The Chained Watcher

Arson :)

~~~

Phil had stayed behind at Sanctuary, as their old base had come to be known, to talk to the residents living there and see what had changed. Faella sent out messages to the other kids they'd rescued, so he was going to talk to them too. Grian hadn't stuck around, having a couple plans after learning about the Church's object of worship.

Flying away, he looked back at the burning Church building he had exercised his right to arson against. Yep, that's one building that won't be salvageable alright. Several priests were trying to throw buckets of water on the fire, but it was a bit late for anything but torrential rain to extinguish it.

With not a cloud in the sky, the chances of that happening were next to none. This was the third building he'd burned to the ground already, and if it wasn't time to go check in with the new base, there would be quite a few more. Still, telling the other players about the Watcher worshipers was the priority here, so no more arson for today.

Not feeling like flying the entire way, Grian pulled a long distance teleport to a relatively close part of the ocean. He beelined for the command room, garnering the attention of the strategists sitting and staring at the map. "Oh god, not you again."

"Aw, c'mon, aren't you happy to see me?"

"You're always the one who brings the most problematic information, what did you expect? The village, the other continent, the time dilation problem, the ongoing war, and now what?"

"I, well when you put it that way, you're not wrong... And who am I to break a streak? So you know the Church fighting in the war? Yeeeaaaah they kinda worship Watchers."

The various strategists stared at him for a good second before slowly slumping, massaging their temples or just face planting on the table in front of them. "Is there any other earth-shattering news we should know about?"

"Uhhh, apart from the fact that our old base has quite literally come to life? Maybe the Hero Summoning thing, but other than that, nope!"

Several more heads thunked against the table. "What do you mean, our old base came to life???"

"The spooky forest surrounding it moved its roots and brambles to create a path to walk on, the World Tree has grown more flowers, I think the spaceship has activated itself, and not to mention the giant magic shield surrounding the entire base. Literally, it came to life."

"And this Hero thing?"

"Apparently the Church used some kind of spell to summon highschoolers from another world, so now they're stranded on this world with no way home. Naturally, they ran away the first opportunity they got, and they're now living in our old base along with retired soldiers and war-weary parents with their kids."

"So tell me. How many of the Church's buildings have you burned already?"

"Only three, I wanted to get back here to tell people what I learned first. For the most part, we probably shouldn't mess with the Church in case there's an active Watcher behind it."

"Then why did you burn their things?"

"They're at war, they won't have the time to track it down to us. If anything, they'll think it's just sabotage from the other side."

"Alright, fine... Go off and do stuff, we need to talk about the latest revelation you bashed us over the head with."

~~~

Someone with a variant Frostwalker enchant had made a speedy bridge across the ocean all the way to the mainland. It wasn't melting for some reason, so his assumption was that Doc had something to do with it. Either way, several players, after hearing about the Watcher worshiping Church, had set off to cause as much mayhem as humanly possible. 

The people in charge had managed to convince the not-so-stealthy not-so-fast players to design TNT dupers that work here and gather resources, which left most of the Exploration team to go wreak havoc. The signal towers had been improved too, and the responsible people leveraged that to its fullest to keep everyone else out of trouble.

For those channeling their inner demolitionist, they were told sternly to keep their destruction to the areas covered by the signal. This way, they could call for reinforcements if anything went wrong, and an ender pearl stasis chamber could be activated to pull them out of harm's way.

Grian naturally disregarded this, going after the more distant targets others wouldn't be able to reach in a reasonable time. Elytra had been crafted for the explorers, so the range that got hit was rather terrifying to take in fully. For the most part, everyone was pretty cautious when setting their explosives, or they just spammed a flint-&-steel and fled into the sky.

Only a couple people had needed their stasis chambers activated, and there had been no losses so far. Admiring his latest act of arson, Grian returned to the range of the signal towers to check up on the latest news. Several maps of the already destroyed locations had been updated, and the leading groups were neck and neck. What, you thought this wouldn't end up as a competition?

A new TNT duper design was up, this one with a design that let it move while bombing the land below it to smithereens. Over to the west, a new signal tower was up, so the different factions were fighting to get all the easy targets first. Actually, this looks like something Doc made. It's modular, so it can be repeated to extend the effective coverage for more efficient bombing runs.

If the Church didn't worship Watchers, he'd almost feel bad for them. Each and every one of their establishments is getting razed to the ground with much prejudice, and some of the players had vented in a much more... bloody, manner. Let's just say they were feeling much better after taking out their anger on the priests.

Any attempts at retaliation had fallen flat before it even got out the door, leaving the angry players to run amok with little restraint. Still, Grian had been feeling a little on edge lately, with no clear reason why. A little more failsafes wouldn't hurt.

Flying back to base, he rifled through his chests to see what he had to work with. Flint, wool, a couple spare TNT, compasses, ooh, he can work with those. He fiddled with the compasses, binding them to some things the other hermits always carried with them. There's probably a smarter way to keep them safe, but this way he can go help if anything happens. 

While he's at it, he should make some for Xisuma too. The server's admin worries himself enough as is, so this ought to give him some peace of mind.

~~~