199 The Althonite Empire

[Nobility Domain Details:

The nobility domain is a selective domain that is only accessible to gods who have an innate desire to rule. By acquiring it at all you've proven that you're ready to begin to step down the road towards true leadership.

It governs nobility, royalty, lordship, countries, and empires. It is a prominent domain that helps manage territories and aids with administrative tasks. To acquire more power over it, build a wealthy, successful, diverse empire. The larger and more powerful your empire grows, the more your own power will grow with it.

Nobility Domain Passive Powers:

Artifact Rentership: This considerable power allows you to grant the status of "Rented" to an artifact. By utilizing this power you cause an artifact to be useable by yourself and by those you give permission to use it, rendering it immune to being stolen. If ever out of reach of the person who is renting it the renter can, at will, return the object to themselves.

Aura of Royalty: This aura causes people to recognize you as a supreme royal. If you're using it while masquerading as someone else then they will recognize you as a herald of yourself, a herald of Althos.

Divine Mandate: This power causes those who you use it on to be filled with a fragment of your authority. Those who you use it on will gain a number of powers and boons and are considered to be enactors of your will by nature itself and other things that you influence. You can take this away from them and they learn that the second you grant it to them. This power is in essence you demonstrating that you endorse whoever gets your mandate. Keep that in mind.

Noble artifacts: You can select artifacts and grant them unique restrictions that prevent unworthy would-be wielders from using them.

Noble realm: Those who wield your mandate gain limited lordship powers of their own, in an area, they select once per year. This power is a considerable one, and those to whom you bestow it are recognized as nobility by your other, more spiritually attuned servants.

Royal blood: Unless you specifically designate otherwise or take nobility away from the family in question nobility becomes a hereditary trait.

Nobility Domain Active Powers:

Protection: By utilizing your powers over life and healing, in concordance with your powers over nobility, you can, once per day, protect those who bear your mandate from pain and suffering for an hour. This renders them immune to harm to anything but the divine attacks of a god stronger than yourself. So... they become truly immortal, for an hour.

Restoration: Once per week you can resurrect people who have royal blood, without it counting against your other weekly resurrections.

Nobility Domain Blessing \u0026 Curse Details:

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"Nobility... What an odd domain." I muttered as I willed away the notification. More than an hour had passed since I had finished assigning members of my angelic host to their new homes. I found myself absentmindedly wandering the streets of my new fortress-city. Night had fallen, just minutes ago.

Stars glimmered in the skies above the newly built community. Their light trickled down to the streets beneath my feet. The road beneath me was made from gold and shone on its own, but the starlight added to their brilliance.

Around me, angels walked the streets as well. They smiled at me and bowed nervously whenever I passed by. I nodded politely at them and I smiled eagerly at them.

The angels were universally beautiful creatures. It mattered not what domain they held some degree of influence over, nor how much influence they held over the domain in question, they resembled idealized humans. The males were well-proportioned and had a number of forms. Many were like me, muscular creatures that fit a conventional conception of masculine attractiveness. Some though were at least physically younger beings, resembling teenagers and possessing the lithe figures that came with that.

Female angels were similar to that. Many were curvaceous beauties who had airs of grace and class. Some were more youthful, looking like teenagers or very young angels, and possessing bodies that logically made sense with that.

There were also mature angels of both genders. In both cases, those tended to be greater angels and they weren't idly wandering the streets but rather either ensuring the security of the streets or attending to various duties throughout the city. The time I spent assigning angels to their new homes wasn't a period where I only told angels where they lived, I also gave them tasks.

In many cases though, it was the greater angels who took the greatest amount of responsibility when it came to completing the tasks. And what's more, is that many tasks required that the angels go to disparate parts of my divine realm and communicate with the existing rulers and leaders. In some cases that was easy, angels of dreams and dreaming, for instance, could instantly commune with any leader providing they were sleeping. In other cases, it wasn't so easy, such as for angels of the deep oceans who I had helped with their tasks by providing portals.

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My divine realm wasn't organized. That was a simple fact. My divine realm, my bastion, my final stronghold, was not a place that anyone could fairly describe as organized or even logical. But I had set about changing that.

All of my angels that were actively completing missions were completing missions throughout the divine realm we all called home. Angels of death were collecting the souls of deceased Althonians to bring to the tower, angels of war and a few angels of law were visiting communities that housed more belligerent races and taking stock of their numbers and supplies. Angels of life and angels of biology were visiting communities and ensuring they had all they needed to reproduce successfully since we had transitioned out of Torus and into my divine realm.

Everyone had work to do, though some were doing more than others. Even I had to work to do, I was simply taking a break in the wake of the work I had done organizing the angels.

Around me my senses were constantly tickled and teased. Angels of the arts hovered high above the city and played music, the sounds lazily drifting down to those of us who were on the ground below. Angels of illusion ensured that anyone on the ground smelled something pleasant that differed from person to person.

The fortress-city was a wonder, a true marvel to behold and it was only possible because of the angelic host I had gathered. Without them the wonders that made this place a paradise, even at a glance, simply wouldn't have been possible. At least not with me at my current level of power.

I continued my idle walk, while musing on the status of the rest of my divine realm.

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The dark elves of Torus, unsurprisingly, were among my most steadfast worshipers. Dark elves had some presence in every continent back on Torus and that continued over into my divine version of my homeworld. Dark elves, particularly Puerto Rican Dark Elves, were fanatical worshipers of mine as a dark god in both a literal and moralistic sense.

I sent angels of evil to Aronms and to other dark elven settlements, angels bolstered by golems I made and armed to the teeth using my ability to make simple, expertly crafted weapons instantaneously. I instructed my angels to tell dark elven historians to maintain the leadership of various dark elven cities, without any changes. If only that would have been the case for every other major racial group...

I sent angels of law, goodness, and faith, backed by potent metal constructs to meet and in some cases protect groups of dwarves who had opted to worship me and turned their backs on Morehammer. Dwarves were most commonly found in one of the continents I had never visited: Anterior, a continent to the east of the world and now my divine realm that I had never visited but I knew housed the most diverse coalition of races of any of the continents in Torus.

The major empires of Torus, the Reconquista Empire and the Ansari Empire, were made up of humans and of assorted types of elves respectively and both of them had been impacted significantly by the dark exodus Althonian inhabitants of Torus had undertaken.

Worship of me was popular in Mysteria, the continent where the elves lived. I was worshiped by perhaps six out of every ten elves, and they had willingly undertaken the dark exodus. Now they had been awake for a few months, after being stuck in stasis for a few weeks. I quietly directed angels of magic and nature to go to their communities and to aid them, before I sent angels of nobility towards the major cities to ensure that their leadership knew they had my backing, something which was essential for their legitimacy now that they were in my domain.

Worship of me was not quite as popular in Humana, where I was worshiped by four out of every ten humans. That said, I sent angels of civilization and agriculture, as well as of war and time, to Humana and to the remnants of the Reconquista Empire. Humans were less strong than elves were and would need greater support before some sort of new normal could be established.

Iredale and Anterior, the two remaining continents both received assorted delegations of angels. Both continents had unusual governments, with Iredale being inhabited by all sorts of races and Anterior being governed by various monster-led states that had a loose alliance and coalition that largely protected them from outside influence but wasn't itself a simple nor true alliance. Anterior also housed the majority of the world's dragon population, though even it didn't house an enormous number of the legendary creatures.

Of all of the continents, my worship was the least popular in Iredale, and was the most popular in Anterior with only one in ten inhabitants of Iredale, the least populated continent in the world, worshiping me and nearly nine in ten inhabitants of Anterior worshipping me.

One of the few non-angelic forces I dispatched from my island home and the capital of my divine realm was The Swarm. I ordered them to bolster the settlement of Florida and to begin to convert the whole of the coast of Iredale that was close to Puerto Rico into territory that was safe for trade and for travel. Along with them I sent eusocial angels and new creations like enormous centipedes and driders. I had plans for The Swarm that required that they be active, and soon so I wasted no time with them.

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All in all, perhaps half of the angels who were meant to inhabit the city would be gone from it for the first night of its existence. I would spend a considerable amount of time in the city proper during that first night myself. I wandered the streets I created, quietly and indirectly bolstering various angels throughout my divine realm.

I was busy, actively working to support my servants and despite that I was still grateful for their new loyalty and their willingness to busy themselves on my behalf. Without them the work that had gotten done in even a single night would have taken much longer. And their hard-work freed me up to do other, more fun, things.

One of the things I did was remotely create a plethora of temples throughout my divine realm. I created them in forests, atop mountains, within mountains, deep underground, in the oceans, in lakes, next to settlements, atop floating islands, atop glaciers, and within cities. This was my divine realm and here my will dictated reality. I wouldn't settle for anything less than a temple in every community, and indeed the number of temples in my realm exceeded the number of settlements.

I would spend the next three days in my divine realm, content to set aside my ambitions and to reside within my deific vision of Torus for the time being. I conferred with angels of law, knowledge, and war. We established universal laws to be followed, and sent word of my whims and wishes to the farthest reaches of my realm. Every community without fail sent members to be trained in the assorted ways of Althonian or Cosechian worship. And for a time I was at peace.

I owned this time to my realm. I owed it to my worshipers to safeguard the souls of the fallen, to keep them safe in my angelic city, and to establish order throughout my realm. I owed it to my angelic host to see that they were organized and had a true home. I owed it to future Althonians, and citizens of the Althonite Empire, to begin to establish laws and traditions.

I didn't mind the time spent in my city, though I did wish I had supplied the place with more water. I was quite fond of spending time in submerged temples, but I discovered that I wasn't especially fond of only partially submerged temples. I liked to be in temples that were entirely underwater.

It was only when things began to calm down that I turned my attention back to my earlier ambitions. I turned my mind first towards some of the simpler quests. The easiest three to complete were simple: the quests for the agriculture subdomain, the domains of dreams and stars, and the mind domain.

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One of my Htraeian cults was a cult of famine. They worshipped me as a provider of food, and were a cult at the center of the largest non-city community in a small country far from New Sol. All I had to do was offer to make them the town's saviors once the fires settled, which I did by showcasing my newfound prowess over nature.

They set fire to several blocks of restaurants and stores, and I kept the other people of the community asleep until the fires died down. When it was over I ordered my cultists to flee back to their homes, and allowed the people of the town to awaken from their unnatural slumber. In the resulting panic my cultists were able to become town heroes by leading the way to perhaps the biggest orchard in the world.

Completing the quest for the mind domain also wasn't especially difficult. I created an artifact I dubbed a "Communication Stone" which when utilized by people I blessed with telepathy allowed them to speak to similarly aligned psychic cultists across even interstellar distances. I connected a few stones and earned the second domain of influence over the mind domain, greatly expanding my own psychic abilities.

It was at this point that I noticed a trend among the quests related to acquiring a second tier of influence over domains and subdomains. Thus far, the vast majority of quests that I needed to complete before acquiring the second tier of influence over assorted domains required that I either destroy something or create something. It was an amusing and striking thing to observe, and I tended to choose destruction as it was simpler than creation.

For the dual-domain quest of dreams and stars, two strikingly powerful domains, all I had to do was create a new kind of portal that only activated if approached by members of the cults. It was a simple solution that allowed even a mortal to travel instantly from one galaxy to another. One of the cults was based in a modern world occupied by humans and elves in a star system far from Torus, and the other was located in Htrae.

I had expected the quests to be harder, but I wasn't complaining in the slightest. With those three quests completed, I had far more power than I had even days ago, including powers over nightmares and a far more diverse range of psychic abilities. The powers that filled me now made my earlier powers look weak, and it was with great excitement that I opened up a portal leading out of my realm and back into Htrea. I had more quests to complete and more power to accrue.

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[Destruction Domain Primary Passive Abilities*:

Antimatter aura: You can generate an aura of antimatter. Antimatter is composed of anti-particles which have the same mass as ordinary matter but their opposite charges. Antimatter and matter, when colliding, are mutually annihilated, causing a number of nasty phenomena. This is synergistic with the physics domain.

Antimatter manipulation: You can manipulate and even create antimatter at will. The energies released by collisions between matter and antimatter are extremely immense and this phenomenon can be used as an aggressive attack.

Barrier buster: You can destroy barriers at will, even those made from abjuration magic. The only barriers that can withstand your destruction are those formed from divine beings and other higher-beings whose total strength exceeds yours.

Crushing: You can crush objects, using your physical power or your mental power.

Cutting: You possess the ability to cut through objects that weren't divinely constructed. You can use sharp objects to do this, or you can utilize your own limbs to do so.

Explosion manipulation: You gain nearly absolute control over explosions, a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner, usually with the generation of high temperatures and the release of gases. You cannot yet cause supernovae or other enormous explosions.

Pressure manipulation: Pressure, the amount of force applied perpendicular to the surface of an object per unit area, is something you can manipulate now. This is a synergistic power granted to you by synergizing the powers of the physics domain. With it you can crush objects, move objects in some cases, strengthen the impact of gravity on them, or even induce pain or death.

Separate: You can separate physical things. If someone is holding something you can separate them from what they are holding. If someone is wearing something you can separate them from that. If there are any sort of divisions between someone and something you can manipulate it to part them from that thing. Right now this is a purely physical power.

*Attacks which previously didn't work on humanoids now do. This means that you can shatter or disintegrate humanoids at will.

Destruction Domain Active Ability:

Sonic Attacks: At will you can utilize sounds to attack enemies in a plethora of ways. You can unleash attacks that can penetrate any physical defense by utilizing this unusual at-will, active ability.]