Once, Daniel Obrove was the Egomancer, a wizard who had grown powerful beyond the scope of mortal mages by exploiting the infinite potential of his own multiversal analogues. Daniel’s many counterparts were ripped from across spacetime and repurposed for his own use, be it as unwilling servants, as living fonts of energy, or as the output of powerful offensive magic. The archmage had no qualms with this, because each life he ruined was his, in a roundabout way. They were all Obrove, and thus Daniel held claim to them as he might the parts of his own body.
Daniel might have convinced himself that building the seat of his power on the backs of thousands of lives was justified, but eventually there came a time when he was forced to face the consequences of what he had done. The final straw came when the archmage’s arrogance and pride drove him to slay the goddess Mai, a woman who had come to trust and care about him despite his callousness and wanton cruelty. The spilling of divine blood triggered karmic backlash as the mechanisms of the cosmos acted on their own to mete out justice against the depthless pit of immorality that the archmage had become.
At the moment of Mai’s passing, Daniel Obrove was judged. Karma mandated that if the archmage was going to choose to live his life as a soulless monster, then he would literally be stripped of his soul. The process of having his soul extinguished was agonizing, and the shock of it might have killed lesser men, but not the archmage. Daniel would bear karma’s punishment, but he would not die as a result. Instead, he wove a framework of enchantment that tethered his personality to the now-empty husk of his body. Individuals in Daniel’s universe could exist without souls, but the cessation of ego meant a true end of one’s existence. Unfortunately for the cosmos, Daniel Obrove was nothing if not possessed of a potent ego.
Adding insult to injury, Daniel was also launched off of planet Wisteria, the base of his arcane operations, and sent plummeting between dimensions. The universe he was in would have nothing more to do with him, with a soul or without, dead or clinging to an unnatural life. The archmage eventually landed on the distant world of Cuscuta, a planet whose surface was covered by a towering pinewood forest, with a few struggling pockets of civilization dotted throughout. The forest, all-encompassing and ever-shifting, was cursed by the presence of monsters, witches, fairy tricksters, and other horrors yet to be discovered. After centuries of separation, each settlement survived using their own means, be it warding magic, elaborate traps, capable militia, or whatever other methods they could devise.
Daniel arrived in the village of Sundeval, a place warded from the dangers of the forest by a barrier of silk created by the locally-venerated arachnid god. After years of facing the horrors that lurked beyond their borders, the people’s hope for a better life, and thus their faith in their god, had begun to fail. The barrier was fraying, and creatures from the forest frequently stole in to terrorize the villagers.
Daniel realized that he could no longer use his magic to the ludicrous degree that befitted an archmage without disrupting the enchantments that preserved his form. He could no more create a portal back to Wisteria than he could raze the endless forests of Cuscuta with a wave of magical fire. He was stranded on Cuscuta, but he was not without hope for regaining some of his former power.
The former archmage recognized the stars scattered through Cuscuta’s night sky; he knew this universe. He knew that the supreme God of this plane was holding a contest to achieve Utopia. The ruling universal Power had originally only allowed its lesser divine servitors to join this competition and try to create a perfect world. But Daniel had learned--soon before he was transformed by Mai’s death--that the God had opened the contest up to any being, mortal or immortal, that was able to prove themselves worthy.
Any being that could prove they could initiate some vision of Utopia would be given absolute dominion over the planet they had begun to improve. Daniel only had to increase the quality of life on Cuscuta substantially, and then he would be given the power to shape the world as he desired. So long as Daniel remained on Cuscuta, he would be like a god. And from there, he could find a way to resume his multidimensional conquests. It was a long shot, especially in his diminished state, but even a significantly weakened archmage still had some power to change a world.
Daniel began his plot by endearing himself to the Sundeval villagers. He mended their wall of webbing by bolstering their god with whatever magic he could spare. What’s more, Daniel did the impossible by beating back the edge of the forest. The ancient pines had always proven mostly resilient to loggers’ axes, and those that the villagers could cut down sprung back up in a matter of days. Daniel discovered that his altered body, hungry for energy as it was, was very efficient at drawing ambient power from the air. He couldn’t sap the life force directly from the trees, but it only took a little feeding from the fresh forest air to power a wasting curse which destroyed each tree, and kept them destroyed. Daniel’s body was still too fragile for him to perform any truly extravagant magic, but culling the forest one tree at a time allowed him to expand Sundeval’s borders without angering the protective elemental powers of the forest. It was for the best that the the archmage show restraint for once.
The archmage was inducted into the spider-god’s priesthood shortly after. Clearly, this strange person who had come to Sundeval, seemingly from nowhere, was a chosen of their deity. Daniel was given the duty of personally overseeing the spider-god’s idol, allowing him to directly empower it with his magic.
At Daniel’s request, the people began making blood offerings to the god, stating that he believed it would further strengthen it. Little did the villagers know, their fresh blood was actually being used to restore the archmage’s strength. Blood carried a hint of the vital power of the soul that Daniel had lost. He was unable to drain the life energy from other beings in the same way that he could magical energy, but blood acted as the perfect medium for providing a small taste of what had been stripped from him. By imbibing on the village’s offerings, Daniel could feel truly alive again...
The former archmage--now the vampire lord Daniel Obrove has initiated his endgame for planet Cuscuta. Of course, his plans involve improving life for the inhabitants of that cursed rock, but only for as long as it takes for him to ascend as the world’s master. Once omnipotence was again in the monster’s grasp, who could be sure what he would do with it?
Daniel Obrove is the alternate universe analogue of the tremendous sea serpent privateer, Bakunawa. He is not her former life, her blood relative, or a close acquaintance. He's the Obrove if Obrove were a monster, while Bakunawa is Obrove in the form of a woman trying to do right by her people!
More Obroves can be found on their alt list, here.
There are more "Danalogues" to come, eventually, so we kindly ask that you...
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