Chapter 8-237: A Long Ride to Kiwi-Land (1/2)
It took us another two days to finish circumvoluting the Mountains, winding back and forth between them and picking off a lot of oozes and a few shoggoth who hadn’t gotten the message that we shouldn’t be messed with.
Even though we didn’t stop, it took us that long because the Mountains on this side of Antarctica actually stood alone, deviating from the Transantarctic Mountains and effectively forming their own unnatural chain marching down to Princess Elizabeth Land and ending up near the Amery Ice Shelf, before abruptly vanishing with no sign or indication.
Yeah, those things were totally natural, yup-yup, nod-nod, wink-wink.
That, in turn, meant we had to turn around and quarter-circle the frozen continent to line up with Australia and the like for our trip up across the ocean to the Land Down Under.
Contact between nations was a far more sporadic thing than before. There were spellcasters who basically made a living scrying chosen locations, Writing or Holoing the information put on display there, while others returned the favor in ‘newsrooms’ across the world, desperately trying to maintain contact between the far-flung branches of humanity in an unfriendly world.
Transport via airplanes was the most common, and some of the riskiest, as going down in a plane was basically a death sentence without any of the sea traffic there that might rescue you, and nobody to Waterjump you to safety.
Transport via the sea could handle larger numbers, but was slow, and there was the very real possibility of encounters at sea with the hostile aquatic races, human cargo basically being seen as either a floating buffet or slaves/reproduction sources by the sahaug and the Deep Ones, and even the merfolk could get very prickly about territory.
Because of that, world trade had never developed to the massive extent it could have after the Shroud arrived, and technology had not spread. International phone cables had all been severed long ago, so alternate sources of information were all that could be used.
The single most reliable way to get across the ocean was on warships, as the aquatic races didn’t want to take on a fleet of naval vessels. Trade vessels generally assembled in convoys escorted by naval vessels if they wanted to get to and from somewhere, raising the cost of trade immensely to do so, and hiring security forces to help safeguard their ships was also a thing.
There were plenty of colluders happy to report if you didn’t hire security, or maybe the sea races’ Seers just sussed you out. Any attempt to sail a ship without them was going to end badly sooner or later... unless you were dealing with them on the sly, and truly didn’t need the security.
On top of all that was the fact that any smaller port cities, towns, and villages were potential raiding targets of the sea races or creatures crawling up from the depths, and only the larger port cities were able to fend them off and stay in business. Fewer ports of call meant less trade.
There were whole cities and islands in the Pacific that had been virtually wiped clean by the assaults of the aquatic races, their populations eaten or carried off into the deeps to unspeakable fates. Indonesia and the Philippines had never managed to develop properly because of this, and there were very few of anything that could be called proper ports of call there, greatly hindering their ability to defend and improve themselves.
Naturally enough, there were Shroudzones, too, the most well-known of which was Sydney, where the spirits of murdered aborigines had risen up and slaughtered the entire population of the city, turning its largest place of habitation into a literal ghost town overnight, the corpses of descended settlers now serving their former lessers in undeath.
That wasn’t our first stop, of course. Our first stop was New Zealand!
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New Zealand had a much more integrated culture with its natives than Australia, which had shown its value by the much weaker undead presence that had risen there, and was put down by valiant new Powered springing forth from all the people.
The Kiwis had united even harder when the raids started coming from the seas, building up shore defenses repeatedly and relentlessly, pushing invaders back time and again with blood and fire.
They didn’t ship out much sheep anymore compared to another Earth, and had to rely on the Aussies for a lot of their iron, but in terms of grimly enduring siege mentality, the Kiwis lost to nobody on the planet. Their Maori Berserkers were the most famous of their units, taking axes, greatclubs, and spears, as well as a lot of shotguns, out to meet the Deep Ones and sahaug who seemed to take turns coming at them from east and west.
Still, even their hardened Shoreguards didn’t see a motorcycle come riding in out of the sea every day, or watch it put a radiant bolt of light through the skull of a megalodon with a six-foot dorsal fin that was having it out with a pod of angry orcas.
Whalecaller Kauri of New Zealand was one of the first human Druids to make Faux Seven, and his focus had been the sea. In addition to being one of the best deepwater scouts and a sentinel against infiltration by the aquatic races, he had further Awakened and spoken with many porpoises, orcas, and whales, negotiated a peace between their races and Humanity, turning New Zealand, and especially Cook Strait, into a sanctuary for them in times of danger.
Needless to say, whaling around New Zealand carried the death penalty now.
The Whale Nation of New Zealand was at once both formidable and wary. The animals couldn’t gain spellcasting ability themselves, but they had proven lethally effective hunters and scouts, and with humans providing areas of relative safety, food so they didn’t have to spend so much time hunting, and loads of healing magic, they had proven incredibly effective at punishing the invaders from the sea time alongside the inventive monkeys from the land.
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The brawny men working the sturdy trawler called out in excitement, and whooped when I blew a Shardray through the skull of the mutant shark, a trademark pet of the sahaug and a born whale-killer. They held out massive hooks, calling out in Human that they’d tow the thing back for food for the whole town, and I gestured out, bringing the hooks from their hands and into Master Fred’s, who smoothly descended into the water to anchor them into the massive beast.
One of the orcas burst out of the water next to me, uttering the sharp cries of their kind. I listened intently, and nodded, “Of course! Line up next to Master Fred if you have any injuries, and he’ll get you fixed up quickly if I don’t.” I reached out and blew a full Heal through this cetacean knight of the sea, who had introduced himself as Carchadon’s Bane, mending the torn hide and bleeding wounds he was currently suffering. He hadn’t taken a direct bite from the creature or he would have lost a lot of mass, so the spell fixed him up pretty good.