scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/2pxf1q.md

[MK] The Two Year Emperor - Ch78, Fleeing and Recruiting

• Author: u/eaglejarl *

• URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9669819/78/The-Two-Year-Emperor

• Score: 11

• Created: 2014-12-20T23:46:53

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u/MoralRelativity [+3] (50 minutes later)

Wow, this isnt easy... Poor Suzy.

u/Empiricist_or_not [+3] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (3 hours later)

So is the god of magic going to step in or is he biding time, so he can nominate/appoint a new death once Suzie starves?

u/eaglejarl [+3] (3 hours later)

That would be telling.

u/MoralRelativity [+3] (5 hours later)

I had forgotten about Shalious(sp?). He could help. Or maybe he wants do win the portfolio for himself? He does call himself 'the one true god'.

I'm hoping Suze gets her shit together, somehow.

u/ahd1903 [+3] Neo-Victorian New Atlantis (10 hours later)

...Suzy is really, obviously, young, isn't she? I mean, wow. That is some good "show, not tell" in this chapter.

If the goddess of secrets told me I should quit wasting time on the pointless revenge on random meat-bags and put serious thought and effort into reclaiming the loyalty of all my predecessor's clerics before I died of starvation, if it was me being told that? I might listen.

u/eaglejarl [+2] (13 hours later)

She's 19, yes. After running from Ellen and April she was feeling angry and hurt. She did what made that problem feel better instead of the longer term one.

u/ahd1903 [+1] Neo-Victorian New Atlantis (a day later)

...well, I will think of it as evolution in action. It will be interesting to see who her successor as Death is.

u/MoralRelativity [+1] (2 days later)

Nooooooooooo! I don't want to lose Suze.

u/ahd1903 [+2] Neo-Victorian New Atlantis (4 days later)

This is rationalfic. :)

u/krakonfour [+3] (a day later)

A few questions:

-Is Suze trying to turn Death's agenda into something Lawful Good?

-Suze's hunger is overcoming her rational though and self-control. Is it something specific to Death? So far, we know that Gods gain power through the number of worshippers and their prayers directed towards them. This extra 'need' either adds a new layer of complexity or contradicts that theory.

-Where is Jake in all of this? He could grant her favors. Ultimately, Suze's agenda is in direct conflict with Jake's no-death-no-disease utopia project. I have a feeling Jake and Suze will have to form a contract of sorts, with Jake making concessions (as a God, she can take things from him).

-Suze is now evidently weaker than the other Gods. If her power is proportional to how many lives she takes and how many undead there are, she will have to kill a lot more to gain Neklos' rank among the Gods. On that Jake contract again, and limitation on the number of Deaths would mean a limitation on her power.

-Why has Suze not gone through her power trip? I mean, interactions with people you can kill with a flick of a finger will eventually turn relationships vile and dislikable. They know their life is in jeopardy when approaching you, and you know they can't touch you and you can escape all negative effects of your actions. She has to, at some point, consider humans as playthings until she either considers herself as a God and humans beneath her, or pulls her shit together and establishes some rules. She's done neither, but since Godhood doesn't grant Moral Integrity +10, it's bound to happen.

-Is there a God of Conspiracies and Secret Plans? If yes, what's (S)he up to?

u/eaglejarl [+4] (a day later)

• Right now, Suze doesn't have a specific agenda aside from "stop whatever it is that's hurting me" and "don't die."
• Right at the moment, Suze has exactly zero direct worshippers. She's starving to death, sustained only by "ambient" sources such as the existence of undead, which is enough to stave off CriticalExistenceFailure for a while, but not forever.
• Jake is over in Flobovia trying to upgrade an entire country (and, later, an entire continent) through the Singularity in under a month. He would be happy to deal with Suze if she came to him, but he has no way to go to her.
• Weaker...yes and no. When she got the office, she was rank 20 because that was the level that it had just been at. She has no direct worshippers right now so she's losing ranks as time goes on. At the moment she's still got a boat-ton of power, but it's fading away pretty quickly. She doesn't know how to use all of her power at the moment, but the power tends to take care of things for her (moving her around, killing people) when she wants something but isn't thinking about actually doing them...much the same way that you can catch a ball if you just reach for it, but not if you try to consciously think about how you need to move your arm. None of the other gods would like to tangle with her right now, but in a few more days / weeks they might be up for it.
• Suze is on her power trip. She spent the first week learning how to handle the divine senses and such but since then she's been killing or torturing everyone who ever harmed her or anyone she cares about.
• In the Forgotten Realms setting (canon D&D), Cyric is the god of intrigue. The characters haven't told me whether there is one in 2YE or not, but I think the answer is no.

u/krakonfour [+1] (a day later)

Interesting thing about how power can fade away. Also, it had to come from somewhere... Was it taken from Neklos? Without his power, is Neklos now unable to stand up to the gravity of a black hole, and currently dead?

u/eaglejarl [+1] (2 days later)

The mantle was taken from Neklos, yes. After it transferred there would have been a small amount of inertia -- he would have kept his power for a few hours or maybe a day -- but it would have faded quickly. From his perspective, he was only in the black hole for one round so there was no perceptible amount of fading while he was in there. He then stepped out into a universe where even the protons had decayed away. He promtly died.

u/krakonfour [+1] (2 days later)

So, at the instant the decision was made to turn Suze into a God, power starts transferring. Is godly power a physics-abiding object? If power is physically contained with Neklos, how does it escape the black hole?

If it is no with the god, it could be remotely stored. Does it abide light-laws? Will calling upon it have lightspeed lag? Can a spell leave a black hole, if you were shielded from time?

Also...

Once Suze gets her godly powers, is it a duplicate of what Neklos had. During the transfer, since Neklos could stillresist the black hole (great amount of power), does the total amount of death god power in the universe increase until it is removed from Neklos?

And... If Suze obtains a fraction of Neklos' power, does that mean that the amount remaining with Neklos is enough to allow him to resist a black hole?

u/eaglejarl [+2] (2 days later)

Nope, godly power is not physics-abiding. None of this is physical in any sense, it's all somewhere between magical/spiritual/metaphorical.

I picture the mantle of death (again, a metaphorical thing, not a physical thing) as belonging to the current owner of the portfolio. It fills the owner up with power, maintains their immortality, etc. All of those things are generated from the mantle and then imbued into the god in question. When the mantle switches owners, the new person gets filled with the same power that the old owner had, and all the new juice flows to the new owner.

Divine power does not obey any sort of physics.

Yes, when Suze got the mantle she was given a duplicate powerlevel / powerset to what Neklos had.

Yes, until Neklos actually dies there is a higher amount of "death god energy" in the world then there was before Suze took the mantle.

Yes, Neklos still has / had enough power to sustain himself against the black hole. Remember, from his perspective he was only in the black hole for one round. There wasn't enough time for the divine power to drain out of him before he stepped back into the universe at the end of time and promptly died.

Before you ask: Suze has no worshippers now. At the end of time, Neklos had no worshippers. The reason he died instantly and she didn't is because she is getting a minimal amount of charge just from the fact that undead exist, deaths are happening, etc. By the time Neklos escapes from the black hole absolutely everything is gone (yes, that includes the incorporeals -- statistically speaking, they were destroyed eons before he escaped), and there is nothing to provide him even a small amount of power.

u/ahd1903 [+1] Neo-Victorian New Atlantis (a day later)

Isn't that Herrun?

u/MoralRelativity [+1] (2 days later)

That's what I thought too. Perhaps /u/EagleJarl will explain.

u/eaglejarl [+2] (3 days later)

Technically, Herrún is the Goddess of Secrets and Knowledge. That covers secret plans, certainly. It also covers a lot of what happens in conspiracies, but conspiracies aren't directly part of her portfolio.

u/MoralRelativity [+1] (4 days later)

Thanks.

u/Anakiri [+1] (a day later)

I wasn't expecting to see Ellen again. She's important enough that we see what happens to her after her interactions with Suze? Her first reaction on seeing a murder is to run away, even with a witness to her innocence - a witness she knows is on the FLEA list and therefore easily identified. When accosted by a justiciar, she momentarily incapacitates him and escapes. That guy was there to keep order at the give-people-superpowers machine, so he's almost certainly been through it himself. Ellen's daughter is trained to know when to stay quiet. Upon escaping, Ellen immediately starts looking for resources (asking about a job). She weaves through shops and alleys and leaves obstacles behind her when she thinks she's picked up a tail. When a justiciar tries to arrest her, one of her first thoughts is "How does he know my name?" She ends up staying with a relative on a farm who is willing to provide shelter at a moment's notice without question.

None of that is too far out of the ordinary for a nervous quick-witted person in an abusive relationship, I suppose, but I'm not sure if I buy that. Pleased to meet you, Lady Shadow.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)

Granny Farmer isn't actually her relative, "Granny" is just her nickname. She an older widow living off on a farm in the boonies.

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