Literature / Conquerors Of Providence

Kay: "But that's just impossible! It goes against the primal principles of the whole Core system!"
Gabe: "Hey, I was the one who discovered the whole Core-business, so I can break it any time I want to."
Kay: "What!? That's not an argument! By this logic, Newton should have been able to break the laws of thermodynamics just because he was the one who first wrote them down!"
Gabe: "Well, maybe he could!"
Kay: "… What?"
Gabe: "Prove me he couldn't! Come on, I'm waiting."

Conquerors of Providence is a Web Serial Novel created by Gabriel Croath. According to him, it is a post-apocalyptic Science Fantasy Dramedy following the lives of the reincarnations of four powerful men (and their weird significant others) who once destroyed the world three hundred years ago and their oftentimes hilarious exchanges as they apparently plan on fixing things.

The original idea of the series came from some wacky exchanges between the regulars on the Visual Novel Database discussion boards, but after a few chapters it somehow blossomed into its own story with multiple plot-threads, dozens of characters and an extensive world with its unique metaphysics system, all the while being permeated with the same tongue-in-cheek humor that spawned it.Although the series' plot is slowly picking up the pace, the first arc is more about character-interactions and setup than actually saving the world, but taken that the series is supposed to have five arcs in the future, it might be excusable.The series also has several "non-canon chapters", which usually dial the absurdity-levels up to eleven, with the cast regularly Breaking the Fourth Wall to the point where there might not even be one anymore.

The series was previously known as "The Offtopic Wars Saga", but as the story went on that name was quickly reduced to a project-title.

An updated version of the first volume can now also be found on Royal Road under a different title, with added comments by the author detailing the unusual conception and development of the story. It could be formerly found here.

---

This work includes examples of the following tropes:

• After the End: To be precise, three hundred years after a planetary-level Kaiju-induced apocalypse.

• Anachronism Stew: Justified. The world is still rebuilding after the end of the world while it's aftereffects still make it impossible to use electricity. Also, guns are restricted for Order personnel only, explaining why people use close-combat weapons.
• Artifact Title: For two years, the series ran by the rather silly "The Offtopic Wars Saga" title, which has absolutely nothing to do with the story anymore (not that it had much connection at the beginning either...)
• Ascended Extra: Only Sane Man Victor in the main story was originally just a random guard but somehow ended up on a high-stakes mission with two crazy mercenaries, because they thought getting on his nerves was hilarious. Also the two talking camels in the weird non-canon chapters.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: The final scene between Gabe and Jill has shades of this.
• Back from the Dead: Jill.
• Back Story: Most of the plot revolves around the Devastation and the main characters' involvement in it.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Soketsu and Kay. Also, Gabe and the resurrected Jill have shades of this.
• Berserk Button: DON'T hurt Pabloc or Lily will eat your soul.
• Beta Couple: Although it wasn't apparent at first, it seems that Pabloc and Lily of all people have the most balanced relationship in the story.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Nicolai acts harmless enough when with friends, but he still has a huge enough body-count behind his back to be considered an One-Man Army.

• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The entire main cast, but Gabe in particular takes both aspects up to eleven.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Alternates and their partners do this all the time in battle. Justified in that their Psychic Link also have a time-dilatation effect, giving them some leeway.
• Cat Girl: Tiari, although she doesn't really act catlike at all, save for the occasional hissing under distress.

• Crazy-Prepared: Thanks to his clairvoyance, Ahazkun actually plans centuries ahead, demonstrated by his first appearance, where he single-handedly beats up a group of lesser EldritchAbominations by planting explosives and weapons... in the walls of a random building in an abandoned city.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The battle between Gabe and Soketsu in the former's favor. Later in the story Soketsu does the same to Adhi and Kiseki once he got reunited with Kay.
• Deadpan Snarker: Everyone turns into this when faced with Gabe's unique personality.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Subverted. Soketsu is quickly recruited into the main cast after his defeat, but only because they are already allies from three hundred years ago and he recovers his Past-Life Memories.
• Death Is Cheap: Played with. At first it is established that the metaphysic laws of the universe do not allow it, but then Gabe just stuffs them in the corner while he does it anyway.
• Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: The main four allegedly created the circumstances to summon a Physical God way before he was supposed to appear three hundred years ago. Once the gig was up, he apparently wasn't amused.

• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first three chapters are officially declared non-canon. It's easy to see why...
• Eldritch Abomination: Lily, the most adorable Lovecraftian expy ever.
• The End of the World as We Know It: It happened 300 years ago by a Kaiju that not only annihilated a good portion of humanity, but also spread a corruption that made electricity unusable.
• Fate Worse than Death: What happens to Kiseki and Adhi, although it depends on how bad "being eaten by a Lovecraftian horror" is. For the record, they didn't really held it against her in the next non-canon chapter

• Hand Blast: Gabe's armor is able to store all the impact it nullifies and release it in the form of this.
• Hybrid Monster: The Type-0's are humans disfigured by The Corruption and then cybernetically modified to become the mindless grunts of the Order.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: Alternates in general, but Adhi's weapon form takes the cake: A three-barreled gatling-gun that shoots something that can melt concrete.
• Improbable Weapon User: Gabe and his Rusty Seppuku Spoons.
• Insane Troll Logic: All the discussions in a particularly deranged non-canon chapter. Let's just say, it involves talking camels, racism, bestiality and Gabe.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • Soketsu, may even venture into overpowered territory.
  • Gabe, as long as he is in his Powered Armor. Otherwise he is a Squishy Scientist at best.
• Mad Scientist: Gabe tries to deny his status as such, but it falls flat once you consider he made a set of vector-bending, ultra-powerful magical weapons... and decided to make them look like kitchen utensils.
• The Medic: Pabloc is actually an engineer but had to learn medicine to be able to patch up Soketsu.
• Mind over Matter: Pabloc's telekinesis. According to a particular non-canon infodump, the Sufficiently Analyzed Magic of the setting works this way: it's all about accessing and overwriting the "Cores" holding the information of material objects, forcing them to change according to their new "program". Example: taking a piece of paper and modifying it to become "hard" and "sharp" turns it into an Absurdly Sharp Blade.
• Mood Whiplash: The non-canon chapter can often come off as this.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Cyborg Assassin Ninja Monkeys from the Reckoning War, the non-canon first three chapters of the story.
• No Conservation of Mass: Averted. Alternates actually retrain their weight when transform.
• No Kill like Overkill: Gabe gets so worked up while fighting Soketsu that he embeds him into a metal door as a finishing move.
• Non-Specifically Foreign: The story apparently takes place in Africa, which ironically the least devastated continent exactly because The Corruption and the Baad En’Gliss specifically targeted places with sophisticated electronics. However, the skin-color of the characters is never stated, so as far as we know, it's quite possible that none of them are Caucasian...
• Obfuscating Stupidity: It's kind of hard to tell whether Gabe is pretending to be stupid or he is really brilliant but very eccentric.
• Occidental Otaku: Lily uses random Japanese words in her sentences, tags honorifics on everyone and generally acts like an airhead Genki Girl most of the time. Justified, as in she spends most of her free time watching recovered Mahou Shoujo shows (which somehow survived the end of the world...).
• Oh, Crap!: Invoked by Kay and Soketsu during the fight with the mercenary couple.
  Kay: "Oh, look at his expression!"
  Soketsu: "Fufu... I think it says: "Oh crap"."
• Older Than They Look: Tiari, Kay and Lily.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Pabloc receives a cut that almost severs his leg but uses his telekinesis to force the wound shut and continues the fight.
• Only in It for the Money: The mercenary couple Adhi and Kiseki are this. Nicolai from the second arc mostly averts this.
• Only One Name: Most of the characters. That, or Only Known by Their Nickname. It's not exactly clear.
• The Order: It's called The Order.
• Our Fairies Are Different: These fairies not only live underground in an artificial, human-sized modern city, they are actually the familiars of Gabe. All 2 324 669 of them.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Pabloc is a genius-level engineer and physicist who is capable of building humanoid battle-droids and just learned medicine on the side to be able to treat his allies... and then there is Gabe, who can break the laws of the universe with science, constructs a self-sustaining metropolis housing more than two million fairies underground and resurrects a dead fairy as a human in a way that even Pabloc couldn't understand. So yeah, Mad Scientist trumps Omnidisciplinary Scientist in this case.
• Really 700 Years Old: Lily is a very ancient eldritch abomination.

• Person of Mass Destruction: Pabloc, once Lily's limiter is removed, can move entire mountains of sand without breaking a sweat.
  Pabloc: "Without the seal my power is nearly unaffected by the ether-disturbances or the mana-density of the target, so I could have smashed the guy into the concrete before he could have even started to move, then restrained him with his own arms while keeping the scythe-woman separated from him in order to minimize the danger they posed, then if that didn’t work out well I could have still got rid of them by collapsing the whole tunnel-system onto the top of their heads. Or I could have just reversed the flow of blood in their veins and blow up their hearts, that works too... Actually, you could say they were lucky that it was Lily who got them."
  Soketsu:"..."
• Precision F-Strike: Ahazkun's reaction when Gabe wants to talk to him after screwing up his centuries-spanning plans.
• Psycho for Hire: Subverted with Nicolai Farkas, a mercenary with such a horrible reputation that his previous mercenary-band wanted to kill him off because his infamy scared off the customers. In reality he is a really affable and laid-back guy who just happens to be an extremely talented swordsman with Kung-Fu Clairvoyance.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Kiseki-Adhi-Victor trio.
• Saintly Church: "The Order" actually does a good work at rebuilding human civilization with no apparent oppression or anything.
• Schizo Tech: The setting has extremely powerful, downright fabled weapons of myth that are able to rewrite reality so that they reflect any force applied to them, making them One-Hit Kill superweapons... and they are shaped like kitchen-utensils. In their defense, Gabe made them on a bet just to prove a point. They just happened to be so outlandishly effective that they became legendary regardless how ridiculous they looked.

• Shapeshifting: Alternates can apparently change into any form they previously examined in detail, but most of the time they are used as weapons.
• Shapeshifter Default Form: Subverted and played straight at the same time: Kay normally turns into a little girl as her default form, until it is revealed that because of some complications she just turns into the form she had when she first transformed, that of a little girl. Once the issue is fixed, she turns into her proper age when in human form.
• Sleep-Mode Size: Lily has a unique version of this. She is a shape-shifting Eldritch Abomination by nature appearing as a little girl, who still needs to sleep all the time to preserve energy, except that thanks to her Bizarre Alien Biology, sleeping for her means that she becomes an airhead Genki Girl.

---