Once there was a world without him, then he was simply there. The being knew who he was; he was Hargal, god of burials, and was on the world of Allyssa. It was a strange world he knew where life seemed to almost strangle death with how much life there was in the world compared to death.

  Which Hargal instinctively knew was strange. For it was the nature of things for the dead to outnumber the living. But Hargal decided not to dwell on it any longer and set out to do his duty. He first gathered the few graves of Detreon there were and brought them to the tombs that came into existence at the same time he did.

  It took time, for they were scattered across Alyssa as he collected the bodies for proper burial. He watched the many creatures as they lived by their instincts and the people as they lived off the bounty of the land through hard work and the guidance of his sister.

  Sadly, he had a hard time observing them, for most beings fled at the sight of him. But he could not blame them for that; he was a being unseen on this world; his form was that of spiked bone, and his eyes were dark, endless void. All things considered, he should be grateful none had charged him out of misplaced fear.

  But eventually he had all those who were supposed to be buried in his tombs settled, and soon most of his time was taken up traveling from one tomb to the next, expanding them so they could take in the constant influx of herd animals that had to be buried in the tombs, as was the right of any and all creatures of Allyssa.

  Sadly, Hargal began to run into problems that only worsened as time went on. Not only was he in a never-ending race to keep his tombs across Alyssa ready to receive the constant influx of animals that died across Alyssa, but as Hargal made his eternal journey to see to the needs of the dead, he began to find his tombs had been vandalized.

  Hargal had no idea who would do such a thing. Not only were the living terrified of him, but his tombs left no one brave enough to venture into his tombs to commit the vandalism in the first place. But there was no one who should have any reason to come into the tombs and start smashing them up, for why would the people of the farming kingdoms or the wildlife of Allyssa enter his tombs and begin smashing the resting place of the dead?

  Hargal went to Detrei for her connection to the life of Allyssa; it was strong, and if anyone knew who was vandalizing his tombs, it would be her. Sadly, instead of the knowledge he sought, he found accusations instead. Detrei, instead of helping him to find the vandals, instead accused him of making mistakes with his expansions.

  She said that his constant and rapid expansion of his tombs had caused them to become unstable and parts to collapse, which he was misreading as vandalism instead of the signs of his mistakes that she claimed it was.

  Hargal, of course, denied this outright, pointing out the damage had been done to the crypts within the tombs and no damage had been done to the ceiling, meaning there was no sign of the structure damage from poor planning like Detrei had claimed.

  Hargal, after making his point, once again asked for Detrei's help in finding the vandals, but she didn't believe him, nor was she willing to come to his tomb to see the evidence. This left the two at an impasse, and so Hargal had to make do without Detrei's help.

  Hargal tried to go among the living to find those responsible, but sadly, as a god of death, he naturally frightened the living with just his presence alone, much less actually speaking to them to find out who is guilty.

  So he made no progress trying to find the culprits himself and eventually had no choice but to give up on finding the culprits and instead had to try and find ways of preventing the vandalism from taking place to begin with. He began to look for ways to defend his tombs. He looked around Alyssa and found the insects that called Alyssa home seemed to be the only things fighting and constantly defending themselves, at least from each other. So what better beings to inspire him to defend his tombs?

  He took specific inspiration from one of the insects. the one the creator had said was called a blister bug. An insect that covers itself in an oil that caused blisters to any that tried to touch it. So Hargal went to the pits of his tomb, where the few insects who died of old age went and threw themselves in. He then extracted the oil from the pit belonging to the blister bugs. Using this oil as a foundation, Hargal mixed it with his Divinity to create a special oil that would cause any not near death to burn in painful rashes if they touched it. He called this new concoction he had created the dying ward.

  This would allow the dieing to come to their resting place safely and deny the vandal's from disturbing his tombs. So he began to place the dieing ward over every entrance on each of his tombs as he went about his duties of expanding and maintaining the underground tombs of allyssa.

  For a time this seemed to work and Hargal found joy in his success as he went about his duties once again undisturbed finding his tombs in the same condition as he left them in. Returning to the status quo of always needing more space for the new dead. This sadly changed as the dieing ward somehow failed and something or someone got through and began smashing up his tombs once again.

  Hargal approached Detrei once again for help, hoping that perhaps this time she was more amicable to helping him this go-around. Sadly, it was not to be, and she was just as dismissive as she had been before, as well as accusing him of being incompetent once again, telling him any damage found in his tombs was because of his poor planning.

  Once again finding himself on his own to deal with the situation. Hargal looked to the insects of Alyssa once again for the inspiration he needed. This time the insect he found to inspire him was the giant centipede. Hargal took the bones from the most damaged tombs of the horse crypts to create the guardians of the entrance hallways for the tombs.

  He first organized the rib bones of different horses to make the main body; he then took the leg bones and sharpened them into long bone spears connected to the now centipede-like torso before he embedded this new skeleton centipede in the ceiling. Hargal put back the horses necks and heads, leaving those for burial, before he then took his divinity from inside himself and began to fill the creation with the breath of undeath. Now this creation was a member of the undead and was ready to defend its tomb with its many bony spears in combination with the dying ward.

  Now that Hargal had a way forward, he went around to the different tombs creating these skeletal guardians who would defend the tombs from the vandals. With this Hargal new peace once again as he went about his work expanding and maintaining the tombs, now checking in with each respective guardian.

  The guardians who Hargal named the skeletal ceiling centiedes weren't intelligent enough to identify the vandals, but they were smart enough to know when the vandals came to vandalize the tomb. So the guardians were able to do their duty and defend the tomb. Hargal also now had someone to talk to at each tomb; while the skeletal centipedes didn't make for the best conversationalists, they were great listeners. So Hargal was grateful for their company.

  The guardians did their duty for a time, and Hargal began to know what companionship was for; now he had a race of beings on Allyssa that he could speak to and would not flee at the sight of him. Though this peace ended one day as Hargal came upon one of his tombs and found its guardian had been pierced through with a sharp object straight down the middle, leaving it in two pieces on the entrance floor.

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  Hargal stood there for a moment just looking at the shattered guardian, not saying anything. Before a roar of rage tore through his mouth and echoed throughout his surroundings. Hargal quickly gathered what was left of the shattered guardian and tried to fix the damage, but it was far too late, and he could do nothing for the shattered guardian. Hargal sat there for a while holding the remnants of a being he once called friend.

  Hargal got up and went about fixing the damage done by the vandals to the tomb and then created a special crypt in the deepest part of the tomb for the fallen guardian before he went about creating a new one to defend the tomb. Once he was finished, Hargal quickly went to the other tombs to find the situation repeated time and time again: guardians cut in half with smashed crypts lying strewn about the tomb. Each time Hargal having to pick up the shattered pieces of his friends and burying them before having to create their replacements.

  Hargal feeling grief and rage from the loss of so many of his guardians. Now he felt shame and self-doubt; he had lost so many and accomplished nothing but a small reprieve for the sacrifice of the only beings who had ever welcomed him, who even now were being slayed defending his tombs. No, it would seem his defensive mindset had caused him and those who answered to him nothing but grief and setbacks. He needed to go on the offensive, but how to go about that?

  Hargal once again looked to the insects for his answer, for while they had not solved the problem of the vandals totally, They had been what had gotten him this far to even begin with; not only that, but he had chosen insects to use defensively to begin with, so now he would simply pick one that was offensive in nature for inspiration.

  He chose the always-on-the move driver ants, a ravenous form of insect that seemed to slaughter all in their path. Figuring this insect is what he needed for inspiration to take a more offensive role.

  Hargal began by taking the bones of deceased oxen, taking their ribs to form the torso and their horn to form the mandibles. He then began to take the legs and sharpen them to a point to give them proper insectoid legs. Once this new undead creation made to look like a giant driver ant was finished, Hargal filled it with the breath of undeath and watched as it scuttled about.

  Seeing the creature seeming to work as intended once Hargal has done a few tests with it. By having it display the strength of its mandibles and its running speed. Hargal then proceeded to make squads of 50 in each squad to patrol the different routes he took to the different tombs. So anyone who tried to attack his guardians risked his new skeletal driver ants coming at them from the rear.

  For a time, this new solution of risking an attack from his new skeletal driver ants long before they got near his tomb and risking getting attacked from behind by them while fighting his guardian caused the vandals to stop their attacks once again.

  Sadly, though, the skeletal ants patrolling Hargal routes caused Detrei to become enraged, for Hargal's domain was below, and hers was above; he had slighted her by suddenly having undead patrolling her lands of influence, even if it was routes mostly avoided for fear of running into him.

  Hargal tried to soothe Detrei by explaining that the skeletal driver ants were to only protect his tombs from vandals, not threaten her lands or her people. She did not believe it, for Detrei told Hargal that he was jumping at things that were not there and that there were no vandals, but his ants were real and they were a threat to her people, but she would allow them to remain so long as they remained on their paths once she realized Hargal would not send them to the tombs instead.

  So once again peace returned to the tombs of Hargal, but now not only could he talk with the guardians of the tomb, he could also speak with the skeletal driver ants, though just like the guardians, they were more listeners than speakers, occasionally nodding their heads to show they understood and answering whatever Hargal told them.

  This eventually ended when Hargal began to find the guardians and patrols destroyed with what was left of them smashed into bits. So once again Hargal was forced to bury those few he had come to know and create their replacements. Hargal, once again feeling rage and depression at the loss of his undead, looked to the wisdom of the insects to guide him on what he should create next to stop the vandals.

  Hargal thought long and hard and decided that this time he needed to go into the skies instead of staying on the ground. He found the hawker dragonfly, an insect of great sight and ability at flight, to be the perfect choice. So once again Hargal went to the insect pits and went to the pit dedicated to the hawker dragonfly.

  Hargal first began to combine the wings of several hundred hawker dragonflies to create the first set of wings. He then took the eyes of several hundred as well, creating two shining orbs before taking the leftover bodies and combining them into one giant spear-like one, adding in the eyes and wings before giving it the breath of undeath, letting it rise as what Hargal called the seeker fly.

  Once the first seeker fly was finished, Hargal then began creating hundreds more to begin patrolling the skies of just that one tomb alone, and after he went to each tomb, rebuilding the shattered patrols and guardians, he added the seeker flies to the mix of each patrol. This angered Detrei greatly because not only did Hargal claim part of the lands as his domain with his routes, now he was claiming the skies with his seeker flies.

  It was almost too much to bear, but Detrei bore it for the peace of her people, and Hargal tried his best to not impose on her lands any more than he already had to try and placate her, but with his new seeker flies, his tombs were once again safe, and Hargal went back to his duties of expanding and maintaining the tombs. While his protectors worked in tandem to push back any attempt on his tombs by the vandals.

  This cycle of constant siege between the vandals and Hargal finally came to an end when, after a brief skirmish, some of the seeker drones followed the trail of where the most recent attempt by the vandals to attack the tombs had been attempted. The seeker flies found a stable and destroyed it, hurting the stable hands in the process.

  The stable hands had nothing to do with the vandalism, so as far as they were concerned, undead in the shape of flies had just attacked them, and they were lucky to be alive. They went to their hill lord, and he in turn went to his king, who gathered the farmers and armed them with sharpened scythes to cut the menace down.

  The men under their king followed the direction of where the seeker flies had come from and eventually found themselves on the path of Hargal, a forbidden path for good reason. For who went on a death god's routine route. Sadly, though they had a duty, they had been attacked, and the threat had to be dealt with for the good of their farms and families.

  They eventually stumbled upon a patrol of skeletal driver ants and seeker flys. The men charged attacking the patrol, and after a fierce battle, won, mostly because they outnumbered the patrol by about 5 to 1. Sadly, what made this whole incident so much worse is once they were done destroying the patrol, Hargal stumbled upon them, and seeing his shattered undead, Hargal had become convinced that these people and their kingdom had been the ones invading his tomb.

  For the king and his men's part, they simply fled back to their kingdom once they saw Hargal was upon them. Not realizing that not explaining themselves would be their doom. So full of rage that this kingdom had been destroying his tombs, Hargal gathered his undead creations and created more to triple their number before leading a massive attack on this kingdom.

  Overwhelmed by the onslaught of Hargal's undead. The surrounding kingdoms gathered their people and marched to the survivors aid. Though as Hargal's forces were facing a counterattack by the surrounding farming kingdoms, Hargal felt his divinity reach its first peak and his divine domain expand for the first time, and Hargal had to choose his very first expansion.

  While the battle was raging between Hargal's insect-like undead and Detrei's many farming kingdoms, Hargal decided to pick the father of dark insects, considering insects had not let him down so far, as well as the fact he would need it, especially considering the conflict had grown far beyond what he had expected.

  Once Hargal had chosen, a dark light emanated from his skeletal form, and soon it consumed him, and unlike his sister's transformation, he was changed, for now Hargal had a giant skeletal centipede form as a lower torso.

  Hargal began to recall his undead insectlike creations, feeling the need, as the father of dark insects, to begin their transformation. He began to raise the farmers that had already fallen to his insects like the undead as he went down to the closest tomb. As the war turned against Detrei, eventually causing her to call for the creator's aid.

  "Well, I take it you didn't mean for Hargal to use insects so much when he was designing his undead, did you, Robert? I know my audience would love to know." Simon asked Robert in his best radio voice.

  " Noo I didn't, nor did I expect him to turn into an undead insect god hybrid either." Robert replied, clearly exasperated with trying to understand how the hell Hargal had gotten the insect option as a choice in divine domain expansion, but he didn't know, especially since Simon thought it would be better if he let Alyssa have her own secrets even from him.

  So unless it was an emergency call from Detrei or Hargal telling him of an emergency situation he wasn't aware of, what was going on with Allyssa? Well, unless either of them expands their divine domains, that kind of level-up sends a kind of wave that got his attention.

  "Well anyway, now that Allyssa is set up, I believe it's time to see how our first player is getting along, don't you?" Simon said with a mischievous tone in his voice.

  "What are you on about, Simon?" Robert was confused about what Simon was talking about and a bit concerned about what Simon might be up to.

  "Oh, nothing, my dear contestant Robert; we're just getting into the next part of our little show." Simon said with a cheer in his voice, causing Robert to almost physically see Simon doing jazz hands.

  "Right, I guess we will get on with the next part." Robert replied, figuring Simon was talking about the players now entering Alyssa as he turned back to the world, looking through the workshop's many monitors as both Simon and Robert watched the first players enter Alyssa.