Prologue:
"Oh, what has the little lamb dragged in?"
"Wouldn't you say dragged around, more like?"
"Hehehe so it seems, but look at it struggling, how interesting!"
"Say, to reject the light even when it took a direct shine to it, would it not make a great champion?"
"No, no how boring. It would deny us just as much as that lightbulb. Let it choose us. It likes its little bargains does it not? Or transactions with clearly outlined terms and conditions as it likes to call them. How delightful!
"Let's cause some chaos I say! Throw it in with all the other little sock puppets."
"You always say that. Fine, I agree nonetheless, for its stubbornness deserves a reward!"
"Seconded. No blessings yet though, we wouldn't want to sour our partnership."
Waking up for the third time as a baby and for the second time in an orphanage, I cursed the X-species once again for their lack of originality, customer service, and their inability to improve their obviously unsuccessful strategy.
The conversation I overheard after my peaceful death between X-2, X-3, and X-4 indicated that they were a rival enterprise also seeking to dole out "blessings". In an eerie facsimile to the cursed type-95 orb they intended to force me to voluntarily accept a bargain with them, without clearly outlined terms or conditions. During that meeting they did not even specify the payment I would render them for their "blessing", which seemingly was part of the course for the entities that somehow qualified to manage human reincarnation. In all likelihood, any dealings I had with them would be done in bad faith and result in mental corruption.
As a peace-loving individual who valued her mental integrity and personal freedom, I would never again compromise my principles to bargain with beings who did not value societal rules or free market principles. While pursuing survival above all else was of course an entirely rational viewpoint the fact was that bargaining with trans-dimension entities was both entirely unconducive to my long term goal of survival (as a mindless crusader self-preservation instincts tended to go out of the window) and would most certainly lead to the me that I wanted to preserve to be totally subverted in a mad attempted to inspire faith. As my previous lives have proven human ingenuity and rationality would ultimately sweep aside such meaningless drivel in a wave of progress.
Though considering the circumstances of my third life it may be more accurate to call it the tendency of sentient life to work towards modernity, where faith would be replaced by logical self-interest . Inclusivity was important as a good HR manager, as to not allow racial discrimination, or in the case of my new world, speciesism, to hamper work efficiency.
Indeed, the continent I now inhabited was populated by more than just the humans. Through the ingenuity of the capitalist system my new birth-nation, the so-called "Dread Empire of Praes", had incorporated the Goblin and Orc races into itself, simply by offering fair compensation for services rendered. In fact, like the empire of my second life, Praes was a wonderful case of meritocracy, lacking even the implicit discrimination based on my gender that had somewhat hindered my career prospects previously. In fact, our current, highly successful, and seemingly ageless monarch was a woman.
Of course, the name of the new empire I found myself in had given me pause, when I first heard it. My worry that I had been reborn into a terror state that openly worshiped evil had however proven entirely unfounded, as the excellent state run education in the orphanage I resided in had disproven my embarrassing assumption.
It seems that around 850 years ago the then monarch, one Dread Empress Triumphant, had led an extremely successful military campaign over the rest of the continent using summoned extra-dimensional entities as foot soldiers. The primitive, feudal societies that sadly still dominated most of the continent had done as medieval peasants are wont to do and condemned their enemies as "devils" and "demons". Realizing the effect on the morale of peasant levies such a reputation had, Triumphant had encouraged such rumors to fuel her conquests.
Additionally, the woman began to style herself as "Dread Empress" which apparently had been a title, or "name" as the locals would call it, that had existed before her ascendency and was commonly used by the rulers of Praes. Of course, the far more likely explanation was that in order to generate legitimacy, as all monarchic governments tended to, the woman had used her absolute power to simply falsified the vanishingly few records that existed of the time period before her in order to pretend to hail from a long line of previous autocrats with similar stylings.
In much the same way her successors had adopted her titles and iconography to link themselves to the mighty conqueror. At first, this was wildly successful under the reign of Terribils II who aligned himself with the previous dictator to shore up domestic support and present a uniting ideology to the many tribes and city states that made up the empire. Unfortunately, linking yourself to an expansionist tyrant also made the surrounding nations nervous, culminating in multiple wars of aggression. Unlike the empire of my first life, however, Praes actually managed to repel the invaders, further legitimizing the ideology and iconography of "evil".
Then, in a series of political assassinations the reasonable leadership of the empire was replaced by fanatics who actually believed in a creed that only ever should have served as a uniting history. Only occasionally did a Dread Emperor with an actual understanding of governance come to power, such as the latest Empress Malica.
Frankly, considering that the dominant philosophical and cultural movement for the eight hundred years until her arrival could be adequately summed up as "Do Evil, Gain Power, Expand" in that order, it was a wonder my country still existed. Openly professing to wanting to conquer our neighbours in order to commit "unspeakable evils" resulted in a diplomatic position that could conservatively be described as isolated. In fact, the only state my birth nation had somewhat warm relations with was some isolationist fortress city ruled by an undead magus who also made up the entirety of the sentient population. And, as could be expected from a consumer population of one, this "nation" was not even a useful export market.
In fact, until recently my country did not have any land based trading partners despite their abundance of natural resources and their technological and magical edge over the rest of the continent. Instead, we had kept our economy afloat mostly via sea based trade with the Thalassocracy and the Free Cities, who often, after having to realign themselves with the Principality of Procer, issued trade embargoes. Luckily I was born into a more prosperous time and peaceful time. Barely more than a decade ago Praes had finally conquered and annexed their long time enemy, the feudal kingdom of Callow, and was still busy absorbing it, while the other continental great power, Procer, was still reeling from a two-decade-long civil war.
While my contemporaries at the General Staff often noted my extreme distaste for communism, having been reborn into a world where medieval societies dominated, I found that there was in fact one ideology that deserved even more of my ire. Had Praes not conquered Callow, I would have been born into a nation where the free market economy was subverted by state sponsored cartels who officialised themselves as "guilds". A nation where societal advancement was outright blocked for those lacking the required bloodline (which, considering I was once again an orphan would have been disastrous for my future career options) and commoners could not only be unilaterally drafted by nobles for military purposes, but also their private building projects. Even a strictly rational person like myself could not help but feel immense gratitude to Empress Malicia. Not only had she shattered the feudal system, even the orphanage I resided in and the excellent state education I received were provided thanks to her initiatives.
Honestly, my only gripe with my new nation was the quality of the local administration, but as one of the architects of the successor states of the Rus Federation I could understand the difficulty of finding capable administrators when political appointments were the only options. In fact, that the only city suffered under a corrupt administration was the former capital of Callow, Laure, spoke very positively to the Empress's political skill.
Though sadly my countrymen and fellow orphans did not share such a rational opinion.
"Hey Tany, whatcha you reading?"
One such fellow was Catherine Foundling, whom I considered a pleasant acquaintance. Unlike the rest of the orphans she intended to advance her social position and did not hold onto that ridiculous Callowan "eternal grudges" mind-set.
"Catherine, my name is Tanya, not Tany. Properly addressing your conversation partner demonstrates both basic politeness and makes them more likely to answer your question."
"But you will answer my question anyway because you know politeness has never stopped me from bugging you until you tell me what the mysterious book in the foreign language is about."
Sometimes pleasant acquaintance more like, though admittedly her line of reasoning was somewhat rational and experience told me she was telling the truth.
"Merely a history about how our nation successfully subjugated the Callowan territory written by a Procrean scholar."
In response, Catherine started scowling.
Well, maybe stating that she did not share the revanchist mindset of the former Callowans may have been a bit misleading. While she did not bear a grudge about the conquest itself, she was quite opinionated on the city's administration. And so she once again started her rant.
"I still cannot believe you support Governor Mauz. Or that you still pretend to be an Albino Soninke when you look more Callowan than I!"
"And once again I want to remind you that I do not support incompetent governance, which is also the reason I am a loyal subject of the empire and do not support a rulership model based on bloodlines. A rulership model, that should the Fairfax dynasty have remained in power, would have led to us both of us dead on the street instead of living in a richly appointed state run orphanage."
"Hey, I can take care of myself!"
"I am certain that as a toddler you had already acquired your pit fighting abilities, which would have been necessary to survive on streets without Legion patrols."
Knowing a losing argument, or more likely unwilling to contemplate a Laure without the army she (despite my best attempts) practically worshiped, she instead brought the argument back to her original accusation: "I can't help but notice you didn't say anything about the wannabe Soninke part."
"Because I did not deign to stoop to your level of racial discrimination. That my ethnicity is Callowan has no bearing on my ability or my loyalty to the empire."
Though it will have an effect on my career prospects, I added silently. The millennia long rivalry and constant battles between Praes and Callow had built up much resentment. Still, the fact that the current "black knight", which was the traditional title for the commander of the Legions, was a Duni, an ethnic minority of Praes, showed that in Malicia's Empire irrational concepts like race took a backseat to ability.
"Fine, fine you damn patriot (her hypocrisy!). We don't have time for me to win another argument. The big lady wants all orphans to gather in the yard, some army mage or some such is checking for magical talent."
I set of in a run immediately, realising I just wasted time frivolously with Catherine when my superior was waiting for me. Internally though, I was once again cursing Being X and its miserable breed for their unoriginality.
AN:
Tanya's misunderstanding of the Dread Empire:
Her explanation isn't as farfetched as it would seem at first, especially for an advent student of history like her. We have in fact many real life cases of monarchs who inflated the number of their predecessors (like Charles XII who was actually Charles VI, though he probably did so unknowingly unlike the ancestor who ordered the mythological history written that Charles relied on) or retroactively changed the title of address (like the Qin and Han Emperors who just downright inventing a whole fictional dynasty, also lead by an emperor). Tanya just assumes the same thing happened here, because which nation would be so insane as to internationally isolate themselves since their very founding by claiming to be "evil"? Not to mention that in Canon the Praesi actually have a history of altering their history, with a suspicious blank period (The Secret Wars) that Tanya would have noted.
