You have defeated Aubert Duvost in an Intrigue. You have earned 125 XP

You have defeated Victor de Bargougne in an Intrigue. You have earned 245 XP

You have taken control of a Territory: City of Talnier. Claim? [Y]/[N]

What? I stared at the notification in confusion. It must have been a full ten seconds before I noticed that no one else was saying anything. When I looked away from the blue box, I saw that everyone else was frozen.

“Don’t worry, it’s not a time-stop effect from the Territory notification,” a familiar voice said. I turned my head to see Fyskal, sitting in a chair that hadn’t been there before, at a space on the table that hadn’t been there before.

“You,” I said.

“Me indeed.” He gave me a little grin. “You’re a lot calmer now. I think we’ll be able to have a much more productive discussion than last time.”

“Will we.”

“Oh yes,” he leaned forward conspiratorially. “You have questions, after all.”

“Are you going to answer them?”

“Eh.” He waved a hand noncommittally. “Let's not get into spoilers.”

“Fine.” I looked at the box, still hanging there, but I had more pressing concerns than that. “Let's talk about me getting home.”

“You can’t.” Fyskal shrugged. “That’s beyond the power of any of the Gods.”

“You brought me here though,” I said. “Why can’t you send me back?”

Fyskal sighed. “That knowledge can’t help you,” he said. “It will only confuse you and hurt your feelings. Can’t we just leave it at ‘can’t’?”

“You said you’re predicting my dialogue,” I said evenly. “Aren’t you able to predict what my answer is going to be?”

“Yes,” he said sadly. “If I don’t tell you, the question will eat away at you and continue to distract you from your missions. This way, you’re more effective. And by warning you—” he gave me a sly smile, “ — I get seen as a more empathic figure, helping us work more effectively together.”

“Or it would have, if you hadn’t been a smart-ass about it.”

Fyskal sighed theatrically. “I’m sure you noticed that the body you came here with isn’t the same one that you had before.”

“Yeah…” I said warily. I had noticed a few things. Like being drop-dead gorgeous all of a sudden.

“No need to thank me,” Fyskal said, smirking. “The System handled all that.”

“Wasn’t planning to.”

“So there are two reasons for that,” he explained. “One is that if you enter this world with a physical body, the System detects and treats you as a demon, and you don’t get anywhere near as nice a treatment as you did.”

“What’s the other one?” I asked, my unease spiking. I’d noticed the change, but I’d assumed that my body had changed, not that… it was missing.

“The other one is that we only brought your… well, call it your soul across, so we needed the System to provide a body to put it in.”

“My body is back on Earth? I’m dead?” My voice hardened as another thought flashed through my mind. “Did you fucks snatch my soul out of my body?”

“That’s a lot of outrage for someone who didn’t really believe in souls about four seconds ago. Unfortunately, the answers to all those questions are some flavour of I don’t know.”

“How is that possible!” I yelled. “You stole my soul and you don’t know where you snatched it from?”

“You have to understand that other worlds are outside our area of influence,” Fyskal calmly explained. “We can’t extend most of our powers or senses out there, so we’re limited to examining and affecting the more ethereal side of things. We didn’t have any way of perceiving your body at the time, so we have no idea if you were in it when we brought you here. But we don’t think so.”

“Why not?” I said, glaring. This is just a memory, I told myself. Even if you could punch him, there’d be no point.

“There’s a lot we don’t understand about other dimensions,” Fyskal admitted. “We don’t know why Earth is the only one with people available to us. And we don’t know why your memories all stop at the same point in time.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t remember dying do you?” he asked. “Nor do you remember the incredible pain of your body being severed from your essential essence. No. Your memories of Earth stop exactly where they did when we first found you. It took us forty-three minutes to make our decisions of who to take, but no memories were added in that time. To any of you.”

“Well, maybe I was asleep?”

“Seven billion of you?” Fyskal laughed. “Even if that were possible, you do lay down memories during sleep. Even before you start dreaming, the traces of unconsciousness are unmistakable. And absent.”

“But, what does that even mean?”

“We speculate, but ultimately we don’t know. What matters is that we can’t send your current body back, and we don’t know if there is a body remaining to receive your soul. You have memories of Earth, and they are valuable. But you are a creature of Ryvue now, and won’t ever be anything else.”

I stared at him in horror. Everything I knew was gone forever?

He sighed. “I can tell that you need some time to absorb all this. I did warn you. You might prefer if we left it here, but then you’ll be stunned in the middle of an important meeting with an unknown dialogue box in your face.”

I stared at him for a bit, before realising what he was talking about. Shit! The meeting! The Territory!

I took a deep breath.

“OK, what can you tell me about Territory management?”

“Absolutely nothing. I can’t just give information out to a Champion, it would be showing favouritism.”

I slowly counted to ten, getting to four before I yelled. “Then what are we having this conversation for?”

“Calm down there,” he said, grinning like the ass he was. “You should be able to work most of this out by yourself. To start with, I don’t imagine you have any questions about the notification itself?”

I looked at the box again. “I got notified because I got elected and I won the first vote? Am I going to lose the territory every time I lose a vote?”

“Power in a democracy can rest on a knife-edge, but it’s not that volatile. The System has determined that you are the most likely leader to determine future policy going forward, so it’s offered the city to you. Losing a vote won’t lose you the city, unless it's a crucial one.”

“It used to belong to Aubert,” I said thoughtfully, “So that’s why I got the Intrigue notification from him. Is Victor the Duke?”

“Yes, so you also stole it from him,” Fyskal agreed. “The King isn’t on there as you still maintain at least nominal fealty to him, and Marseau isn’t on there because he’s dead. You might want to think about answering the question.”

[Y] I thought, making the box disappear. “Wait, if this is a memory…”

“Yes, you’ll have to accept the offer again. Don’t worry, I know what happens next.”

What happened next was nothing.

“Shouldn’t something be happening?” I asked.

“Why should it?” he replied innocently. “Have you requested any information?”

“Right. [Status].” The familiar blue sheet came up, but there was nothing different about it.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Fyskal said airily, “Most territory owners never find their way onto the page. They still manage to affect things, but only unconsciously. For the most part, that means that things continue to operate as they always have.”

Territory. The System had used that word too, it sounded like a clue. [Territory Status]

[Territory Name]: Talnier

[Territory Type]: Free City

Population: 1436

[Territory Points]: 0

[Roles]

[Customisation]

Liege: Kingdom of Latorra

Vassals: None

Threats: Tribal Confederacy, Barony of Seren, Duchy of Arryen, Duchy of Bargougne

“That’s a lot of threats,” I mused, my eyes going to that section immediately. “Wait, I thought you said this was hard!”

Fyskal chuckled. “You still haven’t noticed it,” he said. “Try saying it aloud.”

“[Territory Status]. [Territory Status].” Each time, the screen came up as before. I wasn’t hearing anything unusual… wait.

“[Status]. [Professions]. [Log]. What the hell?”

“Most of the System interface is translated into the native language of the user,” Fyskal explained, still chuckling. “That includes the commands - except for a few.”

“[Status] and [Territory Status] are in English!” That was why, I realised, people here called the System, the [Status]. They didn’t know what the word meant and thought it was the name.

“Strange isn’t it?” Fyskal chortled. “English was unknown in this world until we contacted your universe. Imagine our surprise when we realised it was somehow embedded in our deepest mystery.”

“So why do people know [Status] but not [Territory Status]?”

“Only a few people in a country are authorised to use the latter, and they have a tendency to not pass it on if they do know. Now that we’re not handholding, the knowledge tends to die out over a few generations.”

“Even with the Priests of Knowledge about?”

“Toriao is pretty much constantly pissed with rulers who try to restrict knowledge of magic. She’s instructed her priests to never reveal that word.”

“Charming.”

“Eh, it works out,” Fyskal said. “It's not like there’s anything necessary in there, after all.”

What is in there? I wondered. I would have asked, but I knew that would just be an invitation for Fyskal to be difficult. Instead, I started going through the highlighted options on the screen. [Territory Name] and [Territory Type] just seemed to be an option to change either one. [Territory Points] just got a help file.

Territory Points are used to purchase all options in [Roles] and [Customisation]. Gain Territory Points by improving your Territory!

“Since you’re wondering, I didn’t write the help files,” Fyskal said. “Though I have been inspired by them from time to time.”

I snorted with derision and continued on. [Roles] gave me a very complicated screen. After studying it for a while, I ventured a guess.

“I can… create [Professions]?”

“That’s right,” he said. “Some professions are universally available, while others can only be taken from within a particular territory. You’re inheriting a bunch from Latorra - those were created by the current King’s grandfather.”

Huh. That did sound useful. It looked like there was some kind of point system that kept [Professions] from being too good, but I could think of a few ways to use this - once I got some points.

Moving on to [Customisations], I saw… a lot of options. It looked like I could control all sorts of tiny little civilisation details. I could have women addressed as ‘Ms’ for example, or set the standard greeting to ‘Whassup?’. Clothing fashions, cultural norms…

“Is this mind control?” I asked, horrified and fascinated at the same time.

“Not exactly,” Fyskal replied. “Most of that gets pushed through [Charm], with a few bits going through other skills”

“So this is where [Charm] gets its information from? I curtsey because eighty years ago some guy decided I should?”

“You don’t have to curtsey though,” Fyskal pointed out. “You just know that that’s the best action to take at those times.”

“So if I changed curtseying to bowing…”

“Most people with [Charm] would just switch without thinking about it. They’ll probably notice, but you know how easy it is to just go with [Charm]’s flow. People without the skill would take longer to start doing it, but they’ll soon pick it up.”

“Still feels creepy,” I muttered.

“Well, you don’t have to use it. Of course, you’re inheriting the settings from Grandpappy Nestor, so there will be an effect even if you don’t change things.”

“Even so…” It did creep me out, but ideas were already coming to me about how to use it. Developing a healthy corporate culture was such an important part of running a corporation, and a town wasn’t any different really. If I could install a culture of professionalism and honesty, it would go a long way towards reducing crime and corruption.

I could feel that I was talking myself into it, so I put it aside for now. It wasn’t like I could do anything without Territory Points.

“Well, I think this conversation went much better than the last one,” Fyskal said. “It’s been fun, are you ready to go back to your meeting?”

Right, the actual meeting. “Sure,” I said, casting my mind back to where it had been before Fyskal showed up. “Lay it on me.”

He snapped his fingers, and everything started moving again. The box appeared, and I selected [Y] again.

Whew, I thought. Time for a nice exciting budget meeting.