CHAPTER 40: Necromancers have feelings too!Greeting, fine folks! It has been about a month since we had any story update, and sadly my computer parts's shipment is turning into a clusterfuck, which spells an awful lot of delays. In the meantime, I delved deeper in Legend Mode, so why don't we all take some time to learn more about the strange characters populating the Windy Realm?
Let's start with the realm's original Quula. Her portfolio is rather off-putting. She is associated with death, suicide, blight and diseases, she is a rotting carcass with a creepy and discusting title, and somehow, she is also the goddess of happiness. And daydreaming. A strange combination if i ever saw one, however, as we dig deeper down, we will see much more of this dichotomy surrounding death.
The first thing I decide to check is this legendary ''Tactical Hill''. Many of the pre-skypig migrants and founders endured a war there. right off the bat you know something went down, because elven kings are dying and elfs are eating humans, while Quula/Ukas is wandering around slaughtering dudes.
Yet, a few years later, a human necromancer by the name of Ohe Closebrain shows up in the Tacticall Hill, and reanimate the elves killed specifically by Quula herself. For what end, I cannot tell.
My curiosity shifts toward the lavender empire. While the Citadel of clutches is pretty unremarkable, save for it's monarchy, the human civilisation in the north is rather special. In the year 4, Ukas the giraffe fiend appears as a goddes, and usurps the leadership of the empire. Soon after, the Lavender Empire enters a war with the Apes of Crowning, one of the various elven civilizations. This first war ends with a peace treaty signed quickly by the elves. Quula turns her attention to Soothedslapped, a newly founded tower. When I embarked, SoothedSlapped was home to Quula, and a handful of humans. This is her private retreat, close to the empire, but filled with emptiness.
The peace treaty allows the human to create more settlements near the elven borders. This is not enough for the Lavender Empire, however, as many attacks are soon declared. The elven cities are pillaged, and the population turned into slaves. They will be used to build the many roads, tombs and keeps that will turn the Lavender Empire into a mighty civilization.
The following decades see more wars being declared, but they are quickly ended by peace treaties. Signs of elven rebellions being quenched, no doubt. Some seek to liberate their fellow clanmates from slavery, but the might and infrastructure of the Empire, combined with the powers of Quula herself cannot be challenged.
What follows is a rather smooth period of building and infrastructure centralisation. Roads, bridges and cathedrals are completed after years of elven labor.
After almost a century, the humans notice a settlement on the northern continent. Dwarves. Why are they here? It is clear that these newcomers have problems of their own. The travellers speak of a young dwarven heroine who took arms and slayed three mighty titans to save her cat. The dwarves of the Wilted Sack seem resilient, and well-defended, and soon adopt a very militaristic approach. With tales of a mighty monster-slayer, and a well-defended position, Quula is wary of fighting those short, strange individuals. For reasons unknown, the dwarves request nothing but wood, which come cheap to an empire that took over the elven lands. In return, the dwarves offer gems and rock crafts with no regard to their actual value (oh, and a truckload of rags to dress up the slaves!). A trade route is established, for mercantilism is much simpler than warfare when dealing with Whisperwhip.
I always assumed that Quula came to see us because she wanted to raise corpses, or meet the queen and take her as a pupil. In 114, she shows up at our doorstep and starts to stalk the mayor. This is exactly one century after she appeared in the elven lands. Could this have any meaning? she also resigned from her seat as empress, or law-giver as she named the title.
Could there be more to Quula the giraffe fiend than I know?
First, she was the first of her kind. she is associated with murder, war, death and fortresses. This is all in line with her attitude as empress. she wared the elves, killed them, and used the survivors to build a mighty society. I always pictured Quula as basically the devil. Her title of ''Law-Giver Giraffe fiend certainly didnt help here. In my head, she was sitting on a throne all day, sacrificing orphans and eating babies while murdering people left and right. also tricking people into selling their souls.
Yet it seems that Quula/Ukas has been exploring the world a lot. yes, as she finally exits the underworld, she uses her powers to hijack a small group of humans and slowly shape them into a force to be reckoned with. But as the years pass, she wars less and less, and begins exploring the world, taming various animals, and visiting exotic locations.
She also begins to write artifact books. (more on them later) Those tomes are stored in her personal tower, SoothedSlapped, to which she returns after her journeys. Ok, yeah, she also kills a whole bunch of elves. I skip a page here, just assume more elves die.
years pass, and quula continues writing books, with some travels and elf-slaying along the way. Then after a century among humans, and elves, she visits the dwarves in Whisperwhip, and resign. The humans are finally in control of their own empire, which their deity of happiness and general gruesomeness forged for them. The giraffe fiend spends 2 years with the dwarves, then leave. No one knows where she went, but she isn't dead. For a god of death and murder leading armies, she has a kill count of about 35.
Enough with demons, let's take a look at the royal family. Coq Floorquest is another strange character. Her necromantic powers were something I feared. but she never reached Whisperwhip. she is, however, still alive somwhere, doing her own thing. She was the first of her kind, and her husband died after 17 years. that must have been quite a tragedy. Then shortly after, some of her children die as well. However, in 74, she hears that by defiling a sacred place, her eldest daughter and heir to the throne achieved eternal life, albeit in a cursed form. shortly after, she becomes a necromancer. Is she trying to save her heir? Is she drive by jealousy?
Perhaps she is simply shocked by her days in the windy realm, and seeks a way to stop her loved ones from dying. She has achieved this somehow. yet instead of ruling from her new awesome fortress in the north, or bestowing immortality to those close to her, she instead chose to exile herself and disappear.
What have you discovered, Cog Floorquest? What was the price you paid for immortality, that somehow made your entire kingdom irrelevant?
Meanwhile, we have the heir apparent, a vampiress, currently on the run from various dwarven settlements after her clumsy murders aroused suspiscion. for the last 30 years, she has been undercover in theathershake, her true identity and nature still a secret. Maybe that's the key here. By the time queen cog ad mastered necromancy, her daughter was already gone, unwilling to break her cover. Her mother must have agents looking for her since then, yet none found her yet. Could the whole thing happening in the north be a decoy? It is possible that moving the capital to the faraway Whisperwhip was just a ruse, giving the queen time to disappear and look for her daughter, while claiming that she was travelling to the northern continent.
Interesting fact, before being cursed, Princess Kumil led the Cult of bronze, a religion devoted to Kadol, of which the Bronze General was an important member, along with his sister Kel.
I decide to browse the vampire's descendants. her great-granddaughter is currently living in our fort. she is the wife of the engraver/mason/miner that was executed recently. Still, the queen's great-great-great-granddaughter was born 2 years ago, meaning that Somehow, if the queen was to die as well as the vampire, the throne would go to Ral's parent, then to her, then to her daughter Ducim.
Finally, i promised we would look over the books! Ukas Archescort is using the pen name Quula, and her first book is about the tactical hill where she led her military campains as empress. She sounds like a serious and vicious individual.
She then writes a tome about the giraffe Fiend's practices, altho there is yet a single giraffe fiend, herself. it's almost like she is trying to consolidate her sense of identity.
She writes about her enemies, the elf, and produces a 237 pages biography on one of them, by far her longest book. She is studying the humans from up-close, but most of her book relate to the elves and their lands.
Ukas Archescort creates Hell, a book made of forgotten beast leather, depicting tales of the underworld. This is the single most metal artifact ever created right there.
Fifty years after her escape from the underworld, Quula creates another book about the elven lands, this one a more flattering work than the precedent.
At this point, quula just doesn't give a fuck anymore about her disguise, or the tricks that got her to be named empress. she writes an autobiography of Ukas Archescort the ferocious Nails the giraffe fiend. She seems to be growing weary of her role as empress, and starts to travel and write more, isolating herself from the people she fooled. Clearly she has learned all she cared to know about humans, and is now studying elves instead. She also seem to be writting about her kind a lot, so possibly she wonders about what she is, and study other races to understand her existence.
Her last book is a dire tome describing death. This is her longest and most elaborate book. the writing is dire, and dead serious. clearly, legends of dying demons and forgotten beasts, as well as the countless wars she waged, have made her aware of her own mortality. she is mighty, yet after eons of treking the underworld, she has escaped to the material plane and now truly understand the grasp of death. The powers she represents and embodies will soon claim her as well. The age of Myth is coming to a close, and in time, the walking gods and megabeasts will all be forgotten, slain, or sealed off in the depth of the earths. Year after year, she hears of the heroes of Whisperwhip, slowly taking down demons and titans like they were cake.
Maybe this is why she left, and visited the dwarves, whom she must never have seen before, as the Wilted sack is the first group to lay foot on her continent. Everything she did now makes more sence. The way she stared at corpses, looked over destroyed FBs with an eerie glare in her eyes and not a word spoken, how she followed the mayor around and observed his strange mechanical skills at work, never speaking, slowly towering behind him for years on end... Whatever she has seen here, it was enough to give up her empress title for good. Now she has gone on a new journey, perhaps to visit more dwarves, or discover a meaning to her now counted days.
i lied, there is an eight book by Quula, it's also about the elven lands. but that's not what matters.
Here we have a book by Tikes Tanbanner, which is a kickass name if i ever saw one. He wrote a looot of books on necromancy, death, the tragedy of the human condition, and from what I understand, he was the student of Ohe, the necromancer who raised the elves in the tactical hill. His writing is very personal, full of anecdotes, and filled with melancholy.
Another book you may have noticed on the other screenshot (i mixed a quula and a tikes book up sorry) is called The wizard guide to Extinction. at first it sounds like a tome to learn meteor swarm for high level spellcasters, but it is actually a sad, melancholic tome on the secrets of life and death. given the title, it's fair to assume that altho he mastered necromancy, Tikes Tanbanner did not in any way believe that it could actually repel death forever. His beloved mentor Ohe was himself a necromancer, yet he is now gone from this world.
Reading all this has filled me with an unshakable feeling of dread. I was supposed to be the hero, fighting off the bad guys. The lone, rogue champion battling against tough odds. But the more i read, the more I realise that most of the antagonists I'm facing are better heroes than I am, filled with grief, despair, and tragedy. I'm just a violent asshole with a crossbow and a bad attitude. Something is not wrong with Whisperwhip. The world as a whole feels wrong, and somehow, i was too busy complaining about all those goblins I had to slaughter casually, rob and dump in a huge pile to realize that we are basically the bad guys in this thing, everyone has it worse.
Could this be the real story behind this playtrough?
For long I saw Whisperwhip as a bastion of willpower and strenght, courageous dwarves fighting off armies of invaders and countless beasts. their identity is forged not by their riches, nor their fame, but by the sheer fact that they remain alive to this day. Yet, the fort fails to thrive in areas other than warfare, and as the years pass, the mighty warriors are slowly turning into exiles, fighting a pointless war with no real reason to stay, and nothing to return to. they have come to pray, as have I, for a glorious death, maybe to a dragon or fighting off a zombie invasion. Yet it is the slow, inexorable grind of accident, poor planning, disease and infighting that is slowly bringing the place to it's knees, one stupid death or accident at a time. I have described the fort as the Captain Star of fortresses, and i still believe this is accurate.
Yet when you read this story, or watch the show im referencing, it's easy to just look at the misfortune of those dwarves, or this crew, see them stranded at the edge of the world, and curse the world that has forgotten them. What you don't think about, tho, is that maybe, just maybe, the rest of the world is also having the same problems. The Windy Realm is aptly named, for it is ephemereal and fleeting. In time, it will vanish and die, and so will all those that dwells there. Necromancers master the art of life and death, yet fail to save their loved ones, nor themselves. Heroes fight a battle, only to have their victories robbed from them by time and tragedy. a vampire has gained an extended lifespan, but in doing so, lost the grace of her goddess, and forsake her throne. Even an ancient Archfiend of death, that has been in the underworld for eons, is now realising the futility of existence, and travels the world seeking answers, trying to make sense of it's life.
So what is the point of life on the Windy Realm, then? why do all these characters keep going, despite the failures and the unavoidable ending? Why should the dwarves of Whisperwhip endure, when deep inside, they know that their actions are ultimately futile?
I think Quula, or Ukas, has the right of it, even tho she probably doesn't fully realise it herself. Maybe the true meaning of life isn't the ending, but the journey...
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