Visiting The City Of The Dead

I stayed in the air above the city of Aronms for a few more moments. I surveilled the city, quietly composed another mass-alert, and then transmitted it. All it was, was an explanation for why I had done what I did to the manor. As soon as I transmitted it to the inhabitants of Aronms I felt that my business here was complete.

I didn't hesitate to teleport out of the city. I went from one darkened place to another. The instant I was done with my self-assigned task in Aronms, I teleported from the dark-elven city to the unholy undead city my reanimated horde had built which was now located within my floating island.

I went from floating freely in the air to standing in the heart of the undead metropolis my undead worshipers had created deep underground, only for me to move to my floating island sanctuary. I teleported to the heart of the metropolis, and quickly found myself surrounded by the same horde that had attacked and successfully defeated the reptilefolk encampment, a week ago.

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The settlement I was now within was populated entirely by Althonians. And more than that it was made up of a distinct sect of Althonians: undead beings who worshiped me as a god of death, and the undead.

I was standing in the middle of a bizarre, macabre marketplace. All around me milled thousands of undead creatures, from simple and uncommanded zombies who idly roamed the marketplace, to fully sapient vampires who in life had been members of dozens of species but were now united in undeath and who carried themselves with pride and purpose.

The marketplace was pitch-black but that didn't bother me or my undead servants. All of us could see in the dark, unaided by any additional magic. I could see the assorted sorts of intelligent undead I controlled milling about in a fascinating imitation of life.

Skeletons, ghouls, vampires, and other corporeal undead performed the various roles needed for a marketplace to function successfully. I could see skeletons in one part of the marketplace bartering for spare bones, and skeletons in another selling spare limbs.

The shopkeepers here were curious to me. I listened to the thousands of deals being struck in the marketplace and noticed that the majority of the deals involved a special kind of currency. I had half-expected the undead to create a sort of pseudo-currency, but they hadn't. This boney marketplace, merely one of several in the city, seemed to accept a peculiar currency: the promise of favors to be repaid later.

Incorporeal undead floated in the open air above us. They moaned, their loud wails providing a creepy, ambient auditory backdrop as other, more physically present undead pursued a number of businesses.

The marketplace had a distinct, deathly, odor to it. It smelled of death, of rotting corpses, and of bones buried shallowly in the dirt. The smell would undoubtedly have grossed out a mortal, or even a more kindly god than I. Even I didn't revel it, but it didn't bother me either.

No undead noticed me, because I didn't feel like being noticed. My powers over them, just like all of my other powers, had grown recently and I could now control their perceptions. If I had wanted too, I could blind them to me or even to each other. Even when I touched an undead creature that alone didn't cause it to notice me.

I proceeded to walk forward, silently observing the ghoulish undead, many of whom were themselves actual ghouls. As I studied them I took in the haunting atmosphere of the strange city and allowed my mind to wander a bit.

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The atmosphere of the city of death and undeath was an unsettling and gory one. As I explored the city's central marketplace and took in the sights and sounds of the city, a part of me wondered about the nature of undeath. It was a fascinating state of existence, and I wanted to discover more about it.

It was precisely when I was mulling over what little I knew about undeath that a voice I had never heard before whispered into my mind.

"You could use me to find out you know. Use my powers I mean. It's been so long since you indulged in me, even though I was and am your personal vice." The voice whispered.

This voice was strange, androgynous, and spoke breathily. There was a luxuriousness and laziness to it that I hadn't expected. There was also a bit of feigned pain in its whispers as if the thing was putting on a show and didn't mind that I knew. The voice belonged to the vice of lust. I was silent for a moment, as I hadn't even known that the personal vices and virtues themselves were also conscious enough to have voices. But after a moment of silent contemplation, I replied to it.

"What do you mean I could 'use you'?" I asked the voice, curious to hear lust expand on its thoughts.

"Althos... I am hurt!" The voice replied, feigning distress once more.

"Isn't what I mean obvious? I mean that the assortment of powers and upgrades you've idly earned pertaining to me allows you to learn all about a creature's desires. Even an undead being cannot hide its desires from you. Just use me." The voice whispered, asking me to make use of the strange powers I possessed over desires, in the form of my influence over the corruption subdomain.

The corruption subdomain had so far provided me with powers I was often on the fence about using. I quickly rechecked the subdomain's listed powers and mentally poured over the upgrades to the corruption subdomain that I had received for perhaps the second time in my life.

For the sake of simplicity, I mentally filtered the list that I perused and was able to slim it down so that it was only the powers I had gotten as a result of the upgrades I had earned to date and the synergistic powers I had access too.

Some of the powers now classified as within the subdomain of corruption were powers that had belonged to the subdomain of sexuality and gender but were now upgraded and stronger. If I had to share my thoughts on why I suspected they were situated here now because lust refers not just to desires for sexual activity but intense desires for a range of things.

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[Corruption subdomain passive powers:

Desire absorption: This vampiric power allows you to absorb the desire someone feels. With it you can feed on desire, which is little more than a neutral word for lust. The desire you absorb is nullified and completely disappears.

Desire amplification or dampening: This power allows you to heighten or lessen the desire someone feels. This desire need not be directed at another person, it could instead be a desire for an object or desire for a sensation.

Desire aura: You can project an aura that amplifies the level of desire anyone caught in it feels. This increase can be to the point that it drives mortals temporarily insane.

Desire detection: You can detect the desires of any creature. At will, you can also release a wave of corrupt energy that copies the desires of any it hits and relays those desires back to you. If applicable this power also informs you of how you fit into their desires.

Desire release: You can overwhelm a mortal, extraplanar, abomination, or undead, mind with desire and cause them to pursue their desires to almost any end. So long as what someone wants isn't actively outlawed in the land they live in they will pursue it to the greatest of their abilities.

This power upgrades as you gain greater influence over the subdomain of corruption, and as you gain greater influence over the domains of law and chaos.

Enhanced pleasure manipulation: This upgraded power allows you to cause abominations, undead and extraplanar beings to experience pleasure. With it, you can make creatures who may not otherwise be able to experience pleasure feel it, you can also manipulate the pleasure they feel.

Kiss mastery: This power empowers your kiss-based abilities. Among other things, you can now fire kiss-shaped projectiles and strike distant enemies or targets with them. Any effect you can apply to your kiss you can apply to a projected kiss.

People you kiss or who are struck by one of your kiss-shaped projectiles find their minds opened to your influence. If you kiss someone enough that they begin to worship you then they worship you as a god of lust, sexuality, and dominance who rewards his faithful with perpetual pleasure.

How much influence you gain over a target depends on a number of factors such as the pleasure they felt from the kiss, their perception of you, and where you kissed them, among other things.

Speak no evil, think no evil: Only lesser beings need to rely on their bodies to arose and stimulate. You can use words or even thoughts to arouse and titillate lesser beings.

Corruption subdomain active power:

Desire illusion: This once a day power allows you to create up to five distinct, personalized illusions whose forms are dependent on the desires of the creatures you target when you activate this power.

These illusions are your servants and aim to seduce whoever is responsible for their forms. They dissipate a day after they've been created, and anything they overhear is automatically transmitted to you. These illusions are real to the people whose desires shaped them and no one else, but the targets of your power can feel them and be touched by them.]

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These new powers were intriguing to me. They were all fairly powerful too, the product of several upgrades and my speedy acquisition of worshipers. I closed my eyes and proceeded to activate one of them: "Desire detection".

I willed its secondary function to go off and felt the wave of corrupt energy seep out of me. The wave radiated out of me and an instant later I felt an immense wave of potent, palpable desire enter me.

This desire hit me like a tidal wave and was infinitely darker than tidal wave could ever hope to be. I felt an incredibly misanthropic and vast hatred towards all living entities, with the sole exception of myself radiating out of my servants. My undead servants hated life, and they felt two immense desires.

The first desire they felt, the one that was the simplest and purest was a desire to kill all life. What they were after was simple: omnicide. The undead sought to kill every single lifeform in existence. The other desire they felt was one that was equally powerful.

The second desire they felt was a desire to serve me. This desire was equally as powerful as their other desire and held their desire to attempt omnicide in check. Curiously, they also felt that I wasn't a lifeform, and thus didn't need to be exempted from their omnicidal desires since to them, I wasn't alive in the first place.

This secondary desire also gave them a nonviolent purpose and I was grateful for it. It was perhaps because of that that these hate-filled monsters hadn't tried to rid the world of life. That said, their collective desire to commit omnicide was immensely powerful. It was so strong that even I couldn't expose myself to it without some of it seeping into me.

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Each undead member of my horde felt exactly the same towards the living. They felt a simplistic emotion that was fairly easy for me to identify and understand. Violent hatred. There was no nuance, no hope for change, no possibility of the emotion ever changing barring anything less than eventual divine intervention.

The hatred that every member of my horde felt was a sinister, surprisingly passionate sensation. It infected their hearts and made them sincerely view the living, not as a complex set of enemies of different powers, beliefs, or goals but as something else.

My undead horde saw the living as a single, monolithic, and innumerable enemy to kill and eventually reanimate. They hoped to assimilated the living, making them undead and thus placing them on "our" side.

There was something enviable about that view. I suspected it was its simplicity. It was a binary worldview, one that gave the undead a mighty and possibly even inevitable purpose: omnicide.

What I had learned about their views of me were intriguing. They hadn't exempted me from the forces of the living, rather than doing that those of them with the intelligence to think deeply about me saw me as one of them.

Their perceptions of me were skewed and gave me a unique position I had never asked for. As far as I could tell they viewed me as the supreme leader of all undead beings, and that I was myself an undead god.

The horde didn't see me as a god of undeath, but a deity who was itself undead. This perception wasn't reflective of reality, but it did reveal why the undead held me in such high regard.

As I thought about that and mulled it over, a voice interrupted my introspective monologuing. The voice of the necromancy subdomain.

"Are you having fun?" It asked, curiously. I chuckled and responded to it in the affirmative. It giggled, the sound oddly innocent given what I knew about the subdomain.

"That's good. I'm surprised it took you so long to try and discover more about the undead." It remarked, sounding almost disappointed in me.

"Well the way undead beings were described to me was... I was given a specific perception of them. And frankly, that perception was largely correct." I told the subdomain.

"Oh? Tell me more about that perception." The subdomain remarked, curious to hear me expand on my initial perceptions of the undead.

"I was led to believe that undead were powerful but simple beings. Creatures that hated life and sought to end it. And those things have thus far proven to be true." I told the subdomain.

"I've seen the undead in battle. They are fierce opponents. And that was them as a roving horde, an unorganized and ill-equipped mob. There is a not-so-small part of me that wants to equip and train them. I would love to see my multitudes of servants transformed into a proper fighting force." I told the subdomain, the thought growing more and more intriguing to me the more I considered it.

After I shared my insights with the subdomain it fell silent, equally interested in the thought of the undead as an organized, well-led, and well-armed force. I was mildly amused by the fact that the subdomain was so easily distracted.

I would spend the next two hours in the undead metropolis. While I was there I would silently observe the city's strange inhabitants and watch them go about their business. The undead and their fascinating facsimile of business and life could have entertained me for days. But soon enough I sensed other things that merited my attention and were of interest to me.

The Ardors were engaging in another sinful celebration. And honestly, I couldn't blame them. They had much to celebrate. And so did I. The sin of lust audibly cheered as I readied myself to teleport from the strange city of the undead to the sinful, secretive chamber in which the family was preparing another of their dark and twisted revelries.

I was externally silent as I phased out of my underground city and took myself to the strange chamber in which one of the first families to worship me was gathering its senior leadership. As I teleported from one place to another I smiled. And as I was crossing from one place to another I heard an intriguing suggestion. It came in the form of a bit of unsolicited advice from my personal vice.

"If you're gonna go and witness the fun the Ardors are having, why not partake? You know some of the dark elves are beautiful. If they see you there, and you invite yourself to their celebration as the lord of sin, they'd surely invite you to join in the bacchanals. Perhaps you should accept their offer. Rid yourself of your inhibitions as readily as they do theirs." The sin whispered.

I didn't pretend to be immune to the suggestion. I did opt not to audibly or even mentally reply though. An instant later I found myself within the chamber that the dark elves had used earlier that day to celebrate their new lifestyle. It assailed my senses, but I welcomed the array of sensations, opting to try and become a "Lord of sin" in body and mind as Lust had suggested I do.