#so much lore...

So if you do not recall or are seeing me for the first time, allow me a quick summary. The Eternal Bureaucracy (EB) is the afterlife that links all of my world together. Across all my worlds, when souls die, they get transported to the EB. There, they spend their afterlives working as a cog in that system. The EB has departments led by gods and goddesses that control certain aspects of the mortal planes. For example, the Department of the Seas controls the waters. The Department of Physical Nature does like trees and stuff and uh animals and stuff. The Department of the Seas is a part of the Department of Physical Nature and departments can get really specific eventually. The EB offers internships to dedicated mortals who have proven their skill and dedication to a particular field. These interns receive a magical budget, wherein they get near-unlimited magical powers (within case-by-case basis) within their department up to a certain point, where they go over budget and lose out on their abilities. While souls cannot die, most if not all souls will go insane after enough time of just existing. This is called expiration and the average time from death to expiration is around 13 billion years (which is already VERY generous). After expiration, in order to prevent the lowering of morale, souls are sent to nowhereland, a special kind of mortal plane wherein souls die and respawn infinitely, wandering through a snowy wasteland where the snow makes you forget.

(a wandering trader venturing through nowhereland)

ANYWAYS all of that is to say that until now, the EB is this monolithic force, the inevitability, the ultimate end.

Key words are: until now. I'm going to tell you something that only one soul knows about (aside from myself, The Author). The EB is not eternal. It is an artificial afterlife.

The original afterlife was a series of floating islands where souls could conjure whatever they desired and could do whatever they wanted. There were no departments and there was no way for the afterlife to directly influence and control every single mortal plane on the level that the EB has now. The only way a soul could do so would be to travel to a mortal plane (an arduous task) and stick around as a ghost/spirit, and this is still nothing compared to the level of control the EB currently has.

It was impossibly idyllic. So what happened?

The EB was started when enough power-hungry souls got together and wanted to exert control.

You see, the afterlife perpetuates based off of pure faith. Back before the EB, souls were overall happy and had their needs met and more. This positive mental environment translated into a positive physical environment. Right now, the EB has crushed this positivity and killed it. The physical environment reflects that and appears very much dead. Similarly, the EB only has the power it does because souls believe it has the power it does. If the majority of souls just got together and simply believed that the EB was really powerless, it would really be powerless. Things would start recovering back to the way they had been. The afterlife could be revived.

Make no mistake though, this wouldn't be some Disney end-of-movie rebuilding montage that's finished in 5 minutes/1 musical number. It would be slow and painstaking and DIFFICULT. Good does not ultimately triumph over evil "just because". Good has to work just as hard as evil to overcome it. Good is not easy, but it is necessary. Because it is good.

Anyways, getting back on topic. The founders of the EB were able to convince/gaslight/a bit of both the majority of souls into believing that the EB had power, and it did. Things progressed swimmingly. The EB grew to develop more power. Things started to change.

Aside from the physical changes like a dying afterlife that forced souls to move into the EB complexes (which is why nowadays, souls live in residential areas without even knowing that the outside exists), there were also other changes in how things happened.

For one, the EB did make it easier for souls to travel to the mortal planes. Beforehand, a difficult and painful process that lasted a significant amount of time and included many trials was necessary to visit the mortal planes as a ghost. Once you were there, you were stuck unless you completed those trials again. Now under the EB's reign, employees can take a short trip on their annual break days to the mortal planes whenever they're allowed and when they'd like. However, these are now on the EB's terms; not the souls'.

Additionally, death itself was a difficult process. Upon death, souls were initially stuck on their mortal plane unless they completed said trials to travel to the afterlife. Now, to ensure that a soul is under the total control of the EB as soon as they die, the Department of Death ferries souls back and forth, never letting them realize an afterlife outside the EB existed.

Now, this does not mean that the people in charge and the employees in, say, the Department of Death are evil by choice. By this point, the founders of the EB have long expired and nobody remembers who they are. Their project was successful. The outside world is doomed to obscurity. The gods and goddesses in charge are now just doing what they've always been doing---getting by in this infernal office afterlife. They don't know there's an alternative to what they're doing. They're just doing their best to keep sane and help others. They perpetuating the system without realizing the system needed perpetuating.

The same goes for the Department of Death. Its employees are not (all) sadistic maniacs. Many of them remember how traumatic literal DEATH was and want to make the transition of life into afterlife easier for new souls. They too perpetuate the system without realizing the system needs perpetuating.

However. At the beginning of this ramble, I said there was one soul who knew about this aside from me, The Author (who isn't technically a soul). That soul is......... Nellie Moon! Goddess of Chaos!!

Nellie knows allllll about this. Of course, she wasn't actually THERE to see the original afterlife. She bargained that information out of me. It's part of why she opposes the Department of Labor (effectively HR) so strongly. She's fighting for a past she never got to see. Chaos is not necessarily bad, and neither is order. It's just that both can be used to reach very bad things. Nellie is not totally evil and neither is Raine Burlough, God of Labor and effective Head of the EB.

Anyways, you might be wondering, "Why doesn't Nellie just spill the beans?" Wellllll she can't. As part of the deal, I have sealed her mind from ever being able to leak the information. She can still think about it, but she can never talk about it or sign it or write it or even ask a mind reader to read her mind and discover it. She is blocked by herself from ever doing so.

So now you might be wondering, "Hey Author, WHY?! You're kind of a jerk." To which I respond, uh yeah. I'm The Author. I'm playing with my toys (gesturing to these souls and people who theoretically would have lives and joys and sadness and griefs and celebrations). In this world, I am neither good or bad. I just am. Actually no scratch that I am kinda bad.