I also had to speak with the little sisters, and my hellpoodles. This was replete with many protests, woofs of denial, and other disagreements that I just ramrodded right through. After all, they knew me, I wasn’t going to take the low road, and I knew them, and I believed in them.

Having someone with a working 50 Charisma believing in you is nigh-irresistible. They all succumbed under Sama’s Steamroller, surprise, surprise.

I had to speak with Errant and Hazé as well, and to my lack of surprise there wasn’t much resistance to what I was proposing. After all, Heavenbound and Mystic Theurge... they were tied right in to the powers Upstairs, and big picture thinkers for big reasons. They reviewed everything, agreed with me on what was likely, who had to do what, and knew what they had to be working for.

Then, it was back to work.

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We cut a very wide swathe across the Zones, back to the capital city. We weren’t hasty, they knew we were coming by those who ran away from us, and yeah, they took some steps to defend themselves.

The Void Brothers descended on the place and took down the Hags and their magical defenses in a night of slaughter, which rather thoroughly gutted their spellpower.

The next day we began hitting them, making sure nobody got to run with the loot and wealth of the city. We were going to reduce the place, and cart off the wealth of an empire for Elder Arg, his monkey boys, and the dragons, and there wasn’t going to be any stopping us.

The self-healing aspect of the Exemplar Lites truly shone here, because it meant we could undertake continuous, grinding warfare. Five minutes was generally enough for even the most badly wounded of our people to return to full strength, barring missing a limb or something important, and as always, the Clerics and the White Staff were standing by, ready to bring someone back who got too cocksure, much to the mockery of the others.

A lot of Karma went into Racial Levels to get Health up, accordingly. The Kings maxed out their Racial Levels, King Gold getting up to nearly the size of a Dire Lion, while King Ivory grew larger than a mammoth.

With more Hit Dice came higher limits on Skills, especially for King Ivory. What he would choose to do with them was his business, but his discussions with me and Elder Arg were remarkably nuanced, even as he commenced taking his Class Levels, too.

The capital city was immense, stone blocks hauled from neighboring zones, built up over this wet and marshy land, forming a grim, damp city that just begged for murderers in the shadows and things stalking the streets in the night. There was a mile-wide crater where the Obelisk used to be, deep-deep canyons dividing the city which couldn’t be crossed by magical flight, and many buildings fallen and collapsed.

We didn’t kill all the giants, of course; that would have been inefficient. They were strong, tended to the dumb side, and were used to being ordered around by female spellcasters. Accordingly, Wayfair soon took control of them, supplemented by massive amounts of Charm spells on key bosses, and in no time at all, we had a labor force for clearing the rubble and getting at the treasures within.

Briggs’ and my advanced Tremblesense came in very useful for locating buried hoards and vaults, and we dug them out with amazing speed, with Rockborn directing everything and haror supplementing with magic where needed. Tons and tons of gold were Itemized or Tapestried, and Wayfair teleported away, following the Wake all the way back to the Plateau of the Monkeys, depositing ever growing piles of the shiny metal for the apes waiting there.

After all, I had tons of Marked monkeys back there, who were all very current on what we were doing and all the things that had been done. They knew about the Shardzone collapse coming, and were starting to gather all the tribes in the jungle in preparation. Their only weakness was supplies, and that wasn’t that hard to solve. Some of the chakon and champa-ka Exemplars headed home through a double Portal via Tremble, Wayfair providing the target focus on the far end, and with their muscle, started to harvest the neighboring dinos and lushest greenery and fruits and preserve them according to the new methods they now had knowledge of.

If they happened to bring along multiple tons of giants’ weapons and stuff bundled up along with them, that was only a little opportunistic and pragmatic...

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You wouldn’t think that a major city that had housed over a hundred thousand giant-sized occupants could be looted thoroughly in under a month, but that’s what having a superstrong labor force who knows right where to dig gets you. We were literally hauling out wagonloads of precious metals, and buffing up Disks to take all the weight as we hauled them through Tremble’s Riftcuts to Monkey High.

The monkey-boys were delighted to learn that yeah, all that salvage and this digging up gold accumulated Karma, too. Given the amounts being pulled out, they were doing just as well as being in roaring combat all the time. Which naturally set thoughts turning to downtime, and Crafting, and casual Karma made that way...

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“We take down all the Obelisks in this Shardzone. I want a full conduit in and out for dumping stuff in Reality. The faster we can do it, the better.”

We were all watching The Map of the Shardzone, looking at our winding path in and out. The positions of the Obelisks we’d passed were clearly marked, as were all those in Zones that we’d bypassed or not entered on the way in. There were quite a few of them.

Pseudonaturals were worth a LOT of Karma. There tended to be a lot of loot at their locations, too, used to fuel the power that held them there.

Almost everybody listening in was an ExLite or better, and nobody was a dummy, even the berserkers. They were all worthy to be in on the planning, having their own inputs and ideas. Of course, the majority of their desires were for Karma and Loot, which was what this was all about, so nobody was naysaying.

The key to taking out Pseudonaturals was Brilliant Weapons and a +VI Weapon bonus. Everybody could do the former, but it was pretty much Nulls limited to the latter. A +IV Slot effect wasn’t something their Weapons could sustain at this point, as most of them were at QL32 or so, and could only support Slot Zeks.

So, we had to get everyone’s Weapons and Armor up to QL 40, the fast way.

If I wasn’t Crafting for Value, getting to QL 40 wasn’t all that hard. Elder Arg had taken Legendary Crafter and could do twenty goldweight of crafting a day, which translated into dozens of Weapons he could refine up. Briggs could out-Craft me on anything but swords, for the most part, and we had lots of chakon with smithing Ranks at 12 to assist or work at the same time.

We needed more Tools, but creating an array of Masterwork stuff wasn’t that hard, and Forge was fully capable of handling the work of dozens of smiths at once.

All in all, refining the Weapons and Armor of everyone to 40 and making Zehn Slots possible didn’t actually take all that long. The key was raw materials, and it came as no surprise that the smiths and giants had some impressive reserves of ores carted up out of the Hole, or from the ranges of mountains that crossed the Shardzones. Given we only needed an eighth to a sixty-fourth what giants did to create their Gear, what we found in mithral and adamant was more than adequate for our needs.

Looting the personal labs and stashes of Hags and Witches got us all the reagents we could use, and certainly enough to make orichalcum. Accompanying embellishments were added as new Weapons and Armor were forged to their owners, and the old ones ceremoniously sacrificed to them, transferring the Names and magic, and opening themselves up to be improved once again.

Going from Zeks or Zeben Slots to Zehn would involve another half year of daily Naming Karma for one Weapon and one Armor or Shield. Needless to say, they were all eager to get about it.

Fido and Shirley were crucial for treating the Mire dragonhides, which were naturally impervious to acidic or basic softening procedures. Many of the Apes opted for Force Armor Bracers over the Armor, but donned it for appearance and the natural resistance to acid damage that it could be enchanted to provide. Plus, ‘me kill dragon take hide wear’ is a rather impressive story to relate to the ladies.

The dragons opted for mithral Barding, with enchantments on it to absorb more mithral so it could grow with them as they got bigger. Dyed in black, it looked very impressive on them, and the ornamentation in gold proudly commemorated the fighting and glory they had won here. They were all quite pleased.

It was a month of hard labor, doing high-end work that would have required all the gathered master smiths of the Klintskun kingdoms to equal.

We didn’t have the time to give Briggs’ new Armor or my new Sword the full Crafting treatment, much as I might have liked. That still meant they were made at QL 55. Briggs’ suit first required making a full adamant suit of skinplate, and then letting the orichalcum eat it before reforging it into the same. Naturally we let the orichalcum eat a lot of different other kinds of metals, too. No reason not to take advantage of its magical nature.

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Team by team, as they were equipped, they left.

King Gold left with the berserkers and a few haror in support. Brilliant was a V Valence spell, and cast on a few Berserker Weapons, would be sufficient to take down any Pseudos they fought, as the group of them was tough enough to survive their onslaughts long enough to do so with a little help. King Gold was definitely looking forward to being strong enough to battle such creatures without such help, but acknowledged he’d probably need the aid for now. He’d also be towing them around very quickly on their Disks with his speed. It also meant he was VERY eager to gain more Druid Levels so he could do such things himself... and if he was quietly liking monkey-paws for being able to work with tools and Make Toys, well, nobody was going to say anything.

Errant and the Heavenbound went with the Rockborn, several haror, and the gnomes. All the Heavenbound had Brilliant in Arsenal, as Errant had prevailed upon me to make them QL 40 Weapons during our Three Days. They’d have no trouble with Obelisk teams, and the griffons could skim along and keep them moving fast.

The dragons and their riders, including Estemar, did indeed leave to reinforce the apes. They’d also take down the neighboring Obelisks, and could easily fight every day with the dangers in the nearby zones. Already the forces from Leng were spilling off the high, cold plateau, moving into the empty undead Zone, and closing in on Monkey High. They were not going to be lacking for Karma, and had the speed to quickly get to the areas that would need to be reinforced.

King Grey naturally went with the Ironblood, whose officers had gained Brilliant Weapons some time ago. Again, there were haror in support for Casting, but the Wolf would be leading his pack on a vengeful hunt. The hyn went with them.

The girls went with King Ivory this time, the Hellpuppies going with them, as did the North Wind. The Elephant would be leading the charge, and unlike the other groups, would be focusing in the holewards districts more. The girls had Brilliant on their Weapons, and King Ivory was definitely looking forwards to butting heads with such creatures. Liiss, Barus, and Kadifyr would provide the buffing support needed, so off they went.

The Brothers scattered counter-clockwise, Veilwalking into the neighboring Shardzones. Their job was to take down Obelisks and ensure the Wake kept following the slowly cracking Formation, driving it around the circle and making sure there were no problems. There was very little doubt that they would find tons to do as they did so.

That left just me, Briggs, AA, and Elder Arg to finish up, before we went on an Obelisk-dropping journey, too. Wayfair would be our back-up Caster for taking them down when we hit them, but with her unlimited teleporting, was also everyone’s back-up, and the loot shuffler. Getting the Obelisks down along our backtrail was #1 priority for the teams, so she could start bringing loot outside Yle Tyorm, and she had Tremble with her just to facilitate that process, promising to get in some fights so Tremble could accumulate Naming Karma more easily.