Outside Influences

“Inquisitor! We’ve found the extraction group!”

Inquisitor Clark turned his head to look at the breathless soldier. The man – a boy really, as Clark hadn’t wanted to borrow someone important from the fighting – had obviously run straight through a field and was covered in bits of grain and other debris. Clark had borrowed him as a personal servant, but at this point he was wondering if he would have been better of by himself. Perhaps if he hadn’t wasted the time and rushed to the town directly he would have arrived in time to prevent the embarrassing outcome.

The boy finally caught his breath and drew up in front of Clark. He did his best to straighten his back and salute, placing a open hand over a closed fist to form the symbol of Technis. He was nervous, but Clark was used to that. Everyone was a little bit nervous in front of an inquisitor, especially when they were furious. Even so, Clark wished that the boy would skip the pageantry and just get on with it.

The boy gulped in fear as Clark glared at him, but he finally found his courage and voice.

“They’re all dead sir.” He deflated as the words passed his lips, his spine curving as he hunched like a servant expecting a blow.

A pointless gesture. Clark wouldn’t hit a messenger for delivering bad news. His ire had to be directed elsewhere to have results. It wouldn’t do to vent it upon the blameless.

“Show me,” he rasped.

Clark followed the cowering boy at a sedate pace, not too slow, but not rushing either. The little collection of farms – Clearbrook or some other maudlin name – was still being sacked by the conscripted soldiers while Clark’s remaining enforcers were busy rounding up any remaining inhabitants who had happened to survive the overzealous assault.

His lips pressed together when he saw that the majority of the villagers had simply been killed and their houses burned. He enjoyed the sight of the burning temple, of course, but it could have been torched after he had conducted a proper search. The inefficiency of it galled him, like a swarm of wasps chewing on his arm.

“They’re right up ahead sir.” The young soldier stepped to the side and saluted again, clearly hoping for Clark to go ahead without him so he could avoid any emotional outbursts.

“Follow along, boy,” Clark commanded.

The first casualties were still being excavated from a tomb of stone and soil. Some kind of ground manipulation ability, but not an uncommon one in a delving team. Rather powerful though, given that it struck such a wide area and at such a great distance from the rest of the fighting.

“The rest are all ahead?” he probed a sweating solder.

“No sir, just the reinforcements.” The soldier hesitated, his eyes dilating slightly in fear as he looked at Clark’s face. He dropped his gaze to Clark’s weathered hands and continued, allowing the sweat on his brow to go dripping down his face. “The original extraction team is another few hundred strides away”

Clark moved slowly through the woods, poking the ground and moving underbrush with his cane on the idle chance that there was something interesting hidden out of sight. The original extraction team had been eliminated a good distance away from this fight, as if the ambushers themselves had been ambushed long before the reinforcements arrived. He wanted to know where this new group had come from and why they had come here. He wouldn’t believe that a group of skilled fighters had shown up by sheer ill-luck.

Clark knelt, moving slowly as his ancient body creaked from the uncommon movement. The rock in front of him had a line of blood – not unsurprising considering the amount of carnage in the vicinity. But, unlike the rest of the innards strewn about, this blood appeared different to his senses. He activated a variety of abilities as he analyzed the dried fluid.

Lempo’s child.

“Inquisitor Clark!”

Clark smoothed his expression before he looked up at the approaching captain.

“Captain Murah,” he greeted. “The priest?”

“On the run. I’m sure my men will catch him,” Murah harrumphed confidently.

Clark stared at the man, wondering if he was an idiot, or just lazy.

“Your men have been slaughtered by an unknown foe, and you have left pursuit of a powerful priest of an enemy goddess to your underlings?”

“Well, er…” Murah stammered. “Well, I have to stay with the rest of my forces. We had to finish searching the town.”

Clark glanced at the walking corpse. His soldiers had formed behind their captain’s, like fattened lizards warily eyeing a circling bird of prey. Clark frowned at the bulging from their suspiciously overflowing money pouches. He suspected that the burning was merely cover for their unrestrained looting.

“And what have you found?” he rasped.

“Ah, not much. A few idols to banned deities. The owners have already been dealt with and the cursed items burned.”

Clark tapped his staff on the ground. Slowly, loudly, and long enough to make everyone aware that the captain had gained his displeasure.

Then he swung his staff at the man’s head.

The captain was ready – so he wasn’t an idiot after all – but the blue barrier that he erected shattered under the force of Clark’s blow. All that the barrier accomplished was to slow his magically strengthened staff enough so that some of the gore from the captain’s insides still stuck to it.

Clark handed the weapon to his borrowed servant. “Clean this,” he instructed.

He looked at the rest of the captain’s enforcers, who were busy trying to catch butterflies with their gaping mouths.

“You have failed to secure the targets,” Clark lectured.

“You have failed to capture and kill the rabble-rousing priest who was known to live here. You have lost members of your company to unknown assailants and then burned down the only possible evidence of their identities,” he continued.

Clark reached his hand back to accept his cleaned staff. He took a threatening step towards the assembled enforcers. Some of them flinched and a few of them took an involuntary step back.

None of them ran though. Good, he thought, they may be salvageable.

“And finally, as if your previous failures were not enough, you have stolen from Technis himself, robbing your god of his people when you slaughtered them.”

Perhaps sensing an imminent bloodbath if they offered no objections, one of the enforcers, a woman with short-cropped hair, stepped forward. Blood was smeared on the blue sash at her waist and a satchel at her side sway from the weight of ill-gotten goods. Her eyes shifted to the corpse of her former captain briefly before she opened her mouth.

“Inquisitor Clark, forgive my impertinence, but the people living in this town were heretics. They deserved punishment.”

Clark narrowed his eyes and glared at the woman. “So you determined that there was nothing they could offer to Technis? Not even as hostages to hasten the capitulation of their husbands – husbands who will, once they hear of this, fight us until their dying breaths?”

He slammed his staff into the ground. “Not to mention their weekly contributions! Do you know how much essence is denied our cause by killing a single person? Not just that, but you have denied Technis the essence of their children, and of their children’s children, and so on.”

Clark shook his head with disapproval, although part of this was theatrics. His first instinct would have also been to simply kill the nonbelievers, but one of the concepts they had learned from their captured Otherworlders was economics.

Sacking a town lead to a large, one time infusion of capital into Technis’ coffers. However, afterwards the town would yield nothing: no essence, no crops, and no coin. Exponential growth – a mathematical concept as powerful and dangerous as any weapon – declared that the future value of a town left in peace was nearly immeasurable.

“Enforcer, do you know how much essence is lost with the death of 100 people?”

The woman’s mouth went slack. “Uh… no, sir.”

“Calculate it. And then calculate the loss of their – how many children does a woman bear? No matter, choose some number, five, and calculate how much essence has been lost in the next generation. Repeat this for five generations.”

The enforcers stared at him blankly.

“Do it now!” he shouted.

He snorted as they scrambled about, like ants splashed with vinegar.

Of course Clark didn’t care a whit for the people here. The great majority of the people within Satrap were worthless. However, the true believers would be leaving Satrap, bound for greater things, and they had to be prepared.

Ruling an entire world would spread the enforcers thin. Forceful reprisals, like the one in this town, were a potential solution to their weak presence, but not a good one. Too much violence would ruin the potential bounty of their new land. Satrap was a training ground for military tactics and disciple, yes, but also for diplomacy and effective governance. These soldiers would have to take that to heart if they were to become effective governors and judges one day, representing Technis’ will across the land.

Laboriously calculating the costs of their actions would hopefully drive that point home.

Now, what to do about Lempo’s child? The otherworld boy would be with her. We originally planned for him to join with the Points so that we could test ourselves against modern military strategy, but it seems that things have diverged.

Clark tapped his fingers against his staff as he considered his options.

He looked back down at the bit of gorgon blood on the ground, surrounded by so many other traces of violence. Surrounded by… hair?

Clark knelt down again and pinched a small number of black strands between his fingers. He stared at them suspiciously and then searched the ground, crawling like a spider in search of prey.

Here is another bit – but this is a different color.

He wrinkled his nose and sniffed. They didn’t smell like animals, or at least no animal he recognized from Satrap.

And this… a giant fingernail? A large scale?

He stood slowly, his bones and joints popping as he moved. His eyes dilated. His nostrils flared. His teeth ground.

“Outsiders,” he spat.

“Boy,” he hissed, turning back to his servant, “carry a message back to camp. Tell them to summon a purging squad from the High Temple with all possible haste.”

The boy’s eyes widened.

“Don’t just stand there boy, run! Run as if I am breathing down your neck the entire way!”