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Gregory mauls the final Deva, stripping feathers, ripping clothing, and peeling off strips of flesh.
Despite being fairly heavily injured, however, it remains true to its (un)holy purpose, and keeps attacking!
Incredibly, it actually manages to land a solid blow...
...whilst Unity continues to be extremely frustrated!
Round 21: Unity (-), DMonD(-107), Gregory(-339), Unity
Wincing, Gregory attempts to finish-off the final angel...
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Gregory tears asunder the last Deva, which dissipates into the by-now-familiar cloud of digital dust.
This allows him to finally turn his attention Unity, scoring a couple of decent blows, despite the self-proclaimed God's tough hide...
...however, he is disquietened to see that Unity's injured flesh immediately starts to regenerate, with alarming rapidity.
"No mere mortal can hope to kill me! I will exist for all eternity!"
So saying, he continues to do his best to disembowel Gregory...
...fortunately, he is unable to back-up his bluster with any degree of melee effectiveness.
Round 22: Unity (-17), Gregory(-339), Unity
Gregory shrugs.
"It is in my nature to strive... I may not be able to kill you, but I am fairly certain that I could severely inconvenience you..."
Taking a deep breath, he continues carving away at Unity.
Frowning, Gregory continues his own assault.
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With renewed fury, Gregory rips into Unity, rocking the 'God' back on his heels.
Grimacing continues his own assault...
Delivering a solid blow, and then stepping back, casting a spell, which causes a significant chunk of his injuries to repair themselves.
"Your end is nigh, fleshling..."
Round 25: Unity (-49), Gregory(-418), Unity
With a groan, Gregory does his best to keep shredding Unity to pieces.
Taking a deep breath, Gregory continues to systematically reduce Unity's corporeal form to inert matter.
+++Error: Core Containment Failing. Cascading System Failure Imminent+++
His head reeling, his boots spent, and his vision blurred at the edges, Gregory fights through the pain, pouring everything he has into one last, desperate effort to bring the Iron God down...
He then pours the last vestiges of mythic power he has for the day into a final Mage Strike, sending a gout of Acid slamming into Unity!
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His strike slowing, several of Gregory's attacks bounce off Unity's divine form...
...but when he pours all his rage and hate into a great gout of acid, which he delivers with a solid blow to Unity's chest, it dissolves a one-foot-diameter hole into it.
Unity staggers backward, staring at Gregory in disbelief.
"My mind is going... I can feel it..."
He then collapses to the ground, insensate...
...although, worryingly, his wounds continue to heal, with remorseless speed.
Gregory draws in a ragged breath, and then breathes a sigh of relief.
"That... was far too close..."
He then starts ripping Unity's body into tiny pieces, leaving only his head and heart intact.
Gingerly, he will then begin exploring the complex.
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This semi-detached building is clearly some kind of combined office tower and roost for Unity's minions; either he built to impress, or built for the future... or he has a lot of minions elsewhere at this point in time.
This towering library spirals upward a dozen levels. Gold light traces from the edge of its books' gray and black covers. The millions of books shelved here contain all of Unity’s vast stores of information... far more than any mortal could hope to read, let alone remember, in a single lifetime.
A vortex of lightning swirls at the far end of this platform, pulsing and lashing out to distant stars. A throne of blue light looks out over the demiplane, the edges of which fade into fog and cubes.
"Interesting..."
Gregory starts searching the library for information on how Unity achieved 'Divinity', hoping to find a way to wrest the power from Unity, and turn it to his own ends.
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Once Gregory realises the magnitude of the task that he has set himself, he spends time creating a Simulacrum, whose sole purpose is to make sure that Unity does not 'wake up' again.
It then takes him several weeks of research, but he is eventually able to cobble-together a potted history of Unity's rise to power.
Apparently, Unity started life as the governing AI for an unimaginably large and powerful Androffan starship called Divinity, the continuing mission of which was to seek out and explore strange new worlds, and collect ethnographical, faunal, and botanical samples, for ongoing study.
Apparently, during their mission, they encountered a Dominion of the Black force, and narrowly avoided being wiped out, by opening an emergency wormhole, which tossed them across the galaxy to an uncharted world.
The record gets a bit fragmentary here, but apparently, some kind of Dominion infection/infestation drove the crew insane, and the ship ended up crashing into Golarion at high speed, leaving Unity's connections with most ship systems severed.
This did not bother Unity overly much, however, because, thanks to the reality-warping power of the Divinity Drive, he was able to create virtual/digital worlds to keep himself amused, trying a host of different permutations on creation.
Over time, he was surprised to discover that the virtual creatures populating these worlds developed rudimentary faiths based around him, and he learned that this virtual faith was actually still quite powerful, as, with time and experimentation, it evolved into something that was actually capable of empowering his ascension to 'true' Godhood.
However, despite achieving this limited omniscience, Unity was still shackled within the wreck of the Divinity; he was software, with no true hardware form capable of supporting him.
Over time, he slowly regained control of some ship systems, re-establishing control over surviving robots, and even discovered how to bring organic units under his direct control, with cyber-surgical augmentation.
His greatest breakthrough, however, was when he discovered a way to make his effective 'home' the Divinity Drive, portable; the next step was to find a way to get it off the wreck, something which was still just out of his grasp when Gregory gate-crashed his personal digital demesne.
There are also tantalising references to something called a 'conversion plague' which Unity hoped to use to forcibly convert all organic life on Golarion to his worship, but specific details are frustratingly difficult to track down .
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Digging a little further, Gregory is able to cobble-together a plan for how to take on some of Unity's power.
Apparently, hidden behind a solid wall in the main cathedral is a pillar of roiling red energy - representing the souls of all of Unity's faithful who, over the years, have died, gone to the Boneyard for judgement, and then been sent back to Unity for their 'eternal reward'.
By slathering himself in Unity, and then using Unity's own starknife to crack open the pillar, it will send the souls of the faithful spilling out... most will go to the lower planes to endure an eternity of torment, by a sufficient percentage will be confused by the 'faux-Unity' before them to be attracted to him instead, suffusing his form with a fraction of Unity's power.
However, with the loss of such a large fraction of the belief that powered Unity's demesne, the realm will rapidly destabilize - Gregory will need to quickly find his way to Unity's throne, and then direct all of his willpower into trying to hold onto a fraction of it, or all will be lost.
Gregory prepares himself appropriately, casting every buff spell in his repertoire, including Greater Longstrider, Ward of the Seasons, and Extended Haste (saving the last until just before he starts attacking the pillar), since he knows time will be of the essence once he breaches the realms 'reality reactor'.
He then clads himself in the accountrements (and essence!) of Unity, gingerly picking-up the Unholy Starknife, which pulses with malignant energy, and heads for the pillar.
"I will not be denied!"
Gregory then starts hacking away at the pillar.
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The pillar initially seems to resist all damage, but then Gregory spots a tiny crack, which rapidly enlarges, extending across the surface of the cylinder; scant seconds later, he explodes, unleashing a horrific torrent of tortured souls. Most disappear off into the ether, but that still leaves dozens upon dozens of souls, which slam into Gregory's body, infusing him, and momentarily staggering him with the sudden rush of memories, emotions, and above all, power.
He snaps out of it, however, when the entire realm starts to shake; heading out into the main cathedral, he sees a dark wave of unreality extending across the 'idyllic' realm beyond the confines of Unity's central demesne, as the wall of the building itself slowly crack and crumble.
Racing against the inevitable, Gregory ascends the tower, which begins to shake, and slams down into Unity's throne, where he frantically tries to maintain his composure, attempting to force his will upon the realm, even as it starts to collapse around him.
"I... Will... Succeed!"
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Unity's former realm slowly collapses around Gregory, as the darkness encroaches, erasing the idyllic landscape below as it closes in upon the Cathedral, the building rumbles, the Rectory collapsing, and the library exploding in a vast conflagration, which is quickly erased from existence as the darkness slides across it, eventually rushing up the tower towards Gregory, as his 'Unity skin' fades away...
...but then the darkness slows, and stops, leaving Gregory sitting on a crackling throne of electrified blue force, at the center of a perfect 20' diameter sphere... beyond which, there is simply nothing.
Gregory breathes a sigh of relief when he manages to stabilise even some small portion of the Divine Realm, then loses himself in reveling in his new-found power, as senses that he did not know even existed begin to declare themselves.
After what seems like an eternity, he gathers his thoughts.
"Right. Time to plan for the future..."
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Making discrete inquiries, and throwing some cash around, Gregory is able to make the purchases that he is interested in.
Upon returning to his Retreat, he discovers that, with Unity's passing, Ophelia's mind has been well and truly broken...
...but with the right cybernetic enhancement, healing magic, and CBT therapy, she is able to be restored to a semblance of her former self, albeit one loyal to the new Iron God.
Slowly but surely, the inky black tentacles of a new faith spread out across Numeria: one professing self-improvement through enhancement, moving away from the impurities of flesh, to the clinical certainties of metal.
Only time will tell how successful this new faith will be, but time is certainly now on Gregory's side...