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Leaning towards "cute" as one of our choices - plenty of people are naturally cute, and it's pretty similar to just permanently wearing really good makeup.

As for the other, Magical Failsafes is immediately tempting as it would make learning this system of magic much safe, but this assumes that Delight is correct in her estimation of us as an "arcane". Are we sure that's the case, given that we come from another world and might just look similar to one from the context of this world?

I should note that Posion Immunity would be helpful not only against deliberate poisoning attempts but also if we get dumped in an area with significant poison-based environmental hazards.

The Sonic Amulet is actually one of the stronger effects, but the trade-off is that it's tied to a magic item, not improving us directly. If we lose it, or need to not wear it/have better amulets to wear in the future, we lose the effect. It's basically not as "permanent" as the others.

Stealth vs. Magic is a very strong effect in somewhat specific circumstances. It's sort of similar to Poison Immunity that way, though Poison Immunity passively defends us even when we don't know such specific circumstances have come into effect. Still, the ability to often completely invalidate an otherwise daunting obstacle can be quite powerful if the situation does come up.

Spectral Waltz said:
What does 'imagination reclamation' do though... I've read the post twice and I can't find where she describes that one.
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I'm also unsure of what this is referring to.
 
You know, I kind of agree with a lot of what Delight had to say on the matter of physical attractiveness. I think Delight would be good for Melia.
 
Ehorin said:
You know, I kind of agree with a lot of what Delight had to say on the matter of physical attractiveness. I think Delight would be good for Melia.
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She would be useful just as someone we can keep saying "why" to. We need a Agneyastra. Unfortunately this time we are not a princess so we might have more trust issues.
 
Spectral Waltz said:
What does 'imagination reclamation' do though... I've read the post twice and I can't find where she describes that one.
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It's a more flowery way of describing this:
Alivaril said:
"Now, that brings me back to repayment. Inoculation and safe passage are a given. As for everything else, I'm afraid I'd need consent for most of my specialties. Choices seem like the best way to accomplish that. First: I could rid you of the sexual thoughts you seem so uncomfortable with, although related attraction to others would be similarly crippled. Expect to inspire plenty of unrequited infatuation."

The daydreams in question are annoying, distracting, and often stage armed takeovers of your imagination. Despite all that, a painful and disruptive event demands your attention instead. If you had to pick a single one to eliminate, there wouldn't be a real competition.
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fictionfan said:
She would be useful just as someone we can keep saying "why" to. We need a Agneyastra. Unfortunately this time we are not a princess so we might have more trust issues.
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But not an actual Agneyastra, because that would be redundant with his other quest. @Alivaril has commented before on how his muse works, and having two very similar quests wouldn't work for him.

Alivaril said:
It's a more flowery way of describing this:
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Ah. We probably won't go for it, but that would be a fairly neat way of cutting off any romantic stuff from the quest. I suppose keeping a clear head in many situations where you otherwise wouldn't would have some benefit too.
 
Ehorin said:
You know, I kind of agree with a lot of what Delight had to say on the matter of physical attractiveness. I think Delight would be good for Melia.
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It's good if you're just aiming to make yourself as manipulative as possible for human populations with similar social & genetic standards as is appearing here and don't have any self-worth for your own body.

Knobby/boney joints are fine for someone still growing up, calluses on women are respected in cultures where they work labor or certain crafts/art, minor scars aren't bad and being flawless is actually a bit unsettling for many, and ideal skin color would change based on location and there's definitely no true "better" one.

As for cuteness, while being cute would make it easier to obtain help, it won't get her out of real dangerous situations and will make it even tougher for people to take her seriously.
 
Alright. Some immediate thoughts.

[] Appearance Improvements ("Beauty").
Nope. Excessive beauty comes with its own problems, and isn't especially suited to our situation besides; spending a boon on it doesn't make sense right now (especially with the alternative "Cute" option available).

[] Imagination Reclamation.
Also nope. Frankly, I'd rather not mess with our mind on a whim. I would question whether this was something we would want for free much less for a boon.

[] Sponsorship.
Eehhh. I'm not sure I'm comfortable running a con on people here. Not to mention, compared to permanent benefits extra wealth strikes me as rather underwhelming.

[] Sonic Amulet.
A nifty tool, but being tied to a physical object is something of a minus.

[] Magical Failsafes.
As @Deathbybunnies pointed out, I'm not sure just how well this would translate to our magic system, much less others we might encounter. Also, the charging is annoying.

[] Poison Immunity.
[] Stealth vs. Magic.
These are powerful but situational enhancements. Poison Immunity is self explanatory; if we ever run into a situation where we are poisoned, this is about the most valuable thing to have. Kind of useless otherwise, though.

Stealth only really helps us if we want to go somewhere we aren't supposed to be... which, frankly, we might be doing a lot. More importantly in my book, it shields us from Divination, which I can find coming really, really, REALLY useful. Right now, we are going to be doing a lot of moving from place to place, and I'd really like to make it so that hostiles can't follow us. (Note that we don't yet know if our Drifting can cycle us back to placed we've been; if it does, this might be the difference between being able to make a new start and having people immediately on our tail).

[] Appearance Improvements ("Cute").
This one is going to be phenomenally useful, at the cost of occasionally making people more patronizing. Still, I am warmly inclined towards it.




Right now, my vote would be for
[] Appearance Improvements ("Cute").
[] Stealth vs. Magic.
 
Right now, I'm leaning towards magic stealth and the sonic amulet. We're cute/beautiful enough I don't think we need any more, but something against wild animals, and something else to keep us hidden definitely sounds good.
 
Cute/Beautiful can both be thought of as a permanent boost to any social rolls we take, and frankly a quality-of-life improvement for a young girl, given the nature of teenage insecurities. I'm definitely in favour of taking one.
 
Voting is now unlocked. Fire at Will.

"Why me?"

EDIT: That was a lame joke on the whole "fire at will" thing. Hugs don't quite fit.
 
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[X] Sonic Amulet
[X] Poison Immunity

The sonic amulet's broad ability is well worth it being an object- and it offers up the prospect of trading the amulet for something more useful later on. Poison immunity is just really handy for someone who travels as much as MC does, even putting aside environmental poisons like arsenic in water or chlorine in air a snake or spider bite can turn into trouble quickly.

The categories of 'mammals, plants, and insects' itself seems kind of bizarre. Mammals but not reptiles? Insects but not arachnids? I get the logic to an extent but still strange.
 
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[X] Appearance Improvements ("Cute").

This one seems fairly obvious in terms of utility. Automatically passing a boatload of social checks like that is pretty useful, though it does come with some downsides it seems fairly manageable.

After that it's quite a bit harder, first of all, the ones I don't think will be good enough:
[] Appearance Improvements ("Beauty").
[] Imagination Reclamation.
[] Sponsorship.
The first is invalidated by "cute", the second is unlikely to be materially useful (and OOC reduces the entertainment of the quest) and the last just doesn't seem useful in the long run. That leaves:

[] Stealth vs. Magic.
[] Poison Immunity.
[] Sonic Amulet.
[X] Magical Failsafes.

All four of these have quite a bit of value. I'm voting for Magical Failsafes because magical experimentation is interesting to me and this will be very useful both in the short term (learning magic) and the long term (developing new spells). This is a proactive choice which requires effort to get use from- the other three are all passive, basically "X is no longer a problem". Those restrict the possibility space of encounters, whereas the magic failsafe expands the possibility space by letting us do more magic.
 
I'm not so much in favour of "Cute" since it comes with the downside of being hard to take seriously. We are going to grow to be a total badass; it's gonna be annoying if people keep trying to protect us and get hurt doing so. We're already pretty cute enough as we are, I don't think we need extra.

[x] Sonic Amulet.
[x] Stealth vs. Magic

These are what I think are most useful. If there are other dimensional travellers around, I don't want them being able to follow us. Also, Sonic Amulet seems really helpful against hostile wildlife.
 
Anti-scry is a must have, but we likely won't get into such situations any time soon.

With poison immunity causing wounds, it's pity she can't offer us regeneration.

I'd rather not mess with our appearance either, since it's good enough.

[x] Sonic Amulet
[x] Poison Immunity
 
[X] Appearance Improvements ("Cute").
[X] Stealth vs. Magic

I think I'd go for Poison Immunity without the wounding, but given that drawback I think I'll go for my second choice, Stealth vs. Magic. It's not inconceivable that we could find another way to deal with poison in the future, so we're probably better taking the other situational option that doesn't have a drawback. (Not being able to cast spells whilst relying on it is a limitation, not a drawback.)

And frankly, even if we don't deliberately set out to manipulate people, the quality-of-life upgrade of "cute" is a pretty big deal, especially given that with our constantly travelling to new places we're likely to be relying on the kindness of strangers for a good long while. Plenty of people already use makeup and we don't accuse them of being manipulative, and cutting off any possible body-image problems a young teenage girl might develop (because, you know, teenage) is well worth consideration all on its own.
 
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drake_azathoth said:
The categories of 'mammals, plants, and insects' itself seems kind of bizarre. Mammals but not reptiles? Insects but not arachnids? I get the logic to an extent but still strange.
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And most notably, doesn't include fish. Gotta remember Prologue.
Deathbybunnies said:
Not being able to cast spells whilst relying on it is a limitation, not a drawback.
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Then getting wounded instead of poisoned is a tradeoff, not a drawback.
 
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