The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

Fey hiding in the shadows had come into the light, and were ever more populous in this new world with magic about. Ancient beasts from deep places were returning to the light, and the existence of the Felldeep, opening back up with buried kingdoms and realms somehow existing down in the depths of the world, raised hackles on anyone wise.

Unperturbed by the rise of the undead, the sea nations were now making themselves known. The ancient Deep Folk, fish-headed servants of Dagon and the Mythos, ruled the deeps of the North Atlantic and South Pacific, and plagued those who crossed it now, even if their technology was behind the times.

The Sahaug commanded the middle and southern Atlantic, warring with the Deep Folk and raiding the coasts for meat, slaves, and just for the fun of the slaughter.

The merfolk lived in isolated seas between those great powers, especially the Persian Gulf and Caribbean, but their kingdom of Lemuria in the North Pacific was also a great power. The Indian Ocean was supposedly dominated by kingdoms of Kraken and eel-folk and stranger races, who fought any invaders savagely and remorselessly. It was noted that large passenger ships attracted all kinds of attention, supposedly for the pollution they left behind themselves, and after several massacres of such vessels, they’d been either beached or completely redesigned...

The noble Tritons had claimed the Mediterranean, and held it against all comers. What force ruled Antarctica wasn’t truly known, but word from some of the supernaturals indicated that shoggoth roved it on land and sea, and no other force dared claim anything there.

Humanity went from being the only known sapient species on the world to one of many. They were still grappling with the fact eight decades later...

Worse for many of them had come the activation of buried genetics with the coming of magic, and entire swathes of humanity had altered over days and weeks into other races.

I was familiar with human midgets evolving into the hyn, but that fate also befell a lot of shorter people here.

Cementing their relationship to humanity, Ancients, dwarves, and elves had all mutated into existence among descendants of Europeans. Goblins had erupted from the ranks of Africans and Mid-Eastern tribes, including Mongolians.

The Han Chinese and most of India, to their utter dismay, found a good chunk of their people evolving into yellow-blooded orcs.

Serpentine bloodlines had erupted among the other peoples of the Far East and some island nations... and sparked massive massacres of them when they did. Nobody wanted Yuan-Ti among them...

Gnomes had come out of hiding, being a race with Fey connections living in realms warded by illusion and secrecy... places now far too easy for the Powered to find. Their cautious and secret nature had given rise to a lot of fear about their shadowy hands manipulating everyone... but since there were so many other forces doing so, it wasn’t taken as seriously as it might have been without all the distractions around.

Given they were generally a Lawful Good race, the rumors probably had unhealthy sources, too.

Elves had been concentrated in the Scandinavian countries, with Norway having the highest percentage of converts, followed by Sweden, then Finland. There had been some appearing in rural France, Spain, and places in Ireland, but by and large they were the rarest of the new races... although their presence on the world stage rapidly exceeded that of every race but humans.

Dwarves had been common among the Scots, the surviving Germans, and the Slavic peoples. A whole lot of Polish people had started to grow beards...

The Ancients were basically concentrated among the Russians, and also among people who formerly had mental defects like Down’s Syndrome. As a result, they were pretty damn rare even compared to elves, but stood out even more, towering over all the other races.

America, perhaps unsurprisingly, had more half-bloods of all the races than probably the rest of the planet combined. Half-orcs were non-existent among the pureblooded Chinese, for example, but the urukhar children of Orcs and other human subspecies weren’t that uncommon at all.

Thus half-orcs, the urukhar; half-dwarves, the dhatun; and half-elves, the halvyr, had a significant presence in America right from the start, and were considered races of their own because of it. While others had certainly come up in numbers, half-bloods never arose from their parent races who shared a heritage, i.e. there were no Chinese urukhar; they were always humans or orcs.

The more mixed your ancestry, the greater the chance you’d be a half-blood. America thus had a bunch of them everywhere. Since most half-bloods were born Powered, it definitely was considered a good thing to be, although orcs and goblins were no more likely than humans to be Powered...

Noteworthy was that there were no half-goblins, but considering there were three breeds of Goblins who had evolved out of humans, it was not that unexpected...

---

So, in addition to the Powered arriving and simply ripping apart rigid old human societies with their power and drive, this whole situation had introduced massive race politics into the whole situation.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. It reminded me of the Fall, only this was worse. The only race politics Terra-Luna had to touch were Hyn and Ancient, and they were such small numbers initially that it was irrelevant... although the numbers of Hyn had increased sharply later...

With only the Powered/Primos divide to focus on, they had naturally focused on addressing that discrepancy and trying to raise the floor and level the playing field thereby, showing those without magic how to gain power, Levels, become Forsaken, and stand as equals with the lucky magic people.

There were still differences between our societies, and the Powered definitely had advantages in life, but there was no caste system.

It helped that Powered didn’t have Powered children; they were born to random Primos. Building Powered dynasties just wasn’t that easy, although some were trying to do so using a sect/cult system, and the Churches were certainly based on that paradigm.

Here, many of the non-humans were Powered (no Ancients were, in contrast), although they had the same problem Humans did... and orcs and most goblins were notably less intelligent than humans, which definitely hampered their ability to improve themselves.

Then, of course, there were the Secret Societies that had been exposed by the coming of the Powered. Suddenly the apple carts they’d had all to themselves were all over the place, out of their control completely, and they were being discovered by magical people with all sorts of new ideas and ways of doing things, without all the ancient conflicts and clashes between them...

---

The Illuminati, the necromancers of the world. Thousands of years old, present in every realm and kingdom of the ancient world, and every country of the new. Their greatest leaders were all necromancer undead, and they were both rivals and allies of the Vampire and other Tomb Clans.

The Druids, the Shamans of the world, suddenly finding that their reverence of the world-spirit was now being answered, and their animist beliefs now had teeth. They had been isolated before, with some mutual respect between them, but they had rapidly linked themselves up into a worldwide force present in virtually every rural community... and Urban Druids were as desired by a city as Citybound were.

The Warlocks, sworn to otherworldly spirits or forces, or to the genius loci of the world about them. They were the avatars of their Patron powers, and the conflicts between those forces played out between minions willing to sign off their souls for the chance to wield power. Even the new Churches didn’t have rivalries as long and unending as the Warlocks did...

The Alchemists, rivals in magic and intelligentsia of the Illuminati, and numbering most of the greatest scientists and inventors of the older world among their number. Their hold on the highest order of scientific thought had started falling since the Renaissance started tearing open the sharing of information, but their alchemical and artificing knowledge was rivaled by none in the world, and they had rapidly established themselves in that respect.

The Magi; astronomers, astrologers... and the true Wizards of the past. Both the Illuminati and the Alchemists were, to an extent, merely offshoots and junior branches of the Magi, and their libraries had held the magical foundation that had cemented them as the brainy guys of the magical world. They had reluctantly stepped forward to secure their influence and provide the core material for The Lore after eager new Wizards working with Sorcerers had worked out dozens of spells, realizing they would be sidelined quickly if that continued.

Their greatest rivals weren’t the other magical societies, but the new Churches, and most tellingly, the Sorcerer Bloodlines that had erupted out of nowhere with the coming of magic, and couldn’t be controlled or anticipated in the Human population... and who simply didn’t care about the cerebral education that was at the heart of Wizardry. One simply prayed and got spells, and the other... just got spells from their Bloodline.

The Magi didn’t really get along with religions that actually got responses to prayer because of that...

The Assassins were around... and there were at least three competing organizations of them. Most of the major players were believed to have their own covert strike teams, of course, but the Assassins were pay for hire, and had been for millennia. The most infamous teams came out of the Middle East, but there was another organization managing things in the Far East, and supposedly another one associated with the organized crime and Vampire families out of Europe.

They definitely loathed the Church of Harse, and the Church of Shoul was definitely involved with them as a result thereof.

The Knights of the Temple were known to be about, and there were a few famous businessmen or members of noble families who had declared themselves as Templars. The true goals of the organization were unknown, particularly since the religions of the old world had proven empty and false... and it was widely known now that any force ‘revealing itself’ as the One True God or somesuch was anything but, and the costs to those who bought into it all ended up bloody and final.

It was notable that despite repeated overtures, no known Paladins had joined the Templars... My private belief was that the Church of Imprus was seducing them with talk of power and privilege, but we’d have to see.

The great criminal families of the world basically existed in their own ecosystem, fed by advocates of Shoul, Huul, Angar, and other dark powers, forming a dark underweb to normal society that often erupted into violence. The Tomb families of the pseudo-undead, and the wererat and werespider clans were all intertwined with them in numerous ways, and there was simply no way to get rid of them... which didn’t mean that the Good Churches weren’t happy to take action against them and the shit they pulled.

Oddly enough, most of the Citybound tended to loathe the Families, too, as their predatory habits weakened cities and towns, concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a few... and Citybound didn’t care about the law when it came time to get rid of parasites.

The Hags...

There were multiple stories about Hags. Curses, prices for using them, and crones pulling strings of dark magic among the supernatural beings of the world. Ogres and Trolls were seen in numerous places now, and leadership of their clans inevitably wound back to a Hag somewhere. The Fey both feared and respected them, even the Mythos races dealt with them cautiously, and the werepacks and tombclans treated them with trepidation and disdain born from great unease. The Magi acknowledged their power, the Illuminati had been burned by them and kept going back for more secrets anyway, and the Hags just cackled in the shadows and pulled their strings...

The Freemasons were the last of the big non-governmental players, stepping forth as uniting elements for the skilled tradesmen of the world, whose importance had swiftly returned with the necessity of hand-made items for making magical Gear. The Dwarves and Gnomes had proven to be major players here, and even the Elves had somewhat joined in, setting uniform prices for high QL goods, a guaranteed market and supply center, and a place where their skills could be taught and traded among one another, and guarantees of Quality put into place.

Their online auction site of high QL goods was by far the best in the world. While, as always, the very best crafters could certainly go it alone and not do business through the Freemasons, there was little practical incentive to do so, as the elite crafters were a society in and of themselves. In terms of gathered goods pre-made, the Freemason website dominated the world...