Motif · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

Conscription

The ninth floor's spell for pressing the unaffiliated into an army — service until the end of the floor, a no-healing debuff for those who refuse to fight — which Mind Balance resists, which Carl will not use on a friend ('Never like that'), and which the war mages get in a hell-kissed potion from Krakaren Prime that works on most deities and is likely suicide for a caster of too low a level: Harpocrates at level 250 on the Princess Posse's roster, and a girl who cannot be ordered to understand. Potions of it work only on floors 9, 12, 15, 17 and 18.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 1 — Porthus; Welcome to Faction Wars
• Chapter 4 — Gloom Wraith Phase
• Chapter 23 — Killing in the Name
• Chapter 27 — Gavrilo Princip
• Chapter 35 — Volteeg; the dwarves' tunnel
• Chapter 39 — Alliances break; Operation Snake Pit
• Chapter 48 — Colonel Prepotente
• Chapter 58 — Sultan Rishi the Usurper
• Chapter 62 — A non-team entity
• Chapter 67 — Hey, Dickless
• Chapter 68 — The Grease Monkey
• Chapter 69 — Interlude — Several days earlier; Interlude — Rosetta; Zarogoths
• Chapter 71 — Donkey Kong
• Chapter 72 — Diah
• Chapter 73 — An act of fiendish cruelty
• Chapter 74 — Bijanbi
• Chapter 78 — The Scavenger's daughter is with us now
• Chapter 79 — Tart
• Chapter 82 — Ursensus

Progression

Mind Balance protects against it (ch. 4); the orcs' conscripts all die (ch. 39); Carl puts a potion away rather than use it on a goat (ch. 48). The war mages' hell-kissed version, from Krakaren Prime, works on most deities and is likely suicide for a caster of too low a level (ch. 69, ch. 71); Carl uses a duplicate on a girl — 'Never like this' (ch. 71) — and Li Na uses the original on Harpocrates and lives (ch. 72). Under Orders makes a god a Legionnaire and cannot make a child understand (ch. 72). Selvi and Tuba bleed for refusing to fight (ch. 68).