Continuing to observe the people at the farm was a sowhat surreal experience but also a deeply fascinating one. The surreal part ca with the continued exposure to the Oathbreaker effect hamring my brain with the knowledge that these people were not trustworthy, making wonder what long-ti exposure would do to a person. It also made wonder whether this hamring was the only aspect of the effect or if there was more, as I couldn’t really tell whether my continuously rising disdain for them was artificially induced beyond what I had noticed. Regardless, the entire thing drove ho just how important it was to avoid breaking my oaths, ever, especially in a way that would have labelled such. It also sent a shiver of anxiety down my spine when I rembered the group I sought to harden and push onto a path of sowhat authoritarian leadership by giving them an external foe and the divine scolding I had received back then. Luckily, I had never given my Oath or so sort of promise, so I had been safe, but the effect I was observing here drove ho just how harsh the consequences could be if the punishnt was assigned by the system.
Maybe it would be best to be very, very cautious with any research and experintation on any part of the system if this was what the system could do if its rules were broken in a manner egregious enough to trigger these punishnt effects. Compared to this, the Divine Curse I had seen earlier, or the effects of Mortal Hubris and Titanic Ambition I had observed on myself, were completely harmless but then, those effects hadn’t been a punishnt for ssing with the system but one for ssing with powerful entities within the system, a sowhat important difference.
On the other hand, the fascinating part of my observation was the social dynamics I could observe. By now, Luna and I had essentially agreed that the people there didn’t have any real, formal leadership beyond what Ned might have brought to the table as a legacy, but from what I had seen, the guy hadn’t been interested in acting as a community leader, at most, he had been the leader of his party. That might be why the effects I was observing were as pervasive as they were. If the community had essentially been anarchic, with everyone discussing things without a formal, or even subconscious, organisation in place, anyone was essentially a leader. And, as it looked like, the leader could obligate their community, aning that anyone could assign quests, though possibly only to those from outside the community, and everyone could acknowledge their completion, making this incredibly volatile.
Now, they were trying to establish so sort of hierarchy or organise sothing while under the Oathbreaker effect and getting hamred by it if the way they avoided looking at one another was any indication. It had to be quite hard to have that kind of knowledge get hamred into your mind whenever you looked at a friend.
rcifully, the children didn’t seem to be affected by the effect; the few that I could see were moving around normally, and I didn’t get any ntal feedback from looking at them. However, it made wonder when the transition from child to adult was according to the system. Was it based on age or level? Going by chronological age, Luna would almost certainly be considered a child, but going by levels, ntal and physical maturity and power? Most would see her as an adult, with a few considering her a mature teenager, readily able to step up to take their role in society.
But that was only a side observation; the really interesting part was watching a few individuals move between small, slowly congregating groups, obviously trying to get so semblance of a democratically chosen council or sothing like that. From what I could hear through my constructs, they needed to judge those responsible for the Oathbreaker effect or it would persist, sothing they obviously wanted to avoid. It would be interesting to see how exactly that would work and if there would be lingering effects of the ntal hamring, like so sort of conditioned reflex. Maybe keeping a scrying construct or five in the area and taking the occasional look would be a good idea.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
But as strange and interesting as this hitherto unseen influence of the system was, I was more interested in the effects Lady Hecate had demonstrated during her divine punishnt. The curses She had used were quite fascinating, especially given that She had worked as slowly and openly as She had, allowing to observe with a fair amount of clarity. I had no doubt that this had been deliberate, and Luna’s comnts later only confird that for , though I wasn’t completely certain why Lady Hecate had acted as She did.
Maybe to compensate for taking over what so might consider my vengeance but I wasn’t too bothered by that. Her actions punished those I wanted to be punished and, if I was honest with myself, there was no way I could have topped what She did without a great of research and experintation. And even if I had managed, I doubted they would have co close to the tight and neat effects She had created. Those had been a work of art combined with a marvel of magic, both aspects pushed beyond what I could accomplish and, likely, would be able to accomplish for a long ti.
A part of wondered if I had accidentally undermined Lady Hecate with my actions, as the Oathbreaker effect now in play easily overshadowed Her punishnt, taking so of the sting out of it and, if I were reading the situation correctly, would see those She had punished either executed or banished from the community, rendering the punishnt sowhat moot. After all, if people didn’t know that sobody had been punished for a certain act, there was no deterrence effect from that punishnt, though I doubted that people would willingly desecrate shrines without having proper divine backing in place, making sure that the Gods they were attacking couldn’t just retaliate as Lady Hecate had.
Regardless of whether my actions were to Her liking or not, I happily parsed out the curse She had used, and while I was well aware that replicating it was beyond , I could take inspiration from it. There were so fascinating links between Blood Magic and its effects on the Body, Mind Magic and its obvious effects on the Mind, and, lastly, the effects of either were, in turn, influenced by the Soul. Which could be manipulated using Soul Magic, though getting to the point at which I could manipulate a soul in a delicate enough manner to have the changes I made to the Soul had the exact and predicted reflections on Body and Mind would be a long and arduous process. A little like trying to play an instrunt from across the room, blindfolded and while using fans or sothing like that: incredibly indirect, highly dependant on the individual in question and, quite frankly, highly impractical. This wasn’t to say that I wouldn’t be researching how a manipulation of the Soul would reflect on Body and Mind, but I would likely stay with simple changes to the soul and their effects, not trying anything truly delicate for a while.
Once again, I was reminded just how incredibly complex sapience is and how deeply the different aspects of what makes a being sapient and a person are connected. Sadly, that also reminded just how difficult it would be to get Sigmir back and into a proper body, how many things could go wrong with that process and how horrible the consequences of things going wrong could be.
The Body was the most flexible aspect in regards to my plans. As long as the fundantals were there, it could be adjusted to fit the Mind, and the Soul would hopefully attach to it. However, I had a feeling that a disjunction between the Body and the other two aspects could be debilitating. Still, I felt as if the body was the least problematic aspect, simply because bodies were changing throughout the course of a lifeti anyway, so the Mind and Soul had to be able to cope with a changing body. To what degree and just how that coping would play out? I had no idea.
My current understanding was that the Mind was of lesser importance. While it stored all mories, mories were, if I rembered correctly, constantly evaluated and partially overwritten as a person grew and reexamined their life. This was why the Soul was the most important aspect, as it had to be responsible for that process and was, quite literally, the thing that made a person into who they were. It decided how experiences were interpreted while also defining a person’s core characteristics. In so ways, the Soul was the essence of a person, so ssing with it fundantally changed who that person was. And I knew I had to ss with Sigmir’s to get my beloved back. And wasn’t that a cheery thought?
User Comments
0 comments from readers