Why are you special?

No, it doesn't take long to gather everyone together. After all, there's a little detail they want to ask me about.

“Where's the loot?” The fat rep from the Raptors demands.  Disgusting little man, quite greedy. Not that I'm not, but these resources are petty and largely beneath my notice…

…but I can't be a wet noodle here, “Do you mean the soldiers’ gear from when I eliminated them all over the course of a few seconds OUTSIDE the city wall?  They're safely tucked away in one of MY off-plane vaults, because I took them in battle. Why do you ask?” As if I don't know.

Fatman is pushing, “It was a joint military operation. Everyone deserves a cut.”

I raise an eyebrow, “Was it? When I invited everyone to a planning session, I got ambushed, walked calmly through it, dragged your generals in anyway, and then I basically just set you all out of the way so you wouldn't get caught in the crossfire while I did all the work. What did you do, exactly, that merits any reward?” I glare at him, and I have a pretty good Intimidate modifier.

He shrinks back in his chair and pales - practically wilting under my gaze, and stammers out “Wh-when you put it like that…”

I turn to the rest of the room, “Anyone else want to stake a claim?”

Nobody speaks up, so I continue, “Wonderful! Now then, the reason I called you all here: I don’t plan on bailing you out like that again, and this particular army was sent by a coalition of deities whose portfolios you've been trampling for years. So we're going to need to change this city's habits if you don't want to get overrun in a few years when they have time to regroup…” I lay down the new law: “No more strip mining, slag needs to be carefully buried away from the weather, coal needs to be kept from smoking significantly, and merchants need to be let in and out of the city largely unmolested.  The first three are specifically for the deities. The last is so you don't need to lean on the dungeon quite so hard… and yes, I've already reseeded.”

Nobody likes the rules, of course. Everyone has their income stream stepped on with them.  That said, they very grudgingly accept when I point out that I can vanish a district as easily as an army.

No, I don’t like ruling by fear. But it does work for these folks.

It takes a few weeks for the magic to reach the town. The assassination attempts in the meanwhile are… amusing. Poisoned food and wine (I'm natively immune when I'm bothering to eat or drink), daggers and crossbow bolts aimed at my back, and then there was that poor man who thought I actually used my bed for sleeping, and stayed up three days straight trying to catch me asleep.

They all made lovely statues for the gardens, although we did need to go through some hoops to shape them and properly pose them. After all, I have True Seeing constantly, and it wouldn't do for the nudes in the garden to be men. But if I cast a Fleeting Spell Magic Jar on my familiar, Buttercup, then she can possess the and have them drink down Elixirs of Sex Shifting while she's in control, I can stone them, and then dismiss ttheMagic Jar spell to free Buttercup.  It works quite well, and she comes up with such interesting poses showing off their new (or freshly upgraded) equipment. She knows my tastes quite well.

The magic coming back doesn't really change things: It just means I can have Wanda do the poses if I like, the attacks get a little flashier, and I make use of Mythic Detect Scrying to ambush my attackers. I end up with quite the statuary garden.

I wonder how they're going to react if they're ever restored?  No matter: They kill people for money, it's okay if they don't like self-defense. I figure I'll let them go in a few hundred years, once all their contacts, allies, and enemies have died of old age.  Give them the option of starting fresh in a new world and a new body.

I will, however, give them a bit more starting gear than I had.

And of course, magic's return means I can set Oscar on cleaning up and planting the environment around Brasilia - although thankfully, the dungeon does do much of the job for us.  It's fun to watch, really. Grass just sort of starts growing around the hole in the ground, and spreading at the ridiculous rate of a couple feet a day, breaking up rocks and leaving behind fertile soil as it goes, following behind the magic zone by a considerable amount.

I'm also making bank selling food, of course. And as per the plan, I very slowly raise prices. I want to get people interested in growing their own food, setting up deals with merchants, and so on. I also slowly sell off all of the captured military equipment, as well as Fredrick's hoard. I make quite the sum of money that way, which I use to set up a school.

See, Pathfinder has some retraining rules, even in just the first party content. I use the money to pay teachers to convert commoners into useful classes - Clerics, Druids, Shamen, Sorcerers, Summoners, Oracles, and Psychics … the full casters (Summoners only go up to 6th level spells, but they have a lot of spells on their list that are 9th level spells on other lists, plus their summon monster spell-like ability - I consider them “stealth” full casters) that can function with very little and aren’t overly heavily wealth-dependent. Wizards and Arcanists rock, don’t get me wrong, but all those spells in their spellbooks have to come from somewhere: It costs quite a bit to make a functional Wizard or Arcanist.  Well, okay, the Spirit Whisperer Wizard archetype or the Unlettered Arcanist archetype just need their familiar (like the Witch, also a full caster), which… isn’t too bad, but it’s still a hundred crown ritual for their first level.  The table game just lets them start with it (or the spellbook, in the case of most Wizards and Arcanists)… but it’s more than first level wealth by level (by a lot, in the case of a spellbook).  And of course, using a spread of classes also lets me pick based on an applicant’s highest mental ability score: Wisdom for Clerics, Druids, and Shamen; Charisma for Sorcerers, Summoners, and Oracles; Intelligence for Psychics.  Wizards, Witches, and Arcanists are also intelligence-based, of course, but again: I’m looking at training up COMMONERS.  They don’t have meaningful amounts of money to spend on the things those classes NEED in order to function. Of course, if someone with the money needs the retraining, I don’t say no: They just don’t get student loans.  But I don’t set up teachers for the expensive classes.  Fortunately, I didn’t need to seek out teachers!  I can make them.  The Time sphere from Spheres of Power has the Complete Reversion advanced talent, so I can convert willing subjects of suitable level and stats into teachers… and I can check for level and stats with spells. Detect Desires, Detect Thoughts, and Detect Anxieties lets me identify a person’s Charisma, Intelligence, and Wisdom scores (respectively), while a little setup and the Magic Jar spell lets me identify someone’s level... and commoners are easy to find.  We even have trappers in the full casters!  The Sorcerer and Oracle can get the Seeker archetype, you see, and that grants trapfinding.  And of course, Druids and Summoners come with semi-disposable meatshields, while Clerics can mostly do the job too... so I’m running a magic school.  I guess that makes me Dumbledor?  I like to think I look better in a robe.

And yes, I'm generally wearing robes nowadays; it's simpler than figuring out what will fit every day when I make new clothes. My belly's been growing fit to burst with little Alex inside, and I can feel them moving around occasionally; there’s very little like the sensation. It's not too much longer until I'm due… ditto for Wanda. I even know both our dates due to my divine domains.

And I'm ready. My own subconscious expectations have morphed me a bit. It's not too noticeable, but my chest has grown and never runs dry anymore. I am always full to the point of slightly leaking: It doesn't matter how much I pump myself.  The “No Scent” spell gets rid of the smell, at least… and it wasn't too hard to build a simple rig that sucks out the milk as I leak it, then tosses it through a portal into a refrigerator elsewhere. If I have the pump actively suck, I outperform Wanda, even though my rack isn't even half her size, simply because I just don't run dry.  I don't do that beyond a one-day test, of course: Catching the leaks for my avatar is sufficient for me. It's not an issue for my other me's: My new relatives GET IT: Some of them have similar problems (Sickness is constantly bleeding, for example) so I can simply let the milk drip and not worry about it… my brothers seem to enjoy the show, but hey: I never developed any body shyness for my chest thanks to my history, so it works.  Meanwhile, the me's keeping an eye on various portions of my Aspect only interact with the world deliberately: Any leakage simply vanishes when it gets a short distance from those me's.

And of course, I have Alex coming….