Gods and mortals have clear and distinct responsibilities. Gods provide clergy, and magic, while mortals provide faith. The problem arises when gods are partial. A very obvious example is the mushroom queen. Drow society worshipping the mushroom queen, has a power structure that is very chaotic and matriarchal. Any female noble born is above the strongest wizards, unless the wizard in question is so strong that they are above the hierarchical system of drow.
As Ahr'zel read through the annotations made by Sum'gial the necromancer from three centuries ago. He didn't understand how the mind of the lich worked. Yet, here he was working as a Librarian. He had to take a personal holiday from his job in Hell, right after he came to the material plane. He could imagine the confusion of his subordinates, as well as the joy of his enemies. He got into this, he couldn't get out.
He didn't know whether to file the contract as completed or not either, If he filed it completed, the repercussions from it would be mind blowing. If he didn't file it, he would be working for free. Not that the pay was good or anything, but it was the principle of things. The only way out he could think was to find a replacement for himself. But, he was HR manager as a lesser archduke. Almost top of the hierarchy in the 9th hell. Who could replace him, better than him?
Could he summon more than one lesser archduke? He sighed as he filed away the book "drow of E'nathyr by Sum'gial".
Jacob POV
Long, long ago, the God of Gods—the Almighty stood alone in the void and created the universe.
His creation drew the envy of beings that drifted through chaotic space, and they attacked Him. Their war nearly unmade the newborn cosmos.
Weary of battle, the Almighty gathered the corpses and souls of the fallen and forged from them new creatures within His universe. Yet the fabric of creation still leaked; holes yawned in the firmament. To mend them, He raised some of His creatures to divinity. As each void was filled little by little, the Almighty separated Light and Darkness to govern all that lived.
But Light and Darkness despised one another. Their conflict again threatened to tear the universe apart, so the Almighty decreed that they would fight only by proxy, never again with their own hands.
Light gave birth to new races—elves, dwarves, humans, dragons, and many others.
Darkness answered by corrupting them: elves into drow, dwarves into duergar, metallic dragons into chromatic.
Only the humans were spared complete corruption; Light sealed both good and evil within their hearts, making them her living balance.
Across the long war of Light and Darkness, countless deities rose—some shaped by the Twins, some born without their touch. The Almighty watched, forbidding any young god to slay either Light or Darkness.
Among these younger powers was goddess of the drow, of mushrooms, of chaos and evil.
From opposition to her rot rose the orchid goddess, once a moon-elf huntress whose village perished in a drow raid. She swore to the Mother of Elves—the first elf created by Light, goddess of the Sun, Nature, and Good—that she would fight until her last breath and beyond.
How the orchid goddess ascended remains uncertain, but she became the Orchid Goddess—deity of beauty, orchids, purity, and vengeance tempered by order. Her cult raids the Underdeep, forcing "conversion" upon drow, turning them back into elves by divine metamorphosis.
---
Jacob closed the brittle manuscript of Sum'gial and exhaled slowly. The ink had faded, but the implications had not. Now he understood what he was walking into.
They would reach E'nathyr within the hour. As the army's slowest element, he counted the pace good enough. Before entering the city he would have to store the undead inside the dimensional pouch his father had crafted.
The more he examined Sum'gial's preparations, the greater his uneasy awe. Fifty books on politics, two cursed swords, hidden crossbows, a small arsenal of knives—his father had packed foresight into every page and pocket. Even the pouch itself contained a fold-space capable of holding an entire undead company. Everything cursed and bound to him. Anyone other than him would turn into undead.
And of course, the watchers were already there. He had felt their eyes since leaving the Tower of Bones. They would be expecting him.
His father had warned him: the one most likely to greet him would be the eldest half-brother, the political son—Veyn'dor. E'nathyr would not make mistakes with its reception.
Sum'gial had also confessed, almost off-handedly, that Jacob had "around a hundred" siblings scattered through the city. Offspring born of contracts, debts, and fleeting transactions during the lich's mortal years.
A promiscuous past, indeed.
—
Veyn'dor POV
Flames are the easiest magic to start with, yet the hardest to master.
A single fireball spell shows entirely different power in the hands of an apprentice and an archmage.
While an apprentice merely releases a sphere of destruction, an archmage reshapes it — folds its energy, calculates its path, bends temperature and sound to his will.
An archmage is not a user of spells, but a master of them.
The difference lies not in strength, but in understanding.
With enough intellect, even a zero-level spark could become a legendary conflagration.
That was the lesson his father had written centuries ago in Basic Spell Theory:
"All spells are questions. Only the mad think they have answers."
Knock… knock… knock…
Veyn'dor lifted his gaze from the tome. "Enter."
A slender drow youth entered, half-bowed. His youngest half-brother—one of the many inevitable by-products of Sum'gial's years in E'nathyr—and now Veyn'dor's reluctant apprentice.
"Report," he said.
"The scouts confirm it, Archmage. The envoy from the Tower of Bones has reached the lower district. He travels with… a company of the dead."
Veyn'dor closed the book softly. "Father's touch, then. He never could resist dramatic symbolism."
The boy hesitated. "Should we alert the Matrons?"
"The Matrons panic best when uninformed," Veyn'dor replied. "Let them find out when it's already under control. I'll meet him myself."
He rose, black silk whispering like oil. Candlelight flared automatically in response to his mana; not flame, but disciplined heat—the room obeyed him the way politics never did.
His eyes drifted to the old tome again, its cover scarred and curling. Basic Spell Theory. His father's masterpiece of unpredictability: every formula containing deliberate inconsistencies, forcing the reader to interpret chaos into meaning.
"Sum'gial," he murmured, "you made chaos look like art. E'nathyr still bleeds from your brushstrokes."
He addressed his apprentice without turning. "Prepare the inner gates. I want the guards positioned, but unseen. Tell the Council I'll handle the reception."
"Yes, Archmage."
When the door closed, Veyn'dor extended a finger. A single spark flared, whirled, and multiplied into a miniature constellation before vanishing.
"Even chaos," he whispered, "burns prettily when one understands the rhythm."
He crossed to the wall where pale fungus veined the stone. The strands pulsed faintly under his touch, releasing a thin breath of lilac spores. The Eyes of Myconid stirred awake, weaving a soft haze of light and shadow before him.
Within the mist, impressions formed—movement, echoes, the hollow rhythm of boots and bone.
A slow procession of the dead emerged, and at its head, a figure whose stride he knew too well.
Jacob.
The last echo of his father's living days.
The spores shimmered, reflecting a faint smile—his own, mirrored in dust.
"Welcome home, brother," Veyn'dor said quietly. "Let's see if Father's latest experiment remembers which side of madness he came from."
He turned away, sealing the spores back into silence.
Outside, the city waited.