The Open Door (megacrossover)

[Academia Nut]

Okay, so I uh... got a little bored, and its currently winter break so I have nothing better to do so uh... yeah.

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Chapter Fifty-six: Strange Lessons

For the children of Nesmé, the warnings to not stray out into the woods or monsters would get them had been very real warnings for generations, but still, children would be children and thus one of the responsibilities of the Riders was to round up stray young ones who wandered off before they got eaten. They weren’t always successful, and life was hard and often tear-filled out on the moors.

Thus, despite the uneasy alliance -vassalage at gunpoint really- the parents of Nesmé warned their children away from the camp at their doorstep… and were promptly ignored by the younger and/or more rebellious members of the village who had yet to be scared straight of the dangers around them.

That said, those in the camp did not trust trolls around the children and they were constantly monitored by either Lars, Skuld, the Erinyes, or one of the wizards powerful enough to produce fire or flame to handle the brutes when around adults. But as with all things, there was one exception.

The children stared up in awe at the troll, sitting there quietly, its hair done up in ribbons and wearing a straw hat with pretty swamp flowers all about it. Between two enormous pink painted claws it daintily held a crudely made clay tea cup that was sized for a small human. In its other hand was any equally tiny saucer. A rough sheet of flax was thrown over it in a crude imitation of a dress.

“More tea Mr. Green?” Gunnhild asked while holding a rough tea pot in her hands. She wasn’t quite sure where the idea for the game had come from, but she suspected it was daddy’s side of the family.

“Yar,” the troll grunted. Gunnhild glared at him and he tried to enunciate more politely, “Err… yes please.”

Lowering the tea cup, the troll allowed Gunnhild to ‘pour’ the imaginary beverage before he raised it up and took a sip, extending his pinkie at the last moment before he could be told off. Trolls as a species weren’t very bright, but this one had excellent Pavlovian conditioning.

“Thank you,” the troll grunted in its rough voice.

“You’re welcome Mr. Green. Would anyone else like some?” Gunnhild asked the braver selection of children who had gathered around the flat rock the troll had dragged into the clearing for Gunnhild’s tea part. There was also a large, awed collection of children who watched at a safer distance.

“No thank you, I’m good now,” Thomas Smith, son of a local craftsman replied. At ten he was just at the age to think he was the bravest person in the world without having a teenager’s cockiness quite set in yet. While he thought the majority of the games Gunnhild like to play were stupid, he was enthralled by the way she so effortlessly commanded the trolls and if playing her games was a way to learning such things then he would put up with them.

“More for me please,” Faeresta asked, holding out her little tea cup. The orphan child of a defunct house, she had been picked up the refugee column as they left Menzoberranzan and utterly adored Gunnhild.

“I still have half a cup left, I’ll be alright,” Emily Redford, another Nesmé child who refused to bend to anyone’s will, replied.

“Marvellous, marvellous,” Gunnhild replied dramatically before setting the teapot down. Adjusting her own broad rimmed straw hat, she asked in a gossipy tone, “Have you seen some of the patterns coming out of the new mill? Oh, those will be the talk of Waterdeep come the fall fashion season.”

Had the word ‘Victorianism’ been explained to Gunnhild, she would not have understood why anyone would act that stupid to her reckoning, and those around her really had no clue about the strange cultural mishmash she had inherited from the dozens of minds that composed her father’s form, but they all played along because Gunnhild found it fun.

“You mean the pretty flower clothing?” Faeresta asked innocently.

“Indeed. Quite the bit of finery, don’t you think?” Gunnhild asked her assembled guests.

“My dad helped set up that mill thing,” Tom said as something of a suggestion. “He helped set up the looms.”

“Oh excellent! You know, my mother says that the hard labours of craftsmen like your father are what the future is built on,” Gunnhild said cheerily.

Emily frowned and said, “Whenever my mother talks of the future, she says strange things like ‘stop daydreaming, a man is the only thing in your future’.”

In another life Emily would have eventually left home to become an adventurer, lived in Silverymoon for a while as a sellsword before returning home after nearly a decade’s absence to try to rebuild the ruins of Nesmé and settling down with a cleric of Lathandor before both of them died a decade after that in the chaos resulting in the death of Mystra. Again. However, that timeline had collapsed into non-existence recently, so she had a rather different future ahead of her.

“Oh nonsense, mother wouldn’t allow such a thing,” Gunnhild said with an extravagant wave of her hand. Unfortunately, her crude little tea cup did not have the strength necessary to stay together under such an acceleration and the handle broke off, sending the cup flying, to explode on the stone of the ‘table’ with a spray of clay shrapnel.

Wincing, Tom looked down at the little shard stuck in his hand and the tiny drop of red blood welling up from the wound. A slight shadow then fell over his hand and he looked up to find the troll leering hungrily over him, drool flooding out from between the gaps in its razor sharp teeth as it reached a gnarled, clawed hand bigger than Tom’s torso towards…

“Mr. Green!” Gunnhild barked, causing the troll to suddenly freeze up in absolute terror, its eyes loosing their hunger and instead gaining a spike of absolute terror. “That is not proper behaviour!”

A sour look on her face, Gunnhild’s features then softened as she looked at Tom. “I am so sorry Mr. Smith, I must make it better.” With a wave over her hand the tea set, constructed out of river clay by Gunnhild just recently, went flying, propelled by a telekinetic impulse.

Grinning in a slightly unsettling way, she said, “Let’s play doctor!”

The troll whimpered.


Skuld had a mirror, a full length mirror, set up in front of her, a ‘gift’ from the town of Nesmé, although ‘tribute’ was more accurate. She didn’t like the way she scared the poor people, but she had practically leapt upon the gift when it had been offered. It had been the first mirror she had seen in the better part of a year.

It had taken her six hours of staring at it, and later crying before it, before she had come to the conclusion that Belldandy wasn’t going to step out of it.

She had then stared at the mirror for a long time, not hoping for her sister but wondering at the reflection she saw within. She remembered the time she had been turned into an adult after the Lord of Terror incident, and staring at the mirror now, she realized she was closer to that point that she had realized.

Some part of her was still childish enough to wish for her big sister to come swooping in and make everything all right. Another part, a growing part, was realizing that she was an adult now. The Underdark had changed her, had aged her in ways that mere time could not do alone.

Not that time wasn’t important. Eventually, she had stripped off her clothing to stare at herself naked in the mirror, to see who she was beneath it all. She remembered a line from Nietzsche, “Man is a rope stretched between animal and overman suspended above the abyss.”

She certainly felt like she was caught on a rope between adult and child, stretched thin. She supposed from the triangular patch of hair between her legs, her body had been trying to tell her that she was an adult for a while now; it was just that she hadn’t really cared up until a few weeks ago. Goddesses didn’t have the same physiological maturation as human women, but many of the outer changes were the same.

Sitting there, in front of the mirror, Skuld placed a hand on her stomach, above where her womb would be. She closed her eyes and sighed at the sight of Gunnhild’s smiles. She wondered at other possible futures that might lie in store -that might have lain in store before Lars crashed into her life- and then she broke down crying again.

She had been such a bitch. She had been a selfish cunt. Once the thought of Belldandy holding Keiichi’s child would have been from a scene out of her deepest, darkest nightmare, let alone the image of her sister pregnant. It had been inconceivable, it had been the equivalent of some sort of disgusting, tentacle covered monstrosity crawling out of the ocean to molest school girls in her mind.

Now she was trying to get such a beast to molest her and the thought of Belldandy glowing with pride, Keiichi’s ear pressed up against her belly to listen in to the heartbeat of the tiny life they had created together, and Skuld wept. She wept because she doubted she would be there. She had never properly celebrated the love her sister and Keiichi had.

Wiping away her tears, she looked up at the mirror before approaching it proudly, chin and chest thrust out, her head unbowed. She looked over her frame with an appraising but not critical eye. She could certainly do some more growing in all areas, but she was not a little girl. She was a goddess, and she was crafting her own realm brick by brick.

She had taken the Shadow Weave from its creator with no outside help, proving her strength!

She had chosen to marry Lars with no outside encouragement, proving her will!

She was Skuld, Norn of the Future! She would make her own heaven on this world, become her own Valkyrie, and have her own king by her side!

Waving her hand, she conjured up new clothing, made from solid shadows, creating a tight, silky black dress that emphasized and accentuated her feminine traits while still leaving her plenty of mobility to get down and apply a wrench to a stubborn, oil covered bolt.

Maybe this change would help convince Lars to start fulfilling more of her fantasies. Like say working towards getting Gunnhild a sibling.

She was such a good little girl!


“Doctor Smith, you must hurry and find the tumour! The blockage is causing the patient such pain!” Gunnhild said enthusiastically while her telekinesis held down the ‘patient’.

“This is so neat,” Tom said while probing the troll’s brain with his finger, watching as his poking caused the giant to spasm and twitch in strangely predictable patterns. He and the other members of the original tea party, plus several of the more curious audience members, were all covered in blood and other fluids from the troll.

So far they had done a quadruple heart bypass, removed a ‘cyst’ from a lung, and about a half dozen other surgeries while Gunnhild suppressed the troll’s ability to regenerate until their play was done.

Lars meanwhile watched on from the distance, unnoticed by the children, two Erinyes next to him.

“Your daughter is impressively evil,” Autu noted with an impressed tone.

“A touch yes, but you’ll note she’s also selective about those she plays with. She won’t hurt the other children; it’s a compulsion she can’t overcome, but she does know who can take what level of roughness. For example, she knows that the troll she picked as her companion had a long history of ‘playing’ and she has a somewhat developed sense of fairness. I do believe our friend on the operating table will very nearly have learned his lesson by the end of this session. Plus she is teaching invaluable anatomy lessons, and she’s even using mostly correct terminology,” Lars said with some pride.

The other Erinyes, Caut, commented, “Sometimes Lars you sound like a mewling paladin, pleading for ‘justice’ and ‘mercy’, and other times you tingle our spines with talk of evil so grand.”

Lars let a strange look cross his face, something dark and predatory yet gleeful. He looked down at the gathering of children before he replied, “Your Blood War can be summed up with the two most evil phrases my people know. Your foes, the demons, have the phrase, ‘Because I can’ on their side. You devils however have ‘Because I had to’ on yours. These two phrases, when distilled down to their essence, account for all suffering, and in the end, the latter is more destructive. The truest evil is not achieved by the men who think themselves the villain. The truest evil is done by the good man who does what he feels he must, and thus he does it without hesitation.”

Lars paused before he said, “I saw the memories my daughter extracted out of that troll. He did not choose to be born a troll, he did not choose for the endless, predatory hunger to fill him, but he did choose what happened after that. The trolls are hungry and have to eat, but this one could slowly flay the skin off his victims’ flesh, could squeeze the marrow out of their still living bones, and could seek out the smallest babies because they were so tender, so it did. And now I can watch my daughter and her friends peel it back layer by layer, looking at what makes it tick, and I won’t lift a finger because I am not a good man. To my friends and family I will be loving and tender, selfless and self sacrificing. Nothing is too much for them. To complete strangers I will be polite and courteous. To those like the people of Nesmé who oppose me but who are just trying to live their lives, I will respect them while still grinding them into the dust. But to those who are my enemies, well… let’s just say that the children done there will be getting a debriefing about the appropriateness of what they just saw, but the troll will just get a little smile from me. Understand me ladies?”

Both Erinyes were quiet with thought. They were somewhat chilled by this perspective on evil. It was a flavour they had never seen before. It was darkness contrasted with light, which instead of diminishing the dark only made it sharper and deeper. It was colder and more methodical than the evil of the Hells, yet more brutal and savage than the evil of the Abyss.

They liked it. It was the evil of a good man. It was the evil of the eldest days of Hell, when Asmodeus still walked amongst the heavens. They liked to talk to Lars about good and evil, and slowly they were starting to understand.

The greatest evil is not committed by a devil or a demon; it is committed by a saint.

Strange lesson indeed.

[Alan Bolte]

Okay, so I uh... got a little bored, and its currently winter break so I have nothing better to do so uh... yeah.

I certainly can't complain.

[Jim Starluck]

Me either. Hooray for super-quick updates!



Now if only I could crank out my writing at such a rate... or at all, for that matter.

[Crayz9000]

For scouts in the Star Wars verse, watch out for the Yuuzhan Vong who grow bio-tech and view machinery as an abomination. In canon, their invasion forces were weakened by the pollen of the Ithorian bafforr tree, so be sure to collect samples of local fauna and flora, as you never know what properties will prove useful later on. Try to capture a few Yuuzhan Vong scientists alive, as their knowledge would greatly compliment the Angelic technology of Chaos Undivided

I know this is a bit pedantic, but the Yuuzhan Vong don't believe in the scientific method, and therefore do not have scientists. What they do have is shapers, and a heretical (i.e. semi-scientific) shaper such as Nen Yim would be a good asset for newChaos to capture,

[Valorie]

NeoVictorianism: how the children of NewChaos rebel against their parents.

Little boys adore the gross-out factor, so Thomas Smith may end up having a schoolboy crush on Gunnhild after poking a troll's internal organs with a dull spoon.

I just googled Bolo, and now I keep imagining a Bolo tank equipped with a daemon-enhanced R2 astromech partner for tech support, communications, and field repair. A cute little astromech may become a popular must-have import item given their loyalty, bullheaded stubborness, and squeeky language.

Depending on if Skuld ever meets the new Chaos gods on Lars' home turf, she might become the MachineGoddess of R2 droids.

[Darth Fanboy]

daemon Wall E and EVE lol

[Jaeger]

I don't know which is more amusing: the idea of daemonic droids, or droids with “Skuld is my co-pilot” logos etched onto them.

**
Don’t forget about Star TREK. The last time we saw Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Parliament was ready to start throwing shoes at the poor bloke because he dared to suggest that the Prime Directive was outdated. That and the Dominion War seemed to be locked in a stalemate, although the Romulan Empire was fairing rather well.

Also, with the Borg having the cr@p kicked out them and their jump-gate whatever destroyed, the U.S.S.Voyager doesn’t have a quick way to get back to the Alpha Quadrant.

[Skyfox120]

Yeah, it sounds like it was sorta "brain-damaged," which it would have to be. The sense of honor and chivalry that is a core component of most Bolos would make it... tricky... to get one to work with nChaos.

NOt necessarily.. this is a Mark XXXIII BOlo... one of the ones that links directly neurally to humans... and more importantly probably participated in the final solution agaisnt the Melconian empire.. one way or the other. DAvid Weber's story "A time to kill" SHowed what a Bolo's mental process was during the end stages of the final solution (Well at least a attacking one)... and believe me there was no Honor and Chivalry there... it was literally one SMALL step above 'Blood for hte blood god, Skulls for the SKull throne!' beserking.

Since this Bolo came from the same, its memory and mental capcities may be 'damaged' as it tries to cope with the insanity it participated in (IN weber's short story, to regian its sanity the Bolo was literally lobnotimized and then rebooted from backup memory...)

Even a cannon Bolo... getting it to work with Chaos may not be so tricky... at least limited. Just provide it with accurate Data on the NEcorntyr and C'tan, and it will at the least ally wiht CHaos as the much lesser of two evils..

[von Neufeld]

Good closure with the Stiletto returning.

Tricking SW and WH40k to fight, eh. Yuuzhan Vong meet Tyranids, Tyranids meet Yuuzhan Vong.

BTW, how can the Stiletto jump between universes without having to visit the Haruhi-verse?

Buffyverse=Eye=Central Hub, I assume, so can you give us some more hints on which universes are the final two gates?

Also, good chapter last chapter in Nesme.

[Setesh]

Tricking SW and WH40k to fight, eh. Yuuzhan Vong meet Tyranids, Tyranids meet Yuuzhan Vong.

Quoth the Hive Mind 'Cognito ergo nom nom nom'. The damage a genestealer infestation would do to the Vong is hilarious. In open battle the Vong simply lack the rapidfire capability needed to stop a swarm army. To say nothing of the Norn Queen's genetic engineering capabilities which are far above and beyond the Vong Shaper's.

[Academia Nut]

You don't need a hub to travel through the Doldrums, which is part of the reason its such a pain to move through. You have to slog through multiple universes with low energy. If it weren't for the fact that the Great Warding sort of already partially made their galaxy low energy and thus caused the evolution of the S-series engines, the Chaos forces wouldn't have been able to bring enough fuel to last the trip.

[MichaelAwesome]

I'm confused, how is the Central Hub connected to the Eye that canon W40K is part of? A map would be helpful.

Happy Holidays


For people from a low-energy dimension who don’t any inheritable predispositions for psychic power, can Psykers emerge within a population due to long-term exposure to Warp-based energies or supernatural phenomenon? After a few years of living on Earth, will the Colonial settlers in Australia begin having psychic children?

Is it possible to insert recessive Psyker-genes into other sapient species?

As for non-humans, the Syracusians have been apart of Chaos Undivided for a decade now and numbered around +20 million at the time of evacuating their original homeworld, assuming that they all survived the Borg attack. How are they getting along? If they’re not living on Earth Prime, what other planetary territories does Chaos Undivided have that could house the avian race?

[Deadpan29]

I've been thinking about that head-on encounter with the Race. They aren't quite as closed-minded as the Praxis, but encountering spaceships not associated with their own empire comes close to being an outside context problem for them. I would expect more psychological trauma from that, but then again the whole incident was skimmed over.

[Singular Quartet]

I'm confused, how is the Central Hub connected to the Eye that canon W40K is part of? A map would be helpful.

It isn't. As I understand it, the Eye that Ao refers to is the Central Hub that Tzintchi refers to (Buffy-verse). The Eye of Terror has nothing to do with anything else.

[Academia Nut]

Imagine if you will a great hurricane that spans the interior of a sphere. At the centre of the hurricane is the Eye, the heart of the storm that is also strangely quiet along with the space around it. The Eye Wall on the other hand is the most furious part of the storm, the most energy soaked universes. TTGL is part of the Eye Wall, although probably not the most furious part where nothing can live, partly because the laws of physics are so wonky and partly because the precursors to AMG sterilized those places.

The calm regions above and below the hurricane are the Doldrums, and situated above and below the Eye are the Houses of Time and Space. However, there are also tornado-like structures of stirred up space time that stretch between these two places and the Eye.

Of course, this is just a projection of a higher-order dimensional space into a three dimensional representation, but it gives you some idea as to the overall structure of the interior of Chaotic Space.

[Mutant Headcrab]

What I'm most curious about are the four gates. We know that Lovecraft-verse and Haruhi-verse are two of these gates. Could we get a hint or at least confirmation that we'll find out what these other two gates are?

I'm also immensly curious about New Chaos' plans, if any, for the universes that inhabit the "Eye Wall."

[Xon]

Exactly what era of the Time Lords are we talking about? You do have something like 10 million years of Time Lords before the Doctor ended the Last Time War and something crazy (multi-billions of years) for the Gallifrey natives who where per-Time Lords.

[Academia Nut]

The Gallifreyans are the inheritors of the Lords of the House of Time, so we're talking way, way, way back. Both Houses lost the vast majority of their tech in the conflict. All I'll say about the two remaining Gates is that they both feature artefacts of cosmic power. The Eye Wall is currently "Don't disturb" for new Chaos as there are things in there that will fuck them up right good.

Also, there is a side chapter written primarily by another author now up.

[Sute]

“Your Blood War can be summed up with the two most evil phrases my people know. Your foes, the demons, have the phrase, ‘Because I can’ on their side. You devils however have ‘Because I had to’ on yours. These two phrases, when distilled down to their essence, account for all suffering, and in the end, the latter is more destructive. The truest evil is not achieved by the men who think themselves the villain. The truest evil is done by the good man who does what he feels he must, and thus he does it without hesitation.”

This makes me wonder what phrase Lars would say accounts for good.

[Xon]

The Gallifreyans are the inheritors of the Lords of the House of Time, so we're talking way, way, way back. Both Houses lost the vast majority of their tech in the conflict.

How would end-game Time Lord tech compare to the Lords of the House of Time? And what effect would the Time Lord's Time War have on the multi-verse. DW-canon wise we have been told it fucked an entire universe over and drastically altered how easy inter-dimensional/universal travel is.

All I'll say about the two remaining Gates is that they both feature artefacts of cosmic power.

Eye of Harmony or Key of Time still in Who-verse?

The Eye Wall is currently "Don't disturb" for new Chaos as there are things in there that will fuck them up right good.

They would want to be careful in general. Nothing like finding a stranded Dalek Time War era ship in a low energy universe (Dalek's put cockroaches to shame in survivability) to ruin your past, present and future.

Also, there is a side chapter written primarily by another author now up.

[Valorie]

TTGL?

So far, New Chaos’ early plans seem to involve to following:

1) Prevent stagnation while preparing for the C’Tan conflict.
2) Use the inhabitants of other verses as a smokescreen to hide their own actions and send probability distortions into space-time that’ll make enemy precognition more difficult.

3) Pissing off dozens of low-threat enemies (Starfleet, Cylon, Praxis, etc.) yields several benefits.

A= Provoke social and cultural innovation, like removing Starfleet’s Prime Directive.
B= Make the locals more likely to resist an invasion from oldChaos or Imperium, or atleast less trusting of outsiders.
C= It’ll give newChaos “friendly spars” to look forward to.
D= Force FTL civilizations to explore the greater multiverse, either to better defend themselves or to seek out their enemies. The Cylons won’t give up so easily, but it’ll take centuries before they have the tech to begin searching for the Colonial fleet.
E= Entertainment and education. Watching others make mistakes is an efficient means to learn what not to do without risking your own assets. Plus, people from newChaos might observe events in other dimensions the same way we watch soap operas, much like Mojo and Longshot from the X-Men comics.

“Turn the channel, ‘Law&Order: Starfleet Edition’ is on.”
“No way! Giles just found out that he isn’t the father of Miss Calendar’s baby. You know it’s going to be a good episode.”
(*insert epic battle over who gets the TV remote*)

[WillowBee]

Great little shortie for Shyft the what-I-assume-is-a-golem.

For the Who-verse, I’m only familiar with what has been recently shown on the Sci-Fi channel that starred the Ninth and Tenth Doctors, played by Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant.

I forget how many times a Time Lord can regenerate, but it’d be ironic if an agent of Chaos Undivided “reset” the Doctor’s biological clock to give him a fresh new 12 regeneration allotments. They’d want the Doctor around for a long, long time as part of their plans, and there’s a chance that any lingering daemonic taint left over from process may grow stronger with each regeneration, so that when the Doctor finally expires from his 22nd death, he’ll be transformed into a lesser daemon while still retaining his Time Lord traits.

[rodon]

All I'll say about the two remaining Gates is that they both feature artefacts of cosmic power.

Eye of Harmony or Key of Time still in Who-verse?

Sailor Pluto winds up to smack the malfunctioning Gates of Time before looking at the fourth wall. "What?"

[Xon]

For the Who-verse, I’m only familiar with what has been recently shown on the Sci-Fi channel that starred the Ninth and Tenth Doctors, played by Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant.

THe new series builds on the previous 26 seasons, and referances quite a few of the wackier novels.

I forget how many times a Time Lord can regenerate,

By default they have 12 regenerations, giving 13 lives. But this is a social thing, as they tend to lose the will to live after 10000 years or so. The true limit is determined by the plot. For example, the Master has gone through at least 14 regenerations. And despite dying quite visibly on the end of Season 3 and then having his body cremated, most fans expect him to be back sometime in the future.

but it’d be ironic if an agent of Chaos Undivided “reset” the Doctor’s biological clock to give him a fresh new 12 regeneration allotments. They’d want the Doctor around for a long, long time as part of their plans, and there’s a chance that any lingering daemonic taint left over from process may grow stronger with each regeneration, so that when the Doctor finally expires from his 22nd death, he’ll be transformed into a lesser daemon while still retaining his Time Lord traits.

Time Lords are already daemon like entities which can feed off the belief/feelings of sentients. They are 6 dimensional (Who-verse has 2 time like dimensions) beings who have vast temporal powers and contain enough knowledge that a human would self-immolate if that knowledge stayed active within them for any length of time greater than maybe 20-30 minutes with an unknown level of collateral damage.

Time Lords are vastly resistant to shock compared to humans, several times stronger than human base-line, and have powerful time-like telepathic abilities. This is before you start counting thier often living & sentient technology which is just fucking crazy.

[von Neufeld]

All I'll say about the two remaining Gates is that they both feature artefacts of cosmic power.

Well, a net search on cosmic artifact gives many hits for the Marvel universe (Heart of the Universe, Infinity Gems, Cosmic Cube). For the other one, I have no idea. Well, there are some candidates that I rejected due to the duality nature of those universes (Belgariad, Transformers, ...).