NOVEL SIMPLE And they don’t stop coming
Year 19
I, along with nearly half the retinue, cheered when the Keystone was fully charged, dispelling the dark Xel’naga from the Golden Armada and allowing the Protoss to free themselves. Netorarian didn’t live long after that, to be fair, but it was the first time he fully completed a scenario laid out for him. In the body of Artanis, my boy had held the front line himself.
On the one hand, he was still someone who preferred to lead from the front, but on the other hand he’d matured to the point that he picked his battles and did everything he could to survive. Mission completion was the priority, so he let himself cut loose a little only when his army was starting to fold. In this timeline, if it had continued, Artanis would be remembered as a heroic martyr.
Of course he still relied a little too much on Flavie for strategy; Vorazun, matriarch of the Dark Protoss, would probably have been remembered as the one actually coordinating most of the troop deployments in that conflict. That wasn’t all that bad of a weakness though; she was his partner and he intended to keep her by his side long term.
When he arrived back in the pocket plane, it was to vigorous applause and a mountain of roasted meat. Everyone was slapping him on the back, thousands of women wanted to sleep with him, and he was too physically and mentally exhausted to properly appreciate any of it. Stress defense lets you push through anything, but you still feel it. From his point of view, he’d just fought for several days straight against an overwhelming force, culminating in his own death moments after his army attained its win condition. He’d completed the test only by a technicality, but damn if I wasn’t proud anyway.
He resumed his Drake form, ate enough meat to feed a small village, and returned to his room for a food coma in a safe place. Obviously he was happy to hear he won, but the thing about the main timeline is that nothing is ever urgent here. Not anymore; when you literally own the afterlife and have multiple pantheons of deities at your disposal, nothing is a serious threat. He could pass out for a week and we’d handle the debriefing when he was ready.
I hoped that he’d be ready to be there for his sisters first dive, but Artemis and Vivienne didn’t exactly need their big brother there to provide emotional support in the lead up. I’d raised them to be very literal conquerors of worlds; they were chomping at the bit to prove themselves in the field.
I’d trained them in a far less brutal fashion than I had their brother, what with them having an actual childhood and friends. The most comprehensive education I could give them in philosophy, tactics, history, martial arts, ecology, primitive survival, espionage, anthropology, and economics, as well as a shallower study in a wide variety of other topics. Specific information like the alchemical properties of Peacebloom would be largely useless, but understanding how to analyze an ecosystem or society and recognize patterns would be relatively transferable. Of course, I also had to rob them of all Talents so they didn’t end up with gifted kid syndrome on steroids, refusing to engage with anything they couldn’t master in less than a week.
Essentially, my girls were extremely well trained and educated but had little to no actual practical experience at basically anything. They would hopefully be more well rounded than their berserker big brother, but nothing could compare with experience in the field. They’d be given the same first world he had been; Diablo 2, act one. For obvious reasons they’d be granted the Amazon and Sorceress classes respectively, to mirror their own main timeline martial training.
They were cocky teenagers. I honestly expected them to get torn apart; either through rushing into something like their brother had, or by moving slowly enough that hell quite literally broke loose and flooded Sanctuary with demons. Watching as they smiled and said goodbye to their friends, most of whom would be going on extraplanar training missions of their own, my heart sank. They wouldn’t be this innocent the next time that I spoke to them in person. It had to happen for their own good, but that didn’t make it much easier.
Sending a kid to college would have been hard enough. I was about to deliberately subject them to intense horrors just to make sure they would be ready for the only career available to them. What I was about to do with Rari was almost as cruel, but he had already proven he was able to be a war hero and adventurer. There was, however, another setting that was incredibly common, somewhere he’d be disproportionately likely to be thrown. It would also take much longer to properly prepare him for. First though, he could rest.
••••••••••
Year 20
Rari approached the building, a large white structure, with more than a little trepidation. He was one of many near-identically dressed young men and women, Flavie lost somewhere in the sea of students. The other men, like Netorarian, wore black button down jackets and pants along with simple brown shoes. He walked in a daze, following the instincts built into his body.
He joined his fellows in a large room, where he listened to a speech from an old man with beige skin about resilience and the importance of academic excellence. He didn’t really pay attention, but tried to act as if he was. He was actually reading through his missions with a growing sense of despair.
Place in the top 50% of scores during exams for a semester. Bonus if you are the top scorer in at least one subject.
Reward: additional 5,000 yen in pocket money per month.
Bonus: Teaching Talent
Acquire a job and legitimately earn 500,000 yen
Reward: Fool’s Gold Lure
Participate in a school sport, becoming recognized and respected as the star player of your team.
Reward: Athletic talent
The list continued with more in that line of logic, with thoroughly mundane tasks rewarded with perks that would encourage him to continue to pursue that kind of activity. Not all were school related; there were options if he wished to become a delinquent, romance a cute girl, or enter the Esports arena for example, but none would come naturally to my dear berserker.
In the background, usually far away from anything Rari had any part in, Overwatch and Talon faced off all around the world. That was no concern of his, though. He was just an ordinary high school student and would remain so until he graduated and took part in the workforce for at least a decade. If he wanted to join (or enslave) either organization, he’d need to choose that goal and work towards it himself. He had an unfair advantage, several in fact, but compared to what he’d been through so far he certainly wouldn’t feel that way.
••••••••••
Tony and Sally had a lovely life together, but unfortunately they had nearly doomed their world through negligence. When the Eastern Kingdoms proved too hard a target, the Lich King still had his mission: to summon Archimonde into this world and usher in the invasion of the Burning Legion. Nefarian and Onyxia, while quite powerful, had to face the Scourge with extremely minimal support from the rest of the retinue. They settled in Zul’Drak, the frost troll nation. It was, to be perfectly frank, the strongest coordinated military force fighting the Scourge.
They took occasional forays into the Grizzly Hills or Storm Peaks to gather allies and build bridges, and went quite a long way in averting the cannibalism of the northern Loa. Ultimately, however, the two black wyrms were more focused on fighting the Lich King than containing him. As such, they were caught off guard when Arthas took the Nexus and used the ley lines there to reanimate Kel’Thuzad and summon Archimonde to Azeroth. The other dragons did what they could to fend him off, but at that point in history only the green dragonflight were really at their full strength.
The demons assembled and supported their undead patsies, slaughtering the natives of Northrend so that they could be reanimated and bolstering their numbers for the assault on their true target: the world tree Nordrassil. Soon, hundreds of powerful dragons rose in service to the Scourge, and the Vrykul were awakened and indoctrinated into the service of their new god of death.
The Eastern Kingdoms were rebuilding nicely, but the Horde, Alliance, and Sentinels were all at one another’s throats on Kalimdor. Without an immediately apparent common enemy to point them at, Medivh had no real way to build bridges between the three factions. Things just got worse when Daelin Proudmoore arrived. Jaina was more or less willing to sit tight and defend her borders, but she had no particular love for the orcs or elves. Similarly, a still sleeping Malfurion’s moderating influence on Tyrande was replaced with a vengeful Cenarius killing Grom Hellscream to protect his borders.
When the demons arrived and began marching for Mount Hyjal, they didn’t face three wary allies standing together in good faith with clenched teeth. Instead, three enemies barely willing to stop killing one another to save the world tried to fight the demonic horde as uncoordinated separate armies. When the united forces of the Alliance swept in along with hordes of frost trolls riding bats and black dragons, it was a Hail Mary play that barely worked. In the end, Archimonde was still beaten back at the eleventh hour, but not before a bloodbath that killed off 90% of the night elves in their desperate last stand.
The High Elves embraced their shell shocked cousins, often in a very literal sense. Practically overnight, the newly mortal Night Elves were nearly all captured and begging to join the Alliance to help them rebuild. Daelin still wanted to kill off the orcs, but siren song gave Ranger General Windrunner just enough sway to convince him to stay their execution until the Scourge was dealt with. It had been left to fester and rot for far too long, and they’d nearly lost the world to the forces of chaos because of it.
Tony and Sally didn’t particularly want to bring their children to war, but they had the benefit of knowing that they would return to my timeline and live like kings if they died. They were 18 and 16, and that was old enough by the reckoning of the Alliance. They were brought to Zul’Drak, to live among the strongest allied culture on the continent. That capital city was the closest thing to a safe refuge that my agents could hope for in a war like that.
••••••••••
Name: Onyxia AKA Katrana Prestor AKA Aerith Primrose AKA Ti’va
World: Darkest Dungeon, the Hamlet
Tier: Free to Play
Modifiers: Mission System (you will have bounties posted on certain tasks, such as gathering holy relics, mapping out a region, or defeating a major leader among the enemy forces. You will receive no credits or perks; your rewards will be limited to minor or moderate company assets, miraculous or fortuitous events, useful treasures, or new heroes arriving in the Hamlet.)
Budget: 0
Origin: Free Tier 1, The Heir
Perks: Lesser Green Eye Orb: once per lunar month (or roughly 4 weeks) you may visit *Erich Bismark*’s Meeting Space to trade, socialize, and make wagers with him or other contractors who happen to be present.
Drawbacks: +1 No Homo (Bisexuality detected. Only those you find particularly attractive, not just those you could plausibly sleep with, will be counted.),
+1 Harder Daddy (the Hamlet will be actively raided and besieged by bandits at regular intervals, making trade with the outside world difficult and requiring some forces to be dedicated to defending the town),
+1 Speedrun (you have 86 weeks to vanquish the creature at the heart of the Darkest Dungeon.),
+1 Speedrun (taken a second time. You will have 18 irreplaceable recruits that will organically arrive over the course of the first 10 weeks, one of each Canon class from Darkest Dungeon. Mission rewards may include similarly unique heroes derived from popular mods or the sequel.)
Soul Purchase: -3 Job Security, -1 Permanent Purchase: Lesser Green Eye Orb (one hour at the meeting place per month)
••••••••••
For anyone who missed this link last time, since I added this poll after the initial posting of the chapter.