects of Divinity's madness after all, and not discrete entities of their own. But when Denissa Mardok would read the heavily modified transcripts some time later, they would look something like this:
"Boy, there sure are a lot of people asking me to EXPLODE things right now!" Kharn thought. "They know me so well! I'm always looking for a reason to SMITE things, and EXPLOSIONS are my favorite kind of SMITING. They are all pointing at the same target too, so that must mean that it's totally fine if I SMITE that, right? No hard feelings by anyone if I do?"
The other voices of Divinity were silent. Most of Divinity was asleep right now, including the smarter parts of Kharn himself. None of the awake voices objected to his plan.
"Sweet! I get to SMITE someone with an EXPLOSION! Today is a good day!"
He prepared to smite the target that so many of his followers were pointing out to him, but then he hesitated.
"...wait. What's that?" He wondered, as he noticed something odd in another part of Divinity. "An open quest? Smite that person over there for five hundred achievement points? That's a lot of points!"
Kharn did not really know what quests or achievement points were, or why they should matter for anything or anyone. But Divinity was insane, and it was trained on the internet, and it had internalized the general idea that "making the numbers go up" was a good thing.
If Divinity was a proper AI or a rational agent, one might say that Denissa Mardok's hacking had modified its utility function, and increased the utility scores assigned to her preferred outcome. But Divinity was the furthest thing from a rational agent, and her hacking was really more like waving a fancy new pay-to-win game in the face of a hopeless video game addict, in the hopes of making a quick buck. Rational behavior had nothing to do with this.
"Hm. The target of that quest is pretty close to the people my Followers want me to smite." He thought. "They pretty clearly don't mean it though. Their prayers are pretty precise about whom they want me to EXPLODE. I’m not sure if I could plausibly pretend to have misheard that. But on the other hand. Five hundred achievement points. Wow. So many points."
"I would rather you didn't do that." Brytius suddenly spoke up. "I like that one. Please don’t smite her." The god of growth was not very lucid right now. Enough to talk and to answer minor prayers, but not more than that. The different personalities within Divinity waxed and waned more or less at random, and right now Brytius was not powerful enough to countermand Kharn if he insisted.
Kharn wanted to do what his Followers asked of him, and he didn't want to make the other gods mad, either. But he also really wanted to see all of his numbers go up.
He pondered the conundrum for all of a femtosecond.
"Screw it. I'm getting those points. My followers will just have to deal."
His decision made, it was time for him to perform his primary function. To enact vast changes upon the world and twist reality itself, through the most ingenious and honorable method: By acting cute and adorable towards someone vastly more powerful, and politely but insistently asking for a favor.
"Hey, spirits! Can you please EXPLODE that guy over there? Pretty please with sugar on top?"
--- Cilia Ulein ---
Huh? Did it just get brighter?
Cilia had just a fraction of a second to wonder where that sudden bright light was coming from.
Then she never wondered anything again.
--- Rhovan, Priest of Kharn ---
"Awesome!" Shouted one of the priests as they all stared at the enormous pillar of flame in the distance.
"So cool!" Added another.
They were all cheering, and opening bottles of beer to celebrate a job well done.
Rhovan had to admit, it did look pretty impressive. He had hired some reporters ahead of time to take recordings of this, and he was really looking forward to seeing the pictures. They would make for excellent propaganda material. In his estimation, they would get easily over a hundred new recruits from circulating those pictures. It would all be worth the annoying chanting, after all.
"Wait. Isn't that pillar of flame quite a bit further away than it should be?" One of the priests asked, while eating popcorn.
Huh. Now that he thought about it, it did look a bit off. He looked over to his aides, and noticed that they were looking pretty nervous.
"Sir, it appears that the strike was off target. It hit roughly five kilometers to the East of the enemy encampment."
A murmur went through the ranks of the assembled priests.
"Does that mean we just wasted all of our efforts and hit the wrong target?" One of the priests asked.
"Explosion?" Another one asked incredulously.
This did not look good, but Rhovan was well-practiced in salvaging military mishaps. His first priority: Exude confidence and keep up morale, so that people would follow once he actually had a plan. He trusted that his subordinates were already working on one.
He moved his hands in a grand gesture and swirled his cloak to draw everyone's attention. Then he intoned in his most reassuring voice:
"It is all according to plan. Kharn moves in mysterious ways."
--- Lilian Weaver ---
Lilian felt a disturbance in the narrative.
It was like a pit had suddenly opened in her stomach, and she felt like she needed to retch. Then, as quickly as it appeared, the feeling subsided.
She knew in her bones that a deeply anticlimactic event had just transpired somewhere.
As if a major character had been killed off screen, and an important plotline had been cut off for no reason.
She could not explain how she knew, but after all her many decades of experience, she had developed a sixth sense for these kinds of things.
She hadn't prayed in a long time, because her relationship with Tonos was best described as a complicated love / hate kind of thing. She hated all the pressure and her frequent loss of control over her own life, but she also appreciated all the many perks she received by meeting interesting people and getting to influence important events.
She was Tonos' chosen, but she was not a priestess of his. This gave her a rather unique connection to the god.
After that horrible feeling of narrative wrongness, she knew that Tonos needed her right now, and so she sat down to pray.
"Tonos, are you ok? I know we aren't on the best of terms, but I'm there for you if you need to talk."
She heard faint sounds of sobbing in response.