Okay, some more in-depth responses to people because I feel like it.
DULMEA
Also, I love Dulmea's cry of "I can't be a demon lord!", just because I'm hearing it in that stereotypical "But I can't be pregnant" tone.
Also incipient Dulmea freakout which is going to be fantastic, and even better because she'll have to freak out even harder when she starts growing souls when the third charm in the series gets developed.
Dulmea does not deserve this shit, yo. The poor angyalka just wanted to do her duty and knew her proper place and was pretty happy there and everything.
Now she's become first a not-angyalka-anymore, then a mother to a human girl who keeps her near-constantly worried, then a sublimati-thing that can make serfs, and now apparently a demon lord. Whose greater self has gone crazy. And she's also having a panic attack because she can't actually dispute that point about Keris qualifying as an Unquestionable in every way that matters, given that Keris got 14 fucking successes on pointing it out while she was listening.
#DulmeaDeservesaRaise
ECHO
Also Echo XD. So cute and willing to poke fun at her mother.
A Brief Perspective on Summoning Echo
Pros:
- Very smart.
- Scarily optimised murderhobo.
- Can cover enormous distances at great speed.
- Never needs to rest.
- Fairly easygoing for a demon lord.
Cons:
KERIS
poor keris
Her Station of Sacrifice really gave her a different perspective on everything. Amusingly, Keris the sort-of-ditzt combat wombat is a far better God-Queen than Nemone Sasimana.
I kind of had it in my head that obviously Keris would pick up 2nd circle Sorcery before THO, because otherwise she'd be able to summon her souls without...actually being able to summon them.
The real fun starts when someone stops to think about the implications of an Infernal's subsouls only being able to freely escape during Calibration.
That "Straight fight would never happen" thing kinda applies both ways.
Because Keris would never fight Ululaya head on either. She'd sneak into her Moon-Palace-Body and super murder Ululaya without ever fighting her dudes.
How badly are things going to turn out for Keris? Because I really don't want her to die from this... The story's excellent, and I really want it to continue...
Oh, Keris. Yes, one of the many things that I work into the narration and description whenever I get the opportunity are these little hints at how Keris really does think of herself as Green Sun Princess now, and that she's left behind the morals and standards and values of her past to a much, much greater extent than people like Sasi or Testolagh, who still cling to who they were even though they can never go back. Keris is very much someone who looks forward (or at least who doesn't look back), and her Sacrifice amplifies that trait even more. As for summoning; come on,
@deadcrystal. She learned how to create First Circles before she learned how to summon them, of course she learned how to externalise her own through Pantheon Heresy before she learned to summon them with Sorcery. Though
@The Sandman, I should note that
the text of the Charm specifies she can summon them at any new moon - it's just that she can summon them once a day at Calibration, so she can get nearly her whole family out over the course of the Althing.
@Nervaqus987, you are correct that Keris could quite probably kill one Unquestionable by using her native HVT-assassination skillset. She might even be able to get two or three like that if she was quick and smart and subtle. But then they will start to catch on, and she finds herself fighting
nearly all of the Unquestionable as a single united block, because they Do Not Approve of people permakilling them.
Keris is a very good assassin. She is not that good. I'm not sure it's actually possible for a single person
to be that good.
That said, she will almost definitely probably possibly maybe get out of this okay.
... or
alive, at the very least.
Hopefully. 
TORMENT
Given the trigger conditions, and the fact that she just used the Malfean Excellency and failed to convince Sasi, and that Sasi has only just walked out on her, this looks more like the inciting incident to a period of Torment than the torment itself.
I expect it will take a moment for Keris to start really working herself into it.
Is torment actually going to happen here? Infernal limit is pretty easy to bleed off, and even easier for Keris what with her having Coadjutor 5. Guess we'll see.
Ah. Yes. See, what happened here was basically thus: Keris has spent the best part of two months working nearly-flat-out on complex, stressful sorcerous-alchemical theory and design. Much of that has included testing on human subjects, quite a few of whom have died despite her best efforts to save them (thereby pinging her Compassion). She's been under pressure from Orabilis, her second attempt at sending out feelers for information regarding her hometown and parents got her a big fat nothing, and due to the insane pace of the work she's had very little time to sit down and play and bleed Limit through acting like an angyalka.
Then Calibration began. Keris has a paradigmatic tendency to go a bit crazy whenever her soul structure changes in some major way. Lately her reactions to budding new souls have been lessening, partly through exposure and partly because adding one soul to eight or nine is a lot less of an impact than adding one soul to four or five. But as Calibration started,
six of her ten souls began to mature into demon lords simultaneously, and one of them literally cut her way out into the real world.
Which led to Keris challenging her once-kid-sister-now-eldest-daughter; ickle wind-waif Echo who follows in her wake and helps her fight and is cute and adorable in how she mimics Keris, to a fight. And getting fucking
trounced after throwing her full mortal dicepool at the bout and approaching it with a stunt that was all about
overwhelming Echo with sudden power to throw her off-balance and dominating the match completely until she won.
And so here we are.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Hi, a by-now long-time follower of this rpg session recordings / story here. I would like to stop just mostly lurking around here to post that even if it was cut a bit short, this was my favorite update so far. I had a grin on my face and chills running up my spine nearly the whole time, and even the cliffhanger didn't manage to foul my mood. Echo was awesomely annoyingly smart, Sasi's quite panic was impactful, and I'm looking forward to (possibly) seeing the hinted epic meltdown in the next update.
Now, if you excuse me, I have to go and try to wrestle with my F5 compulsion. (No, hand. It doesn't make the update come any sooner, no matter how often you keep hitting that button.)
I'm so glad you're enjoying it! I always love hearing what people like and which bits are their favourites. Are there any plot threads or character arcs or running narrative themes that make you grin every time they come up? Things like the Keris-Sasi-Testolagh love triangle, or Haneyl's struggle with her nature hurting people, or the rising tension of Keris getting increasingly attached to Darling Yellow (who is old and frail and may not last much longer)? Do tell, do tell!
