Chapter 17-431: Matters Beyond Land and Gods (2/2)

We all had more shit to do. I shook my head to myself as the discourse started getting into post-Ten levels of stuff, everyone realizing that they needed to Break Ten soon, and hungry eyes turned to all those Banes there.

Well, especially now that Shoggoth were off the menu...

Sama and Briggs didn’t have to worry about it, as no little Shroud was going to stop them from Leveling, only the speed at which they could apply Karma.

Master Fred was already on Twelve, and nothing was likely to stop him from taking Legion higher and higher, save earning the Karma to do so. His Cohort was coming along for the ride, taking the Secondary Levels for him at their own cost, and building on that Seventeen Lilitu goodness with great enthusiasm. Going from being a Three to being a 17-Ranks transcendental specialist in a Skill was its own kind of giddiness

The terrible Evils locked away by the werewolves were just going to be tests for those forcing themselves past the Ten limit. Werewolves, so usefully useless...

And we still had to go in after the Shattered... after the Forsaken got done slicing off more and more of the phasma in Tibet, after the Yellow King was reached and disposed of.

The only Shroudzone left in America was Roanoke, and that was clear aboveground. Obviously there was something strong enough below it to keep it active, although the radius was half what it was. Whatever passageway they had used to come to the surface was closed, so now the Shroud hunters had to finagle a way down.

Azaia had promised to do the Widened Dawnstop Stone Shaping for them to accelerate the process of building an access tunnel. It was a vertical mile of work to do, which meant a lot of steps and slides. Going down could be quick, but that hike back up was some work if you couldn’t fly, which meant getting a Disk Train going behind a flier or lightfooter was definitely something to do.

The Blakhamars were gnawing through the Deepzone there in Russia, and had expanded to two Gulagzones to fit the sudden surge of Kamchatkan volunteers signing up for the chance to be uber and get back at the undead who had taken their homelands. The American army had also rolled in, despite the protests of the Russians, and was using the Gulagzones to Level themselves. A lot of those troops had Russian grandparents, too.

The tribes in Africa had at least allowed their people to join in a group effort to start taking down the Shroudzones, now that they could. The explosive rise in strength from those who did so started the process of declaring ‘Our Shroudzone, stay out!’, which was entirely expected. That was going to lead to violence until the Druids reminded them that this was hurting the Land and the Mother Land didn’t care who cleared them, She just wanted them gone. So, first come, first serve.

Naturally that led to bouts of slaughter, trying to deny the Karma to others, which naturally gutted the ability to raise Named Weapons. Eventually the Druids just had to step in, take control of those who wanted to fight, and farm properly when the warriors couldn’t get their acts together. As they controlled most of the healing power in Africa, nobody dared to stop them, and so the Druids there took a big step up on the Prestige meter.

South America/Amazonia had similar problems, with the tribes there taking quick action once they learned how, growing their forces and strength... and then rapidly turning against those who were oppressing them once they were strong enough. The nation-states of the continent were already very unstable, and as natives led by Warlocks, Druids, Neutral and even Good Churches started accumulating real personal power, those national governments started cracking and falling.

Happily, the Allegiance systems were there to keep some form of order, if not of national unity. There were deep divisions between the descendants of colonial powers and the natives, often split between city and country, so it didn’t look like there was going to be any kind of True King coming out of Amazonia anytime soon, any more than Africa.

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Shvaughn’s influence was spreading like spiderwebs all over on both Africa and Amazonia, naturally enough. She was a busy woman there, treating inducting new Warlocks there as her downtime entertainment, and she was building up a web of influence, favors, knowledge, and information-sharing, very much the Jet side of the Jet and Silver.

She decided to call her Allegiance Obsidian Web, and they soon had quite the reputation on both continents... and beyond. Shvaughn knew a lot of people, and that was expanding every day as her primary investigation into the activities of the Freemasons yielded a lot of low and high-hanging fruit.

Her total lack of surprise that the Freemasons were totally abusing their market power to influence, subvert, suppress, and remove competition was thundering. Blackmail, intimidation, theft, kidnapping, and murder were all on the table as options, in addition to merely manipulating legal systems to punish their enemies and drive business to themselves.

It was all just business, until someone came up, Consumed you, and took everything you had worked for that she wanted for herself.

The Hunts for the Killers of Kings spawned sequel after sequel, although they would naturally be released a suitable distance apart. The Freemason membership roster, which they kept very secret, was cracked open for outside scrutiny, and oh, that examination did not find much of anything to approve of at all. The infiltration by various outside forces who used the revenue gained to fund various (un)holy activities certainly didn’t help their standing in the eyes of anyone, and the wide agreement to make sure there were no Kings there to thwart the Allegiances they were growing was soon very much known to considerable interested parties.

The fact that an increasingly large number of their members and their families was disappearing didn’t make them feel any better about it.

Eventually the Inner Circle of the Freemasons decided to hole up and await whoever was coming after them, certain their defenses could deal with them. Unfortunately for them, Shvaughn was already half the Inner Circle by that point, went ahead of them to their little safehold, and took them as they arrived.

Some absolutely momentous levels of asset transfer, ownership and management changes, organizational takeovers, and further removal of factors unnecessary for proper business operations later, and Shvaughn’s three Foundations controlled some of the best and wealthiest business operations in the world. She was also the Chairwoman of the Church of Trose by dint of controlling its bank and permanently ‘recruiting’ the elders who contested her position, along with their wealth and shares.

The signatures were all totally valid, of course, and the witnesses, too. The lack of legal action and challenges might have been due to those mounting those challenges, and their lawyers, mysteriously going on permanent vacations as well, and their objections were withdrawn in very apologetic handwritten letters.

Her release of artwork sequestered in many hidden collections alone caused many, many waves. The discovery of the Mona Lisa, missing for years after the Nazis plundered the art of France and somehow not buried in a vault in Germany, was cause for global delight among the elite. Most of those who pulled off the theft and sale were old men, but nobody put together their joint disappearances. Many of these private buyers of stolen art were private to begin with, and a simple note or phone call meant they weren’t missed for weeks or more...