The Sage Ghouls were de-lighted to learn that we’d taken out their colleagues and ‘liberated’ Navar Nevrend. Looting would commence henceforth, and they were definitely itching to get their flesh-ripping nails on all sorts of things.

That was a slow process, of course, since we weren’t exactly assigning thousands of people there like we needed to in order to get the project done as quickly as possible. That was mainly because of the total tedium of having to rise up through the Great Pit from under the Strata after the sun rose, and head back down there before it set.

The reason for that was the literal millions of incorporeals who came swarming down to investigate, as quickly as they could make it down through ten miles of stone to get there.

Safely hidden and Warded up against all their senses, I watched them all arrive, ignoring the twitch of my fingers demanding that I Kill Them All. That would happen, just not yet.

In the meantime, they were going to find nothing but the Great Pit going on down past their twenty-mile limit, and they couldn’t do shit about it. The looters were well below, resting in the still-burning corpse of the krovboynyar city of Peh’Ket, whose name translated as something like ‘I Eat All’, clearly somewhat mocking of the ghoulhold above which it had once thought itself greater than, and then found out otherwise.

Well, it was being eaten now, its City Spirit being devoured along with the negative energy and the destruction of its body and those that had inhabited it. The Warlocks could feel it raging and shouting in fear as it dissipated far more quickly than the millennia it had taken to rise, but the tunnels below it were being cleared and collapsed, layer by layer, and eventually all of it would be demolished all the way back to the Deep Sea, effectively becoming a small inlet where once a proud trading port had held itself here in the Strata Deep.

No sympathy from anyone. Maybe the dwarves and gnomes, if their populations grew too weighty, would choose to develop this place... but I could see little reason why, unless we emptied it of basically every other race living down here. They’d basically be setting themselves up as a slave source, meat market, and provider-of-bodies. Even as a base of operations, it was too far from any other raid target for physical travel.

No, the only goal was to loot, Itemize and Tapestry the stuff, and get it out of here. If something wanted to settle the place after we were done, they’d have to take into account that big pit going up into the ceiling only a dozen miles away, and the mystery of what had happened to the previous inhabitants here.

That being said, there was a lot of loot being taken away both lore-wise and goldweight-wise. Sacking a city had always been profitable historically, and it had definitely proved true in some respects here.

I zipped in to help with the looting after my Mapping was done, and if the incorps raged and gnashed their teeth that we were looting the place and stuff was vanishing, what were they going to do, move it themselves? Ghosts could futz around with stuff, but we’d grabbed the most valuable stuff first, and there was no hiding it from us.

I had work to do here, but the big looting stuff had to get done first, so I watched the days roll past, and the Shroud didn’t force me to gain the spare Masteries immediately, letting me clear my desired Nines first.

============

Before we get to the juicy stat lines...

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Warshaper/4. This finally got me a constant, mentally-directed Fast Healing as an extension of body control. It was a base 2 points, nice if not impressive, but boosted by Blood and Spirit to 4 points, which was much nicer. In addition, if I could make a Concentration check equal to my total Health damage and took a full six seconds, I could heal 10, er, 12 points instead, potentially getting healed up much more quickly if I had the time.

Tack on Healing Reserve, and I could repair my Health damage very quickly if I was conscious. I didn’t lose consciousness until -96 Health, when I died.

Now it was making me want some Regeneration, like Sama and Briggs had. Baby steps...

A Skill Focus on Natural Lore and a Mastery Advance of Extra Wildshape/1 (+2, +1 per extra Tier) rounded out the Advanced Class.

Grenadier/4 dropped some more bombs I could use, a bonus Bombs feat of Healing Bombs (did half damage, but all Healing), Purchased Feat of Skill Focus to Alchemy and a Mastery Advance of Better Bombs/1 (+1 Kicker damage per Tier) rounded that out.

Hierophant/3 and /4 followed over the next two days, as I watched frustrated incorporeals pour through the ribcage ceiling like spectral rain and immediately go racing around trying to find the lack of stragglers present. I departed before too long, but noted that while their irritation was high, three days of doing the same thing meant their diligence had gone down slightly...

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Hierophant/3 gave up five Spell Levels in my Spell Pool for Spell Potency +2, +2 to Save DC’s and Penetration of all my spells. I considered that an excellent deal. Hierophant/4 was Channeling Mastery, for +4 to Turning Undead checks, which had some interesting synergies with Silver Fire...

Purchased Feats were Skill Focus on Religious Lore, and Improved Power (Silver Magic), which added onto Silver Magic’s normal Dispelling Power with +4 Girding and +4 Spell Penetration vs Evil. It was circumstantial, but I didn’t like fighting Neutrals, anyways...

Now, the Purchased Masteries were interesting, as this Fury of the Zealot Mastery came out of nowhere, and I was definitely going to have to pass it on to Aelryinth. Normally this was a spell effect you had to invoke, but here it had become a Mastery...

Tier 1, your Alignment Effect Spells became Non-Aligned, as opposed to Opposite Aligned. In other words, Good spells hit the non-Good, as opposed to just the Evil, not sparing those in the middle... which meant they were now useful, instead of useless, against Neutrals.

Tier 2 extended this to Alignment Smites. So, Smite Evil could now Smite Neutrals, too. You might not think that important, until you realized that a rampaging dire bear was more dangerous to a Paladin then a Hellhound was, because he couldn’t Smite one to defend himself... nor, say, a Neutral Bounty Hunter assigned to get rid of him.

I approved heartily. Neutrals killing the Good was a thing I detested. No more invulnerability for not choosing a side!

Archmage/3 and /4 followed Hierophant. Scaling Spell Potency that matched the Spell Power buff meant I lost 7 Pool for another +2 Spell Potency, scaling to +3 for 9 total Valences whenever I finally reached and Burned the Ninth Ring. /4 gave Reach of 30’ automatically to all Touch Spells, turning them into Short Range spells. This wasn’t much until you considered that it stacked with Reach Spell, instantly turning all my Touch spells into Medium-range spells for no Valence cost, which was pretty huge.

If someone could get that at a reasonable Level, instead of a Faux Thirteen, Energy Grasp would be a murderously powerful single-target spell, quite exceeding Shards, even if it didn’t have the range... but you could Spellwarp it to give it that range, and Chain and Bursting could make it an AoE. Heh!

The Purchased Feats were Warded Soul, a Necromancy specialty that gave +4 to saves against necromancy and death effects; and Evoker Resistance, which gave -1/die of damage from all non-natural energy sources. So, it wouldn’t help against lava or a furnace, but it would against dragon breath or a Fireball...

The Mastery was the Arcane Spirit from Sorcerer/9, Tiers /2 and /3. A +3 fixed Kicker to all spell damage if I invested 3 ki... here, take my ki...

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December 13, 2019, I officially made Ten.

“...where rest the weary, and dream of the wind at dawn.”

The Dings seemed to roil through Markspace as I finally crystalized the way into Ten for all Halvyr along the road of a Double Helix... and to 14 Faux Sorcerer with it.

DING! DING! DING! DING!

Yeah, it was pretty happy. Power was swirling around me as I took all the rewards, watched some Karma drain away, didn’t miss it.

Making Ten, +1 to all Stats. Sustained Effort doubled that to +2.

Halvyr/4 ticked over, Atlantean Halvyr, and every Stat but Intellect went up by another two as my racial bloodline was purified and refined another stage. I might have allocated Karma to some Racial Levels, but I had not pushed any of those bars, and I didn’t plan on doing so unless I had to before I hit Fifteen at the least... and Twenty was preferable.

Halvyr/4 was actually a Template assigned to me, not an actual Level, so there was no additional Health or anything else, just the Stats. That was fine, as +2 to all Stats was plenty good.

Sorcerer/10, Skill Points, Soak from Hit Die, Favored Class, etc. +1 Caster Level, more Valences, more Spells Known.

Purchased Mastery, merely Arcane Spirit/4, +4 kicker damage to all Spells.

Purchased Feat: Awaken Second Bloodline!

From out of whirling, shining slurry of the Arcane Bloodline I’d forced upon myself, the influences of the Morningsun Phoenix Bloodline and the Shroud raised their heads. As they looked at one another and instantly started to break out into hostilities, I promptly spun them together in counterpoint to my Arcane Bloodline, not about to take any of that Dark-fighting-Light shit inside me and my Matrix.

Legion was present, as was Azaia, Commander Haru’Ara, the Angelos, and Windgraf Mochtal, and even Bey ‘Azzar had warily come out of his boudoir. Sama and Briggs had completed their runs early to traipse up here and watch. I wasn’t going to risk the rest of my family freaking out when what happened here happened.

The Dark Phoenix came screaming out of me in ecstasy, roiling cold black from the depths of the stars, lit up by hot, hot starfire accents. It was condensing all the benefits of the major Bloodlines I’d thrown away, as opposed to mixing them as the Arcane Bloodline had done. The sweep of flaming hot and cold wings swirled through my heart and blood, foci of the two Druidic Rituals I’d undergone, were definitely influencing things.

The Phoenix and Brightmoon bloodlines were light and fire. The Darkmoon and Shrouded Bloodlines were dark and cold.

I was both. Get over it.

Raging Elemental power built around me in the call to my Spell Power, burning and blazing up into the Haze here at the top of the world. The Haze peeled away in wary respect for what I was, and it didn’t come back immediately.

Burning phoenix wings, black as space and set with silvery moonfire, burned on my back and about my hair, counterpoint to the flames of a true Phoenix. I sat up there a hundred feet above the ground as a swirling whirlwind of starfire and moonfire cascaded around me in delight at what I had become, and magic thrummed and stirred and sang arcane symphonies upon the Sublime Chords of the world.

There had never, ever been a spellcaster like me upon this planet. For a moment, I had a touch upon Terrestrial Awareness, able to feel the magic over the whole planet... and for a moment, I could feel the Shroud itself, a cancer upon that magic, weighing down on it with the force of the billions of tormented souls inside it.

The mental Dings went off as the magic of the whole world acknowledged me, all the souls in the Shroud were my audience, and my Assay rendered it all down into comprehensive language as two new Titles descended.

Magos of the Blood: Double Arcane Traditions, double Bloodlines, gifts from Heaven and the Damned: You stand athwart the power of Magic on this world as has no other, and all Arcane Casters will follow in your path. +1 Spell Power.

Magos of Stars: Six Stars have actualized as you have reached Ten, setting the height for all who come after you. +1 Spell Power.