I should be done with my current project within the next two days, the soul energy that I’m getting from forming these connections is a lot more than I expected to be, even after I realized that it would exist in the first place. Which is great, this isn’t exactly the most fun project. Even with restricting how much I am spending it still leaves me feeling cold and tired, and keeps me from doing other fun things.

I spent some time talking to Preacher today, he has definitely taken to his role well. He isn’t nearly as good at organizing things as Speaker was, but he is incredibly talented at inspiring and guiding the people in broad strokes. Which is exactly what is needed right now, his predecessors have already laid down the groundwork, now he is the best person to take advantage of it on my behalf.

Thanks to him there are now efforts to convert every single large group of sentient creatures on the continent, with the exception of the ones under the control of the enemy. This should allow expanding my forest and our empire to be seamless, at least until we reach another continent.

Speaking of, the island with people on it that I found recently has its own religion, one that is followed quite strongly by the population. In and of itself this is only a small issue, but it is one more issue causing them to reject our authority. They don’t want to join our empire and we can’t spare the troops to force them to join us. At the same time, I don’t think that they would react well to being conquered in the way that the enemy’s cities are. They are much more free-spirited than the people on the mainland, and their whole religion supports this.

So we need to teach them our language, share our culture, and convert them to our religion, otherwise, they will never willingly join us. Luckily we have two different organizations that would love to do just that.

The scholars want to teach them our language, they want everyone in the world to share the language that they created and they don’t take kindly to those that refuse to learn it. I have heard stories of civilizations being purged for that type of thing. From what I hear this usually starts with a very aggressive effort to translate everything from the local language into their language, including written works, spoken stories, and common sayings. Then they go in and teach anyone and everyone that is willing to learn their language, including written language. It’s weird to think about, but apparently in places of the world that the scholars have not touched literacy isn’t common, sometimes to the point of a written language simply not existing. How do people record things without writing? I’m sure at least one civilization figured out how to do it with the soul, but that can’t be common.

As for religion, Preacher is already trying to convert them. He hasn’t had much luck yet, but it’s only been a couple days. I suggested that he look at their religion and see if there are any stories of plant manipulators or healers that he can draw from to help their own efforts and I hope that bears fruit.

Both of these things will do a lot to spread our culture to them, but to be honest, I would be completely fine with it if they weren’t completely converted to our culture. I haven’t seen everything that they have to offer, but the food alone is amazing. They have so many spices that I simply didn’t have before and that no one else knows how to use properly, even our best chefs haven’t managed to figure out how to make many of them actually tasty yet. And their people are very attractive, as many of my own people will attest to. It’s been a week and already several of my people have already hooked up with theirs, and I expect that to continue. On top of that, the few traditions that I have observed have been interesting, like the way that they treat necromancy. It seems to be something that they honor and respect, but their necromancers are treated as somehow being other or outsiders and are rarely accepted into the general population. But on the one occasion that I did see them accepted they were treated incredibly well, lavished with gifts and praise as they went about their work of reanimating the corpse of a dead relative. It’s a bizarre custom, why do the necromancers put up with that kind of treatment, and why would anyone in that culture willingly become one of them? I haven’t seen any of them with any kind of romantic partner so it can’t be a familial thing, which makes sense considering how often necromancers turn into undead. I really want to know what the story is here.

Anyway, Good Night Diary.