The number of times Deus swivels around to stare dramatically out over the horizon during this flashback borders on the hyperdramatic. I guess he needs a few more moves in his repertoire.

It would be super challenging to carve out a slice of civilization under the conditions Indinge describes. Any attempt at building infrastructure could be seen by any number of parties as threats against them, their goals, or their power base. Even stuff that doesn’t seem like it could possibly be a threat could be resisted simply because they don’t want to see opposing parties succeeding. It legitimizes them as legitimate rulers which takes away from their own power. It’s one of many reasons that war torn regions like that can get mired in seemingly endless cycles of violence. Someone else is building a school/hospital/water treatment plant/pipeling? Blow it up. Take credit for it to recruit more like minded people to your cause or it it goes badly and a bunch of innocents get killed, then blame the second most powerful party to drive people away from them. One single super in an environment like that could radically shift the power base, if not totally decide the outcomes. A person like that would either be courted like a god or hunted like a dog. Or a fox I guess. People don’t really hunt dogs. Not as an organized “sport” anyway.

Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.