Ultimate power is overrated. Whenever you get it some young teenager goes on a long quest to defeat you. Wait... does that mean Mirande will come try to kill us? So meta.
Ultimate power is overrated. Whenever you get it some young teenager goes on a long quest to defeat you. Wait... does that mean Mirande will come try to kill us? So meta.
Ultimate power is overrated. Whenever you get it some young teenager goes on a long quest to defeat you. Wait... does that mean Mirande will come try to kill us? So meta.
You know, if we WERE able to develop Theosophamy, it'd be really helpful with fixing Mag. Well... mitigating Mag. It could presumably be used to sever his fatebonds (If we can't already). That's one of the things it's quite good at.
As is I suspect we'll have to settle for just tattooing people we want to protect from it.
Taking a long moment to think about it, you then nod and say, "No, you're right, it's too much of a risk to me, even if I would prefer to avoid violence if possible. If you have experience with this sort of thing you should do what you think is best."
Mag blinked a few times and opened his mouth as if to say something before he clicked his jaw shut and instead nodded. Eventually he just sort of half grunts, half growls in agreement and then says, "Be back in a bit."
Leaving the anti-materiel rifle with you, he heads out to go do his thing. You mostly move to a more defensible position while you try to dip into the future to figure out what is going to happen.
Infiltration I
Rolled 40 + 30 = 70
vs.
Rolled 72 + 22 = 94
Successful
Infiltration II
Rolled 24 + 30 = 54
vs.
Rolled 100 + 64 + 22 = 186
Crushing success
Infiltration III
Rolled 76 + 30 = 106
vs.
Rolled 71 + 22 + 20 Major success = 113
Success
A few hours later Mag comes back with a pair of duffel bags slung over his shoulders, and a pair of women trailing behind him, each with their own set of supplies as well. Once he reaches you, he lifts up his face mask and gives you a bemused look. "Went better than usual. Found help."
Taking off their helmets, the women reveal themselves to be strikingly similar in appearance, and you just look at them and then look over at Mag and ask, "Do you have a habit of picking up twins?"
Mag has the shame to at least look embarrassed and he says, "Don't try."
Rolling your eyes at him, you say, "Well, don't let my sister think you can get away with that. She's touchy about that sort of thing."
"Sister?" The three others all ask of you.
"Older twin sister, fraternal," you state.
"Ah!" The two women reply with nods. They then introduce themselves as, "Dahlia and Morgan."
"Mirande," you reply back.
"We're the daughters of the Mayor. Well, some of them. He's not... bah, no need to really explain, we were already looking to run when Mag showed up," Morgan explains.
Everything properly packed away, Mag says, "Should go. Your dad probably not happy."
Dahlia and Morgan both nod their heads. Morgan goes up front with Mag while Dahlia stays in the back with you. Pulling out a medical kit, she says, "So you two were involved in some sort of break out?"
"Something like that," you reply. "I arrived after the initial attack but got into a fight with the last of the salvage teams and got captured. Mag was captured in the initial attack but broke free and happened to get onto the transport carrying me. If we can get back to Dawn Flower I have companions and support in one of the rail lines."
Dahlia nods and says, "Mag described some of that, and we might know who the attackers were. There was a group who figured out how to mount fusion reactors in vehicles and they sort of became a bunch of nomads, surviving by performing trade between various settlements. Our town would shake some of the smaller groups down. Anyway, about half a year ago some of the smaller caravans come through in a panic and say that the largest group has had some madman come to power and everyone has lost their mind. That sure sounds like the group that hit Dawn Flower."
You rewind things in your mind and scowl at that. Roughly half a year ago was when you stabbed the Archduke's brains and unleashed all of the warp energy on the world. Now, you're getting this third or fourth hand, but that would certainly fit the time line. Fuck, you've got more blood on your hands over that series of events.
"Must have been that flowering event. Things got weird around then," you comment in a somewhat sideways fashion.
After a few hours of idle chat and filling each other in on basic details you pull up to a stop at an interchange area. Coming into the back Mag says, "Need to choose. Not many friends ahead. Need to pick route: short, medium, long. Short, go back, probably run into people running from. Medium, meet old enemies. Long, probably nothing, but long." Mag then looks at you pointedly and asks, "Which best?"
Sighing, you pull out your cards and then start meditating on the issue. Morgan and Dahlia are clearly confused by your behaviour, but before you really get into the divination you say, "I'm mostly just using them to focus my thoughts, they can't really tell me anything on their own."
This is, of course, technically true, if in the exact opposite way than what they would expect.
Still, peering through the future, you see that Mag's assessment is about correct. The shortest route takes you back onto the spur you left from, but even though their leader is obscuring their movement, especially now that you are distant in time and space from them, the raiders are probably going to remain in force around there and you are almost certain to run into a hostile group. Taking the shorter route that has you skirting around on the loop to the closest interconnects to the other spur into Dawn Flower takes one or two weeks instead of days but runs you into groups that Mag has encountered before and left a trail of destruction in his path, which has the potential for conflict but might also be avoidable. Alternatively you could take a long, looping path that would go through several loops, but that would three to six weeks, which includes the fact that you have to take breaks to resupply. While the potential delay is not enough to make you lose your calm, the loss of what could be a month of time to the situation is certainly aggravating.
You counsel to head back to Dawn Flower by...
[] The shortest and most dangerous path (0.7x)
[] The medium path (1.1x)
[] The long path (0.9x)
Because this has always confused me a little: @Academia Nut , do the meat shields die EVERY time they get used as shields, or do they only suffer a mundane equivalent of whatever the phenomena would be.
If we take the shortest route we'll end up having to deal with the psyker's presence messing up our future telling, while the long path is just too long. Also, I imagine there would be a heck of an intimidation bonus when meeting one of the groups Mag tore a new asshole, if he can regularly murderhobo his way though a few hundred raiders at a time.
I... somehow feel regret that I didn't switch my vote to diplomacy at the last second. I don't really like how this decision came off from Mirande IC. Ah well, live and learn I guess.
I... somehow feel regret that I didn't switch my vote to diplomacy at the last second. I don't really like how this decision came off from Mirande IC. Ah well, live and learn I guess.
From the explanation given by the Mayor's daughters it sounds like diplomacy would have been possible, given that they were just honest raiders and the crazy bunch have upset everything.
At least he didn't end up killing the settlement - that would have been a lot of pointless bloodshed on our part.
