A forest that was not there yesterday

[unprophesied_of_ages]

The Lord Ruler is in his palace, when he sees a sight he hasn't seen in centuries. Trees, sunlight...is he hallucinating? The fact that there's a forest in his living room isn't the surprising part. The fact that there's a forest on his planet is. As soon as he walks through the door to where his living room isn't, it's definitely not a hallucination.

His stores of Allomantic metals abruptly disappear. They're still physically there, but the power is completely gone. He immediately turns to go back, only to see more forest.

At least his Feruchemy still works—he can tell because he's still alive—but that won't last him forever. He only has so much stored youth, and without both sets of abilities he can't replenish it. He hasn't been in so much danger since the beheading that one time. Returning to Scadrial is the highest and currently only priority. If spontaneous forests are a thing, he needs to find someone who can explain them and more importantly how to get back.

The next few hours are spent walking in an essentially randomly chosen direction, with the sun to his right. He's quite certain that suns are supposed to be moving across the sky, but that's not a pressing emergency. He already knew he wasn't on his own planet when he saw proper trees and plants instead of ash-covered monstrosities. Whenever he calls out, nobody responds. If it's an empty spontaneous forest, he's probably doomed.

After some time, he hears his stomach growl. He hasn't seen much that looks edible, but possibly that's just because he's not used to real plants. Berries. Berries used to exist. Those berries look tasty, and if they're poisonous it's not like he needs to worry about it. As always, he has a truly ridiculous amount of stored health in his gold jewelry. Tapping gold just in case, he eats a handful.

Comments

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Last time around, I had to rotate the entire planet so that the pool would end up in one of the habitable parts."

[imeanforever]

"The entire what?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"The planet. Giant ball of mostly rock that circles around its star once a year. It also spins once a day and that's what causes days, but I know yours doesn't, so it might be different in other ways."

[imeanforever]

"Huh. I don't think Fairyland is or contains planets." She taps her chin, not that he can see this; she's still invisible. She doesn't want to have to redo the spell unexpectedly if something comes up. "At this time my motivations are to arrange for your world to continue to exist, for it to be run less awfully, and retain my personal safety in so doing. Annoying you is not a desideratum but neither is not annoying you a priority next to those three things. I am willing to expend considerable amounts of my own time and magic - which turns out to work here - to achieve these goals. Comments? Suggestions?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"If you're not familiar with planets in general, I'm even more sure that I'd rather have me at the pool in three hundred years. The reason this world is so unpleasant now is because of a relatively small error I made regarding its distance from the sun. Anything bigger could have killed everyone.

It would not destroy the Empire—let alone the world—to change everything changeable that you've objected to. The worst consequences would coming from stopping the Soothing; I'm not sure you appreciate the fact that the order it keeps helps save lives.

Your safety can be perfectly guaranteed by going to the South Pole, er, the other side of the planet. There's a civilization there, or at least there was seven hundred years ago, but I can't easily get across and nobody else knows you exist. But that would obviously interfere with you affecting anything on this side, so you probably don't want to."

[imeanforever]

"Mind that I do have to eat - not to live, but to function at reasonable capacity - and any mortal food I eat that doesn't come directly out of your hand is a problem." Pause. "Never induce or allow anyone else to feed me. Do you honestly have no other ideas for maintaining order than emotional manipulation? I would certainly need to know more to generate same but you've had plenty of time to think."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"That's the most effective one. Ordinary bread and circuses can also work for keeping populations happy, and a tyrannical rule with a steel fist can enforce laws, but making people not want to harm society is a ruler's dream come true. Since I imagine you're going to make me stop the Soothing, I'll have to increase policing and probably have some public executions or pillories or similar.
I've spent more time thinking about how best to expand the emotion project than about what lesser methods exist."

[imeanforever]

"I suspect I also disapprove of executions."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"What, all the time? It has never not been the assigned penalty for attempted assassination and suchlike. While it's probably theoretically possible to run a country without ever executing criminals, I've never heard of it being done successfully. And wouldn't you want to execute Yellow?"

[imeanforever]

"I can't, he's immortal. I want to make him and the master I had before him forget my name and prevent them from acquiring more vassals and free the ones they have. If they weren't immortal and the only way I could stop them were killing them? Maybe I'd do it. You seem to simply not be very creative. You wanted to move a bunch of colonists to Fairyland. What were you going to do if fairies you could not possibly execute tried to assassinate you?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Get their names, order them to do their level best to never interfere with me again especially regarding any efforts to get this order removed, and drop them off on whatever corner of the human territory is farthest from any coconspirators they might have. Possibly also publish their name and picture as extra incentive to stay very far away indeed.

For the first few, I might also try bringing them here to see how and whether the magic I'm familiar with can steal their immortality."

[imeanforever]

"Well, I can't technically fault your imagination, but I think I can improve on 'blatant evil' as a system of government."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Which part is evil? Publishing the name may be excessive but I wouldn't have to do it often as long as it's known to be a possible result of trying to assassinate me. In fact I think I'd only have to do it once."

[imeanforever]

"Fairies don't have a very efficient news system. Fairies don't always do things just because they want to. If you could reliably get names out of fairies, then some fairies would find out, others would remain in the dark, and some of them would cozy up to their rivals, suggest that those rivals go antagonize you, and use you to get the names. If they wanted you dead they'd send disposable vassals with no choice in the matter and stay safe and far away. Even in the paradigm case where some fairy decides to try to kill you of their own accord and turns up in person to do it, publishing their name opens them up to arbitrary abuse for as long as literally forever, especially if you write their name down - not that killing somebody isn't bad, not that a successful attempt wouldn't probably leave you dead forever, but throwing them to the whims of whoever catches them first when those whims could be anything at all is unnecessarily cruel. Fairy masters usually keep the option of retaining a written record of a name as an escalation option if they don't like how their vassals are behaving and aren't interested in fixing that with more refined orders."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Okay, the fact that it's not them doing it does change things. In that case, I'd have them force-fed, find out who their orders came from, and if possible threaten them with it. That even leaves the vassal without a master.

Although, if fairy communication is as bad as you say, I might be able to get away with posting a fake name. If stealing their immortality is successful it'd probably kill them, and the perpetrator never being seen again is consistent with them running and never stopping."

[imeanforever]

"Okay, so appealing to any sense of empathy is probably totally pointless, noted."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"It's a particularized lack of empathy for people who have recently tried to kill me. It's not like I'm suggesting doing anything of the kind to innocent fairies."

[imeanforever]

"You suggested doing something of the kind to innocent fairies a moment ago before I pointed out that they could be under orders. You didn't spare a second to think about it, you leapt straight to murder and disproportionate retribution. How sure are you that's the only thing you're missing?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"If someone were to try that here, they would know that they could tell me what they were ordered to do and I'd go after the actual perpetrator instead. I can protect them from whatever consequences they were threatened with, and since I'm widely believed to be even more powerful than I actually am, people know I can protect them. That's the situation I'm used to, where how strongly people can be forced to do things is limited, and that's why I assumed anyone trying to kill me wants me dead. It's different in Fairyland, but it's a specific difference, not one in a wide class of things that don't apply here.

As for disproportionate, it doesn't seem to me to be any more permanent than death."

[imeanforever]

"Your sense of proportion is about revenge and not about - anything else. It is not a good sense of proportion. Please be advised that if you demonstrate the ability to model a better sense of proportion, even if it is not natively familiar to you, I will be much more willing to leave you unsupervised, because I will be able to refer to it when telling you not to be so blatantly evil."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"I could also lock them up, or give only the orders necessary to keep them away, or even just ask you for a temporary gate to this world and leave them. Those are inferior options not because I'd want revenge but because they're insufficient incentive not to try to kill me. Or to vassalize a mortal, as I suspect would be more common. The point of a terrifying punishment is that you don't have to use it."

[imeanforever]

"I don't think you're going to get very far with this argument. I understand the concept of deterrence. That is not the gap we have here."

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Oh, I don't expect to convince you of that. Just that there exist non-evil reasons for me believing it.

If it's opening them up to arbitrary torture that's the problem—and I agree that's a problem—how strongly would you object to actually killing people like Yellow? Especially if, since I don't know whether or not this is the case, every few executions may make a human as immortal as a fairy."

[imeanforever]

"I expect that I can figure out immortality without having to kill any fairies via sorcery alone. Yellow is not a good person, but he does other things with his time than unremitting evil and could be prevented from the evil via methods short of execution - or even turning him into a frog. You're not a particularly good person either, as far as I can tell, aren't you glad I don't want to kill you for it?"

[unprophesied_of_ages]

"Of course I am.
In the time until you figure out immortality, how many would die? I can find people worth three of Yellow. I could probably even do it by choosing at random. If the same were true of me and killing three like me would let you save one of them, then I would be able to understand why you might want to kill me for it.

Please do keep in mind, I'm already kind of immortal. I'm not just motivated by selfishness here."