BECMI Chapter 86 – Crazy Origins
I could not have shocked her more if I started polymorphing in front of Technician Dani Saliaveli, growing more heads and arms or something.
Well, it was indeed pretty serious.
It also completely upended history as we knew it, and what they had assumed.
“This, this world has Federation-level technology?” she gasped at me.
“Had, Technician. Had. The extent of it we don’t know about, but there is clearly at least one other active force with advanced technology along a different paradigm. The Ei of Hazz employs psi-shifted technology similar to what you might consider the Elder Races, and its brainwashing systems operate very similar to your own.”
“...I see.” She considered that with surprising calm. “That means… you are either a devolved planet, or are recovering from a catastrophe that reduced your technological level back to an earlier state. And this… magic has made it difficult to recover.” Her head came up sharply. “The protocols for dealing with advanced cultures are very different from dealing with primitive ones. Captain Emeril’s containment and isolation protocols are no longer necessary in any capacity!” she breathed out excitedly.
“Except for the interests of the Immortals,” I informed her.
She paused in disbelief. “The Immortals? The… gods these natives worship?” she asked uneasily.
“They are not gods. Gods operate under completely different paradigms than Immortals do, and are intimately tied to far more profound forces than Immortals are.” She just stared at me, trying to accept that. “I posit to you a much more important question: given the nature of damage to your ship, do you believe you were shot down by a long-dormant and extremely advanced orbital defense system, or does the nature of the damage to your ship suggest a critical blow bypassing your defenses, as if guided by an intelligent hand?”
She stared at me further, processing that. “I saw the damage to the reactor and the ship’s core,” she finally said hesitantly. “There was no external loss of hull integrity at all, as would be needed by any attacking weapon. The only damage to the hull was from venting the explosion and saving the ship…”
“So, something very much like a mysterious, powerful, dare I say, magical Entity entered your ship, hit it where it would do the most damage, and escaped, all without being detected.” I nodded more to myself than otherwise. “You were going to be interfering with all the fun things they are doing on this world, Technician Saliaveli, and they couldn’t have that. If any ship comes in to do the same, they probably won’t even manage to make planetfall before being destroyed, and that’s if all records of your ship and crew are not simply removed from all the computer databases of the Federation entirely.”
She went completely pale at that, not a good look on her. “These Immortals… are that powerful?” she asked hesitantly.
“They can raise mountains, drain seas, shift continents, and likely mold planets like a sculptor does clay. They aren’t gods, but that is largely because they are not reliant on the faith of mortals for their personal power, only for their influence on the mortal plane.
“I don’t know why they are involved with a world in the Prime Plane, but your existence here leads me down certain paths of thought.” A sparkling crown of jet and rose patterns wove itself into place on my head, and her eyes fixated on it helplessly. “The manafield of this planet. Do you truly have no other records of anything similar elsewhere?” I asked of her.
She only paused for a second. “I believe you have access to most of the records I could copy, but nothing I could pull up indicated any familiarity with the energy field. That… does not mean it has not been encountered elsewhere, and was either not recorded, or… access to that information was restricted…” she trailed off quietly, considering the Crown of Lightning I was wearing, even if it was only a Holo.
“You are growing wiser. This world exists as a center of magical power in a universe where mana is either not widespread or does not naturally exist here. That means the entire existence of this world is likely engineered by these Immortals. Do you know this entire world is actually a sapient elemental creature? It is actually alive, and we are living on the paper-thin biosphere growing on its skin, smaller even than dust mites and other parasites that live upon ourselves.”
The feeling of the eye of the world looking back at me, and past me, at the Void Phoenix sprawled about the infinity behind me, had never left me.
It wasn’t even the Land, which in the end was normally an agglomeration of the outer biosphere of a world, and the true spirit of the world didn’t even know we existed as individuals, far too small.
Technician Dani blinked at me, trying not to believe me, but a damn voice laced with Truth, really hard to disbelieve. “You truly are not joking, are you?” she asked faintly.
“No, I’m not, Technician. About any of it. But such matters are mostly theoretical and airy dreams that only interacted directly with you for one explosive moment, simply because of the threat your ship posed to whatever the Immortals are collectively testing out here. They are of no more immediate threat or relevance to you than laws and regulations being spun out and implemented in the halls of Federation Command on Paradigm.”
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She took a deep breath, then nodded. “So, I’m no storybook protagonist chosen by some mysterious godlike beings for a special destiny?” she managed to ask with mock lightness, even managing a false smile.
“That is an excellent way to keep your sanity in a world which must seem primitive, crazily magical, and completely unstructured compared to your normal life. On that note, how would you like a job and a removal to a much more peaceful civilian setting, with more security, no swamp, decent food, and people happy to see you, instead of brainwashed cultists, companions who turned out to be tyrants and mad scientists, and maybe even able to learn some of this weird magic stuff for yourself?”
There was no way to disguise the widening of her amber eyes. “I… could learn magic?” she asked in wonder.
I lifted a hand, flicked up the Testing Orb, and tossed it to her. She caught it easily, and it almost vanished into transparency in her hand. I pointedly glanced at it as she stared at the nearly-invisible thing in her grasp.
“Most interesting. You’ve also the talent for Artifice, much like the King of Darkmoor who’d be taking you under his wing. That seems to indicate the manafield here is designed to work with almost any sapient native of this plane, and why Wizardry is so much more popular than Sorcery. It is an upgrade in terms of versatility to the base arts of the Artificer.”
“An Artificer?” she repeated, a spark of hunger in her eyes. The Orb tugged free of her hand, returning to its normally cloudy center as it left her touch. “What can they do?”
“Your tutorial programs are often written as gaming programs, so you should not be at all unfamiliar with the ideas of Classes, Levels, and similar things, right?”
She nodded quickly, a slight flush of green hitting her cheeks and ears. “I, I’ve played my account in Exudar IV for many years, although I was more of an archer than anything else…” she blurted eagerly.
“Well, it is one of the most popular VR games in the galaxy for its genre, so that’s no surprise. That means you’ll rapidly adjust to the fact that with magical ability and mana here, the Rules of the Universe change to accommodate the whims of whoever runs the magic behind the scenes. And among other things, you can and do gain Levels here, take Classes, increase your Stats and Skills; learn Feats, Masteries, and Techniques, and generally gain ‘experience’,” I even interrupted my typing to make the air-quotes for her, “which we call Karma and is really the magic of learning, and get more and more powerful.
“Of course, to really do that you have to engage in many activities that are life-threatening, stressful, reckless, and generally make your mark on the world, instead of the world making its mark on you. You can get strong enough without indulging in such activities, but just like in the game, gaining experience by training and running collections quests of herbs and flowers doesn’t come anywhere near the Karma gained by running grand Quests, kicking down the doors of the morally recalcitrant, and trouncing boss-level creatures trying to make the world bow down to them.”
She stared at me, my words sinking into her with grim purpose. “That’s why you’re here,” she whispered in sudden understanding. “You gained a lot of Karma taking out Chief Ferru and the cult he set up...”
“As well as making fairly peaceable contact with a member of an advanced alien civilization, who might just be qualified to teach a bunch of prospective students some of the secrets of their ancestors that are NOT magical… and possibly set up an enclave of other members of her people who might want to leave their starship for the new life on this strange new world they’ve found themselves on, one where they don’t have to enslave or shoot the locals, and can engage in the mutually beneficial behavior that is the hallmark of advanced sapient species.”
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She blushed faint green around the edges again. “I-I’m sorry for shooting you, earlier…”
“I was in no danger from you, Technician, or you would have been dead or unconscious before I stole your fusion generator, not afterwards.” She grimaced slightly. “Having more powerful portable ranged options at your side isn’t nearly as powerful on a magical world as it is in your own society. You would need fairly conspicuous body armor or force-screens to deal with such, while a Wizard needs merely Buff themselves to be resistant to fire, and your lasers are no more effective than shining a flashlight in our direction.” I made a dismissive flick of my wrist. “I am sure you have a saying something like ‘God made men, but Grit Firearms made them equal’, no?”
“...Yes, I’ve heard something similar in the past,” she nodded slowly.
“Magic makes people very unequal, indeed. The profound force of Chaos allows the will of the one to rise above the will of the many, and gives them the power to make it so. Individuals can be mightier than whole armies here.
“Magic breeds elites, and allows individuals to change the world in ways they cannot in a society with tech.”
She swallowed as she looked at me, and managed a wan smile. “So, you’re one of the high-Level people around here, I gather?” she asked carefully.
“Compared to you? Yes. In the local parlance, you’re an Expert/6, Technician. You’re very good at your job, likely why you earned a place on a ship that employs independent, forward-thinking people with talent whose gifts would be needed to adapt to the many strange encounters one might have on an exploration vessel.
“Your Security Chief Ferru was a Fighter/12, in contrast. There are multiple individuals among the Darkmoor forces which have reached Eighteen or even higher in Levels. I have not played your Exudar game, but if you consider your combat abilities and those of the Chief, and consider then that an Eighteen would consider your Chief about as dangerous to them as you were to him, you might have some faint idea of the level of power running about on this world.”
She clenched her hands tightly. “And I could get to that same level of power, if I wanted to… become an adventurer?” she asked roughly.
“Throwing yourself into lethal conditions repeatedly, if you wanted to gain those Levels swiftly. If not, there is still the slow and steady way, and as a gamer, you will probably make progress where many non-combat civilians would falter and stagnate, since the contrast between what you had, what you have, and what you might become are so very, very different…”