The Birth of a Meta Kingdom

In truth, Swain seemed a little too handsome for his own good, at least that was her opinion, and she also instantly didn’t like how, right on his flesh, he was wearing the harvested soul of the celestial beings that blessed their land. It was also true that some espers were vile, and her assumption was, correctly as it turned out, that the many who now wielded Runes had converted the vile espers as their servants in their flesh. Rumor had it that the resulting torment from mastering vile espers had gone beyond reasonable bounds, and some of the now lauded runelords had reportedly lost control of their newfound powers. Unfortunately, the wicked espers did in fact have weapons in their arsenal. There were some in Sovereign Valley who believed all espers could and should be united against the Rune Lords, but the fact was resistance to Swain and his barbaric invasion was already fairly hopeless. Fighters from Ivalice were fierce, and since they and their warriors became stronger with the ...

          The truth was a fusion of different Meta-domains rolled into one. One of the ‘runes’ was the Sovereign Rune, which allowed the rune lord to invoke the Empire from Final Fantasy 6. In this game, it was possible to enslave a recurring Final Fantasy trope that has different names, but amount to the same thing. The Empire developed machines to convert celestial beings into magicite, which powered their weapons and could be used against their enemies. It was necessary to exercise perfect control, because the potential exploit was the Empire was the bad guy, and so whether the result was good or whether the result was bad depended on who wielded the Sovereign Rune. By invoking it, the rune lord enforced the presence of weaponry that could combat the demons that plagued the metaverse, but the intrinsic nature of the Empire had to be controlled. Throughout history, Empire has been wielded to commit many atrocities, and its nature is to rule by conquest. T...