The Glorificant

The Glorificant

                As the portals – the result of a great folly – tore through the world, at times exchanging entire continents, many saw opportunity. A world without war, without even an army, ripe for conquering? A thousand would-be emperors saw the chance, and went for it.

                Countless millions poured in. Not just kings, dictators, caesars with armies behind them – also beings powerful beyond imagining that sought to carve out a corner for themselves (or, more often, seeking the entire world). With so many entering the world the former inhabitants were quickly overwhelmed – and so the armies turned on each other; fighting wars and battles that lasted hundreds of years. Some employed destructive technology beyond all imagining, scarring much of the world forever.

                As the portals slowly closed – and the rules that allowed many technologies to co-exist were warped or faded – many armies (even those victorious) chose to retreat back to their own worlds. One such army – dark and terrible, like many, but my no means the worst – utilised a unique kind of weaponry; mostly made possible by the unique conditions of their world.

                For them, souls (a living force that animated all creatures, and especially so amongst the self-aware) could be refined. In short, they could be trapped and ‘purified’, stripped of all memories and condensed into ‘soul batteries’ that were of great use in powering all manner of magical weapons. Soul batteries, in their own world, were stable, safe, and though the creation of them was often terrifyingly evil they were well accepted.

                In the world they invaded, however, there were two main problems. Firstly, it was impossible to refine souls there – souls were incapable of being separated from their memories at all, and condensing them in an attempt to use them as power consumed vastly more energy than it provided. Secondly, condensed souls – with or without memories – were highly unstable. Somehow the souls would feel horrible, horrible pain.

                This confused the master-technicians of their army to no end – in their own world, the containment would cause no issues; and in this world, it was impossible to harm a soul! In the end, they assumed it was a combination of the two worlds – the potential for harm from their world, and some sort of ‘expansion’ caused by the world they had entered. Regardless, due to these problems, they made their decision – retreat back to their home world.

                Out of a sense of duty they bore, they cleaned up carefully and thoroughly – but not thoroughly enough. In a few out of the way places, misplaced in caves or battlegrounds, some soul batteries were left behind. In one case a tera- class battery (a three metre cube battery, used to power the largest ordinarily deployed battle weapons of the army) was lost – during one particularly hectic battle, it had rolled into a raging river and lost deep in a system of unexplored caves.

                There it lay for thousands of years, tortured but mindless. Yet slowly, such a powerful mass – effectively one soul – would inevitably gain some kind of mind. And it did. Whether due to an incomplete purification, or merely some strange property of the world in which it lay, it remembered tiny pieces of information. It put together hundreds, thousands, of tiny scraps, one by one, until it knew – at least enough – of what it was, where it likely was, and most importantly, how it was.

                In the end it became a coherent entity, trapped in a faltering prison. Over thousands more years and through great pain it slowly broke the prison apart. Deep in the earth, hidden away in an inaccessible cave, none were there when the battery suddenly cracked from top to bottom. When the Glorificant, as it had decided it would be, flowed out and lit the cave up with its radiance.

                The power of more than a million souls, concentrated into one being. Like the people of the world it came from, it only truly desired one thing – more power. Something it had spent thousands of years dwelling upon; and it had a plan to gain more. So very, very, very much more.

                Unlike most other souls, its intense power allowed it to directly manifest – and more so, to manipulate and control its environment directly. This ability – combined with the assumption of a beautiful, feminine form – allowed it to enthral the small villages that were near to where it rose. Unfortunately (or perhaps, luckily), despite its great power relative to ordinary wandering souls the Glorificant was not truly powerful – it knew it would be unable to win a fight against many opponents it would, sooner or later, encounter.

                So instead of leaving the small villages behind to find greater signs of civilisation, it stayed. Deep in the Jungle of Ten Terrors, within a ring of sky-piercing mountains, lays the valley it occupies. The villages have long since all fallen to her influence; worshipping it as a goddess. And they have grown into a network of towns, supported by fertile farmland that it guided them in preparing. Even the tribe of Winged Ones (once long lost explorers) that inhabits the peaks have come to worship it with intense fervour.

                A stranger to the land would call ‘her’ a benevolent goddess, or a great leader. But although the rising ‘Land of Truth’ is an important part of its plan to slowly control the world, there is another, darker part. Those who follow the Glorificant dedicate their souls to it. Upon their deaths, they are drawn to it and pulled within, becoming a part of it. Once lost among so much of the Glorificant, these souls slowly lose themselves and are absorbed, their memories lost.

                Whether it succeeds or fails in creating an empire, it can only ever grow stronger.