Winnower's Garden Reaction, word count once I libreoffice(Edit: 667 Words).
The Winnowing Garden
It did not sit well with him to stay idle while his physical body regenerated, but neither could he afford to take undue risks in this state. He resolved to scout the surrounding area and pick off any isolated knights that presented themselves. If other enemies appeared, he would do his best to withdraw until he had an idea of their capabilities.
The knights were sparsely dotted across these grassy plains, many of them situated in locations of tactical import - hills and fens, caves and groves, wherever a vantage point or natural fortification might present itself. He passed by a gently babbling brook that was, disappointingly, utterly devoid of life. Not that he had a fishing pole at the moment, with Letrizia's supplies beyond the Temple gates.
Were there Lemons? Fresh Cut Spring Flowers? Also really Lord Hunger, you're thinking about fishing here? Oh well, from a Lord Hunger being sane standpoint you win some you lose some, but he never said he was going to be reasonable.
He wondered what, if anything, the people in here ate. Was it possible to live off the land, did adventurers simply bring their own meals?
What the fark is your food plan anyway? Have you been hunting or has Accretion miraculously ensured Verschlengorge didn't run out of supplies?
Speed and strength having been bolstered by the first knight he felled, and wise now to their tactics, he dispatched further singleton knights without issue, though not without the occasional wound or two. It seemed a somewhat sustainable means of harvesting power without undue risk, though increasing patrols of heavily-armored knights began to appear in the region he frequented, as the hours ticked by and their isolated comrades died. They even attempted to pincer him into an ambush, with a lone knight on a tall hill serving as bait, but he sniffed out the attack when he entered the armored giant's sight and was not immediately pounced upon.
This ain't Dark Souls. This is worse. This is like Dark Souls as run by SCP-1633.
Tedious and increasingly risky. His enemies were no strategic geniuses, but neither were they fools. They had some basic conception of cause and effect, the ability to organize and call reinforcements as they fell. Should this continue he had little doubt this region of the Temple would be swarming with the things, and who knew if there was any limit to their number, to say nothing of greater escalations.
Smart.
With that in mind, he called it a night and withdrew, but was intercepted along the way by an enormous burrowing wurm-creature, its titanic length erupting from the green earth in a world-sundering burst of noise and motion, tides of heaving pitch-black loam, shattered-stone shrapnel in a furious geyser as it snapped at him. Its quadruply-segmented jaw, thick with stone-cracking fangs, was mercifully slower than the wind-light mass of his spirit body; though the heaving bulk of its follow-through, like an onrushing train, caught him out with its whiplash speed. He was thrown back and away, cratering the hard earth as he landed, vision gone blurry for a moment as fragments of his spirit-corpus lost coherence and dispersed. And then, quick as it'd come, it was gone, disappeared beneath the earth once more.
Ouch. Tangentially, you apparently need to learn to walk without rhythm to avoid attracting worms. This is also a point where our Agility saved our asses from needing to use Form of Rage.
Like a bomb going off the worm had appeared: sudden destruction and chaos to be followed by a long, ear-ringing aftermath of tense silence. Now that he was attuned to it, he could hear the mountainous rumble of its passage beneath, gliding smoothly through dirt and stone, circling about its intended prey. How much strength, how much sheer force of momentum, was required to move so effortlessly through the solid earth?
I just wish I had an idea for good BGM for this fight right now. So far the best one I've been able to come up with is the Volvagia fight from Ocarina of Time and Volvagia is a dragon. At least Volvagia is a serpentine lava swimming dragon though so maybe that's close enough?
Would this be the one, this nameless, eyeless beast? Would it force out the power he'd pledged, not hours ago, to forsake except in direst extremity?
No. It would not be here, not now, not to this overgrown muckraker. He ran, sprinting for the antechamber, pounding footfalls alerting the beast to his location as he moved. Coming across a rocky hill, he climbed it, pacing across its length as if undecided as to his next destination.
Thank goodness for that. Thank goodness for pride and how hubris being the watchword of the coward is an inevitable truth of the Rihakuverse. *Volvagia drums keep playing*
There. The rumbling of its movements had paused. Some might take it that the pursuer had given up. He knew it for what it was. Unnatural stillness, like a serpent coiled to spring. Waiting to ensure its target would not spook or startle before it committed to the attack. The Tyrant had been fond of movements such as this. One did not spring the trap until the bait was claimed.
The standoff tension is palpable here.
He closed his eyes, become still and silent, attuned to the world around him, the whorls and eddies of Pressure as it twisted the skeins of chance, bringing the physical world in alignment with his wishes. The ring of power blazed on his hand, crimson light like an anglerfish lure, enticing the creature's avarice, its hunger. Now, he prodded it. Strike now and fill the gnawing emptiness within.
Of course Lord Hunger has a standoff breaker in a can
And so it did, thunderous blast of roaring sound as its jaws swallowed earth and sky, the hill given way in a instant, plunged within the monster's gullet. But he was already gone, sprung away in that final moment, now attached like a limpet to the creature's side, running down its length, splitting its carapace with the Forebear's Blade to carve himself a crevice. A makeshift warren, cut into the monster's absurdly thick armor, within which he could withstand the awesome pressures of the creature's movement underground. Inside he climbed, as sun and sky disappeared, his world become a blind narrow place of heat and abrading force, this subterranean ocean where errant stone and branch passed with speed enough to splinter limbs and shatter bone.
This is metal. For some reason I'm getting Empire Strikes back and Tauntaun thoughts.
But ensconced in its armor he felt none of that, and steadily cut himself further in, a fell-handed excavator cleaving the outer crust to the treasures secreted within.
Let's hope they're at least fish tier.
At last he reached a vein, springy flesh yielding tenderly to the Forebear's Blade, and where he struck huge gouts of acid spat outwards and at him, the monster's pressurized digestive juices or perhaps merely its blood. The Evening Sky wrapped around him, he stubbornly cut onwards, even as the outer boundary of his spirit-flesh began to waver and burn away.
Evidence we need to soupe up our defenses.
Before long he reached a pocket of empty air, esophageal flesh coated with mucus, and tucked himself inside, the stars of his cloak his only light. By their illumination he ran, up and through the monster's digestive tunnel, instincts guiding him to an organ of greater import. Acid dribbled off his form, coating his footsteps as he ran. There was pain but he ignored the pain, easy to do in this body of wraith-flesh.
Real Shadow of the Colossusesque atmosphere right now.
There. A cluster of nerve endings, synapses as thick as his fist, sheltered within a calcite growth of hardened stone. Thickly spooled nerves radiated from the organ, spiraling into the creature's musculature, wrapped densely around translucent reservoirs of bright green acid. It pulsed steadily in time to the wurm's movements, part part action potential, part heartbeat.
For some reason my brain suddenly drifted to the episode of Futurama where Fry got augmented by worms from an egg salad sandwich he found in a truck stop.
Likely not the only such organ in a beast of this length, but he only needed the one. Marshaling his energies he struck down with the Forebear's Blade, attacking mind and spirit more than flesh, and at this the wurm jerked, twisting and tunneling in a futile attempt to dislodge what was alrady within. Again and again he stabbed downwards; each steady, gruesome blow left a wound leaking pale-white soul matter out into nothingness. The wurm convulsed, acid ducts widening, mucus flooding the tunnel in an attempt to sweep him free, drown him out, but it was too slow by far. He attacked unrelentingly, drawing upon his uttermost reserves of energy, and by the time he was knee-deep in mucus half a dozen soul-fraying wounds were buried in its nerve cluster. Positioning himself sideways against its esophagus-wall, he continued to run, occasionally striking out with another fell blow as his energies recovered.
Ouch. I wouldn't have been surprised if we needed Form of Rage here.
Its primitive mind and soul bled dry by his onslaught, the creature did not last long. For all its towering physical might, it was, in the end, only a worm, and though the force of it spirit was unusually bountiful, still it had no way to stem the bleeding, no means to replenish what his attacks irrevocably stole. Eventually it ground to a slow, shuddering halt, meters-thick layers of muscle twitching and undulating stupidly, its intellect utterly banished, dispersed into the aether by the Forebear's cruel power. Unable now to control or regulate its internal functions, it was a helplessly breathing corpse, meat to the slaughter. He decoupled Blade from belt and began the bloody work.
Prey Slaughtered!
[X] Pick Off Stragglers with [X] Brute Force has won.
Did Hunger use the power gained from killing various isolated knights before fighting the wurm?
[ ] No. [Cost - 2 Arete] Choose 4 picks below. Hunger is grievously wounded, hanging on to his spirit form by the barest tether of ghostly life.
[ ] Yes, Obviously. Choose 3 picks below. Gain 1 Echo of the Forebear. Hunger is badly wounded, having less than half his spiritual corpus remaining.
I'm leaning towards Yes, Obviously, it took me a seriously long time to work through my decision paralysis and figure out what I want, or what I think is Optimal.
Choose 3, or 4 if No was chosen. You have 6.35 Arete.
[ ] Forebear's Blade - Echo of the Forebear - Cloud-shadow of the Forebear's might.
Legendary strength and speed, and the resilience to exert them. Can be taken multiple times. [+Might, +Agility]
This one is kind of redundant if you take Yes, Obviously.
[ ] Evening Sky - Opalescence - The soft light of evening before which all attacks falter.
Improves defensive parameters. [+Protection]
A good thing to pick if you're looking for a 1 pick option to fill out what remains.
[ ] The Ring of Power - Dominion: Life - 2 Arete
A ring of power does not exert influence casually. It has its own will, its own preferences, and if that will should be inseparable from its owner's, its sway thereby shall be greater for it.
Select a domain of influence. While acting within its domain, [Ring of Power] effects are substantially less taxing and more potent; the effects of this can be abstracted as follows: treat the owner's Rank as if it somewhat* higher for related actions. You may select this advancement multiple times, choosing a different domain each time. If multiple domains apply, their bonuses do not compound.
Life - Applies to the manipulation, augmentation, or restoration of biology or life-force.
*+0.5 if Low, +.25 if Mid, +.1 if High.
Does this benefit anything we have besides Pristine Star at the moment?
[ ] Feat: Apex - +.2 Astral Rank (2 picks) - Who is King? Who else but he who suffers the Tyrant's Doom?
Maybe? Depending on how things go I could be induced to take this.
[ ] The Ring of Power - Gardener's Hallow (7 Arete, 2 picks) - Unto this land, I give my blood.
By infusing vegetation or livestock with his blood, the wielder may impart upon it supernatural properties. These range from the basic (consuming this fruit grants you an Echo of the Forebear) to the incredible (consuming this cow awakens your full Astral Rank from your Defensive Rank and remove the Defensive Rank penalty) to the spectacular (consuming this fish ignites a meta-singularity of findross within you; should you survive then you may theoretically wield the True Quintessence). Similar effects don't stack.
All efforts beyond the basic take considerable amounts of time, effort, and unique resources to cultivate. These can be lessened via the other advancements of the Ring of Blood, especially its Chief Dominion and pre-requisites.
Unfortunately I can't see any scenarios right now where we manage to boost ourselves with this to win the dungeon. There may be potential in this route if we abandon the dungeon though, I dunno.
[ ] Forebear's Blade - Dreadnought's Bearing (7 Arete, 3 picks) - The best defense is the Forebear's bearing.
Requires Undying Echo. Gain +++++++Constitution, +Protection. Gain 50% resistance to the Tired Condition, stacking multiplicatively with other sources of resistance, and 25% resistance to the Exhausted Condition. If you have, or later purchase, the [Iron Curtain] Advancement, you receive its benefits permanently rather than needing to activate them, and may choose to Ignore Exotic Attacks via a Constitution check rather than Deflecting them.
Choose:
Sharp of Eye - Regrow your eye. ++Wits, +Cha. You now have depth perception, making ranged attacks more effective. You may take options that require two eyes; there are surprisingly many.
Rune King - You may not regrow or replace your eye by any means. +Int, +Wisdom, Apply the effects of [To Shatter Heaven] to all magics you learn from now on.
This is extremely tempting. 7 Constitution pluses, a protection plus(Given what we've seen, we need some), fatigue mitigation for when/if we need Form of Rage, and then we've got a choice between 2 Wits Pluses, a Charisma Plus, and improved ranged attacks from Depth perception or two thirds of the baseline Philosopher's Wreath benefits and To Shatter Heaven on all future learned magic systems. This is a very hard decision. Wisdom! Farking wisdom! Neutralizing the training time objection to learning future magic systems!
[ ] Forebear's Blade - Ruinous Valor (3 picks) - Where he advanced, so did the tide of entire wars, the shock of his blade like a hurled epicenter, the trail of his passage but wasteland and rubble.
[+++++Strength]
Power of Ruin now scales upwards depending on your Strength.
Choose:
Einhander - You may not regrow or replace your left arm by any means. Substantially reduces the cost and increases the range of special attacks made with the Forebear's Blade. This Advancement grants Might instead of Strength (+Might = +Str, +Con).
Zweihander - Regrow your left arm. Your barehanded strikes now carry the full destructive power of the Forebear's Blade.
If Einhander is taken, unlocks One Arm Fury.
If Zweihander is taken, unlocks Martial Stances: Forebear's Blade
Einhander seems like budget Fall of Night right now. The fact we didn't take Fall of Night earlier means I'm kind of apprehensive about taking it now. Still, this has a lot going for it. The Armor piercing properties of our attacks scale with our strength and we get 5 strength taking us to 10 pluses, what's not to like?
[ ] Hunger - Stranglethorn (4 picks)
Age and treachery made flesh.
The might of beasts is not the only province of the ring Hunger. It bears witness to a deeper and elder power as well, the strength of root and stem that bleeds life from the earth itself to thrust upwards towards heaven. The might of oaks, ancient and thousand-ringed, which crumbles stone and blunts steel, which repels the wind and absorbs the tide, which stands unscathed even in the face of heat and fury. That juggernaut stubbornness like a gnarled fist: the power to push through problems with patient, unyielding strength, to break them down and see them crushed beneath you.
Fitting for a Guerilla combatant, in spite of the agility loss.
Defining Advancement - You may currently have no more than three Defining Advancements.
Increase by 20% the value of all Rank +s
Double the value of Strength and Constitution +s
Double the value of Willpower +s
Reduce by 20% the value of Agility +s
Establishment: By committing meaningful resources towards a given context, and staking out a solid position, you slowly but increasingly accrue power and influence within that context, becoming ever-more inescapable and impossible to dislodge.
Our pluses look like this, tempting but I'm kind of leery given how agility literally saved our ass this update. Also no Wisdom.
Before:
(4)Charisma: ++++
(2)Intelligence: ++
(2)Protection: ++
(8)Agility: ++++++++
(5)Strength: +++++
(8)Constitution: ++++++++
:Stranglethorn
(4)Charisma: ++++
(2)Intelligence: ++
(2)Protection: ++
(6.4)Agility: ++++++++
(10)Strength: +++++
(16)Constitution: ++++++++
--- 0-pick options ---
I hope you remember what these do! They're quite good.
[ ] Undying Vanguard [5 Arete]
[ ] A Thousand Cuts [7 Arete]
---
Neither of these sounds especially bad. I can totally see us getting most of the Forbidden Build with Thousand Cuts and Opalescence for example
What now to do?
[ ] Keep Up Momentum - You got lucky. You won't always perform so well. Now is the time to seize the moment and capitalize on these gains by slaughtering all who come before you. Though you may be wounded, the greater portion of your power still slumbers, locked away in the event that you need it. [+Increased % chance of finding enemies you can handle, +0.5 Arete]
[ ] Retreat to the Antechamber - You got lucky. Now stop gambling. Besides, you want to show Gisena your cool new... whatever.
If we've got a sufficiently strong defense build I can maybe see Keeping up Momentum but if we don't I'm leaning towards retreating to the Antechamber.
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