Everybody Wants the Crown [Pactverse Quest]

"Okay," Dad says, sitting opposite to you. You have your own cup of tea in hand, while Mom is drinking hers while working on her laptop. "I guess the logical thing would be to start with the Goblins, since they are the most immediately dangerous."

You nod, reluctantly.

"Well, it's not like there's much to say about these ones, anyway," Dad scratches his cheek. "Last I checked they were at about... two dozen, which is unusually large. Mostly lesser or middling, though there's a few mid-tier ones that can hit hard. And Turdblood, of course."

"What makes him so special?" You ask, "You and mom always seem... almost scared when you talk about him."

"Well, there's a lot of things about that particular Goblin that are worrying," Dad says. "He's a Redcap, which is bad on its own, but there's how he's stronger than he should be for a Goblin his size."

"Hm," you take your cup to your lips and take a sip.

"Also he killed me once."

Aaand you spit out your tea. "I'm sorry what the fuck?!"

"Language," Mom chimes in.

"Yeah," Dad seems embarrassed, like he hadn't said something totally insane. "If it hadn't been for the Heart Mark giving me an extra shot every time I use my Berserk Form, I would have been toast. I didn't even see him show up, he just suddenly had a fist through my chest."

Jesus fucking Lord.

"How did you even-?"

"He left me for dead when it was over," Dad shrugs. "Naturally, he peed on me and took my wallet first, so I've got a bit of a grudge, but the main lesson is that he's a serious threat. You shouldn't underestimate Goblins in general, and that goes double for Turdblood. He's stronger than he looks, smarter than he sounds and even meaner than you'd expect."

You swallow, "Noted. Any other notable Goblins?"

"Eh," Dad waggles his hand. "Turdblood doesn't seem to like to share the spotlight. I've noticed some Goblins that survive messing around here getting stronger and then just vanishing, so I always figured he kills them or banishes them."

"Well, that's a positive, maybe..." You shake your head.

Your dad had died once, holy shit. What if he died multiple times? Clearly he hadn't died-died, but still, to be so casual...

"Jack?" You look up and see Dad looking at you. "Are you okay, buddy?"

"I-" You stop yourself, take a deep breath, and nod. "Yes. Can we change the subject?"

Your Dad looks at you, then clears his throat and puts down his tea. "I'm sorry. My career as a Practitioner has been... steeped in conflict, to say the least. And with your mother having been there for most of it, sometimes I forget to sugarcoat the messier parts of it."

You make a face. "I don't need you to sugarcoat things. I'm-"

"I know you don't need it. But do you want me to?"

You consider this. "... no. I should get used to it, I'm a Harbinger too."

Dad smiles. It's kind of a sad expression, but he nods and moves on. "Anyways, there aren't any notable Goblins besides him as far as I know. Anyone else you're curious about?"

"Well, I was wondering what Oni are, since everyone seems worried about them. And Byrne mentioned a cult?"

"Ah," Dad makes a face, then nods. "Okay, starting by the ones less... personally complicated, Oni are a faction of Others originating from Asia."

You guessed as much from the name. Though... "Faction? Not species?"

"Good catch," Dad says, giving a proud smile. "I'm not totally familiar with the history, but the basics are that the Oni originated as a group of Others that took steps to become the opposition to Practitioners."

"... isn't that every Other?"

"No," Dad says. "Most if not all sapient species of Other have countermeasures that they can teach each-other, but the very nature of Oni is the opposition of the rules that every other being involved in our world is bound by. The Seal of Solomon still has some influence over them, so they don't go around tearing apart Innocents even if they were inclined to do so. But defeating an Oni thrice doesn't necessarily make it easier to beat them again, trying to use things in opposition to their nature to Bind them--if you can even discern their nature to start with--won't always work, things like that.

"The Oni faction originated in Asia because there, the relationship between Practitioner and Other was..." Dad struggles for a polite way to say it.

"Tyranical," Mom interjects. "There's a lot of resentment to the Oni community, but there's a reason why so many Practitioners turned coat and joined them in their war."

Dad nods, ruefully. "Just so. I don't like to generalize, but the customs were... harsh, to say the least."

"Hold on, war?" You say, "I thought wars were Innocent stuff."

Which was kind of an ironic mix of terminology and phrasing now that you said it out loud, but you stand by it. You'd asked your parents if some big Other had been behind the World Wars or something and you'd been politely told that that was a dumb question.

The Practitioners on one side of the war always get cancelled by the ones on the other side. Others may spring from war but they won't turn the tide. The truth was that while either type could gain a lot of personal power, soft or hard, history wasn't yours to directly change.

"It wasn't a 'fighting on the streets' type of war," Dad says, "Like the Oni are, it was a subtle affair. Families fighting Oni suddenly found themselves with more pressing reasons to fight each other, Others suddenly had items that could turn around Bindings, strange alliances took place just long enough to end entire dynasties, things like that."

Mom closes her laptop and walks over. "Truth is that while the Oni didn't exactly win, they didn't exactly lose, either. They couldn't get the Other Kingdom they were fighting for, but the world of Practitioners and Others was changed forever. For one, it used to be that an Other blending their nature was rare, only happening in certain way for certain types.

"The Oni specialized in altering their natures, sacrificing the power of patterns for unexpectedness and trickery. Goblins wrapped in glamour, crude Faeries, lively Ghouls, et cetera. They popularized it, and while it's still rare, someone might see more than one Eater of Unborn in their life."

... you don't want to know, but you have to ask. "And an Eater of Unborn is...?"

"A type of Ghoul that eats fetuses to gain connections to birth and death energy, making them almost impossible to Bind."

"Huh..." you scratch your cheek and do your best to supress your imagination. "So how do you beat them?"

"Setting them on fire or cutting off their heads seems to-"

"I mean the Oni."

"Oh."

"Make them use their tricks early against someone or something else, then hit them until they stop moving. So setting them on fire and/or beheading them is still a valid answer." You give your dad a flat look. "Hey, like she said, they traded the patterns of species for unpredictability. They're not exactly tough in a physical sense."

"Noted," you say. "And the cult?"

Both your parents sigh, look at each other, and do that silent communication thing before Dad speaks up. "Well... it started with a Cultist Practitioner."

You groan. That explains it.

Harbingers and Cultists tend to get associated by virtue of both having... generally uneven relationships with their Patrons. Cultists are Practitioners that specialize in stealing power from Things Beyond Mortal Comprehension, Ancient Gods that Lost their Names, and other things with Big Important Capitalized Letters.

The difference is that while your parents taught you how to focus your storm and not turn Berserk any chance you got, Cultist Practices seem to be the mystic equivalent of walking up to a bear mother, grabbing its cubs by the ankles, slamming them into the nearest hard surface and then wonder how it could have possibly ended with you mauled by an extremely pissed-off momma bear.

One of the biggest tricks in a Cultist's arsenal, for example, involves summoning your understandably irate Patron and then hoping it kills your enemies first while you desperately try to banish it back to wherever you pulled it from.

Really not what you would call the Thinking Man's Practice.

"Yeah," Dad says with some resignation and...

[Sharp Roll (2d6): 4,3=7]

Sadness? Why would he be sad? More than that, his grip on his cup is tighter. Like he's angry.

He clears his throat. "Anyways, there was this Cultist, Marshall Green. Powerful guy, truth be told. Good at what he did. He was almost on even ground with Byrne, Calloway and Wayne-Flowers, though only the latter would say it. I was only there at the tail end of his existance as a human, but I saw him explode a whole squad of Dogs of War with a few words. Made car alarms go off all over town and broke a few nearby windows, too."

"But then his patron, Ava-Raum, took notice," Mom says.

"Yeah." Dad takes another moment before continuing. "None of us are really sure of what it is. I doubt Green did, either. But it took notice, and every Practitioner in town saw the moment it decided to punish its cultist for his hubris.

"I could only see it with my Sight, but it was... It made me glad that Vox is small, relatively speaking.

"I saw the sky crack and split open, and through the split I saw an endless expanse of gates, openings bright as stars. I saw a pale, bright finger the size of the moon go down and point at poor Marshall Green, and give him more power than he could have ever wanted. And when it was done, I saw the same finger go back into the void and the sky seal back up like nothing happened.

"Green had lived with eight other Practitioners in a house on the outskirts of town, they had big plans for obtaining the Lordship and making the town some sort of huge ritual to make them powerful. Nowadays, not even the foundation remains. Green's eight friends turned into Paper Men, and he was... Well, he wasn't so lucky.

"Ava-Raum tore out a good piece of him, made him a Vestige, and filled the resulting space with light and power and words. Secrets of power that only an idiot would risk their sanity to hear, if you ask me.

"I saw him afterwards, and it was... It was wrong."

Dad takes a deep breath. Your mom puts a hand on his shoulder and, at your look, explains, "Your father... had taken a few lessons from Green, when he had just moved here. Before we met."

Oh.

"If you ever wonder why I'm so blasé about my deathly experiences," Dad says, voice shaky, "It's because sometimes you see something worse, and that puts things under a different light."

You swallow, mutter a string of vaguely apologetic noises, and make for your room.

"Jack," you stop at the door and look at your father. He's standing up. "We don't know what the thing wearing Marshall's face, or the one that put it there want. But we all have an obligation to stop it. Any chance I get, I take or break their Paper Men, and I send bound Others to attack their gatherings and destroy their holdings every month at least once.

"I won't ask you to do the same. Truth be told, I don't want you anywhere near them.

"But if there's a shot," he says, and you hear a force in his tone that he'd only used when explaining the importance of keeping your promises. "If there's a shot, and you can take it without hurting yourself or those around you, I want to believe I raised the kind of man that would take it."

You swallow, and head to your room without answering.


Well, that was... horrible.

Still, preparations need to be made. You start by putting on some music and getting the nailgun, then carefully dumping out the nails and dividing them into two groups: a loose mountain on one side of fifty iron nails on one side, and nothing yet on the other.

[Weird Roll (2d6+1): 5,5=10+1=11]
[Execution Roll (1d10+5(Whistle While You Work)+5(Full Day of Work)*2(Weird Roll Crit)): 7+5+5*2=34]

It's not the best work you've ever done, but it's definitely up there, even if only out of lack of competition. After a while, you got a good rythm of carving runes into the heads of nails, setting them into ordered lines and moving on into the next one. It takes you long enough that by the time you're finished, it's time for dinner, but when you're done you have a full clip of nails, plus some extra that you won't be able to use in combat.

[Extra Nails Roll (1d50): 18]


(So close.)

It takes a small bit of power to keep them charged, but with the runes as small as they are, you'll be as close to a full tank as you ever get when you start the fight. Still, if you're going to keep making magic shit for your fights then you might want to look into some better methods.

You take some time to rest, recieving praise and proud looks from your parents when you report your resounding success over dinner and diminishing the visible worry in their faces, though it's far from gone.

The next day, you load fifty nails into the clip, put it in the nail gun, and start preparations for the Unearthly Howl.

[Weird Roll (2d6+1): 4,5=9+1=10]
[Execution Roll (1d10+5(Whistle While You Work)*2(Weird Roll Crit)): 5+5*2=20]

Despite what people think of Harbingers, it seems you've got a more apt hand with small, detailed work than with bigger diagrams. Then again, it's kind of a pain to paint the diagram around your neck using a small paintbrush and a hand mirror in the bathroom, but when you're done the black figures are there, lined carefully around your neck.

You give your work a last check by turning on your Sight.

Shadows become darker, light becomes brighter, and Connections manifest before your eyes. The lines of your runes and diagrams look more like openings, with small shifting things barely visible through them. It's a little eerie to see that on your neck, but from the looks of it the Unearthly Howl is set and ready to use.

You take a moment to inspect your Connections. Your bond to your parents is strong as ever, thick golden chains covered in symbols you associate with love (hearts and smiley faces and junk; you're not exactly a master of symbolism) sprouting from your heart, a connection you draw strength and joy from. Your Token, on the other hand--or wrist, maybe--has a single power line running from it to beyond your sight.

Lesser Connections (those guys you met at the meeting, high school friends you suspect are already forgetting about you) take the shape of thin chains wrapped loosely around your fingers, with miniscule symbols.

And then there's the subject of your ambition. Your Connection to Poet's Hill.

At the moment it's just a small chain going from your ankle to the ground. But you think you can make it answer to you. It'll be hard, it'll take a lot of fighting and smooth talking... but you know you can. Same way you know you can breathe and walk, you know you can do this. Because it's worth doing, because it's hard.

Because in doing so, you can make this town more. Make it better.

And this is the first step.

You turn off your Sight, nod at your reflection, and walk out of the bathroom.


You know where the Goblins are, but that doesn't erase the need for looking, if only so you can make sure they don't see you approach.

[Sharp Roll (2d6): 4,5=9]

And you manage it.

Not that it was that hard, considering...

"Move it, you witless fucking maggots!" a horrid little thing, his head about even with your hip in height, screams at three mini-Goblins the size of rats. He seems to be directing them to do... something with the dumpster. You see how he kicks one inside when he fails to scamper up fast enough. There's another Goblin about the same size as him, chewing with a glassy-eyed expression as she sits opposite of the dumpster. Some things crawl out of her mouth, but she just shoves them back in absentmindedly.

The male Goblin keeps screaching, "Find the best trash, cockgurglers! I need it now! Now! Now! Now! Right! Fucking! Now!"

Yeah, you're not sure he hears anything over himself.

You take a good look at the Goblins, turning on your Sight to make sure their attention isn't on you.

The Connections tying them together are made of rusted metal and covered in miscellaneous trash, which you didn't even know could happen to Connections, but the ones tying them to someone deeper in the woods were covered in barbs and wrapped around their necks, which gives you a pretty good idea of Turdblood's brand of leadership.

The male Goblin has a small torso and long limbs, making him kinda insectile. His head is fat, doughy and bald, and before your sight you see some kind of green mist constantly drifting out of his mouth. Every time he swore, you saw the mist curl in the air.

The female Goblin is basically the opposite, with a body that's almost perfectly spherical and small stumpy limbs. Her head, which has a long mane of hair covered in what looks like condoms and rotting foodstuffs, is half-sunk into her torso. This brings about the bizarre view of the top half of her head (all you can see from your place across the street) twitching so her hair whips into her hand, she grabs something horribly with unfailing accuracy, and with that same prowess she tosses it into her mouth.

The latest such object is a condom. An used one, from what you peek.

... ew.

The three rat-size Goblins are, fortunately, too small for you to see well at a distance.

Okay then. Showtime.

[] Battle Strategy: You really don't want to look at these guys any more than you have to.
-[] Opening Move: They don't know you're there, so...
--[] Announce Yourself: So fuck the element of surprise? It is good karma to give the enemy a warning, tho.
--[] Shoot First, Announce Never: You've been good enough, it won't be a huge loss to just shoot the fuckers.
-[] Strategy: How are you going to do this?
--[] Write-in (how you plan to react to their moves, in what order you'll attack them, when/how you'll use Unearthly Howl)
-[] Goal: What's the endgame? And don't say 'kill Tony Stark'.
--[] Murder: Pull out your inner murderhobo. You didn't play a Barbarian all those times just to wuss out now.
--[] Banishment: Get them to leave and, if done well, never come back.
--[] Binding: Their asses are yours now.


QM's Note: My browser restarted and updated right as I was finishing this update, and I thought I lost everything, so know that I wrote the last couple things coming off of a mild stroke.

Do keep an eye on what you can do and the cost of your practices when you do this, guys. I won't weigh in on the planning unless you start to plan something totally suicidal or impossible. Best o' luck.

Big thanks to @TheFat1 for beta reading.