BECMI Chapter 268 – The Ei Hazz it and Gets It
“I do not know the particulars of its design, but I knew it was at least an atomic device, the radiation on it responsible for the local mutations,” I replied to Jorg Tumalez’s urgent statement, letting the Illusion of the area fade away. “Those primitives? They are devolved humans, a variant known as ‘morlocks’. Tough, strong, aggressive, and none too bright anymore. Like nifloids, only more dangerous on average. Unlike nifloids, they actually can use advanced hunting techniques and cooperation, and don’t make war on one another unless there’s major food problems and population becomes an issue. Given the dangers of where they live, that generally isn’t a problem… although the death of the Yellow Fungi Mutant may allow their numbers to rise again.”
“A future threat?” King Antius asked, frowning at the depiction of the slope-browed, wiry-muscled, and sharp-toothed morlocks.
“There are no signs of them on the Other Shore. I think they were bred into the nifloids and helped stabilize their bloodlines. Without them, here? Well, without the mutant radiation affecting things, their future will be different. Whether they can return to being human or become something else, I’m not sure.”
In particular, they might be candidates to become Ancients if they could find room to grow and live. That might be on me, but I wasn’t going to do anything until the Doom had resolved itself, at the least.
“The Ei of Hazz has connections to the technology which created them… or might be a mutant creation of that technology, given how erratic and obsessive the records of its activities seem to have been?” Jorg murmured. “And if it has connections to fission or greater explosives…”
“Although the Immortals cleaned up almost all of the remnants of it, traces left behind indicate that the Doom’s detonation was an anti-matter explosive measured in the gigatons. What that would do when suffused with magic is certainly a plausible explanation for the Doom,” I said quietly. “Where it came from is also unknown. There’s no way of peering through time before the Doom, the moment is roiling, and, I believe, deliberately obfuscated. The Immortals don’t want anyone seeing the fate of Darkmoor.”
“And learning who was responsible,” Marius deduced darkly. “Instead, the humans will blame the elves, the elves will blame the humans, and strife and mistrust spread once again, for their enjoyment.”
Quiet murmurings flowed around the table with nodding heads. Just watching the strife that had been tearing apart Iberon for the past few years, with the Immortals doing nothing, had been enough to disillusion everyone about the beneficence of Immortals.
Many, many people turned out for the Salute to Aru every morning. At least, that name always delivered a small amount of help to high and low, every day.
The Church of Darkmoor had been quietly de-emphasizing the names of particular Immortals from doctrine, and instead focused on the domains of them, the names of less relevance, and how those domains were applied now was of more importance.
That this turning away from the Immortals as symbols of adulation was likely one of the very thing that prompted the Doom had to be obvious from the view of the Great Jordie, who was not a fool.
On the other hand, mortals were working to survive the Doom and improve themselves, and the Immortals weren’t helping, they were smacking them back into barbarism. The only difference was that he was taking a high road instead of a vengeful low road.
‘The best revenge is living well when others seek to tear you down,’ he had confided in me as we went over the messages being sent down to the Clerics beneath him. The unimaginative naturally protested this change in doctrine, but the more progressive embraced the focus and helping of others, and the people responded with like energy and faith, not knowing that faith was going elsewhere than intended.
“So, you intend to… string the Ei of Hazz along?” Sir Godfrey asked, considering the implications.
“I think the Ei of Hazz triggers the Doom somehow. Escalating matters against it advances the Doom. If we want to buy time, we need to distract it, confuse it, infuriate it, play with it, and maybe even occasionally lose to it. The best way to do that is with adventurers, who as all of you are quite aware, can be the most utterly confusing bunch of bastards to get involved with as a general rule.”
Since all of them were adventurers in one vein or another, be it explorer of strange new worlds or Dungeon-delvers or warlords, they’d all seen and done some crazy stuff, and knew of others doing the same.
“You’re going to blood our elites on the Ei for years,” the Azure Knight blurted out suddenly, his eyes gleaming. “You’re going to wrap them up in romantic stories of triumph and woe, major successes and pratfalls galore, and it’s going to think it’s the great villain or hero of the tale, depending on its point of view, while the rest of the world goes on without it!”
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“Even got a couple of the bards and fiction writers coming up with proper tales to tell for people to act out on, running a whole celebration of the thing. There are plans for movies and shows with the Ei in them, who should be alternately basking in the recognition and fame and whining about how it is portrayed, given its past inclinations.”
Chuckles spread around the table at that description of the despised creature, whatever it was.
“But it won’t last,” Jorg finally pointed out.
“No,” I agreed. “At some point it’s going to do something drastic, we’re going to have to respond drastically, and then…” I just slowly spread my fingers apart, frowning. “It’s coming. It’s just how long we have before it does.”
“What about Castle Darkmoor?” Rimblefyr, who had been mostly silent for the meeting, finally spoke up. “I hear stories of what is going on from some of the teams probing it, but they get so fantastical it’s hard to tell what is real.”
I just looked at King Antius, who smiled slightly. “Most of the stories are a bit exaggerated, but they are real. The Dungeon under Castle Darkmoor… is much larger than it was five years ago, we are certain.”
That was news to many of them.
“We think it is the amount of new magic moving through the ley lines around Darkmoor itself, feeding through the Darkstone under the landscape. It all flows to Darkmoor Castle, and so the Dungeons beneath it have been warping and growing. Lady Edge has posited that her expansion and alterations of the Thisbean Inn being nearby ‘taught’ the Castle how to manufacture dimensional space, and it has been expanding a demiplane beneath itself. Who or what is in charge of it is completely unknown, but the highly eclectic and unnatural spread of monsters, tricks, traps, terrain, and labyrinths is definitely, eh, imaginative,” the king related. He naturally had been among those making regular trips into the depths of the place, with a skilled and versatile team with him.
“That said, while the layout of lesser expansions can open, close, and change, the major levels and iconic features seem to have largely settled in. While it is dangerous, Rimble, you should definitely go with a team down to the Underwood. I think you would find it a fascinating place.”
Not much of a cave-delver, the plant-obsessed wizard, currently pursuing a doctorate in botany from the severely-upgraded university, pursed his lips at the thought. “New species?” he asked carefully, trying to hide his interest.
“Some of the weirdest flowers and blossoms, and the Mushroom Field is particularly crazy,” the king assured him.
“I will, ahem, consider it,” the green-haired wizard said, trying to keep his expression straight while everyone grinned knowingly around him.
I glanced in the direction of the Dungeon near the city, a place that was becoming yet another resource to test and temper those who wanted to be adventurers and the elite. There were deaths, there were body retrievals, there were grand fights against strange monsters and Elemental forces and undead and strange horrors of technology and magic and other things…
But what was guiding the whole process?
We did know the denizens wouldn’t die forever, although they appeared to hold little memory from one life to the next, and so did not improve. Astral Templates, caught at a moment in existence, able to improve within one life, but reset from one to the next, much like Monster Summoning spells.
Victories by the monsters flowed into the Dungeon, and seemed to open up newer and deeper areas.
The more people came and died, even if they were Raised later, the more the Dungeon grew.
In return, minor magical items and things of technology that were not of Federation tech were being brought out of the place, flowing into the economy (and the reverse engineering labs), and enriching the delvers and the city, the wealth flowing slowly and steadily out into the countryside.
The implications of being able to make something right here on our doorstep was inspiring and disturbing in equal measure. We didn’t know what was responsible, so we couldn’t stop it, prevent it, or guide it.
I had been inside, of course. The Dungeon wasn’t prepared for me and the array of Detects I had, someone with powerful Telekinesis, and basically unlimited firepower. I tended to blitz through the higher Levels with speed, confirm the static nature of the central Dungeon areas, note changes in the fringes, and the nature of satellite areas and sub-Levels and the like.
What I had seen and found I kept to myself for now. Castle Darkmoor was an exciting place to do things, and to see and by seen by other dangerous people.
Skarvald was Permanently Denied entry to it, on pain of Eternal Ribbit. He wasn’t happy, but his last drunken rampage in Darkmoor territory had ended with six months of time as a frog statue, being shat upon by a large number of birds, and the next time I promised to take his Amulet from him and he could face his enemies without it.
Then I sent him dragon-hunting in the south. The dragons were all going to die in the Doom, so killing as many as he liked while earning their ire and having to run like a thief in the night fit his skillset too well.
They also weren’t dumb and soon were targeting his Amulet’s magic. He was having a harder life now than he had before, too bad for him.
When he accepted the Iron Graf’s offer to go down and raise havoc in the Iberon Empire, nobody cared, and he vanished from the thoughts of the people with little more than relief. I trusted one of the archmages down there wouldn’t be totally stupid and could deal with him if sufficiently bestirred, but in the meantime stirring up a full-blown rebel army was entirely within his skillset.
Talk soon turned to the expansion of the university, additional classes to be held, and the ground that was being broken on a new cutting-edge manufacturing complex to the east, near one of the more productive dwarven mines.
Hapless dwarven elders did decry some of the new technology that wasn’t of dwarven make, but their children kind of ignored them and went straight for the mechanical and electrical engineering stuff with crazed glee, wanting to put together bigger and better stuff… and with a dwarven Artificer twist, surely enough. One of the fellows had this plan for a great huge robot a thousand feet tall…
Well, leave them to come up with this stuff. Things were coming along nicely, all things considered…