Where Dream meets Reality...
My kingdom was expanding.
I had two thoughtstreams going full bore, the benefits of a 30 Intellect (28, actually). One did all my normal stuff, and the other was managing the information stream from all those Marks.
In particular, I had asked for and was monitoring the visual input from all the scouts, moving in all directions. In doing so, I was synthesizing their Lived-Lines into my own.
I had a Map below me in the Markspace, a track and chart of where I had been since I woke up on that cold and lonely mountainside. It laid out with great precision exactly where I had been and traveled, every inch and step accounted for, a Map of marvelous precision that couldn’t be matched by a cartographer.
Unfortunately, it only tracked where I had been, what I had seen. I had very good estimates on distances, and so I could place mountains and hills, rivers and valleys, forests and clearings, all relative to where I had been.
But, for all the fact that I was such a lethal being, I hadn’t actually BEEN anywhere of note. My ersatz progress through the forest after the Valley of the Hags was meticulous, to be sure, but it had a lot of hollow areas around it where I hadn’t been, and the area to the North was just a big expanse of nothing.
So, it was time to start pooling our knowledge.
-This is Sama talking. We’re going to hold a group meeting here in the morning in just a minute. If you can arrange to take a break from whatever you are doing at that time, we’ll get started then. It will only take a few minutes, telepathy goes much, much faster than jaw-jabbering.-
The omni-cast went out, and everyone that was Marked heard it.
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Creeping through the light of dawn, the hunter hissed despite himself, dropping the bow he was holding onto as he clutched his hand, while those words, that voice, echoed in his head. The rabbit he was stalking bounded away, but he didn’t care, as something hissed on the back of his hand, a symbol from a distant, dream-like memory congealed and sank into his skin.
A Mark that had been carved upon his soul.
“Sage Sama!” he blurted out in shock.
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Captain Anton Markov had had an illustrious career. He had purchased his officer’s ranking young, and proven himself time and again on the borders with the orcs and other feral races.
His brilliance with a spear was unmatched, he commanded his men with the air and experience of a warrior who’d seen a thousand battles, and his tactics were both inspired and instinctive. He demanded utmost discipline from his men, and paid it back with victory after victory, standing firm where other officers fell, having an ability to read and respond to the battlefield that officers decades his senior could not grasp.
The cup of water fell from his hand as that voice from his dreams stole through his mind, as calm and fearless as he had ever imagined.
It had been a long time since he dreamt of that voice and its owner, of doing battle against countless foes, of valiant death in battle. Those endless dreams had driven him to where he was today, none of the horrors he had faced ever matching what he had done battle against before.
“S-Sage Sama?!” he called out in shock, tearing off the gauntlet he’d put on his right hand a moment ago.
Three Marks, harsh black figures limned and centered with white, waited on his strong right arm.
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Knight-Captain Boryars slowly lifted the edge of the stiff leather undergarment on his chest, pulling it back up over his head as his squire watched in disbelief. The grim Captain strode over to the mirror in his tent, and stared at the Marks emblazoned up the center of his torso.
“Gut, gullet, and heart,” he whispered, remembering those words as these things had been emblazoned on him in a distant dream. “Sage Sama!”
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-Sage Sama!-
-Sage Sama!!-
-Sage Sama!!!-
My mindscape thundered as literally thousands of voices all rang out at once.
And I recognized all of them. How could I not?
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
I had Marked every one of them. I had fought beside them in thousands of battles. I had watched them die, and watched them come back over and over again, to fight for me once more.
Of course I knew them all...
-What did I tell you about all trying to talk to me at once?- I /replied to all of them calmly, and the giddy excitement faded into an awkward, enthusiastic quiet, brimming out there in thousands of minds across who knows how many miles, all utterly shocked at hearing my voice, and yet, there I was, as unflappable as ever.
None of them were around, so they couldn’t see the tears that were brimming in my eyes.
-In ten minutes I’ll be briefing everyone. So, get to a quiet place if you want to listen in and not be distracted like an idiot.-
I could feel a LOT of activity out there, even as I looked at all the lights that had suddenly popped up around me, and I began to shift them.
By weapon, by company, by platoon, the officer’s channel… I set up the chatboxes in my head exactly as I had before.
Only now, there was no half-minded wisps of personality on the other end. There were real, living people, their Marks powered by the Real Karma made fighting against real evils in their dreams, from anywhere and everywhere it was easy to harvest them.
I had stuck the Marks to their Dreams, and they had carried into the real world. How about that?
I glanced over at Briggs and Estemar, who were packing up Forge and looking a little confused at what I was saying.
“Oh, you two are NEVER going to guess what just happened…”
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-This is Sama. Shut up.-
All the conversations surging on the backchannels went absolutely quiet. Men and women who had never met one another in real life were conversing across thousands of miles about shared dreams, the Marks they were bearing, and who they actually were and what and where and why and how and did they remember…
They went absolutely quiet. Why? Because Charisma 30, Intellect 31, and Wisdom 34 completely swamped every single one of them in every category, and that included the Void Brothers.
-This is an omnicast going out to every individual who has agreed to be Marked. The purpose of this briefing is information consolidation regarding our goal of closing the Rift opened by the Warp Gods in the area north and east of my current location.-
Everyone’s eyes opened up on The Map I had drawn. It was meticulous, detailed, and anyone focusing on any of the indicated points showed locations, details about those locations, who was there and with what forces, and the like. Much hazier, off to the northwest was ‘Dwarven Kingdom of Klintskun’, and to the south was ‘Elves in the Sidhete’, ‘Feral races’ to the east, and a total blank blob of ‘human empire of Rosencruz’ to the utter south.
-As you can see, I’ve not been out of Nightmare very long, and my personal mapping has been erratic at best. We need our Map filled in. I never undertook such a project in Nightmare, because it was useless, to say the least.
-Here, you can see that I have been extending The Map with the aid of numerous scouts and Rangers, who have already located several more of the warbands that are our targets.- Their positions held shifting markers of angry red, volatile and easy to see.
-In the interest of creating greater support lines, pathing, and coordination among all forces, I need this Map filled in. So, I am requesting that those who have traveled these lands, especially the unclaimed ones to the North, input their knowledge and fill out The Map.
-Everyone who is Marked will have access to The Map. The purpose of this meeting is to Make The Map. Sapients, if you please.-
There was a pause, and then The Map began to flower.
The Borderguards, scouts, and Rangers all bent their attention to common points, and found their focus sharpening like knives, their personal recollections so clear they were almost present there once again. The blurred landscapes began to grow, sharpen, lengthen, and spread out in all directions as a collective tens of thousands of years of experience filled everything in with incredible detail.
As recollections overlapped, they linked up, resolved into greater accuracy, and sharpened The Map further.
The Map into the North blew into existence. Personal travels stamped onto The Map, racing back and forth across it and filling in blank areas, reaching out, out, out…
The forest itself exploded in depth. Little Mikle, toting a Strength Tat proudly, proved to be incredibly informative about a great many things, and his startling revelations were expanded on rapidly by the elven foresters. The whole of the Sidhete began to ripple and clarify, like a blurry image coming into focus, laying on roads, cities, villages, tribes, and clans in parts of the forest others had not known of, the boundaries of the whole kingdom of the Fey laid out in stark detail there in the depths of the forest and bordering hills, extending down towards the Empire of Rosencrux with incredible speed.
The travels of the Void Brothers in particular were all over the place, especially Brother Shadowknife. His incredibly precise recollections were shooting all over The Map, here and there, setting times and distances and positions of this landmark and that. Dark corners that others didn’t want to venture into formed in every direction, lengthening The Map prodigiously, extending it far beyond the reaches and knowledge of the common person beholding The Map.
I could hear people gasping, as it grew, and grew, and grew…
My Dream-Marked were scattered all over the place. But as The Map grew, down into and through the Five Kingdoms of the Rosencrux Empire, they began to pop up, add in their own travels, greater detail, the lights of their presences on The Map winking on, washing this way and that across the continent. They reached the great Ocean to the south, spread out in tendrils of travels to the east and the west, kingdoms of humans and other races rippling into being as the travels of the Marked connected up to the greater Map. It still left tons of holes and empty places, but thousands of lights were shining as my people indicated where they were on The Map.
Population numbers, cultural biases, races, technology level filled in automatically by the observations of those involved, resources they dealt in, economic powers and routes of travel. It was all there, available at just a glance.
And it could all be updated in real time. The fighting men didn’t miss the implications, and neither did my Marked involved in more mercantile pursuits.
Cities and realms many people had only heard of in tales were there, laid out with incredible precision. It was a map spanning thousands of miles, even reaching down into the ancient and corrupt kingdoms to the south, while vague measures of even older lands across the seas shifted out there with no hard reality to back them, only names and glimpses of people from far places.
Everyone just waited, staring at The Map. It was so big, extending everywhere, covering so much, so close, so intimate, and yet so grand...