Chapter 8-239: Living Down Under in the Land (1/2)
Sydney was close, so we were going there first.
Scrying Exchanges had notified Australia that I was coming, to which the reply was quite mixed. That was because of the existence of the old Anglican Church, and what it had become.
Imprus had made heavy inroads in societies that had a feudal hierarchy heritage and a history of discrimination. Redirecting that discrimination against non-humans was extremely effective, and blaming those who didn’t obey as working against the good of everyone was an extremely useful tactic.
On the flip side, Australia had been settled by penal victims, and had an independent streak a mile long, plus a history with the native Aborigines that was anything but equitable.
In short, Australia had problems, and the Imprusar had been quite successful in downplaying the excesses of their fellows in America. They had a powerful following in the country, almost as much as in England itself... but at the same time, had some bitterly opposed rivals, especially among the natives and the rarer non-humans.
The Japanese fleet that had fled their home islands had settled in Darwin, and had naturally built the area up immensely after they did so. They were a very hierarchical culture, and got on fairly well with the Aussies once things like loyalty and proper dues and all that were ironed out. They were basically the last of their people, and so greatly motivated to preserve their culture and traditions. Since the whole population had been military people or their families, they were organized and very disciplined in developing the area.
However, they’d had a problem in that there were far too few Japanese women remaining, and they had little to no respect for the natives and their traditions. Taking women from the native tribes was basically considered saving them from savagery, and just furthered the divide between these new outsiders and the native population.
Unfortunately for the colonists, the Aborigines were just as likely to have Powered as they were, with a major focus on the Shamanic, Shifter, Ranger, and Sorcerer Traditions that didn’t need much schooling. Although outnumbered by the colonists, they took their people into the outback, helping them survive and freeing them from the grasp of the colonists, while bedeviling searchers with the dangers of the wild. Pretty much all the Landbound of Australia were among them, too, contesting hotly with Lawbound blessed by the Imprusar.
The biggest change from Terra-Luna was that Australia did not have anywhere near the ranching presence it once had, as the natives had combined their efforts to systematically steal from the herds, dry up water sources, encourage the spread of pestilence and poisonous grasses, and unleash dingos and other predators upon the sheep and cattle.
Likewise, the mining that had been the foundation of Australia’s growth and wealth had petered out. The lack of available labor and the constant harassment from the native population meant that all the mineral wealth in the world could be sitting out there, and could barely be developed without having to pay heavy costs.
Topping this all off was the aquatic threat, with the addition of the eel-men, crab-men, fish-men, and slave races of the kraken that dominated the Indian Ocean. They were all perfectly happy to pick off humans at sea, decimating the fishing fleets and those making a living near the ocean. Once the ideal lands to settle on, the shores were now places of danger and unease, never knowing when a tribe of undersea dwellers would swarm ashore for slaves or food or just carnage at the command of their dark-dwelling gods.
Internal enemies and external foes. It was a really bad situation to be in, and the hard lines of the Imprusar, and the corresponding response from the Shaman Druids who led the natives from the trackless depths of the outback, didn’t make it any easier for anyone.
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The Sydney Shroudzone wasn’t that big as far as such things went, mainly because of the lower population of the city and surrounding area. It still had a ten-mile radius, was still a brooding dark blot in the grey of the Haze, and still didn’t belong on this world.
Both sides blamed the other for it, and even tied up prisoners and left them in the Shroudzone so their souls would be tortured and imprisoned by the undead there, a tit-for-tat relationship that had killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people over the years, especially Powered who had offended the other side.
The Shroudzone itself wasn’t a threat to me at all, and I could probably have cleared its population of undead in a few hours, the biggest problem being how spread out they were and how long it would take all the undead to reach the Shroudlord once I isolated it.
Mmm, scratch that. The Druids were very fond of sending off Imprusar to the Shroud to enjoy a very rigid hierarchy, indeed, which meant it was now full of necropolitans. If the Shroudlord was cut off from its March, the Imprusar and Druid necropolitans would rip the March apart between them, and promptly go to war for the new vacant position.
That would accomplish the same goal of concentrating the undead, only in more areas as they proceeded to start fighting one another.
The main problem was that Druidic powers did not carry into undeath normally. The only way they did... was as Blighters.
The undead didn’t use Druidic magic often while isolated in the Shroudzone and not fighting. Once they did start fighting, they’d use the Shroud itself as a Blighting focus, and start sucking the power out of the land in all directions at once, turning the areas around it into one massive Cursed stain on the land that would take years of Ritual Hallows to clear off. Even vivus wouldn’t restore Sydney and the area around it before it was Cleansed!
-How bad?- Master Fred /asked.
-The entire Shroudzone is a Blight,- I /sighed, shaking my head at how damn easy it was to taint the Land. -Plus nine hundred meters around its perimeter. The last advance was several days ago, so they aren’t pulling power out often, and only grabbing a few meters when they do, given the total area... but it’s still growing, and if they start fighting, it’ll start growing by a hundred meters a day or more.-
-Those dumb shits,- he /stated softly, looking at and feeling the ocean around us.
There was almost nothing here.
The Blight extended in a radius, and Sydney was a port city. That meant it extended out into the ocean.
The seaweed, the plankton, the coral and reefs... they were all dead out here. Without the plant life that formed the foundation, life couldn’t persist here, and what animal life could flee had done so.