They both hissed with excitement at the potential. -How many are in Siricil?- Sama /asked urgently. -I have met at least two passing through. They seemed quite miffed for some reason at our smithwork.-

-Probably because they couldn't replicate it easily,- I /grinned at her. -The two of you Craft at QL levels that are Eternal in structure. You can't just imitate such things with a wave of the hand, magic isn't that good at replicating truly superior Craftwork like that. They probably thought they could make Angelwork swords easily once they examined one, then found they couldn't.-

I looked around outside once, my hand on Dread, concentrating and analyzing.

-There are three active Immortal Avatars in the city at this time, and half-a-dozen others paying passive attention to it through various means, judging by the effect on the manafield. Tenya has an active Avatar here, somewhere. So does Liisana… and so does Thanatos.-

I actually wasn't surprised by any of them. Tenya was basically the Siricillan goddess of war. Liisana was a goddess of love, beauty, and romance much adored in Delpha. Thanatos, well, He saw an empire here to bring down, so of course He was active somewhere, somehow. There were other gods with interests and representation here, like Quarzion the Sun God, who was worshiped in one form or another across most of the continent, and likely beyond.

-Three IN the city. I gather they would be very disturbed if they knew you knew that,- Sama /mused. -Tenya, Liisana, and Thanatos. Do you have plans for any of them?-

-I need to kill an Avatar of Thanatos one more time in this timeline.-

They both did the blinking thing again. -Kill Him again?- Briggs /repeated, giving me a strange look. -How many times have you killed Him?-

-My Sims have killed him four times.- It had been one of their primary objectives after learning he sponsored and commanded the Soul Eaters. -He is involved in the fall of Empires, and that in its own way makes Him predictable. They looked for His agents among the empires, followed the trails back to His Avatar, and when the empires fell in grand style, they made sure His Avatar fell with them, very much not in the manner he was trying to bring about.

-This did not alter the timeline. They used the eruption of Maganoa, the sinking of Nekshul, the Destruction of Delpha, and the purging of Sythia as covers for the deaths of His Avatars.

-I still have to kill him when the Doom of Darkmoor and the Crimson Cataclysm come down, and neither I nor my Sims can do so in the 'real' past, so it will be done when I go back there.-

-Is there a reason for this very direct killing?- Sama /asked, rather delighted at the idea of a mortal's Simulacra actually stalking and killing an Immortal.

-Yes. For a moment when His Avatar dies and their Immortal Power, their soul is open and vulnerable. My Sims have learned four of His Truenames.

-And I am a High Cryptomancer. I can make incredibly good use of Truenames.-

Okay, that really got their attention.

-Damn,- Briggs /muttered. -It's been too long since I spoke with a Powered who actually played the games and knew what the fuck they were doing, Sama!-

-No shit!- she /agreed eagerly, staring intently at me. -We've got something of a mad on for several Immortals, you might have realized.-

-Have you killed any Immortal Avatars?- I /asked them directly. -I've only killed one solo, and that was inside the Thisbean Inn, basically temporally shunted up and down the timeline and, it turns out, empowering the Inn and its temporal Portal and rejuvenating existence to unreasonable levels. The others have been Immortal creatures, but no Immortals themselves.-

-We've fought three in various forms, mostly pretending to be mortals. We don't know their real forms, but we're fairly sure one was Tenya, one was some manner of thief after our Weapons, and another was Entropic. They, ah, weren't expecting mortals with Bane of Legends on their Weapons, and were all pretty surprised when they died and were vivified explosively,- Sama /snickered. -If we can use those deaths to find their truenames and potentially cripple them or kill them permanently, we'd be happy to go Immortal hunting, Edge!- she /informed me cheerfully.

-I would love to take you into the other timeline, but I'm pretty sure that the temporal stability you both exude would shut down the Portal if you even get near it. The big thing isn't killing the Avatar with vivus, it's doing it so fast that there's no sign of the fight and a great big resulting explosion,- I /nodded at her.

-We didn't use vivus,- Briggs /told me. -But we did kill them very quickly, and they don't appear to have taken direct action against us. There were no witnesses to the fights, and when they died, they just, well, died. We vivified them only after the fact to remove any traces of the body.-

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I frowned. -Final Rest?- I /guessed, and both of them nodded again. -Oh, good, so you did chop free at least part of what was fighting you and cost them their local memories permanently, at least. Unless that was their main body, they don't know who exactly killed them, even if they suspect something. Been bugged by any mysterious cultists or assassins?- I /inquired rhetorically.

-Occasionally. But after what happened to the last cult and arm of the Thuggee Brotherhood who tried something, there's been a brief field of inactivity as more disposable elite assassins are recruited,- Sama /stated without batting an eye.

-Because of course there must be an international organization of assassins, and an Immortal or two is behind its coherency and spread of influence, right?- I could only /sigh and roll my eyes.

-The local Thieves' Guild is very powerful, very old, and very organized. They will also do whatever we tell them to do after we offed their leadership three years ago and recruited some eager younger thieves happy for the chance to advance themselves. It seems that they wanted some of our students to take some dives during their bouts to earn some extra gold on the bets. They didn't, one thing led to another, and we had to wipe out two of the local branches of the Guild and the leadership, some of the old and established families, and so forth. Pity, that,- Sama /said with a particularly straight face.

-And lo, some of the children were spirited away into the night by faithful retainers who managed to make off with just enough of the family wealth to train the children to come back and take vengeance upon the brute and the hag who killed their living families and kinfolk?- I /asked archly.

-It's like she's done this sort of thing before, Fuzzy!- Sama /proclaimed with another eight-canines grin.

-I'm interested in your plans going forward, Edge, and what you think we can do for you,- Briggs /said seriously, regarding me intently. -We've got our own plans, of course, but we've been operating under something of a handicap. We'd like to hear what your intentions are, what you've done, and what you're planning out.-

---

So, I told them. I told them all about Darkmoor, of course, and the fact the rulers of the people there now knew they were doomed… and they were using this future time as an escape exit and 'colony', preparing it for the mass immigration sure to follow.

They were also preserving the technology of the FS Barhund, the starship that brought high technology back to Nown.

Yes, BACK to Nown. I told them that the high tech they'd found was likely even older than Darkmoor, if they found it anywhere other than within a certain radius of the Bleaklands, because that was where my Inn was, and the center of the Doom that had destroyed Darkmoor, while Zanzyr was literally right above the buried remnants of the starship and its now Artifact-level power core!

The new Moorian kingdom was planned to be up north in Eislas, the wild lands there long a bone of contention between Delpha and Siricil, mostly populated by random nifloids, monsters, barbarians, and a lot of dragons. However, it seems Delpha was once again establishing a colony there and intending to lay claim to the area, which was triggering Siricil to start taking precautions. Games of empire were taking shape, completely ignoring the wishes and desires of the native populations in doing so.

I was also building up Erendyl in Zanzyr, expanding the Ranger Tradition there and intending to blossom it in size and scope.

I also had to return home and break Gaebrel's hold on my people, but there were several other things I had to deal with then, as well.

In the past, I had to set up the whole situation with Darkmoor, make sure it did indeed reach the glory and height that had made it survive in legends… and then make sure as many folk as possible escaped the Doom that was coming. There were already people from that time-line here, starting the work of preparing for the Doom that was coming, something that would be leveraged by time and probably take place inside a decade our time.

There were a LOT of things that had to happen for everything to succeed, and someone else available to oversee the non-Casting mundane side of things would be very important and useful.

That wasn't the key thing that stood out to them, of course.

---

"You have high technology here, now." Briggs' eyes were almost glowing as we shifted back to real time so late that false dawn was already coloring the eastern sky. He and Sama were almost salivating at the chance to get their hands on such stuff.

"Yes. One of the first things we brought through was a fabber that can make items at TL 7, just a little bit better than what you and I remember as 'modern' back home. So, yes, I've access to computers, simple lasers and particle guns, and even rail guns if we need them. It can't make anti-grav components, those still have to be made by specialized machinery for the purpose, and those machines can't be fabbed by it, either, they have to be made by people trained to do so."

"Which I assume you have people doing, but you need to set up the supply network and logistics for it," Briggs nodded. "You've just scratched our major itch, Edge. If you want us to move, you have it… and I don't think you want to be introducing high technology in this place. They'll just try to use it to conquer the world, or something," he sniffed disparagingly.

"My, I never would have guessed that," I also rolled my eyes at that, which earned hard smiles from both of them. "If you're willing to move, I'm willing to trust you with operational oversight, have no doubts on that score. I simply don't have enough time to do everything. I can give you the services of a Sim of mine, who will have access to IX's in Casting power, if you need a friendly Caster helping you out. They are restricted to sixty percent of my capacity… but I'm Rank M now, topping out the basic Elven advancement paradigm, which is roughly equal to a human at Thirty.

"I think you will agree that Eighteen is a good Level to be at, and that allows the Sims Valence IX's across Wizard, Sorcerer, and Ur-Priest Clerical spells. They can Cast Wishes if they need to for you."

Their breaths hissed out. "Inherents?" Sama asked quickly.

"Yes… for the appropriate cost. However, the Wishes of this time and place don't have the Costs we tend to associate with them, so Power of Ten Wishes are a different metric than the Wishes here, much like their Permanence spells are different from Permanency spells. The primary benefit of Wishes here is enabling Ability Stats to be raised to Base 18 with enough Wishes to do so."

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