Chain 232: Spawn

Chain 232: Spawn

Location: New York City
Identity: Drop-In
Drawbacks: None

[100/1000]  Veteran Soul
[300/1000]  Might Makes Right
[400/1000]  Tracker
[600/1000]  Bestiary
[Free]      Camoflage
[900/1000]  Boots And Cogs
[1000/1000] Writ Of Ceasefire

Spawn is not a happy place for a great many reasons.

You know what's way, way worse than having open warfare between Heaven and Hell, though?

Having an interested third party get involved.

You see, the powers that be on both sides? They're plenty potent, sure, but not omnipotent. They can see a lot, but aren't omniscient. God and Satan here? Sure, they're gods in a sense... but not capital-G Gods. Sure, they're the children of the capital-G God here - the Mother of Everything - but they're spoiled children with stupidly large amounts of power. And by "get involved"... I mean after the abomination that was my previous jump, I decided to get SUPER fucking involved in the world here.

Making everything work took everything that I had, because when you're facing opponents on their home turf, it takes every dirty trick and underhanded tactic in the book. Oh yes, I cheated like the dickens. Because when you face opponents that like to take human souls to their ends... the best way to deny them resources is to deny them souls. And while I've got a nice couple of afterlives that I tend to collect my followers (and anyone else that dies in a universe where they'd be consigned to oblivion instead), they're inaccessible to outside forces for the most part. But I can get into any afterlife I need.

So I promptly went to Hell, set up a couple of convenient distractions, and stole every human soul from there who hadn't been hopelessly corrupted and put them in Purgatory. And then went to Heaven, stole every single soul from THERE that I could, and put them in Paradise. All the while, the Conspiracy had immediately started spreading the word about myself. Now... normally I'm not one who does this sort of thing outside of those who seek me out, but this is a world that needed all the help it could get.

Holy wards that worked against demon and pseudo-angel alike. Those who desired to rest could, but others? Holy warriors who were willing to work with us - priests that could bring about minor miracles, clerics who could heal the sick and wounded, or bring back the dead. Oh, we're not talking people that died of natural causes here - the end is still the end - but when it comes down to an undead opponent, combat resurrection is a very viable tactic. Loyal hellspawn suddenly brought back, drained of their strength, for instance.

And, well... this is a world where Outsiders (for lack of a better term) were unused to forces that could act against them freely, whether by banishment or more esoteric means.

Al Simmons? Him, I talked to personally. Fixed his head and explained what was what. And then offered him a better deal than the locals would give. Sure, he'd have had a ton of power as a hellspawn, but when one can lend the power of a hundred worlds' magic and faith, that's a game changer in itself. But Spawn still was, despite everything, hellspawn. And then he got a power-up from Heaven, as well.

And so it was a three-way war. My escalation didn't really do the world any favors, I'll admit it made the world a much worse place in the short term. Taking souls away and being visible with miracles meant that the other sides were needing to bump up recruitment, and so the both sides of the local religion were suddenly more active than they'd been in centuries. Disasters, whether diabolical or alleged divine justice, were seen. Southern California sank into the sea. Australia was turned into a tropical forest on par with the Amazon. Politicans claimed to have divine revelations. Pyromancers moved about the population freely.

In the end, it still came down to Spawn. When he had his words with the Mother, things were perhaps a bit different. Humanity wasn't extinguished from Earth, no - would've happened if I hadn't intervened, though. But I'd ensured humanity had the weapons to fight off an apocalypse. The Four Horsemen? Please. God and Satan were fighting elsewhere in the cosmos, but my focus was solely on Earth, so it was simple enough to deal with them. And while those two overpowered idiots were sending their angels and demons... humanity realized that the local religion had no interest in their survival, only their exploitation. And so I worked with them, empowered them, taught them. There was damage, but it was not insurmountable.

Instead of his needing to resurrect humanity in an alternate dimension, Spawn was handed the reins and I stepped back. I ensured his power would not decline, and he set to work. I found it pretty interesting that humanity's culture took a turn toward honorable and martial, in the wake of all that. Less infighting, because if there's anything that humanity's willing to do, it's to unite against a larger threat. After all, what's a larger threat than a very visible fight for the souls of every member of mankind?