Apostles of Doom

Tom grinned. “What about reincarnation? It is something that the Nyjyr Ennead do for their followers, as do many other gods, correct?”

“Indeed. It is one of several possible selling points for deities,” Phaestus replied.

“So they do this with magineering; they mentioned a Wheel of Life, I believe,” Tom said.

“Correct. It would be quite burdensome to have to manually process every soul. Different deities and pantheons, however, have their own mechanisms and methods,” Phaestus said.

“Why do you care? It’s not really a problem for us,” Darg-Krallnom said.

“Isn’t it?” Tom asked, and Darg-Krallnom looked puzzled. “Well, here is what I was thinking: we have sworn in all these people in Nysegard, mortal and immortal. When the immortals, the D’Orcs, are slain in battle with the Unlife, they are sent back to Mount Doom like any other demon. However, when the mortals die, what happens to their animus? Do they all have gods who will collect their animus? Yes, I know there are a few priests in Nysegard, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot. I would think mortals would often look to gods to protect them from Unlife.”

“On Nysegard they looked, and will look again, to Doom,” Darg-Krallnom said.

“Exactly, but we do not provide any afterlife services to them. Is that something we should be doing? For one thing, we do need more D’Orcs,” Tom said. “Should we try to streamline or improve the process? Automate it?”

Darg-Krallnom chuckled, as did Phaestus.

“So we come back to this question again,” Phaestus said.

“What do you mean again?” Tom asked.

“This issue came up every thousand years or so,” Phaestus told him.

“So you have considered it?” Tom asked.

“Many times,” Darg-Krallnom agreed.

“What was the answer?” Tom asked.

“Well, that was why it kept coming up. It was — is — a difficult question; one of priorities, branding and other issues,” Phaestus replied.

“Huh?” Tom asked, bewildered.

“We could, in theory, do it,” Phaestus explained. “We have, in principle, the knowledge of how to do it, or at least some of it. We know we can capture souls in anima jars; we’ve done that for designated D’Orcs before they die. We could figure out something to do with those we collect; however, the real problem is—”

“Do we want to be in the god business?” Darg-Krallnom asked.

“The god business?” Tom asked.

“Once you start promising people life after death, you are basically in the god business,” Phaestus said.

“Orcus, and most of the Tartarvardenennead, were not fans of the gods. Present company excluded,” Darg-Krallnom said.

“He had no desire to be worshipped as a god,” Phaestus said. “He felt it was, one, a responsibility he did not want to have and, two, that gods were generally more in it for themselves and their own power than for the sake of their followers.”

“Which is true,” Darg-Krallnom stated.

“For some of them,” Phaestus countered.

“I said present company excluded.” Darg-Krallnom shrugged as he said this.

“Many of my best friends are gods.” Phaestus glared at the D’Orc.

“I’ve always said you need to hang with a better crowd. Us, for example,” Darg-Krallnom replied.

“If you haven’t noticed, I am spending a lot more time with you, now that Tom is here.”

“You will find it much nicer here,” Darg-Krallnom informed him.

Phaestus shook his head and turned back to Tom. “So, in any event, Orcus struggled with the desire to provide for those who fought for him versus the desire not to become that which he most disliked.”

“How many of the mortals in Nysegard are religious, with afterlife plans?” Tom asked.

Darg-Krallnom shrugged. “Depends on what you mean by afterlife plans. Orcs are generally shamanistic; they believe in going back to the spirits of the material world. Ancestral spirits, nature spirits or simply returning to nature.”

“Actually, the D’Orc thing was quite a shift in paradigm for the orcs,” Phaestus said.

“It certainly was. Immortality to orcs comes through the memories and retellings of your glory passed down from generation to generation. Orcs have no desire to sit around on a cloud playing musical instruments,” Darg-Krallnom said emphatically.

“So it is not really as big a concern as you might think,” Phaestus said. “I suspect it was as much a guilt thing on Orcus’s conscience as anything else.”

“Although to be fair, it could save a lot of training time if we could recycle more people,” Darg-Krallnom said.

“That was Tizzy’s argument, as I recall,” Phaestus said.

“Now you are just being mean,” Darg-Krallnom told the god.

Astlan, Orcan Plains: Late Fourth Period

“I still can’t get over Exador being an archdemon,” Jenn marveled to Gastropé, who was sitting on the carpet next to her as they headed toward the orc camp where the alvaran prisoners were being held. An envoy from the Nimbus had arranged for a meeting between the Grove and the Stone Finger tribe, who had the prisoners. The rest of the Freehold contingent had decided to come along in hopes of getting more information about the D’Orcs.