BECMI Chapter 350 – Targets of Opportunity
Sama had the chance to take down Morphail’s entire castle on him.
Briggs smirked as he thought of his hag gleefully doing just that. It was basically a done deal, she just had to figure out how she was going to get out of there. After all, slaughtering so many hordelings and filling the air with Immortal Power gone vivic was locking down the dimensions, so she couldn’t get out of there with Teleports.
Eh, Edge was there. They’d figure out something. Still, it wasn’t a chance they were going to pass up.
Sitting there alone in the dark, Briggs checked on the progress of the Forsaken.
No clerical magic or Turning was being used in their assault on the undead of Caergard, just martial prowess and magical fury. The men who should have been opposing them were either doing nothing or joining them first in the pacification of their ancestors, and then in bringing down the wizard nobles who thought they would obey forever.
Ghosts were being put down (if their dooms could be made right, that was addressed, too), wights returned to dust, wraiths wailing and expunged, spectres and shadows chased down and dusted. Enslaved druj of all times were destroyed, chained revenants allowed to die in battle, and the rare vampires were staked, beheaded, and Burned en vivus.
Four liches they’d uncovered among the Caer: three of the clans, one outsider. Edge had been sussing out the locations of their phylacteries for months, the twats believing that just being an Archmage and having access to Mind Barriarmeant the link to their sequestered souls could be hidden from the likes of her. Suppressing the former for short periods wasn’t hard, and IP-boosted Divination magic could likely punch through the spell regardless… one reason why, although they had it up on their own Rings, the senior Oathbound didn’t rely exclusively on it for protection.
Immortals could be watching, and they could beat it if they really wanted to. An unfortunate fact of life, that there was no absolute mortal defense against Immortals… by the Immortals’ own design.
He watched the Markspace map, the Forsaken Bonded and the Daisho teams hitting objective after objective. He had to tip a hat to the Zanzyran necromancers, as they didn’t like using rote skeletons and zombies for their banked undead, preferring to upgrade them with magic and materials. Groups of swordwraiths made from squads of men who died in battle, fast zombies who were almost as quick as normal humans, skeletons upgraded with Elemental power, or even all the way to Skeletal Warriors if they had hit Nine; hulking tough gravesworn and even the occasional bone knight devoted to Entropy coming back as a willing commander of the undead.
They were running into all of those things.
The undead were not, of course, aware that they were actually part of Thaum’s precautions against the similar amounts of undead being whelmed by the House of Bulgarov. With His control over Prince Cannarl and Elder Jocinth, the two Radiant Liches, any movement by Morphail to rise up with undead legions and threaten the nation could be met by Caergard whelming to do exactly the same, and they’d actually have the advantage in basic undead due to the greater martial inclination of their culture.
Morphail would totally have the advantage in fantastic and monstrous undead, especially skull howlers and the like made from werewolves, however. But Caergard would be backed by the mages of the rest of the country and thus able to deal with them and the vampire nobles and minions.
That was why they were removing the Caergard undead FIRST.
On the surface, it was a clearly predictable mortal uprising against necromancers and wizards dominating them. Outside of Caergard, it was being painted as an insurrection of warriors not knowing their places, totally ignoring the fact that there were a LOT of spellcasters involved… and all of them were Zanzyrans by birth.
A lot of Caer. Some Verdains. Scattered low-borns of all kinds, returned as Wizards and/or Rangers.
Verification of these facts in Parliament was basically forcing a stalemate on what to do. Prince Drakkar wanted to race in there, wands blazing, and put down this revolt. His infantry core nearly revolted out from underneath him, neither wanting to fight the undead nor fight those fighting the undead, and his mages weren’t much more enthusiastic.
None of the other noble Houses wanted to get into a Fireball-tossing contest with what was verified as hundreds of Wizard-level and higher spellcasters.
Brittabelle was naturally receiving a lot of political attacks, as so many of the attackers were human Rangers. She just waved them off, noting that most of the necromancers involved were students of the Great School, so did that mean Grandmaster Jean-Arc was backing the necromancers and telling them how to run their affairs?
Since she wasn’t telling them what to do in the slightest, the fact they were blitzing through Caergard was just not of any concern to her whatsoever, even if the truth that they were completely loyal to her and would obey any order of hers without fail was totally apparent to everyone there.
There was no proof, she certainly wasn’t contributing herself, and the elves who were involved could have come from anywhere.
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Briggs smiled coldly there in the dark.
Thaum’s undead failsafe was being removed from play. That left Morphail with all of his undead armies, and the twin Curses of vampirism and lycanthropy, two great Evils that could explode and spread with magical haste, in play and in the palms of the master vampire.
Pointedly, the latter was suddenly a huge exposure in the lands of Thaum’s own House of Verdain, instead of a hidden strength. Wizards who had thought to upgrade their physical abilities using lycanthropy infested the hierarchy of Verdain, and doubtless had spread it to their most select and loyal followers, as he himself had witnessed in his stroll through the territory.
If revealed, there was no law against slaying lycanthropes, who were classified as shapechangers and thus automatic targets for wizardly experiments, at the very least. Plus their own people would revolt, knowing the lycanthropes were preying upon them and who was truly responsible for past random monster attacks upon them and the like.
The shape-shifters’ loyalty to House Verdain was thus highly conditional, and it was far more likely they were loyal to their own kind, subverted by the Curse and no longer thinking of themselves as humans, or even fellow mortals.
Thaum had to realize the conflicting loyalties at play. He also had to realize the best thing he could do was NOT move in on the wizards and warriors killing all of his own undead forces, because now he would need those rebels to move against Morphail!
Now, the key was how Morphail was seeing these events.
Did he know Caergard’s liches had been subverted by Thaum?
He had to know that with the removal of Caergard’s necromancers, the biggest threat to his undead in Zanzyr was being taken off the board.
House Verdain had the strongest force of pure spellcasters, but Morphail could turn that topsy-turvey by, say, backing the establishment of a lycanthrope haven of a noble dominion. To prevent a conflict, Thaum might very well back it, for a price of loyalty from the shapechanger clans, not caring about the price normal folks had to pay.
In short, he would sell out his non-Casters and leave them prey to the lunar tendencies of the accursed in order to preserve his precious wizards.
Well, Edge was doing something about that, too.
As a release valve for the Evil that the Hag Curse inflicted upon the world, Briggs was acutely aware of what supernatural Curses inflicted on the mortal population could do, and had absolutely no sympathy for Thaum’s position on such matters.
Removing the Curse of Lycanthropy from the world would be well-nigh impossible, but the hunt for shapechangers was hard-coded into many religions and cultures, and even trying to stamp out such tendencies in Zanzyr wasn’t working.
Too many stories. Too many missing people. Too much blood and gore, and lack of control by the lycanthropic population. That true-born lycanthropes were better at controlling the urges of brutal territorialism and murderous slaughter than the freshly Cursed only made the situation worse, as now the Curse was a weapon of chaos and murder, rather than any kind of magical evolution.
There was no doubt the Curses were a big step up for a normal human. Increased physical ability scores, especially in hybrid form; natural armor; supernatural Damage Reduction; natural attacks with tooth and claw; increased combat instincts and enhanced physical Health as the Hit Dice of the Totem Animal replaced one’s own, and could grow then on the Werebeast Path; plus increased natural senses expanding the world all meant that there was no one who would argue that becoming a werebeast could be a massive upgrade in survivability.
Downsides? The overwhelming instincts of the beast, warping personality. Severe personality suppression and overwhelming aggression tied to the demonic origins of the Curse, flaring to a full and brutal pressure under the full moon that even most hardened trueborn lycanthropes had difficulty dealing with. For those newly Accursed, the savagery was sufficient to overwhelm their personality and turn them into starving reavers who would devour their own friends and families without hesitation to feed the slavering new beast within them.
The demon prince Orcus was the Patron and Corrupter of all Lycanthropic Curses. Supposedly there had been a werehawk Curse at one point, whose members were driven to a noble and eagle-like personality, but they had been hunted by the more savage Curselines and supposedly extinguished. Werebears were often of decent heart and took care not to spread their Curse… but they could also be hunted, provoked, and newly-Accursed werebears could be as savage and brutal as any crazed and territorial predator, and did not take intrusions by anyone on their territory lightly.
-Commander, we have a problem.-
The /tell didn’t come from any of the current violent actions taking place. Courtier Sim Eight, Divay, was as crisp and neutral as always. Her job was Head of Monitor Duty, maintaining a constant pattern of Scrying and Divination upon their own holdings and places of interest where communications might not be prompt, or could be subverted.
This usually involved looking at naval traffic at specific points on the waters around Eislas or further south, monitoring military build-ups in the Siricilan and Delphan ports, and keeping an eye on independent lordlings who spurned working with the Eismark Federation out of pride or independence, thinking they could go it alone and prosper thereby.
The more interlinked holdings had Marked, Oathsworn, and often regular radio communications to ensure there were no surprises. Given the size of their holdings, there was always something happening somewhere, every day, and boring days were good days for everyone, as soon enough it would be their turn for ‘interesting times’ once again.
There weren’t any of the recalcitrant ‘nobles’ in Eismoor, of course, but Brucall had a fair number of lordlings establishing themselves up the Saber River, and Eiscall’s newer liege vassals tended to be sub-par in their ability to work with others, too.
-Go ahead, Divay,- he /acknowledged her call, his brow furrowing. It was a good time to be out attacking, with a good chunk of their elites wrapped up in this undead killing.
Opportunistic, one might say.
-We have lost all contact with the dominion of Baron Shakar Nearu, a border noble of Eiscall. All Scrying into the area is shrouded in fog, and I have verified no contact with any kind of foot traffic from his holdings within the past twenty-four hours.
-There are no Marked or Oathsworn currently in place in the dominion.-
And someone is about to learn why we put those people in place, Briggs thought acidly. -Anything related?- he /frowned back.
-There have been intermittent rumors of a flying castle seen in the distance.-
Huh…