Epilogue: Igneous

The trip to the Vash Barony was a great success.

First the trip itself (via Gehenna and Baator), which Igneous spent bouncing around Lost and Found setting up the Interinternet. He didn't even come out of the bag at Baator, where Samuel diplomatically bought a map and that was it. He even organized the wheel's first telepresence-based inter-sphere scientific conference, at which major advances were made in science-magic interaction, and inter-sphere telepresence technology got a good load-test.

Then the Vash Barony, where our heroes slew the Baron, freeing his people. Igneous then dug carefully through his electronic memory and found key insights into both Soul and Fate Magic.

The collective scholarship of the wheel cracked the hawking rune problem. The runic medium needed a certain metaphysical weight, which could be achieved either by raw mass or by life-sustainingness. The latter was achievable by deriving from the platonic form of food. So Igneous modified the horn of eternal soylent to produce ncRNA in the shape of the needed runes (and established a proper aquaculture system for Lost and Found).

So the pieces were now in place for Darkforge II. Jenny provided the black hole (with the resources of a dozen spheres at hand, everyone has a price). The horn provided a continual flow of runic arrays. A standard Titan's Arm based tractor beam pulled macroscopic darksteel to a safe orbit. By default, the system produced small flat plates, suitable for armor (they could be overlapped and sovereign glued if desired, or implanted as bionic-style scales, which we did for Whalord). With Vash's fate-magic, it could produce anything.

So Doktor Meetslab finally achieved his goal, exalting as the first darksteel prometheon in living memory.

(Igneous was tempted to experiment on his soul in transit, but there was no control group.)

Shortly thereafter, the crew received an emergency message from Captain Maximillion Nero, who forced his bag's zipper and tossed a radio beacon into Lost and Found. A key subfleet under his command had defected to the demons. Mind-magic was suspected. He needed reinforcements immediately or all the wheel would fall, and only our crew could make it in time.

He expected a handful of powerful warriors. He got a darksteel-clad spacewhale. And a darksteel promethon. And a goblin who could turn invisible, swim through enemy shields, pull microtorpedos on time-detonators out of a bag of holding, crazy-glue them to enemy hulls, and portal back before discovery. The wheel was saved.

Seeing how precarious life in the materium had become, Igneous made a deal with the shipwrights of Titan's Arm. Soon the entire Vanguard Fleet was armored in darksteel.

But Igneous had become too prominent. On the interinternet, no one knows you're a hideous abomination. And Craft(polite email) is wis-based, not cha-based. Soon people realized that Igneous, the ambitious, conference organizing scholar with a strong interest in fate-magic and general relativity was the same person as the mysterious benefactor who delivered a stream of darksteel to Titan's Arm who was also the same person as the infamous Igneous von Darkforge. In hindsight, a psueudonym might have been wise.

The governments of the wheel began to gather a fleet to catch him. Maximillian talked them out of it. True, young Igneous had done a terrible thing. But adult Igneous had made awesome restitution. And the wheel needed him.

The governments accepted this logic. The Omnissian Church did not. They did assemble and send a fleet.

Various allies offered to help, but Igneous refused them all. He had to do this himself. He did allow Samuel to help upgrade the oratory routines in his vocoder, but sent him away for the actual confrontation.

He met the fleet in empty space outside Titan's Arm. No allies. No spelljammer. No weapons.

It was no contest. The Omnissians didn't understand their ships. So their attempts to close buffer overflows in the comms systems were nowhere near the level a thriving academic culture could produce. With his first message he turned off their weapons systems.

His second message was to the people.

“Yes, I am Igneous von Darkforge.

“Yes, I killed twenty thousand innocent people. Your people. I didn't mean to, and I am very sorry, and I know that isn't enough. I can't bring them back, but I can spend the rest of my life saving people.

“Starting with you. I turned off your weapons. I could have turned off your life support. I estimate there's twenty thousand crew in that armada, whom I just spared. Maybe you could call that even?

“I'd really recommend it, because you're in a terrible bind. I am an advanced piece of technology. Organic nanotechnology, but technology nonetheless. I'm swimming through space. I can pass sphere boundaries. I breath fire without a fuel source. And I do all these things because I made myself into a thing that can do them. I am advanced technology, and by your own oaths you cannot destroy me.

“But I can destroy you. Maybe wipe you from half the spheres in the wheel and compare progress with and without you. Maybe I should do that.

“But I'm not going to. I don't have to, so long as I can find other mysteries to investigate, and the wheel isn't short on those. And I don't want to, because I realize most of you are trying to do what's right, and I'm sick of watching innocent people die.

“So here's how it's going to be. You're going to leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone. I'll learn new things. You'll preserve the old. I'll save innocent lives as the opportunity presents itself. And you'll count my debt as paid.

“It will be like that. Because you have no alternative.”

They had no alternative. They slunk off into the void.

And Igneous? He never settled in one place for long. He handed off his conference organization duties to better-suited people, and popped from scientific mystery to mystery. For a very, very long time.