A Solitary God In A Dark Multiverse 126 Extraplanars And Fey

Many sapient creatures, particularly humanoids and good-aligned dragons, leaped to the conclusion that I had wanted them to leap too. They viewed me as a G.o.d of love, mercy, and freedom, and some even worshiped me as an altogether good G.o.d. Handfuls of them were even wondering how to get into contact with me rather than waiting around for me to perform another miracle.

Extraplanars and fey were wiser, at least on the society-wide scale, and their response to me was colder and more neutral than that of humanoids and dragons. Unsurprisingly, they tended to react to me in ways that fit their alignment, which in turn made me feel a range of emotions.

Seelie fey were excited by me so far, but even they were cautious. Plenty of them began to worship me as a G.o.d of healing and as a potential focus for their powers, a provider of magic. I intended to be that for them, so this excited me. The system also informed me as to what Seelie fey were in the first place.

Seelie fey were, generally speaking, the members of the fey that were warmer to humanity and other humanoids. They included most of the world's dryads, pixies, sprites, satyrs, nymphs, and other, often humanlike fey.

Unseelie fey was the other type of fey. They were a faction of fey spirit that was far more aggressive and hostile to humanoids than their Seelie counterparts. This faction included hags, nuckelavees, redcaps, primal goblins, boogeymen, and a range of other fey. They were far diverse, in appearance at least, than their Seelie relatives.

Extraplanars who were located on Torus had a far more complex set of reactions to me. Celestials, the universal term for good-aligned extraplanars were some of my biggest supporters among the extraplanars. Fiends, the universal term for evil-aligned extraplanars, were not excited by me so far.

The few angels on Torus, including a once hidden angel of lies, were no longer hiding. The angels were the neutral-aligned extraplanars who most liked me which was unsurprising since angels had been created to serve G.o.ds.

There were under three hundred of them in the world, scattered throughout the continents, and of the extraplanars they were the least populous group on Torus. Among them there were angels of nature, love, faith, law, n.o.bility, lies, truth, war, life, dreams, creation, and other domains and subdomains.

They were the only group of extraplanar beings I immediately reached out too in the wake of studying the menu. I could barely contain myself after actually sitting down and learning about them.

________________________________________________

[Alert: A Choice Lies Before You

Althos has noticed your existence and is aware of the history that ties together the G.o.ds and the angels. He wishes for you to come home, to the home he built for himself but will happily welcome you into. And to that end he will tell you of his true nature.

Althos is a neutral G.o.d who aspires to gain omnipotence and omniscience. One of his minor goals is to rid the multiverse of slavery. He is worshiped by a nameless legion of the undead and by an enormous swarm of evolved, eusocial insects known as 'The Swarm', as well as by various families and individuals throughout the solar system.

Althos will not force you to serve him or to worship him, but he would be pleased if you did. If you tire of the mortal world, if you seek a place to call home, and to serve a higher purpose, Althos would gladly welcome you into the solitary, floating island sanctuary he calls home.

If you choose to stay among the mortals, Althos will respect that. He wants you to come to him willingly. If you do decide to come to him, know that Althos will respect you and will seek to use your talents intelligently. He will give you purpose and power.

He believes that many of you will come. That many of you tire of the land of mortals. That you seek, in your heart of hearts, a purpose. Come. Find your purpose. Join your G.o.d.

Ask to come home. Pray to Althos. Inform him of your desire to join him. To work to achieve his goals. To be the first angels in all of existence to gain purpose anew.]

________________________________________________

When Althos reached out to the angels with his customized alert, he also touched their minds. In doing so he inadvertently empowered them, by giving them a taste of something they had forgotten: the touch of true divinity. The undivided attention of a G.o.d did something to angels, on a genetic and biological level and even the slightest bit of attention from Althos was a religious experience to the angels he sought to bring to his side.

Althos had no way of knowing this. He had only encountered two angels in his life, and they were broken but then healed by him. They had had the needed time to adjust to his power, to feel it caress their skin and touch their souls before directly encountering the G.o.d. The other angels weren't that lucky.

Angelic anatomy was not like mortal anatomy and angelic minds were both stronger and weaker than those of mortals. They were wired differently than mortals were, and even among extraplanars their nature was odd and sometimes frightening to behold.

Angels were not created to be independent beings. They were an artificially constructed servitor race, made of soul-stuff and powered by the will of the G.o.ds and the angels of Torus had been running on fumes for over half a million years. With the exception of the volcanic angels, they had no way of resisting the drug-like divine touch of Althos.

It was by the will of the old G.o.ds that the angels were created with the power to handle domains and subdomains. Angels could faintly mimic the powers of the G.o.ds and the domains they influenced and they used those powers to serve their masters and enact their wills. Such powers were not free: for angels to use their powers they must receive power and life from a G.o.d they served. Otherwise they would die, eventually. Even if it took them millions of years.

Althos did not know this, at least not a lot of. He knew bits and pieces of it, subconsciously, but he did not know the dirty details. He did not know of aetherium, the name that was given to soul-stuff by ancient, long-dead scholars of the domains. He did not know of the sacred processes that were involved in creating angels. He didn't even know that angels themselves were physically dependent on G.o.ds. If he had, he probably would have approached them earlier.

Althos' touch wasn't a maddening one to the angels he reached out too. If anything it was the opposite, just too much so. It repaired them, strengthening their senses, and their ties to the domains they were created to embody. They were reminded of their old masters, and

Every angel on Torus felt what they hadn't felt in hundreds of thousands of years. They felt the faintest touch of a G.o.d and the restorative powers of such a subtle action.

Their bodies, auras, powers, and even their souls were turned and tuned to the inaudible frequencies of Althos' peerless, G.o.dly soul and the inscrutable nature of his whims. They felt his power. And they submitted to it. To him.

At once, every angel who lived on Torus prayed. They asked to be given a new home. A new destiny. To serve the whims of their new G.o.d. Althos replied to them without words, and merely by opening portals in front of them to his home. None of the angels hesitated and they walked through the portal. At once the angels stood up, and walked into the portals in front of them.

________________________________________________

My mind was fast. Far faster than the physical bodies of the angels. And in the time after the angels prayed to me, but before they stepped through the portals, I learned of the other types of extraplanars that existed on Torus.

None of the truly rare extraplanars that lurked in the multiverse were hidden within the secret swamps and cryptic caves of Torus. But there were still thousands of fiends, celestials, and other, neutral types of extraplanars in the world.

Devils and leyes lived within the Reconquista empire. The respectively lawful-evil and lawful beings didn't even try to hide their presence. They were openly accepted within the cities they made their homes as a quick inspection of a few members of either species revealed that they were authorities within both the centralized government of Reconquista and the individual communities they were part of.

A part of me wanted to reach out to both sorts of lawful extraplanar beings. If I wanted to build a real empire I'd need their aid. I'd also need the help of the pedidos, the lawful good extraplanars. Pedidos lived in Ansari, but not in Reconquista.

Salvajes and demons lived in the Ansari empire, but neither were accepted by the elves. My stellar awareness made it clear to me that both types of creatures lived far away from elven settlements, but for some reason both were common on the continent of Mysteria which wasn't fully settled by the elves even though all of the civilized parts of it were within the borders of the Ansari empire.

The continent of Iredale housed the world's largest population of pain-bringers. Anterior housed a fair amount of extraplanar beings, but no group had its population center within the mysterious, monster-led continent.

A part of me wanted to reach out to all of the a.s.sorted extraplanar beings who lived on Torus. I knew that if I reached out to them I'd gain even greater power. And that it would be safer for me to reach out to them than for me to summon extraplanar beings on my own.

That was what I was thinking about when angels began to appear in front of me. I turned my mind away from such distractions just to properly greet my angelic servants, a wide smile on my face as the creatures began to walk out of portals that had just appeared in and around my divine tower.