Reincarnated as a mana core

Excerpts of a report series of the Oceanside Archive:

Date: 22nd of February to 11th of July (?)
Year: New 0
Title: (tentatively) Teleportation chaos, summary

During the night of the 22nd of February presumably all of humanity was somehow teleported to a different planet. Early scouting trips across the ocean and gravity gauging support this theory. Our new gravity is now around 0.98 earth g.

The teleportation was almost entirely random. Families, communities and nations were ripped apart without concern. The only silver lining was that most of our infrastructure was sent with us, though who or what banished humanity from our home planet didn’t bother to do so properly and as such our infrastructure is as random as the makeup of our population.

It is with great shame and regret that I have to admit that the first few weeks were a bloody and dangerous kind of chaos. We were way too many people of different ethnicities for there to not be incidents of violence and without institutions and laws nobody striving for power had time for small-time murderers, rapists and warlords.

It took at least a whole month for a first power structure to form, which promptly collapsed after the more humane leaders of our little corner of the world banded together and waged war against the brutal and downright evil people that showed their faces in the wake of the teleportation. During those two weeks hundreds of brave people lost their lives in the fight against the dark side of humanity. It was only thanks to them that we managed to achieve such a swift victory.

Without this threat however, the alliance was close to breaking apart as infighting in a bid to grasp more power increased. The only thing keeping us together was concerning news from the region north of us.

On the third of May a cult came into power there and went on a crusade to unite the surrounding towns and villages under their banner. The speed at which they gained territory was so alarming, that most of the villages, towns and cities of our region put down their differences and formalised the Oceanside Alliance. Rules and laws were established and the infighting quickly reduced to the normal amount for a civilization.

On the fifth of June some of the cult started to mutate while bathing in a river that came out of a birch forest to the west. Some of them became literal angels, others a variety of animal-like people, most notably bats, while about a third remained human. The strength of the mutation varied wildly.

The face of the cult was one of the bat-like people and immediately killed upon his transformation. The river and the angel people were subsequently declared as holy and those that turned into something else were termed demons.

The last thing we heard from our spies was that the cult went batshit crazy and started a genocide of massive proportions. Most of our attempts to infiltrate the region after that were met with failure, but the news we did get wasn’t good and we feared a war was inevitable. [...]

Date: 13th of June to 17th of June
Year: New 0
Title: Radio silence and mana

13th of June
We lost contact with our north western settlements. No radio communication is able to get through whatever is happening. People are worried.

14th to 16th of June
More and more settlements are going dark in a wave-like pattern. Some last messages we received speak of mana, initialization, people mutating and technology malfunctioning. Scout drones send out to figure out what is going on simply stop working a few minutes after they cross some invisible border. Our leaders are keeping a lid on this, but the situation is tense.

17th of June
The mana wave and all it entailed hit our capital. Most technology is now useless and there has been chaos on the street for most of the day.
With the mana came the initialization into some kind of system. The message I received looked like this:

[Initialization complete]
Welcome to Lotusriver, your new universe. Your old universe banished you here. What a jerk, right?
Hopefully you survive your mana evolution and are able to thrive afterwards. Good luck!

I was lucky and remained human, but others changed, sometimes to such an extent that they regressed to animals in intellect. We don’t know whether or not to trust the system, but we also don’t have much of a choice. Either way, it wasn’t worth the price we had to pay.

Date:18th to 19th of June
Year: New 0
Title: Confusion and communication

We don’t know what to do anymore. The disruption of our lives by the mana wave is just too large. Only our leaders are still acting, but most of their initiatives fail to find purchase in the population. The horserider courier system they want to establish for communications will hopefully help.

Date: 22nd of June
Year: New 0
Title: Depression and shock

The courier system works like a charm, though it doesn’t have the effect on the population we wanted. Still, many people started to throw themself into any kind of work available so they don’t have time to think. This isn’t sustainable, but it will have to do for now.

A courier arrived with news from our northern territories five minutes ago and what he told us makes my blood boil with rage and fear. Our concerns have come true, but not how we expected and much worse. The cult travelled with the mana wave and struck while we were still in the dark about what was going on. Tens of villages have been destroyed and the inhabitants mostly slaughtered. One small town is still fighting, but completely cut off from us, not that our military would be able to respond in time. People are fleeing in our direction, but some have switched sides. I would kill the traitors myself if I could, but I’m just some random archivist.

This report series will now focus mostly on the war.

Date: 30th of June
Year: New 0
Title: War

We were forced to give a lot of ground to the cultists before we were able to establish a defensible frontline. The fighting is brutal and mostly in close quarters with the most basic of wooden weapons. A lot of injuries lead to deaths because of the reduction in available tech and our medical supplies are dwindling, but we are doing everything we can.

2 days ago the cultists went through a change. Where before they praised some nebulous god, they now sing their prayers to Meran. Whatever inspired this change also inspired them to be more relentless and almost reckless in their assault. We are losing ground again, but this time at the cost of the lives of their soldiers.

Estimated lost territory: 8% of our nation

Date: 29th of July
Year: New 0
Title: War

The fighting has reached a stalemate and entered a bit of a lull. We are not sure what the Meran cultists are planning, but our soldiers need the breather.

The regime to our north west has offered aid in exchange for fealty to their yet to be founded kingdom. We refused.

The other regions around us lack a singular strong power and are thus unable to help us. There is another country upriver from our capital, the Munzumira Republic, that is currently in the process of consolidating their territories and strengthening their foundation. They refused to give us aid on account that “this is not their struggle”. There were a few angry words and some of us feared they would declare war on us, but thankfully they were understanding of our situation enough to excuse the slight.

Estimated lost territory: 11%

Date: 15th of August
Year: New 0
Title: Betrayal

A smattering of human sergeants, a few human captains and hundreds of human soldiers turned on us in coordination with a major attack from the cultists and parts of our frontline were completely routed.

There were more betrayals in the following week and we were forced to retreat further. The stalemate is now broken, we are on the backfoot and morale is low. The offer to join the kingdom is becoming more and more enticing by the day.

Estimated lost territory: 19%

Date: 23rd of August
Year: New 0
Title: Hope

An enterprising teenager has figured out how to use firearms without them exploding in one's own face with a relatively simple application of [mana manipulation]. Up until now we weren’t able to do anything terribly useful with mana and thus, findings were mostly excluded from this series of reports.

The military is already in the process of teaching soldiers and supplying the frontline with the previously useless weaponry. People are actually volunteering to join the fight and the boy, Adrian Baslin, is being celebrated as a hero.

Estimated lost territory: 23%

Date: 26th of August
Year: New 0
Title: Victory

The first deployment of firearms ground the cultists offensive to a disastrous halt. Only a few soldiers and predominantly the younger ones had a knack for what the system calls [mana manipulation]. Combining that and the fact that the majority of guns and ammunition will take a bit longer still to be delivered, there were maybe 1 in 200 to 300 soldiers with a rifle. The difference in weapons was so large though, that more than 200 enemy soldiers had to have died across the whole front. It was good to see the cold steel of technology massacre the primitive wooden spears of our enemies.

Plans for a counteroffensive are being discussed and most are treating this war as if it was practically over now. I like the optimism but my gut feeling tells me this won’t be so easy. I hope I am wrong.

Estimated lost territory: 23%

Date: 31st of August
Year: New 0
Title: Frustration

I was right. The usage of firearms gave us total ranged and defensive dominance, but it did nothing to quell the determination of our enemies. They started felling trees left and right to construct movable barriers made of entire logs. We laughed at this, assured that our weapons would be able to annihilate them and didn’t even think that the cultists would be able to move them in the first place.

There were two mistakes we made here. One, we failed to take into account that, because of the system, people are getting stronger than what should normally be possible. This was especially so for those at the front.
And two, we never considered that things other than us humans may have access to the system. The wooden walls held much longer than we thought. We are still able to get through them, but it takes more time and more of our finite ammunition. For now the attempts of the cultists remain fruitless, but they are getting closer and their movable walls better.

Estimated lost territory: 23%

Date: 04th of September
Year: New 0
Title: Plague

A plague broke out in our western most front. Both sides are suffering and physical fighting reduced to a minimum as both sides are busy with a different kind of war.
The rest of the front is holding strong, but we are unable to push back. Hopes are high that the cultists run out of bodies first in this war of attrition. At least the estimated KIA’s of our military favour our side now. They didn’t when this whole thing started.

Oceanside deaths: 8.753 confirmed
Meran cultist deaths: ~15.000

Estimated lost territory: 23%

Date: 15th of September
Year: New 0
Title: Slog

The war is still going, but nothing has changed.
There are rumours going around in christian churches in the territory north west of ours, rumours of their god Meran. This is worrying news, especially since these are the same people that offered aid in exchange for fealty.

Estimated lost territory: 23%

Date: 21st of September
Year: New 0
Title: Dread

The cultists discovered something, something that made them inhumanly strong temporarily. People started to call it a buff, but whatever it was, it allowed them to shrug off bullets while only suffering surface wounds, gave them speed that was difficult to adjust to and the strength to barrel through brick walls with abandon. 

We don’t have a counter for this. Eyes and such are still vulnerabilities and explosives work, but aside from that we can only wait out the buffs or kill the buffed cultists that make it to us in gigantic suicide explosions by letting the ambient mana react with our firearms. The enemy soldiers weren’t the source of the buff though and not especially valuable assets.

We lost a town and the surrounding villages on the day of their first surprise attack.

Estimated lost territory: 24%

Date: 28th of September
Year: New 0
Title: Pressure

We are now in a slow retreat, trying to shed as much enemy blood as we can for every inch of land we give. That still means more evacuations, which means more refugees. The people aren’t blind and they can see the war isn’t going well. They want results, some piece of news that isn’t bad and gives them something to cling to. If our leaders aren’t able to give them something soon, they may not remain our leaders for much longer.

Estimated lost territory: 26%

Date: 7th of October
Year: New 0
Title: Aid

Our leaders decided to accept the aid of our neighbours. Oceanside will now be part of the still not founded kingdom. The only concession we, I mean they, managed to receive was that Oceanside would be a duchy. It will take time for soldiers and materials to arrive, but now there is hope. What they were able to help us with immediately, was our understanding of mana and magic. They know much more than we do.

Estimated lost territory: 29%

Date: 20th of October
Year: New 0
Title: Magic

Mana is fascinating, but sadly I won’t be able to go into the intricacies of what we learned in this report. What I can say however, is that everyone can use mana to do magic, but some are much more talented and the ones important for this war.

With a methodology on how to do magic and a few example spells, the talented mages were able to create spells of their own. At first we believed magic would remain a utility addition to the war, seeing as it was still in its infancy and relatively undeveloped, but we discovered that the buffed soldiers who gave us so much pain were ridiculously vulnerable against magic attacks. Suddenly we had a counter to the enemy's ace and favour swung in our direction. We are ready to push back.

Estimated lost territory: 32%

Date: 3rd of November
Year: New 0
Title: Vengeance

With the arrival of allied soldiers and even more magic expertise our counteroffensive began in full swing. Now it was the Meran cultists who were on the back foot and our soldiers were brutal in their push back. After we discovered some of the things our enemies did behind their defensive lines no more prisoners were taken, though death was too much of a mercy for them.

Estimated lost territory: 28%

Date 10th of November
Year: New 0
Title: Ghosts

Our offensive was hindered by weird magical phenomena that we found around old battlefields and had to avoid. Some areas were completely devoid of life and everything that entered started to die itself. Then there was a town where possessed corpses shambled around, attacking some things but leaving others alone. Our allies had experiences with them and identified them as spectres, beings of mana that were defined by the intent they fed on. There were other areas where soldiers started to hallucinate and fight against imaginary foes or areas where every living being got the urge to kill every other living being in sight. It seemed that with mana around, the scars of war left on the planet were much more apparent.

Estimated lost territory: 26%

Date: 22nd of November
Year: New 0
Title: Gods

We believe that gods are a different kind of mana being, but similar to spectres. This came about because a second Meran was born in the yet to be founded kingdom, making us reasonably sure our enemies god is also real and that he is older. We also believe that the second Meran was somehow influenced or polluted by the first, why else would they choose the same name, but we do not say this part out loud for fear of retribution from our allies. This didn’t stop us from using the power invested in us as a duchy to ban the church from entering and operating in Oceanside territory. The church wasn’t happy, but the soon to be king was delighted. It set us on edge.

Estimated lost territory: 20%

Date: 7th of December
Year: New 0
Title: Founding celebration

Today the kingdom of Erdanien was officially established and our Oceanside duchy was part of it. A kingdom wide celebration was held, one our citizens really needed. Our leaders weren’t really happy though. The party is still going and wild.

The war couldn’t be stopped for this and fighting continued. Per agreements our duchy will retain all its territories, even those lost before, but what we will gain in addition depends on our contribution to the war. We will try our best, but we lost many soldiers and the rest are exhausted. Stopping is unacceptable though, the more territory we gain from the cultists, the easier it will be to rebel against Erdanien in the future.

Estimated lost territory: 11%

Date 13th of December
Year: New 0
Title: Back again

We have pushed the cultists back to our starting borders. Now we are going to take in retribution. The cultists have been constantly forced to retreat for weeks. We will see how they do on their homeground.

Estimated lost territory: 0%

Date: 17th of December
Year: New 0
Title: Horror

The march of our army has been uncontested, but we have to go painfully slow. The cultists have left fields littered with dead bodies in our path. Some of the corpses had been put on stakes and were already half decomposed. We can’t just go through these fields, the risk of illnesses is too high and so, we have to go slowly, burning the dead and cleaning up behind our enemies.

Date: 29th of December (Author note: around present Argul time)
Year: New 0
Title: Enemy defences

We finally reached the enemy's defence line. They had prepared trenches and wooden palisades to fend us off, trying to minimise our ability to use firearms. Nonetheless, our first assault was somewhat successful. We managed to inflict a lot of casualties, but weren’t able to fully push them out of their holes. Their soldiers also seem to be a bit more resilient than we were used to, but aren't weak like the other buffed, which forced us to retreat out of caution. It will be a pain to root them out, but it won’t stop us from eliminating this scourge.