Perth was a mining center and shipping port, and its relations with the native tribes wasn’t actually all that much better than the other colonial cities of Australia, especially with how mining tailings polluted the Land, and how the miners were tearing it up with wanton disregard for the ecology.
However, the arrival of the Buddhist Mantra had at least been enough to warrant a cease-fire, as the brainwashing and mind control of the Mantra was a horrifically effective threat that could potentially work on anyone... and the natives certainly weren’t immune to it, as quite a few had been caught up in the Mantra’s power.
Again, I had to stay for two days total, both to clean up this nasty mess, light some vivic fires to eat the Qi hotspots in the city, and wait for the important people to gather so I could talk to them about vivus, the Helix Method, their need to Level, and very importantly the Sydney Shroudzone and the implications if the Mother Land woke up before it was fixed.
There was also some major fallout with the current administration, which had been dominated by merchants and crafters of Trose and Forj. They actually hadn’t minded the rise of the Mantra folk, right up until the Priests of their Faiths, and all the other ones too, were converted or ganked. Having people who labored happily and mindlessly had gotten a lot of work done without them having to spend more money, and they’d been very happy with the Mantra up until then.
They didn’t have much profit once they were dead and their workforce had taken over, which had curtailed a lot of production. The Druids probably wouldn’t have minded that all that much... if the Buddhists hadn’t been forcibly indoctrinating their people, too, and even the Druids eventually realized the Mantra simply wasn’t going to stop.
Common cause makes for strange bedfellows.
The Druids by now had heard of what I had done in the east and the north, and some of them were actually eager to meet with me. They Treejumped and Wildshaped into birds to wing their way to Perth to meet me urgently, not wanting to miss out on what I was bringing.
I basically mass recruited all of them when I shared a Commune with Nature with them, and they finally got to feel the sleeping awareness of the continent directly, and how very, very small they were.
It also very clearly showcased that I knew Druidic magic, and I was much, much better at it than they were. Funny how that browbeats people who respect strength into line, and inspires others to want to get stronger, once they know what it entails. The simple idea of being able to Commune with the spirit of an entire continent had their eyes lighting up.
What next? The oceans? The very world itself?!
There was still bad blood, there were still conflicts, but the whole idea of owning property was turned on its head when you realized that property owned YOU... and it was probably going to get rid of you as anti-productive if you didn’t prove your worth. Oh, did that make a lot of people grimace when the tables were turned...
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They were happy, sad, and angry to see me go, but that was par for the course. There were going to be some big changes coming, and some of the Priests of Heaven were coming to help mediate and figure out a new way of doing things. Taking responsibility for their actions instead of just making money and leaving someone else to clean up the mess was really a hard pill for a bunch of capitalists to swallow, but all they had to do was remember that vast, sleeping entity who they were giving a deep rash to, and they swallowed their pride.
We roared out of the harbor, heading around counter-clockwise to complete the circumnavigation of the continent. I inquired if Master Fred and Sleipner wanted to Waterjump back to the north, and proceed across the sea from there, or make an overland run across Australia instead.
There was no intact road across the continent, chopped up by the Druids some time ago, so going overland while retaining a Lived-Line was going to take us at least a couple of days if the trail was still pretty clear, twice that or more if it was not. Australia was not a small place, and without a road, Sleipner’s land speed was as limited as any vehicle.
Warlock and unicorn debated the point, and expanded it out to some of the Allegiance members interested in such things. As I had alternate methods of travel available to me by also Treejumping, and could simply contact a local Druid or person to find a plant to exit from nearby, there was no immediate need for a Lived-Line lock, unless I wanted to bring large numbers of people with me.
It was something I could take care of in the future, so I demurred, and when we finally swung around the eastern corner of the continent and closed the Lived-Line, I Waterjumped us all the way back to north of Darwin. We fell into the sea, swirled along the edge of All Waters, and emerged in an erupting spray back in the Arafura Sea. We headed up to circle around Papua, the island which would be New Guinea back home.
The primary purpose here was to deliver copies of The Human Tongue to all the settlements, which would quickly help communication between them. Yes, it would inevitably destroy the hundreds or thousands of regional languages here, which was a sad thing I didn’t really much care about, in the end. The tales and culture would live on, but now they’d actually be able to talk to their neighbors.
There were problems with this, of course. One of them was the actions of the Japanese, stealing away some of the islander women for wives for their men. The second was the barbaric cultures from the inner areas of the island and the Native Spirits who responded to them, which didn’t help the tribal peace situation at all. Headhunting and tribal warfare were still a thing here, and with the Priests there to encourage it, raiding was still a common event in the interior, occasionally spilling out into the coasts.
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Shamans and barbaric Priests defending their ways of life (and their own positions) also held back a lot of technology and advancements.
The last factor was that there were Chinese Cultivators in several places, and they had to be purged violently. The natives didn’t like it at first, as the Cultivators did defend them against raiders from inland... at least until they realized it wasn’t the raiders killing their Powered, it was the Cultivators themselves...
The coastal communities had strong followings of Aru, if their Priests were still around, and both Amana and Flora, along with Niord. Western influence fell off rapidly as you went inland, however, and Shamans and Warlocks of native Place Spirits started becoming a lot more common.
But the Human language was literally infectious. Just coming into contact with someone speaking it would plant the seed. Even limited contact would start the process, and it would grow slowly over time, edging out other languages naturally, until people had to actually think and concentrate to speak any other language, Human becoming their ‘natural’ language despite what they had been born and raised with.
Importantly, I had the Lived-Line and Great Seal locations of these settlements. If they needed help against the shit from the sea or from inland, I could potentially get there to help from halfway across the world.
Blessings and some Bannersworn, and the Obelisks letting them link into the World Wide Internet, made that suddenly a lot easier. They would just have to protect them, and doubtless those things would become a primary target of any raiders who knew about them.
Still, just getting advice on how to defend their communities from the sea, and how to make basic fortifications, was an improvement, as was the ability to train their Powered properly.
They were also pretty enthusiastic about Forsaken. That they would get this knowledge before the tribes inland did would also be a long-term advantage.
I handled each stop as quickly and professionally as I could, and used the elders in each place to alert the next stop I was stopping in; could they gather a proper assembly of people so I wouldn’t waste time?...
The arrival of Sleipner coming in over the water so fast actually became something of a celebratory event. A motorcycle that could run over the water was something, seeing the spirit of the unicorn in the spray made a lot of eyes go wide, and Master Fred and I were naturally pretty eye-catching. The changes we were bringing for the express purpose of getting rid of the Shroud only helped.
That we went off violently on any Cultivators present absolutely mercilessly and then explained why meant we also got a tremendous amount of respect. Being able to teach literally thousands of people The Human Tongue at one time with illusions was also amazing to them.
Connecting to the world’s internet through the Obelisks also generated a lot of excitement.
The Churches of Heaven naturally loved all this. I was helping bind the people ever closer together, opening up chains of communication for them across the world. Secular corruption was one of the factors that was limiting the Papuans the most, and there were already servants of Harse, Scriba, and Bulwark making ready to go out here and shake out their governments and law enforcement.
Different cultures had different mores and customs, of course, placing certain things as more important than others, as all peoples had. The Churches of Harse had no problem with that at all; it merely needed to be put down into law. Abusing government and law enforcement positions and the power that came with them lit cold fires in such people. They had no problem helping govern sophisticated trading cultures, rural agrarian areas, or pre-techno cultures, and even if they wanted to uplift such cultures and advance them into the greater world, they wouldn’t abuse their positions to do so.
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We did arrive at a coastal community that was in the process of being attacked by Deep Ones, and massacred the lot of the things, much to the disbelief of all involved. That we didn’t take any compensation and left behind a couple Blessed and the Human Tongue was something that would only increase our reputation, and I was sure that it would be spreading out behind us.
Oceania had a lot of islands, and we certainly couldn’t hit them all without spending weeks out here, so the next leg of our journey was basically zigzagging between islands and settlements on them, dropping Obelisks and data as we did... and stumbling into Cultivator nest after nest and exterminating them.
Singapore had a full Daoist Dojo with thousands of students and adherents, and only a very skilled assortment of Wavebound and Landbound native to the city had delayed their takeover. They weren’t happy to find out they’d delayed too long when we arrived.
Slaughtering thousands of erstwhile citizens didn’t go over well, but staring at the evidence of Powered being killed and rendered down for pills did tend to take care of any hard feelings, while those who were friends with the Cultivators had some VERY hard questions to answer...
In the meantime, I was still Leveling sideways, taking those /5’s.
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I would like to say such things were only of minor significance, a slow build-up, but once again I was slightly surprised by something.
The two Levels that came as we finished Australia were Minstrel/5 (8) and Lore Theurge/5, which took Minstrel to (9). This got me Heartsong V’s, Extra Spells Known Theurgic and Feat-based, and three other Feats. One of the Feats was nothing but a showcase/impressive effect, the Footsteps of a Mage, which basically let me zip along without actually walking, just gliding right above the ground, pheer me.
Metamagic Song, Lyric Spell, and Improved Arcane Pool/4, using Arcane Pool with Minstrel Music uses, blindsided me. Metamagic Song allowed me to spend uses of Minstrel Heartsong music to power Metamagic... and it ignored the Metacap, just like... Duskstopping Spell...
Lyric Spell allowed me to Cast a spell by paying its Valence Cost in Minstrel Magic uses.
That basically formed a clear line of cause and effect equating those things to Ki Points, Arcana, and Burned Ring Valences. Suddenly, I had rechargeable uses of Minstrel Heartsong magic, as it went from being an x/day Class-based ability to another force inside my Arcane Pool!
Just like melding spells...
The ‘real’ effect of it wasn’t much for the moment, except that it allowed me to Meta spells I currently couldn’t, and simply recover the uses with more Shards, if applicable... or convert unwanted uses of, say, Undead Wild Shape, or Contagious Touch, into Pool points, and then into Heartsong, if I wished.
I had, of course, wondered if I had a true unlimited loop effect of mana. I could recharge or refill a Slot or Engram up to a IV with one ki, two ki if a V, and I could convert any Slot or Engram into full Valences to refill my Arcana. Spend one to get four, spend four to get sixteen... infinite mana loop! I only needed one ki and I would eventually be able to fill EVERYTHING... right?