I would like to say that I was having the time of my life.
Seriously, I would.
I had been blown into the Warp after it cracked the main line connecting it to reality. However, there was now a border there, and it had been crossed.
Forces of all nine Alignments were there on that Wall, little starpoints of interest, immovable, watching, waiting... and oh so slowly drawing off the powers and souls that belonged to them, bringing them back into Creation.
It probably wasn’t any faster than the Warp was accumulating power by psychic resonance and people dying and living, but what it meant was... the Warp would no longer grow in power.
That was not a small thing.
Neither was having all those horrifically powerful outside forces looking in on them. Yeah, mommy and daddy are watching you little fellows...
On top of that, things were coming in through that gaping weakness in the Veil. The Warp didn’t want the Veil intruding on it and subjecting it to Creation’s Laws, so the Veil wasn’t blocking as it might... and so things from Outside Creation were coming in, looking around, and finding new and fun things to explore. Given how they messed with Time, they were soon spread out over millennia, and really starting to mess things up.
After all, Yog-Sothoth was the Gate and the Key. What did he give a fig about Warp Gods? Although I think jRaztl and Nyarlothetep sat down and started playing six-dimensional chess with glee...
Whatever, lots of Elder Gods and Old Ones with interests here suddenly, their servant races with them, and their activities started to wake up a lot of other entities that were suppressed in the Warp.
The Big Four were certainly busy, weren’t they? Hee hee hee...
Me, I tumbled through that void of Eaten Warp/Serene Warp that had been sucked away by Creation, moving at the speed of plot; when I got there, I got there... and not incidentally I was digesting a Whole Lot of Karma in the meantime.
Very not incidentally. As in, I had no choice in the matter.
Yeah, cracking open a barred universe back into Creation done won me ALL Da Karma, thank you, and it was all freaking seething to be used. As a matter of fact, given how psychoactive the Warp was, I couldn’t actually stop it from going off on anything and everything it could.
I may have been somewhat overzealous in the past...
Few things magical were left on me. The Amulet with the connection to Mithar that Estemar had made for me, preserved only by His Grace, was one... and giving Him the werewithal to look around inside the Warp, and make some plans accordingly. He couldn’t Act, or it might trip a planet-wipe in reaction, but looking quietly from my viewpoint, who knew what the General of Gods could do? The Crawling Chaos didn’t like playing chess against Him, after all...
The second my hair. Yeah, I’d been working on my hair.
Last was Chalice, sitting there in bodyphase atop my heart. Mwahahahaha, I’d kept a Sword. It had been a good Call.
My connection with Markspace was gone, eroded away by universes streaming by in two directions, and a whole lot of hostile magical power and Rules. Expected, and while I really missed having a link to my homies, all ten thousand-plus of them, I finally had my head to myself for the first time in a subjective few years.
Given how many thought streams I had, I certainly wasn’t lonely. I could form my own little chorus line inside my head, and the arguments between myselves were hilarious.
But this place was psi-active, hugely responsive to sensitive differences, and was not liking my Tats and Soul Magic. Or should I say, it was liking them all too much.
Oops.
I had been very enthusiastic for that six months of power-leveling, grinding, and map-wiping back in Yle Tyorm. Everything there was going to die, and if it wasn’t going to die, it deserved to die. As a result, I seldom had a problem killing most of the stuff there, and as for the innocent, well, they had passed when Time had reclaimed and reallocated itself everywhere, consigning the living back to Dream, or to getting reborn elsewhere, elsewhen.
Being the opportunist I was, I’d Templated a lot of creatures into my Marks, for use with the shape-changing Set Power I got from having the three Physical Marks and Investing lots of Karma. Now, that power technically wasn’t able to morph into anything that wasn’t basically humanoid, but the key part was that it formed the foundation for taking Racial Levels in said creatures, and maaaaaaybe being able to acquire some of their Stats and passive magical abilities.
I had not been intending to take those Racial Levels. I’d been hoping to finish out the Racial Levels that I had started, and then shoot them all done and through, letting me end up with my Seventeen in Succubus, a full Lillitu buy-up, and then take my ExLite Elixir to cap everything.
Unfortunately for me, this weird ass magic/psi combo thing they had working here started invading my Marks through my Soul Tats, which meant I needed to make some adjustments, and all that Karma started coming in right along with them.
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Yeah, it started taking ALL the Racial Levels. Holy shiznit, Batman!
So, here I am, drifting through the void, time passing, ruminating on how long it's going to take me to get to solid ground ahead, and in the meanwhile, oh, is my body changing...
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have fed a marilith to my Tats. I swear, I wasn’t planning on taking those Levels.
Or those medusas. Or the sirines or nerieds or harpies or mermaids or mereids or various female Jotuns or Hellmaidens or alu’ri or tieflings or shapeshifted creatures or whatnot. I was NOT taking those Racial Levels.
Well, yeah, I was, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. All this Karma wanted somewhere to go, and it went there.
I began to grow in a whole lot of ways. Tumbling through one of the streams of psyches, souls, and emotional energies the size of continents and planets streaming past to those many stars in their watching pattern behind me, I was like a vortex, power drawn by Karma getting quietly sucked into me and building there while I crossed the interminable distance, certainly not going to do anything until whatever was going to get done was done.
The weird thing was, these Levels weren’t coming like I normally took Levels. I watched and analyzed the pattern, to see what was going on. I could definitely feel the Level indicators going off, that rush of completion to body and soul, but they weren’t happening quite the way they used to. Sort of... backwards?
What I was used to was Level Rewards. I acquired enough Karma to make a Level, and then all the corresponding stuff gushed out and I got it immediately. What got better got better, and if it happened to overlap with some other Level, welp, that was just wasted Karma, on to the next Level!
That wasn’t happening. What was going on were limited, incremental improvements, both Class and Racial, and they weren’t overlapping.
They were stacking, or they weren’t happening at all? That was more akin to a levelless, career-change system, where you spent until you maxed out a certain job or career or other classification, and then you switched to another. You didn’t get a Hit Die for Soak or Health, you got a potential new ceiling, like +10 Hit Points, and you had to buy the Hit Points individually.
It was far more Karmically Efficient, but it was also slower, if you had a lot of things to do, especially if they were small improvements that things like Levels normally awarded as a bunch at once...
Like Health, Soak, PP, Skill Points, and Caster Slots...
If what I thought was happening was true, this whole process could take years, because I was going to be eligible for a simply titanic amount of some stuff, especially Null Caster Slots. Good thing I didn’t really have any impression of time passing here, although I could count off the Renewals passing...
One of the reasons I had not cared about Nogging away my Caster Slots in return for permanent quasi-magical effects is because the amount of Bonus Spell Points I was going to have with my Constitution was just so ridiculous. I mean, come on, my Con score was north of 80 right now. That was a +35 bonus. Going from 80 to 82 meant I got a Level 36, 32, 28, 24, 20,16,12, 8, and 4 bonus spell, as long as I took the Expanded Spell Capacity for them to apply. And why wouldn’t I do that? That was 200 Valences! For two points of Con!
So of course I would take them... and right now, I was being forced to do so.
Is this what apotheosis felt like? I felt like becoming divine or something should allow more choice in the matter. Had I screwed myself this damn bad?
Now, in the Power of Ten system, there were technically no spells past Valence V, sure. If you got past Ten, your Valences received a universal power-up every two Caster Levels, in effect raising I-V, to II-VI, and so forth, and you got to apply a free Meta to them to represent that.
Bonus Slots beyond V just became part of your spell pool, which you could use to Meta up some of the Spells you were Casting, straight up Cast other Spells from, and so forth. In other words, a classic mana pool free of the restrictions and benefits of Vancian Casting. Spells from Pool wouldn’t be as powerful as those Cast from Valences, but that was hardly an imposition...
---
As the days rolled past, I watched my Matrix building up, while changes to my body happened that very, very quickly took me way past anything that resembled a human, let alone a hagchild.
I was fairly sure this damn effect was working off anything I’d Templated, which could actually mean anything that I even ATE, if it came down to it, at least after the effect was active. I didn’t even want to think what that would mean for my genetics.
Maybe it was limited to sentients. Mithar, I’d nibbled on a cerebrovore, just to find out what it tasted like... and drank xenosym blood, just to see if I could (acid immunity, not a problem. Tasted like shit, of course). Of course there’d be no ill effects, surprise, surprise me...
Short form, I knew I was going to ramp up to Seventeen Hit Dice on the Racial Side, finishing out Succubus as a lilitu murder queen... without giving up any of the lilithi stuff, which I also acquired.
I’d Templated a lot of dark elves, figuring it might be useful in the future. Elven Hit Die come with 2/3 Caster advancement, usually arcane. Lilithi advancement comes with Favored Levels. Ghaele Arhen advancement comes with Cleric Levels. Nymph advancement comes with Druid Levels.
Null Druid Levels are a Con-based Caster Effect; we accumulate energy like capacitors, and can’t do anything with it but Nog it away, or lend it to a Bound Spellcaster. Also, we recharge it by taking Con damage, converting life energy into Valences, a completely closed system, pure mana untouched by anything external.
Like how this mana around me was contaminated by psychic roll-out from the Warp. Any mortal using this shit was basically doomed. There wouldn’t be any normal wizardry developed in a place like this, only Sorcery with a bloodline from the Warp, and Damnation soon to follow.
The Elf Level was Arcane energy, which slotted to Intelligence. Cleric slotted to Wisdom, and Favored to Charisma. They all used the same Matrix, the spells within just enriching in quality of mana, so a Caster of any of those Classes could use them.
Was that Heartsong in there? Dammit, I had Null Bard? When had that... ah, those bloody Fallen Lillends in that Fey Court... Mithar...
All these Slots were opening, the spell pool was growing. I did my part, dutifully taking the Con damage, converting each point into mana, filling Pool and Valences. I could mend 36 or so points of ability damage a day, each point was 36 points of mana...
When it got done, it took me near a week to fill everything. The Pool alone was nearly five thousand, almost half just from my Con bonus. Valence Slots were something like 46/43/43/43/40, and all the Valence Slots above that broke down into +4,905 mana.
That was a simply stupefying amount of spellcasting. Sama the mana battery, here to save you. I could break the Caster requirement for Spell Slots simply because I didn’t have any Caster Level to start with.
I think a Caster seeing my Null Matrix would blow his effing mind. Just what in the heck good was all this power being accumulated for? It just looked like a total waste of Karma to me... which was probably the point.
I’d rather have made Twenty or higher...