Names are currency.
I learned that truth before I ever learned to speak.
The system pulsed: Alias Required — Choose a Human Name to Anchor in This World.Two thoughts warred inside me: a name to hide my divinity, and a name to carry dread.
I let my mind play with letters like a child turning keys. Then I folded my power around a name that felt like metal and shadow — the kind of name a wizarding ledger would swallow without question.
Auron Soran.
It had the same angular rhythm as the name that had once ruled Númenor. It had a human face. It would lie easily across tongues.
I spoke it aloud, not as a lie but as a mask that would become bone.
"Auron Soran," I whispered into the cold night. The syllables tasted of iron and old roads.
Alias Registered: Auron Soran.Magical Anchor: Linked to Hogwarts School Records.
The system hummed approval, as if amused. I was still part god, still Maiar, but now also a rumor given a human body and a false history. That history would be as real as any other once the magic took root.
I tested the link. Far to the southeast—Hogwarts. The Book of Admittance lived in the headmaster's hand like a second will. A minor charm, a tug of my new power, and the Book shifted as if nudged by a breeze. I could not see its pages from here, but I felt the thread take hold like a fishing line hooking the world.
"Perfect," I murmured. "The world will know me as Auron Soran. And Auron Soran will do what Sauron could not."
Scafell Pike rose in my mind like a black tooth. The largest mountain in England, skeletal and proud—remote enough, accessible enough, and high enough to hide ambition. A perfect seed for a dark throne.
New Objective: Establish Base: Mount Doom (Prototype) — Location Candidate: Scafell Pike.
A cold thrill ran through my chest. I imagined the peak scarred and smoking, a tower of iron crowning its summit. I could already taste the heat of it—lava not yet molten, a dream of industry that would one day funnel shadow into the sky.
I unrolled Saruman's research notes with a thought and let the stolen intelligence fall across my senses. Typewritten lines, diagrams of muscle and spellwork, scribbles in the margins where a traitor had at once obsessed and erred. Knowledge made flesh; knowledge corrupted by need.
One passage forced my brows low:
Method to Create Uruk-hai — Saruman Research NotesCore ingredients: troll hearts, centaur blood. Ritual: Corrupt the beast's marrow with twisted herbicant and bind with an iron oath. Objective: Strength of troll, speed of man, obedience of chain.
Troll hearts. Centaur blood.
My mouth went dry. The mechanics were simple in their cruelty — the union of two proud, monstrous things into one obedient weapon. But the raw components… Trolls were rare. Centaurs even rarer, and proud to the point of madness. To harvest such things would take forces, and forces cost points, labor, and secrecy.
I closed the notes and felt the system nudge me like a patient tutor.
System Hint:Creation of Uruk-hai requires resources beyond starter pack. Gather System Points by spreading the Legend of The Lord of the Rings. Consider secondary sources: rumor-mongering, artifacts, and alliances.
There it was — the cruel loop. Spread the legend, earn points; spend points to summon the means to spread it further. The system delighted in recursive hunger.
I crouched on the hill and sketched the outline of my plan with small, cold statements.
Secure a foothold near Scafell Pike.
Use monthly summons strategically — an item to anchor influence; a monster to guard and gather resources.
Seed the legend of The Lord of the Rings—books, whispered songs, forged curiosities. Wizarding minds were eager for myth; a good rumor could cross Hogwarts faster than a letter owl.
Acquire troll tissue and centaur blood — recruit or commandeer creatures from the wild; erode the pride of those who stand in my way.
With points, summon a structure — a black forge, a tower, a first ring of dominion.
The plan folded in on itself neatly, like a trap closing.
Moonlight carried the distant glow of Hogsmeade. Hogwarts lay shadowed behind it — ancient, full of children whose bones would one day harden into some fighting force or other. But children were malleable. Teachers were stubborn because they believed in good. I could turn that.
For now, I needed resources and discretion. The Saruman notes mentioned corrupted forests and blighted swamps as excellent cover for illegal breeding and experimental rites. The Lake District would be quieter than Hogwarts and full of old magic the locals had forgotten. Centaurs roamed only in certain wild places; trolls were known to lurk where quarrying and quarryers met the edge of civilization.
I smiled, baring teeth the shape of which the night had not yet learned to fear.
My starter pack offered a monthly summon. The system allowed me one item and one monster per month without spending points; structures required points. I would not blow a summon on fireworks. I had strategy.
I selected possibilities and weighed them like knives.
An item that turned rumor into legend — a forged palantír, perhaps, small enough to convince a scholar but convincing enough to burn a seed of obsession. A monster that could move like rumor — small, stealthy, deadly: an emissary of shadow to test the land. Or I could begin with a guardian — an old, hollowed wight to gather bones and frighten shepherds.
The system's interface was cool and emotionless. It did not press me to choose. It only waited.
I let the idea fester instead: first, anchoring my human name in the world's most respected ledger; second, planting the seed of ancient tales that would, like ivy, climb the halls of Hogwarts; third, turning local beasts into instruments of my will. Troll hearts and centaur blood were not yet in my possession, but they would be. All things had a cost; all things could be purchased with points, and points were sewn from story.
I rose and dusted off the grass. The night tasted of rain.
"Tomorrow," I said aloud, "I will collect the first fragment. I will make an artifact. I will let the children of the castle look upon a thing that belongs to another world."
The wind sighed like a reply. Distant owls called. Far beneath Scafell Pike, the earth shifted—old bones rearranging to make room.
Auron Soran — a name to register in a book. Sauron — a name to make tremble in a song. The gap between them was small, and I intended to close it with iron.