Chương 379: 9.ii

The words written here are for the generals, princes and the heirs of the High King of Magarska and no lesser rank. These words are meant for none who has not taken the strictest vows of loyalty to Magarska under seven of the divinities of kings. If you should read these words without that sanctified vow upon your soul, may you pluck out your eyes and eat them for this trespass while you bite through your own tongue. Magarska Prevail!

So following are the methods for a master of war engaging with one of the most potent and terrible of powers the enemies of the Kingdom may bring against you. The methods given are proven to work, when this task is even possible. But the cost will be grave indeed for all. So is the price of defeating a god.

Most important of all before continuing, when at all possible it is best to appeal and draw in an enemy's gods to an alignment or neutrality with Magarska rather than to endeavor in the grueling, tedious and critically demoralizing campaign required to strike divinity from the world.

But the wise general must recognize when the alignment of the enemy's divine allies is too tightly bound to a people, too inimical to integration within the High Kingdom of Magarska and most importantly sufficiently narrow and local that the necessary strategies are even feasible. Diviners, philosophers, priests and the distant gurus of the east will all argue that the following acts do not in fact fully slay what is divine. That the heavenly hosts are each individual and utterly immortal.

Yet history and record both of Old cantor and even more ancient lore and legend ratify that if these methods are not fully effective in slaying divinities it is sufficient as to separate the ability of the mortal earth to ever again reach out to a 'slain' member of the heavenly host. And with the destruction of the reach of man to the heavens, there is in all the archives of the army no sign of slain divinity reaching back to the mortal world once expelled.

At minimum if such divinity are ever called back from their banishment and censor they do so in a form no longer aligned to their former allies and thus is this proven sufficient for a matter of war. So follows the acts that are found sufficient to slay a god. They are simplicity itself and yet grueling in their enactment. For censorship and the destruction of mortal memory is the weapon that cuts at the heart of divinity.

If the population who know the god's name is small enough, if the priesthood who can summon its miracles is identifiable and the records which name them and their stars are able to all be collected. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Then it is possible to enact a deicide.

First and foremost all learned in the name and nature of the enemy god must be gathered up, if they are to be allowed to live their tongues must be cut out, their brows branded to forbid them healing of this injury and their hands broken or cut from them. So that they may never again write, speak or mark the name of the enemy god. No man, woman or child can be spared from these acts of censor, neither your own men, the citizens of Magarska or any serf or slave be spared.

Once the campaign of a deicide has begun none can be left to spread the name. For if even a single person carries knowledge and spreads it the wrath of a god that you have failed to slay is more terrible than any other enemy. All records, all words, all effigies and statues must be broken, burned and undone in all totality. Every priest and learned man able to summon the enemy divine's miracles is to be killed without delay, there can be no exceptions.

All who hold the ability to bring forth its workings can become a conduit for its wrath against you in the campaign, all who hold its name in their hearts are now your enemy. Even if it is your own wife, child, mother or esteemed father who is the divine's vessel they must die. By your vow for Magarska this cannot be avoided. Your own men will likely attempt to rebel against your orders in this.

You will be required to call upon their own vows and discipline or execute their rebellion without ever letting a single one of them know the purpose. For this service there will be no mercy or reward for you, in this life or after. The blood of so many will stain you for the living, and your success in the deicide will doom you in death. The gods cannot be expected to spare those that kill one of their own.

It is this cost that demands that such acts be relegated to only the most dangerous, the most fearsome of heavenly powers. Whose grip on the souls of man are most light. And with whom no chance of peace or satisfaction is possible. But as a master of war all options must be open to you. Judge wisely. The act will be a work of years or decades, it will earn nothing but hate and curses upon you. It will doom your soul.

And when the work seems done there is one final act that must be taken, for you the master of war so learned in the nature of the divine you have targeted must too be censured. Your tongue and hands will be forfeit, or your life. If you choose life an execution or imprisonment will follow as is deemed necessary by your peers, for none but fellow masters of war can know why you acted as you did and the appearance of justice will be upheld.

Your name will be marked in the tome of honored warmasters but the act earning this honor will not be written. All but the warmasters will know you as a traitor and a monster dishonored for your evil. When you die whether in wretchedness or swiftness in this way you will take the last memory of one of the most fearsome enemies of Magarska from the world And in doing so you will know that you are a god slayer. - On the Mastery of War from the Magarskan library of kings.