Here's a big doorstopper of a story that doesn't introduce romance for the first bit, but sufficiently counts. It's set in a world where, when you die, you find yourself raised at one of eight cathedrals three days later. Occasionally new people arrive in the world, and occasionally some don't come back, and occasionally people reference other people not in this world, but nobody seems especially concerned about this. There are no children or old people, only adventurers of a variety of races, constantly respawning in the prime of their lives, some greater and many lesser. The gods don't seem to have alignments, exactly, though some are more evil and some are more lawful. One is vaguely Iomidaean and another slightly Asmodeousish but not closely in either case.

The cycle of conquest, of push and counter-push, is a cycle - the weapons in use advance in sophistication and might until they start ruining the world around them, turning verdant fields into blasted hellscapes emitting invisible poison. Eventually one of the gods' factions grows stronger than the rest and effectively claims victory, but by old agreement this victory is simply tallied up for some eventual reckoning, and everything is reset. Once more the adventurers start as a half-naked mob in eight wooden shack cities and spread out into the world to cut down trees and dig up stones and build smithies and workshops and raid each other in extremely brutal personal assaults, organized if not equipped from the get-go. They make leather armor and iron weapons and build blast furnaces, and clash with steel armor and crossbows and limited strategic magic. They set up more and more sophisticated supply chains, wagons ferrying chalk and sand and salt to glassmakers, acid foundries proving a major target for strikes by the enemy as destroying one can cripple the whole economy, and fight with cannon and musket and bayonet and spell-charged bombs, all of which need to be hauled to the front. They build incredibly intricate war golems that walk on their own and are profoundly expensive bulwarks of battle, though terribly vulnerable if misused or unsupported. The warmachines and industrial logistics and strange magic have the Planet-characteristic level of nerdy detail focus on them, when relevant. They start working incredibly complex and delicate procedures in huge industrial complexes to refine magically active crystals into an extremely energetic form, to build superweapons, and launch them at each other at key moments with intel and secrecy becoming far more critical than ever before. The cycle tends to take about twenty years. (Close examination and some possibly-expensive experiments will eventually show all these industrial processes to be - wrong and useless in subtle ways. Unfortunately.)

And then someone wins, and it's all reset again.

A follower of one of the eviller gods has long had a back-and-forth with a particular foe on another god's side, going out of his way to interfere with them when it doesn't especially disturb his god's strength and fantasizing about doing so, about grinding their smug face into the dirt, when practicality and loyalty to the cause interfere. The pair of them clash wits, sometimes winning and sometimes losing. It gets to the point where both characters' allies remark on how obsessed they seem, and the superiors of the more-evil one order them to try and get useful strategic information out of their rival. The eviller one pursues this goal with gusto, making innocent comments to provoke revealing responses, making casual bets of information risked against information, with applying appropriate levels of double-checking and skepticism to what they learn. They're thrilled and happy with the constant pushing, seeing defeat in the face of the foe, and seeming string of victories for a while, until a brilliant stroke of counterintelligence by the less-evil rival ruins a large part of the more-evil god's army in a nasty ambush.

It's a wakeup call, and only makes the man want to outwit and conquer his foe more. He goes with a subtler and longer strategy after that, remaining friendly and cheerful. Over time they convince their foe that the most fun moments of their repeating lives are when the two clash wits and earn delicious victory through their own ruthlessness and cleverness. In dialogues on the battlefield and occasional ambiguously-might-be-rape sex scenes after victories and defeats they continuously try to out-wit each other, and eventually the follower of the less-evil god switches gods to be closer to their other rival. They bounce off each other in constant contests of dominance after that, the talented upstart without reputation and contacts versus the loyal long-term servant. It's a delicious thrill, and when the former rival makes a play to take control of the established one's unit, someone the rival thought was a friend and ally betrays them, and they end up chained to the ground in the evil one's bedroom. It's a shame he can't be too cruel, the eviller one thinks, because then he wouldn't come back the next time he dies in battle, and he'd be much less useful that way. He has to restrain his torment to just enough not to drive the rival away from the plane for good, just enough to give them a glimmer of hope to prove themselves again or become the superior eventually.

The doorstopper of a novel ends on the note that, unknown to the eviller god's followers, the rival's former superior officer receives a coded message that is implied to contain vital intelligence. She comments, "That idiotic masochist's playing the long game, huh."

Here's a big doorstopper of a story that doesn't introduce romance for the first bit, but sufficiently counts. It's set in a world where, when you die, you find yourself raised at one of eight cathedrals three days later. Occasionally new people arrive in the world, and occasionally some don't come back, and occasionally people reference other people not in this world, but nobody seems especially concerned about this. There are no children or old people, only adventurers of a variety of races, constantly respawning in the prime of their lives, some greater and many lesser. The gods don't seem to have alignments, exactly, though some are more evil and some are more lawful. One is vaguely Iomidaean and another slightly Asmodeousish but not closely in either case.

The cycle of conquest, of push and counter-push, is a cycle - the weapons in use advance in sophistication and might until they start ruining the world around them, turning verdant fields into blasted hellscapes emitting invisible poison. Eventually one of the gods' factions grows stronger than the rest and effectively claims victory, but by old agreement this victory is simply tallied up for some eventual reckoning, and everything is reset. Once more the adventurers start as a half-naked mob in eight wooden shack cities and spread out into the world to cut down trees and dig up stones and build smithies and workshops and raid each other in extremely brutal personal assaults, organized if not equipped from the get-go. They make leather armor and iron weapons and build blast furnaces, and clash with steel armor and crossbows and limited strategic magic. They set up more and more sophisticated supply chains, wagons ferrying chalk and sand and salt to glassmakers, acid foundries proving a major target for strikes by the enemy as destroying one can cripple the whole economy, and fight with cannon and musket and bayonet and spell-charged bombs, all of which need to be hauled to the front. They build incredibly intricate war golems that walk on their own and are profoundly expensive bulwarks of battle, though terribly vulnerable if misused or unsupported. The warmachines and industrial logistics and strange magic have the Planet-characteristic level of nerdy detail focus on them, when relevant. They start working incredibly complex and delicate procedures in huge industrial complexes to refine magically active crystals into an extremely energetic form, to build superweapons, and launch them at each other at key moments with intel and secrecy becoming far more critical than ever before. The cycle tends to take about twenty years. (Close examination and some possibly-expensive experiments will eventually show all these industrial processes to be - wrong and useless in subtle ways. Unfortunately.)

And then someone wins, and it's all reset again.

A follower of one of the eviller gods has long had a back-and-forth with a particular foe on another god's side, going out of his way to interfere with them when it doesn't especially disturb his god's strength and fantasizing about doing so, about grinding their smug face into the dirt, when practicality and loyalty to the cause interfere. The pair of them clash wits, sometimes winning and sometimes losing. It gets to the point where both characters' allies remark on how obsessed they seem, and the superiors of the more-evil one order them to try and get useful strategic information out of their rival. The eviller one pursues this goal with gusto, making innocent comments to provoke revealing responses, making casual bets of information risked against information, with applying appropriate levels of double-checking and skepticism to what they learn. They're thrilled and happy with the constant pushing, seeing defeat in the face of the foe, and seeming string of victories for a while, until a brilliant stroke of counterintelligence by the less-evil rival ruins a large part of the more-evil god's army in a nasty ambush.

It's a wakeup call, and only makes the man want to outwit and conquer his foe more. He goes with a subtler and longer strategy after that, remaining friendly and cheerful. Over time they convince their foe that the most fun moments of their repeating lives are when the two clash wits and earn delicious victory through their own ruthlessness and cleverness. In dialogues on the battlefield and occasional ambiguously-might-be-rape sex scenes after victories and defeats they continuously try to out-wit each other, and eventually the follower of the less-evil god switches gods to be closer to their other rival. They bounce off each other in constant contests of dominance after that, the talented upstart without reputation and contacts versus the loyal long-term servant. It's a delicious thrill, and when the former rival makes a play to take control of the established one's unit, someone the rival thought was a friend and ally betrays them, and they end up chained to the ground in the evil one's bedroom. It's a shame he can't be too cruel, the eviller one thinks, because then he wouldn't come back the next time he dies in battle, and he'd be much less useful that way. He has to restrain his torment to just enough not to drive the rival away from the plane for good, just enough to give them a glimmer of hope to prove themselves again or become the superior eventually.

The doorstopper of a novel ends on the note that, unknown to the eviller god's followers, the rival's former superior officer receives a coded message that is implied to contain vital intelligence. She comments, "That idiotic masochist's playing the long game, huh."

Here's a big doorstopper of a story that doesn't introduce romance for the first bit, but sufficiently counts. It's set in a world where, when you die, you find yourself raised at one of eight cathedrals three days later. Occasionally new people arrive in the world, and occasionally some don't come back, and occasionally people reference other people not in this world, but nobody seems especially concerned about this. There are no children or old people, only adventurers of a variety of races, constantly respawning in the prime of their lives, some greater and many lesser. The gods don't seem to have alignments, exactly, though some are more evil and some are more lawful. One is vaguely Iomidaean and another slightly Asmodeousish but not closely in either case.

The cycle of conquest, of push and counter-push, is a cycle - the weapons in use advance in sophistication and might until they start ruining the world around them, turning verdant fields into blasted hellscapes emitting invisible poison. Eventually one of the gods' factions grows stronger than the rest and effectively claims victory, but by old agreement this victory is simply tallied up for some eventual reckoning, and everything is reset. Once more the adventurers start as a half-naked mob in eight wooden shack cities and spread out into the world to cut down trees and dig up stones and build smithies and workshops and raid each other in extremely brutal personal assaults, organized if not equipped from the get-go. They make leather armor and iron weapons and build blast furnaces, and clash with steel armor and crossbows and limited strategic magic. They set up more and more sophisticated supply chains, wagons ferrying chalk and sand and salt to glassmakers, acid foundries proving a major target for strikes by the enemy as destroying one can cripple the whole economy, and fight with cannon and musket and bayonet and spell-charged bombs, all of which need to be hauled to the front. They build incredibly intricate war golems that walk on their own and are profoundly expensive bulwarks of battle, though terribly vulnerable if misused or unsupported. The warmachines and industrial logistics and strange magic have the Planet-characteristic level of nerdy detail focus on them, when relevant. They start working incredibly complex and delicate procedures in huge industrial complexes to refine magically active crystals into an extremely energetic form, to build superweapons, and launch them at each other at key moments with intel and secrecy becoming far more critical than ever before. The cycle tends to take about twenty years. (Close examination and some possibly-expensive experiments will eventually show all these industrial processes to be - wrong and useless in subtle ways. Unfortunately.)

And then someone wins, and it's all reset again.

A follower of one of the eviller gods has long had a back-and-forth with a particular foe on another god's side, going out of his way to interfere with them when it doesn't especially disturb his god's strength and fantasizing about doing so, about grinding their smug face into the dirt, when practicality and loyalty to the cause interfere. The pair of them clash wits, sometimes winning and sometimes losing. It gets to the point where both characters' allies remark on how obsessed they seem, and the superiors of the more-evil one order them to try and get useful strategic information out of their rival. The eviller one pursues this goal with gusto, making innocent comments to provoke revealing responses, making casual bets of information risked against information, with applying appropriate levels of double-checking and skepticism to what they learn. They're thrilled and happy with the constant pushing, seeing defeat in the face of the foe, and seeming string of victories for a while, until a brilliant stroke of counterintelligence by the less-evil rival ruins a large part of the more-evil god's army in a nasty ambush.

It's a wakeup call, and only makes the man want to outwit and conquer his foe more. He goes with a subtler and longer strategy after that, remaining friendly and cheerful. Over time they convince their foe that the most fun moments of their repeating lives are when the two clash wits and earn delicious victory through their own ruthlessness and cleverness. In dialogues on the battlefield and occasional ambiguously-might-be-rape sex scenes after victories and defeats they continuously try to out-wit each other, and eventually the follower of the less-evil god switches gods to be closer to their other rival. They bounce off each other in constant contests of dominance after that, the talented upstart without reputation and contacts versus the loyal long-term servant. It's a delicious thrill, and when the former rival makes a play to take control of the established one's unit, someone the rival thought was a friend and ally betrays them, and they end up chained to the ground in the evil one's bedroom. It's a shame he can't be too cruel, the eviller one thinks, because then he wouldn't come back the next time he dies in battle, and he'd be much less useful that way. He has to restrain his torment to just enough not to drive the rival away from the plane for good, just enough to give them a glimmer of hope to prove themselves again or become the superior eventually.

The doorstopper of a novel ends on the note that, unknown to the eviller god's followers, the rival's former superior officer receives a coded message that is implied to contain vital intelligence. She comments, "That idiotic masochist's playing the long game, huh."