"The logistical situation is basically that material scarcity can go fuck itself, except for certain legendary reagents which will either have lead time or prove outright immune to artificial cultivation - I'm still working on that; true liao is one of those, incidentally, unless I figure out what the hell is perturbing regular liao so that it has the right, hm, anchor points, or find that it can be cloned from samples.  A conjured liao based off a sample of regular liao doesn't mirror the precursory metaphysics.  ...Oddly enough, chemical analysis says that the regular stuff is a specific hallucinogen, and it works as usual; we checked.

"There's theoretical upper limits on magic-per-time throughput, but if we're reaching those it's because we needed to make a universe or something otherwise extravagant; I'm working mostly off of the high ambient levels of magic you have.  ...Damn, that reminds me, I wanted to look at an ushabti at some point, see if I could get them working better in a replicable way.  Don't want y'all to be dependent upon my benevolence, because despite it all I'm still only fucking human.  I don't trust me with the power I have, no matter that I have it; you shouldn't either.  But that's practically your mission statement, so I'll refrain from - well.  Going on a lecture about the way the power to create, especially to my absurd degree, is the power to destroy a thousand times more than you have ever made or could ever make, because creation is working against entropy.

"That said, I think I actually might trust you a bit further than my weedy unaugmented arms could throw you, so.  Here, take a look at this."

And Evantia gets a tablet set up to create an account with more access than she'd give out to all and sundry; deployment information, fabrication capacity registers, cameras...

"You don't get to order stuff that's not already on the public list without approval just yet, but I'll probably approve most things, and I rather insist you get something from the 'decent armor' catalogue post-haste.  People have tried to get at me through my people, before.  I refuse to let that sort of thing happen without making whoever tries fucking bleed for it."

Evantia skims the index, determines this is going to take a considerable amount of time to absorb, skims the armour list a bit more throughly.

"Excellent," she says, a little distractedly, "this is essentially the project we've been working on as a nation, something sped up and more scalable is - excellent.

These look good," she taps something that's essentially a force field generator, essentially the most minimalist 'wear innocuous jewellery and everyone is surprised you are now immune to swords and probably also explosions' set available, "but I'm happy to take your recommendation.

I would love to dive into this, but actually I think prioritisation is still the most important thing - as you say, there's one of you, I now have an approximate idea of the scale of your capabilities, but you still need to deploy them - and simultaneously build your Net of trusted allies to help you deploy them."

(Evantia finds that there is simply no such item that doesn't come with 'backup physical armor deploys from 4-space on a moment's notice', but that there are plenty of tastefully minimalist anchor devices with sturdy shielding.  Does she want her armor in 'fight back' (a variety of weapons are in the catalogue of attachments), 'escape and evade' (mobility augments, EWAR, decoys, integrated portal guns...), 'defend even more' (with shield projectors aplenty; "took a nuke once"), or 'S&R' (tractor beams, integrated engineering capability, vital-searching capacity...)?  There's not a single blueprint that doesn't have some capability to handle problems that aren't in its profile, but there are tradeoffs.)

"Right.  And I need information from people on problems to prioritize interventions.  There is pretty significant autodeployment capacity, though - most of the forbearance is that I don't want to step on toes that don't firmly deserve being trod upon.  Anyway.  Spiritual threats?"

"The major extant spiritual threats in my priority ordering:

The Vallorn, which definitely captures souls and impedes their progress.

The Labyrinth spirits - I would previously have downrated this as intractable, but my definition of intractable has recently updated sharply.

Various necromantia - less verified than the Vallorn, but at least the Axou do claim to be successfully capturing spirits.

Nexi of intolerable suffering - the Druj are the most obvious, but centers of abject slavery - such as the salt mines of the Grendel, some parts of the Iron Confederacy, probably some things the Asaveans are doing - also count.

Destruction of orc souls - there's something odd going on with orc collectiveness which I don't really comprehend, or this would be much higher, but there are many active conflicts in which orcs are dying in large numbers, plus of course deaths of old age and illness etcetera, and our best guess is most of them do not make it across the Abyss.

There exist many other potential threats but these feel like the most pressing - although actually I put Vallorn at the top there out of habit, and perhaps orc souls and intolerable suffering should be higher in urgency, if not in magnitude."

"I think I've done something about the destruction of orc souls already just by being around, but it's worth confirming; a moment, please."

She does something that definitely looks like communing, for a moment.  Eyes closed, head inclined slightly, hands clasped together.  "...Yeah, my contact is working on that; I'm not really that specialized in applied metaphysics as to be able to do much more than throw her at the problem.  Most of my work experience is actually at the interface of magic and nonmagical...physics and industry.

"The vallorn are an aggressive hegemonizing swarm, albeit a very slow one; you're absolutely right to give them high priority.

"I can't assess labyrinth spirits unless the hatred spirit in the Black Plateau counts, and even then I don't know what they do in the Labyrinth.  So, I'll need more information to prioritize them effectively.

"I can take a look at the necromancy; I don't tend to find it on-principle disagreeable but many, many implementations I've encountered are, well, awful.  Souls kept here against their will, for example.

"And the intolerable suffering...I should probably loop in Keth, she's got more eyes on Grendel politics and I don't want them to just collapse if I happen to them.  Or rather when I happen.  The Salt Mines need to just...not happen anymore.  But - it should be clean."

"Hatred spirit in the Black Plateau with enough intelligence for conversation definitely counts. We do not have nearly as much information as I would like on them but they tend to title themselves charming things like The Eater Of Hope, potentially actually consume souls and certainly trap them in self destructive cycles, and generally impede passage through the Labyrinth.

There are also theorised to be helpful Labyrinth spirits, in particular that is one possible mechanism for the intervention of the Paragons on the mortal world, but as anything that might be evidence of this tends to be immediately attributed to a Paragon, I have even less to go on.

As is in the name, they generally inhabit the Labyrinth, but can escape via True Liao visions or Whispers Through The Black Gate, and probably other equivalent methods.

Necromantia probably a lower priority, the Axou practice is generally with willing if not necessarily fully informed souls, no other major systemic practitioner has been proven to do anything to the original soul."

"...wait a goddamn minute, the reason true liao is screwy is because it actively breaches realms?  Well that explains the weird leftover effects on regular liao, and why it didn't conjure with the same potential!"

"...What does passage through the Labyrinth involve?  I have a vague impression of atemporality, actually, which is odd.  And is it a place you can visit, or a metaphor, or both simultaneously?"

"The fact that we don't actually know is literally written into doctrine, but this is what is known:

On death the human spirit leaves the body and travels to the Labyrinth, where things we don't comprehend happen, and eventually it gets reincarnated without direct access to its memories, but with instincts and inclinations from its past lives.

True Liao in the visionary formulation works by killing the participants in such a way that a route back to the body is held open.

The spirit of a dead human can be called to speak to by spell for ten minutes and by ritual thereafter, but does not recall anything after the moment of death.

It can also fail to travel and become a ghost or be trapped in an object.

A paragon is a human who can surpass the Labyrinth, instead of being reincarnated they go onwards. Generally this is held to be accompanied by various signs when they are alive, such as miracles - most commonly, creation of durable auras without liao.

I have further speculations but they are purely speculation."

"That is...

"How certain are you that human souls...

"...ugh, some of these things that are known just don't make sense in conjunction with other things!  Why are spirits incapable of remembering things post-death, but - specifically human souls?, undergoing the liao ritual can remember things if they come back?  How does true liao let you time travel?  If it does at all, and the Labyrinth isn't just some sort of semi-motile and semi-agentic human-specific Akashic record with opinions - How the hell do miracles even work?  I don't..."

"I'm sure I'm missing something or working from a flawed assumption but - what is this?  Why is this?  How is this, most of all!

"...I'm going to want to observe one of those soul tethers sometime, very probably.  But it's certainly not time-sensitive in the way vallorn are, only time-sensitive in the way suffering in general is.  Ha; only.  That's definitely a sentence."

"It is canonically impossible to be absolutely certain about anything involving the Labyrinth, but the evidence comes primarily from the research which led to our ability to safely conduct a True Liao vision - assuming the participants actually follow instructions, that is. There are many other ways to apply True Liao and combine it with magical effects, which are considerably less safe, but do provide more direct contact with the Labyrinth, rather than only the content of a specific incident in a single user's past life. Our secondary evidence comes from the intervention of Paragons from beyond the Labyrinth, but records are... rather scattered.

We do not currently know about the status of, for instance, Hylje or Daeva souls, as we do not have a large reference population which has been willing to participate in experimentation. We have a little information about Orc souls due to the efforts of the Bonewall preachers, but most of our information there is second hand from cultures such as the Jotun, who have more... extensive contact with their Ancestors.

It is likely that the visions in the customary use of True Liao are some kind of record rather than true time travel, as deviating too much from the expected events causes them to collapse as opposed to be changed. However, true time travel via the Labyrinth does appear to be possible - there is a particular famous scholar, Abraxas Whitespire, who is said to have successfully passed an object forwards in time, and information backwards - but unfortunately that did likely shatter his soul in the undertaking, and certainly did shatter his mind, and there is no evidence that he managed to affect anything that occurred before the start of his experimentation - although under some theories, there wouldn't be, of course."

"...holy shit you have the broken-ass sort of time travel.

"That or it's just the usual you've-already-changed-the-past flavor, but - it doesn't feel like that's how the story goes.

"Also, is this - canonical impossibility of certainty a doctrinal position or a cosmically-backed one?"

"Doctrinal; although that essentially means that our best religious scholars have been unable to tell it apart from the cosmically-backed variety. I am not sure how you would even gather evidence for it being cosmically-backed - the full doctrinal position, to be clear, is that we cannot understand the Labyrinth because we are not yet Paragons, not that it is actually impossible for people.

Essentially, the fundamental definition of 'Paragon' is 'Understands the Labyrinth sufficiently to transcend it', although - for, as far as I can tell, primarily political reasons - only Paragons that legibly follow the True Virtues and carry out their paragonhood in a Benevolent fashion actually get Recognised.

It's possible Benevolence is in fact necessary for the fundamental variety of Paragonhood - but, between you and me, I have not seen any compelling evidence of this."

She nods firmly, decisively.  "I wish it were.  Too many let power go to their heads.  What is the doctrinal definition of being a Paragon?"

"Let me get this entirely correct," she says, and closes her eyes and thinks for a few moments, then declaims in a tone that is very clearly quoting from something: "A truly virtuous spirit, one who is a paragon of Virtue, is capable of freeing itself from the Labyrinth of Ages through transcendence. A paragon spirit can be identified for having completed at least six of the eight signs of the paragon, after which it can be recognised by the Imperial Synod."

"Signs of the Paragon - I am not going to be able to recite all of these verbatim - are," she counts them off on her fingers, "Transcendence - oh, sorry, technically it's called Liberation; Recognition, that's not Recognition as in the Synod recognising them but recognising their past life as someone significant;

Benevolence, they did some good in the world; Inspiration, they had followers; Salvation, they brought people into the Way;

Legacy, they left some kind of durable mark on the world, sometimes it's an actual physical object but things like 'invented the system of weights and measures we still use today' count;

Miracles, actual things that non-Paragons just can't do, like durable spontaneous auras or literally bringing back a piece of the Sun;

Pilgrimage, this is a stupid sign that the Highborn love because they get to believe that Bastion is amazing, in recent years it's been extremely liberally interpreted as 'went on some kind of journey to the Heart of the Way however the recogniser feels like defining this'.

Obviously try not to repeat that last one, but I think you get the picture."

"Sorry, bringing back a piece of the Sun?  Are all your celestial bodies like this?"

"Tian is one of the ancient Paragons, and 'from the Sun' may be somewhat metaphorical, although it was clearly a great feat of prowess, possibly magical in nature, which wrought physical damage to her in its making and saved a great number of settlements from a series of harsh winters."

"Ahh.  ...I bet we could check.  How long ago was this?"

"Seven centuries is the arrival of the Highborn on this continent, they discovered the history of Tian as a history ancient to them; it dates from before the formation of Terunael, the fall of which somewhat pre-dates the arrival of the Highborn. I expect if you'd picked up a historical scholar they could be more precise, although Urizen historical records have suffered several unfortunate incidents along the way, so may not have a precise figure remaining, despite our people likely being co-existent with the relevant time period."

"I just need a ballpark figure on where I'd need to yeet a camera to do a search; light has a speed, so if the sun itself was broken, we can check with a FTL jump to approximately the right timeframe to see if the star's dim.  Probably; I haven't actually checked space to see if it's normal or full of Excrucians yet.

"...We'd know if space was full of Excrucians, because they're not subtle, but the more general concern of whether space and stars work like my homeworld, or if the planet's flat, or if there's some sort of - I once saw a book describing a universe that actually wrapped around on itself, y'know?"

"The world is spherical and rotates around its somewhat tilted axis, as well as moving around the Sun; the moon circles around the world, and reflects the light of the Sun rather than being lit itself; astronomers suspect the Wanderer is in fact another world also moving around the Sun, which is why it has weird interactions with the other constellations.

We're not exactly sure what the other constellations are made up of, it seems likely that whatever it is, it's very far away."

"Stars like the Sun, probably; this planet is very similar to my homeworld, and my homeworld's stars are also suns."

"As charming as this digression is, it is rather a digression from our list of urgent problems?

If we're prioritising the Vallorn - how much do you already know? I am not specifically a scholar of Spring magic or the Vallorn itself, but I know a little of its nature, history, the difficulties it poses, and the current ongoing work regarding it."

"Life-flavored area-based body hijacker.  Animalistic central intelligence; coordinates with others of its kind.  Haven't gotten a particularly good look at one in person yet, but I'll pull up what my analysis suite captured...

"Oh, and - good news, the people it's captured are still in there, bad news, the people it's captured are still in there.  I don't know if you knew that or not."

"Yes - we had suspicions at least, that's why 'the greatest spiritual threat to the Empire' is verbatim wording from multiple Synod motions.

So, brief history lesson.

Before the Empire was here, most of the Empire's territory was Terunael - stretched further than the Empire, mostly concentrated in big cities, lots of Spring magic.

Then the surrounding orcs became a pressing threat, and the Terun people performed an enormous Spring ritual - and, whatever they'd intended to do, what they got was the Vallorn.

It, essentially, ate all their cities, then tried to eat everything. Their survivors came up with another ritual, to direct its power away down the Trods - which is what powers the magical vitality you get when you walk them. Dedicated walking of the Trods is gradually drawing the power out of the Vallorn. The one at Miaren was defeated during the time of the second Emperor, at great cost - and that strengthened all of the others, hence the rather long time before we have been able to even think about trying again.

Recently, the momentum behind discovering that people are stuck in there - that was a recent discovery - has meant there's an effort to put a library together in Hercynia, an unprecedented expedition into the heart of the biggest Vallorn in Broceliande, and in general things are moving, although estimates are still at least a year before all the research is put together.

Winter magic is our main solution to the spread of the Vallorn, other than the Trods - there's a curse called Wither the Seed which curses a territory for a generation, makes it hard for anything to grow there and for people and animals to conceive, but slows down the Vallorn. Liathaven and Broceliande are currently under it.

Each Vallorn has a 'vallorn heart' which is in the ruins of the old Teruneal city it ate; the expedition might be getting our first look at the main node, if enough people showed up and they are lucky.

The Vallorn exudes a poisonous miasma and contains a considerable amount of giant wildlife as well as the hijacked people, and between them they tend to give anyone who ventures in various diseases, which makes it a dangerous operating environment; the expedition is under some limited-time magical protection from the Summer Eternal of Adventure, Rhianos."