Chương 199: BECMI Chapter 198 – Spreading out the Power

"You indicated the Black Wolf Baron is the power behind the Iron Chain," I mentioned to Sir Horn, Lord Horn now, and he was definitely considering the idea of giving himself a title by conquest, openly taking over the city of Culm. That would also mean taking over Tribanks Keep, the prison and salt mines nearby, and the ore traffic coming down the Ulesos River.

Part of that would mean dealing with the lizardfolk who lived in the swamp to the east, as they were a clear threat to any barge traffic they didn't want coming through.

"Yes. He meets with their ship captains stopping in at Castle Doom," we both smirked at the utterly pretentious name, while outside Duum sniffed haughtily, "and sends his agents to meet with their officers inland. We've found quite a few cells of them in other cities of the land, and the Elb just love dealing with them." All thanks to the Hounds.

They were so much easier to insert into a community than random humans, and nobody looked twice at humans coming in having a dog or two with them, especially if they weren't fighting breeds that might threaten people or cause trouble.

"I understand Buck has made some contact with the hyn pirate clans that have connections in Sevens. Feeding them information on slaver ship movements should have a positive effect. But… they are pirate clans, and freeing slaves is a cost, not a profit. Even if they are less cruel than many, they still want to make money."

"Rewarding them for freeing slaves is logical, and at the same time gives them another golden goose to exploit. They might even start letting slavers go so they can catch them and milk them again," he sighed, nodding as he understood the viewpoint of what we would have to work with.

"We would need a dedicated privateer ship or fleet, paid to do nothing but sink slavers and free the slaves, wouldn't we?"

"Which would not be all that hard to staff, merely arranging the funding and support. It will also encourage the slavers to plant ships with false slaves to backstab and kill any liberators, or simply overwhelm them when attacked, much like they would other pirates."

"Ah, yes. A risk I'm sure that many would take, if they had been unjustly enslaved themselves. I'm sure there's no shortage of them among the pirate crews," he mused thoughtfully.

"Our contacts there would likely have to run through the criminal underground, however, and those pits of vipers are as responsible for the state of this country as the Siricilans," he stated grimly.

"Guy took it as his special job tracking all the different branches of the Masked Society and its families, many of which go right into some of the oldest and most famous noble houses of Hellena." He grimaced at the not-unexpected knowledge.

"They naturally don't see themselves as a problem, either, blaming everything on the Siricilans, and ignoring their own culpability in how matters came to be this way."

"To be fair, it's rather amazing the Siricilans left this land alone as long as they did," I said, and he could only nod his head in agreement.

"You are literally right next door to an Empire, the land was broken and warring all the time. I can only conclude that they didn't see much worth conquering here. Note how quickly they gave it up to the Archduke when he offered to move here. This land was far more trouble than it is worth." Sir Horn swirled his brandy.

"You are alluding to the fact that if I do manage to unite the country and throw out the Archduke, it might suddenly become a land worth having, and they will come in force to claim it," he conjectured.

"Yes. The Immortals love conflict, and Siricil is an empire that loves its short victorious wars. They will see this as a great opportunity to have some fun, knowing they will roll right over you."

"Understood. And with the population difference, the only way to truly stop them is for them to stop themselves." He glanced south and east, not uneasy, merely thoughtful.

"A slave rebellion or something, giving them greater problems at home?" he ventured.

"It would serve them right. Their entire economy collapses without access to slave labor, and barely teeters along with it." As was the wont with any society that relied too much on slavery to sustain it, like, oh, the Khirifi. One of the reasons they wanted the short, victorious wars was to distract the citizenry, and the other was to get new bodies and plunder to keep them careening along.

"The key point to raising a revolution and throwing out the Siricilans is manpower. Quality only goes so far. As I've noted to you, the ambitions of many of those coming to sign up under me are far, far from noble. More than a few are spies and agents of the local nobility, especially the Masked. They seem especially put out that they don't know where the Elbers and the Moorish folk are coming from."

"You knew that coming into this situation, that you'd have to recruit largely from the locals and the rural populations. The established nobility are simply going to have too many knives ready to pull out, preparing to stab you in the back for their own benefit once they've made use of you. Winning the hearts and minds of those outside the cities gives you bodies, but it doesn't give you power until you train them up…

and it doesn't give you gold, because the cities dominate trade, and that's where the gold is made." If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Yes. But one thing I've discovered working for you is that gold is just a number to you." Well, it was true. Once I could Commune with Nature, gaining some precious metal wasn't all that much work. Once I had Shape Stone up to snuff, it was even less work. And with Cryptomancy at full bore, it was no work at all. It was basically what I'd done to set up a foundation in Darokin, after all, and it hadn't even taken that much effort.

Other people accepted limits on what they could do, not having the mindset that magic existed for the purpose of passing those limits and throwing them out the door.

"There is a fourth force at work in these lands," he added on calmly, prompting an eyebrow lift from me.

"I didn't want to mention it until I had more proof, but the reports that have been trickling in have been… persuasive in their thoroughness. One of the young women from Elb, actually, whose family was sacrificed to that Cauldron. She has something of an obsession with bringing justice to dark priests, and quite the nose for finding them." I inclined my head.

"Karina," I identified her, knowing the faces of everyone who'd taken the Portal to this time. With no family left to her, she had been ideally suited to be one of the first to emigrate.

"What has she discovered?"

"There's a common thread between the werebeasts and the vampires. There seems to be an alliance of demonic Immortals active in this land, trying to completely corrupt it and turn it into a center of chaos in the midst of civilized lands. They have been around a very long time, according to some whispers from the Hellenar Church's older histories… histories that have been destroyed or altered several times to hide evidence of their existence.

"They call themselves the Lestat, and they seem to be an alliance of cults serving Nyx, Orcus, and Thanatos." I reached for the bottle mentally to refill my glass, Funf's TK handling it perfectly as I swirled it thoughtfully.

"Wereboars and devil swine?" I finally asked. He nodded firmly.

"They were bade to come here. Orcus is believed to be the creators of both strains of the lycanthropic curse, and His cults often claim that all evil werecreatures are the result of His perversions and mutations of nature." That was true. Orcus here was a bestial force of predatory power and seething anger, the worst and most violent aspects of man and animal coming together, not a lord of the undead. Lycanthropy was one of His favorite tools to use.

"Nyx is reputed to be the Mother of the Undead. Scriptures of Her church indicate that She considers it the next proper stage after existence, completely ignoring the fact She's an Immortal." Anyone who believed that deserved what they got out of it, too, never becoming Immortal.

"And Thanatos is a destroyer of empires," Sir Horn breathed out, nodding. He had no idea how true that was, as the Sims I'd put down in the past had as one of their prime directives to find out and track what the bastard had been doing across the centuries… and if they could, to thwart Him in the worst ways possible, to the point of calling for me to come and help them do so.

I had five such Calls waiting, ringing across the centuries, opportunities for me to strike at the Immortal most responsible for the destruction of Darkmoor. I was going to take them up on them, but, as ever, I had time in the now to do things before I took those steps. My Sims were setting up the field, but they could not achieve the power I did, even if they gained souls of their own… which they all did and had, I had been assured. They couldn't become Immortal, either, and had no desire to do so.

No, what they had was thousands of years to help prepare the ground for the things I was going to do, working in the background as Immortals carved apart the world and then put it back together like children playing in the sand. Thanatos, He was going to be the poster child for the kind of vengeance I could bring to bear. A master manipulator, using the tools and forces of the other two to His own ends and a greater vision, which they were totally happy to buy into and work towards.

Bringing down empires, nations, noble dreams; it was all great and good work for the Immortals of Entropy, and doubtless they enjoyed the struggle and the fun even if things didn't quite go their way.

"That would indeed explain why nothing has become of this land after two millennia or more of trying. The Eonic Empire rotted and burned, and this land and its people have been largely abandoned by its Immortals in all but name. They give power, but precious little guidance, their attention and intentions elsewhere." Sir Horn winced, born and raised in the worship of the Hellenar Immortals, knowing all their stories and deeds and how they related to his people.

Those were the Immortals of his people, his own ancestors, and looking at them in a harsh and cynical light was difficult. But there was no denying that while they had helped keep the identity of the people intact, the Church had precious little real power to effect change in the world, and certainly what guidance it received was born of mortals, not Immortals, judging by its frequent pettiness and politically-minded nature.

The Siricilan Church had come in with a bruising mandate to convert these people to the worship of THEIR Immortals, and instead had run smack dab into a brick wall of absolute scorn and disinterest in them, their Immortals, and their empire in general. The refusal to convert was just another display of the anger between conqueror and conquered, and the Hellenar people were having none of them. Hence our encounter with a rabid priest interested in forcing conversion by the sword, if he'd allowed it at all.

He'd gotten what was coming to him then, that was certain…