"...Deliberately, I think, but I haven't met them myself."

"Do they tend to be the sort of worlds that urgently need taking over? Or is that something else your sources haven't mentioned?"

"I'm not sure me and my alts have the same definition of urgently needing taken over as other people, but people at least seem to agree that mine could use it."

"...Oh?"

"Well, for one thing, every year, two dozen teenagers are rounded up and put in an arena until only one of them is alive."

"Unpleasant," he says. "I am effective enough at taking over worlds that I managed an entire continent before I learned how to stop. Perhaps I can help with yours."

"Well, what do you do with your continent? My world is pretty bad but it could be worse and I've met, you know, all kinds of people in here, no offense."

Nod nod. "Being a god-emperor sounds like a pretty good deal."

"Yes. Unfortunately, both my mortal and my divine neighbours found my success threatening. The problem fed on itself; someone would attack me, I would defeat them, I would gain yet more territory or followers in the exchange, everyone else would become slightly more nervous, and then the cycle would repeat with the next god or king. The last few kings surrendered, and the last few gods fled rather than wait a few more centuries for all their followers to abandon them, and now I have an empire."

"By accident. Huh."

"I now strictly avoid claiming territory, divinely or otherwise, on any continent but my own. I have embassies and I receive immigrants, but I am strongly disinclined to risk conquering anyone who does not egregiously need it. Your world sounds like it might qualify."

"It needs it. I'm just not sure what you'd actually... do. It would be hard to get an army through the bar."

"I wouldn't necessarily have to," he says. "I assume no part of your world has been previously claimed by a god from mine - if it has, that would be a major obstacle. But if not, I can send a holy object home with you and expand my divine territory to cover as much of your world as necessary. There will be some changes to the landscape, but my terrain type is fairly flexible, so most things should stay recognizable. No mountains being leveled or entire forests sprouting from the ground. After that - I can see and hear anywhere I choose to look within my domain, wich should help me decide what exactly to do next. Leveling mountains and sprouting forests and diverting rivers are all within my capacity."

"The Capitol can do that too. I'm mostly just guessing from the bit about aqueducts and the way you're dressed how many things have been invented already in your world, but they have a lot of advanced technology, including some really powerful weapons."

"I've heard of some things here that don't exist yet in my world. Go on."

"I don't live there so everything I know about what they have is heavily filtered or through here where I have a lot of other things to read about, but they've got animals that they've - messed with, so that they're stronger or meaner or carry drugs or eavesdrop and respond to Capitol handlers. People can't sail out to sea too far or their boat will get attacked by a kraken, that's a big messed-with squid. There's wasps that can follow a person forever and mess with your mind if they sting you, there's birds that listen in on conversations and then go repeat them back. Those are just the ones I know about and remember - they come up with small batches of animals like this every Hunger Games, that's the twenty-four teenagers thing. And there's bombs, bombs that could wipe a whole city off the map with one drop. So you'd need to seize the Capitol hard, fast, so they couldn't do anything, or you'd need air and sea control on top of your terrain thing plus anti-nuke powers, or we'll soak up a lot of casualties even if you eventually win."

"Air control is... doable. Most of what I can do to the sea is turn it into more land, but that could conceivably help. And although having a city-sized piece of my domain obliterated would be very uncomfortable, and I'd prefer to avoid it, especially if there was a cityful of mortals living there, it wouldn't actually affect my control of the surrounding area substantially or for long. Hmm. Suppose I spread out underground first, over the course of a year or two, and then take the surface of your continent all at once. Would the Capitol have the means to discover that there was a god at work at all...? Or would it just seem to them that their entire continent had suddenly been converted to taiga for no discernible reason? I'd hardly think they'd tend to blame their mortal subjects for that."

"Whether they have a good reason to blame us doesn't consistently enter into it, but my world doesn't have any magic of its own and I don't think they're doing anything that should let them see the effects underground. But obviously a cityful or ten of mortals burning up is undesirable on its own merits and I'm hesitant to call it an obvious trade."

"Deep enough underground, claiming territory has no material effects on it whatsoever," he says. "...Are you saying that if mysterious forces started acting on their terrain, they might react by arbitrarily destroying one of their own cities?"

"They might destroy District cities, just in case some of us had something to do with it, or the scary magic thing wasn't nuke-proof. They're not going to drop a nuke on the Capitol itself, admittedly, but us they can starve and bankrupt and shoot and kidnap for their entertainment and convenience. There used to be a District Thirteen and now there isn't."