Continuing to observe the people at the farm was a somewhat surreal experience but also a deeply fascinating one. The surreal part came with the continued exposure to the Oathbreaker effect hammering my brain with the knowledge that these people were not trustworthy, making me wonder what long-time exposure would do to a person. It also made me wonder whether this hammering was the only aspect of the effect or if there was more, as I couldn’t really tell whether my continuously rising disdain for them was artificially induced beyond what I had noticed. Regardless, the entire thing drove home just how important it was to avoid breaking my oaths, ever, especially in a way that would have me labelled such. It also sent a shiver of anxiety down my spine when I remembered the group I sought to harden and push onto a path of somewhat authoritarian leadership by giving them an external foe and the divine scolding I had received back then. Luckily, I had never given my Oath or some sort of promise, so I had been safe, but the effect I was observing here drove home just how harsh the consequences could be if the punishment was assigned by the system.
Maybe it would be best to be very, very cautious with any research and experimentation on any part of the system if this was what the system could do if its rules were broken in a manner egregious enough to trigger these punishment effects. Compared to this, the Divine Curse I had seen earlier, or the effects of Mortal Hubris and Titanic Ambition I had observed on myself, were completely harmless but then, those effects hadn’t been a punishment for messing with the system but one for messing with powerful entities within the system, a somewhat important difference.
On the other hand, the fascinating part of my observation was the social dynamics I could observe. By now, Luna and I had essentially agreed that the people there didn’t have any real, formal leadership beyond what Ned might have brought to the table as a legacy, but from what I had seen, the guy hadn’t been interested in acting as a community leader, at most, he had been the leader of his party. That might be why the effects I was observing were as pervasive as they were. If the community had essentially been anarchic, with everyone discussing things without a formal, or even subconscious, organisation in place, anyone was essentially a leader. And, as it looked like, the leader could obligate their community, meaning that anyone could assign quests, though possibly only to those from outside the community, and everyone could acknowledge their completion, making this incredibly volatile.
Now, they were trying to establish some sort of hierarchy or organise something while under the Oathbreaker effect and getting hammered by it if the way they avoided looking at one another was any indication. It had to be quite hard to have that kind of knowledge get hammered into your mind whenever you looked at a friend.
Mercifully, the children didn’t seem to be affected by the effect; the few that I could see were moving around normally, and I didn’t get any mental feedback from looking at them. However, it made me wonder when the transition from child to adult was according to the system. Was it based on age or level? Going by chronological age, Luna would almost certainly be considered a child, but going by levels, mental and physical maturity and power? Most would see her as an adult, with a few considering her a mature teenager, readily able to step up to take their role in society.
But that was only a side observation; the really interesting part was watching a few individuals move between small, slowly congregating groups, obviously trying to get some semblance of a democratically chosen council or something like that. From what I could hear through my constructs, they needed to judge those responsible for the Oathbreaker effect or it would persist, something they obviously wanted to avoid. It would be interesting to see how exactly that would work and if there would be lingering effects of the mental hammering, like some sort of conditioned reflex. Maybe keeping a scrying construct or five in the area and taking the occasional look would be a good idea.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
But as strange and interesting as this hitherto unseen influence of the system was, I was more interested in the effects Lady Hecate had demonstrated during her divine punishment. The curses She had used were quite fascinating, especially given that She had worked as slowly and openly as She had, allowing me to observe with a fair amount of clarity. I had no doubt that this had been deliberate, and Luna’s comments later only confirmed that for me, though I wasn’t completely certain why Lady Hecate had acted as She did.
Maybe to compensate me for taking over what some might consider my vengeance but I wasn’t too bothered by that. Her actions punished those I wanted to be punished and, if I was honest with myself, there was no way I could have topped what She did without a great of research and experimentation. And even if I had managed, I doubted they would have come close to the tight and neat effects She had created. Those had been a work of art combined with a marvel of magic, both aspects pushed beyond what I could accomplish and, likely, would be able to accomplish for a long time.
A part of me wondered if I had accidentally undermined Lady Hecate with my actions, as the Oathbreaker effect now in play easily overshadowed Her punishment, taking some of the sting out of it and, if I were reading the situation correctly, would see those She had punished either executed or banished from the community, rendering the punishment somewhat moot. After all, if people didn’t know that somebody had been punished for a certain act, there was no deterrence effect from that punishment, though I doubted that people would willingly desecrate shrines without having proper divine backing in place, making sure that the Gods they were attacking couldn’t just retaliate as Lady Hecate had.
Regardless of whether my actions were to Her liking or not, I happily parsed out the curse She had used, and while I was well aware that replicating it was beyond me, I could take inspiration from it. There were some fascinating links between Blood Magic and its effects on the Body, Mind Magic and its obvious effects on the Mind, and, lastly, the effects of either were, in turn, influenced by the Soul. Which could be manipulated using Soul Magic, though getting to the point at which I could manipulate a soul in a delicate enough manner to have the changes I made to the Soul had the exact and predicted reflections on Body and Mind would be a long and arduous process. A little like trying to play an instrument from across the room, blindfolded and while using fans or something like that: incredibly indirect, highly dependant on the individual in question and, quite frankly, highly impractical. This wasn’t to say that I wouldn’t be researching how a manipulation of the Soul would reflect on Body and Mind, but I would likely stay with simple changes to the soul and their effects, not trying anything truly delicate for a while.
Once again, I was reminded just how incredibly complex sapience is and how deeply the different aspects of what makes a being sapient and a person are connected. Sadly, that also reminded me just how difficult it would be to get Sigmir back and into a proper body, how many things could go wrong with that process and how horrible the consequences of things going wrong could be.
The Body was the most flexible aspect in regards to my plans. As long as the fundamentals were there, it could be adjusted to fit the Mind, and the Soul would hopefully attach to it. However, I had a feeling that a disjunction between the Body and the other two aspects could be debilitating. Still, I felt as if the body was the least problematic aspect, simply because bodies were changing throughout the course of a lifetime anyway, so the Mind and Soul had to be able to cope with a changing body. To what degree and just how that coping would play out? I had no idea.
My current understanding was that the Mind was of lesser importance. While it stored all memories, memories were, if I remembered correctly, constantly evaluated and partially overwritten as a person grew and reexamined their life. This was why the Soul was the most important aspect, as it had to be responsible for that process and was, quite literally, the thing that made a person into who they were. It decided how experiences were interpreted while also defining a person’s core characteristics. In some ways, the Soul was the essence of a person, so messing with it fundamentally changed who that person was. And I knew I had to mess with Sigmir’s to get my beloved back. And wasn’t that a cheery thought?
