The world of Torus was a strange place. Even before the spontaneous emergence of the last G.o.d in existence took place in a tiny, remote island on its surface, ancient and dark mysteries lurked on, underneath, or in very rare cases above, its surface. That said, the aforementioned deity was one source of considerable mysteries of various degrees of eerieness, despite his youth.One mystery the G.o.d was responsible for was the sudden existence of an eerie island floating over a vast sea. The closest thing that the youthful G.o.d had to a home was itself the gravity-defying and tower-housing island. The surface of this place was idyllic, yet disturbingly quiet. Very little lived on the surface of the island. It was within the island"s rocky surface that the life and unlife existed in any large number.
Within the island itself, far from the harsh rays of the sun, there was an eerie, phantasmal reproduction of a city. This ghoulish facade of a metropolis was inhabited by scores and scores of the undead. This was the one place in the world where undead ent.i.ties did things other than plot genocides and fantasize about committing atrocities against the living.
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No light illuminated the nameless wen. And no living creatures sullied the forsaken streets. It was a dreary place, inhabited by undead of various levels of strength.
The nightmarish mockery of a city was entirely controlled by potent undead such as the feared magic-users known as "Worms that walk", and their allies: vampires, mummies, and wrights. Occupying a middle-cla.s.s of sorts were ghouls and ghosts, as well as other spectral undead of not inconsiderable power who retained their sentience. The lower cla.s.s was made up of the nameless legions of zombies and skeletons, even though skeletons had always retained their sentience and the zombies controlled by Althos had universally been awoken by the dark G.o.d.
The city was largely ungoverned by Althos directly, but the nightmarish ent.i.ties that prowled its dead streets all served their G.o.d with incredible loyalty. There were two groups in particular that had a legitimately remarkable loyalty to the alien G.o.d that exceeded the norm even for undead: zombies and ghouls. Zombies were fanatically loyal to the G.o.d because he was directly responsible for granting them sentience and made a conscious choice to do so.
Ghouls on the other hand were loyal to Althos because they believed he favored them. Their leaders included the original ghouls who Althos reanimated at the beginning of his life, most notably Mof the highly charismatic Satyr whose death Sombra played a key role in. Mof spread the tale of his own reanimation and thus was responsible for the widespread myth that Althos favored ghouls.
This drove ghouls to be especially pious, and within the city there wasn"t a single ghoul who wasn"t also an extremely proud and arrogant follower of the G.o.d of the grave. Some ghouls even spent time perpetually in a state of unholy prayer, whispering observations about their surroundings to their distant G.o.d. Althos was aware of this, and he actually liked it, but he was also perpetually in motion and thus only rarely commanded or even spoke to the ghouls who were so devoted to him.
Minutes after Althos received the notification alerting him to the quest he"d need to complete to be able to gain the second tiers of influence over the faith and civilization domains he sprung into action. And this meant that he finally turned a significant amount of attention to the undead metropolis.
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"I need to create a holy city? Okay... I can do that." I thought, in the safety and privacy of my own mind. I turned my mind towards the places either under my control or at least led by servants of mine.
In truth that was a considerable number of places both in Salifinos and in Torus. I was worshipped in a number of ways throughout the solar system, but my presence was directly felt by people in both of those worlds. Torus was my home but the people of Salifinos knew of me in a way more maddening and terrifying way: as the G.o.d of abominations and madness, and thus as a potent and terrifying warlord whose decision represented the final nail in the coffin of mortals on Salifinos.
Physically I was still with the orcs, but many of my more potent powers didn"t require that I be physically present in a place to actually affect it. I was quiet as I considered which place would be the easiest for my minions to transform into a holy city. It didn"t take me long to come to the realization that there was a single location that would be perfect: the necropolis within my floating home.
I chuckled and smiled when I realized this. It was perfect because it was already inhabited by extremely pious worshipers of mine, and because if I told them what to do they would do it without question. I knew this through experience and I trusted my undead servants beyond any shadow of a doubt.
The ferocious and loyal undead I commanded were in many ways the ideal servants. They didn"t balk at evil commands. They wouldn"t die of hunger or thirst, making them perfect guardians. They were pious and patient. And more than anything else they worshipped me whole-heartedly, even if it was in their own black-hearted sort of way.
I turned my attention to the city and its numerous inhabitants. All at once I did a number of different things, all while feeling happy that I had the powerful and reality-warping mind of a G.o.d.
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The undead metropolis that Althos allowed to exist underneath his tower and inside of his island was abruptly changed. The first change wasn"t a physical one, though it was at least as important as the ways in which the G.o.d who indirectly ruled over the island sought to physically change the city.
Althos" prying, intrusive mind entered the minds and hearts of the undead servants he commanded. He did this loudly and in a display of deific might. His otherworldly and confusing personality seeped into and further dominated his servants and he made use of one of his eldritch domain abilities for the first times ever: "Fanaticism inducement".
This power was one of the more sinister powers the dark G.o.d possessed. With it, someone"s sanity was at risk but the truth was that no undead being was ever truly, fully sane anyway. This power eroded the mind of someone who already worshiped the G.o.d of the grave and transformed them into fanatics devoted to their dark G.o.d in any way he desired them to be.
The dark G.o.d"s mind was a powerful and overwhelming thing. Even the strongest extraplanar beings wouldn"t be able to touch it or be touched by it, and somehow be left unchanged. And the undead inhabitants of the city were not as strong as the mightiest extraplanar beings. Their minds were nothing compared to their G.o.d, and all at once, the inhabitants of the city felt the chilling touch of the mind of their G.o.d and master.
The undead universally fell to their knees as they felt, to them anyway, a loving and glorious mental caress. Their G.o.d"s power washed over them like a dark tidal wave and filled their minds with the glory of their unholy master who was also the source of their unlife. They were helpless to resist even the lightest mental touches of their deity of death and reanimation. That said, there were effects caused by the particular sort of corruption their master exuded that were unexpected by the G.o.d himself.
One such effect was that his powers as a lord of l.u.s.t and G.o.d of s.e.xuality would wash over his undead servants, and infect them like a sinful, s.e.xual plague, yet that was exactly what happened. Moments after the undead fell to their knees in collective supplication to their dark G.o.d they felt a potent rush of pleasure flood their undead, reanimated amygdala, or in the cases of the ghosts and the skeletons they felt it suffuse their very essences, soaking into their ectoplasmic cores and their bones respectively.
This unholy burst of unexpected pleasure was misunderstood by the undead as a reward for their renewed devotion to their master. Even the least sensitive of them felt the dark pleasure as powerfully as a s.e.x-addict might feel their first o.r.g.a.s.m in a fortnight. This feeling was more powerful than the feelings of dark elation vampires got when they drank the blood of their victims or when a ghoul bit into a living human for the first time. It was rapturous.
Undead who still possessed their flesh, especially vampires and wrights, felt the full-body pleasure as intensely as when they had had s.e.x as living creatures. And thus their love and devotion for their master took on newer, more sensual shades. Far away from the city, Althos felt an echo of the city"s collective s.e.xual pleasure and relief, and he chuckled at the potency of his own power.
Another such effect of the dark G.o.d"s power was that for a moment it overcame the hatred the undead felt towards the living. The power of Althos" eerie, mind-altering corruption was so suffused with pleasure and laziness that it enabled the undead to momentarily forget their previously all-consuming hatred of the living. Their minds were so thoroughly corrupted that they could momentarily imagine a future in which they transformed their bastion of pious hatred into a macabre, hedonistic playground devoted to two great evils: the utterly selfish pleasures of the flesh and incredibly lazy dereliction of duty.
Althos felt this too. It was the first time he ever felt anything resembling indifference coming from undead ent.i.ties and it legitimately caught him off-guard. It was the first time since he had encountered Morehammer, hours ago, that he felt actual surprise, and the second time in weeks he had done so.
Far away from the undead he mentally muttered "So this is the power of sloth huh? Enough that even fanatical undead become lazy...". It was interesting to him, to watch even for a moment as creatures who in mortal eyes were incapable of anything but hatred for mortals, become indifferent to them. It opened his eyes to a world of possibilities, even if this was a moment that came and went in an instant as a second after it occurred the hatred the undead felt for the living returned and washed out such slothful thoughts from their minds.
The final unexpected aspect of his power that washed over them was a personality-shifting ability to induce addiction, obsession, and desire. Their hearts were thoroughly overwhelmed by an addiction to the sensations of their minds being flooded with his dark power, and they felt an obsessive desire to hear his voice etch itself into their souls.
It was only an instant later that he felt the powerful effects of their newfound devotion to him. Their collective emotions surged into his heart, and he was stunned to find that this was the closest thing they could feel to love. It was a gruesome obsession, a community-wide addiction to serving him and an almost kind-hearted desire to share the pleasures of service with the rest of existence. But he recognized that last one for what it was: a new attempt by some of the wiser undead to justify their violent hatred of life.
After allowing himself to bask in the emotions of his undead worshipers he quietly turned his mind towards his grander objective. After refocusing he quietly gave the destructive monsters a single command directed at the strange city itself: "Destroy". His words echoed in their minds, and filled them with a desire to see the city fall apart. Then rose up off of their knees and turned towards the city, destruction on their minds.
The fury of the undead legion that slavishly served Althos was almost a thing of beauty. They moved as one and began to tear down the walls they had built weeks ago, and the buildings they had constructed for various purposes. It didn"t matter if they were wrights, zombies, ghosts, mummies, or skeletons, they took their hands, their weapons, and their energy to devastate the buildings they had once occupied their time building. The total destruction of the city would take around two hours to complete.
Once the destruction was complete, the undead felt momentarily sated. Althos, cognizant of their work this time purposefully transmitted feelings of pleasure to them. They wallowed in this emotion for perhaps half an hour, before Althos refocused and gave them another vague and equally simple command: "Build a city".
The undead refocused and threw themselves with equal fervor into the task of building a city. This time they built far faster and with much more focus than when they first gradually built the city. After all, they were commanded by their G.o.d to do so. And as zealots of their dark G.o.d, their new overriding goals were to enact whatever strange whims struck their G.o.d. Unfortunately, creation was much harder and much more work than destruction and even with a tireless legion of undead building an entire city was much more work than destroying one.