His plan had changed again and again. It needed to be for a true masterpiece. A good planner always adapts to changes. A strategy that can not adapt to changes has to be discarded. Fortunately, his plans did not need to be discarded. His plan for taking over the kingdom''s west was fast. It would happen in three nights and 1 day, for a total of three days in-game time.
He had analyzed his brother and sister''s runes while enhancing his own understanding. He had found they could use the divine energy incantations too. His brother and sister both had access to the fear rune. He could not be sure if it was offered to every evil god or only to some divinities. This meant that fear domination was a skill they could access.
The forest that the tavern guys in Misthaven warned of beast tides was not a regular forest it was called the great moonlight forest said to be housing elves. It encompassed the western border of the
Evernight kingdom where Elijah had developed. His trial for Timothy had been in the outskirts, only. He had to choose the outskirts because he was not sure if the tavern NPCs would risk it otherwise.
Mike and Delilah convinced him there was no need to act separately. Mike convinced of the potential of the evil pantheon idea and excited about the family time, had already spent some of his savings over the years to higher an editor. Starlight scenes were not that useful when you wanted to grow and wait for the bigger fish. No big company would support someone just because of the trailer. The only way the idea could be successful enough for Mom to let them go was by getting sponsorship from somewhere huge. Deli had already created social media.
The plan had two stages, he called the first the Great Nightmare and the second the Great Beast Tide. The first was the evolution of his nightmare initiation. They would make every single person have a nightmare. Choosing a relatively dangerous location in the forest and nighttime as the initiation. The first would be to make all three cities, go through the nightmare initiation. Because of the scale, he could not personalize anymore. Especially, since some of these were done by Deli and Mike whose character’s dream skills were not as high level. He had created initiation ritual essentials and levels for different people. The first level that most people would see was just a warning. It was drowning in a sea full of visions of people being eaten by beasts. Its purpose was to make the cities fearful and generate some influence in time.
The second level mainly targeted them. In the days following some NPCs would dream of a fae calling herself the queen of the night. This fae would show a location in the forest. This was an initiation site.
The third level was an attempt at weakening. Some NPCs would dream of becoming possessed or told by a great father figure or mother figure that they needed to assassinate the blessed, the hostile strong NPCs, and the mayor for the greater good. He planned to use the lore in chronicles for the figures, He needed the equivalent of Ouranus and Gaia from the Greeks, the primordial. It needed to sound important and destiny-like to give real insensitive.
The beast tide was self-explanatory, three of them would go deeper into the forest, and use their abilities to cause a beast tide. He thought with fear rune he should be able to create an incantation for widespread panic in creatures even if he could not there were other solutions. His current skills like fear domination could do it too but much slower. He actually had hope that plague runes offered to his brother could cause madness or bloodlust condition in monsters. In theory, plague divinity would beat nightmare in a wide area effect any day.
In summary, the plan would be to create a beast tide as an external problem for the cities and also as a test for NPCs. Choose the ones we would like and have them blessed to create cults, while the city’s guardians are exhausted take control over it from inside using cults, assassination, and manifesting if needed for the final touches. Manifesting allowed attacking the blessed too. The final part was actually a bit wasteful. If they could have positive images he would have slowly extended influence to the mayors who held count titles. He could imagine the thrill of a political strategy game but unfortunately, it was quite impossible. What they could do was to take these three cities and grow the cults fast enough to extend their influence to the counts’ whole territories. Meaning the villages and towns under their jurisdiction. If they were successful the west of the kingdom would really belong to them. He was also somewhat relaxed about leveling up now even if there was no better way. They could always just periodically create beast tides. He was feeling great about the idea.Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
“Nyarlathotep, God feels weird to call you that, are you sure this would the timing would work, if we make this city have the nightmare by the time we travel to each of these cities and set the nightmare wouldn’t it be a better use of the time if we just focus on this city,” said Mike who he now had to call Hastur. He loved Lovecraft but even he felt weird calling his brother Hastur.
“You are right, it is a bit ambitious but I solved the problem when I was with Raven. It is actually making me a little horrified how the pieces of the puzzle have gathered. Although frankly, this is too subjective. Hastur, you see actually for this plan my divinity might be the most redundant. Yours can be used for the beast tide best and Raven’s actually offered teleportation ability as level 1 runes. Although it is pretty limited it is enough to do this for three cities and three consecutive nights after that we do really need to focus on a city. I guess the game should offer something for taking control of a city. Let’s hope it helps with this.”
“You know, it is not exactly the pieces of the puzzle when you analyze runes. You know one of my best friends is a pro right? He told me a good incantation formula is a rare drop from monsters outside the divine cities. Most of the gamers have turned this into a luck-based competition. You did not crack the game’s rune language, did you? Even mom can not save you if Philemon sues you “
“I do not have enough runes to crack the rune system and it is ambiguous technically the law mentions created languages. I just have to prove they made it based on old north runes or something. These AIs would not create it based on scratch.”
“Philemon would not sue him, they would probably just pay money to shut you up. They may even sponsor you. The damage by spreading that is worse. It had happened to a company about 3 years ago. You should definitely crack the rune system” said Delilah returning from testing the new incantation.
“Why do you two believe that I can crack this language? It is honestly hard. It does not follow a simple order?”
“You are the genius you tell me? Though the incantation worked isn’t the cool down too long” said Deli
“What do you expect from level 1 runes? We are low leveled as fuck.” said Elijah a little offended. He had spent time on the incantation.
“First language, second give Raven some points. It is hard to feel low-leveled when you are in the middle of overtaking three cities in-game” said Mike
“In this game, we are gods what do you expect? Actually, this should be the standard progression anyway, gain influence in the mortal world where you are actually powerful to use in the divine realm where you have no power at all”
“I see. So play the strategy game to get to role-play. It is actually good but why don''t many do this then?” said Deli.
“No some are doing it. You know Andrew my best friend?” asked Mike.
“The one who quit medical school” exclaimed Deli.
“Yes, he is a pro gamer. He told me they were doing the same thing but they planned to take the influence of one city for the guild not this much” said Mike
“Sooner or later they would expand. The problem is we don’t have the luxury. I don’t know much but this game seems realistic. This would mean that while the kingdom’s reaction to gods would be a question to us who are considered evil gods would not be. I do not think gaining and maintaining a territory is open to us”
“You mean the game would not let us maintain these cities,” said Deli
“Yes, probably they send some sort of expedition force,” said Elijah
“Then why take cities at all” said Mike
“Because the territory is too much of an advantage. I think the only realistic way we three could hold territory would be to take a vast amount right now where there is no player actively on the side of the kingdom,” said Elijah
“Doesn’t this mean evil gods are at a disadvantage? Wouldn’t that be unbalanced?.” asked Mike.
“I think you forget the inherent advantage though. We can gain influence based on fear. You saw what I did at the tutorial. You can do it easily. Find a mage get him to summon a demon in your name and generate fear. If this mage is your apostle you can order him to go to the next town and the next, till you generate enough fear. My problem is that it can not be endgame play for us” said Elijah
“Because the gods would be protectors of the kingdom right?”
“Exactly”
Elijah was actually thinking about how to defeat the expedition force of the kingdom. He hoped the levels they would gain in this plot of theirs would be useful and give him an answer. These levels meant more because he would see how the stat assignment went for his brother and sister. He had considered using telekinesis more so he could gain some DP but he was not sure he wanted to yet.
If he did not have a single DP major skill that had potential was raising the stats that important. It was just hard not to feel he was going wrong about this. When he first started playing he was fascinated by specialization, then as he gamed more he realized most games would require full balanced builds or at least having balanced stats at first then specialization. This game was new in a lot of ways that he rationally knew there was no comparison but he was being stressed.