Chapter X: Reparations

It was around this time that the Eternals began bestowing items of power to those they once avoided directly interacting with, in the form of Eternal Masks. While worn, a mask could give a mortal being dominion over a particular facet of reality. Even though they would not directly improve the statistics of said mortal, the power alone was immeasurable*. The only price they would ask is for the mortals to perform their duties, a price very few would consider high. It is important to note, however, that they did not do this merely to be nice.

As the war had many casualties on both sides, at levels of Lesser Eternal and below, many smaller domains were left vacant. This was particularly visible on the side of the Protection Faction, as the Destruction Faction was far more likely to end the existence of their kin, coupled with the fact that the Protection Faction had non-lethal options available. It is for this reason that often quoted that Infinel was the one that provided the masks when Infinels forces merely had a higher number of slots to fill.

Additionally, lower tiers of Eternals also needed the ability to recruit on their own: it was not the job of higher Eternals to hire their underlings’ underlings. One might consider this to be a stupid idea, giving mortals the ability to grant other mortals immortal power, but in the case of Eternals this was not the case: Any council member could, with little effort, stop their entire host of Lesser Eternals from any sort of malfeasance, and any misuse of the power for personal gain would be extremely easy to catch. In any case, the duties of an Eternal left those granted said power little time to plot. At least, until some Eternals started to quit, resulting in some of those in charge of making the Masks now lacking immediate superiors. This lead to the infamous Kildracks Incident**, and later the events of the first ADVENTURERS! *** The latter, of which, mostly solving the problem by resulting in the device used to create the Masks being destroyed.

* Any measuring tool would itself be finite, after all.

** See Chapter XII

*** See Chapter XVI