“You’re in a tech-verse, not a fantasy realm, as you doubtless figured out. Furthermore, it’s the grimdark universe dominated by the Four Warp Gods: Klaw, jRaztl, Amourae, and Riggibuhl.” All the hands went up at the same time. “No, it’s not Warhammer 40k, although there are certainly similarities, and honestly, I’m not operating at a scale where I can really tell how much. For instance, there is a clear difference between psionics and magic. Perhaps due to the Eternal Emperor, psionics is a neutral force, although it comes with its hazardous side. Magic, on the other hand, is purely the province of the Warp... which means no energizing Soul Tats right now, period.”

“SHIT!” they all said together.

“I goddamn know.” I rolled my eyes with all of them. “What’s the use of having pre-paid Tats if I can’t use them? Anyway, any Good deities we can think of are utterly suppressed in the Warp, and that’s entirely by design. There are Lawful powers still in existence, although they are outmatched, and they spin around the axis the Eternal Emperor represents. Naturally, Law can counter Chaos, but without Good, Evil has an iron grip on much of this realm and society.

“For whatever reason, we were dumped onto a world where the dark side-“

“HAH!” they all interrupted together, and began to hum the Emperor’s March instantly.

{ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzWSJG93P8}

“-hasn’t overwhelmed the light side,” I winked back at them, waiting for the March to finish. “So, it’s largely Neutral fucked-up. I wouldn’t be exaggerating to say that this room probably represents the single largest concentration of Good souls on the planet.”

Heads turned right and left in counter-waves. Ugh? Damn..., they were all thinking.

“You’re inside the mega-city of Janus Prime, a production facility and habitation and arcology adjacent to the largest mines on the planet of Janus III here. Population is about 2.6 billion people, and it covers tens of thousands of square miles and cubic miles.

“There are massive class divisions in effect and negative pressures on society. Probably a third of the population is formally addicted to narcotics of varying severity. At least a fifth is psychopathic to some degree from societal pressures, the lack of opportunity to advance, the pure drudgery of their work, and competition for resources, and so can explode into violence or manic depression basically without warning. The average person sees a murder or suicide every day of their life here.”

They all blinked. Well, it was true!

“All that, of course, is why I have you here. The scale of what we have to do has to increase, and I can’t keep a personal touch on the numbers that we are working with here.

“To wit, our goal is very clear. We are to fuck up the Warp Gods, tear them off their thrones, open their Realm to Creation, and restore the Warp to serenity.”

250 whistles broke out in total synchronicity.

“Quest accepted?” I asked archly.

“YES, MOM!” they all shot back without missing a beat.

“Such good girls,” I winked at them. “Now, your programming defaults to Human Hagchild, and all I can say is, that’s a very good idea, because it keeps you grounded. However, you are not Human Hagchildren, you are Rantha Hags. You’ve gone through Hag Awakening, which turned you from vat-born Hagchild equivalents without an akashic connection to who you are right now. In other words, I exploited the Curse to fix the problems with technology in making pseudo-clone daughters.” I tapped the Brand on the side of my face. “If I got rid of this, I could not do that. I have to keep the remnants of my Curse around.

“I am an Exemplar Lite, inherited from Mom, who I believe is also an ExLite... but who knows, since she’s something completely unique, she may be an Exemplar as the first of her kind. Our kind? No, definitely her kind.

“Whatever, she skimmed off the stuff she didn’t want passed on, and probably couldn’t pass on, and encoded her personal Curse with that template. As Annis Hags have Annis Hagchildren, and their Curses make them Annis Hags, so Sama Rantha’s children are Rantha Hagchildren and her Curse makes us Rantha Hags.

“As you are my daughters, and I don’t have some post-Eternal shit of whatever degree Mom is working with, normal degradation has occurred, and you are all Advanced Rantha Hags. That means that all you get are +4 to all Primary Stats.”

I sounded mopey, but that simultaneous whistle rose up again as the lights dimmed and a holo display went up, showing the Stat line all of them had, and the Class and Racial Levels. “In the future, unless there is some effect not allowing these Classes to be taken, in which case the Karmic equivalent is freed up, this is what all Rantha Hags will come with. To wit, once you take away the Advanced Stat Line, you are by quite a degree the weakest of all Hags at creation. However... this is the advance schema.”

Flick, up it came, and I waited politely as they all scanned it.

An eerie trembling whistle arose, whose melody I knew well. All their eyes were literally glowing. Tremble, oh oooo oh, Tremble, we come...

“Yes, it is totally overpowered. Also, notice your waists, and the bands of Tats around them. Congratulations, those are Lilitu-level Blessing equivalents, the standard nine, and if you get the three physicals, the Alter Self ability automatically kicks in, although duration limited, and its magical, so you won’t use it, anyways... except internally, which means you qualify for Warshifter, among other things!”

They looked down at their taut bellies, then their sisters next to them, in front of them. Yep, they all had the same thing. No, none of them were active... except for six of them, over in the front corner, who got up together and walked up to flank me.

“Now, the Marks don’t come to us powered up, but since they are untyped stacking bonuses, I’m not gonna cry over it. Charge them up with Karma.

“You are naturally aware that such Marks come with telepathic contact between the grantors. Do NOT FUCKING INITIATE TELEPATHIC CONTACT WITH ONE ANOTHER!” all seven of my mouths said at the same time.

All their eyes opened wide together.

All six daughter-selves of me turned sideways, where the Constitution Mark had a dim coloration the other Marks didn’t have.

“I didn’t consider why our primogenitor didn’t keep a Marklink active with me. Well, it’s pretty basic. It’s because at our core, WE ARE ALL THE SAME!” all of my voices finished together grimly. “I Energized these Marks so I could monitor if anything was happening to you as you grew. When your Curses Awakened, they blew through the Markdoor and established instant harmonic resonance with me, because everything you are at your core, I am at my core... except there’s a lot more of me because older.

“Ergo, right now, I’m a seven-body hivemind,” I sighed, as all of me crossed their arms and looked over at all of them.

My daughters all grimaced together, going through the implications.

“That’s right. You initiate telepathic contact right now, there’s going to be absolute thought convergence, and you’re all going to end up hiveminds. If that was with me, there’d be just one person in this room right now, and I wouldn’t be needing to talk to all of me.”

“THANKS MOM!” came the unified sigh of relief from all of them, and they laughed despite themselves.

Dauntless don’t fear. The completely unnatural reaction, which would have creeped out any normal person, was more amused, and noted as something to really avoid.

“This is important because you all have recycled souls. You are reincarnations.” They all sat up straighter at that, eyes narrowing. “You all ARE different, and the souls you have belonged to your other parents.” They all blinked together. Yes, they were their mothers...

“Your grandmother seized upon an opportunity to enter the mortal realm, and came out at a finishing school for talented girls called Wendlerton Academy, which just so happened to be a very important center of Amouraen influence. All of you were pslaved and converted to Amourae, and that’s how all of you died.”

Their eyes narrowed sharply, and the air almost crackled with tension. Rantha Hags do not take kindly to being oppressed or brainwashed or enslaved by force, because that’s what the general Hag Curse wanted to do.

“Since you died Evil, willing or not, the Curse could latch onto you easily, and your grandmother used that to fix your souls to eggs in my ovaries, and at the same time used your genetic codes for the other half required to make you.

“You’ve gone through the reincarnation process, and you are a Null Forsaken, since you are a Rantha Hag. Amourae has no hold over you now, naturally. You are not the person you were... but you were indeed someone else in a past life, different than what you’ve been made into.”

256 Bands beeped, heads looked down, and visages popped up.

I’d compiled files on every single one of those dead girls, looted from the Academy, government files, and their Boole activity. They were fairly comprehensive, but the key thing was they all had faces, and they all had names.

The Rantha-nymphal equivalents of those faces stared at the images of the girls their souls used to belong too very intensely, indeed.

“And that is how you are going to be named.” Another beep, and names replaced the faces. “You are being named in honor of your mothers.” I turned my gaze to the brunette at the front left corner. “Starting with you, stand up and tell everyone your name.”

She rose with a grim yet serene look on her face, turned to face all the eyes staring at her, and said, “I am Phoebe Rantha!”

“HI PHOEBE!” everyone exclaimed together, waving. She waved back, smiling despite herself, and sat back down.

The lavender-haired Oriental girl next to her bounced to her feet, turning to face everyone and also waving. “I am Kwannon Rantha!” she said proudly...

-------

The names went around the room. There were a couple duplicates, and those who had the same name were naturally given middle names to differentiate them, and nicknames were promptly assigned to further individualize everyone.

Everyone introduced themselves, everyone got a chance.

“30 Charisma,” I stated calmly, after Leia Rantha sat down, and Fyr, Aura, Emma, Azure, Vivi, and Inigo behind me also introduced themselves. “At 30 natural Charisma, you can force down the reincarnation wall and look at who you were. At that point, your Identity should be absolute, and you can initiate telepathy with one another and myself.” I gestured at the six behind me. “I’m going to have been six different people, but I have to get there individually with each soul, Karma still has to be earned. I can’t open their past any more than you could.

“You’ve already done the math and you know you’ll have a 30 absolutely guaranteed at Eight, and sooner if you want it. So, you’re going to freaking Level.”

“DAMN RIGHT!” they all called to me, whistling and cheering. It was grinding time!

I held up my hand. “There’s a greater, overarching plan to all of this, of course.” They all nodded knowingly. They could figure out my base Stats, and hell ya, there was a plan. “You don’t all need to go Deep. Furthermore, this is a tech universe, not a magical one. Skills... are very, very important here!”

I let them consider the implications, especially since they had only minor exposure to tech skills. Even things as simple as Driving were electives.

“Let me show you where I’m at in terms of resources and advancements.” The holo came up, showing the world of Janus Prime as I knew it, displayed out in a planetary grid format of resources and empty spaces. Of note was the great desert to the west of Janus Prime, where basically nothing was, and nobody investigated.

This wasn’t much different from a resource-driven game. They all leaned forwards and began to calculate as the planet revolved, laying out the cities, mines, and major resources. Reams of the competing factions blew past, relative sizes, their leaders, off-world connections, and then centered on Janus Prime and zoomed in.