[x] Decline. You have a bunch to do and not a lot of time to do it in.
-[x] That said, ask if she can send you contact info for a few people in case you have half an hour free to try to nail down cleansing.
Although you'd like to run off and start learning new magic, you don't really have any reason to do so immediately. You told Nanoha you'd run recon on the new plane and maybe pick up some anti-air systems. That plan fell apart when you realized how you'd need to alienate (heh) one or more factions to obtain such a defensive system, but at least you found a few significant caches of resources. Before, you probably would've had to attack an alien refinery or something else along those lines in order to get the materials you needed. Now? Now you just have to convince XCOM to share their secrets.
Get on our level, luck-wishing MGs.
Your homeworld is much the same. You could go running off and start learning magic immediately, but honestly, that sounds like the sort of thing you should bring Nanoha along for. Not only will it be fun, but it'll be good practice for the celebrity status your party will likely earn during the Jewel Seed incident. No, you should just make sure your appearance doesn't induce Kyubey to contact the other Incubators with additional information. That might've been a long-term problem, but it's still one you'd like to avoid. If you're going to spend any time on this plane before Nanoha is ascended, it should relate to the lifesaving Red Cleansing. Either way, Mom probably already saved a bunch of magical resources for the next time you start training anything the Internet knows about.
(3:02 AM) Guest: Thanks for the thought, but I have a lot to do and not much time to do it in. Still, could you send me the contact info for a few people willing to act as guinea pigs in case I ever have a spare hour to work on it?
(3:02 AM) Kanon [Enchantress] [Moderator]: ...Well, you're definitely a Red.
(3:02 AM) Kanon [Enchantress] [Moderator]: I might know a girl or two with high enough Fire Resistance, but practice outside their soul before you start setting up stuff inside it, K? Safety first and all that.
(3:02 AM) Kanon [Enchantress] [Moderator]: I'll mail you with a list later, OK?
[x] Offer to help with the conference setup and operations. Assuming you're going public, you have access to significant financial and organisational assets.
-[x] In the long run, if anyone is interested, you could probably handle a formal professional/academic conference for mana magic as a field.
(3:02 AM) Guest: Okay. I could help with the conference setup once Kyubey is taken care of; I'll be able to access a bunch of financial assets and absurdly competent organizers after that. If anyone is interested, I could probably even do a formal professional/academic conference for mana magic in general. I'm not as good at non-Red magic as specialists would be, but unlike probably everyone else, I actually have the full picture.
(3:03 AM) Kanon [Enchantress] [Moderator]: Nah, we've got this. MG gatherings are less academic talks and more party-esque social gatherings, so the important part is picking somewhere with good public transportation. We'll talk about a second conference depending on how this one goes.
(3:03 AM) Kanon [Enchantress] [Moderator]: Also, party our budget is of the "if you don't use it, you clearly don't need it" variety, so if we can spend money on something both high-profile and visibly helpful, I expect we'll actually make an effective profit over time.
(3:02 AM) Kanon [Enchantress] [Moderator]: Part of our budget*
(3:03 AM) Guest: Okay. Um, I guess I'll just go drop off the face of the Earth, then?
(3:03 AM) Kanon [Enchantress] [Moderator]: You can go if you want to
(3:03 AM) Kanon [Enchantress] [Moderator]: You can leave your foes behind
(3:03 AM) Kanon [Enchantress] [Moderator]: But your foes don't dance and if they don't dance
(3:03 AM) Kanon [Enchantress] [Moderator]: Then they're all foes of mine.
(3:03 AM) Kanon [Enchantress] [Moderator]: (Stay safe, good luck, and good hunting!)
...Oooookay then?
(3:03 AM) Guest: You too.
You turn away from the tab and close your eyes. Agneyastra will take care of actually putting the equipment away. It's not laziness if she enjoys pampering you, right?
[x] Try listening for prayers. Even if you can't get worship-power across planes, it'd be useful for communicating - just being able to respond to an attack on your city on the king-selection plane would be huge.
Despite your best attempts, your mind remains disappointingly silent. You'd expected whispers from prayers on the current plane, distant murmuring from Magnostadt, something, but the only thoughts in your head belong to you.
...Maybe if you tried it in Eternity?
"Mom, will I break anything if I planewalk away?"
"Not anymore, Jade. You may proceed at any time."
You lean back and fall into Eternity.
The bad news: although you can hear Magnostadt's whispers of prayer while you're in Eternity, you can't actually understand any of it. You can't even hear the despairing tone you know to exist. Unless your ability to hear prayers improves with practice or quantity, it will be utterly useless as an early warning system.
The good news: you still managed to save a bit of time despite your inability to understand prayers. You hadn't exactly intended to start looking at the science-Spark plane, but once you started, you couldn't just let yourself
stop. The inhabitants deserve better than that.
With preparations completed and battles fought, the war between the Shining Coalition and the Heterodyne family has officially begun. Clockwork automatons are frequently fielded by both sides, but their movements tend to be jerky and their attacks easily dodged by biological Constructs. Enhanced humans, including the monstrous Heterodyne Jägermonsters, are by far the most dangerous entities on any given battlefield. Armored baseline humans are more common, but although some of them could be quite respectable under ordinary circumstances? In this world, there's a reason they're often called "Monster Fodder."
War is said to be hellish and you're forced to agree. The Heterodynes have little land to defend, the defenses of their infamously powerful home city, Mechanicsburg, adequate to guard what few friendly neighbors they have. The Shining Coalition is not so lucky, its component towns and villages burning from raids far from the official battle lines. The Heterodynes simply do not play fair, nor do they seem to respect the difference between soldiers and civilians. If the Shining Coalition could focus its forces in one place, they
might be able to destroy Mechanicsburg and end the threat, but they're too busy reacting to actually act. Five of their Spark-equipped soldiers might be enough to take out a single Jägermonster. They've found that cold comfort when said monsters are more interested in burning and fleeing than their usual pillaging and fighting.
Despite all this, morale remains high in the Coalition. Mechanicsburg was long famed for being an invulnerable fortress. At the start of the war, an exotic bomb planted just inside the walls managed to toss Mechanicsburg's main gates several kilometers away. The gap was sealed by moving walls and a replacement gate is almost completed, but damaging Mechanicsburg during a serious conflict? It was unheard of in modern culture.
Three of the bedraggled Jägermonster Generals still serve the Heterodynes admirably, but they seem to have grown out of their former bloodlust. In the absence of such, this trio has quietly begun searching for a way to end the conflict without disqualifying loss of face or life. Their efforts have yet to bear fruit. The Heterodyne way of life, that of raiding other areas for sport and riches, is mutually exclusive with the laws and protection the Shining Coalition tries to guarantee. Really, the same could probably be said of any government. The Heterodynes are just as monstrous as the majority of their servants and utterly cancerous to any civilization not their own.
The worst part? You can't even really intervene on any serious scale. The exotic weapons Sparks can field could easily destroy or kill anything you could bring to bear, including
yourself — or at least, your vessel. You aren't truly an outside-context problem, not when the world is already so very strange. If it exists, a Spark has weaponized it, and if it doesn't exist, a Spark has been inspired enough by the absence to make something
worse. This seems to include even magic if the immortal god-queen of England is any indicator.
...You should probably avoid her, you think. Or maybe not? Her skills and technology have grown so advanced they've flipped over to actual colored magic. You could learn a lot from her if she doesn't kill your vessel out of sheer frustration. Your soul would remain an enigma she couldn't destructively study, but so long as you don't actually tell her what your protective Spark does, she might just treat it as a naturally-occurring method of achieving the divinity she claimed. Which... you suppose it
is, but that's beside the point.
Or you might just be making mountains out of molehills. After all, Queen Albia of England used to have several sister goddesses before they... started to loathe each other and physically fight over their differing treatment of favored mortals...?
Never mind. You don't think the precedent of other gods will make any huge difference to how she receives you. Her habit of caging promising female Sparks via overprotective affection might be similarly problematic in the long run. Sure, you might get to become an official princess of England and that's honestly hilarious, but Albia has enough
Red to be genuinely heartbroken by your departure and possibly enough
Blue or
Green for an exceptionally creepy, memory-free flesh-clone of your vessel. Avoiding that level of attachment might be tricky.
[] Head back to your home plane.
-[] Aim for Aria Summers.
[] Travel to Velgarth.
-[] Aim close to, but outside of, the Dhorisha Plains. You'd prefer not to have to tiptoe around a bunch of evil mages.
-[] Aim for Karse, the country ruled by a corrupt religious theocracy overly fond of burning "witches" with fire. You could sympathize if they were Witches, but since they're not...
-[] Don't aim for any particular landmarks and just focus on finding an untapped adept-potential.
-[] Return to your friends. Worst case scenario, you talk magic with a heroic ghost for a little while. No huge loss, that.
[] Stop by the science-Spark plane. You couldn't possibly justify doing that without talking to Nanoha first. Your homeworld, you knew to be relatively safe. The science-Spark plane? Not so much.
[] Write-in
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