[Warpworld] Ch 25 – The Fantastic Ranthas

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            “How would that happen?” Patrick Briggs asked, as we closed in on the Pyramid. I didn’t bother to take the Walls of Fire down, or extend a ramp.

            “It seems the Sama Rantha Template and Briggs Template are tied to the Hag Curse by one of your number’s machinations. So, wherever the Hag Curse exists, a Rantha and a Briggs whose souls were slain by Evil beings can be reborn there.” At least if Einz/Traveler was correct, but since that Sama of hers had told her, she should be, right?

            “Sounds like Papa Silver is a godsdamned opportunist of the first order,” Elisia Rantha sniffed.

            “It does sound like something He’d do, pissing off Evil with its own tools,” I had to agree. “Now that you’ve found a way out, your intentions? Mark the road, lead others out, start up transdimensional trading, blah blah blah?”

            “Evangelizing!” Elisia reported with a grin.

            Vwoop! “Okay, that is absolutely the last thing I ever expected a Rantha and a Null of your caliber to ever say,” I admitted, arching an eyebrow.

            “It turns out my mom’s Curseline is tied to the spirit of a billions-year old AI who Transcended with our help. He wants to get some Divine foundation outside the home universe, but it’s a bitch getting out of there for reasons that might or might not involve a ton of shit from Outside Creation.”

            “Oh, you didn’t want to go traveling through Mythos home realms while tied to the essence of a neophyte deity? Can’t imagine why, nope, nope,” I shook my head emphatically.

            “Yeah. The disintegrating realm of the Warp Gods there was a convenient work-around and starting point. Of course, we’re all split up all over the place, and even the Marks we have don’t link up through multiversal barriers, so no idea how much trouble my sisters are having.”

            “On the flip side, we got in a lot of exercise on the way,” Patrick noted cheerfully.

            Feature rose into the air, and both of them flexed, bouncing up like they had springs. Both of them leapt over the Wall of Flames looming before us with its almost crystalline flames a-Burning with tons of Holy Kickers. The dragon and phoenix mounts further down the sides of the blocks looked at one another as Feature slid along and dropped me off on the block above where they stood, then curled around to lay himself out on the next tier above me.

            Then the two leading elf-mounts flapped up on opposite sides, let their elven masters dismount, then retreated as I flipped up Disks for everyone absently.

            “Oh, solid!” Elisia exclaimed after plopping herself down, patting the chair. “I don’t even have to restrain my Null!” She and Patrick shared an impressed look.

            “I can probably punch both of your Forsaken fields without much effort,” I answered, and Elisia gave me a low, elegant whistle, while Patrick grunted. “Not many Theurges where you come from?”

            “Eh, the Warp Gods fucked everything up,” Elisia admitted with a casual dismissive wave. “Total corruption of the manafield to their churned-up nastiness of the Warp, forced a complete rejection of the magical arts and subsequent delving into psionics, plus put some massive spiritual pressures in the way of breaking Ten.”

            I contemplated that for a moment. “Well, that certainly would stop a lot of development into the deeper mysteries of the one, and the complete loss of knowledge of advancing in the other. I trust that’s no longer an issue?”

            “Oh, yeah! Grandmother kicked the Warp Gods out, reversed their corruption of the manafield back to what it was, released the trapped gods, restored the channels of Faith, yada, yada, yada.” Elisia waved it all off absently. “The galaxy isn’t a big happy place, but it certainly is a lot better than it was a generation ago.”

            “And this deity you’re fronting for? A former AI, of all things?”

            “Yeah, Ronnie Rantha, our Curseline progenitor, is the Fantastic Rantha. She’s also the soul of The Great DM, or Deus ex Machina!”

            I made that ‘WTH’ head-jerk motion. “The God in the Machine? Well, okay, I guess that is totally appropriate. Spheres, Domains?” I had to ask.

            “Positive self-improvement, honorable fulfillment of contracts, harmonious relationships for the betterment of all!” she replied forthrightly, grinning cheerfully again. “Magic, science, psi, spirituality, don’t care. As long as it’s a positive improvement, whatever works for yourself, family, society, race, worlds, multiple species!”

            “He’s throwing a pretty broad net,” I noted wryly.

            “Grandmom made an impression on him,” Elisia winked. “Took an ancient murder-machine past its own programming into non-finite status and the sky be the limit! Those are the kind of people he likes, and, hey, it’s like Ranthas are made to be role models of Be All You Can Be!” She stuck out her arm in a pose and flexed with a whoop, plainly not at all discomfited by her role.

            “I imagine this place has a very corrupted version of that going on, more like ‘Be All Your Asswipe God Can Mutate You Into And Be,” I noted, the two elven archmages nodding imperceptibly, fascinated in spite of themselves at this completely irreverent high-level talk.

            “Yeah, ‘Positive’ and ‘You Can Be’ are limiters, sure. You wanna mutate yourself into something that ain’t you, or at the cost of others, welp, bye now, time to feed your ass to the Land.” She jerked around back at me suddenly. “Which reminds me, what’s with the glasses? You concealing your Sign?” she asked archly.

            I took them off and looked down at her and Patrick, who also turned to look back and up at me. Both of them hissed at the hot little silver sparks in the back of my dark eye sockets.

            “Saw something that made my eyes try to eat my brain. Wrath blasted them away. Regenerated them, they tried to eat my brain again. Blew them away again. Normal people tend to be a bit discomfited by a guy with sparks burning in the back of his eye sockets, so I put the shades on.” I directly turned to each elf in turn, who endeavored to remain looking unmoved as they pondered my appearance.

            “And that Hellscar across your nose?” she also asked directly, completely unabashed.

            “Ah, I got Marked by a Greater Devil as a target for Hell. It’s come in very handy for detecting Fiends around, especially other Devils, and it reacts to the presence of Evil nicely, enhancing my own Eyes of Heaven.” Mortus Dius lifted up its top, spun, and a black dot emerged, growing rapidly to a fist-sized inhuman skull with long horns rising from it, red-purple-black flames boiling over it like heavy liquid, glinting off the silver and gold Runes emblazoned upon it. “Here’s the fine fellow now. Meet Gorgriespiel, everyone.”

            I waved the Baneskull around at everyone, the Hellscar on my face lighting up crimson with a vaguely irritating burning and blackening of my skin as it did so.

            “Ah, Baneskulls. Anyone tells you Fiends can’t be useful for something, they are lying,” Patrick said wisely, patting his Hammer. “Been relying on Slaughter for the Bane effect, myself.”

            “Master Aelryinth, if I may?” Master Sethanon asked quietly. I tossed the Baneskull at him, and he caught it deftly, examining it with great interest. Master Altis scooted over to take a look at it with him, both their eyes intent on the thing. “This creates a highly anathemic effect to otherplanar beings?” Master Sethanon asked intently.

            “If you wound the creature type it is attuned against, it deals additional harm to the creature, along the lines of driving an extra greatsword or greathammer into the injury. A fell stroke becomes a deadly stroke, a light cut becomes a deep slashing cut, and so forth. Extremely useful. That particular Skull works against devils, demons, daemons, divs, dreggals, demodands, d’barai, and other denizens of Evil who are born of other worlds beyond the Mortal Realm.”

            “And this effect... can be modified to work against a particular species?” Master Artlis spoke up quickly.

            “Yes. Although wielding such a thing against your own species means you are in for a very bad time. In general, Bane represents the ultimate ‘I hate you’ of magical Weaponry, and generally makes you a very hated target of anyone who recognizes what you are bearing. Or, in the case of Fiends, earns you their grudging respect and admiration. Mortalbane Weapons are highly prized by them, after all...”

            They glanced at one another, the same question obvious to me.

            “Yes, I have an Elven Baneskull.” I held out my hand, and Gorgriespiel’s Baneskull floated back to me. “It was made from the skull of an elven hunter from a society that considered all other beings, sapient or not, potential prey and entertainment to test themselves again.

            “You elves have many cousins whose souls are as Black as pitch, with no redeeming characteristics to them. Their only value is removing from the world the negative worth they bring to it.

            “Those are the things we make Baneskulls to, not just knocking them off willy-nilly for everything we run across.”

            “Hey, I was counting the specks!” Elisia protested with a grin. “You got quite a collection in there!”

            “I do. I’ve encountered quite a lot of things whose only purpose in existence seems to be getting removed from it. I imagine Slaughter’s house on your Weapons has quite a few residents?” I replied affably.

            She just cackled. “That is true! Want to test out my Fracture?”

            “Of course.” I held out my hand calmly, and she smoothly drew and tossed her Sword over to me.

            It was much heavier than it looked, but I was stronger than I looked, so that was fine. I grabbed the QL 55 adamantine bastard Sword out of the air by its hilt deftly, acknowledging the Weapon’s confident spirit with a differential nod, and let the mnecromonics sweep over me.

            It was a good way to study someone’s career. Corrupt and cruel humans, vermin, growing increasingly larger, giving way to mutants human and bestial, then alien beasts, monstrosities, the first demonic and axiomatic things, animated undead often cyber-enhanced, increasingly cybered humans and non-humans, more and more exotics beasts, sapients of increasingly non-human sort, and then exploding into vast numbers of Aberrant entities and oozes, wildly mutated beasts and former humans, increasingly crazy war machines, phrenic abominations, and military actions that began to take massive tolls at one time.

            The recent inclusion of lots and Lots and LOTS of Warp demons and the like slain personally by this Sword was vivid and potent, but didn’t match the numbers put up in her prior fighting at all, just a constant running stream of nasty things fed to the Land which deserved it.

            “You have had an impressive career, Lady Rantha,” I acknowledged, and released her Sword to drift proudly back to her.

            “It’s had its moments,” she grinned, impressed at how easily I’d taken the surge of recorded kills and deaths. “How about you?”

            The elves watched as I gestured Mortus Dius over to her, and both she and Patrick reached out confidently to take hold of my Staff.

            Their interested expressions rapidly became frowns as they looked at nothing, becoming outright scowls and grimaces as they glared at nothing with looks that promised utter death to anything in front of them. Even the focused elven archmages behind me shuffled uneasily at the rage stamped into their faces.

            “Hunh!” Elisia shouted, Patrick snarling as he let go with her. She stared at Mortus Dius, then up to me. “Was that Earth?!” she demanded angrily.

            “The first one, yes. The second was the world that wanted to invade us, and as you could see, how I ended up here. I’m kind of trying to get back home.” My Staff floated up next to me, lofty and aloof. She had a mighty Sword, true enough, but my Staff wasn’t anything weak, either, and actually had both Weapon and Staff enchantments bound into it.

            “Wow. Had no idea it was that bad. Survival rate?” she grimaced.

            “One percent or so.”

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