A Simple Transaction I

[ilbgar123]

Corvidae Cursebearer

Corvidae Cursebearer: Chapter 1​

Raven groaned, slowly pulling herself off the cobblestones into a sitting position. Looking around, she found herself in a town that, while a bit drabber than she was used to, wouldn't have been too out of place in one of the kingdoms of Ever After. Glancing down at herself, there were some tears in her purple and pink skirt ruffles and fishnet stockings. Along with a long cut, thankfully closed with healing magic, in her silver sleeves-shoulderpads and high collar from when one of them got a lucky swipe, which also gouged a big chunk of her hair out. Right along where the purple streak turned magenta. She much preferred the purple to the black, but the contrast was appealing enough she didn't want to dye it. Also, her makeup was almost certainly messed up, but she had bigger problems. So, pretty much everything above her boots was damaged in some way. Open-toed high-heeled boots weren't really good in a fight, even with buckles to help keep her feet in them, though in her defense, she'd always sort of expected that if she was in a fistfight, things were going to hex. Which they had been.

Her brain still rebooting, she muttered "Oh... so that's what the narrators sound like..."

Wait what?

"Wait what?!" She bolted upright, grabbing onto a nearby wall to raise herself up quicker.

"Okay, whatever..." she stared off into space for a moment, shuddering. "those things were, they did something to Ever After and now I'm here." She glanced upward, feeling it appropriate as that was what Maddie had done when talking to the narrators. "Do you guys know what..." she paused, staring in shock as a star flickered, then flashed painfully bright. After blinking the spots out of her eyes, the star was gone, and a terrible feeling of dread filled her.

"That's... probably a coincidence, right...?" she asked, half-directed at herself. Shaking herself, she changed the subject. "Why can I hear you guys now?"

The narrators, parents and child, spoke in hushed tones for a solid ten seconds, before Brooke Page, the latter, responded. "Most likely, it's something to do with the location change. Kitty and Maddie were the only ones who could hear us, but we can't, uh, find them right now."

"...That can't be good." Raven grimaced, then blinked. "Wait a minute, why do you have speech quotations and your parents don't?" she blinked again, bafflement crossing her face. "...Why can I tell?"

It's sort of like Cedar's situation where she can't lie until her story starts, because that would mess with her story. Brooke hasn't achieved full status as a narrator just yet, so she's occupying a sort of halfway point, the male narrator explained.

Hard to be sure on the specifics, but somehow you've gained some awareness of the fourth wall, like Maddie and Kitty, the female narrator commented.

Huh. She'd have to ask Maddie about this. "Hm, shouldn't someone have heard me 'talking to myself' by now? Then again, I'm not sure how long I was out for, so it could be 2 AM or so right now. It does look like this is a dense enough area for a night life though, so I should have attracted some attention." she queried.

"You did, in a way." Raven turned to find a man she was certain hadn't been there a few seconds ago. Her magic seemed a bit off after that star vanished, but her eyes were working just fine. She saw an apparently endless well of power, sufficient to snuff out all of existence as she knew it like an ocean being dropped on a lit match, or raise even the lowliest to heights that would make the destruction or salvation of Wonderland require less than a thought, and potential to rise higher still. Which he was. Always. She could discern just enough to tell that the only reason she hadn't instantly been driven mad or had her very soul annihilated, or first one then the other, for the temerity of meeting his eyes was active restraint of his influence.

Raven paused in shock as she processed all this, then nodded. If he wanted to do... anything, she couldn't possibly manage so much as inconveniencing him, so she might as well humor him. "Uh, alright. What's going on, hexactly?"

"Your World is but a part of the Greater World, a singular universe or dimension in an ocean of them in a closely connected multiverse. Currently, the Great Darkness is in ascendance, swarms of Heartless have swallowed more than three-quarters of all Worlds in your multiverse, hence your narrators having been temporarily been bound to you, as one of the few individuals to be lucky enough to escape and thus one of the only ones to have a story to tell, particuarly with the rules of your World not particularly carrying over beyond your personal magics. Normally, the hand of fate, not unlike your destiny, would guide a young man, younger than you, in fact, to begin pushing back the Darkness, and restoring both your and the other Worlds, but an Apocryphal intervention against one of my High Cursebearers some million years from now has echoed backwards in time across the local omniverse, rewriting vast swathes of it. For one thing, most versions of this multiverse have no such World as your own, and the potential for your mother's past dealings with those beyond your World to change things is high, and yours is not the sole World introduced. For another, the ripple effect of the distortion that triggered the changes to this multiverse can and will cause drastic shifts, regardless of any butterflies of chaos unleashed already, like your existence." the man explained.

"Is there... anything I can do?" Raven didn't want to believe what he was saying, but the same impression, one that she was sure she'd never forget, that she got regarding his power told her that he was telling the truth. An echo of his intentions coming across the same way?

"In theory, yes. While magics specific to a given World lack the ontological veracity of the Greater World's, especially if your World is lost or you travel beyond it, or both in your case, that doesn't mean you're powerless, nor that you can't learn the magics of the Greater World, and intervene on behalf of the forces of Light to help tip the scales. Fate will not give up so easily either, and will attempt to get things back on it's track. In practice, you don't know anything about the Greater World or the fated course beyond what I've told you, and you lack any means of transport across the Ocean Between without risking your Heart in the Darkness. However, if you desire to make a difference, to grab your destiny with your own hands, I can offer you a fraction of my power and Progression, in exchange for a an equally miniscule fragment of the burdens I bear. No contracts, demands for souls or blood, or anything of the sort. Simply a bargain we have struck. Do note that you cannot back out once you agree, and I cannot tell you specifics of the deal until you do. Further, the power I grant will be sufficient to match the value of the extremely unpleasant burdens you take on, which I will mitigate to the point you can withstand them, but you will suffer from their effects. I see a great deal of attrition among those who take the deal." he paused. "Usually, I'm asked why I can't do anything and/or asked if I'm The Devil by this point." he noted.

Raven gestured vaguely at the sky. "I clearly know much less about how reality works than I thought I did, I think spending so much time around my mother when I was younger inured me a bit to evil auras, considering she dealt with dark enough magic to curse entire worlds, people call me evil all the time because of something I haven't actually done, or that my mother did, and I like to think I'm a decent judge of character, so I don't think you're evil, even if I kind of want to punch you in the face, which I'm thinking is the fault of a curse." she explained. "You must have a good reason. At a guess, if the scales you operate at are like you say, then intervening here would mean you can't help other people later. So, you make deals like these to get some extra help."

The man nodded. "I am bound by countless Curses. While I am infinite cardinalities of infinity your greater, I am still a pale shadow of what I once was. I strove to become the one who made the rules, to make reality fair and just, but extant Powers That Be intervened. Though I was victorious, it was a pyrrhic victory, a win in only the most technical of senses. As such, though I would like to resolve the issues plaguing your reality, other, more troubled realities need my attention, as do others who I might make this offer in the local omniverse. Speaking of which, do you wish to take on the burden and opportunities I offer?" he asked, and Raven nodded her assent.

"Normally, one must remain pure of body and mind for 30 years, and while you remain pure, you are barely over the halfway mark of age, but I can make an exception, though it increases the number of Curses you must take on." The Accursed raised two fingers. "Firstly, there are two distinct types of Cursebearers. One is immediately formidable enough to build or destroy entire worlds, but gains further might no more quickly than they otherwise would. Still, power compounds upon itself, and only 1 Curse is necessary for you to qualify, as you are not clinging to life and existence by a thread, unlike many I offer this transaction to. This is known as the Combat-Type. It is rare for a High Cursebearer to arise this way, as the offered power does not grow naturally, but not impossible.

The other kind is the Progression-Type. Little to no immediate power is offered beyond restoration of enough life and spirit that the Cursebearer won't keel over dead the moment they have to fight, but they have the limits removed, and their Progression increased to bewildering heights, such that the average Cursebearer of this type can go through Shonen training arcs through normal life, an enemy that nearly killed them one-on-one being reduced to chaff in a month's time. However, this option requires that you take on the same Apocryphal Curse that caused this mess in the first place, something I wouldn't recommend unless you had no other choice. Additionally, 2 Curses are necessary in total to qualify, as payment for the Progression you would be granted, though you are in far better shape than most candidates, as your bloodline is very accepting of new power being added to it. Apocryphal counts as 2 Curses, so that's not a dealbreaker, though this does cut down the number of Remittances you could reasonably take. If you do take on this option nothing will be impossible for you, with enough time, and assuming you survive the tribulations Apocryphal tosses at you. You could raise everyone you know to the level of an immortal deity, or higher still. You could resolve the Heartless permanently, and restore the Realm of Light to it's former glory. Becoming Overdeity of this multiverse is but a stepping stone to becoming a High Cursebearer, and thus well within your potential.

Additionally, you may purchase Greater Remittances for each additional Curse, or 3 Lesser Remittances for each Curse, but you'll get a Primary Remittance either way."

She thought it over, but not for very long. "A Progression-Type's a lot more likely to get their World back and keep it afterward if they live, right? Plus, you said that the Curse that started all of this will keep messing things up indirectly whether or not I'm strong enough to keep myself safe, nevermind my World." Raven clenched a fist. In the end, it wasn't much of a choice. "That's why I agreed in the first place."

"Are you sure? This isn't something even I can trivially undo, and as I said, none of these Curses are pleasant." The Accursed questioned, but did not deny her reasoning.

Raven nodded. "Besides, if even the inkling's inkling of the scale you operate at I can understand is accurate, lightening your burdens even a little makes reality immeasurably better. If I don't do this, I'll drive myself crazy wondering what I could have done, and what you could have done with just a little more breathing room."
He closed his eyes for a moment, and nodded once. "As you wish. Which burdens in particular will you take on? I will explain the mandatory Apocryphal Curse first.

The Apocryphal Curse. Truly a dangerous Curse. By far, the majority of Progression Cursebearers fall to this Curse, either directly or due to it's machinations. One of a few Crowning Curses, worth 2 of their fellows. Over time, which Curses will usually take the worst for you of objective and subjective time flow, it will build up 'credibility' wreaking havoc with it to make things interesting. Perhaps an enemy will have an unreasonable breakthrough. Perhaps tides of What-Is-Not will threaten to unmake reality. Or maybe you will attract the ire of dire enemy. Perhaps an ill will befall your friends, allies, or their kingdoms, tugging at your heartstrings so you spend time fixing that instead of strengthening yourself or them, and wearing away at your mental health. Generally, it will be trying to make your life miserable rather than directly to kill you, unless you trigger Apocryphal Onslaught. On the other hand, it will never let you rest on your laurels, always testing to see if you are up to the task of being a Cursebearer. Mitigate it quickly, lest you be drowned in a tide of bizarre coincidences, constantly preparing for the last fight."

The implication Curses could think was... deeply unsettling, but it was a little late for second thoughts. Besides, if she'd learned anything from Maddie, it was that certain types of chaos could be made into good things. Theoretically. With an actual Curse she'd definitely need to work at it.

"Geas of Indenture. One of the more extreme examples of mortgaging your future to pay for the present. This Curse has three effects. First, you are ripped away from your current reality, unlikely to ever see your friends or family again. Second, it directly bars you from bringing any new companions along with you, though they may still attempt to follow you, though sufficient proximity or ontological compatibility for this to be both possible and non-fatal is up to chance as much as anything else. Thirdly, you will receive a task. Failure to complete it will result in death beyond the possibility of recovery, and the definition is very strict, such that, for example, if you were required to rule over 50% of your universe, 51% of your universe being erased from existence, whether you could recover that or not, would result in immediate task failure and subsequent death. On the other hand, it will always be at least possible for the you as of entering the Geas world to succeed. This task varies between the killing of a 'Chosen One' selected by fate, or to conquer and rule over a stretch of territory. There are exceptions, but they are rare.

The tasks will not be inherently abhorrent, though keeping your hands entirely clean will not be possible. Murder of a well-meaning Hero is about as bad as it gets, and nothing stops you from resolving the issues they were intended to. In a struggle between Hero and Demon Lord, you could be an outside-context problem who killed both and led the world into a new golden age. There is also no need to rush. So long as even a moment remains on your timer, it does not matter when the task is completed, so long as it is. Hero-killing generally has a timeframe of 100-500 years allotted, while rulership tasks tend towards 1-10 of the Earth-standard millennia, sometimes more if a large enough area is to be conquered. Succeed, and you may then vacation for up to ten years, though with Apocryphal this mostly serves to temporarily remove an instant-death condition for Apocryphal to exploit. The main issue is the length of your sentence: 937 octillion years. Long enough that you are likely to be a very different person by the time you finish. If you do.

Decimator's Affliction. 10% of the lifeforce, and subsequently the lifespan, of every being within range is drained every standard year. This range scales with your power, but is enormous in comparison. A normal human might only affect a region. You would likely affect a significant portion of your entire planet even now. By which I mean more than an entire continent. When you have world-destroying power and the rest of your abilities match up, the scale is more in line with an entire solar system. This also means that, if you lack access to enough fundamental lifeforce, the Decimator will begin to cannibalize your essence. Skills, memories, abilities, your very identity and ontological veracity can be lost if you do not sate it or mitigate it sufficiently. It is technically possible to grow faster than this occurs, but even a Progression-type would be crippled under the absolute best circumstances. Mitigation of this Curse is on the more difficult end, though there are more routes than with most Curses. None of them are pleasant or easy, however. For example, feeding Decimator fallen enemies, sacrificing anything you might have gained from the fight in the process.

Affliction of Slumber. Our dreams are often fragmentary things which vanish from our minds when we wake. Thus, it can be said that the 8 hours taken for recovery of our bodies and file sorting for our brains do not truly qualify as life, just as a machine turned off to undergo maintenance is decidedly inactive. This Curse saps 8 of your waking hours, reducing you to 8. While you can be awoken, even a few minutes missed sleep will leave you exhausted and groggy and a full hour will threaten your physical and mental health as if you were a normal human going days without sleep. Intelligent enemies may realize this is the case, and exploit it to leave you constantly weakened. No matter the strength of your constitution, these effects cannot be resisted without proper mitigation. Half of your waking existence, and this half your life, is consumed by this Curse. Unlike your friend Briar Beauty, this is not a simple 'carry out your sentence and then continue your life' sort of deal. Most Curses are permanent things, as opposed to Indenture.

Brand of the Champion. People often come to depend far too much on individual heroes. Still, champions are chosen to solve problems, even if this sets them apart from others. You have likely noticed the tendency for everyone in an RPG to fail to assist you unless you do something for them first, even if that's moronic, evil, and/or irresponsible. This is essentially the function of this Curse. Others will refuse to assist you in any way without recompense of some kind, usually a perilous or ridiculous request, though money can also work. Generally, this scales off of the aid you have in turn requested. I am not an exception, though I am less affected than most.

Brand of the Wretched. This Curse causes an aura of dread and horror to emanate from you, giving everyone you meet a truly horrible first impression. This can be overcome in time, but expect your initial reception to be mistrust and fear at best, even if you just saved their life, and vicious hatred at worst, if you did anything remotely unpleasant or seemed to. In essence, this will cause people to initially assume the worst of you. Do not underestimate the difficulties this can engender. Both in terms of mental health, as humans are fundamentally social creatures, and in terms of interactions such as buying potion ingredients and selling off your potions, for example. Take the insistence that your friend Ginger Breadhouse is a cannibal, present or future, and how that affects her social life. Your first impressions will be even worse.

Plenary Brand. They say knowledge is power, guard it well. This Curse makes guarding the knowledge of your powers and potential as a Cursebearer impossible. Your fundamental nature as a being of limitless potential is broadcast across all senses, impossible for any sane and most insane beings to ignore. Neither concealment nor misdirection are possible without mitigation, and even if people would like you more for it normally, this Curse prevents that from being the case.

Everyone who perceives you has their attention drawn to you, with your capabilities presented to them, to whatever degree they can comprehend, though extreme specifics are usually lost. It's sort of like having Libra or Scan used on you the moment you come near someone, in RPG terms. They may not know the names of your spells, but they'll know your general health, magical power, and what you can do with your spells, as well as gaining as much awareness as they can withstand of the bottomless well of potential Progression provides.

This also makes disguises, mundane or mystical, useless without mitigation of the Curse. In turn, enemies who come across you will react to this information dump. A Combat Cursebearer, they would attempt to outscale. A Progression type, they would bring the hammer down on immediately, throwing even irreplaceable assets at them because they knew that every failure to kill them would make them stronger. Any enemies you make will never forget the danger you represent, nor overlook you. Indeed, barring very unusual circumstances, they will prioritize you as a target in a fight. Even ostensibly allied parties will set up contingencies, justifying it under the rationale that they live at your mercy if you manage to build a head of steam. No one knowing about you, particularly the powers that be, before that happens is arguably your greatest defense. Many Cursebearers are lost within the first day, month, year, or decade.

Worse still, this Curse is like the Decimator. It worsens. Unlike Decimator, it grows on it's own. Unless you wish to become a mind-destroying, soul-searing memetic hazard who risks killing or rendering comatose people who glance in their direction, or for your enemies to become rabidly determined to kill you, you must mitigate this Curse.

Doom of the Tyrant. A Tyrant is someone who does not recognize any authority beyond their own. Who does not allow for any authority beyond their own. The Doom prevents you from recognizing, and especially submitting, to the authority of anyone or anything, from holiday traditions, to the rule of law. This only applies if someone tries to order or enforce such on you. Such as trying to make you come to a New Year's Eve party, which would trigger an extreme version of the pathological tendency to wish to disobey any orders one is given. Orders from myself or authority equal to my own are excluded, and I am in general immune, so taking this Curse and the Geas of Indenture does not guarantee death from refusal of the Geas' orders. On the other hand, Brand of the Champion's constant requests in return for aid make it extremely difficult to ever get any kind of subordinate with a mind of it's own to do anything, since you will refuse to bow to the Brand's authority, and they will refuse to follow your orders unless you do. Similarly, the Brand of the Wretched is likely to cause a vicious cycle of rising hostility if combined with this Curse, as you will refuse to comply with any requests from people inclined to think the worst of you, and they will likely take offense.

As you can imagine, operating in any organization you are not unquestionably in charge of is crippled, making serving in most militaries and working most jobs difficult at best, and effectively impossible at worst. Diplomacy is a laughable dream. Economic exchanges work just fine though. Do note that enemies can provoke you via reverse psychology, though the operative word is 'provoke'. You will not be forced to do the opposite of what they say, though you may be forced into attacking them. This is one of the Curses most difficult to mitigate, for whatever that's worth without proper context from bearing a Curse yourself.

Doom of Lunacy. The monster, hated by all others, protects a single individual who shows them kindness, but is comparatively weak and fragile, and thus vulnerable. This is a common theme in the various shards of reality. Approximately 75% of your power is sealed in a monstrous battle form. You cannot intentionally trigger it, beyond arranging stressful situations to force it out, or else you will go berserk, mindlessly attacking allied and enemy forces, destroying everything in the area. This area scales in a manner similar to Decimator, beginning large and becoming truly enormous as you grow. Anyone who perceives this form is effectively inflicted with the effects of Brand of the Wretched. All but your closest allies so exposed will turn their backs on you at best, or try to kill you outright.

Leaning into the theme is the only effective means of mitigating the Curse. Rarely, you will stumble across an individual with high compatibility with you, though they will usually be far weaker outside of their specialties. The Doom will begin to shift into the Geas of Lunacy in response to their continued presence, though you may resist the change if you wish. The Geas removes the penalty to your power, but inflicts an unhealthy devotion towards the individual. Their happiness and wellbeing, and even their whims supersede your own. You will find it difficult to refuse even inane requests, and their life being at risk will cause you to drop everything else, which any competent enemy will take advantage of, and compounds on the complications of Tyrant in serving in any kind of organization. The fact that increasing their power beyond their normal rate of Progression is always more difficult than it ought to be compounds their usual weakness.

Doom of the Martyr. Imagine Brand of the Champion, but you took on the tasks for no reward. That is the gist of this Curse. If someone pure of heart addresses you with a plea for aid, you will be compelled to give it. People who believe in their causes will usually qualify, such as your friend Rosabella, regardless of how correct they are in their beliefs. Someone who wholeheartedly believed that the moon would look better if it was turned around would be given equal weight as someone who believed that meat should be banned, provided the belief was genuine and the intentions were pure. Completely unreasonable requests, such as killing oneself or family, can be safely ignored, in part because pure intentions and murderous intentions do not generally mix. Charities can and will make you bankrupt and enslave yourself for others' happiness, though you are under no obligation to expose yourself to such. Indeed, you could avoid social interaction of any kind at all in a number of ways.

Additionally, no matter the evils committed and vileness of a given enemy, should they throw themselves on your mercy, you will not only grant it, but honestly forgive them, to the point mitigation is necessary to even take up countermeasures should they be lying or 'backslide', and fully support their supposed turning of a new leaf. They can do this an infinite number of times, and even if they killed your family and friends and made you watch, repeatedly, you will still fall for it, to the point of preventing others from finishing them off.

Brand of the Naturalist. All forms of technology are, by their very nature, unnatural. The Naturalist eschews all of these. From phones to clothes. You will feel a deep disgust simply from using a wooden spear without mitigation. You will also resist things like having healing potions used on you, though water which naturally possesses healing properties is still acceptable. Thus, you will be limited to magic, and biology. Artifice of any kind will be closed to you, as will most forms of equipment. You'd eschew technology to a level that Wood Elves would consider extreme.

The Curse of Hubris. Pride is the leader of the seven deadly sins for a reason. Hubris will alter your mind, causing you to have an unreasonably high estimation of your abilities. You will refuse to use your full power or skill against anyone, at least initially. Empirical evidence can lead you to the conclusion that it is necessary, but you will treat it as a one-time thing, even if you've brought it out a thousand times against this specific opponent. This can lead to your death against an opponent who would stand no chance against your full strength with relative ease. It is also a social malus, since you will grate on people with your constant condescension. Surely you've seen people in anime get angry over someone holding back on them? That, but all the time. Doom of the Tyrant combined with this Curse is likely to make you seem impossibly and undeservedly arrogant.

Doom of Ineptitude. The only thing worse than not having power, is having power you cannot control. This is the effect of this Doom. Your skill in all respects is lessened. Calamitously. Perhaps you attempt to heal someone. You give them cancer, or heal them to the point they end up with more limbs than they're supposed to and eyes where they shouldn't be. An offensive spell might burn half the town down. Trying to sew would likely see you puncturing everything in a 30 foot radius, and making a scrap of cloth that bears more resemblance to an ink blot. Hubris combined with this Curse would result in an enormous number of deaths from your overestimation of your skills.

Villain's Brand. A Permutation of the usual Brand of the Wretched. Rather than engendering an instant hatred in everyone you meet, instead, everyone you meet will be inclined to see you as evil or as a villain, or at very least as if you were waiting for an appropriate trigger to become such. This is more likely to make people outright attack you than Wretched, but on rare occasion there will be beneficial effects, such as a mentor who deems the best method to preventing your fall to be taking you under their wing, rather than trying to kill you. In essence, it trades the guaranteed general disgust of Wretched for more valence in response. Even I am not immune, but since I'm already taking you under my wing as a Cursebearer, it is somewhat moot. Additionally, this is merely a first impression, just like the normal Wretched. Sufficient heroic action, or at least non-villainous, can override it. Your mother's insistence in seeing you as a potential successor will be compounded by this, which may blind her since she already does not wish to believe you won't follow in her footsteps. Be mindful of others who share similar views. The Curse of Hubris would make it much more difficult to shrug off the villainous impression, as would Doom of the Tyrant, and together it would be almost impossible, as you'd be acting almost exactly like a stereotypical villain and reinforcing the impression.

Doom of Explanation. You will be compelled to explain your plans and/or prior actions to anyone who asks. Someone you determine to be a nemesis may well trigger it upon proximity. An enemy who notices can exploit this, and knowing it's coming is not an adequate defense, as they will be able to 'get you monologuing' no matter how many times they've used the tactic before. Comes pre-mitigated in that it runs on narrative time. For example, if you were using a bomb on a timer of any kind, the countdown wouldn't advance until you finished, preventing it from blowing up in your face literally or metaphorically, though any captives you possessed might escape while you were jabbering on, or their sidekick might disable the device while you and they were mutually occupied.

Curse of Reeking Darkness. In this multiverse, beings draped in Darkness can smell the Light or Darkness in the Hearts of others. Your Heart, regardless of it's actual component levels of Light and Darkness, will reek of Darkness, to the point even mundane people with extremely strong senses of smell or low-level mages with the most basic detection spells will be able to sense it with proximity. It will also draw immense amounts of attention from the Heartless. Similarly, your magic will feel incredibly dark and foul to others. In other ontologies, equivalent senses will be assaulted by your mere presence. For example, your spiritual energy might feel incredibly foul like the worst of evil spirits, attracting such in worlds with evil spirits.

Curse of Curses. Lesser curses and evil beings will be attracted to you. This can cause misery to both yourself and your surroundings, as others walk into the crossfire, or are targeted by particularly malicious curses and ancient evils to get to you or even just for the giggles. This does not modify extant Curses in any way, merely draws local ones to you. This compounds upon Apocryphal to make you more likely to be targeted by ancient evils for seemingly no reason. Spells with negative effects will home in on you regardless of any such capabilities, or their intended recipient being in the complete opposite direction to the point of visibly making a u-turn. Left unchecked, you will make a leaking receptacle for all the world's evil and malice.

Recusant's Brand. An X-shaped symbol, which serves as a means for others to spy on you without your knowledge, as well as a beacon to dark forces and a bullseye to any mage worth their name, will appear on your clothes or person, or even insert itself into your name. It can be hidden from physical eyes once you've mitigated it, but it will always be visible to magic. It merely broadcasts location and actions by itself, not intent or ability, so your plans can be extrapolated from the former, but most beings lack 100% accuracy with that sort of thing, especially with the sheer speed Progression Cursebearers can obtain new abilities. However, combined with the Plenary Brand, others can be expected to have perfect knowledge of your location, capabilities, intentions, and actions.

Curse of the Well. Fonts of magic and wonder take many forms. Sometimes a literal font. Sometimes a wishing well. Cosmic Keystones which govern local magics. Bearers of this curse are the font. As time passes, all beings in your cosmology gain power equivalent to 10% of baseline Progression. Body, mind, soul, magic, skill, and/or technological mastery are all valid targets. You will not benefit directly, and hostile entities gain doubled benefits, putting them in spitting distance of being a Retinue slot holder, reducing the benefits of being a Progression Cursebearer from growing a hundredfold the speed of the average person. Wishing wells can't grant their own wishes, after all. This Curse compounds upon Apocryphal. Apocryphal runs on 'credibility' which is naturally accrued over time. By making unreasonable breakthroughs in power much less unreasonable, and thus, more credible, the Apocryphal Curse has a much easier time empowering your enemies with singular or even multiple breakthroughs. Much like Decimation, this can be sated, though it requires major Ennoblement of others rather than slaying of foes. Retinue can work, but each instance of it only works for a short-time, as investing Progression into someone is technically a singular empowerment. Also like Decimation, the range is a function of personal power.

Affliction of Restless Slumber. Your sleep will be unrestful. Of the recommended 8 hours, you will get 0 per night. In most cases, this will simply take the form of waking up every minute or two, and immediately falling asleep again, never managing proper sleep rather than a light doze. If you remain in this ontology, this is pseudo-mitigated by simply transporting your consciousness to the Realm of Sleep, a place for Worlds to repair themselves in your reality, which allows your physical body at least to rest, though the endless tide of Nightmares, manifestations of Darkness, may destroy your Heart and soul, killing you in every way that matters. Additionally, though the Spirits are more positive manifestations, their normal upgrade path is incredibly frustrating, somewhat luck-based, and yet somehow monotonous. At very least, any Spirit allies you make can remain on guard while you slumber in truth, and there is the option of recruiting your friends to accompany you in the Realm of Sleep, allowing for more normal sleep, though they will also be at risk, and diving too deep into the Realm of Sleep risks death or falling into Darkness, which most of your friends are not properly equipped to resist, save Briar Beauty, whose close ties to the Realm of Sleep grant her an unusual level of insight into it's peculiarities. Like the normal Affliction of Slumber, this Curse rarely kills directly, instead leaving you open to another Curse or mundane enemies, though in this case mental exhaustion and penalties to your sanity from lack of sleep are unavoidable without significant mitigation."

He stared her dead in the eye with a momentarily even more dour expression, the intensity causing her to freeze for a moment. "I do not recommend you take this alongside the Affliction of Slumber." His expression returned to a slightly tired frown.

"Lesser Curses are far less unpleasant, but are only worth a singular Lesser Remittance.

Doom of the Rivalry. Rivals push each other to greater heights. Usually, this is due to having the same goal, such as becoming ruler or champion. This Lesser Curse modifies Indenture so that each task will see 4 Cursebearers, three in addition to yourself. Though another Cursebearer's success will count as success, only the one who completes the task will advance in their Indenture. Competitive spirit is enflamed, which makes arranging any sort of exchange, such as cooperating at every meeting and switching who wins, difficult. You must take Indenture to take this Curse.

On the other hand, killing or torturing your Rivals is not allowed. This includes all axes of their existence. The body, mind, heart, and soul are all off-limits in that regard. I will be... unappreciative if you were to change your definition of torture via intentional self-delusion or modifying your own mind. Should these rules be violated, you will draw my ire. In full."

People were willing to mutilate themselves to try and get around this... when it wouldn't even kill them if they didn't win? It was an inconvenience compared to normal Geas failure! The Accursed nodded in approval, and she blinked at the obvious response to her thoughts. Or microexpressions? Maybe both. Well, if he was this strong, she shouldn't really be surprised. She'd want to thoroughly vet anyone she offered this deal in his shoes. It was something of a violation, but with Ineptitude, she should probably be glad he could read her mind without messing with her head.

"Doom of the Culling. Much like Rivalry modifies Indenture, Culling modifies Rivalry, so you cannot take it without Rivalry. Rival actions are not constrained in any way, and they will go to any length, because your victory would constitute their failure. Further incentivizing conflict, the victor will gain a fraction of the losers' power."

At her disbelieving expression, he sighed.

"Yes, some people in the omniverse are stupid or crazy enough to take this Curse. A small fraction actually make it work. So, if you, by some chance, take this Curse, keep in mind what you'll be up against sooner or later.

Brand of the Chaste. Connections are one of the main things that can keep a Cursebearer grounded. Strong connections are especially important for this. This Curse causes any and all romantic relationships, regardless of if they actually had the potential to go somewhere, will end in betrayal or death. This can be partially gotten around by betraying them first. Do you believe you have the emotional strength for that, though?

Brand of the Fated. A much stronger iteration of the Chaste. Relationships closer than 'professional acquaintance' will suffer the same affliction as romantic ones under Chaste. However, a single person is immune. This is the only reason this Curse doesn't drive more people insane. The Chaste and Fated together are not recommended.

Mutilating Affliction. One eye, one ear, one arm, one leg, one lung, one kidney. You will lose these, along with roughly half your general health. Organs cannot be replaced, but prosthetics can take their place. You will not be able to gain any joy from the prosthetics. A false skin will not provide any joy, even if the artificial neural impulses ought to do so, for example. The replacement eye will not be able to appreciate beauty or art. Lost limbs will remain lost. Becoming a thousand-armed hecateoncheir will leave you with 500, so that route will not work either.

Affliction of Leprosy. Supernatural Leprosy. Not only does it provide a social penalty, for obvious reasons, though you aren't contagious, luckily. This can be overcome with physically covering the body, though most Cursebearers who take this must closely resemble mummies to do so. A penalty to all actions is inflicted, which worsens as you engage in physically strenuous activity such as combat. This scales with physical Attributes, so unless your constitution is immensely superior to your strength and speed, you will rapidly leave yourself bedridden following any major combat. Even then, the difference has to be enormous to provide any major difference.

In return, you will gain your Primary Remittance, and as many other Remittances as you have the Curse-credit for.

Primary Remittance: Dark Bloodline. Your family line has long been closely tied to curses and dark magic as a whole. This amplifies your talents in dark magic to ludicrous levels, allowing for both casting and curing of their effects. You could repair Wonderland of it's current curse in a matter of minutes, regardless of distance, even without your mother's notes. By that same token, you could cast such a curse with only a passing familiarity or significant distance to your target. Poisons, dark rituals, anything that falls under the term 'dark magic'. You also gain immense resistance to dark magic, enough to provide inherent resistance to your Curses, roughly akin to an archmage's wards, from your bare flesh alone. Light magic and most neutral spells will be unaffected, or made only slightly more difficult.

Your bloodline is retroactively made more potent, which will lead to changes in the timeline. This is not necessarily bad, but it will further damage your ability to leverage future knowledge.

Begin your journey with universal Stage 1 Mitigation of all Curses, and a ready means of expanding upon mitigation, fully compatible with many others. The benefits here cannot be overstated.

Primary Remittance: Perfect Witch. Your mother attempted world domination and destruction partially out of her own ego, but also because she resented the endless cycle of your stories leaving you to be ridiculed and mistreated for a crime you had not yet committed. This Remittance retroactively generates a backup plan. If she couldn't make them too afraid of you to hurt you herself, she'd turn you into a magical superweapon and let you do it yourself. In this case, it would be 'activated' by the loss of your World, with signing the Book of Legends also having been a valid trigger mechanism via kickstarting the greater engine with the immediate doubling of your power.

The benefits are myriad. Firstly, your basic physical and mental Attributes are elevated to the peak of humanity, making you borderline superhuman in all respects without any mystical enhancement. Peak human strength, combined with the speed and dexterity you would possess, would generate blows actually in the low-tier of superhuman, from synergy. Your mind is vastly expanded to the point you are a genius in all fields, rather than merely being above-average with a focus on magic, though you retain a special focus on magic, achieving super-genius there. Your appearance will become rival-to-superior to that of the current iterations of the Charmings and Whites, if you care about that.

Secondly, and more impressively, your potential for magic is increased from merely the absolute heights a sorceress can achieve without dark rituals done by and to oneself, with generations of dark magic flowing through your veins, to effectively uncapped. As this is a Remittance, and you will have unbound Progression in all fields, this functions as an additional *10 multiplier to all forms of magical study and use beyond normal Progression, and an additional *10 to magics native to your World, including those of those you call friends. Given that these may not normally work outside your specific World, nevermind your multiverse, this is less impressive than it sounds. Still, Progression is nothing if not a well of opportunities, so you may well find a way around that.

In addition, your lifespan is unbound, essentially infinite unless something kills you, giving you unlimited time to Progress so long as you survive without needing to spend time discovering a solution. Your aging will halt in your physical prime, though you will have the ability to modify it almost at will, and you can regenerate entire lost limbs or equivalent biomass in a minute, with no crucial organs. Destruction of your brain is more inconvenient than anything else, and you can regenerate from liquification, or even being reduced to a singular cell. Your regeneration can be halted if you wish to 'play dead' or for other reasons. This taps into the tendency of witches and warlocks to be incredibly difficult to permanently end, so resurrection and revival magics are also eased by this effect. A spell that might take a month to restore someone to life might require a single week, for example.

You may, with sufficient Curses, select these Greater Remittances:

Gaming Interface. This world has ties to realms made of data, to the point a simulation of the current times was crafted of data in the distant past. This allows for such an interface, similar to those commonly seen in RPGs, to be made for Cursebearers from this reality. As this is a Remittance and not merely a facet of their existence as it would be for beings created from data, this is an adaptive system rather than strictly denoting characteristics in a numerical overlay for friend and foe alike. You will automatically compile relevant skills when exposed to relevant stimuli. This bolsters Progression, though only for abilities directly relevant to the situation. For example, if you had your head punched off and survived, your healing and physical durability might increase, your intellect would not. Enemies that are powerful, skilled, unique, or some combination of the three, may outright offer abilities upon defeat with no further investment on your part. This generally ignores multipliers or demerits to Combat Progression, as it is purely a function of what the enemy in question possesses, their difficulty, and what affinities the user might have when generating such rewards. A fire elemental would almost certainly give something fire-related, such as resistance therein, but it could also provide a boost to fire magic, and given your magic affinity, likely the latter.

This Remittance increases compatibility with all systems of magic, unless they specifically disallow each other. Anti-Magic would not disallow all other forms of magic, for example, though it would still require you not use it simultaneously with regular magic. On the other hand, if you have 5 diverging systems you can only select one of, significant effort would be required to bypass that requirement, though this Remittance would make that possible. Additionally, it allows the user to detect means of Advancement, taking the form of Quests, Sidequests, Key Items, Vendors, etc. Given the possibilities provided by intimacy with others and the heights which magitech or even pure technology can achieve in some ontologies, the definition of 'Advancement' is fairly broad.

Back to the Beginning. I can revert the timeline back to approximately when your iteration of Wonderland was cursed by your mother, reverting the last 9 years. On the one hand, this will grant you a great deal of time to prepare and immediately restore your world and it's inhabitants. On the other hand, the Apocryphal Curse, by itself, guarantees that not everything will be the same, and most of your Curses will cause major butterflies as well. In essence, your future knowledge will be mostly useless beyond broad strokes and generalities, which will only worsen over time. Additionally, you will have your power reversed to that point. Your knowledge and skill will be intact, but you won't have the raw power you do now without help from other Remittances. If taken with Perfect Witch, the main change to that Remittance will be that your mother succeeded in activating it without the book's help in unlocking your full potential. Your narrator friends, who are unable to actually interact with me to any real degree as they are intended to narrate a story and I have long since left logical constraints behind, hence their silence, will retain the barest awareness of this 'original' timeline, and the other two timelines of this multiverse regardless, which may prove useful down the line.

Praxis. A dream of fairness. Mine, specifically. This is my personal casting system. This Remittance grants access to the Praxis. This system relies on the self, and only the self to be used, casting and reserves alike sourced from you and you alone. Heart, mind, body, soul? None of that matters, so long as you maintain a sense of self. Even beings which technically don't exist can, and have, used this system. While the universe may care for no one at all, you can obtain the power to force it to care for every last person, and the potential goes well beyond a mere universe. Talent is all but meaningless, in the face of hard work and self-sacrifice. Burning magic systems on the alter of Praxis is a common tactic, for example.

There is no ontology it fails to function in. Even anti-magical effects fail almost universally, save those sourced from the Praxis. Offensively and defensively, it is without equal, though in matters of healing or revival, it falters. Utility is relatively common, however."

...She wanted to take this one really badly. Sacrificing magic systems to it sounded like a last resort, but this sort of power was what she needed if she wanted to avoid her World and friends getting eaten, even with Apocryphal in her way. She'd need other Remittances to buy enough safety to get to that point though.

"As for Lesser Remittances:

Enchantress' Wand. This wand takes the form of a classical wand, with a black spinel, a heart-shaped gem, set in the handle. It increases the user's magical ability tenfold, from direct casting, to study therein. Additionally, it unlocks forms of magic normally impossible to learn, such as those limited to specific bloodlines or specific souls. For example, in an ontology where techniques are something you are born with rather than developing, you could break this rule and learn any technique. However, this does not mean you can use those abilities as well as their original owner, though that can be of benefit on occasion if your talent is superior, and requirements such as a certain amount of magic or a degree of probability manipulation remain. For example, you might gain access to traditionally Heroic abilities of the Charmings, but if one of their abilities required that you wield a sword, you would still need the sword. Further, it is indestructible by anything you currently know of.

Ruler's Rapier. The blade is a fine silver, with a golden handle. Enchantments are the only reason it can withstand it's own weight. The rapier can technically be used to fight, indeed, fencing is a common enough activity in some circles, but by the standards of most weapons, it is fragile and lacks striking power. It was a badge of status among nobles and the like. This rapier is not meant to be used for combat, instead it is meant to enhance rulership qualities, effectively multiplying the power of any Rulership Advancements you possess, and Rulership-related Attributes. In theory, you or your mother could destroy it now, so by Remittance standards it is fragile. This is not necessary to equip to yourself. Investment in it can cause it to directly confer Rulership abilities as well. The easiest method is generally to simply copy over any such powers you possess.

Sorceress' Grimoire. A leather-bound book, with a lock on it. Though the key, it's handle a heart with wings and it's blade an F, is hanging on a chain, none but yourself can unlock it. It represents the scholarly side of sorcery and magic. It cripples combat-based gains, but massively empowers training and study as means of Advancement. It also possesses other abilities, which can be enhanced with further investment, though it struggles to develop anything truly new compared to the others, perhaps a mark of it's nature as a record of the past. Instead Advancements generally take the form of increasing the power of the abilities it already possesses, and on rare occasion their scope. The former ability will never allow you to enforce your will on others by removing their ability to rebel, for example, nor the latter allow you to implant your personality in an unwilling vessel.

Rebellion. Defiance of fate is something many Cursebearers have in common. Knowledge of the past is necessary to look to the future. All rebellions are begun with the dream of a brighter future, if only for a select group in some cases. These are all things you have ties to, which is enough to forge a bond with Rebellion. Rebellion allows the user to cast off chains of any kind. Mundane authorities, spells and seals, gravity, fate, even the Curses may be rebelled against. This does not inure you to social consequences, and the heavier the bond, the more difficult to break. Mundane rules can be overridden, allowing passwords and security devices to be overridden with relative ease. Meanwhile, even slight Curse Mitigation is incredibly difficult. Still, this is a relatively versatile power, and heavily conceptual in nature.

Written History. Your achievements are automatically recorded, from the greatest triumph to the deepest folly. If you are attacked along the axis of your existence, even if the damage is incidental of another effect or being's presence, or self-inflicted, that vector will be guarded by, at minimum, the protections offered to all Cursebearers from divination. Should that fail, the contents of this grimoire will be used to reboot your mind and spirit as closely to your undamaged self as possible, and accelerate any recovery. In theory, this allows abilities which sacrifice portions of the self to be used nearly freely, though it can be difficult to gauge the exact line where the cost rises too high without trial and error, which few sane beings would countenance.

Keyblade. In this reality, Keyblades were forged in imitation of a much greater key. These weapons can only be wielded by those with strong Hearts, which is where they draw their power from. They possess the ability to unlock and lock almost anything, operating on conceptual bounds, including Hearts, be they that of a person or World. Their forms are malleable as well, the key shape being merely a base form. Guns, swords, hammers, shields, banners, even vehicles can be used as forms for one. They can serve as a magical focus, as well as one for the use of Darkness and Light, but also act to draw attention from dark forces. Most forms of concealment don't work for very long, and the Recusant, Plenary and Reeking Darkness Curses all act to accelerate the timetable of a means losing effectiveness.

Normally, you would need to be chosen to wield one, either by a Keyblade itself, or by a potent Keybearer who bequeathed a Keyblade to you... Or at least let you touch it. Though gaining a weapon tied to your being and evolving it into one is possible, and killing a wielder of one while possessing a strong enough Heart would also work. Notably, a strong Heart is key, as even if you fulfill all other criteria, it won't necesarily be that you gain one. Strong-hearted people will not automatically gain one by simple virtue of that either. Harboring the Heart of a Keyblade wielder can allow a vessel or another being to wield the Keyblade, though such circumstances would be rare. Keyblades are selective to the point that even being able to wield a Keyblade as well does not mean you will be able to steal a Keyblade by simply grabbing it, as their true master can and will call it back at will.

I can grant you a Keyblade, as your Heart is strong enough that you possess some potential even without Progression. As Lesser Remittances go, this is straining the upper edge of a single slot, given the potential Keyblades have and their sheer versatility. Their relative commonality in your multiverse is the main reason they only require one.

Digitizer. This machine allows you to digitize anything. People, objects, even the information stored in a book. Entire virtual worlds can be constructed in this manner, or used as a destination for digitized entities. Extraction is also possible. This can used as a training ground, a means to modify things via the more malleable nature of data, or to render an object's maladies as physical enemies to fight. A digitzed person might have their cold converted into a digital virus, which may provide an advantage under some circumstances. Further, by it's very nature, the Digitizer possesses immense data-processing capabilities. Entire libraries can be processed in seconds, though it's up to you to get anything out of it.

Retinue. A Cursebearer's path, even without the Indenture, is frequently a lonely one. Your Progression means the vast, vast majority cannot keep up with you. In time, even the current strongest being in your omniverse may be as a grain of sand before you. Retinue offers a solution. Sacrifice 25% of your own Progression, multiplicative per person, and grant it to one of 5 others. Note that your Retinue is easily inducted into, and very difficult to revoke, so ensure the loyalty of whoever you choose, perhaps even to the point of prioritizing loyalty over power synergy, since potential is mostly taken care of by Progression. Cursebearers have fallen by the hand of a personal Mordred or Lancelot, or at very least been heavily inconvenienced by them.

While a ceremony which categorically prevents betrayal from one who pledges their loyalty to you or another member is available to all members of the Retinue, as well as yourself, on pain of a very focused and ironic Apocryphal Curse permutation, it cannot be forced, and mutual agreement can release it at any time with relative ease. On the other hand, breaking a pledge is slow, difficult, and obvious to a degree only the Plenary Brand exceeds. Pledges can be mutual, become mutual, cease to be mutual, or never be mutual. The only major issue is that these pledges can only be between you and Retinue members. Former members do not qualify, for example.

- Quantified World. This is a sub-Remittance of Gaming Interface. Gaming Interface's divinatory abilities are upgraded. Entering sensory range of the user provides data on an entity's general power level and specific statistics, and more information on potential Advancement is harvested. Greater sensory range is the simplest means of improving upon this, and increasing one's Level provides a general improvement, but without TSH, the effect remains limited, if potent.

- Immortal Sheath. This sub-Remittance is an upgrade to the HP mechanic of Gaming Interface. A 'forcefield' with durability equivalent to your HP is generated, and loss of HP translates merely into minor maluses until HP is depleted entirely, which then leaves you vulnerable to conventional harm. Overhealing does not suddenly become possible by inverting wound penalties. Obviously, this requires Gaming Interface.

Seed of Genesis. I believe you've seen Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Strange that the series existed in your World, perhaps an artifact of- I digress. A Remittance with this applied is split off into it's own body, which can act on it's own to your benefit. It's personality and values will complement your own. You will not receive a knight who considers magic dishonorably underhanded, for example, nor a plotter who will poison your friends just to prove that they can before giving them the antidote. The vessel is subjected to and affected by your Curses, but bears 70% of your Progression by the same token. It is responsible for use, improvement, and facilitation of the Remittance. It controls Advancements gained as well as the Remittance itself. For instance, if applied to the Keyblade Lesser Remittance, the Seed would decide what other forms the Keyblade would take on, as well as whether physical strikes, conceptual abilities, or it's nature as a conduit was the area of focus.

Intensify. Sometimes, you don't need a huge amount of utility, or at very least, you need power more than versatility. Intensify reduces conceptual breadth of a Remittance, in return for vastly empowering remaining abilities. To illustrate the point, a Weaponsmaster might lose access to most of their weapon skills in favor of various types of sword, but have their skill raised to the level of the supernatural with no actual magic, just raw skill.

Relinquishment. Your Curses are heavy burdens. Once every ten years, another Cursebearer or Cursebearers will voluntarily take on your Curses for a week. This time may be stored, so in a million years, you would have 19230 years and 40 weeks. Of course, with the burdens the Curses represent, not to mention the time-based component of Apocryphal, will you manage to avoid using it for that long?

To Shatter Heaven. If you crave a quicker rise, but have no taste for the loss of breadth Intensify represents, this is a suitable means. Progression of skills relevant to a Remittance will be increased 400% via modification by myself for greater compatibility. Conceptual limits may be shattered with sufficient training and/or effort. This can provide resistance to ontological hostility to a given magic, though this is not necessarily guaranteed, as you must still put in the effort to break the limiter. This is one of the only means by which Remittances will be significantly enhanced on an inherent level without major investment on your part, though anything is compatible, even non-Remittances such as extant dark magic in your possession."

Raven considered. This was one part a desire for as much as she could get out of this to avoid a repeat of losing everything she cared about, and one part a desire to help ease the apparent Over-Overdeity's burdens. So, she'd take on as many Curses as she felt she could withstand, rather than contenting herself with taking her Primary Remittance and perhaps Back to the Beginning and calling it a win like she would for one or the other. She doubted she could go past 8 without problems, and 10 was the absolute hard limit. Too many Curses would just get her killed from malicious interactions. As he'd said, the Plenary and Recusant's Brands compounded, so it was definitely one or the other if she decided to take one. Recusant's sounded less terrible. No offense to Cedar, but this version of the truth-telling affliction she had going at least let her keep other people's secrets unless they directly related to one of her own, so while it might be a lot harder to run off to avoid spilling the beans, she could at least avoid that issue. She should take a whack at at least letting Cedar lie by omission, actually. She might stumble across a way while trying to mitigate Explanation anyway. Restless Slumber offered a chance to explore one of the sub-Realms of her reality relatively freely, and she ought to be able to make spells to reduce the amount of sleep she required to remain sane, since she wouldn't have to worry about her body on that front, and defenses in general against the Nightmares. It also didn't cut into her time the way the normal Slumber would, at least not initially. Reeking Darkness would compound on Apocryphal to some degree, and raise the bar on the defenses she'd need in the Realm of Sleep, but if she took Perfect Witch and Enchantress' Wand she'd probably have the power, and only Cerise should be especially bothered by it among her social circle. Baba Yaga might have some issue with it, but she was an 'evil' witch. Her future knowledge being useless from Apocryphal either way made BttB not reverting Apocryphal changes to the timeline less of an issue. If she could keep Wonderland from being poisoned, that would do a lot to solve things, though it sounded like she'd only get a few days, not enough time for a lot of research, so she'd have to rely on convincing her mother it was unnecessary. Progression ought to help there.

Recusant's Brand making her actions known would probably worsen the predictability of Curse of Explanation, so taking them together meant she could throw out any thoughts of stealth, even without Plenary, though involving other people would let her hide some of her plans some of the time. Plus, her plans for the Rebel faction were so simple they couldn't fail, so it wasn't like she was completely locked out of plan-making. Quite frankly, she wasn't huge on obeying authority figures unless they were her father, and he tended more towards advice than orders, kind of like Giles Grimm. She could just explain the Doom to people. Anyone in Ever After crazy enough to command her after being explicitly told she was cursed to disobey direct orders was clearly an idiot. Curse of the Well could likely be mitigated into evening out the enemy and ally bolstering, and regardless, it would offer a means of letting the others keep up at least somewhat for a long time. Curse of Curses... well, she was planning on dealing with all of those evils sooner or later even before all this, if only because she was one of the strongest witches in the world by simple virtue of her heritage, and Progression made her best-suited for dealing with them, even with Apocryphal/Well boosts. Plus, with all her social maluses from Curses, combined with her existing Villain status... she doubted there'd be many people to get in the crossfire, and it might help with keeping her mother from cursing Wonderland, since she'd have trouble with keeping it from hitting Raven herself as well. Lastly... to be honest, she was used to at least some of what the Villain's Brand was supposed to do. You could only see people run away in terror so many times before it got personal.

Lunacy was unappealing, both because she had a sneaking suspicion Apple would be who the Geas form applied to, and that sounded really toxic to have towards one of her closest friends, and because she'd have most of her power locked up until they met again regardless, which sounded like a good way to die when the Apocryphal Curse started targeting her. Which would be more or less immediately. Indenture sounded... not great. She already had people try to sell her future before she was born, no thanks. She wasn't interested in never seeing her friends again, and an instant death condition if she ever failed one of her septillion or so tasks through human error sounded like a level of perfectionism nobody could possible live up to. Not without ceasing to be human mentally or emotionally. Brand of the Wretched on top of Villain's sounded like a good way to have pretty much everyone trying to kill her on sight. Chaste she was somewhat on the fence about for a few seconds, but she'd like to keep her options open on that front, and, well, she was going to be a hormonal teenager in a high school full of hormonal teenagers less than a decade down the line even with Back to the Beginning(along with a couple other reasons). She hadn't gone for it before out of a mix of most people being afraid of her and having her supposed destiny to contend with before, though there was also the issue of things being pretty busy from the Royal/Rebel clash. Fated was much worse. She'd rather not be guaranteed to get her friends killed by proximity, and have the same with anyone else she got remotely close to. Naturalist... no. Just. No. It would make most forms of equipment useless to her, which would be an issue for a sorceress, nevermind a student or scholar. Not to mention, magic potions explicitly counted as technology. Also, a selfish part of her liked dressing up, something Apple had encouraged, even if it was through the lens of positive reinforcement of looking the part of the Evil Queen's successor. Ineptitude was practically asking for her to kill people accidentally with how finicky magic was at the best of times, and she was depending a lot on her skill with magic to mitigate her Curses. Rivalry and Culling required that she take on Indenture, so they were right out even if she was crazy enough to risk sending Curse chunks back to The Accursed, since she suspected they wouldn't just dissipate. Curses didn't normally do that, which was why you were expected to be very careful with them these days. The Mutilating Affliction sounded like a real pain to deal with, and would force her to spend her early days getting artificial replacements when she ought to be talking her mother down from destroying Wonderland and getting out of that crucial early phase of weakness. Affliction of Leprosy would be a general drain on everything, which she didn't think she could afford, and, frankly, she already had enough social penalties she was concerned she'd be attacked by angry mobs on a daily basis if she added any more. Decimator affected everyone. Apocryphal was both necessary to getting Progression, and theoretically should target her personally most of the time, limiting collateral damage until she was strong enough that she could guard against that vector, so taking Decimator would compound the moral ickyness of knowingly taking these Curses on. Plus, given they were Curses, she was fairly sure the lifespan decrease of Decimator and the general improvement of Well wouldn't overlap in the slightest, turning everyone into enormously empowered mayflies. Affliction of Slumber would cut far too much into her research time, which she'd be relying on, and it sounded like it would be murder when combined with Restless Slumber. On that note, she ought to work on a solution for Briar's curse, perhaps a pocket dimension of accelerated time. She couldn't use it with Apocryphal going off all the time if she made one, and Well would probably match up with her timeline to compound the issue, but Briar didn't have that problem, and she wouldn't age since it was a curse mitigated by the intervention of a good fairy. Doom of the Martyr would mitigate the Villain's Brand pretty quickly, and it appealed somewhat to her sense of irony, but she'd never get anything done. She'd be so busy solving the little problems, she'd struggle to tackle the underlying ones. Curing individuals instead of curing the disease, for example. Maybe if she weren't taking on Apocryphal, but she'd already have a lot on her plate. For one thing, she'd have to relearn (at minimum) her family history to see what changed. The secondary effect... yeah, her mother would take shameless advantage of that. That was a definite no. Brand of the Champion had similar problems, especially if she planned to study under anyone, and the issue with Doom of the Tyrant and insubordination would be a big problem if she planned to ever lead anything, even a school project. Curse of Hubris, as The Accursed mentioned, would compound on Doom of the Tyrant as well, and she wasn't interested in a Curse that would alter her mind that much.

So, that made 10 Curses thanks to Apocryphal, 8 more than required. That gave her all 3 Greater Remittances, and 15 Lesser Remittances. She didn't think it would be worth it to break up any more Greaters for Lessers. Perfect Witch sounded like it had more long-term potential than Dark Bloodline, though immediately having less powerful Curses almost swayed her. Perfect Witch could, in theory resolve the issue just as well, only it would take a little longer, and wasn't solely focused on dark magic. Perhaps she was letting the comparisons to her mother get to her but... At any rate, the timeline changes of Dark Bloodline strongly implied the curse on Wonderland would be different, probably stronger, which risked getting it destroyed if things went badly, and would likely cancel out the Remittance's anti-curse benefits regarding that specific curse, at least in the short-term. Back to the Beginning would immediately resolve the issue of the loss of her world and social circle. To be honest, she was pretty sure the near-immediate offer was the main reason she hadn't freaked out the moment the shock wore off. She wasn't sure she could accurately judge the consequences of the timeline alterations, but even from a purely pragmatic standpoint, not needing to spend time fixing that meant she could focus elsewhere, and, emotionally speaking, she didn't feel like she'd take losing literally everything but the clothes on her back well. No offense to the narrators, but she hadn't known them before, so they'd probably just make her more homesick. The Praxis would give her an endless array of options for combat if she was just willing to put forth the effort, letting her focus on healing and utility effects with her normal research, which was something local magics in Ever After excelled at. Gaming Interface improved information-gathering without being obvious about it like normal spells would be, and improving general magic compatibility would be very nice.

Increasing her magic studies' efficiency and her spells' power practically locked Enchantress' Wand in, even ignoring how she could learn unique spells with it, something her inner scholar salivated over, and which would make figuring out happier endings for everyone a lot easier. She could lend out the Rapier to her prince and princess friends and pretty trivially make their rule amazing. Not that she doubted Lizzie and Apple. Pretty much the opposite really, a multiplier worked better the higher the baseline was. The Grimoire would give her a direct means to contest her 'destiny' since she didn't think the anti-divination defenses her patron was providing would defend against hostile fate-bending, and she was sure there were means beyond the Book of Legends to mess with fate, as well as defend against literal existential threats, which she could definitely see being an issue given the level of reality-warping The Accursed could apparently dole out pretty casually. Anything on his level would be utterly beyond her to even attempt to counter or guard against, but anything she was likely to encounter would at least be slowed down by this. The Keyblade would give her a melee weapon, open a lot of doors literally and metaphorically with conceptual locking and unlocking, and if it was possible to just give her friends the ability to use one by letting them hold it under some circumstances, she was sure she could figure out a way to leverage Progression into giving everyone those pre-Keyblades The Accursed had mentioned. The Digitizer would also be very useful. It sounded like she could set it up to scan the whole library and then search through it like the Mirrornet, and that was just scratching the surface if the other Lesser Remittances were any indication. From there, she'd grab To Shatter Heaven for everything. Except Back to the Beginning, since she had to leave the one alone, and she was reasonably certain it had the fewest skills to boost. Time manipulation, probably, but magic ought to be capable of that as well, and overlap between her TSH applications boosting that should make her advance with enormous speed. Given that she once managed to freeze time in a small area by accident, she wasn't worried about permanently losing access or anything. 400% extra Advancement across so many different skillsets from all the Remittances would do a lot to soft-mitigate Curse of the Well by letting her elevate herself faster, and Retinue's downsides could probably be mitigated a lot, letting her make her inner circle at least into members without crippling her own Progression to spitting distance of what hostiles got from Curse of the Well.

Meanwhile, the social Curses would affect her 'Stand' so Seed of Genesis was a bad idea, what with Doom of the Tyrant and the unlikelihood of achieving anything close to The Accursed's current power(and thus of achieving 100% mitigation) in the next duodecillion years, nevermind actually catching up, so full mitigation wasn't happening in any timeframe less than that. Intensify cutting down on her versatility seemed a bit counter-intuitive, when as a mage being versatile was kind of the whole point of being able to break the laws of physics over her knee, and Apocryphal taking advantage of any holes in her abilities was a potential issue of closing off abilities. With TSH, she had a lot less to worry about in terms of being spread thin anyway. Relinquishment was too long a timeframe. By the time 10 years had passed, she'd likely either be dead or at least on the third stage of Curse Mitigation. Plus, she'd be burdening other people with her Curses. Theoretically, they could probably benefit, but it sounded like people too nice for their own good taking on her problems with no real stake in them. Quantified World and Immortal Sheath seemed somewhat pointless when she already had TSH on Gaming Interface as a whole. They were probably better in their specialties, but it wasn't enough for her to give up TSH on anything. She wasn't willing to take on any of the remaining Curses either, not when she was already so heavily laden.

"The Apocryphal Curse, the Doom of the Tyrant, the Recusant and Villain's Brands, the Curse of Explanation, the Curse of Reeking Darkness, Curse of the Well, Curse of Curses, and the Affliction of Restless Slumber. I'll take Perfect Witch as my Primary Remittance, Gaming Interface, Back to the Beginning, and the Praxis for Greater Remittances, and Enchantress Wand, Ruler's Rapier, Sorceress' Grimoire, Keyblade, Digitizer, Retinue, and To Shatter Heaven on Perfect Witch, Gaming Interface, the Praxis, Enchantress' Wand, Ruler's Rapier, Sorceress' Grimoire, Keyblade, Digitizer, and Retinue for Lesser Remittances."

She had a moment to process the bemused expression on The Accursed's face, then she staggered. Not because of the weight of the Curses, or the flood of memories of her mother doing rituals to empower her or teaching her about the artifacts she'd both just gotten and had for years as her mother passed them down to and tutored her in their use, or the subsequent rush of power and the potential she could feel unlocking EVERYTHING for her to grasp if she simply lived and tried, but because reality twisted, tied itself in a knot, before somehow straightening out without untying the knot, leaving her in her mother's study.

Raven found herself 6 again, looking wide-eyed at her mother on the other side of the ritual circle of virgin(not used in any rituals) blood magically crafted from the marrow of her(the Evil Queen's) mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and onward to 12 generations in all, before she'd added some of her own, apparently having been saving her blood's virgin use for something special. Speaking of her mother, she'd been freed from, or rather, never trapped in, the mirror dimension. Equally wide-eyed, her mother stared.

Raven's outfit was similar to what she would wear later in life, just simpler. For example, her dress was a one-piece that was pitch black at her shoulders, slowly turning purple until it was a deep shade of it at the lower edge of her skirt. Her tiara was much smaller, more of a circlet, and she was wearing much more normal shoes, though they werea deep purple.

"It... that wasn't supposed to happen." the Evil Queen muttered, staring, scanning her daughter as the Gaming Interface popped up and categorized her mother as Level 798, which she had no real frame of reference for. Raven immediately noticed that, even though she was in the past, she seemed easily an order of magnitude stronger than she'd been as of 15. Apparently Perfect Witch was enough for that, though her mother was more than 2 orders of magnitude more powerful than she remembered. That didn't bode well for the general power curve. Her mother noticed, though she couldn't see what she Raven was pushing away, Raven waving aside the notification of her own attributes and the changes To Shatter Heaven wrought upon them, though not dismissing them outright. She could look at it later, right now she needed to be running damage control so her mother, who could apparently tell she was horribly cursed in return for immense Progression/potential, didn't decide to destroy Wonderland... among other reasons.

"Mom?" she asked, managing to keep... most of the emotion out of her voice. Sure, she knew her mother was a monster on the objective level, but a part of her simply couldn't see her that way. Probably because she'd actually had Raven's interests in mind in her own twisted way, mixed in with the pride and what she could admit was probably a healthy dose of the not-fun kind of crazy.

"I've somehow managed to simultaneously succeed beyond my wildest dreams and fail horrifically." the Evil Queen said, half to herself. "Those Curses are the worst I've ever seen." she raised a hand, her deceptively simple wooden staff topped with a black crystal, which both was and wasn't how Raven remembered it, appeared in her hands in a rush of purple flame and shadows, and glyphs Raven both did and didn't recognize joined them. Despite how confusing that sounded, she was actually thinking quite clearly, The Accursed did good work.

With a grunt of exertion, her mother directed 9 orbs of scintillating energy to surround Raven, and, able to discern their purpose, the not-actually-a-child didn't move until they'd vanished.

Her Interface informed her that she'd temporarily received Stage 1 Mitigation of all 9 of her Curses, and her mother nearly slumped over, leaning on her staff for support.
"Mom!" she rushed over.

"That's not nearly enough. You're still dealing with the majority of the Curses' strength, and I don't have it in me to push it to the next threshold. Maybe if that particularly wretched one weren't there I could manage it once every few weeks, but I'd cripple myself for any other use of magic even then." the Evil Queen muttered.

A brief mental debate ran through Raven's head, her enhanced mind still faced with the foibles of a child seeing her mother in distress. Before she could think it through, however, she blurted out "Universal Stage 1 is more than enough for now, I should be able to take over relatively soon." in an effort to make her feel better.

Her mother raised an eyebrow. "How, hexactly, do you know what 'stage' you've got? I haven't had the time to teach you more than the basics of curses."

Raven smiled weakly. "Uh, The Accursed your ritual involved" That was technically true. "was actually nice enough to give me a list of choices. Limitless potential required the Crowning Curse, apparently as bad as two others put together."

"...You made a deal with an unknown entity?" her mother asked, both eyebrows now up to her hairline.

"Yes, but he had a Curse that made his intent clear, so when he said he wasn't The Devil, I believed him, though not wanting my soul didn't hurt. He made it pretty clear that all of my options for Curses were bad, just not so bad that they'd be worse than what he gave me in return." Raven was starting to think she'd given the Curse of Explanation less credit than it was due. She had Stage 1 mitigation, and all that meant was that she wasn't giving her mother the whole story of her encounter with the impossible entity where simpler answers sufficed. She was still deliberating on how to get the message across that poisoning Wonderland was a bad idea, when she was fairly sure her mother would manage to drag out the whole 'You're 2 orders of magnitude stronger than the version of you who failed to curse Wonderland' factoid and use that as justification for how she would succeed this time. Right now, Raven was still blurting things out like she was Cedar.

Raven quirked an eyebrow at the narrator's commentary, somewhat surprised she could still hear them. Luckily, she wasn't being paid direct attention, so it went uncommented on by her mother, who instead asked for a list of the Curses and what she'd been told of their effects. Raven explained.

Her mother put a hand on her chin. "Hm, yes. I think I understand what happened. Dark Magic always demands a price. I managed to overpay enough that the ritual broke through to a whole new tier of bargaining, for which the old price wasn't enough, so you had to pay up-front, with no time to prepare, leaving you in a position to get worn down by them even if those Brands don't get an angry mob after you."

Oh, she didn't like where this was going, better to reassure her. "If it makes you feel better, The Accursed works on a scale we can't begin to understand, so lightening his load makes existence better on that scale." she placed a hand on her heart. "Plus, with Progression, anything I want is possible. One day, I might get to literally punch Fate in the face. The benefits of Perfect Witch, uh, the boost you were trying to give me through The Accursed's lens, are just icing on the cake in the face of that."

"Yes, but it also leaves you with a number of crippling weaknesses. Certainly, the main reasons I could tell at a glance was decades of experience with dark magic and curses, and you being my daughter making me very familiar with your magic, but that doesn't mean your Curses won't be exposed sooner or later, and major weaknesses in this number leaves you wide open to a lot of social and mystical attacks. That Recusant's Brand alone will make most forms of intrigue and skullduggery beyond you without go-betweens, which is only a partial solution.

In short, unless they're too scared to go after you, someone's going to get lucky." her mother explained. "Perhaps by attacking your body while you're trapped in the Realm of Sleep."

Raven winced inwardly, feeling an uncomfortable recognition towards the look in her mother's eyes. She hadn't accounted for how her mother's calculating and somewhat paranoid mind would view so many Curses overwhelming the upside of infinite potential. Probably because they barely interacted after she got sealed away. The authorities were smart enough, and she was self-aware enough, to realize that Raven couldn't be trusted to keep her at arm's length, so she'd only been allowed to visit as she wished at about 12, and it hadn't exactly been a daily thing. This would be harder than she thought. "Mom, don't do anything crazy. This didn't work out how you expected, so maybe we should do the boring, practical thing, and you just teach me everything you know about magic, while I bang my head against the wall of miti- Wait, you know about the Realm of Sleep?" she asked. Specifics on that would be nice. She'd be going to bed in only 5 hours. She didn't know... hexactly how fast Progression was beyond studying being about a hundred times as effective as fighting, given the vagueness The Accursed assigned to most of the Remittances, so she had only some idea how much time pre-transaction Raven would need to match that.

"There's something of a gap between my poisoning Snow White and your birth, and I didn't spend that whole time locked up in my tower. Ever After is just a tiny piece of the Greater World. There are even other Fairytale characters in other Worlds, though usually only the one tale per World. Much like our own World, there's a balance, though unlike our World, the forces of Darkness aren't content with the niche carved out for them." A hint of resentment made it's way into her voice at that.

"I traveled the Greater World with..." she paused, then skipped over it, ignoring Raven's obvious curiosity. "when I was in my early twenties. I learned a thing or three on my travels, and I came back here about a year later. The locals had calmed down, the average townsfolk have a pitifully short memory, so I made myself at home again. I rekindled my relationship with your father, and here we are.

To answer your question, the Realm of Sleep is permanently occupied by Traverse Town, a haven for the lost, which appears in the waking world if Worlds are lost and their inhabitants are left with nowhere to go, acting as a natural 'drainage site' for people whose Worlds are lost. Otherwise, it remains there, as a relatively safe haven for those who have fallen into the Realm of Sleep. Worlds that are restored after some sort of cataclysm rest there to make repairs. For this reason, even the Heartless cannot enter. However, Darkness always finds a way, so Dream Eaters fill their role, with Nightmares making up the majority, and benevolent Spirits the minority. I'll give you a recipe book to create a few guardian Spirits so you can sleep properly there, though it's likely you won't be able to get a full night's sleep, since I'm not remotely strong enough to get you even halfway there." This time, bitterness made it's way into her voice.

Raven would have to keep a close eye on her over the next few days at very least. She decided to try and change the subject, without being too obvious. "So, what do you know about the Heartless? That they eat Worlds is all I was told about."

"They're denizens of the Realm of Darkness. Some of them are people consumed by it, and some are pure Darkness come to life. The former are chained to the Darkness, effectively reduced to zombies, the latter are incomplete to the point that they're functionally the same. Regardless, they try to consume Hearts, and while people can control them if they tap into the Darkness and have strong wills, a moment's loss of control is as good as a dinner bell. Worlds apparently have the biggest, tastiest Hearts, so just about the only thing that can distract them from a World's Heart is a Keyblade, a weapon of the Heart that signals a truly potent one. With your Curses, you're likely to see them soon. You remember the combat spells I taught you, yes?"

Raven nodded. "Uh, speaking of Keyblades..." she concentrated, and a mix of light and shadow crystallized in her hand, revealing a purple key with a total length of about 4 feet. It had a heart with black angel's wings for the 'teeth' with red on the left side and blue on the right gradually merging into purple in the center. The guard was circular, and a keychain in the shape of a purple heart hung off of it. Gaming Interface informed her of it's name, though she'd realized the moment she'd summoned it. Rebellious Heart. Despite it's size, it felt like it weighed almost nothing, so she wasn't unbalanced even as a 6-year-old.

Her mother was shocked for a moment, then frantically waved her hands through a series of spell sigils. "Quickly, put that away, before-" A pool of shadow appeared 5 feet to their left, and spawned a quartet of humanoid figures that resembled shadows come to life. They stood hunched over a bit, with clawed hands. Gaming Interface informed her that they were Neoshadows with Levels in the 40s. Truthfully, she could have just mentioned that she'd gotten the Keyblade, but this was in part a way to gauge how bad Reeking Darkness was with a much stronger person in the room to act as a safety net. Evidently, pretty bad. The other part was gauging how her physical abilities had changed. Again, with someone in the room she could trust to keep her safe, even if she didn't trust her mother to hold much else in the way of standards.

The Neoshadows were fast, and Raven was in her 6-year-old body. Even so, she found herself moving like the Neoshadows were the Giants of Beanstalk Academy. Bigger and stronger than her, technically faster as well, but their mobility was garbage. When they weren't diving into pools of shadow, at least, but Raven managed to down one, while her mother obliterated two more, leaving only one to hide in the puddle of mobile darkness. She was forced to back off from the staggered Neoshadow as the puddle chased her, though her mother took care of it. She instinctively raised the Keyblade into a guarding position, Perfect Witch's enhancements allowing her to see the tide of Darkness erupt from the pool when the Neoshadow emerged, blocking it from so much as touching her, as well as the follow-up swipes from the Neoshadow, and her physical strength was enough that she was able to hit it with a blast of magic with one hand even as she kept her guard up. Momentarily dazed, the Neoshadow offered no real resistance when her mother quite literally ripped it in half, making it collapse into billowing Darkness and then smoke which itself dissipated unnaturally swiftly. Especially since they were indoors.

As her mother had ordered her to put the Keyblade away, Raven struggled to even want to unsummon it for a moment. Realizing the issue, and not reacting on instinct any longer, her mother said. "Raven, keep your Keyblade out." which, with Stage 1 Curse Mitigation, allowed her to follow the impulse to disobey even though she knew this was what her mother actually wanted.

"Okay. Reeking Darkness plus Keyblade is bad. Got it." she commented faintly, dismissing the notification that she'd gotten 11200 EXP. The Grimoire was probably draining her gains there, and having her mother do most of the work probably didn't help, but that was still more than half from just four enemies, three of which she hadn't actually hit, and two she hadn't even made contact with. One left a dark grey crystal behind before it vanished, though it vanished too, it wasn't quite the same. Something to investigate later.

"I'll cast some wards to hide that thing, but I would appreciate it if you only brought it out if there are already Heartless about." her mother very carefully did not order.
Now that she had a moment, Raven finally read the messages Gaming Interface provided her.

'Raven Queen.

Level 20. Progression Cursebearer.

EXP: 11200/21000.

Strength: 17. Physical strength. 10 is the average for personal Attributes among adult humans. Points increase in value as you get higher.
Constitution: 20. Applies to stamina and resistance to negative effects on one's physiology, as well as healing and general durability.
Agility: 22. Speed and dexterity.
Intelligence: 46. IQ, is to magic what Strength is to physical weapons.
Wisdom: 31. General competence of thought. Usually acquired through experience, which means it can be difficult to raise any other way.
Wits: 30. Speed of thought, can substitute for/act as multiplier for Intelligence and Wisdom.
Charisma: 35. Personal presence, appearance, ability to command.
Manipulation: 19. Ability to scam and avoid being scammed.
Willpower: 35. The mental/spiritual equivalent of Constitution.
Appearance: 30. What is says on the tin.
Luck: 19. Slightly modifies probability in the user's favor, though this is inherently difficult to measure. Extreme instances can lead to fate manipulation. Difficult to raise under normal circumstances.
HP: 2000/2000. HP Regen: 100% of full HP per minute.
MP: 4600/4600. MP Regen: 10% of full MP per minute.

Current Willpower Reserve: 15000. Base 10000 increased by 5000 due to desire for power to protect and restoration of homeworld with associated social circle.

350 Willpower automatically generated per day. 100% of normal Progression consumes 300 Willpower per day, as a benchmark. Praxis is significantly more intensive.'

The phrase 'giving 110%' was never going to sound quite the same to her fter that little tidbit. Also, she assumed the Willpower production being 10 times her 'Willpower' wasn't a coincedence, like how HP and MP were with Constitution and Intelligence. She was sort of curious about how Appearance and Charisma fed into each other, since Intelligence(ironically) seemed to be the mental equivalent of working harder to Wisdom's working smarter, while Wits just made her work faster, so they didn't have the explicit overlap of Appearance and Charisma.

'Progression Cursebearer. Easily a hundred times the Progression of a normal being by default, though there are beings able to naturally keep up with, match, or exceed this, and affinities cannot be entirely bypassed. Cursebearer status also provides protection against enemy divination, and mental and spiritual attacks, much like how Curses are limited to something the Cursebearer can currently withstand. If an attack would completely rewrite your personality beyond your ability to recover ten times over, then it would likely be blocked. An implantation of false memories would be resisted, but could get through. It's something of a bell curve.'

Okay, she should probably tell the school staff(and Faybelle) not to do any divining on her. Also, who exactly had the ability to keep up with a shard of the Over-Overdeity that was The Accursed's Progression? Well, logically, he had to get there at some point without such a patron. Did he just win the cosmic lottery a dozen times over, or what? She supposed it didn't really matter at this point, since she doubted she could even get inspiration from what he did as she was. It did mean that someone who could match her without Curse of the Well's help could show up. Something she ought to keep in mind.

'Curses:

All Curses have temporarily received Stage 1, or 12.5%, mitigation via the Cursebearer's mother and her expertise in Curses. More permanent mitigation will be necessary should something happen to her.

Apocryphal Curse: Stage 1 Direct Mitigation. 10% reduction in 'credibility' buildup speed, translating into less frequent/powerful activations.

Doom of the Tyrant: Stage 1 Mitigation. Reverse psychology can be used to bypass the Curse if the user wanted to do the action in question anyway. For example, if one person ordered the Cursebearer to jump into a lake after they had ordered her not to, she could choose to disobey the secondary order and ignore the former, despite knowing full well the actual intent behind the command, provided she didn't want to jump in the lake.

Recusant's Brand: Stage 1 Mitigation. The exact location of the Cursebearer is somewhat more difficult to track, even if the general location of Brand can be found just as easily by anyone with working detection spells.

Villain's Brands: Stage 1 Mitigation. Slight reduction in vitriol, with significant increase in the number of people who consider you 'redeemable' or at least potentially steered towards good deeds.

Curse of Explanation: Stage 1 Mitigation, The Cursebearer can be specific in response to questions, rather than spilling their entire scheme/motivation/backstory to anyone who asks. Being asked 'What's your scheme/motivation/backstory?' will still result in fully spilling the beans, however.

Curse of Reeking Darkness: Stage 1 Direct Mitigation. The stench has dropped in potency from completely overpowering of even World-destroying Darkness, to merely somewhat above that level. This reduces the odds of being killed on sight by Light-aligned individuals, and the degree of appetizing the Heartless and similar entities will find you,

Curse of the Well: Stage 1 Mitigation. The definition of 'hostile' is stricter. Non-sentients, such as the Heartless, will not count, despite the harm they would cause if they succeeded, because they lack intent to cause harm.

Curse of Curses: Stage 1 Mitigation. Curses specifically designed with targets other than the Cursebearer in mind will not be drawn to her. The draw is generally slightly weakened.'

...Weirdly convenient for her mother's potential poisoning of Wonderland. Just a consequence of Stage 1 being the lowest-end, or did the source have some influence over the form of mitigation? She was probably just being paranoid. With how many Curses that were for specific bloodlines or individuals, something like that made sense as Stage 1 Curse Mitigation. ...Unless the Apocryphal Curse was leaning on things. With how much worse the Curse of Explanation was than she'd been expecting, she wouldn't be all that surprised.

'Affliction of Restless Slumber: Stage 1 Mitigation. The Cursebearer may gain a singular hour of restful sleep per night, neither constantly awoken, nor sent to the Realm of Sleep.

Remittances:

Perfect Witch(TSH). General multiplier to use and study of all magics and magical potential by drawing on the collective power and potential of the previous 13 generations, including your mother, with effectiveness increased tenfold for magics of your homeworld. +30 to Intelligence. +15 to all other Attributes, including newly unlocked ones, save general Progression, though the variety promised by magic means that this is of limited inconvenience. Provides massive healing, sufficient to bring the Cursebearer back from the brink of death in a minute, though cursed wounds and attacks along existential vectors can reduce or halt this. Magical energy is, similarly, regenerated extremely swiftly.

Back to the Beginning. Timeline of the Cursebearer's local reality is reversed 9 years, restoring their World and social circle, as well as reverting significant Heartless-originated damage to their multiverse. Has little bearing on the user's Progression, though their base power is reverted to the point it was at at the time.

Gaming Interface(TSH). A full RPG system. An Inventory function, which stores the physical object Remittances, save the Keyblade which has it's own 'hammerspace' linked to the user's Heart, a Social Link system which vastly improves divinatory features regarding the Cursebearer's social circle such as the user's mother, general divinatory features such that general statistical information can be gleaned from any enemy within 50 Levels of the user, denoted by their Level serving as a demarcation of overall power unlike the user's which is purely a product of EXP obtained. Full information will require Advancements. Skill loss is permanently halted outside of direct attacks on the user's being. Certain enemies will automatically provide or provide bonuses to relevant skills upon defeat. Loot Drops can be auto-generated if they do not occur naturally, while natural loot drops have their incident rate boosted. Simply particpating in a battle will offer experience rewards, even if you do not land a single blow on a given enemy. Experience is automatically duplicated to all relevant parties, though demerits or bonuses from Progression or Remittances are applied only to the relevant individuals in possession of them.'

Okay, that meant she was in fact getting the full rewards from those Neoshadows, leaving her with 11200 Exp from each. While she wasn't a video game fanatic, she felt like that was really, really high for 4 enemies. Progression already paying dividends, it seemed. Still, she ought to ask her mother about 'farming' by simply letting her higher-level 'Party member' slaughter Heartless, abusing her Keyblade and Darkness Curse's drawing-in effects.

'Praxis(TSH). The system by which virtually any offensive or defensive effect may be generated, which works everywhere in all circumstances the user may form the appropriate runes. Seeing as they are formed of the user's self, this is, theoretically, anywhere they can exist. The intensely personal experience means that it cannot be taught in the conventional way, nor learned through any means but sheer effort. Incredibly Willpower intensive by normal training standards, even with To Shatter Heaven reducing training-based Willpower costs.

Enchantress Wand(TSH). A wand which massively amplifies the user in using and learning magic, and unlocks normally person-specific magics for their perusal.

Ruler's Rapier(TSH). This blade provides bonuses to Rulership, multiplying the user's relevant Attributes and any Rulership magics they might possess. It can be used by others.

Sorcress' Grimoire(TSH). A Grimoire which serves as a 'memory backup' for the user and a general bolstering to resistance to existential attacks, as well as possessing an inherent Rebellion magic. Cuts down on the rewards of combat in favor of boosting study, though Gaming Interface mitigates the downside somewhat.

Keyblade(TSH). Forged of the user's Heart, this is a weapon which can directly strike at the very beings of other entities, or possibly even their own. Concept-based locking and unlocking.

DigitizerTSH). Allows the digitization of objects and entities, and the construction of entire digital worlds. Extremely high processing speed.

Retinue(TSH). The Retinue allows 5 companions to be selected, each with one quarter of Cursebearer Progression, at the cost of a multiplicative 25% loss for the Cursebearer's own Progression. With (strictly voluntary) pledges of loyalty possible between Cursebearer and Retinue members.

To Shatter Heaven. Remittances this is applied to have relevant skills grow 400% quicker, and it becomes possible to break conceptual limits. For example, Retinue(TSH) will see psuedo-Retinue Advancements unlocked more easily and swiftly, and in time you may gain the ability to mitigate the downsides such as the drain on personal Progression and/or cap on the number of users and what it considers an individual. Applied to all Remittances save Back to the Beginning.'

Alright, she had a little context for what Levels were about, and a few ideas for paths to follow in terms of growth, now she just had to figure out a way to convince her mother not to poison/destroy Wonderland. Incidentally, her Perfect Witch-born increases in Agility and Wits really seemed to have improved her reading speed. That would have taken much longer to get through... yesterday? Time travel terminology was odd.

"Alright, the Heartless shouldn't be able to break through these wards below the level of Heartless like the Darksides. It's probably just a consequence of your Darkness Curse combined with the lure of a Keyblade, but it's very strange for them to be able to breach the World barriers so easily." her mother commented, finishing the wards.

"About that..." Raven began. "Uh, apparently, in the next nine years, about three-quarters of the Worlds get eaten by Heartless. I don't know why, but clearly something happens to the barriers that apparently keep them out." Some sort of handbook or something would be nice to lay out the metaphysics the Heartless were working off of. She'd only heard anything about 'World barriers' just now.

Her mother stiffened, then relaxed so fast Raven wasn't actually sure she'd seen her tense up. "Hm, one of your boons I assume. I did think it was a bit odd that your vocabulary had improved so much so quickly, though I'd put it down to the intellectual improvement. Hexactly how clear is your picture of the future? What happens to us?" her mother asked.

"Well, a much stronger Cursebearer, called a High Cursebearer, is going to show up in a million years, so their Apocryphal Curse is making our reality retroactively more powerful to be a pain. That's probably going to happen periodically, but since it's a million years or so, it's probably something like a thousand years per magnitude or something that's a lot on that timescale but not especially relevant in the immediate future. Plus, some of the Remittances have made changes, which makes you two magnitudes stronger than the version of you I remember from the-yesterday-that-was. So, any knowledge of the future isn't going to be the most reliable, especially with my version of Apocryphal making things weird too. I actually ended up starting a revolution of sorts when I refused to sign the Book of Legends" ...Was she imagining things, or did her mother's grip on her staff tighten for a second there. "and I ended up de facto leader of the Rebel faction. The Heartless showed up about a month after that, and here we are." she responded, managing to avoid outright giving away the hexact chain of events by a slim margin. Straining against Explanation like that cost her 50 Willpower, and the fact that her mother's fate was only proccing the Curse because of her fate influencing Raven's fate and thus weakening the effect somewhat was probably the only reason she'd actually managed it.

"Not completely useless, at least for the next few months. Still, I feel like you're avoiding the other question." her mother raised an eyebrow in expectation. "Which is kind of impressive when you've got more than 85% of a Curse that should make that impossible working on you."

Maybe it was a minor proc from Tyrant's Doom over the implication that she needed to explain herself despite the Curse of Explanation making that literally the case. Maybe she was just mundanely annoyed from not having much say in the conversation because of the latter Curse. Maybe she knew her mother well enough to know that she wouldn't let it go now that she'd gotten riled up enough to comment on it. Probably all of the above. "Mom. Look. Cursing Wonderland isn't going to work. Believe me, it didn't the first time." she stated bluntly.

"What hexactly happened?" Now both eyebrows were raised again.

Raven had just enough time before her mouth started to move on it's own to sigh. Not much point in holding back now, even if Explanation would have let her. "You got mad about people being mean to me and calling both of us evil over a destiny that they wanted us to fulfill in the first place that I haven't even done yet, and caused a lot of chaos and destruction, partly to frighten them into submission, partially out of years of pent of resentment that you'd finally gotten tired of bottling up, and partially out of your own ego, and tried to crown it with destroying Wonderland. Baba Yaga and the Grimm brothers interrupted you mid-cast and sealed you in the Mirror Dimension." she managed not to grind her teeth or anything. It wouldn't have stopped anything, even if this was hexactly what she was trying to avoid. She'd have to apologize to Cedar. She had no idea how unpleasant not being able to lie was, and she could still lie about other people.

Her mother... adopted a considering expression. "Hm, and if your future knowledge isn't wholly reliable, you couldn't give me an accurate estimate on whether I could manage it this time either way."

Flabbergasted, Raven continued. "Were you even listening to me?! You got sealed away! I saw you maybe once a year until I was 12!" there was no point trying to debate the moral issues. Her mother hadn't been especially repentant after doing it. If anything, she'd been more concerned over how it had backfired on Raven, though that had mostly taken the form of doubling-down and wanting Raven to lean into it. ...Wait. "Plus, it just made people pick on me more." Admittedly a somewhat desperate play, but she was legitimately starting to wonder if taking the Plenary Brand for the short-term benefits in convincing people what she was saying was true might have been worth it. Surely she wasn't this pig-headed. Raven would remember, right? Then again, they hadn't had much in the way of moralizing discussions beyond that time her mother told her to respond to bullies by destroying them physically and mentally with hexes, curses, and maybe a little voodoo until they were too scared of her to lay so much as a finger on her or critique her in the slightest. ...In hindsight, her childhood was kind of messed up.

"Half-measures tend to be the worst of both worlds, yes." her mother shrugged. Shrugged! "You also mentioned that I've gotten an order of magnitude stronger, independent of the general empowerment from Apocryphal causing trouble for a senior Cursebearer down the line. Not to mention the countermeasures I can devise to being sealed away. Obviously, I'll need to wait until you've gotten independent Curse Mitigation, just in case something does go wrong, which I still maintain it won't, but your Progression and Curses cancel out at best, so this doesn't change much for at least the next month." Before Raven could respond, her mother continued. "Speaking of Curses, I should get out that Dream Eater book." she began using her magic to sort through some of her older books, though the tomes were surprisingly thin compared to the usual Bestiaries and theory books. "You'll be seeing a lot of them soon, and I can't ward against them if your consciousness is in the Realm of Sleep rather than physically here. It would be like warding the moon from here."

'I'm starting to think I'm not equipped for this.' Raven thought, bewildered. Maybe getting sealed away had humbled her mother, or maybe being a magnitude stronger relative to everyone else compared to before was feeding into her ego. Sure, she'd been 6 for real when this happened the first time, but she didn't think she'd have this much trouble convincing her mother not to try and destroy an entire World! Maybe she should try investigating the link between their Worlds and using that to justify why Wonderland should stay intact? Then again, she might be a deranged egomaniac, but she wasn't stupid, and Mom hadn't seemed concerned about the effects of a lack of Wonder the first time she'd tried this. Honestly, she was grasping at straws here, but Maddie, Lizzie, Kitty, and all the other denizens of Wonderland were depending on this. For a hysterical moment, she considered trying to physically stop her mother, but she didn't have anywhere near the power for that. She'd be throwing herself into a wood chipper for a minor delay, metaphorically.

She couldn't delay the Curse Mitigation either, since that was liable to get her killed, especially if anything happened to her mother and Raven lost what she had, and Apocryphal would target her mother if she was that much of a crutch. Maybe she could lean on Progression to grow as quickly as possible, and prove she didn't need anything drastic done? Curse of the Well would make that difficult, even if TSH somewhat resolved the issue. Had she backed herself into a corner overestimating her ability to reason with her mother?

In an effort to distract herself from her internal panic, she checked up on this Inventory her Gaming Interface had mentioned. She blinked when she found herself staring at a grid of 5x5 squares, with a second page of the same, and a mannequin apparently meant to represent her to the right. It said that she'd already equipped everything but the Digitzer, though there was also a black crystal called a Dark Crystal, which she was informed was dropped by one of the Neoshadows. Apparently her Inventory auto-looted the fallen. Convenient for now, but she hoped that she could turn that off. Automatically looting corpses could very easily be taken very badly. The Sorceress' Grimoire and Ruler's Rapier were treated as 'Accessories' and were displayed as, respectively, being in a holster along her left knee, and in a sheath on her back, while the Enchantress' Wand and Keyblade were treated as equipped in either hand. Sure enough, while they weren't physically present, if she reached for one at the appropriate location, it appeared. Unlike her Keyblade, where it felt sort of like drawing something out, much like her magic, the Remittances felt as they were depicted. Like reaching for something already there. Which, technically, it was, according to Gaming Interface.

"Alright, I burned through most of these materials over the years for a variety of reasons, and I didn't have a major surplus to begin with, with how ridiculous and luck-based unlocking techniques for a Spirit is I didn't see why I ought to get more than samples, but the Komory Bat and Necho Cat should be available."

"Mom, I've been wondering. Why don't you mess with the Heartless? You use dark magic, sure, but after seeing the Heartless, I can safely say that you seem to avoid actually using the Darkness." Raven asked, before her mother could begin the probably-delicate procedure.

Her mother sighed. "I saw more than a few petty villains succumb to Darkness and turn into little more than rabid animals during my travels. They were barely a step above the Heartless, and one outright became a Heartless. I'm not risking it.

Magic can be mastered. It's easily the most benign of the metaphysical forces in that regard. Light? Darkness? They both master you. Light's just more subtle about it most of the time. The Heartless are just the same. Always pushing. Even Djinn and the like can be at least temporarily satisfied with enough mayhem and destruction. One moment of weakness is bad with a summon, but if there were a rule where people who had that with the Heartless automatically became Heartless, it wouldn't change much."

Feeling rather like she was listening to a recovered drug addict explain why drugs were bad, Raven nodded. She shrugged off the apparent lemony nature of the narrators. Anyone who needed Maddie to keep them on the straight and narrow at all ever was at least a little bit kooky.

Her mother brought over a cauldron that looked like it was made of candy. At Raven's questioning look, she rolled her eyes. "I know, but the Moogle insisted on this aesthetic, and with everything I went through to get something they invested their crafting magic into so I wouldn't need to rely on them if I wanted to craft these things. It needs materials you can only really get from Heartless or Dream Eaters to make much of anything, but it gets a little better with every item made."

"Huh. Does it have an upper limit?" Raven asked as some strange-looking crystals went into the cauldron.

"It starts at H Rank, and ends at S Rank, jumping from A Rank. Right now, it's at C Rank." her mother said as the pot began to shudder. To Raven's clearly questioning look, she added "There's a letter on the bottom."

Two animals jumped out of the cauldron. One was a colorful bat, primarily pink and light blue. It was round and fuzzy, and honestly looked a lot like a child's stuffed animal. The other was a purple and dark blue feline, it's tail in the shape of a musical note, while a golden bell hung off of a red collar, and one on each ear.

"Like I said, I don't have much left in the way of materials from the Realm of Sleep. However, A-Rank synthesis of even the basic Dream Eater types makes them strong enough to exist in the waking world even at their base level. So you can get some practice in-" her mother paused as 2 dozen smaller Shadows, as Gaming Interface claimed, crowded the room around them. Only in their teens apiece, but the study was crowded, so fighting with this many was ill-advised.

"Okay, this is ridiculous." her mother growled, a small wave of spells disintegrating the Shadows without so much as scuffing anything else, getting Raven 3600 EXP by proximity, setting her at 14800, nearly a quarter of the way there. "It hasn't even been 5 minutes, how have they gotten through the wards this fast?!"

"Maybe they were already drawn to our World before you put up the wards, and they were close enough to bypass them? They were more like sound dampening than total blockage." Raven suggested.

Her mother considered, calming down somewhat. "Hm, yes, that makes sense."

"Actually, Mom, I have a plan. One of my Remittances lets me gain from enemies being defeated near me. Kind of like how in video games the other characters get experience even if only the one guy actually hit the monster. If you're willing to let me, uh, stand around and draw Heartless while you blast them to smithereens, I could get a ton of power in short order. Then, while I'm in the Realm of Sleep, I'll have enough of a headstart to get some actual sleep. At least for a while."

"So, you're going to shamelessly abuse your circumstances to get ahead." her mother smirked, then chuckled at her expression. "That's thinking like a Villain. Sure, why not. I can only prep you so much directly, and I won't be able to help you at all when you're actually in the Realm of Sleep beyond safeguarding your body. First, we'll need to figure out the range of 'near' though."

"Ideally, I could study up on magic, since I get about a hundred times the benefits for commensurate effort studying as fighting. Also, that Remittance I mentioned collected something called a Lucid Crystal and a Dark Shard from the Heartless. Can the cauldron do anything with those yet? Doubling up by harvesting materials and power from exploiting my Remittances, and then tripling up by studying in the spare minutes should let me frown fairly quickly. I might end up with bloated magic relative to my skills, but that should be temporary." Raven commented.

Pinching the bridge of her nose, her mother replied "Alright, I'm going to need you to explain those Remittances." she raised a hand to pre-empt Raven. "I know. I've been focusing on the Curses thus far, that's on me, but I'm remedying that now. I'll bring down those wards in a few minutes." she commented, bringing over a small stack of books while she was at it, pulling out a small recipe book herself. "Nothing here that works off of just a Dark Crystal and Dark Shard, but if we keep harvesting from the Heartless, there should be some things available. We can start on the curse texts tomorrow. For now, combat magic is our best bet." she explained. "I've even got one on the various Elements of the Greater World." she noted.

"Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Sound, Electricity, Magnet, Ice, Illusion, Space, Time, ...Flower and Moon?" Raven asked.

"Flower is nature, so healing spells and death effects usually fall under it's domain, while Moon is the mental magic, as opposed to the sensory one of Illusion. Light and Darkness are technically Elements, but no amount of magical talent will let you use the one if you're talented with the other, though if what I can tell about Progression is true, that might not be true for you." she paused, thinking. "There's also the Balloon series, which is tied to Wonder, and can be treated like raw magic, so anything that doesn't absorb or ignore magic itself will take damage. Strictly speaking though, it's it's own book when it comes to Elements."

Huh. Did that have something to do with her plans for Wonderland? Wonderland being the source of Ever After's magic was well-known, by virtue of being the wellspring(literally in some cases) of the Wonder that formed it's backbone. They never did figure out what exactly her mother had done to Wonderland, probably because the spell wasn't complete. Sure, poisoning it was pretty obvious, but that was like saying someone who was running a fever was sick. Correct, but it didn't help much.
The duo made their way to a larger area, a banquet hall, though the table was currently pushed against the wall, leaving a long room 50 feet long and 20 feet wide relatively open. While technically, there ought to be a ton of servants in the castle, even Villains got some perks post-Story, especially royals, it was the first two weeks of summer, so her mother had 'reluctantly' allowed the staff to go visit their families and spend time with their children, hence Raven not being concerned about Heartless roaming about inside. Given that she did this every year, it had aroused no suspicion. Well, it was something of an open secret her mother used this time for less legal experiments and spells without any witnesses, so it wasn't entirely selfless, but they had less than 50 staff. It wasn't a massive edifice like the White castle.

The point was, unless Raven could get a message out to reveal her mother's plan to the people who stopped her last time, despite not having a mirrorphone or messaging magic, or knowing exactly where the Grimm brothers and/or Baba Yaga actually were, or having much in the way of reason for them to trust her when she was reasonably sure Villain's Brand wouldn't care if she was using a message as opposed to a face-to-face meeting unless she was using an actual proxy, or having much idea how to get to Apple, and by extension Snow White who would be able to intercede and get the message out, then she'd have to fall back on her current 'Get so strong Mom has no reason to worry.' plan, as opposed to her mother's 'Scare them out of their minds so they don't touch a hair on her (or my) head.' plan. ...Wait, there was someone who could carry a message. She'd just have to get herself 'alone' first.

They soon discovered that she had to actually be present for Gaming Interface to work. Having her a room over didn't count, though being in a storage closet didn't count as a separate room if it wasn't practically it's own room. The Komory Bat and Necho Cat could act as relays, due to their connection to Raven, but the range increase was less than half of her normal range, and they couldn't double up on such links. At her mother's questioning, while they were testing out the limitations, Raven filled her in on her Remittances. Her mother shook off the minor existential crisis at her personal timeline getting messed with surprisingly quickly, a benefit of her ego... probably.

On the other hand, with the wards down and Keyblade in hand, even with Reeking Darkness and Brand of Chi mitigated, a constant stream of low-level Heartless, mostly huge numbers of Shadows, Mega-Shadows, the hedgehog-looking Earth Cores, what she could only describe as a possessed pot with bat wings and the lid permanently aflame in the Flame Cores, the bat-winged jellyfish which were clear in some places and pitch back in others seen in the Water Cores, and the teleporting black spheres with mouths, the moderately less common Darkballs, appeared. The Possessers and Mega-Possessers taking over suits of armor and charging into the room with some regularity were a surprise the first time, but they quickly ceased to be, as they lacked much in the way of strategy, since the Heartless were dumb, and simply leaving Balloon mines at the doorways, while not able to damage it, did still knock it back(which was weird, since no other spell, even the explosive ones, got through their magic immunity to even that extent) allowing her mother to smash some of their 'friends' into them. There were sprinklings of Giga-Shadows and Mega-Possessors, the disturbing pile of shadows endlessly crawling on top of each other that was a Demon Tide, which took forever to kill because you had to manually take out the hundred or so high-end Shadows that made it up, and the occasional group of several Neoshadows and lone Novashadow. Invisibles were about halfway between Neoshadows and Novashadows, the sword-wielding teleporters nasty and showing about once every 40 seconds, but not capable of overwhelming her mother single-handed. Raven could defend herself against the strongest ones, with help from the Dream Eaters, long enough for her mother to slaughter her way through extant groups.

After about 15 minutes, an absolute drenching of Darkness made itself apparent, and a giant of shadow, a Darkside appeared, followed almost immediately by a Heartless similar to the Invisibles, but it's blade, wings, and horns, were a dull orange to their blue. An Orcus. Thirdly, a pool of Darkness that was initially similar to the Demon Tide, but emerged as a more potent, if somewhat less mobile, Demon Tower. It didn't have the constant crawling mass effect of the Tide, though moving as a single unit with that many component Shadows was creepy in a different way. It was also tougher in the sense that her mother's first blast of magic at each of the trio to stagger them did less damage to the Tower than the Tide, if the much smaller number of Shadows briefly flailing at their separation before they disintegrated was a good indicator. Gaming Interface didn't tell her HP for other people, so she had to eyeball it.

"This trio's a little different from the rest. These are Boss Rank Heartless." her mother explained, a veritable wall of spell arrays surrounding the giant Heartless and pouring on magic targeting it's wrists and head. The Orcus, meanwhile, was dodging flames almost frantically, and mostly failing as her mother bathed half the room without dealing permanent damage, wearing it down with almost casual ease. The Demon Tower was bracketed with mines, both groundside and airborne, so when it turned into a tornado of Shadows and somewhat more mundane Darkness

"Normal Heartless are usually vulnerable anywhere. The big guy? Invincible unless you hit their wrists or head, and the Heartless really only have a few varieties of Boss Ranks. The Dark Follower is all but a recolor ratcheted up a couple notches across the board, like the Novashadow and the Neoshadow." she continued, idly snuffing out the Darkside's stream of dark comets even as they were blasting out of the enormous heart-shaped hole in it's chest.

"The Orcus, meanwhile, is healed by lighting, but otherwise magic that hits it from a distance is your best bet if your aren't much, much faster than it. It prefers to hang back, but that doesn't mean it's not a competent swordsman for it's relative physical abilities. That being said, it's almost a recolor of the Invisible.

"Finally, Demon Tides are a lot slower than the Tides, but if the Tides hit like carriages, Towers hit like trains. There was a theory they were made up of Mega-Shadows instead of normal Shadows, though it can be hard to tell since Megas aren't that much bigger than normal ones, and it could just be that they're stronger."

"They also hit much harder than their lessers, take far more punishment to bring down, have much more varied attacks, and worst of all, the massive amount of Darkness makes them smarter about fighting. It's not that they can think, their instincts about Heart-taking are just sharpened to the point they can kind of fake it." she added as the Heartless disintegrated and Raven received 100000 EXP for each.

"So, how many Levels were those ones worth?" she asked her daughter, having so thoroughly slaughtered the Darkside neither party had so much as scuffed the floor.
Shaking off her shock as her mother manhandled an enemy she'd need the Social Link system to even see the Level of, Gaming Interface providing only a '???' on that front where the Darkside or it's companions were concerned, Raven answered "10. Though that's only because I was about a quarter of the way there already."

'Raven Queen.

Level 34. Progression Cursebearer.

4560/29000.
...
14 Attribute points available. Wisdom and Luck cannot be raised with Level points.'

She decided to go for Wits, raising her mental processing speed by more than a third to 44. Willpower was likely to be her 'God-Stat' sooner or later between her training drain and having to resist the penalties from lack of sleep, but for now, she would focus on raising Int and Wits to improve her magic studies. More immediately, she felt like she'd gained a lot of... she'd go for 'energy' that she could invest towards a more direct power-up. She'd need to work to shape it though, and she got the impression she wasn't getting much out of being carried relative to doing this herself.

She noticed the difference immediately. It was like everything was moving through water, movements a little slower than they should be. Maybe it was different because Wits was almost twice her physical speed now even ignoring the increase to the worth of a point? Still, it made reacting to the Heartless a lot easier. Her reading was proceeding much more quickly too, and that made shaping the power she was amassing easier.

This continued for the remainder of the 5 hours until she'd be going to sleep, Raven achieving Level 127, and 93 points to invest in her Attributes. 10 of those went into Wisdom, since she could apparently invest one for every 10 Levels she gained, as this sort of EXP apparently counted as 'experience' in the more mundane sense, but that left 83. Reluctantly, she brought Agi up to 30, reducing the issue with her physical body and mind being disconnected somewhat, then happily dumped the remaining 78 points into Intelligence, massively empowering her magic, intellect, and by extension, her research.

'Raven Queen.

Level 127. Progression Cursebearer.

EXP: 45500/128000.

Strength: 17.
Constitution: 20.
Agility: 30.
Intelligence: 127.
Wisdom: 41.
Wits: 44.
Charisma: 35.
Manipulation: 19.
Willpower: 35.
Appearance: 30.
Luck: 19.
HP: 2000/2000. HP Regen: 100% of full HP per minute.
MP: 12700/12700. MP Regen: 10% of full MP per minute.

Current Willpower Reserve: 14900.'

She suspected her Willpower had regenerated her, well, Willpower, which was why it had barely gone down. Good to know it was a regen effect and not something that happened while she slept. That would suck. Though the fact that it had gone down notably when her first day wasn't even up yet and she wasn't doing anything strenuous for more than a couple minutes at a time when the Heartless waxed in numbers too fast for her mother to immediately wipe out was probably a bad sign for her general Willpower reserves long-term.

"Hm, about time for bed." her mother muttered, glancing at Raven, who was noticeably slowing, despite prodigious use of magic, both to conserve her physical stamina, and because she was, frankly, literally orders of magnitude better with it compared to the key-shaped blade. Frankly, she was pretty sure the connection to her Heart was the only reason she was remotely proficient enough with it to use it in that first fight since she'd wielded a sword herself less than 5 times, and watching Hero class students wasn't the same(even if it might actually do more for her than wielding the Keyblade directly now, since that was technically studying), though even with her mother doing the heavy lifting, she'd notably improved in these hours, probably because she was working from more than 8. Raven opened her mouth to agree, since her body might be massively improved, but she was still 7, and not much of a physical fighter to begin with, when an absolutely enormous quantity of Darkness made itself known, dwarfing the Darksides, Orcuses, or Demon Towers from before. Clawing it's way into the world, at a glance it looked like a slightly bigger, dark red version of the Darksides that had attacked. The fact that Gaming Interface only provided ??? for name and Level was a very bad sign. If her mother wasn't here, she'd be trying to run, though she had a pretty good idea what this one was.

"Dark Follower." her mother breathed, looking deadly serious for the first time since this impromptu training session began.

Unlike it's 20 or so counterparts, this one was strong enough for her mother to immediately restrain it. To Raven's mild terror, the restraints started to crack under the strain immediately. Even with the active distraction of her mother expending more magic than Raven had in total, even with her recent power-up, every second in a repeat of the targeting she'd been doing on the Darksides, the Dark Follower's efforts to escape were quickly bearing fruit. Raven decided to join in.

"Stop!" she called out, having learned all the basic spells of the Greater World by this point, as well as Fira, in the first. The Dark Follower froze for all of 2 seconds even with her massive Intelligence boosting it. That was probably what she ought to expect from a first tier spell against a Boss Rank. It was fine, that was more than enough time for her to lay down a wall of Balloon mines on the floor in front of the Dark Follower. Just in time for the restraints to break long enough for a hand to slam down, and a pool of Darkness oozed outwards around it, Neoshadows, Giga-Shadows, and a smattering of Novashadows emerging. They charged headlong into the Balloon mines, which Raven was forced to renew over and over, as she wasn't one-shotting anything with a given mine, and they just kept coming. Meanwhile, her mother kept pouring fire on the Dark Follower. Literally. It broke free just long enough to bring it's other arm to it's chest, and massive orbs of dark energy started shooting out, easily twice the size of a Darkside's comets, and approximately 4 times as dangerous even ignoring how getting hit by one would leave you wide open for the rest, or how there were twice as many at once as the Darkside's. However, with her Wits, they also offered opportunity. Raven swung Rebellious Heart like a baseball bat, deflecting one such orb, the stream eventually forcing her to guard and nothing else, with her Dream Eater occassionally deflecting a few of them, though they lacked her accuracy. Each orb so bounced away was sent right back to it's source, doing some damage along the way. Something she'd learned by accident when 2 Darksides had appeared at once, splitting her mother's attention just enough for a comet to get through.

It took a full 10 minutes to take it down, though it felt like a lot more like 2 hours, what with at least 4 near-misses with massive bursts of Darkness that would probably have instantly-killed her on a direct hit, since they shaved chunks of her HP in the hundreds off from proximity alone, costing her 1000 Willpower. Raven actually took a moment to realize she'd gotten an EXP notice for a solid million, which was a little more in total thanks to the lesser Heartless it had called forth. Her mother actually looked a little drained. "I think we should set those wards back up." Raven panted out as the last of the Novashadows fell and she dismissed her Keyblade to make herself less appetizing.

Her mother didn't bother saying anything, letting the 'No, really?' expression on her face speak for her, wordlessly restoring the presence-concealing wards. Plus side, she'd gained a Darkness Resistance ability from this last fight. 10% resistance to all Darkness-based effects. Not amazing, but it should apply to most high-end Heartless attacks, and potentially to using the Darkness, if she needed to do that. It sounded like Light and Darkness were both mentally hazardous, so, if at all possibke she would stick to magic, but if this fight was any indication, she'd need a major power-up to have any hope of surviving against any Boss Heartless. Anything that was magic resistant could cause a lot of trouble for her, so she'd probably actually, since her skills were comparatively lax compared to her now-bloated Attributes, and she wasn't operating on a lot of combat magic. Grossly overpowered basic spells were still just basic spells, but she was ridiculously more powerful than the average mage. She'd need to get higher spells to be able to even approach her taking on even one of those Boss Ranks as casually as her mother did.

Speaking of which, she'd gotten Level 133 and change out of that mess. Pushing Wisdom to 42, that left her 5 points to emplace. She'd save those for the Realm of Sleep, just in case. Right now, she was intending to put them in Willpower, to increase her 'defense' against losing any more and her recovery rate to a lot higher over the point of giving 100% in normal training. Something more imminently lethal might make her change her mind, so just in case, she'd wait the not-even-15-minutes.

They made their way back to her mother's study, put the books back, and then to Raven's bedroom. "Wouldn't *yawn* it make more sense to have some kind of heavily warded room?" she questioned.

"Not if you're going to the Realm of Sleep. Your Curses will be hitting both instances of you, but I believe that targeting the one will mean letting up on the other, since it's still technically the same individual. Plus, you'll be getting so little actual sleep as it is, that keeping you comfortable is worth a little extra hassle."
Barely suppressing another yawn, Raven nodded as her mother spoke. "Alright, you've increased your magic by more than three-quarters, and with it's potency increased by the same, you're easily thrice as strong as this morning. Let your Dream Eaters handle the heavy lifting. Try and get some rest beyond what's been mitigated." she looked Raven dead in the eye. "And. Don't. Die."

"I promise I won't die. The first night shouldn't be so bad, especially with the power-ups. As long as I keep Keyblade-ing to a minimum." Just before she'd laid down, they'd dumped materials into the cauldron, and made a number of pieces of equipment and items. Her Gaming Interface apparently considered each finger and toe a 'Ring' slot, as opposed to the 2 general Accessory slots she had free after the Rapier and Grimoire, so she had plenty of room even without accounting for earrings, a necklace, or a tiara, though her mother insisted on calling it a crown. There was the issue of her accessories being limited on those fronts, and the Heartless weren't exactly generous with the items they left behind. On the other hand, thousands of Heartless were felled every hour, so she ended up with 3 of the dark silver, heart-shaped with a fleur de lis on the bottom, crystal called an Illusory Crystal, 9 pieces of the blue starburst of Orichalcum and 38 Gales from the Invisibles(with huge amounts of the latter coming from the Neoshadows), 30 Gold chunks from the 20 Orcuses, and 50 or more of the Blazing Shards, Blazing Stones, Soothing Shard, Soothing Stone, Pulsing Shards, Pulsing Stones, Lucid Shards, Lucid Crystals, Fury Stones, Writhing Stones, Writhing Gems, and Wellspring Stones. Then there were the Potions, Hi-Potions, and Mega-Potions the Shadows and Neoshadows had dropped, which healed 40, 60, and 40% of the intended user's HP per use in the former cases, and everyone in a radius of about 30 feet considered an ally in the latter case, well, well over 100 apiece, which was how she found out her cap per Inventory slot was 99, though equipped Equipment didn't seem to count. Considering she was pretty sure she wasn't supposed to get two pieces of gold from these things, Luck was clearly already paying dividends!

Huge chunks of the items needed Mythril Shards and Mythril Gems. 2 Lucid Shards, which she had hundreds of at this point since Shadows gave about 15 for every hundred felled, made a Mythril Shard, and 7 of those made a Mythril Gem. With those, she was able to get a Moogle Badge, which provided +10% to her HP and MP, and +2 Agi, though it cost her three Orichalcum. A pair of Guard Earrings, which both granted 3 Agi and a point of Constitution apiece. After some debate, since she was already on the Fire chain's second level, she got a Thundaga Trinket and Blizzaga Bangle for each wrist and a Firaga and Blizzaga Bangle for her ankles, granting 20% resistance to electricity and fire, 40% to ice, and 3 points of Constitution apiece. The Divine Bandanna was hidden under her tiara, which had no effect on it's effects, but allowed her to wear it without pushing her tiara aside, as it technically didn't count as equipment due to providing no bonuses, like a skin in a videogame. It gave her 2 Con... and nothing else. Every little bit helped. Her remaining inventory slots either had no equipment available, or were the 20 Ability Rings she had made and equipped, which added singular points of Agility each. Not much on their own, but huge all together.

She fell asleep almost the moment her head hit the pillow. Her first hour was uninterrupted thanks to mititgation, though the remainder would not be. Her mother would at least wait until she was actually in the Realm of Sleep before getting any rest of her own, and she'd long since used enough spells on herself to make staying awake 24/7 for weeks no real issue.

"Now then, while I wait..." the Evil Queen slipped through a long series of symbols. Finally, a swirling purple fog formed itself into a circle and, resembling a cauldron of water for a moment, resolved itself into an image of an old man with harsh expression, bushy grey eyebrows and long beard, in blue robes and hat.

"Mira? It has been quite some time since you called." he noted.

"I didn't hexactly part with your friend Eraqus or Xehanort on the best of terms Master Yen Sid." she responded, addressing him with some actual respect. She wasn't sure how a serious fight between them would go. The fact that she didn't assume a win in a one-on-one was a mark of serious respect by her standards. "I assumed you would be upset with me for dismissing them as lost causes."

He frowned. "Regarding Xehanort at least, I fear you may have been more correct than anyone realized until it was too late. He attempted to forge the X-Blade."

"HE WHAT?!" the Evil Queen shrieked. Thankfully, she'd had the foresight to set up one-way sound dampening spells, so she didn't disturb Raven in the slightest.

"That is how most people react, yes." Yen Sid nodded gravely, unflappable from acquired immunity. "Eraqus was struck down due to his machinations, and even now, their apprentices are lost. One's Heart is missing entirely, though he does seem to draw breath yet. The others are lost to Darkness in one way or another."

Mira grit her teeth. "I knew he was a lunatic too curious for his own good, but I didn't think he was a reality-destroying lunatic. My daughter and I live here."

"Your compassion for others is truly admirable." Yen Sid deadpanned. "Regardless, why have you called?" he asked.

She raised two fingers. "Two reasons, although they're connected." She ticked on finger down. "First, I have it on good, time-traveling, authority that the Heartless are active and going to get more so, and more than three-quarters of the Worlds were consumed as of nine years from now."

Yen Sid stroked his beard, eyes widening fracitonally. "That is a most troubling prediction. I have noticed that the Darkness seems to be waxing of late... Who is the time traveler?" he asked.

"That's the other reason." she ticked down the other finger. "My daughter managed to stumble across a being who was willing to bypass the existing method of time travel in the Greater World and it's rules by turning back time for that long, allowing her to keep her body and memories and interfere with fate, but in return, she had to take on Curses from The Accursed-" she paused as Yen Sid shot up to his full standing height.

"You're sure it was The Accursed?" he asked, deadly serious.

"Yes. One of the Curses my daughter took on requires that she answer questions regarding her actions or abilities. Something I can confirm empirically. I take it you know who that is?"

Yen Sid sighed, sitting back down. "Only fragments. The Keyblade War which shattered this reality was not the first. There was one but a few decades prior. The Cursebearer in that time period fought in it, and gained... quite the reputation for himself and his patron. The former gained the Title, Herald of the End of Stories, which he purportedly earned by destroying the avatars of Fate, though he was felled shortly after as the other participants ganged up on him in fear. Fate has only recovered enough to manage proper fateweaving, with or without it's Arbiters present, in the last 200 years or so, and that is likely because of the cosmic reshuffling the Keyblade Wars caused. The Herald was quick to say that he was nothing compared to his benefactor, which, as you can imagine, drove wild speculation and more than a bit of paranoia among friend and foe alike. I had wondered if it was just a tale, given how this would be earlier still than the time we call the Age of Fairytales and the account seemed fantastical even for that time period, but with confirmation that Cursebearers exist... Well, I can see why you called me."

"I need more general expertise, and none of the other mages of my world do better than matching me in arenas I dabble in one-on-one. Then there's the issue that I need someone willing to tutor my daughter in use of Keyblade, and there's not much in the way of Masters around."

"So The Accursed can grant Keyblades? Interesting..." Yen Sid muttered. "Actually, my apprentice, Mickey has completed his Mark of Mastery exam. He's been patrolling the Worlds to ensure Xehanort didn't leave any surprises behind, and visiting Radiant Garden frequently, as two of Eraqus' apprentices disappeared there, to speak with Ansem the Wise. Still, he says that something about the castle reeks of Darkness, among other things, even if he can't figure out where it's coming from. I hope there's no connection to the Heartless but better to be safe. Still, I will need to visit after he next checks in. That should be only a few days."

Mira nodded, and let the communication spell collapse. "If the old Cursebearer fell in a Keyblade War despite having the strength breaking Fate's back for centuries... then Raven will need every advantage." she clenched a fist. "And I'll make sure she gets it.

AN

AN: This is Raven Queen, one of the co-Protagonists of Ever After High. The gist is that the descendants of various Fairytale characters are supposed to be following in the footsteps of their ancestors, to the point of essentially signing a magical contract to do so being expected, but Raven and some of her fellow students aren't interested. Thing is, the stories can't progress with major characters not fulfilling their roles, which throws everything out of whack. The issue, at it's most basic, boils down to the people unhappy with their endings tossing them aside endangering the guaranteed happy endings of other people, though some people simply don't have certain character traits that would allow them to properly fill the role. The son of the Huntsman from Red Riding Hood has no interest in hunting anything, for example. If this sounds like Disney's Descendants, it actually predates Descendants by a couple years, but Disney tossed a ton of money at it, went so far as to have their merch on the same shelves, and eventually made Mattel shut down the franchise because Descendants was outcompeting it to the point of sales crashing. Ironically, Descendants would be shelved a few years later after the last movie. If this wasn't Worst Timeline, maybe Disney would have picked it up instead, but it is, so the point is moot.

There are some complications, such as the Book of Legends having been in use for centuries, meaning that nobody is quite sure what happens if it's not signed, and though people didn't immediately suffer critical existence failure, there are people concerned that there's a 'yet' caveat attached to that.u Nobody is completely convinced nothing bad will happen, to the point a tainted vision of a Bad Future was enough for Raven to very nearly sign the Book, and Apple, the leader of the Royal faction has some childhood trauma and general issues stemming from her upbringing keeping her from accepting the Rebels' point of view. 'Little Timmy fell down the well' in essence, which made her terrified of the future, and how if they didn't have preset destinies, all kinds of terrible things could happen. This is fairly explicitly spelled out when she says she wants Raven to sign the book because she doesn't want anything bad to happen to anybody, including her.

Plenary Brand plus Recusant's Brand means that anyone who's bothering to look will not only know what you can do and what your weaknesses are, but where you are and what you're doing. It essentially gives them perfect information on your present and potential, beyond any allies you have. Imagine if Beric had known exactly where Hunger was when that fight with the Armament Fish happened and what he was doing. He could have fled immediately, or prepared a surprise attack. Not enough to kill Hunger by itself, but he was badly hurt by the Fish. Dien seemed to have a pretty good idea where Hunger was at all times by simply following the trail of destruction, though pinpoint accuracy could have been a problem. Particularly if even the mitigated version was enough to let him know about the Realm of Evening.

Reeking Darkness is a bit like Hunted from Furthermost Reaches, as well as another negative reputation thing, since her magic and very being will always feel incredibly foul to anyone with the right senses for it, affecting a lot of the people who would notice the Curses. It affects the Worlds as a whole as well, so they're not going to trust her much any time soon, which will make finding Ever After's Keyhole a problem since it will be actively hiding, and her World's rules don't let her summon a genie(or djinn) and just wish to find it. Raven didn't realize this since she knew little about greater World metaphysics at the time. This would be the case for most Genius Loci too. Curse of Curses technicaly isn't a social Curse, but people will associate her with misfortune and being attacked by demons and the like, especially with Apocryphal. People who could figure out Wretched/Villain's was a thing might still fall for Reeking Darkness, because it's Curse nature is a lot more subtle to both mystical and non-mystical senses as a consequence of requiring the former to proc socially in most cases. Given the dark circles under The Accursed's eyes and how he's probably long past the point where he needed the base eights hours pseudo-mitigating Slumber off the bat, I suspect there's some sort of complicating factor, likely a Curse, that messes with his sleep cycle to worsen the effects of Affliction of Slumber. Restless Slumber was my thought. Combined with the normal Slumber Affliction, it would be absolute murder on your Mental Stability, to say nothing of your sleep cycle. Slumber and Restless Slumber are both ironic Curses for anyone who thinks sleep's a waste of time.

With TSH on such a wide variety of skills via relevant Remittances, Raven's probably operating on a level of Progression similar to Hunger, though probably minus the Wishes. The question is how much influence that has on Curse of the Well. I'm tempted to say it at least makes note of her TSH, since, you know, Curse, and with how much TSH covers with so many applications, it might well be that her effective 500% of normal Progression Cursebearer Progression amounts to normal denizens getting 50% and hostiles getting 100%, with her significantky higher tier still helping relative to baseline due to power compounding. Now, that sounds crazy, considering the effort The Accursed goes to to pick out Cursebearers, but we know that, for example, Nameless had Cursebearer-tier Progression, and much like Decimator, it's not going to be an instantaneous 'Everyone in the KH reality gets half of Cursebearer Progression.' thing, that would get silly with how fast Sora and co. go from dealing with mooks to ripping through a Boss Rush of the bad guys, for one thing. Even if it would rapidly extend to her entire home World and it's connected Worlds such as their iteration of Wonderland and Monster High(which has precedent in KH via the Christmas and Halloweentown Worlds being accessible by doors to each other), seeping through the Ocean Between without such extant links is pretty hard until you achieve at least planetary destruction, as the space between isn't normal physical distance, and while her mother can do that, Raven's 7-year-old self can't. Not yet, even with all her Remittances,provided she didn't find the Keyhole and Darkness-gank it. Additionally, Raven's probably going to focus her mitigation on reducing what counts as a hostile to personal hatred, or at least direct ill will towards her, rather than any and every Heartless in range, for example, counting. That would require that you actually know who Raven is in order to benefit. Too bad Xehanort's going to figure out(remember, I suppose) that Sigil thing the Recusant's Brand is likely the progenitor of relatively soon, huh?

Speaking of him, Apocryphal is eying him and chuckling about how much mileage it's goint to get out of him for activations, since the lunatic's research can so easily be used to justify more plagues upon the Realm of Light. This is some of the reason I had Back to the Beginning as a thing OOC, since Xehanort seems to have done a lot more philosophizing than research post-split into his Heartless and Nobody. Most of it seems to have been left to Vexen, though Xehanort was back into studying up after being recompleted, when not actively Keyblade War-ing. Maleficent and Pete are nothing resembling scientists, though since Maleficent managed to pull a Xehanort and ressurect herself from memories after sending herself back to the past following her initial death in KH1, while Pete is somehow capable of creating portals into the past(seemingly a one-off) and absorbing power from Datascapes(hard to say without seeing him fight since then), while I can't see them shifting the entire paradigm of the Realm of Light like Xehanort without draining a ton of Apocryphal credibility(if only because they're more interested in conquest than destroying everything for curiosity's sake), they'll be getting upgrades. Pete's going to develop time powers to become a better rival for Mickey, for example.

As for the singular Curse for Combat Cursebearer or 2 for Progression(so, just Apocryphal), well the logic is something along the lines of being somewhat more suited than Hunger, due to physical and mental purity being greater since she's still a virgin but only 16 so she's at about half of Seram's suitability, and having about half of 'Could kill a world.' level power, given that the only reason her mother failed to destroy Wonderland was that she was essentially interrupted mid-cast (one of the people doing it was also this world's iteration of Baba Yaga. Yes. That Baba Yaga.) and then sealed away immediately, and Raven was about half as strong without accepting her destiny as the next Evil Queen, compared to Seram's base human and Hunger's mostly-dead with chunks of his soul gone, which subtracts about 3.75 Curses from Hunger's version, as opposed to the singular Curse Seram needed to get Progression, since she's still under the theoretical age limit, or else it would be just the one like him, which also accounts for Apocryphal being required while Indenture wasn't. Also, The Accursed is in a surprisingly good mood, so he's giving her a little more leeway than normal, which accounts for that last chunk of a Curse, when combined with the Curse Mitigation he's gotten since Seram and Hunger became Cursebearers letting him give a little more leeway. People not immediately asking if he's The Devil is extremely rare. The beginning of this event-chain is set fairly early in the Ever After High series proper, so Raven doesn't have a ton of people who see past her heritage or her dark magic(which is also her heritage but counts as it's own factor) at this point, which can only help her resist Brand of the Wrectched. It's not that she doesn't hate him instinctively, she just won't act on it without a good reason since she knows what being villified is like, and he's been nothing but polite and reasonably helpful and informative.

Perfect Witch and Dark Bloodline are the King's Scepter of this group, the former granting a sort of ritually-crafted Elysian/Vetruvian for lots of immediate power, as well as the potential of Renaissance Woman regarding magic, only with Progression letting the cardinalities extend to infinity, the latter being heavily focused on dark magic to the point of dropping a lot of utility and early game survivability, but since Curses are strongly associated with dark magic. Back to the Beginning is barely modified from Pittauro's Gohan Cursebearer sub-Quest, the time reversal being shortened being offset by him having to reverse the destruction of the entire Realm of Light via Darkness-ganking, which has a lot more conceptual weight than just blowing up the planets, and The Grimoire is pretty transparently a reversal of Hunger's Ring to complement her being more magical than stabby, though it serves in a role more akin to the Forebear's Blade due to it's connection to her existence. Gaming Interface is probably the most versatile of any of these by itself, offering a small pocket dimension, a Panoply-esque effect via the Equipment feature, and the EXP-harvesting system she's been exploiting to help compensate for her crippled combat gains, though that's not going to happen often from this point on, since her skills have fallen behind and the major magic buff is going to let her handle the Realm of Sleep well enough to not-die for long enough to get proper defenses set up. Plus, she can't rely on her mother being available 24/7 to 'party carry' for the gambit, and she's still only get 10 times the EXP a theoretical normal person with Gaming Interface would, meaning studying is about a hundred times as beneficial to her.

The Digitizer lets her construct entire virtual worlds, which can allow for Realm of Evening-like amenities with sufficient investment, as well as the ability to farm fights, though anyone whose faced the Data Organization can tell you those nutjobs aren't 1 Pick fights for anyone weaker than Hunger pre-Armament Fish. Grimoire and not having the ready-made healing of RoE don't fully cancel out, but they cancel out enough that 1-Pick farming is reasonable. Training dummy enemies generated solely to test out new spells and 'force' Advancements along specific paths is also quite possible. For example, the Phantom Boss in KH1 requires you use Stopra to halt it's Doom mechanic, and you are rewarded with Stopga if you beat it. The implication being that you were able to break through to a new tier because of the life-or-death struggle and spamming the time magic. Things like that. She'd create enemies with massive resistance to magic and fight them with magic, or the same with physical attacks, but weak offense, to force herself to gain resistance-piercing effects, or Puzzle Bosses with specific means of being bested, such as needing to cycle through fire, water, earth, and wind attacks because it's vulnerabilities shift each time it gets hit by an Elemental spell, or an enemy with specific responses to specific attacks that can leave it open.

The 'You can use other people's personal magics' of Enchantress' Wand could be similarly nuts, since synergies normally impossible, such as 100% of Edelross and Vigorflame buffs, alongside Soul Evocations and other such personal magics, would become very possible, not to mention a Companions of the King but with the personal magics of the 'Companions' such as directly adding 25% of the user's Progression in person-specific forms of that magic. This dramatically increases the personal utility of ennoblement efforts, beyond fending off Curse of the Well.

As mentioned, Ruler's Rapier would likely be used by someone in her social circle, probably Apple, though she'd make use of Retinue's TSH to make it the centerpiece of a Rulership pseudo-Retinue, propagating it's effects to rulers she chose regardless of their possession of it. Speaking of which, the contagiousness of Keyblades would make it really easy to grant people Keyblades if they were theoretically worthy in terms of Heart strength(and the necessary strength probably isn't as crazy as the low modern numbers would suggest, considering the events of the previous Keyblade War) and only moderately more difficult if they weren't.

Praxis is almost definitely not something she can teach anyone unless she becomes a High Cursebearer, even with TSH on it, though perhaps giving them shadows of her Refinements would be possible. Sort of like Open Hand, but less draining, since she has a much larger number of people she'd want to target. Side note, with TSH, 1 Praxis Pick is only 250 Willower, as opposed to 1000. So, she'd only burn 1750 Willpower on a 7-Pick, instead of 7000. Though she'd still be bone-tired, and the 28 Picks she could theoretically harvest for 7000 in this case are not recommended without much, much higher Constitution. Unless she wants to die of everything exhaustion. The Willpower cost might be reduced, but let's not get crazy. She's no Hunger, with his Willpower: Yes.

This is an intensely greedy build, and honestly, if I was actually rolling dice, there's a good chance she'd just die in her first week(though she's going to be nuts since I'm not going to just kill her off like that and the sheer madness KH metaphysics gets up to gives her comic-book tier WTFery), especially with the tripple-whammy of Restless Slumber sending her consciousness to the Realm of Sleep, where Reeking Darkness and Apocryphal will ensure she gets swarmed by Nightmares every night. Though, there's a number of reasons for it. There are of course the two reasons Raven outlined, wanting to help The Accursed, and actually legitimately wanting a ton of power after being told that Fate just got punched in the gut and reality as she knows it is in danger of a magic zombie apocaplypse. Then, there's the fact that, well, she's actually got some similarities to her mother. She's terrified of turning into her mother, and... honestly, I could see it under the right circumstances, even if she'd have to be dragged into it kicking and screaming or Drunk on the Dark Side(which Darkness excels at). This is technically two reasons, as she's channeling her mother a bit here in her ambition, but she's also trying to amass the power that she'd never run the risk. Moral compromise is only something that happens if you're not strong enough to do things without it, as Rihaku protagonists have noted. Power only corrupts if you can't both accomplish your goals and maintain your ideals. Though, with Tyrant, Reeking Darkness, Villain's Brand, and Apocryphal, she might be pushed into 'take over the world for it's own good' in a manner similar to Doctor Doom, just less insanely egoistic, since she's got a prime example of where that leads with her mother.

Speaking of her mother, the Evil Queen strikes me as being much like Momonga/Ainz from Overlord. Downright devoted towards family and subordinates, but almost completely apathetic towards any and every other person in the world if they aren't useful. Case in point, her reaction to Raven Batman Gambit-ing her into a defeat was to gush about how smart she was and how good a villain it indicated she would be(after she stopped being mad about the gambit itself). Which is also part of the reason Raven's social Curses aren't bothering her.Villain's Brand is almost a net positive to her, appealing to the sense of hamminess she indulges in when her opposition is decidedly on the ropes by loudly proclaiming villainy to the world, Curse of Curses doesn't bother her much because she works with some really nasty magic all the time. Reeking Darkness is something of an exception, but that's mostly due to bad memories of someone who steeped themselves in Darkness, and she's aware of the Curses in general, so their effects on her are somewhat blunted.

Thus, Raven's got a somewhat skewed perspective, which she will admit, but the outside world also has a skewed perspective. She's both a very overprotective mom who deeply loves her daughter, and an egomaniacal world-killing psycho. Well, attempted, and her intentions for Wonderland are a bit different here, being more akin to causing the magical equivalent of an auto-immune response, and using the shock to the system to set herself up with admin access via the link the Book of Legends has to Wonderland (someone attempted to steal the destiny of the daughter of the Queen of Hearts, making her the future queen instead, and by all accounts it would have worked if she'd actually gotten her hands on the book) giving her total control of all magic in Ever After and Wonderland, something Raven doesn't know, since her World-That-Was self either never bothered explaining or actually meant to destroy Wonderland as a very potent 'Don't screw with me.' example(and partially For the Evulz). Raven's noted the disconnect, and both of those things are working in concert against her. As she suspects, her mother took a hit to her ego after getting sealed in the mirror world, and said mother's currently in a thought process along the lines of 'Oh, they want a monster do they? Then a monster they shall have!' regarding both Raven and herself. This makes her very convinced that she knows best. She's sure that knowing what stopped her last time will let her make countermeasures this time, especially because even if everyone else is stronger than then too, she's stronger still in relative terms.

Raven's Attributes probably seem kind of bloated, even without Perfect Witch. This is because she's from a long line of Evil Queens, so a somewhat literal breeding program at some point in the past is likely, compared to Seram ostensibly being a normal guy. Additionally, she's been using magic since she was old enough to talk, and gotten some tutoring from arguably the most powerful witch in her world. Plus, Back to the Beginning only reset her body and magical strength, not her mind, so Attributes based solely or partially on her mind(so, basically everything not Strength or Constitution, as even Agi was as much about dexterity as raw physical speed, and dexterity is a mix of skill and muscle memory) were resistant to the turning back of the clock. A Greater Remittance focused on immediate improvement of parameters is quite drug, though given Hunger's baseline as opposed to Raven's, 30 Raven-Willpower is still less than 20+ Hunger-Willpower, since she's more in line with a teen novel protagonist(which she technically is even if I'm using the books and the show) than the Isekai Deconstruction Hunger's world turned into. Kind of like the Ruler's Rapier Rulership empowerment, multiplying 5 by 10 is an enormous boost, but still less than multiplying 10 by 10. In general, if Hunger's base was ***** Physical, *** Social, ** Utility, and Attributes gained from there are modifiers on that, Raven is ** Physical, *** Social, ***** Utility, sp while she won't be as strong as Hunger in a fight, she'll be memetic cockroach-tier hard to kill, and work to extend that to her entire social circle via a mix of various pseudo-Retinue effects and shamelessly abusing local metaphysics to make 'killed in every way that matters' incredibly difficult without knowing exactly what you're doing, and making it stick harder still.

Originally, the Ever After universe was a somewhat High Fantasy Slice of Life story with plot. Being merged with Kingdom Hearts, which immediately jumps the maximum heights a tier or two, it's likely to be a lot more plot-based. This does a lot to justify the lack of outside authorities intervening in the conflict as well, since the current generation is in similar straits as that in Jujutsu Kaisen. In-universe, to people who don't know about The Accursed/Curse of the Well, trying to use the Book of Legends to keep a lid on unknown trouble has worked for a time, but it's grown too much to contain, and caused it to fester and boil up all at once. Due to retroactive changes from a mix of Apocryphal gradually buffing the KH omniverse to trouble the High Cursebearer in a million years or so(messing with Raven directly would piss off The Accursed, and not empowering her makes her death much more likely in the short-term), and The Accursed messing with Raven's family so the physical Lesser Remittances(except the Keyblade) are family heirlooms that have awakened in the aftermath of the Perfect Witch ritual, this is even somewhat true.

As for the Evil Queen being Level 798, again, the High Cursebearer Apocryhal Curse gradually stregthening the setting independently of Curse of the Well which has caused a general mag-up for the setting so far(hence the massive EXP from the Heartless despite Combat Progression sitting at 10% of average for Progression types, since dear old mom is killing the crap out of them for Raven it's only really hitting how nasty these things are when the Darksides start showing up), and retroactive additions of the Lesser Remittances as family heirlooms has made the Evil Queen a magnitude stronger still, though she'd only be about 250 in canon. Post-Book-signing Raven in canon would be at about 200, since she wasn't incredibly dangerous in a direct fight and had years less experience and study, but giving her some time would let her destroy or save entire worlds, as her mother could. Going strictly by maximum output they'd be higher, daughter and mother alike, but since their actual combat strength is lower (Vegeta Arc-Vegeta/Goku in DBZ or so) and they're fairly squishy compared to their offense, they're 'averaged out' if you will. In some circumstance, an assassin who got lucky perhaps, they'd be relatively easy for a Level 100+ to take out, or even lower, but on the offense they're really, really nasty to deal with even without prepared ground of any kind. The Perfect Witch has also made her stronger, though that was more of a happy accident and is more focused on buffing rituals and connection-based stuff so while it shows up a bit on Levels it's less apparent to normal magical senses.

Similarly, distance from the Realm of Darkness leaves the normal Heartless relatively weak, especially since the time rewind means that Xehanort has only recently broken open the World barriers on Radiant Garden and the Darkness isn't oozing into the Realm of Light all that much yet. So even high-end non-Boss ones like Neoshadows aren't super-tough, especially with a Keyblade's advantages against them(which is what attracts the Heartless strongly enough for her to be assaulted by high-end ones despite near-immediate Stage 1 Mitigation on both Recusant and Darkness in the first place beyond the strong Heart it indicates), but they come equipped with the 'instant death' attack of Heart-stealing, and Darkness attacks are essentially direct attacks on your very being, so their levels are adjusted upwards for much the same reason as Raven and her mother. The Shadows aren't as much stronger in a fistfight than the Orc Weakling from the original Simple Transaction as their Levels would indicate, though their special abilities and requiring special weapons or specific abilities to put down permanently would probably hand them the win in ontologically-neutral territory even against greater numbers if you let them go at it long enough, since the Orc has few vital areas but Heartless have none, and the Heartless only really need one lucky hit to add the Orc to their ranks via an attack on the core of their being, while there's no Findross for the Orcs to drain because the Heartless act on mindless instinct to consume Hearts in a twisted attempt to forge connections, since they're still Hearts at the end of the day, or Darkness made real, which naturally covets the light.

You might be thinking that the Keyblade seeming to act like -2 Curse Mitigation stages for all the Heartless-attracting stuff Raven's got going on is extreme, but this is basically how it is in canon. Just having a Keyblade makes you Heartless-bait to a ridiculous extent. They'll go to places they normally don't. They'll completely ignore the Hearts of Worlds. The only things that can potentially distract them are other Keyblades, and people directly controlling them, and neither is 100% reliable. There are instances of more Heartless spawning in just because you have the Keyblade out in 358/2 Days within the first 5 or so Missions. Again, this is canon. Add Reeking Darkness and Recusant's Brand(and Curse of Curses to a small extent) as buffs to the Heartless spawn rate, and the only reason she didn't die or get Heart-ganked pretty much immediately was being able to use her mother as a super high-level Guest Character. Especially since Darkness attacks are essentially direct attacks on your being. Taking a bunch of damage that heals almost immediately wouldn't slice off 250 every time, even if it's pretty clear the only reason you aren't dead is that it didn't actually hit you directly, not the least because she'd get at least somewhat used to it by the third time, and it's not like she didn't get hit at all up to that point. So it's standardized because of the nature of the attacks, not just because I didn't go to the trouble of setting up some kind of advanced algorithm to calculate this sort of thing.

On the other hand, farming materials is trivially easy, provided a type of Heartless that hands them out exists. Which is somewhat iffy with the lack of Emblem Heartless at the moment. She might spec into Darkness just to exploit 'Summon Prize Pod/White Mushroom/Black Fungus. Get rare materials from them.' for a lot of her needs on that end once Xehanort's experiments go horrible right. Similarly, Darksides apparently travel in packs in the Realm of Darkness, while Dark Followers are much, much less common. Like, Shadow vs. Neoshadow levels of rarity differences. Though the buffs they've gotten means that they're operating at End of the World levels of strength post-Apocryphal buff. If you were wondering, it was about 500 Invisibles over the course of 5 hours. 1% base chance of Orichalcum drop. Multiply by 1.9 thanks to Luck, and you get 9. Illusory Crystal has 10% chance, but Demon Towers are 4 per hour right now. Even without the *1.9 from Luck, that would still be 2, instead of the 3, and you only need two for each of the two(well, one and it's upgraded form) items you use that for canonically. Nothing she could actually get off of these guys had a chance lower than Orichalcum, and Illusory Crystal is easily the lowest chance Boss Heartless item right now, so we can assume anything that's not Orichicalcum-grade or rarer is going to be in ready supply to make equipment, for herself at least. She can just farm Heartless for materials to feed into the Moogle cauldron her mother bought so she didn't need to mess with the World barriers every time she wanted their expertise after the falling out she had with her old World-hopping buddies. Though she's short some material types for, say, Ultima Weapon since, again, not a lot of Emblem Heartless right now. I round down the numbers anyway, so it should be reasonable. By the by, I decided to merge the lists of materials and recipes therein as part of the general jump in power, so a lot of Heartless are going to be dropping a lot of extra materials relative to a normal game.

The Evil Queen is easily Archmage-level, but she's facing 9 Curses, 10 if Apocryphal counts as two for mitigation purposes. That's never been very clear, since Curse Mitigation difficulty varies by Curse anyway, as seen with Tyrant. If she'd tried to go for Stage 2 mitigation right off the bat, she might have collapsed outright rather than the mystical equivalent of being a little out of breath for a minute. 9 times Archmage-level is probably on the level where you'd be affecting entire solar systems at once rather than individual planets, and she's never demonstrated anything on that level, even if cursing Wonderland didn't seem to be visibly straining her. She's also not specialized for it like Gisena's Nullity, so it's more draining than a commensurate amount of Nullity would be, partially because she has to cast a spell for each instead of Nullity's all-purpose anti-supernatural effect. She casts Curses, and she knows them when she sees them, but she doesn't do a lot of curse-breaking. This is a little like Sauron trying to turn someone back from being a Ringwraith. He knows the curse intimately, but that's not the same as being able to cure it on demand. Yes, Dark Bloodline implies the close association with dark magic allows for easier curse-breaking, but Raven didn't take that. To quote the Witch of the Wastes from Howl's Moving Castle "My specialty is casting curses, not breaking them." This is not to say she's not in the top 1%, but she's not Gisena's 0.1%-er, see?

Speaking of the Evil Queen, anyone who's read the Septimus Heap books has probably got some recollection of the Two-Faced Ring and it's ability to store the combined power of each preceding user to the current one. That is essentially what the Evil Queen was trying to do here, give Raven the combined power and potential of each predecessor to herself, going back 13 generations from herself, with her mother's own being both final ingredient and necessary link. Though it got modified into essentially making her a super-Witch and mildly superhuman in all fields from general magic-based buffs with a pretty major magic Progression boost.

If you're wondering, she had some adventures with some canon characters, but was left thinking both Light and Darkness' adherents were dogmatic lunatics who were going to get them all killed. She refuses to use either for this reason. She strongly suspects Xehanort to be involved with the mess with the Heartless, since she was around for him starting to go off the deep end, and she never really bought into his feigned repentance, having seen that trick before. Heck, she technically pulled that trick post-Story.

31038 words, discounting this line.

 

[Wolfy]

Can't see shit chief.

 

[Zampano]

[Accordion=Corvidae Cursebearer]
[slide=Corvidae Cursebearer]
******[/slide]******

[CENTER]Corvidae Cursebearer: Chapter 1[/CENTER]

Raven groaned

You're gonna wanna move the /slide tag so that the text isnt floating aimlessly in the void

 

[Pittauro]

Edit again: On the other hand, my Companions II Propaganda helped Pittauro to flip, so maybe that argument was stronger than i gave it credit for.

Click to shrink...

eh, I was basically conflicted about my choice since the beginning.

Still am right now!

..also yeah, it will take some time to read this

 

[ilbgar123]

Can't see shit chief.

Click to shrink...

[Accordion=Corvidae Cursebearer]
[slide=Corvidae Cursebearer]
******[/slide]******

[CENTER]Corvidae Cursebearer: Chapter 1[/CENTER]

Raven groaned

You're gonna wanna move the /slide tag so that the text isnt floating aimlessly in the void

Click to shrink...

Better?

 

[JOEbob]

it's functional, but It'd be a bit better if you did this instead of the top accordion tag:
[ACCORDION width="100%"]
[SLIDE_HEADER]Corvidae Cursebearer[/SLIDE_HEADER]
This way the accordion will let the text be cross the page like normal posting, instead of forcing it to a specific width.

 

[HoratioVonBecker]

Well, time for retaliatory omakepower. I'm limited to an IPad keyboard at the moment, so pardon any typos!

Truthbringer
A TRPG-shaped writing tool inspired by the fighting-as-a-series-of-trick-reveals genre. Its' focus and lucidity owes a great deal to David J. Prokopetz, while its' worked examples draw heavily from Rihaku lore.
Or rather, they would, if I didn't have to post this so quickly. More worked examples will follow soon enough, I expect.

What This Is About
This game is a tool to help you write progression fantasy characters, and make sure their powerups always have some texture. Actual playability is more or less left as an exercise for the reader, I'm afraid.

Ability Levels
Any ability this game considers - which mostly boils down to martial arts and combat magics - is assumed to have three relevant traits: Stage, Power, and Quirks. How you define a character - or, for that matter, non-character - abilities as an 'ability' for this purpose All other traits are considered a matter of aesthetics, and left to the players' discretion.

Stage is the context in which the ability is expected to be worth talking about, and by extension, where it isn't relevant. Stages are almost always left implicit in media, and as such they're one of the most common places to trip up when writing - especially in crossover fanfic, which typically lacks convenient measuring sticks like an enemy-and-obstacle roster.
So long as in-universe abilities (powers/skills/resources/etcetera) share a Stage and user, they should all be treated as one 'ability' by these mechanics. You may want to divide them further for bookkeeping purposes, however.

Power is how strong the ability is on a relevant Stage. Because this game assumes that revealing a new trick will usually result in a turnaround, an ability's Power is more-or-less equal to the number of Quirks it has.

Quirks are important details about the ability. ('Traits' might be more accurate, but I've decided 'Quirks' sounds better, so.) The typical use is to define the ability quite broadly, such as 'movement' or 'swordsmanship', and have its' Quirks be major components of those, such as wallrunning, charge shot strikes, or only having one arm.
How broadly you define an ability is dependant on how many types of conflict you want in your story. Some stories benefit from having a strong distinction between chase scenes and fight scenes, even if both involve considerable violence. Others may prefer to make philosophical arguments the primary arena of conflict, with more visible means of conflict being mere set dressing with which to highlight them.

Sidebar: Social Traits​

It's common, in a lot of media, to have what the characters want - and their philosophy of how to get it - be even more critical than their physical toolset. (I believe the standard term for this is 'character thesis'.)​

For purposes of this game, this is just another type of ability. It uses a much more generalisable Stage than most, though, which is a large part of why comic book villains look the way they do.​

-Example Abilities: Violence-

Elusive Shrike Style
A martial art focused on baiting one's opponents into traps, hazards, and crossfires. It's focus on aggressive opponents and last-minute evasions make it a style only for the daring, but its' feats make it attractive to the same.
+Gain advantage when attacked unwarily.
+Gain advantage when you have time to set up traps.

Blind Swordsman Style
Rarely, one who cannot see in the normal fashion will take up the blade. The will to fight by hearing, or by scent, or by any means necessary, is a first step of the Praxis.
If it can be perceived, perceive it. If it cannot be perceived, strike true regardless.
+Gain advantage in low-visibility areas.
+Gain advantage when interrupting the fancy or incomprehensible.

 

[ilbgar123]

it's functional, but It'd be a bit better if you did this instead of the top accordion tag:
[ACCORDION width="100%"]
[SLIDE_HEADER]Corvidae Cursebearer[/SLIDE_HEADER]
This way the accordion will let the text be cross the page like normal posting, instead of forcing it to a specific width.

Click to shrink...

My attempts at this just ruin the accordion I've got up and have it display normally.

 

[JOEbob]

Power is how strong the ability is on a relevant Stage. Because this game assumes that revealing a new trick will usually result in a turnaround, an ability's Power is more-or-less equal to the number of Quirks it has.

Click to shrink...

so... the strongest character is the one who picks up 400 disparate magic systems and makes no attempt to incorporate them coherently, choosing one to use from a hat whenever he's in a bind? that seems like something of a failing. high accuracy, fireballs, a penchant for sneak attacks, and sight in darkness isn't going to turnaround a fight against 'mana shield sphere strong enough for a nuke, and nuke', even if it is nighttime.

My attempts at this just ruin the accordion I've got up and have it display normally.

Click to shrink...

...
huh.
carry on like you already were then, I suppose.

 

[Lealope]

so... the strongest character is the one who picks up 400 disparate magic systems and makes no attempt to incorporate them coherently, choosing one to use from a hat whenever he's in a bind?

Click to shrink...

Almost exactly the opposite? That would just give you 400 abilities, each with minimal Power. The strongest build is taking one system and developing it with as many Quirks as you can. However, this is presumably balanced by the fact that said ability will probably will only be applicable on a single Stage. For example, the Invincible Sword Princess is undefeated in combat but is barely literate and has tremendous social anxiety.

Alternatively, you integrate those systems under the umbrella of a single Ability and have the significant ones become Quirks, as the rules suggest.

As a sidenote, this seems neat Horatio, looking forward to seeing a more extended writeup. Reminds me a bit of the Styles hack for Exalted, which is a pretty solid basis for a game.

 

[Zampano]

I'm going to solve your Accordion Woes

Click to shrink...

You wrote:

[Accordion=Corvidae Cursebearer]
[slide=Corvidae Cursebearer]
[CENTER]Corvidae Cursebearer: Chapter 1[/CENTER]
<snip>
[slide=Corvidae Cursebearer]
[/slide]
[/Accordion]
[Accordion=AN]
[slide=AN]
<snip>
[slide=AN]
[/slide]
[/Accordion]

But you don't need to name the Accordion, and you don't need to start a new one for each slide. The mistake was Accordion=name


Try this:

Slide Title 1

Body Text 1

Slide Title 2

Body Text 2

Slide Title 3

Body Text 3

Some but not all VBcode tags are case sensitive. Using caps-lock for all formatting tags is a good policy unless you're sure it works both ways. (Ironically, my [ code] tag is written in lowercase)

The code looks like this:

[ACCORDION width="100%"]
[SLIDE="Slide Title 1"]
Body Text 1
[/SLIDE]
[SLIDE="Slide Title 2"]
Body Text 2
[/SLIDE]
[SLIDE="Slide Title 3"]
Body Text 3
[/SLIDE]
[/ACCORDION]

 

[JOEbob]

Almost exactly the opposite? That would just give you 400 abilities, each with minimal Power. The strongest build is taking one system and developing it with as many Quirks as you can. However, this is presumably balanced by the fact that said ability will probably will only be applicable on a single Stage. For example, the Invincible Sword Princess is undefeated in combat but is barely literate and has tremendous social anxiety.

Click to shrink...

But the power of abilities is determined directly by quirk number, and the reason for that is each quirk is assumed to be enough to turn the tide. so with 400 magic systems, you would have at least 400 quirks and at least 400 ways to turn the tide, meaning an effective power of 400 (albeit not all for one stage). Assuming it is easier to be initiated into a system then to master it enough to develop whole new abilities, this would be the stronger build.

 

[ilbgar123]

You wrote:

[Accordion=Corvidae Cursebearer]
[slide=Corvidae Cursebearer]
[CENTER]Corvidae Cursebearer: Chapter 1[/CENTER]
<snip>
[slide=Corvidae Cursebearer]
[/slide]
[/Accordion]
[Accordion=AN]
[slide=AN]
<snip>
[slide=AN]
[/slide]
[/Accordion]

But you don't need to name the Accordion, and you don't need to start a new one for each slide. The mistake was Accordion=name


Try this:

Slide Title 1

Body Text 1

Slide Title 2

Body Text 2

Slide Title 3

Body Text 3

Some but not all VBcode tags are case sensitive. Using caps-lock for all formatting tags is a good policy unless you're sure it works both ways. (Ironically, my [ code] tag is written in lowercase)

The code looks like this:

[ACCORDION width="100%"]
[SLIDE="Slide Title 1"]
Body Text 1
[/SLIDE]
[SLIDE="Slide Title 2"]
Body Text 2
[/SLIDE]
[SLIDE="Slide Title 3"]
Body Text 3
[/SLIDE]
[/ACCORDION]

Click to shrink...

Hey, it worked! Thanks! It's much better.

 

[TooSlow]

But the power of abilities is determined directly by quirk number, and the reason for that is each quirk is assumed to be enough to turn the tide. so with 400 magic systems, you would have at least 400 quirks and at least 400 ways to turn the tide, meaning an effective power of 400 (albeit not all for one stage). Assuming it is easier to be initiated into a system then to master it enough to develop whole new abilities, this would be the stronger build.

Click to shrink...

You wouldn't have a single ability with 400 quirks though, you'd have 400 abilities.

 

[Enohthree]

[X] Companions II
[X] Companion I
[X] Heavy Weapons Array

Almost forgot to vote! But I basically see Gisena as a source of future mitigation that will slowly level up on her own. Sure at 1/4 speed but its not like we'd be racking up mitigation 4 times as fast without her. Companions II is to both keep Archmage and also set up for continued Nilfiel benefits down the line. Plus having some leeway in case we need to invoke our ressurection ritual.


Also, hopefully before the final showdown Hunger listened to some of the ideas in the thread and sent, I dunno, 10? 10 Wungers into the Voyaging Realm to extract relevant buffing or utility Surgecrafters.

 

[JOEbob]

You wouldn't have a single ability with 400 quirks though, you'd have 400 abilities.

Click to shrink...

But it's not stated or, near as I can tell, implied that having more quirks improves each individual quirk- power is a measure of how strong the ability as a whole is, and having more quirks is a stronger ability in terms of turnaround opportunities. So, 400 quirks is 400 quirks whether in one ability or 400, unless... I dunno... a quirk can only turn the battle around if it's in an ability of the same power level as the opponents, or something.

 

[ilbgar123]

But it's not stated or, near as I can tell, implied that having more quirks improves each individual quirk- power is a measure of how strong the ability as a whole is, and having more quirks is a stronger ability in terms of turnaround opportunities. So, 400 quirks is 400 quirks whether in one ability or 400, unless... I dunno... a quirk can only turn the battle around if it's in an ability of the same power level as the opponents, or something.

Click to shrink...

I would assume the Quirk has to be of a Stage-relevant ability. A Quirk that let you return your sword to your hand if it's taken from you wouldn't be of much help in a debate, unless you were already also doing that.

 

[JOEbob]

I would assume the Quirk has to be of a Stage-relevant ability. A Quirk that let you return your sword to your hand if it's taken from you wouldn't be of much help in a debate, unless you were already also doing that.

Click to shrink...

true. but raw quantity of quirks still seems to be more important in this system than their magnitude- swarm of a thousand projectiles is one quirk, fire a magic missile is one quirk, but one is clearly far superior to the other, and they're both for the same Stage.

 

[Zampano]

true. but raw quantity of quirks still seems to be more important in this system than their magnitude- swarm of a thousand projectiles is one quirk, fire a magic missile is one quirk, but one is clearly far superior to the other, and they're both for the same Stage.

Click to shrink...

You're leaning hard on two ideas that aren't present in this preliminary version of HVB's system. The first assumption is that new abilities are easier to acquire than improvements on an existing ability. That's not explicit, and it isn't logically required to be likely. Maybe it's hard to break the laws of physics, but easy to use your supernatural gimmick in new and exciting ways, etc. Without this assumption your build/criticism fails outright.

The second assumption you're making is that every quirk is equally likely to cause a "turnaround." The writeup explicitly hedges against this kind of rules lawyering:

Power is how strong the ability is on a relevant Stage. Because this game assumes that revealing a new trick will usually result in a turnaround, an ability's Power is more-or-less equal to the number of Quirks it has.

Click to shrink...

(Emphasis mine.)

But, your given example (magic missile vs projectile swarm) is unlikely to be able to result in a turnaround. Moreover, attempting to cheese the rules by classifying magic missile as a separate cantrip to inflate your Quirk Count explicitly violates the suggested taxonomy of Abilities & quirks:

Quirks are important details about the ability. ('Traits' might be more accurate, but I've decided 'Quirks' sounds better, so.) The typical use is to define the ability quite broadly, such as 'movement' or 'swordsmanship', and have its' Quirks be major components of those, such as wallrunning, charge shot strikes, or only having one arm.

Click to shrink...

I would struggle to think of 400 abilities on the same level of generality as 'movement'. And even if I could, a trait has to be unique & powerful enough to cause a turnaround in a conflict before it can qualify as a quirk. It's likely that you'd just end up with 400 enumerated abilities that have no underlying 'quirk'


Or, equivalently, a talent/Quirk only increases an ability's power that talent can cause a turnaround. One might imagine that a marginal increment of power is harder to acquire once you have a lot of quirks.

 

[Aabcehmu]

So, would be it well-formed to have an ability, 'Summoning', with each quirk roughly representing one possible entity that can be summoned?

-e

I feel like it might be interesting to have a more ways for Abilities to be limited than just their staging.

 

[TooSlow]

But it's not stated or, near as I can tell, implied that having more quirks improves each individual quirk- power is a measure of how strong the ability as a whole is, and having more quirks is a stronger ability in terms of turnaround opportunities. So, 400 quirks is 400 quirks whether in one ability or 400, unless... I dunno... a quirk can only turn the battle around if it's in an ability of the same power level as the opponents, or something.

Click to shrink...

But 400 unrelated abilities aren't going to mean 400 turnabout opportunities in every situation, they're going to result in a single turnabout opportunity in 400 stages.

 

[Aabcehmu]

But 400 unrelated abilities aren't going to mean 400 turnabout opportunities in every situation, they're going to result in a single turnabout opportunity in 400 stages.

Click to shrink...

Stages can overlap, I think, so unless you specifically chose your abilities to have no overlap, you'd probably have a handful of turnabouts?

 

[HoratioVonBecker]

so... the strongest character is the one who picks up 400 disparate magic systems and makes no attempt to incorporate them coherently, choosing one to use from a hat whenever he's in a bind? that seems like something of a failing. high accuracy, fireballs, a penchant for sneak attacks, and sight in darkness isn't going to turnaround a fight against 'mana shield sphere strong enough for a nuke, and nuke', even if it is nighttime.

Click to shrink...

Your fireball ninja and your nuke wizard are using different Stages, since they require different challenges to be interesting.
There's nothing stopping you in principle from having loads and loads of Quirks, but since this is a more-or-less solo writing tool, I don't recommend having more than you can easily keep track of. (Also, drama is easier if pushing a character's limits doesn't take too many reversals.)
As such, I recommend changing Stages and aggregating the ability's Quirks whenever you want it to grow without getting more complicated.

Almost exactly the opposite? That would just give you 400 abilities, each with minimal Power. The strongest build is taking one system and developing it with as many Quirks as you can. However, this is presumably balanced by the fact that said ability will probably will only be applicable on a single Stage. For example, the Invincible Sword Princess is undefeated in combat but is barely literate and has tremendous social anxiety.

Click to shrink...

If you have 400 Abilities as the game counts them, you can meaningfully operate on 400 different Stages, and thus are probably quite powerful. It depends on what the stages are, of course.

As a sidenote, this seems neat Horatio, looking forward to seeing a more extended writeup. Reminds me a bit of the Styles hack for Exalted, which is a pretty solid basis for a game.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, the Styles hack and the Now You Feel Like Number None system were both inspirations for this.

 

[JOEbob]

You're leaning hard on two ideas that aren't present in this preliminary version of HVB's system. The first assumption is that new abilities are easier to acquire than improvements on an existing ability. That's not explicit, and it isn't logically required to be likely. Maybe it's hard to break the laws of physics, but easy to use your supernatural gimmick in new and exciting ways, etc. Without this assumption your build/criticism fails outright.

Click to shrink...

good point.

Your fireball ninja and your nuke wizard are using different Stages, since they require different challenges to be interesting.

Click to shrink...

also a good point. good points all around, really.

 

[Rihaku]

Ragnarok

Novakhron groaned under the weight of its burdens.

Hunger had not taken much time with his Armament of legend, the spell-forged behemoth he had conjured into being at the apex of his mastery of Myth. It had served him well as steed and protector for the lesser members of his party - for though they lacked in power, they were no less crucial to the project overall, and their potential demise no less harrowing.

Briefly he frowned. That, was the coldly analytical evaluation that the Hero of old (or, more appropriately, Catherine) might have assayed, when appraising his forces for survival against the Tyrant. Now he was that Tyrant in full - infinitely greater along every avenue of measure, even - and sought also to quell a Hero with utter finality.

Dien Bravo had suborned a great part of the Human Sphere with fetters of technology and flesh; Hunger had broken it to his will through brute power and supernatural command.

For a society that lived and died on the backs of its smattering handful of Armaments, a billion Armament-level combatants was a Biblical deluge; such overwhelming force that it might as well have been an outside-context problem, and equally as decisive. The probability-smoothing aspects of Rank only further served to enforce that hegemony.

Each of Hunger's echoes was but the cloud-shadow of his true might, but even that passing oppression could smother whole worlds beneath the obliterating press of his will. Much less when multiplied a billionfold! Had his intentions been ill, it would have been a cataclysm of desolation unimaginable: what resistance was possible, or even thinkable, in the face of a world that flowed only and ever towards the purpose of a single master, the merest quantum fluctuation snapping unerringly to attention beneath his incidental regard?

The Forebear had commanded power such as this: power of such indestructible totality that even the preconditions of opposition spoiled and withered away. Hunger wielded not even an infinitesimal speck of his prior self's might; and could only hope he would possess more than a speck of its wisdom, if he should survive the eons ahead.

And in matters of survival, the chief implement was strength. Dien would not permit any other means; he would not sit back and allow Hunger's billion-man armada to blanket the cosmos like a tide and drown him beneath its weight. Nor had negotiation in good faith ever been possible or desirable: Hunger would not deign to speak to the monster who had so callously 'liquidated' trillions, and the Hero was constrained to opposition by his fundamental nature.

Dien Bravo would strike - was preparing already to mount his attempt, a single monumental deathblow - before Hunger could fully master the reality manipulation afforded by his Soul Evocation. Already the threads of Dien's cosmic spider-web were turning inwards: resources quantized and funneled back to their origin, assets converted into raw potentiality to forge a god-beast that could rival the Imprisoner's might.

Hunger's echoes were tracking his efforts, of course, but the Foremost had conjured contingencies like signal flares: a bewildering array of contagions, incubators, constructs and simple oddities each of which might have been a crucial component of some precipitous scheme, sprinkled like dizzying shrapnel across ten dozen galaxies and sub-dimensions.

Not even with Gisena's aid could they hope to unravel the true thread in time; the Surgeon had been producing his grand array of complications since the very moment of his inception, while Gisena had focused all her efforts on perfecting Hunger's Soul Evocation.

In many ways her strategy had succeeded: with regards to density of power, they were unassailable, far beyond even the mightiest of Dien's deployed horrors, and that Soul Evocation itself had helped Hunger project his power across the galaxy entire. But if Dien in his desperation pulled out every stop, took every desperate risk and burned every resource, counting on the Apocryphal Curse to support his reckless drive... would the gulf between their powers be unassailable still?

Hunger had no inclination to underestimate his Crowning Curse, and so endeavored always to climb higher. Novakhron was the swiftest instrument of that ascent, its reality-bending might supreme among manifest Armaments, with power and speed that eclipsed even the fiercest of its kin. If it could be modified to become compatible with his Sword Praxis, even the Foremost Shards combined would pose little threat in direct battle.

But that was no trivial task.

The etchings of the Praxis in cramped microscopic script covered every panel and crevice of the towering Armament, each rune and sigil painstakingly carved by Hunger and Gisena with the full support of Evening's Realm; yet according to Verschlengorge this was but the first in an interminable list of components necessary to achieve full compatibility. The Devouring Armament had been smugly laconic as usual, offering mere tidbits after continuous prodding from Letrizia.

But he did not resent the thing; Hunger had a sense that the monumental difficulty of the task, its will-denuding immensity, was itself an step along the Praxis. An offering to, and meditation on its deepest principles. There were arts where efficiency was a matter of formalism, and every shortcut existed to be wholly exploited - and arts where the toil itself was the process of true actualization.

Verschlengorge had confirmed that it was definitively possible, given their tools on hand: in honesty, that had been more generous than Hunger's wilder dreams.

Novakhron listed again, swaying as if in a breeze, and fell from its support frame to one knee. It was currently being subjected to a process of mythic re-forging beneath the harshest and most transcendental of Aobaru's Vigorflames: its very essence spooled and folded and unmercifully hammered by the Realm of Evening to draw out and eradicate every trace of impurity. Afterwards it would be doused in waves of conceptual Nullity, compressed and scoured bare of even abstract imperfection before Hunger would attempt Totality again - hoping it could withstand merger, even temporary, with the Forebear's Blade.

Hoping it could become his implement, his cosmic sword, his murder-weapon in truth.

Hunger sighed. All this, merely to cement their already-colossal lead over Dien. Was it worth it, such iron certainty?

But the Apocryphal Curse demanded no less diligence than this. Victory each and every time, with such consistency as to rival the inevitability of the Forebear; nothing less would produce vengeance against the Hidden Ones.

It was a cruel and fearsome tempering, which the Armament bore with stoic resolve, constraining its moans of pain as form and soul alike were relentlessly smelted down and remade. Time, however, marched with equal relentlessness. Before Dien arrived, Novakhron had to be made ready, else all it had endured would be for naught. There was no chance for respite nor room for hesitation. Only the Work.

---

Dien was out of time.

Under-prepared, ill-equipped, outgunned and even outnumbered, now that he had consolidated the majority of his forces into himself. He bestrode the cosmos like a primeval nightmare; doom of country and civilization both, endless flesh compressed yet refracted outwards, tendrils like the roots of a methuselah pine. Burrowed so deep into the fabric of this reality, and the countless textural layers above and below, that he simply could not be torn loose; each gradient reinforcing the others such that harm on one level would be wiped away by reinforcement from its kin. Ten thousand magics in a faultless feedback loop sufficed to power the inordinate requirements of that superstructure, though even together they were feeble rejoinder to the enemy's Imperial Praxis.

Nonetheless it was a miracle of engineering, some of his finest work: he had always operated well under pressure! And yet before the foe that he went to confront, it was little and lacking, almost nothing at all. There was meagre room for growth left in him; all had been truncated, repurposed to the end of this single confrontation, this single moment in time where Lord Hunger would be - relatively - vulnerable still. He had sacrificed so much, burned away entire horizons and vistas of possibility, only to grasp this moment.

A moment before Progression left Dien behind, as it had every one of 'they who had presumed to defy Lord Hunger.'

A Cursebearer, is a King. It can be no other way. Struggle all you like, Praehihr. Not even you can fight your intrinsic nature.

For Kings were not heroes, but what heroes became, when they allowed their ideals to twist them into imposing their will upon the world. And why should the world yield to will, merely because its vessel possessed strength?

To engender what you prefer. To abolish what you despise. Enacted on a great enough scale, these were nothing more than the actions of a Tyrant, well-meaning or not.

Dien readied himself. It is the fate of Heroes to die, that a grander world may be born, or a grander purpose fulfilled.

And what purpose could be greater, than the toppling of such a King as this?

This was the end, one way or another. If by miraculous advent he survived what came, in all likelihood he would be little more than a blasted ruin of his self, a shattered husk bearing slight resemblance to the Hero-that-had-been. He had awakened as a Shard and would return to that state, should he persist at all.

It was not that he underestimated Lord Hunger. By calculated reckoning his chance of victory was minuscule, but what did that matter in the end? It would not change his path; all he could do, all he had ever done, was give his absolute effort no matter the odds.

It had not been a full life, nor a long one. But it had been good; filled with invention, observation, dominion and adversity, never a dull moment in the months that he'd had. He had conquered much of the known universe, nearly brought humankind to heel, before Progression had reduced his works to ash.

A good life, deserved a glorious death. He was but a shard still, but he would endeavor to present a defiance, worthy of the Foremost.

Dien smiled, inasmuch as his horror-body could, and prepared his first volley. Thus always to Tyrants.

He struck through the sun of Hunger's present system, where his incubator-parasites allowed a pinhole stream of data from the otherwise impenetrable domain of Hunger's Soul Evocation. Livid white cracks erupted across the surface of that sun, wounds that dwarfed planets: through which extruded a single titanic tendril, splayed like forked lightning, overturning and destroying, star-body rupturing like a pulped pumpkin as it yielded to that horrible emergence.

The tendril's glow was blinding, a terrible light that out shined the now-eviscerated star, a ghastly radiance like every painful truth, every grotesque revelation, impossibly combined. Marshaling strength, Dien's tendril became a proper Limb, enormous against the sun of its birth, an implement with the outside chance of actually harming Lord Hunger.

Every moment he placed himself in his opponent's presence cost him, untold spillage of essence to counter the all-subduing aura of... Winter? the man exuded. Interesting! The Tyrant had not been idle, nor complacent in further developing his faculties. Had Dien not consolidated so rapidly, or quantized all his subordinates, perhaps he would have been better informed of this development.

The Praehihr was, curiously, in his actual Armament for once, a colossus of green and gold whose every surface had been re-patterned with runes of Praxis blue. It blazed with glory ineffable, enough not merely to subdue but overrule lesser minds. A curious electricity played across its surface, static keening and hum of delusion that stretched all reality about it to contain its mere heft.

Dien chuckled. So you've created an abomination, just as I have.

As if in answer to that thought the Armament howled, more blast wave than roar, sheer distortion that whipped and roiled the cosmos like an unquiet sea; all-burying thunder which stilled even the tempest of Dien's own thoughts, and then - vanished.

Simultaneously, Dien's emergent Limb splintered, split in twain by an all-piercing bolt, then smashed into glittering residue by the wake of Ruin that accompanied it. Ghostly Hungers began to corporealize, winking into existence by the tens of millions, pursuing him along the path of emergence to pare his tendrils and strike at his core. With swiftness he manifested another tendril, spasm of destruction butchering the contingent of echoes, but their numbers swelled even greater in response, a seemingly endless provocation of forms. The full billion were swiftly present, pruning his extrusions with eerie coordination.

It was foolish to invest heavily, so early, especially as he had failed to track Hunger's main body, but Dien had no choice. A small infinity of tendrils now deployed, inundating the system entirely, destroying and harvesting the swarm of clones in full.

The morass of their carnage, he hoped, would conceal or distract from his first serious contingency: a three-pronged effort to assimilate Shogun, Emissary, and Arcanist at once. He merely had to hold Hunger's attention here for a few long moments, before his efforts in the Voyaging Realm would come to fruition. Loath as he was to dilute his Heroism, Dien could not afford the luxury of ontological coherence anymore!

Already his extrusions were breaking into the Arcanist's lair, while Hunger's clones prepared a valiant but meaningless offensive against his in-system tendrils. But Dien could not shake a feeling of unease, the anxiousness of a worthy opponent's regard: what exactly was his foe doing, if he wasn't here? The Ereadhihr was swift enough that Dien could barely react, yet had only struck but once...

Am I so far beneath you, Lord Hunger, that you won't even kill me yourself?!

---

Yes, what exactly is Hunger doing, while his clones and allied Shards are fighting for their lives? How irresponsible, allowing Dien to simply overrun the Shogun's system like that! Is he preparing a tremendous counterattack, or was he distracted by other affairs?

Vote update tomorrow!

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