A Solitary God In A Dark Multiverse - 176 Civilization, Faith, And Darkness

Time passed slowly while I was doing my part to aid in the construction of a new settlement. At some point along the way I had quietly come to a nice realization: when I was done here I could appoint a high priest or priestess and gain the second tiers of influence over the domains of civilization and faith. And that was pleasant to think about.

Another thing that helped me kill some time was the appearance of an unusual praereptor demon. About forty-five minutes into the work I was approached by a single praereptor, who wished to aid me and to exalt in my presence. The creature was humble and merely wished to be of use to what it dubbed “The shadowy lord of the unseen”, which was its obsequious way of referring to me. I didn’t mind it though, and the title it came up with on its own was useful because it made realize that this was the perfect place for me to begin to make a cult of darkness.

One of the best parts of this was that this creature’s fixation with darkness made it an ideal high priest. Which made things far easier for me as I no longer had to try and figure out who to pick for that post. The little creature even asked me how I wanted to be worshipped. Each fawning question made me like it even more than I already had.

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“Oh Shadowy One, what must your priests do to be viewed as deserving of your attention?” The little creature asked me, as we stepped towards one of the few buildings in the burgeoning settlement that wasn’t a house.

The building in front of us was a large and square building, that I had designed to be a temple to my glory. It was made of the wood from an especially dark tree, even by the standards set by these extradimensional light-devourers. Every part of it was made of the darkest wood I had ever seen. Even the doors leading into the building were so dark as to be difficult for a non-darkness-blessed creature to detect.

As I approached the door, I mulled over the question asked by my servant. I actually quite liked that question. In thinking about it, I began to think about what I wanted from the demon and the cult we’d be making here. And then the answer came to me. But before it could the demon and I reached the temple I had built.

The creature itself was named Paimon, and I had given it the form of a fairly young and average looking man. It was standing next to me until a bit before I got to the doors of the temple. When I began to approach the temple the demon dashed in front of me and ran to the door, before grabbing and pulling it open meekly. It was at that point that I answered the question.

“Priests, in the order you and I shall build anyway, who seek my approval must blind themselves.” I told the demon, as I walked past it and into the temple. When I was clear of the door, the demon closed the door behind us and dashed back up to me. As it did it spoke again.

“Yes. To worship a god of darkness, one must embrace darkness itself. To do so in the most direct way, one must blind themselves. It is not enough to live in the darkness, one must be willing to give themselves to it. To me.” I told the demon. When I said that, the demon eagerly ate it up. I could sense his fanaticism shooting up even more as I spoke.

“Of course! That makes perfect sense!” The demon declared. I smiled lightly, even as I studied the temple in front of me.

Paimon and I found ourselves inside of a simple nave, an area where a congregation sat. I rose a hand and weaved together furniture, pews specifically, made of darkness. I made dozens of them and scattered them equally throughout the area in front of us. Paimon looked at the scene in awe, a fanatical grin on his face. He spoke as I did this, praising me and my powers over the very stuff that had once comprised his entire form. After a few moments, he delivered a remark of more substance, one worth listening too.

“As praereptors darkness is… It’s everything to us. Normal praereptors are creatures made of animated shadow stuff. As a god of darkness, you are exceptionally appealing to us. Especially since you did something no demon lord ever did: you gave us bodies.” The demon told me, explaining why Sombra had so easily become obsessed with me. In a sense it was only confirming what I had already suspected, but such confirmation was nice.

“Shadowy One, I am eager to learn more of the faith you seek for me and for my fellow praereptors to build. Tell us more about how we might earn your approval.” The demon asked. I was beginning to move towards the back of the nave, closer to where the altar would be when I constructed one. I listened to the demon and once more thought about its question for a few moments. After a bit I came up with an answer.

“There are worlds out there where mortals no longer fear the dark. They feel they have conquered the night. I don’t like that.” I told the demon. I was thinking of both Htrea and a few worlds in the solar system of my birth. In such places mortals were arrogant and through the usage of artificial lights, magic in some cases, and fire, felt like they had conquered darkness. The more I thought about that, the less I liked it.

“Darkness should be frightening to mortals. I will use this cult to begin to strike fear of the dark back into the hearts of humans, elves, and dwarves. We shall spread darkness.” I whispered to Paimon. And at this the thoroughly wicked creature began to cackle evilly.

I wordlessly constructed an altar made of darkness to serve as the pulpit for this temple. I stared at its dark angles for a moment, before I grinned and began to construct something, in my mind anyway.

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I was creating a cult based on darkness in this thus far unnamed settlement. It was time for me to begin to fully embrace that. And so I set to work creating something unlike anything I had ever created. A book.

In the depths of my mind I envisioned a blank, heavy book. Mentally, I painstakingly created empty pages to fill the book with. I envisioned hundreds of pages for someone to flip through, in a futile effort to learn the book’s contents. I wanted the book to be useless to those who had sight and hadn’t given themselves over to the darkness I was the god of. This blank, heavy book would only be useful to those who had sacrificed to me, and given me their sense of sight.

In the hands of a priest of mine who had sacrificed their sight this book wouldn’t be read. Instead this item would tether them to me and serve as a conditional way for them to hear my voice. This item would be a holy symbol to me, and with it a darkness-based cleric of mine would have a perpetual tether to me, and would be able to be guided through life by my whispers.

I was creating a relic. And the more I worked on it, the more I liked it. Especially since the more I worked on it in my head the more ideas I had for it.

In nearly half an hour, I had a potent tool in my mind, and by using my powers over things like art, creation, faith, and magic, I silently brought this book from the immaterial world of my mind, into the physical world and I quietly found myself holding the thick thing. As I did so, I created a unique alert to be given to Paimon, when I give him the tome I had just created.

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[Book Of Shadows:

This dark relic is a unique tool given by the god of darkness to his high-priest or priestess. This book is useless to those who lack faith in the Shadowy Lord of the Unseen, but in the hands of his high-priest or priestess, who would undoubtedly be the first to sacrifice their vision in the name of pleasing their divine master, it transforms into a potent tool.

This unique relic bestows a high priest of the god of darkness with a number of potent powers. Chief among these powers is that it allows a high-priest to hear Althos’ whispers and to be guided through life by their god, truly a wonderful honor only those who seek to fulfill the will of the Lord of the Unseen deserve. It also vastly increases the perceptiveness of those who made the sacrifice to Althos, granting them alternatives to sight that allow them to perceive the world around them in unique and alarmingly perceptive ways.

The book is also able to bestow worthy followers of Althos with the power to store items in their shadows, animate their shadows, and even the ability to make weapons out of darkness, like their god can. Service to Althos is rewarded.]

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The book felt light in my hands, but after a moment I reached over to where my shadow was and dropped the book in it. My shadow was a sentient thing, and I chuckled when I watched the book I had just created vanish into the floor of the temple, or rather into the void-like maw of my shadow. Paimon did not notice, and I was grateful for that.

It and I would spend the next hour discussing the dark cult it would raise. By the time we were done conversing I hadn’t told it that I planned for it to be my high-priest, but I would soon enough. By the time it was mid-afternoon on Htrea, Paimon and I found ourselves gathered in front of the rest of the demons and the mortals I had created in the center of the settlement. I felt satisfied and so I readied myself to make pronouncements.

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I silently and temporarily lifted the floor beneath Paimon and I so that we stood taller than everyone else. The eyes of a few thousand creatures fell upon us and I grinned. I was silent for a moment, before I cleared my throat and began to speak.

“Minions, creations, and worshipers, lend me your ears!” I said, using my powers over noise and sound to magnify my voice. I spoke authoritatively and powerfully, letting my voice explode across the area around me.

“This settlement is now the holy city of Dunkelheit.” I declared, my eyes gleaming darkly as I spoke. I was experiencing a moment of triumph and elation. I knew I was close to the end of the quest to gain greater influence over the faith and civilization domains and that excited me.

I stretched out a single hand to my left and I mentally withdrew the book from the storage of my shadow. My shadow noisily spat the book back into my hand, and to the eyes of the creatures around and in front of me it probably looked like I generated a book from the ground somehow. I chuckled as I wrapped my hands around the book, and then began to speak again.

“This city may not yet seem like a city, but it’ll become one in time.” I predicted a cunning and savage grin on my face.

“I will become a demon lord of darkness, shadows, and fear. To do that, I will first build a cult of darkness, evil, and fear. A cult that shall be led by Paimon.” I said, turning to face the demon at my side as I said its name.

The unremarkable-looking man’s eyes opened wide as I said its name. The demon’s body was male, but the demon, like how Sombra wasn’t really female, wasn’t really male. It turned to me, its eyes opened wide but a smile began to slowly and creepily stretch across its face.

I moved the book in my hand from one hand to another, and then I stretched the hand that held the book to Paimon. I was clearly offering it to him. The demon didn’t hesitate, he took what was offered to him by his master eagerly. His eyes opened wider than they ever had, as I saw the familiar blue textbox fill them, due to him having been handed the book. For a moment the demon was still as its mind absorbed the information it had gained as a consequence of the notification, and then the demon began to speak.

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Paimon’s mind was overwhelmed in an instant as it learned about the potency of the book, and of the nature of the gift its master had given it. But it was only overwhelmed for a moment. And when that moment passed, the creature knew what it needed to do, and what would please the dark god it served.

“I am not worthy of this honor, oh Shadowy Lord of the Unseen… But with this, I hope to begin to become worthy!” The demon said, before abruptly jabbing its hand straight into its left eye socket, and beginning to rip out its own eye. Darkened blood began to ooze down the demon’s face, staining its untanned skin, as the creature’s muscles began to tense and it began to painfully complete tearing out its own eye.

The demon began to laugh, though the laugh was pained sounding. It let its hand linger in its eye socket, before suddenly pulling the hand out and exposing everyone to its empty eye socket. Blood continued to drip down the demon’s hand, seeping into the floor at its feet.

The demon dropped the eye and then violently stomped on it, destroying it utterly in a single powerful stomp. The creature shuddered, obviously in pain, but that didn’t stop its fanatical display. The creature swapped the hand holding the book, placing the empty thing in its bloody left hand, and then repeating the violent actions it had performed on its left eye, on its right eye.

I watched this silently, before beginning to nod approvingly. As I did that, I quietly activated the book in the demon’s blood-stained left hand. It began to smile when it first heard the words I whispered to it, through the medium of the book.

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“Paimon… You have done well.” I whispered, channeling my voice through the relic. The demon relaxed as it heard my voice in its head.

“Your devotion to me has pleased me. For that, have this.” I whispered once more, before numbing the demon to the pain wracking its body. The demon’s smile widened as I did that small act of kindness. Paimon himself began to speak now, proud of himself.

“I shall serve the Shadowy Lord of the Unseen however he wishes. I beseech you all to do the same thing. He has given some of us life, and others of us bodies with which to experience the worlds. Let us serve him as a way to repay him for the kindness he has shown us! Let us spread his darkness across the land, and let us fill the mortals with fear, and terror! Let us blind ourselves and them as well, shrouding the universe in darkness!” Paimon shouted, his devotion to me showing through his voice.

“Today I announce the creation of the newest cult in service to the Shadowy Lord of the Unseen: the Harbingers of Darkness!” The demon announced, speaking proudly. Silence fell over the crowd for a moment, in response to Paimon’s actions and proclamations. And then cheers erupted, and I began to chuckle. I was feeling positively pleased with this development, and that was before I got the notifications I received.

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[New title received: The Shadowy Lord of the Unseen

Title explanation: This title was originally an invention by Paimon, but in the wake of its zealous display of devotion to you it left an impression on the inhabitants of Dunkelheit and that impression is strong enough that the title has become a real one. The system wants to reward Paimon’s devotion to you, as well as the devotion you inspire in Praereptor demons.

The Shadowy Lord passive powers:

Invisibility mastery: You can grant or take away invisibility at will.

Shadow creation: You can create Praereptor demons.]

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[Alert:

You have completed the quest to gain the second tiers of influence over the domains of faith and civilization. Congratulations!

New Civilization Domain passive powers:

Alter buildings: You can alter the properties of buildings, from the outside. This power allows you to more easily create custom buildings that forever change and shape how civilizations progress.

Civilization assessment: This synergistic power allows you to perform an assessment aimed at a settlement or even an entire civilization. When you do you learn things like the population of the target, their alignment in percentages, their faiths, and even their classes and military sizes.

Economy manipulation: You can now gain an understanding of a civilization’s or a settlement’s economics by looking at it. You can also manipulate it freely, editing things like what is used for the currency, changing the value of the currency and more.

Furniture creation: This synergistic power allows you to create furniture using your powers, further improving your ability to create settlements.

Government manipulation: You can subtly and unsubtly alter governments whether it’s by filling people with a need to elect new leadership or inciting riots, anarchy, rebellions, and revolutions. This power takes from both the law domain and the chaos domain.

Civilization domain active powers:

Civilization erasure: This once a year power allows you to target and destroy entire civilizations.

Civilization advancement: This once a year power allows you to target and forcibly advance the technology and culture of an entire civilization.

Civilization regression: This once a year power allows you to forcibly pull a civilization backward in terms of technology and culture.]

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[Alert: Updates To Faith

In the time between you unlocking your faith-based powers and now you have gained influence over a considerable number of domains and subdomains. Some of these are alignment domains, such as good and evil, and others are potent magic subdomains like the subdomain of healing. A few are powerful domains and subdomains on their own, such as the domains of life, death, and creation or the subdomain of fire. All of these have unique synergistic effects on faith.

For instance, fusing the powers of the subdomains of healing, and art and the domains of faith and goodness gives you a powerful holy voice. Fusing the powers of the subdomain of fire, and the domains of evil, destruction, law, and faith, gives you mastery over hellfire. Fusing the domains of goodness, faith, and the subdomain of water, gives you power over holy water.

The domain of faith and the domain of souls are two of the five domains, along with the domains of luck, reality, and fate, that are most closely tied to godhood. The upgrade you are currently undergoing as a result of gaining the second tier of influence over the domain of faith is a considerably powerful one. Treat it as such.]