All Level, No Experience (Worm/Pathfinder Amnesia Quest)

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Last of your people you may be, but perhaps that only meant all the more that you should keep pushing onwards, living your life, keeping their indomitable spirits, of curiosity and innovation, with you. With such in mind, you set your mind on what you hoped ought to be a fairly simple task- properly get yourself a computer, some diamonds for Wish, and phone along the way. Best if you could do so with ones that nobody else would particularly miss. You also should probably get searching sooner than later, as it might take you some time to search for one of the devices without an owner.

Yes, with the memory of your greatest regret, you were more aware than ever that impatience would lead to folly. With it in mind, you rally, your resolve surging as you quickly dash out towards the sides, back towards the town where you had seen more than a few of what you recognize in hindsight as electronics shops, some even dedicated solely to phones and computers. Your first choice is not to rob them, but instead built on a few simple details; phones at the very least, based on what you were able to feel through the ground, are both commonplace and highly varied, meaning that it is quite likely they are a frequently altered at the least, if somehow not also innovated, product, and from the glances you've seen are a the higher-end likely something of a moderate luxury.

And the particularly well to do who don't have too much else to do almost universally have a tendency to desire anything new to replace the old with, while the shops they buy from are more than likely quite happy to repeatedly oblige. That, paired with the fortuitous timing of arriving on the turning of a new year leading to an almost certain spike in 'out with the old, in with the new', very much even including yourself of course, meant the stores would most definitely be bringing in new stock.

That and, given the mentions of 'end of year sales' you've overheard at the mall, almost certainly removing the old stock.

One man's trash, another man's treasure, the saying ringing particularly true in this moment. Indeed, it's only a half an hour until you catch the sight in one of your semi-frequent breaches of a small group of night-shift workers, most of which are inside an electronics shop, packing away old merchandise into cardboard boxes, while one with headphones on is on simple back and forth duty taking the boxes to an open semi-trailer that he steps into, putting them in the furthest back he can. You did listen in for long enough to hear what must be a long-time employee explaining to a junior what to do, and that these were just slated to be written off as a loss and sent off, whereupon you were quite glad to stop for a few moments.

You wait for another seven minutes, to be sure the simple monotony of it has set in for the runner who hasn't been replaced, likely on account of him spending more time waiting than walking back and forth due to the relaxed pace the inside team seems to be working at, and then when you spot your next opening you quickly dart in, and it's more a difficulty of not taking too much to draw notice than of taking too long to be spotted, as you very quickly manage to slip two laptops and a desktop, though you had to carry the heavier laptop under an arm as you made your escape as it wouldn't fit into the haversack with the other two. You would probably have to either leave some of your stuff in your tent the next time or make another carrying container soon enough. You certainly had enough powdered ruby on you to do so.

Regardless, you continued along, finding it even easier to get a few phones, three smartphones and a flip phone among another group slated for disposal. Although, with this many times in close quarters it was impossible for you to not realize, you were rather large. As in, based on a glance at a ruler as well as some amount of math, you figured yourself to be at a height of 9' 7". Regardless, with that confirmation out of the way and your second prize in hand, recently with gems on your mind, you go searching around for diamonds-

And find disappointments. On anything more than a cursory glance, many of the diamonds in the pawn shops you've passed are of too low quality to be worth anything in magical use, if they even are proper pure diamonds at all and not clearly impure and therefore worthless for magical purposes. That would be even if it weren't blatant theft which, while you don't seem to feel any extreme compunctions against, you would prefer not to if not a particularly urgent matter. Furthermore, many of the sources are what appear to be wedding rings, and even the idea of destroying a wedding ring feels, wrong. Not overpoweringly so, but still, something most accurately expressed by way of a vague noise, like perhaps a low heeugh.

With your immediate plans fulfilled, you soon set back for your nook in the sewers, finding it soon enough, though the now certain knowledge of perfectly unclaimed warehouses on the surface makes the smell of it just a touch more noticeable than before, but certainly nothing you can't ignore.

Well then, with all of that business handled, it is currently the early morning, approximately 3 AM, of the 1st of January 2011. You really should consider what to do next.

What do you do next?

[ ] Write In

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First thing's first, you very much immediately go about casting Mind Blank, more than glad to it overlapping, although a part of you feels like even two hours was cutting it close to the line of comfort. With that done, you turn to a fairly pressing issue for a wizard, your spellbook. Namely, in how it is very much locked, without any key you can find. A brief shuffle through your things has it out in your hands, with you very carefully inspecting the lock again, as although ideas of eye-scanners and esoteric material requirements go through you, knowing even what you do of yourself, none of those feel right. For good reason, you find yourself thinking, some of those ideas ran the risk of damaging the spellbook in just trying to get it open!

The memory of your failure had, in bringing some context with it, given you a longer span glimpse of your history than any other piecing together's had, and while you get the vague feeling that perhaps that in, your gut says your teenage years or so, you would've gladly rigged your spellbook with a thousand glyphs and a fission reactor if you could, leaving the thing practically a beacon for anyone with the slightest bit of ability to detect magics, as well as very obviously different and defending, you know that you'd changed since that time. In some ways outright smarter, but more importantly, just a touch cleverer.

For a moment, you decide to ask yourself, 'How do you get past a lock that you don't have a key for?'. The obvious answer springs to mind, 'Well, try picking the lock.', then, you consider that it's the lock on what might possibly be the most important thing a wizard owns, of course it would be more complicated than that. Then, you consider- if someone already has the physical book, and knows what it is, and is your foe, the only reason they'd want to open the lock, is if they're not going to just destroy it. So, the lock doesn't protect the book per se, it simply delays (perhaps indefinitely) whomever is trying to get at the spells inside.

That person is probably also a wizard themselves, which, being one, have some tendencies, one of which is that with their lives so constantly steeped in magic, they tend to think of esoteric or unusual ideas first, and sometimes only. Particularly since many would consider themselves above such things, their vast intellects meaning that they could most certainly see past the surface level examinations that anybody could do, and delve deep into the lore behind the shape of the lock and its material's arcane significances, perhaps even finding historical accounts of similar magical locks, going further and further along in that vein, often very lengthy processes. With the profile of the kind of person this lock would be meant to delay, you then think, what would they not consider?

Lastly in your thought process, you go back to evaluating yourself again, not just your own past and present mentality, but capabilities, as very recently you've found you're quite good in hiding, and rather skilled in quickly pilfering things away, already knowing yourself to be in possession of two of the major skills needed in what else, but a common thief, the third of course being lockpicking. Almost exactly the kind of person a wizard would perhaps hire to steal the book, but of course dismiss them as out of their element in such arcane matters. With that considered, you try the obvious solution, that any competent wizard would immediately dismiss out of hand, on the simple assumption that their rival wasn't a complete dithering fool.

Your claws slip into the lock, pick it, and it opens with a satisfying click.

Well. That wasn't so complicated. With that done, you set yourself down to rest for some time, peruse your spellbook whereupon the formulae and writing within it simply feels correct, exactly as you would make them, all contained not in words but in delightfully precise geometry, which makes sense you suppose. Sadly, it appears to lack any further hints as to your own identity, with no notes in the margins or the like.

A good eight hours of rest, very quickly confirming you don't require sleep, and a brief test during the period where you had absconded yourself into a wall shows yourself as fully incapable of it even, though you were able to reach a relaxed state fairly easily.

Once the time was over, and you could feel your renewed energies, you slipped out of the wall and quickly prepared with information gathering in mind.

Very quickly, in fact. It only took you fifteen minutes to do so, preparing your spells from first to ninth level in your best attempt to put together an information gathering suite from your spellbook, which seemed a touch, eclectic, but not in by way of being all-encompassing like you'd hoped. Then, on previously unknown habit, you kept going, preparing spells of your next level, and next, and so on, until you finally stopped at the fifteen minute mark after having prepared two 17th Level Wail of the Banshees. It was a mite much. Though, informative, probably. You'd have to mull on that, possibly.

After that it was time to study the technology you'd managed to nick- to a degree. You were able to figure out even with just some external looks well enough how to recreate the principles at work in all of the devices, though the exact materials you'd need eluded you until, knock, you gave each one an undamaged but firm tap and listened closely.

Hm, fair amount of lithium, good bit of copper, comparatively trace amounts of gold, altogether an interesting enough mix, particularly in the processing centers.

That glance was also enough to tell you that unlike the phones and laptops, you wouldn't be able to work with the desktop right now for two immediate reasons. Firstly, it needed to be plugged in to an outlet, and while it wouldn't be much of a difficulty at all to convert one of your spare power cables to an outlet strip compatable with local electronics, especially as you'd need to do so anyhow to recharge the laptops and phones, the second issue was a touch more pressing.

You forgot to get a monitor or connecting cable, and while a power cable was an easy enough conversion, data transfer would be a bit of a different matter. It wasn't as though it was a horrible rush, so, you sat yourself down with the higher quality laptop, went through the given steps on the startup, and-

Promptly were reminded that you did not, in fact, have an internet connection down here with which to research. Right, and you wouldn't exactly have a phone plan with the smartphones since you did pilfer them, even if you did get signal down here. Although you were still able to, after a lot of exceptional annoyance with your claws tapping the screen and not registering, having to wad up the sleeve of your armor to maybe get a response half the time, get one of the smartphones active at least.

The flip phone on the other hand was delightful and satisfying in your hands, and you distinctly remember seeing the options for prepaid SIM cards, which would be much simpler to get by just using local cash than trying for a credit card.

Although, there was a part of you that did want to see if you could set up a bank account as just, yourself, xiomorn and all, no fake identity. You weren't sure if it was a silly or proud thought. Maybe both.

Regardless, you know you'd seen a few places up on surface that offered free Wi-Fi as long as you were a paying customer, you'd only need about five, perhaps ten dollars to be sure, in order to pay for a coffee to sit down and research, something much more possible to do thanks to having Alter Self and Veil in your arsenal. You'd considered the Library, but sadly they'd require a library card and other such that you didn't have at the moment.

You suppose you had most of a plan ready to go, just a few details left.

How to acquire about five or ten dollars, what your human identity should look like, and whether you should go for a place providing Wi-Fi in either the upper-class section of town or middle-class section?

[ ] Write in

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AN: There's your available spellbook now also in your character sheet, I prepped the most 'Info Gathering' out of the lot that I was able, except for the ones at 10th and above since those were done automatically by ingrained habit, revealing them in the first place. In the future, if y'all would like to specify any spells or even down to the loadout, feel free! You have no expended slots at the moment, so totalling up the prepared's will get you how many of each level you can prep.

That aside, hope y'all enjoyed this one!

P.S. Also, I'll tally the next vote using Task separation, in case y'all want to separate things like chosen Wi-Fi spot with money acquisition or the like.