It is a most lamentable and fearful state in which Lusternia perpetually rests. The Children of Magnora clamor ceaselessly within their various cages and prisons, endlessly striving towards the unwinding of our very reality. Who among us, whether they be a ecclesiastic servant of the Celestian half-formed or taint-drunk cog of the Engine, does not from time to time shudder to reflect that we are all one unwoven seal or failed binding away from Oblivion? To add insult to injury, this dire circumstance is further confounded by the structural necessity of the Soulless Gods in the foundations of our world! Having had the opportunity on many an anxious, sleepless night to reflect on our bitter condition of perpetual hostagery to the endless hungers of the Heralds, I have been fortunate to at last arrive upon a scheme which, rather than requiring the complete destruction of our universe, might permit the unmaking of the Soulless with hardly the loss of properties or persons of any real value.

 

As any amateur scholar of the histories knows, the Soulless taint all that they touch, warping the essence of gods and tainting the planes upon every intersection. Further, it is observed that this tainting is irreversible, that is to say the essence of the Soulless cannot be destroyed without at the very least destroying the tainted subjects or matter. This grim fact is confirmed by no less an authority than the very Creatrix Herself! Still, there is some consolation; we see in the example of both the Twelve and in the citizens of Magnagora and the residents of the Glomdoring that the taint of the Soulless can be contained. Without moral judgement, we must acknowledge that such an integration changes the living vessel irreversibly. The Twelve then have, by Their creative example, half-solved our seemingly intractable problem already! While the essence of Magnora's children cannot be destroyed, it can be integrated into living beings. The subjugation and subsequent wholesale consumption of various lesser Soulless demonstrate that, with absolute certainty, the entirety of such a being can be integrated into a sufficient number of hosts and thereby prevented from returning to its true form.

 

Skeptics may at this juncture recall that this conclusion is not novel; such a plan has been posited more or less explicitly by the Twelve Themselves and yet have not been implemented for many compelling reasons. It is readily admitted that to take in the so-called taint produces substantial and obvious changes in both the physical form and the mental condition of all who do so. While there may or may not be truth to the claim that the Wyrd is distinct from the more common strains of taint, it is undeniable that the substances share two key properties: Those who partake of either are irreversibly changed by the process and both substances are ultimately derived from the essence of the Soulless.

 

Those Gods and Shards who in some way or another partake of the essence of the Soulless are, whether or not they truly are stronger or more intellectually capable, fundamentally more violent, petty, and generally unsuited for society. (The author here clarifies that such a distinction is relative; are the savages of the northern forest any better fit to take tea in the Golden Serenity Teahouse or join the great scholars in their labs and workshops than the zealots of the southern forest?) The even distribution of Soulless essence among all people and communities would hardly be any less disastrous an event to befall civilization than the release of Kethuru and His Kin from Their chains!

 

The solution, then must be to concentrate the essence as tightly as possible and by this means safeguard as much of reality as can be managed from corruption by means of quarantine. This poses a new threat however; those in whom much Soulless essence is placed become by virtue of this essence an ever-greater threat to the society their sacrifice safeguards. Does not Magnagora, which has tasted only shallowly of such essence, seek to tear down all others in the Basin in its bouts taint-fueled violence and destructive conquest? The subjugation of the Basin by those influenced by taint is, again, nearly as great a threat as the schemes of the Heralds Themselves. In this way, we see that the quarantine must be complete and irrevocable in order to safeguard our world.

 

Even isolation in a distant plane is insufficient. While we might imagine that the banishment of all taint to some far-off corner of reality on the very edges of Astral or beyond might for a time free us from the ever-present threat, the periodic contact of Ackleberry demonstrates that no planar gulf is insurmountable and that to banish the taint to some unsupervised planar pocket only delays a threat which may return more potent. What is needed is a means to freeze the activity of Soulless essence without placing it beyond control and monitoring.

 

We are fortunate in that the very machinations of one of our great Foes have led us to a means to accomplish exactly such a goal! With the existence of the Lirangsha Retreat known to the Basin once more, we are shown an absolute means to contain the dangers which threat to tear our very world asunder! The Krokani of Lirangsha have, out of necessity to protect themselves from the pangs and deprivations of wholesale starvation, developed the means to suspend most of their population in a suspended state of everlasting dreams. The citizens of the Retreat pass in and out of this state of suspended animation according to an established procession so that their limited land may support all of the vast numbers. While suspended, their bodies rest motionless and indeed inert upon the Prime Material Plane while their minds are drawn to motionless repose within the Dream. Without outside interference they are indefinitely capable neither of physical action nor of mental activity.

 

The people of Lirangsha are hard-pressed, both by the hunger that remains an unrelenting scourge upon their population and by predations by Goloth Maxyenka and her so-called Time Dames and legions of Dominators. Doubtless a sufficient incentive could be devised, whether it is a contract of agricultural support, committed assistance against their foes, or even by relocation (possibly through Divine assistance!) of the Heart of Shallach and the entire Lirangsha community, to convince the leaders of Lirangsha society to share the secrets of suspended animation with the rest of the Basin. Indeed, given that the very oppressors of Lirangsha draw their power from the Soulless, it is not unreasonable to suspect that their society would be willing and even eager to assist the total and final conquest of the Soulless Gods.

 

Now the scheme is revealed in full; the Soulless might be conquered not by decisive battle or a single heroic deed, but by millions and millions of metaphorical spoons! A new stasis facility in the style of the Terminus might be constructed anywhere and certainly we have real estate enough beyond the Basin to house such a facility. Logistics for this new home of the tainted will be a trivial difficulty given that most of its inhabitants will require neither food nor water for the rest of eternity. It must be allowed that Elder Gods are a limited resource and it is therefore unwise to trivially waste those few among us who remain entirely unmarred. Shards, however, can exist in numbers beyond counting and the loss of any quantity of them is trivial so long as some members of a given race remain to protect their archetype from being consumed and eternally lost. Little by little, we shall have shards gorge themselves to their limits on the essence of the Soulless Gods, siphoning the power straight from hideous Muud and Illith's wretched half-corpse. Their being stuffed to bursting with tainted power, we shall then promptly secure these martyrs in everlasting stasis within the facility.

 

Those with a lack of vision may find some trivial objections to this plan on either moral or, more reasonably, practical grounds. While it is impossible to foresee every twist and turn the small-minded, short-sighted masses may choose to voice, an effort will still be made to address those baseless complaints which are most likely to be raised as well as to answer those questions which will seem obvious to them (though it is noted that to anyone with sense the answers would have been obvious as well). The first and foremost objection is also the most trite; that it seems immoral to subject countless persons to eternal imprisonment for the sake of the rest. The reader is reminded that those in stasis do not suffer either from their conditions or from an idleness and boredom as they have no awareness while they remain sealed. The infused need not even be deprived of a meaningful life; there is no reason why transfusion might be utilized exclusively upon the elderly. Most importantly, they are being given an opportunity to become the most noble heroes which the Basin has ever seen, surpassing even the Vernal Gods of old by conquering in fullness the enemy the Vernals could only wound. To be used in this manner is not a punishment or injury but the most noble privilege we could ever afford to our fellow beings, allowing them to safeguard their family and fellows from destruction for all time.

 

It might also be suggested that even the entire population of the Basin as it stands is insufficient for this endeavor and that even filled to bursting there are not enough souls to bear the full weight of this terrible burden. It may be true that the Basin is fundamentally incapable of supporting enough life to fully digest the Soulless at once, but it should be pointed out that there is no particular hurry in the complete implementation of this solution. Magnora's children writhe helplessly in their prisons now and, given continued vigilance on the part of both Elder and Shard, they shall remain helpless. No other approach exists that will full negate the power of the Soulless and so a solution that merely takes a few decades or centuries remains vastly superior to a lack of any plan whatsoever. When we wage war for our very right to continue existing, what does it matter if we win slowly or quickly, so long as we win and the foe has no possible recourse ever again?

 

It might finally be pointed out that the concentration of the entirety of tainted power in a single place poses certain dangers in the form of mass liberation by either the remaining Soulless before they are at last fully consumed or deluded mortals who would seek to profit by liberating the imprisoned. There is no need for the entirety of the infused to rest in a single location, however. Once the means to hold individuals in stasis is fully developed, any number of terminus facilities could be constructed. By design, the essence of each Soulless God could be geographically divided and each Soulless could be isolated from its kin when such a separation seems prudent. As with the requirements of population, there is no need to meet the cost of this endeavor in a moment. The need for multiple facilities could be met over time as resources allow.

 

There will necessarily be some few sacrifice made by society in the completion of this endeavor. Obviously, every single illithoid will necessarily need to be held in stasis to complete the containment of Illith. The entirety of the viscanti race is permanently and irreversibly tainted and so must be contained. Similarly, the entire societies of Magnagora and Glomdoring must be reckoned as beyond saving since they are already in their ways infused with Soulless power. Still, since these souls are already necessarily lost the opportunity to further glut them with tainted essence ought not to be neglected. The Krokani are also likely suspect given the infusion of excorable essence received by their Progenitor. Even with these sacrifices made, there will be substantial need for bodies. In a rare occasion, Gaudiguch and Hallifax will share something in common; both possess a substantial underclass which will, for one reason or another, have little reason to object serving the Basin by their sacrifice whether it be because they would do anything at all for a bit of liquor or cactus weed or because they would honorably and nobly accept their duty. In a display entirely novel in the history of our world, citizens of New Celest will doubtless line up in droves to flood themselves with the power of the taint so that they may indulge their bizarre inclination towards martyrdom. The author would suggest that Serenwilders would make prime candidates for the process, given that they otherwise offer little value to the greater society of the Basin, but it might well be relied upon that even the grandest plan ever conceived in our great war will be both beyond comprehension by their limited intellects and insufficient to distract them from their overwhelming self-interest.

 

When the dust clears and the plan is complete, countless thousands will rest silently and eternally in our vaults and the demographics of the Basin will be forever changed, but those who remain will possess an opportunity completely without precedent in the entire existence of the shardling races: a world completely and permanently free from the threat of the soulless. It should go without saying (but must be said none-the-less) that the selection process will leave the best of those societies which remain salvageable to rebuild our scarred world. United by our common cause and ultimate victory, and without the ever-looming Soulless threat, the survivors will be free not only to endure in safety but to reclaim all of our lost world. Turned aside from the cause of constant war, we could set the power of the various nexuses towards rejuvenating the desolate world beyond the Basin of Life. We might hope that given sufficient vessels to receive the corruption we might wholly remove the pollution of the Monolith and recover the Nexus of Earth for application towards this end. In any case, given an eternity to find the means and a unified society to attend to the test we would doubtless find a solution to every ravaging and despoliation inflicted upon our world and reclaim its entire length and breadth at last.

 

A question remains as to the disposition of the Twelve. Certainly, They have demonstrated a capacity to contend with the excorable powers They have consumed but just as surely this power has changed Them. This humble author confesses the deposition of Gods to be beyond him, whether in regards to the intellectual exercise or the technical engineering problem of enforcing any such decision. Doubtless such a judgement ought to be the domain of the Elders Themselves. It is doubtless They will weigh the risks and benefits in regards to what it affords both Them and the long-suffering mortals of the Basin. It is perhaps even possible that the excorable essence of the Twelve might be purged from Them to be taken into mortals once the war which necessitated Their bold experimentation is concluded.