Apostles of Doom

According to his commanders, Nysegard had been greatly favored by D’Orcs. This was due to the fact that the situation in Nysegard, for a very long time, had been very clear cut. There had been no questions of politics; no one tried to distract them from battle using senseless diplomacy and negotiation; no chance of peace short of outright victory. In Nysegard, it was a pure battle for survival. There were no wishy-washy labels of good or evil, no FOG or FOE; there was only Life and Unlife.

This had confused Tom the previous evening. “Unlife? What do you mean?” he had asked.

“That which is diametrically opposed to Life,” Tizzy had quipped.

“That seems a bit circular,” Tom had snapped back.

“Technically,” Phaestus had interrupted, “it is a form of life that is based on antimus instead of animus.”

“Antimus?” Tom had never heard of that before.

“Negatively polarized animus,” the god had informed him. “Not many individuals are even aware that animus can be polarized, but it can be. By its nature, animus has what I would call a positive polarization, at least in the parts of the multiverse that we exist in, but there do exist regions of the multiverse where the animus, or much of it, is polarized in the opposite direction.”

Antefalken had interjected, “I’ve never heard anyone ever mention this.”

“You would not have, unless you were talking with a skilled necromancer, and even many of those do not truly understand what they are dealing with. The difference between a resurrected individual and a revenant or similar undead is that the undead was brought back negatively polarized. This is something that can fairly easily happen when trying to shortcut the resurrection process,” Phaestus said.

“And you know this because?” Antefalken had asked suspiciously.

“Because I’m a god, and it is part of my business to know such things.” Phaestus had grinned at him.

“There he goes!” Tizzy had shouted. “Playing the god card!” The octopod waved his hands in the air. “Nearly impossible to win an argument when they play the ‘I’m a god’ card. I wondered how long it would take him!”

Darg-Krallnom and Arg-nargoloth both chuckled. “He got you, Phaestus,” Arg-nargoloth said with a smile.

Phaestus had grinned and nodded. “In any event, Tommus, the Unlife are those beings that are primarily antimated rather than animated.”

“Antimated? Now I think you are just making up words!” Tizzy had yelled.

“Maybe, but I can do that because… I’m a god!” Darg-Krallnom and Arg-nargoloth both joined in the final part of the sentence, after which they all laughed.

“So you mean zombies, ghosts, ghouls, vampires and such?” Tom had asked.

“Yes. All forms of undead. Although there are a lot of gradations, particularly in terms of the spirits, that I don’t have time to go into,” Phaestus had said.

“And there is no uncertainty that they are evil? Many believe that demons are evil, as well as orcs,” Tom had said. “How do you know it’s not the same?”

“A good point, but creatures of antimus are strongly attracted to and feed on animus. They feed on the animus of others. They are thus the ultimate predators. Those they fail to completely consume are generally infected and will eventually become antimated; typically, undead of the kind that infected them,” Phaestus had explained.

“In other words, they have no interest in talking to or even subjugating you; they simply want to eat you,” Darg-Krallnom had told him. “And they are very difficult to stop.”

“Also keep in mind that, unlike a normal predator who simply kills you, and then your spirit or soul moves on, when you are consumed by Unlife, it is true death,” Arg-nargoloth had added.

“So, they could permanently kill a demon or a D’Orc?” Tom had asked with great concern.

Phaestus nodded. “Or, in theory, a god.”

That had caused others to do a double take. “A god?” Antefalken had asked.

Phaestus shrugged. “It would be extremely difficult, but in theory it is conceivable, although most likely not practical.” The smith sighed. “If a sufficiently powerful Unlife creature could trap a D’Orc, demon or being from the Outer Planes so that they could not depart the Planes of Orc, and they exhausted themselves in the fight, yes — it could kill them permanently.”

Everyone had shuddered and gone silent for a moment, and then Tom’s eyes had gone wide. “That had to be what the blackness was!” he suddenly murmured.

“What blackness?” Antefalken asked.

“Talarius’s dagger,” Tom had responded. “There was some sort of blackness, a draining sort of thing inside of it. When I was stabbed by it, I could feel it draining my animus, my soul. That’s when I started pulling mana directly from Tiernon. I used it to cleanse the blackness, to destroy it and undo the damage it had done to me!”

There had been a number of murmurs at this.

“That would make sense; the highly positive gods use their power to destroy Unlife. You basically acted like a priest of Tiernon in that respect,” Phaestus said.