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Serenity was puzzled by the message requesting to align Pyongyang’s City Core structure with the existing political structure. He hadn’t seen anything like it before and it took some time to get the Voice to clarify what was going on.
Apparently, the option to “align with existing political structure” was only available if all city cores in the political structure were owned by someone who was appropriately aligned, and even then it would only be offered at the ‘central node’. Other “City Co...
2022-10-11 23:19:21 +0000 UTC
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Bak Jae-suk, City Manager for the Pyongyang City Core, blinked when he saw an option he hadn’t seen before. Was [Create City Core Coalition] what he thought it was?
It was.
He was even able to find the option [Align Core Coalition with Existing Political Structure].
It wasn’t the only option, but he wasn’t suicidal enough to select any of the others. Finding the option before anyone else did should get him some rewards from the Supreme Leader. He was luck...
2022-10-10 22:59:43 +0000 UTC
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“I’m going where?” Margrethe stared at her Guildmaster. She knew he was a brilliant man, and that had only been reinforced when she’d found out just who the Oath she’d given to him had prevented her from killing. That same event made her think she had to be missing something. Or maybe she’d misheard? “There aren’t enough of us on Ranar already. How am I supposed to set up something on a planet that I can’t even go to for a couple years?”
Guildmaster Oathbinder grinned his usual grin;...
2022-10-09 23:15:24 +0000 UTC
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The Dead Swamp was, as far as Serenity could tell, not actually all that bad. It helped a lot that they were traveling by flyer; Serenity could remember more than one trip through a swamp where he’d been on foot and that really, really sucked.
Signs of life were everywhere. Despite its reputation, the swamp was filled with life. Plants grew and animals moved around them.
Of course, it was also filled with both death and the undead. They were not very far into the Dead Swamp when Serenity noticed th...
2022-10-08 23:01:21 +0000 UTC
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“You may come to Aeon with me; that way, you may rest and recover until a way to Zon is open.” High Priestess Karin gave a deep nod that was just shy of a bow; Rissa had learned from Ekari that that was the most respect any non-believer was supposed to get from a follower of Lykandeon.
Rissa didn’t know why she was getting that much respect, but it was completely in line with the fact that Karin had arrived at the new hotel so quickly after they found out they couldn’t travel to Zon; with the trav...
2022-10-07 22:58:53 +0000 UTC
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Rissa reached out towards the portal node crystal. She hesitated for a moment; she couldn’t wait to see Serenity and yet at the same time she didn’t understand why she’d heard nothing from him in weeks. She’d heard from her parents; she’d even heard from his!
Things were going well on Earth, at least.
As for the small group of travelers, Rissa knew they were lucky Ekari was with them; getting across Lyka would have been very difficult otherwise. With Ekari’s help, or perhaps more prec...
2022-10-06 23:04:51 +0000 UTC
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“They were getting through the ward, Robert. It slowed them down, it didn’t stop them. They’d have all been dead if we hadn’t happened to pass by and see some people running away.” Andarit sounded tired and disappointed. She clearly had some good memories of Robert, but they were probably tainted now. “The better answer would be that you’re lying and were trying to rob them.”
Robert paled. “I wasn’t! It was just to scare them!”
That sounded like Zon had something like summary...
2022-10-05 22:58:10 +0000 UTC
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“Why did you let him go?” Andarit scowled at Serenity. “He should have been killed for everyone’s safety.”
Serenity smiled as he shrugged. “He’ll stay in the swamp and he’s not going to attack people. That’s enough; the Dead Swamp is already unsafe. Look at what happened to Timmat.”
“Can you really trust that?” Andarit was clearly uncomfortable.
“Maybe, maybe not. Even if he comes out, he’s no more of a threat than anything else that’s in there. Chances are good h...
2022-10-04 23:09:36 +0000 UTC
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Timmat was born in the Heavenfall Enclave to a pair of young slaves, a miner and a waitress. He was raised knowing that because his parents were slaves and could not pay, the costs of his childhood would count against him when he finished his Tier Zero Path and became an adult. This didn’t faze him at all; it was simply the way the world was. His parents were still paying down their own childhood debt, after all, but things were good.
Baron Heavenfall was quite fair. He offered training to any debt-sla...
2022-10-03 22:54:20 +0000 UTC
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“Serenity!” Andarit’s voice floated in from behind Serenity. “Is there something else in there?”
She must have finished off the fire-spitting giant zombie. Good.
“There’s someone up this tree,” Serenity called back. “I’m trying to talk him into coming down.”
The man-shaped figure hadn’t moved. Serenity knew that whoever it was was still alive, for whatever that meant with a patchy Life-and-Death Vital Affinity. The question was why the person was hiding in a tree.
2022-10-02 23:02:49 +0000 UTC
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Each of the three giant undead was at least fifteen feet tall and they all stank of the Undeath Affinity as Serenity came closer.
Serenity was somewhat less than pleased to find that smell was still the sense most impacted by the Affinity that was much like his own, yet so different. He’d always thought that it was simply because he was undead and nearly all undead had no sense of smell, leaving that feeling to be repurposed for other things. Apparently that wasn’t the only reason.
Most of the thin...
2022-10-01 23:04:16 +0000 UTC
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People weren’t straightforward, but nonsapient undead generally were. They wouldn’t go around unless the backup was so bad that they could no longer see him or there were too many bodies. The only difficulty should be if they had a sapient controller, and this sort of swarm most likely did. It was the most common reason for swarms, though not the only one.
Serenity took a few more steps forward. He shouldn’t need the room, but having it just in case was better than not.
It was getting dark b...
2022-09-30 23:00:56 +0000 UTC
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Aeon is the Holy Land, the Land of Eternity made manifest. Lyka is the land of clay, the land of those who are not granted the Presence of Lykandeon.
High Priestess Karin to Clarissa Latimer
You can see Lyka from Aeon if you look up. Lyka is beautiful, like a giant blue marble. It’s hard to believe so many people live here.
Ekari to Clarissa Latimer, four hours after her mother left
I wonder how many religious people back home would be incensed...
2022-09-29 23:13:55 +0000 UTC
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It took a few days, but Serenity was able to convince Andarit to hand the letters over to Ceney to deliver, except for the two intended for Margrave Iron Mountain and Duke Lowpeak. Ceney was already planning how to convince the various country nobles to help, so it only made sense to give her the letters. The only reason they didn’t hand them all over was that they were headed to Lowpeak and that required going through the Mountain Crest Estate.
The only passable land route to Lowpeak required crossing...
2022-09-28 23:01:53 +0000 UTC
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It took a few days for Ekari to get the pass to travel on Lyka, but once she did it was a simple task to get there. There was a portal leading to Lyka only a short distance from the portal that led to Asihanya, under the same Dome.
Lyka was different from what Rissa had expected. Unlike most of the worlds they’d passed through on the way to Berinath, Lyka wasn’t mostly wilderness with a few small cities. At least, the parts they were getting to see weren’t.
Instead, Lyka was a massive city c...
2022-09-27 23:07:15 +0000 UTC
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“How far can I trust her?” Serenity felt more than a little uncomfortable as they left Innat’s home and place of business. The two hundred tiny monster cores he’d given her was a lot on Zon, but it really wasn’t that much elsewhere. Realistically, at Tier Three he was only going to bother even picking them up because he had Loot Core; tiny cores were simply very low value, so most people didn’t take the time to dig in a monster and find out if they were there. The thousand Etherium, however, was a s...
2022-09-26 23:26:34 +0000 UTC
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Innat was busy, but that didn’t stop her from being bored. The only interesting project was the design of a subsidiary Spire; no one knew exactly how the true Spire was built, but there was an architect who’d been telling everyone he could build it if he could just get enough iron for years.
One of the Baron’s nephews had decided to take him up on it. If he was successful, miniature Spires would replace the firewatch towers scattered around the countryside. It was a vanity project, but if the fake S...
2022-09-25 23:03:05 +0000 UTC
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[Node functionality is restricted due to the contested situation in the Zenith Control Zone]
[Node Restrictions: Messaging and portal functions are limited. City Owner functionality is disabled. City Features are available only under manual control. Other functions are unaffected; settings may not be changed until a new City Owner is established]
[Messaging restrictions: Messaging may not cross geographic boundaries. Messages will be retained for future del...
2022-09-24 22:57:16 +0000 UTC
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Celestials’ Rest was surrounded by fields, some clearly used for raising animals and others clearly farmed for crops. There were several bridges on the way to the main settlement, clearly crossing man made canals. Serenity knew there was a river that ran through the area, so that was probably the water source; it came down from the mountain Zenith was on, but the road didn’t follow the river; the canals were probably running from the river to wherever the settlement needed water.
There were Earthlings...
2022-09-23 22:59:43 +0000 UTC
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At first, there were a lot of other people traveling alongside their wagons. Most of the others traveled faster, since they were empty while leaving; the wagons headed the other way were even slower than they were, heaped to the top with things from outside the city.
What traveled to and from a city wasn’t something Serenity had paid much attention to in the past, so he spent some time watching, trying to guess what was in each wagon. Would it be more food or something more interesting, like dye or met...
2022-09-22 23:15:50 +0000 UTC
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Flying a few feet above a desolate moonscape was interesting at first; the entire place looked strange, with signs of impacts that hadn’t been smoothed out by wind and water all over the place. Nothing grew in the land outside the domes; when Rissa asked Emi why that was, Emi asked why they should bother. If they needed more ground space, they could just grow another bubble.
At least as far as Emi knew, they weren’t interested in terraforming Berinath; they simply wanted space to live.
The shado...
2022-09-21 22:57:53 +0000 UTC
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[Message from Aardya a’Kerinth (Kerr) to Rissa Latimer]
Rissa,
I’ve made it back to Berinath from Asihanya. I’ll meet you at the Pearwood Inn, it’s the one closest to the Harrow portal. We need to find a new route, travel across Asihanya is an even worse idea than Raz suggested it might be.
Have you heard from Serenity? He hasn’t replied to my messages. I know he was supposed to be in a dungeon, but I e...
2022-09-20 23:03:59 +0000 UTC
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“Noble Protection,” Andarit filled in. “They’re the premiere armor shop. The place you go to for armor if you’re a noble.”
Serenity was confident he must have missed the name. While it did do a good job of saying what it was, it was a terrible name otherwise. On the other hand, Serenity supposed he probably shouldn’t be too hard on them; it wasn’t like they needed a better name if they didn’t have any competition. Everyone they cared about knew who they were.
The fact that they didn...
2022-09-19 23:03:35 +0000 UTC
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“Who are you?” The first acolyte called out to Serenity from far enough out that he probably thought he was safe from an easy melee attack. Against a normal Tier Three, he’d probably have been right.
Serenity didn’t see any reason to enlighten him about the difference. “My Name is Serenity. Who are you? Do you know why the portal isn’t available?”
Serenity thought he did a pretty good job at acting upset that he couldn’t use the portal. It was probably helped by the fact that he was ...
2022-09-18 23:12:05 +0000 UTC
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Serenity levered himself to his feet. He was worrying about Rissa for no reason, simply because he couldn’t talk to her and tell her what was going on. That wasn’t helpful.
He needed to do something to distract himself. His usual choice was exercise of some sort, but it wasn’t like he could just hop over to the Armory and spar with Sillon and Kerr. There also wasn’t any sort of exercise apparatus here.
He wanted to be moving. Specifically, he wanted to check out the portals and see if they we...
2022-09-17 23:11:39 +0000 UTC
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This doesn't immediately affect anyone here, but if you leave my Patreon and return it might: I've moved to what Patreon calls "subscription billing". This means that Patreon will bill you on the monthly anniversary of your previous payment instead of always on the 1st.
For everyone already subbed, since you signed up under 1st of the month billing, you will still be billed on the 1st - that's your monthly anniversary.
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The view from the third-floor room was nearly ideal. Andarit and Serenity could ...
2022-09-16 22:57:08 +0000 UTC
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“Where in the Palace?” Serenity didn’t like the idea of going back to the Palace, but if it let them get out of Zenith safely, it was worth considering. He knew there were secret passages in the Palace complex, but he didn’t know how easy they were to find or if they connected to each other. It was entirely possible they’d already been found and it wouldn’t be a safe way out.
“Deep inside the Palace, the most protected areas,” the prince admitted. “They’re isolated from the other passa...
2022-09-15 23:03:14 +0000 UTC
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Rissa was the last one through the portal, as usual, right after Blaze. She wasn’t certain why they’d adopted the order, but it was always the same. Sillon first, then Ita followed by Blaze with Rissa bringing up the rear.
As she’d learned to do, Rissa took a couple of steps forward and one to the side, making sure she was out of the way of anyone else coming through the portal, before she did more than see where her feet were going. Once she did look up, her mouth dropped. She was standing in a gla...
2022-09-14 23:08:02 +0000 UTC
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Coyote made his way through Dragon’s study towards the other God. Had he added more bookcases recently? Coyote didn’t remember some of the ones he was seeing.
Not that that was the real problem. The real problem was that he simply didn’t want to ask Dragon the question he was about to have to ask. He couldn’t find that entertaining mortal anywhere on Earth; had something happened to Dragon’s protege?
As he rounded the last corner and was finally able to see the vision Dragon was projectin...
2022-09-13 23:02:13 +0000 UTC
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First thing in the morning, Andarit and Serenity stripped the house of anything even remotely valuable. Andarit had limited space available in her storage bag, but they could fit as much as they wanted in Serenity’s rift.
Enough went through that Serenity began to feel a bit like a packrat. It was simply floating in the Origin; what would the other Sovereigns think? Could they even see it?
Serenity kept that thought to himself. It was still better to take everything than leave it to whoever might...
2022-09-12 23:10:42 +0000 UTC
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