I wouldnt be surprised if thats half of why the nobility stay the nobility. We've seen how drastically important varying conditions when you get your ethea influence what you can get. I doubt its a science for the nobility, but through hard work, effort and knowledge, they probably know the best ways to consistently get decent ethos. Combine that with the best training possible with trainers like Matthew, and they should be head and shoulders above the average person.
It's a Girl's World -- And Lilly wants Adventure
- Thread starter Slyvena
- Start date
- Original Mature Fantasy Action
- Location
- San Ramon, CA
That's exactly what Yolun was planning to do with Lilly before she ran off into the woods. It was a surprise to Lilly that she got the option for [Duty of Wood] anyway.
I'm guessing that this is an essential part of the Lore Warden's work: archive the particularly good Ethos for future (well-paying) generations to access, and when you find a new one with some effective traits, interview the person and write down their "unlock" conditions. As a side note, it would be in our best interest to stay far away from the Lore Warden, protection or no.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Yeah, true. Though I figure for crafting related Ethea it's somewhat more natural than some of the other ones, since there's probably a pretty straight line from being taught (magical) carpentry to getting [Duty of Wood]. A more ruthless parent might try to game that system more deliberately, like if they were trying to get [My Beautiful Pain] they might raise their child on stories of heroes and knights and spend the year around their Ethos choice deliberately dashing those expectations.
1.12 Heartbreak
Slyvena
I don't like pie.
- Location
- Pie Shop
[X] [CI] Okay. I'll come.
- [X] [CI] [Yes] I trust you not to push me too far sir. (Agreement)
[X] [FM] Tell Yolun that we forgive him and he will always be in our heart. Also ask your mom about your namesake cause Ladder said apparently now is a good time.
[X] [APC] Yes, you will likely need their help to get there in the increasingly treacherous forest.
- [X] [APC] [Reveal] Try to convince Captain Martin to detour toward the Prime Tree.
[X] [DwtFLU] She saw it in her dream, it became a little more real.
[X] [DwtFAME] I embrace the connection between all things.
[X] [BB] Arrows flew and swords clashed, she found the calm in the storm.
[X] [BtCabE] Remain as conservative as humanly possible, only draw upon Pithe to save another's life.
[X] [NIV] The end of the First Era.
[X] [DD] She'd likely never have another shot at this. He who sows the most seeds, reaps the greatest harvest. (Evie's {{REDACTED}} will not replace your fifth Ethos choice (available Ethea will be rerolled))
- [X] [CI] [Yes] I trust you not to push me too far sir. (Agreement)
[X] [FM] Tell Yolun that we forgive him and he will always be in our heart. Also ask your mom about your namesake cause Ladder said apparently now is a good time.
[X] [APC] Yes, you will likely need their help to get there in the increasingly treacherous forest.
- [X] [APC] [Reveal] Try to convince Captain Martin to detour toward the Prime Tree.
[X] [DwtFLU] She saw it in her dream, it became a little more real.
[X] [DwtFAME] I embrace the connection between all things.
[X] [BB] Arrows flew and swords clashed, she found the calm in the storm.
[X] [BtCabE] Remain as conservative as humanly possible, only draw upon Pithe to save another's life.
[X] [NIV] The end of the First Era.
[X] [DD] She'd likely never have another shot at this. He who sows the most seeds, reaps the greatest harvest. (Evie's {{REDACTED}} will not replace your fifth Ethos choice (available Ethea will be rerolled))
- - - - Heartbreak
6th Day, 3rd Moon, LE 2302
(Early Hours)
A strange and serene calm is all you feel as you trot past the remains of your family's livestock left behind in the Alphas' wake. The fields feel strange and barren now, empty of the constant low noises of the mulling animals that used to fill them.
The horde spared your home and meagre crops, but that was never where most of the value lay. With your father missing a hand, were you realistically in a position to reject the Captain's offer of wealth anyway?
It doesn't matter anyway. However hesitant you were, your father hadn't been healed yet when the Captain made his offer, and you were too afraid to spurn him mere minutes before requiring such essential help. You've already accepted going further into the forest.
The rest of the expedition are a ways off, rallying a cordon along the mouth of the valley near here. Only Marius the mage has followed you to the workshop turned bunker, he will be the one to ensure your father is okay. Originally the plan was merely to properly stabilise him, but you have bargained a complete restoration as one of the conditions of going into the forest. This will apparently be rather draining for Marius but he knows of a way to gradually replenish himself off your Essence, making it workable.
So that it how you have come to be standing beside the fused walls of the workshop, their subtle runic glows rising and ebbing in languid motions over the surface. It is as unmarked as when you left, whatever tremendous strength an Alpha's jaw could bring to bear, it is clearly not the match of your father's workmanship. Your Essence Sight cannot pierce the enclosed structure, but your {Sympathetic Link} to your father lets you know you are not too late. He is still alive, you made it in time. You let out a long breath at that thought, you actually did it.
Of course the immediate problem now is how to actually get in. You would not be surprised if your father was too out of it to do whatever is required on his side. Pressing your hand against the warded surface elicits no noticeable reaction. You trying pushing out a basic Access Glyph, to no effect. Your brow furrows in frustration. Until you have the Captain's promised physical currency resting in your own palms, you are not keen to try damaging any more of your family's property; only if there is literally no other way inside.
"Allow me to try," Marius interjects, stepping forward and placing both his hands upon the workshop walls.
The night (or is it morning?) is calm and clear all around. The peace and quiet still feels almost uncomfortable after everything that's happened, like waiting for the next nasty surprise to jump around the corner. But there's nothing here except the cool night air and your impatient nerves.
Your Essence sight is somewhere around ten metres in width currently, giving you full panoramic awareness of the entire outside of the workshop. So you are able to notice the subtle shifts in the way some of the Strands intersecting with the surface begin to vibrate and flow in slightly more ordered patterns as Marius concentrates on his attempt. After a few tense seconds, the resistance ceases and you sense a new pattern arching across outside.
"Got it," Marius says, "Your father is quite skilled, I should like to speak to him about his embedded identity reference diagrams some time."
You pay no attention to what Marius is saying as the workshop doors reappear out of the smooth surface and open before you. Your awareness sweeps inside the workshop outlining each member of your family and confirming all are present. Though most of your attention is taken up by a rapidly approaching child who leaps through the air to tackle you.
You and Marcus fall down wrapped in each other's arms.
"You know, if you tried that this morning, you'd have knocked yourself out." You snark at the bundle of hugs and tears on top of you.
"Lilly! I- I- You're here!" Marcus says amongst many other half-started sentences. He is almost inconsolable. It is with some regret that you ponder what it must have been like for your brothers to sit huddled together in the workshop for hours, worried to death for both their father and sister not to mention the terrifying danger that lay outside.
Prying Marcus' arms off you, you kneel down to his height. "Show me to father."
You risked it all for this. Someway, somehow, you succeeded. Everything you've gone through tonight is worth this moment, worth the help it earnt you.
"…father," Marcus' face falls at your words and an ominous lump immediately forms in your throat.
Nearly on instinct your Essence Sight shows you what you had not yet noticed. The rest of your family all packed together tightly in the corner of the workshop, surrounding your father. Yet where their auras are as you'd expect, something foul and wrong and familiar wafts off your father.
You barely notice yourself beginning to move forward slowly, hoping that the impossible thing that familiar presence implies is not true. You can hear the low moans, the thrashing, the occasional growls escaping from the rag you see stuffed into the mouth. The face is almost like you remember, yet the subtle addition of more canine features to the shape morphs it into a painful parody. Your eyes meet his… and he laughs.
He laughs and he laughs and he laughs.
"No," you whisper as you fall to your knees before your father bound in rags and ripped strips of blanket to hold him in place. "Please no."
Marcus is too small to reasonably help, but the strained faces and red teary eyes of Micah, Zach and your mother resting their weight on him make it clear they have been holding your father still for quite some time.
You missed it. You could have noticed when it happened but you missed it. Not a severed connection, a replaced one.
"Daughter, it's good to see you." Its muffled voice carries through the gag, clear to your enhanced sense of hearing. "Come, rest your head on my shoulder. I'll sing you a lullaby." It says through a mouth that holds too many teeth; an unwelcome extra detail provided by your Essence Sight.
"Marius, do something," you plead.
"I'm not… I can't- I can heal the arm girl, but this, I wouldn't know where to start," Marius says, the smug confidence he has carried himself with up till now all but evaporated.
"Don't be sad Lilly, it was only very painful," the monster wearing your father's face says. "Just because you abandonmrph-" before you stuff the gag further into his mouth so that even you cannot understand what he is saying through it.
Marius awkwardly kneels before your father also, placing both hands on him, "Well, I can do the arm at least. Varisay, Marik'tuk Foll!" And a white brilliant light shines out from the mage onto your father's body, the missing arm flowing back into existence like water being poured into a clear bowl.
You just feel numb as you do your part. Pouring in Essence to undo the side effects of Marius' healing. You can feel the difference clearly, his influence melting away before yours, yet the deeper more substantial corruption stubbornly refusing to yield an inch at your pressure. There is a consciousness behind it, actively resisting any intrusion and entirely beyond your scope to counter.
No. I refuse to give up!
You push with all your strength, ramming as much of your own healing power as you possibly can into your father, trying as hard with your everything despite your fumbling unfamiliarity to give it coordination and direction. You feel yourself improving, getting a better handle on things; able to direct the Essence within to a limited extent.
Yet make no progress at all.
You are a child pushing up against something far more than that. You keep pushing, though you realise now there is no hope to reclaim the ground this thing has taken.
"Lilly," Zach says slowly, putting his arms around you.
No.
"It's not your fault. You can… stop."
No!
Without noticing it approach, the [Dream Within the Forest] expands. You fall down into the other place.
- - - - -
The Girl wonders through your shared space distraught, in search of the piece of her father that lies here.
You both realise the terrible literal truth of that statement. A piece of your father. He was weak already, your expansion took more from him, the foulness followed on the back of that loss.
Someday you will be strong enough, the [Dream], this forest within it, to oppose such a thing directly. Now is not that time. You are young, still a sapling in many ways. Your branches are thick and they reach far, yet your roots are new and still have much depth to explore.
For now, there is but one solution. All that remains of the father must be brought here to shelter under the canopy of your Dream. While the seed of hope is small, perhaps one day you shall gain what you need to restore what has been taken.
So your branches grow in a new direction, up, through the roof of the dream and into the waking world. Through Her hands, from the tips of her fingers, you draw upon the thread that already connects the father to this place. You pull him into a deep sleep like death, yet with the promise that he may one day return.
And so as the Girl finds that piece of her father in the Dream, cradles it in wracking sobs. You mourn also for your other half's loss. Her world and yours are connected more deeply now, perhaps some good will come from this. Right now it simply means you weep with her, human emotions are painful things.
- - - - -
A momentary lapse of attention. You wandered for hours in that forest searching, yet the dream took only seconds here kneeled before your father. He goes slack in your arms as the Dream calls his mind to rest. If you didn't feel him held in static embrace within that sunken place, you might worry he had truly passed. But you know his mind hides there, his body comatose yet still breathing here. You cannot purge the foulness from him, but you can hold it from any further advance.
If you had any doubts about the need to finish what you started tonight, you don't now. You are going into that forest, are ripping whatever this thing is apart.
The Dream is no longer a far-off thing either, you feel it close, just below the surface of your consciousness. You are not entirely sure what shape it will take, but you know {The World Beneath} will be at your call when you need it.
- - -
Marius leaves you with your family for a short time. Seeing you successfully stop your father's condition worsening; he tentatively agreed the Watch didn't need to know. You have no real leverage to stop him if he goes back on that word.
You will need to depart soon.
You haven't set out yet, but you already feel like a failure. Wouldn't it be the perfect irony for you to go die in the very woods your family thought you lost to before. Nothing is going to stop you from trying to fix this, but your hopes are not high. You have so much power at your fingertips, but seemingly never enough.
A part of you wishes you could stay here with your family huddled together forever, but even looking at your fathers serene sleeping form fills your chest with a dull throbbing ache.
The story was much like you expected, a few hours ago he became increasingly irrational, though was lucid enough to allow himself to be bound before it got truly terrible. They'd gagged him because he started saying all kinds of hurtful things, targeting your youngest brothers for the sheer thrill of it.
Micah and Zach each have their turns embracing you, but it has been a long night for you all, it's not over yet, and there is little to be said. Your brothers had hoped against hope you might be bringing someone who could help with what is happening to your father, the atmosphere is sorrowful now that they know there is no solution. Everyone for the most part is so dead tired that cannot summon the strength to interact much at all.
It's time to go. You share a look with your mother. You know Sarah would wish you to stay, but you can't do nothing and no amount of words will ever sway you on that. You push down the painful question "if you'd stayed, would father have ended up like this?" and banish it from your mind. Sniffling away a tear, you turn to leave without saying goodbye. It would start an argument you just don't have the strength for right now.
"Lilly," your mother calls, halting your steps.
The weakness rather than the anger you'd expected in her tone is what holds you in place. You don't turn around, but see her approach from behind through your Essence Sight all the same. Sarah places her arms around you in a gentle embrace as the two of you stand silently together.
"You don't have to go," she tries. You both know how this ends.
You state the simple truth, "I do."
If I can't somehow find a way out of this nightmare, I might just shrivel up and die.
The silence hangs in the air uncomfortably long. There is a shift, some resistance in your mother melting away and accepting that you will leave.
"Then you must come back."
"Of course mum, I promise."
Sarah surprises you by pulling your hands into hers and clasping them to her chest so that you face each other, "I mean it Lilly, run if you have too, leave them behind, you simply must survive tonight!" she whispers harshly, so your brothers do not hear.
Something feels off about this. Your mother's tone a hint too manic, too driven. Enough that you remember those Words of Wisdom that seem so long ago. 'Between Midnight and Dawn, ask her about your name and she'll tell you.'
You can't help but laugh ruefully at your poor fortune, whatever the truth is, tonight is not worth it. But you're here now, so be it.
"Mother." You state, looking evenly into your mother's eyes. "Why did you choose my name?"
At her gasp and slight recoil, you gently seize her arm so she can't pull away. "I mean it mum, why?"
Too much has happened; you will not give way on this, not with the Words of Wisdom's assurance of results. "If you tell me now, I promise I'll run if things get too bad," you lie.
You feel the twist of fate at those words, a juncture that could have split off two ways, falling decisively along one path. After a long breath, your mother answers.
"I didn't."
What?
She didn't choose Lilly? That's patently false, you know the story. It caused quite a stir in the community, your mother's insistence on Lilly as your name. She continues before you can question her, weary and defeated.
"None of us chose our firstborn daughters' names. It decides. When your first child is a girl, and she will be a girl, you'll already know what it must be."
Sarah says these things as if they are a great weight upon her shoulders, strange and peculiar the story may be, you do not understand the cause of such a grave demeanour. As you start to respond, she raises a hand to stop you, pre-empting your question of what she is talking about and what this all means.
"There is a place, you'll have noticed it when you were younger. Go there, find your daughter's name, find why you absolutely cannot throw away your life before you have her. It's a certainty deeper than any other you'll ever feel."
As soon as she says it. You know the place. It's a hillock less than an hour west of your home. You found them on some form of outing when you were five; beneath a rocky crag there is a small patch of Nights Lilies, the first you think you ever saw. Though, they spread and became far less uncommon throughout the region from that day onward. These days no one would need to wander more than ten minutes before finding one.
You know where they are, you couldn't possibly get lost trying to find that spot again, you know you'd be unerringly led there. It's not magic, it's something older.
"What is there mum?" Is there any other question you could ask? You have to know.
"Something we can never escape from, the doom of us all if it doesn't get what it wants."
You're about to respond when the realisation strikes you. You think you know what your mother is talking about. You've already been touched by huge, alien and unknowable powers. Multiple times in fact. Every time you have gained an Ethos.
For a moment, it is almost all too much. Too much revelation, too many things happening. But soon that familiar determination rises inside you, that same part of you that has pushed you this far already.
It doesn't matter that you don't understand.
It doesn't matter that big things are happening entirely outside your control.
You will do what you can do, and the pieces will fall where they fall.
"You don't actually know anything about it do you?" you question, "Just that its big and scary and apparently I have to have a daughter or bad things happen."
You're not entirely confident. But in your not entirely flattering view of your mother, that could very well be enough for her to stay quiet on something like this unless it were literal life and death stakes such as now.
"I- …yes."
So this is it. This is the big secret. An old question replaced with a new one.
You are furious.
Just because she was scared. Mum witnesses something terrifying once and then hides it from everyone? It took you a couple days to share your own frightening experience with your father but she waited all these years! Maybe you should be more concerned about the actual content of what has just been shared, but there has been so much unknowable magical babble piling up recently you're running out of room to care. But feeling like something has been kept from you for years for essentially no reason at all? That's a different level, not betrayal, but close. A familiar pain, because it's just the same story on repeat, 'it's not the right time to tell you', 'you don't need to know', 'you wouldn't understand'.
You suppose at least your lie about running away if things turn bleak is perhaps not so much a lie anymore, seeing as how the consequences are apparently so bad (yet also, still not actually explained).
My goodness do you want to keep talking, but there is a very real time pressure to the more immediate problem of the forest and stopping whatever it is trying to do to dad. So once more you bury what you want to say, not an unfamiliar feeling around your parents actually, and you let steel resolve wash over you. Action now, emotion later.
"I see. This conversation is not over. But right now, I have something else to do."
You pull away and walk out of the workshop. You didn't mean it to come across that harshly, but you don't turn around.
Not long outside the door you realise you didn't say goodbye to anyone. You keep walking.
- - -
[Brave Blood] expands on your way back out to where the main concentration of the Watch are gathering, sinking you back into the myriad patterns stretching out to infinite in every direction.
But for the first time there is a sense of orientation within the great tangled mess, a knowing of which ways are proverbially 'up' and 'down'. The calls to be chosen come from far further off this time, brought to you on the back on that single pattern which has already been selected this time.
This pattern is small inside you, without discernible shape, yet somehow recognisably a 'map' or 'balance' of sorts. Prongs and feelers extend out from it all around, fading off into the distance further than the eye can see. It has a texture to it this pattern, it reminds you of your early attempts to piece together information from the Resonance within the Pithe Field itself, related to your efforts in some way.
And just like that you rise back up into yourself, the low grieving moan of the unchosen cut off just as quickly as you'd found yourself amongst them.
Your now feel the pattern of {Objective Awareness} stirring and alive within you. It's as if you understand motion and movement better on some instinctive level, how force and momentum relate to and dance around each other. It's not actually your knowledge or skill, but rather somehow brought to you by the Pithe Field itself; something you hadn't thought it was capable of. But you suppose you shouldn't be surprised, it's always doing something new really.
You can push this new power further too, give it more oomph. While you loathe to do it now while trying to recover, you know you could force more into the power to have it unspool into something more significant. {Stutter Ping}, a momentary total omni-directional awareness of all objects and their relative inertia. Push hard enough and it would be propelled by a meta-concussive force likely to disorientate the unprepared around you. Very draining too, even if you were at your best.
Hmmph. You'd hoped for something better.
- - -
"I don't want to talk about it," you cut Mathew off when it looks like he is going to say something.
From his stilted lack of response, he definitely was going to try.
You are clearly anxious as Captain Martin looks ready to depart, perhaps Mathew meant to comfort you. Or maybe he is looking for some advantage being friends with someone 'invaluable' to the watch for nine months before they cut her loose to the 'Noosemen'. If you can keep new complications down to less than five per day from here on out, you'll count yourself lucky.
Or even just knowing who is hiding things from you and who you can trust, you'd settle for that. You'd assumed your family was exempt from that concern, but apparently even that's too much to ask. Maybe you're being unfair to mother, but you're not in the mood to consider it.
Mathew settles for a farewell and a smile, referencing the first time you met. "Captain Martin is an incredible warrior. Be safe, Lilly 'like the flower'."
"Yeah, like the flower," you respond in reference to something entirely different.
- - -
Waiting was the worst part. It took a little more time for some of the other smaller groups to meet up and further reinforce the long stretching cordon to contain a long segment of the forest. Only then was Captain Martin content to depart.
You spent the time pointedly avoiding conversation with anyone. Lost in your own thoughts trying to convince yourself that if you hadn't taken the {Heartstaff} with you your father still would have been targeted. That is wasn't your fault. Maybe if you say it enough times someday you'll believe it.
Though you doubt anyone would notice, the well from which you draw your Essence seems even deeper now than before, your most recent expansion having pushed it to even more awesome heights. A good thing too, considering you still need to maintain the links to every member. With a wide area to patrol, the cordon requires your Link's coordination to properly function.
Everything is prepared. It is time.
Nine of you forge south. Four in front. Five in the back, with you amongst them. The oldest and most experienced members of the Watch, their clothes alive and shifting the Essence that flows through them in that tell-tale sign you've learnt to recognise magical items by.
For all the unique power such a party must possess, it is relatively easy to divide them in half on appearance. The front four, whom you know draw from Pithe, wear heavy blackened plate armour of varying thickness occasionally adorned with one or two more unique items and apparel. The back four each wear assorted light cloth, more easily distinguished by the unique staves or staffs they wield.
There is one woman among you, Yola Malis. You're told she uses Oath as her only Source, which is quite rare. You'd hoped to talk with her a bit, but she pays you little mind.
Captain Martin has outlined the strategy to you all. The front group are those most easily replenished by your Essence and will be doing the majority of the work on your push forwards. The back actually all also have a way to slowly recover quicker in your presence, but far less efficiently and as such will only intervene as necessary in this early stage. It appears the typical forward fighter supported by rear mage dynamic in many stories bares more than a passing similarity to reality.
You will not be going to the Prime Tree, you will be ranging directly for the source of this entire disaster. Madam Silva and the Truthseekers have been able to, when set to the singular task, determine its exact location and provide that knowledge via the magic stones held by the Watch. Apparently the wholesale slaughter of the Alphas partially lifted whatever fog lay over her Guild's vision, not to mention the simpler task of finding one significant thing rather than many lesser ones.
Still, you'd hoped the Captain could be persuaded, but he was unmoving.
"For your own benefit I cannot tell you the precise reason why," he told you, "But your {Locus} will be better helped by directly supressing this threat. You will be made more powerful by not knowing a short time longer."
Even with his intimidating stature and authority up against your paltry nerves, you almost considered demanding to be told or you'd refuse to go. Because despite repeated assurances, not knowing something until later has helped you precisely zero times so far; that well of trust has run decidedly dry.
In the end though, everything you have seen from the Watch and the Captain has persuaded you that in martial matters at least the man knows what he is talking about. There is a definite time limit to how long you can tolerate being kept in the dark, but for now, you agreed with compliant.
A shield fixed to the harness on Chariot, easily reachable when you need it. A quick show of your {Heartstaff} and it was accepted you wouldn't need a weapon.
Nine people, one objective. You hoped it would go well.
- - -
Forward Four:
Captain Andrew Martin – Bulwark/Support (Pithe)
Moll Yannicks – Bulwark/Charger (Pithe)
Plasil Wam – Rapid Counter / Special Circumstance (Pithe/Oath)
Tovak Shires – Reliable Offense (Pithe)
Rear Five:
Legle Tal'k – Metamagician / Ward Breaker (Mana/Oath)
Stephen Hantree – Close Quarter Area Supremacy (Mana)
Yola Malis – Condition Management (Oath)
Marius Chen – Concentrated Blaster (Mana)
Lilly Silas – Detection/Fatigue Support (Essence)
Captain Andrew Martin – Bulwark/Support (Pithe)
Moll Yannicks – Bulwark/Charger (Pithe)
Plasil Wam – Rapid Counter / Special Circumstance (Pithe/Oath)
Tovak Shires – Reliable Offense (Pithe)
Rear Five:
Legle Tal'k – Metamagician / Ward Breaker (Mana/Oath)
Stephen Hantree – Close Quarter Area Supremacy (Mana)
Yola Malis – Condition Management (Oath)
Marius Chen – Concentrated Blaster (Mana)
Lilly Silas – Detection/Fatigue Support (Essence)
- - -
It is not long before you reach the dense growth of trees that signal the beginning of the forest proper. The rest of the party will continue on foot, but with your small stature it's agreed you'll continue atop Chariot unless the underbrush becomes too unmanageable for him. In that instance you'd ride on someone's shoulders. Silly as that may seem, even with your Essence Sight no one is willing to let your vision be mostly blocked by the many taller bushes.
This is it. You have no idea what is going to happen. You swallow and focus on steadying your breathing as the party moves carefully inside.
Entering in, the span of your Essence Sight quickly begins to fan out into a vast area. The full width easily well past fifty metres from you in every direction. The precision of what you can see also becomes naturally more fine and increasingly detailed, yet never unmanageable. You hadn't particularly thought of it before, but it seems your ability to handle your perception grows in equal measure to its size.
You were all expecting to encounter resistance already. The fact you've run into nothing slowly rackets up the tension more and more as time passes and you creep deeper inside.
This place, it's so similar to the Dreamspace you and the Prime Tree share. {The World Beneath} letting you feel the various subtle features that inspired its inception here while you slept. Somewhere along the way you figured out that your Channel of Essence is almost certainly the Prime Tree drawing from its long history in this place. Another small piece of the puzzle that is you, chipped away.
It does wonders to quell your nerves. Allowing you to find a measure of peace during the advance. Here surrounded by dense woods, you could almost forget the dire purpose that has driven you here, lost in feeling the connection and awareness of everything around you. It's not just the physical that's more clear. The Golden Strands have always been beautiful and moving them has been easy, but even that seems trivially simpler here.
It's because of your focus on the Strands that you are able to notice the hostile intrusion. A cold creeping pattern coiling its way along thin sharp lines through your Essence Sight, seeping invisibly closer through the air. Marius notices your body language and via some signal the whole party comes to a halt.
Just as quickly the previously languid coils suddenly leap forward screaming right for each person in long streaming spikes of unseen corruption!
On reflex, you push out a huge plume of Essence from your channel with all the brute force you can muster, contesting your manipulation against the foreign presence. It is your superior by a wide margin, both stronger and more deft. Were that the only factor you would be hopelessly outclassed. But it is a wrongness trying to further corrupt, whereas you stand in the centre of a forest asserting the return of the natural state. Sweat pooling on your skin; with your far greater leverage, you force back the assault into a wide bubble a dozen paces away from any member. The pressure remains, but cannot approach.
As your focus returns to the mundane, several barriers have already sprung up into existence. In the front, above Plasil, a grey translucent female-esque shade twice the height of the man (though only visible from the waist up) hovers over him. Ethereal steam pouring off her and surrounding the forward four. In the rear both Marius and Stephen have sprung up a techni-colour barrier a mere second after your contest with the foreign presence began.
"It's not necessary," you state, regathering your attention, "I can hold it back. But you'll need something ready if I go down." You're quite pleasantly impressed by how professional you are able to make yourself sound and that all three men trust you enough to lower their protections and reserve their strength.
You all press onwards, as a muffled conversation amongst the forward four is brought to your ears.
{{Moll Yannicks}}: "Is this just Rampancy, or is it Broken?"
{{Captain Martin}}: "We'd be dead if it was Broken. Stay focused."
{{Plasil Wam}}: "We're still a half hours distance away and it has this much reach. How was it able to build so long unnoticed?"
{{Captain Martin}}: "I also suspect foul play. Questions for tomorrow; tonight, we have a job to do."
As the silence returns Captain Martin turns his head to look back at you, arching his eyebrows as much to say 'that last part was for you too.' You turn away and blush at being caught eavesdropping a second time, trust the Captain not to forget you could do that.
Your embarrassment is short lived as a sorely missed sense returns.
Use {Sample Space} for precisely one fifth of a second in four seconds or Marius Chen will die.
Now!? Why?
You don't seriously expect a reply as your mind begins to race. Your senses straining to detect some hidden threat and finding nothing. There's nothing anywhere, no danger, nothing. You've been trying to save {Sample Space} and let it rest up back to strength after pushing it so far a few hours earlier. But, will you be able to live with yourself if don't act and Marius does die? When you could have stopped it?
Altogether, it takes you exactly four seconds of frantic thinking to resolve to listen to the Words of Wisdom (during which time you probably could have said something). You activate {Sample Space} still having no idea why you need too.
Immediately, all possible futures unfold inches away from your ability to remember, an ideal is chosen and collapsed back to a single point. You act.
Your body lunges with a {Pulse Surge} toward Marius who is less than three metres to your side. Within those many possible futures, you twisted the Pithe in a very specific way you didn't know you could. Instead of puncturing Chariot with your feet, a form of {Counter Force} is generated. It propels you a tad slower but still remarkably fast while also somehow having less influence on Chariot than a natural jump would have had on the very lucky horse.
It's only when you have crossed half the distance in the resulting tenth of second that you sense the concentrated bolt of Pithe twist and taut into a vibration that screams 'Death' suddenly appear well within your Essence Sight and fly toward toward Marius faster than anything you've ever seen. In the final tenth of a second the {Heartstaff} is already in your hand and swinging with its large swollen tip in a compressed {Pulse Surge} through the air.
The bolt of compressed Pithe turns out to be some kind of imbued arrow, slamming into your {Heartstaff} at the apex of its swing in a colossal impact that shatters both, all the debris somehow missing anyone. The precise instant the two impact, the unique arrangement of Essence hiding inside specifically designed to avoid your notice is annihilated. You and by virtue of your sympathetic connection all those who are linked to you, become aware of the Essence infused human-like thing crouching not twenty metres to your left. It is the perfect fluke result only the {Sample Space} could ever engineer.
In the proceeding second two compressed flaming novas come alive and fly out from Marius' hands, their explosions rocking the ground all around and igniting the nearest trees from the heatflash alone. The attacker is only scathed as they rapidly move to the side far too fast without touching anything, releasing a second arrow directly at you.
Perhaps they thought you defenceless. Earlier tonight, shattering the {Heartstaff} might have delayed its return. But you've already grown past that. It is more substantial and influential on the world now than before. You recall the once more fully intact {Heartstaff} to block the arrow's trajectory, but you needn't have bothered. At the same time as Marius utterly obliterates where the unknown figure was landing with another of his magical volleys, Legle simply swipes his hand at the incoming bolt and all that hits your {Heartstaff} is an ordinary arrow.
Legle smiles as he quips, "Too strong in the physical and not enough where it counts." Though despite his jovial tone, his eyes roam the surroundings as he speaks. In fact you can feel many such subtle ripples within the Strands from people using various modes of detection.
Your own mind races in the aftermath of saving a life and defending your own. Looking into every shadow wondering where the next threat will appear. You note your {Sample Space} growing over some threshold and the doorway widening, practically doubling in strength and granting you another free second of possibility.
Captain Martin shouts to address all of you, particularly those conducting their scrys, "Anything?" Given the severity of the circumstance, you activate a {Stutter Ping} just in case.
And what you see fascinates you.
It's absolutely ingenious, anyone else would have missed it. Even you are only able to tell because of your simultaneously overlayed Essence Sight and {Stutter Ping} in a place you know so well.
It's an ambush ahead. The efforts taken toward stealth are simply remarkable. Mostly wolves, but you see a couple deer and even a bear (they come this far east?). They are partly merged into the various trees, precisely mimicking their nature. It's actually quite unsettling, looking at something that is quite clearly a wolf yet having half your senses insist quite adamantly it is a tree.
Were this not your forest, the place where so much of what you now are was born, you might not have been able to notice it. You have the sense that there are more subtle magics at play here, reducing their profile further. Yet despite not knowing what they are, something about you is substantial enough to pierce the veil. It's the first time the past hour that resisting whatever this foreign force is hasn't seemed hopeless. The first time you've felt powerful.
Another thirty or so metres and you all would have been in the centre of them, surrounded. But you're not, and because you can now sense them, so can everyone else.
Sixteen Wolves. Two Deer, One Bear. Nine of you.
There is a short pause. Then. Everything and everyone erupt into action.
Almost like a dance, everyone around you moves according to a long established script. Captain Martin and Moll step forward to form a front barrier. The Captain's Armour glows in the Glyph of a Lion as a spectral wall of manes and mouths rises out of the ground in a semicircle around your group. Moll adds to this as thin red strings of energy materialize around his vambraces. They rapidly inflate into thick chains (the kind you'd think may be used to anchor ships) and slide out through the air or plow into the ground around the barrier of lions. Runes dance across their armour and blades as the two men stand ready, shields raised.
Plasil's grey lady shade returns as he stands behind those two, you could swear it looks like he is handing up spectral representations of bread and water to it. Tovak stands with two cruel looking daggers drawn, violet-coloured copies of the implements multiplying out and hovering around him in a cloud of a couple dozen that grow increasingly akin to their originals the longer they remain near him.
In the rear Legle starts waving his hands around with intense concentration, the Strands tell you he is doing something, no idea what. Stephen slams his fists together and in a light-speed wave your entire area fifteen metres in every direction is saturated in an ever-so-slight earthy blue dome of colour.
Yola stands ready, a wand in one hand and a dagger in the other. The flow of rushing water and heavy vibrations resonant from Marius' two hands enclosed around each other, though you can't see any liquid.
Then there's you. You've never given much thought to how to prepare for a fight that hasn't already started. So you settle for gathering as much Essence into your surroundings as possible, practically bathing the entire group's vicinity in a hundred times the normal atmospheric concentration. If nothing else, it will help hold back the corruption a few seconds if you are somehow indisposed.
Chariot, wisely, gallops in the opposite direction.
Never one to be flatfooted for more than a moment, the animals recognised their failed ambush the same moment you did and also spring into action. Bark and underbrush are sundered aside flying out in tiny pieces as each creature sheds its disguise; pierced stealth abandoned and replaced with a mad dash toward you all.
The distance is short, but you still have plenty of time to take in the approaching mass. What a sight they are. The Wolves are much like you've come to expect so far, though foul essence clings to parts of them thicker than you've seen before for some unseen purpose. The deer are likewise larger-than-life inflations of their natural states. Blank midnight-black coloured eyes each holding a dozen tiny flecks of white light within, legs grotesquely overgrown far larger than even Chariot's impressive bulk.
The bear is like something out of a nightmare. Twice what you'd peg as the usual size, an absolute behemoth of thick raw flesh. If it rammed one of these old ancient trees, you don't think it would be the bear that moved. Aside its size, there is no difference you can make out. It's sheer bulk prevents even the vague detail your Essence Sight gives of the inside of living things from penetrating far at all.
The two deer arrange themselves at the front, wolves close behind, bear charging at the rear like a boulder careering down a hill.
Sportmans-like it may have been, your forward formation does not simply let them advance uncontested. Beside Captain Martin, Moll raises his blade and from it spews an avalanche of spinning translucently-crimson scythes attached chaotically to one another with chains; the tangled threshing mess rockets directly for the left leading deer, though has more than enough size to encompass it and several animals behind.
The moment before impact space morphs in a nauseating non-sensical jumble before you. The deer, no, stags' previously invisible antlers ripple with warping energy. Just like that a dozen paths in every direction and dozen more dead-ends spring to life all around the creatures and the crimson thresher is hurtling back toward you as fast as it left.
Moll pulls back whatever gave the red bladed-mess life and it gutters into non-existence just before the lion-barrier which had subtly risen to catch anything that made it through. But whatever the stags did was not a short pulse. The spatial distortion remains, forcing you to switch to relying on your Essence Sight to navigate the shifting scene before you that your eyes have no hope of piecing together before it continually changes again.
"Legle!" Captain Martin shouts.
"Thirty seconds!" the lieutenant replies to some unspoken question as his hand movements increase tempo. It doesn't matter anyway, the charge is five seconds off at best.
You can feel it, the stags, they're going to skip the forward line and deliver the Alpha wolves directly into the rear. Tovak and Plasil turning their backs and closing distance with Captain Martin and Moll all but confirms the suspicion. Stephen's blue dome shrinking to only encompass the rear five as tiny intangible green strings appear between Yola and you same five, that removes all doubt. Everyone sees this sudden turnaround that's come too late to meaningfully adjust formation.
Maybe if you-
Reserve the {Sample Space}; you will need a full second later.
Dammit!
Outnumbered two to one, time running out and knowing you are about to be set upon on all sides, you have a go at something that may or may not be helpful. Perhaps if you overwhelm the Alphas with a wave of your Essence you can throw off their coordination at least during the first strike, stall their momentum at the critical moment.
The charge draws closer. A dozen metres shrinking down to nothing as the deer predictably vanish from the front and appear to each side of your group. Knowing what comes next, you slam your Essence against the Wolves precisely as they reach the forward barrier.
Something goes right, and something goes wrong.
What goes right is that you were spot on with your prediction and it works exactly like you'd hoped, throwing off the wolves and even stumbling a couple right at the exact moment they could have benefitted from finesse the most. Your {Wild Affinity} guides the way you twist the Essence into each wolf throwing some of them right off balance.
What goes wrong is you have all vastly underestimated the stags' mastery of distance and positions. In the blink of an eye the small gap between each individual member is several metres. You are all alone and separate from each other as Alphas step through conveniently supplied spatial paths to strike at you without having to take a single extra step. Were you significantly more skilled with Essence you might have tried to contest the stags ploy directly, but you already know they'd win.
Were it not for your Essence Sight, you might not even know three Alphas were coming at you; a perfect triangle with one in front and two behind. You almost let the moment's panic get the better of you to reflexively activate {Sample Space}, but it is not the right time. Instead, you lunge forward low to the ground. The {Heartstaff} appears in your hand already touching the front Alpha's jaw allowing you to push it upwards instead of getting bitten on the head mid-jump. Not a moment later the {Heartstaff} is held horizontally flat against your chest between your two hands as you sail face first between the Alpha's legs.
But not before slamming the {Heartstaff} flat against its front knees with a {Pulse Surge}, shattering them both. Normally that would have pushed you back the other way, but on a hunch you apply the {Counter Force} to yourself and sure enough the pushback against the Wolves legs feels like it was barely there allowing you to continue and skid under its belly rolling out and up onto your feet behind it.
You think you might be getting the feel for frantic melees. You note Moll in your peripheral vision chopping the head off an Alpha with his now flaming blade while it was held to ground with those massively thick chains he'd summoned earlier.
There's a sudden tightness in your chest for a moment that you push through, but it throws off your initiative. Space twists again leaving you in a new position and two Alphas nearby. One directly in front and one behind, you assume they're the same ones as before.
Rather than biting at you, the rear Alpha pressure sprays out a thin frothing green liquid as you stumble in surprise as it covers the waxy mud magic layer Marius' enchanted onto you earlier tonight.
'Acid!' you internally scream and flail. You are saved when after spending most of its strength to melt through your magic layer you feel some power connected to Evie snatch away the rest of its potency rendering it regular slime and robbing it of the ability to scour your face and body.
It is enough of a distraction that you fail to accommodate for the wolf in front of you when it takes a step to the right to spatially appear and bite at you from your left. Legle rescues your blunder, a thin coil of purple energy wrapping around the Alpha's snout and pulling it off to some new spatial location far off from you. It seems like the Metamagician may be starting to find a way around the stags that have made this encounter so treacherous. That makes one of you at least.
The Alpha that tried to melt you attempts a regular bite while you are still facing the opposite direction. But a flick of your wrist has the {Heartstaff} appearing long and thin in your hand behind your back and the other end already partially inside its open mouth.
What you do next would have been impossible earlier, but you are always connected to the {Heartstaff} now through {The World Beneath} even if you are not touching it. You knew it would answer you call and it does, the {Heartstaff} inflates into a sphere locking the Alpha's jaw open and making a mockery of its attempt to chomp you.
As you turn around to face the Alpha, the {Heartstaff} shifts into a long shaft down the wolf's throat. Its eyes go wide as it realises it can't breathe, distracted. You can't actually reform the {Heartstaff} to pierce into living tissue. But what you can do is have it weaken itself in a very specific pattern so that-
-when your {Pulse Surged} spin kick into the side of the Alpha's throat impacts, the {Heartstaff} inside is shattered into a hundred tiny razor-sharp pieces that all push through the tender inner layers of its neck and shred everything.
The utterly shocked Alpha hacks up a plentiful amount of blood and drops, unmoving. {Objective Awareness} is more helpful than you'd thought, this whole fight you've been able to apply your movements far more efficiently than you think you'd ever have managed before.
Space begins to twist and then immediately doesn't. Your Essence Sight catches the echo of Plasil's shade lady cleaving one of the stag's in half. Clearly some workaround the creature couldn't avoid. In the very next moment the tide shifts within the Strands and you see Legle point his fingers at the remaining stag in the short period it's trying to regain control of the formerly cooperative spatial-magic effort.
"Pow," he says. The stag's magic rebels and it immediately compresses into a ball the size of your fist, black ichored blood that could not possibly fit within the tiny space spraying out in every direction over everyone.
There's that tightness in your chest again, worse than before. You push it away with extra Essence, any injuries can wait.
The battle enters its final stanza. The corrupting intelligence in this forest has underestimated you all, the lumbering bear never even managing to join the fray before most of its coterie were cut down. Six Alphas remain (including one with familiar broken front knees), Stephen corralling and herding them easily with space returned to normal as glowing blue vines rise out of the ground to force the wolves together. Tovak's swirling violet dagger copies starting to stab into them from any direction they are not currently looking.
The rest of you turn to the bear and resume your original formation as Captain Martin and Moll restore the previously ineffective lion/chain combination front barrier.
"It's the Relay, bring it down," the Captain orders everyone.
Though your adrenaline begins to subside. The fight is not over, but you honestly can't imagine what you have to contribute against a creature that huge.
You're liable to get yourself swatted and crushed just for trying. You're more tired than you thought you'd be, you can't even figure out which Source it is you've pushed too far. You thought you'd managed it better but clearly not. Best to remain ready to move out of the way, your biggest contribution right now is staying on the look out for any more unwelcome surprises.
As the bear nears the barrier your vision goes hazy for a moment. There's a sharp pain in your chest and you hack up a small glob of frothy blood into your hand.
Everything is suddenly spinning. There's a loud crash, but you don't know what direction things are anymore. Colours and sounds starting to lose proper meaning. Did someone say your name? You're not sure.
There's that pain in your chest again. Expanding and much sharper now. You're kneeling on the ground, it seems there's more red blood on the forest soil. Ha. It's on your hands too, how'd it get there? Mum's gonna be mad if you get it on your clothes.
"Marius no! It's got reflecti-" you hear someone say, before a burning man missing an arm falls near you. Is it dangerous here?
The pain comes much worse this time spreading out from your sternum and puncturing what feels like just about your everything.
Now.
You're not sure how you know, but it's the right time to activate {Sample Space} for a second and whoa.
You're not sure what you just did, but there were a bunch of nasty feeling connecty tendrils between the people-glows and the bear-glow and you like… undid them… or something. You trust Sample-Lilly, she knows what she's doing.
Your head is on the ground amongst all the blood now and it feels sticky on your face. Gosh, you hope it's not yours! So tired…
The edges of your vision grow dark, your eyelids heavy.
The bear dies. You don't know how you know, but its dead. The foulness around you shrinking backward further into the forest. You guess. Thinking is really hard right now.
: PRIMARY ERROR: :INCORRECT DESIGNATION: :COUNTERMAND: :INVALID VESSEL: :ABORTING: :OVERRIDE: :REDEFINE: :INCEPTION CHANNEL SET:
Linking to the last scrap of your waking mind, the slumbering part reminds you of something very important. Whatever is left of you tries with everything that it has to keep the Essence Link open to your father, the only thing stopping the foulness from continuing its pollution within him. Right here right now, your life could have gone a very different direction. But on this {Critical Pivot} of a moment, the link to your dad remains strong.
You fade into the darkness and drift to a place so alien you'll never remember anything you see.
Cruel tendrilled hands begin the finishing touches on her grizzly work.
End of Arc 1
- - - - - - - - - -
"Valerie, play time's over. I've got a fix on our next target."
"Oh, awesome! Ev̵̩̜̦̐̀ë̸̹́̈́̄ryon̴̦͑e̶̙̽͆̋ di̵͕͖̊̀e. Let's go get em Abby!"
- - - - - - - - - -
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Choice Time:
*** Make sure you copy paste exactly from the options, the only change is adding 'X's.
*** Approval/Multi-Voting Allowed. (Do it all in one post or tally won't count it properly)
[Dream within the Forest]: Level up 4 -> 5
[ ] [DreamLVL] She noticed even the smallest eddies in the current.
[ ] [DreamLVL] The root grew between the rock for years, until finally it split.
[ ] [DreamLVL] It could not lash out at her, she was friend to all.
[ ] [DreamLVL] She carried it with her always, no matter how far apart they drifted.
[Dream within the Forest]: Milestone
Divergence at L - - (x80% to Misalignment Chance) (DC 50x0.8=40)
[ ] [Milestone] Do more with Essence. (x150%) (DC 40x1.5=60)
- [ ] [Milestone-Essence] Awareness - Outer (DC 60)
- [ ] [Milestone-Essence] Awareness - Inner (DC 60)
- [ ] [Milestone-Essence] Shaping - Intuit (DC 60)
- [ ] [Milestone-Essence] Shaping - Directed (DC 60)
- [ ] [Milestone-Essence] Source - Innate (x150%) (DC 60x1.5=90)
- [ ] [Milestone-Essence] Source - Channel (DC 60)
[ ] [Milestone] Extend a Power's potential.
- [ ] [Milestone-Power] {Golden Rapture} (x150%) (DC 40x1.5=60)
- [ ] [Milestone-Power] {Whispers of Life} (DC 40)
- [ ] [Milestone-Power] {In thy Likeness} (DC 40)
- [ ] [Milestone-Power] {Collective Communion} (x150%) (DC 40x1.5=60)
[X] [DwtFAME] I embrace the connection between all things. (Chapter 2.1)
[Cleaver of Fortune]: Level up 2 -> 3
[ ] [CleaverLVL] It looked harmless, but fate told her the truth.
[ ] [CleaverLVL] A moment to consider. Then she understood her odds.
[ ] [CleaverLVL] She stabbed him in the heart, to kill his lover.
[ ] [CleaverLVL] No one knew her future, not even herself.
Normal: Fifth Ethos Selection:
[Striker] (Lesser): (Pithe)
The application of force is far more than simply being faster, stronger or smarter. There are ways that creation wishes us to move, methods of offense and defence that it favours. The Striker listens to the cumulative tradition of all those who have drawn from the Resonance, their seemingly counterintuitive actions often building to a single devastating climax. Force is pitting your Will and desire against the static and opposing the dynamic. All physical movements are at their foundation actually entirely meta-physical. It is manoeuvring for advantage within this meta-physical realm where all contests are truly decided. The Striker never wastes a single drop of sweat, for even their heartbeat matches the rhythm of fate.
[Quickwrit Stennovoker] (Common): (Mana) | Unique
Your father forced hour upon hour on you learning the most basic of runic carvings to the utmost height of meaningless precision. You harbour a unique and profound dislike for such mind numbing perfection and reject it utterly. Good enough is literally good enough, you will walk a path none before you have ever taken. What others spend hours to etch into unmoving stone to last generations, you instantly manifest into the air itself for immediate effect. You don't need a barrier that will last for two years in two weeks, you need one that will last two seconds now. Your only limit is what you can design.
[My Resolution, Thy Bedrock] (Common): (Essence)
The danger of slowly losing track of who we set out to be is one so terrifying most choose to deliberately ignore it. You need not ever fear becoming what you are not, the truth of your origins will only grow deeper and more firm over time. Others will find themselves more solid and at ease in your presence. Decay will pause, decoherence will suspend, unravelling will be held in place. Whatever someone has been, you can always help them rediscover; no matter how lost they have become. Your very nature is a firm foundation on which the unstable may gain respite. You are the objective constant around which change must orbit.
[Needlepoint Construction] (Common): (Flow)
The art of singular attention is a mostly lost one. What people call concentration and meditation are poor imitations of a truly sharpened focus. Your patience is an immutable wall, unable to be worn down. Stress that would shatter a paragon of fortitude sloughs off you without finding purchase. Your mind is not simply solid, but polished to a brilliant shine. Every time you try something, you will do it better. When the occasion requires it, there is no idle thought, no distraction, simply the goal and the meticulous steps required to succeed.
[Overlooked Maiden] (Common): (Flow)
You are exceptional. You know it, the evidence is clearly written on the wall for anyone bothering to look. Yet time and time again no one even considers you might be more than meets the eye. Each uncovered peculiarity is immediately presumed to be your sole defining feature. When something of note is discovered, you are presumed too young or naïve to contribute to the discussion. This is the story of your life, zero to twelve. So be it, ignorance and assumption have been your chains since birth, but you will make your bindings theirs. Be passed over in plain sight, dismissed from suspicion with casual ease. Witnesses won't be able to place your face. After-action reports will conflict with each other. You are the Forgotten Enigma, less than wind.
[Obstinate Rejection] (Rare): (Oath)
Your commitment is a razor-sharp edge, a crushing force, a scything glaive. You will not be deterred from your beliefs. You cannot be convinced to relent. If the whole world disagrees than it is the whole world that must be corrected for their error. Every denial armours you further, every dismissal further hones your blade. The words that have hurt you are now your sticks and stones, break their bones at your leisure.
[I Tear the Veil] (Rare): (Oath) {Inverted}
Secrets; secrets everywhere. The spectre of denied knowledge follows you wherever you go, it's enough to drive you crazy! No more! If they will not share their secrets willingly, then you will take them by force. Gain a presence and defiling charisma so meta-physically deep as to reach out and wrench hold of information you should not know. Shape memory and mystery into weapons of rending horror. Mother's will forget their children's names, soldiers their orders, hearts how to beat, lungs how to breathe. You will inflict your own wounds onto your enemies a hundred times over, hollow souls littering your wake. They can tell you the easy way, or have it ripped from their corpse.
[Sorcerer] (Mythic): (Mana)
Magic Focal Concept: Nature (Rare)
The Trees have spoken to you of a deeper truth that lies within all who take breath. The drive that unites all life under its wing. Instinct, wild and feral, the vicious will to thrive in any circumstance. Tap into the core of your own and other's beings, release the potential forgotten by all but the most simple of life. Lead the pack. Split the rock. Burn with passion and ignite others'. You are the catalyst for immense evolution and change, the top of all natural hierarchies. Your very essence shall demand respect. Your innermost self proudly on display, shame can no longer touch you.
Normal: Fifth Ethos Selection:
[ ] [N:FES] [Striker]
[ ] [N:FES] [Quickwrit Stennovoker]
[ ] [N:FES] [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock]
[ ] [N:FES] [Needlepoint Construction]
[ ] [N:FES] [Overlooked Maiden]
[ ] [N:FES] [Obstinate Rejection]
[ ] [N:FES] [I Tear the Veil]
[ ] [N:FES] [Sorcerer]
SPECIAL: Foundational Ethos Selection:
[Rapid Iterator | 2873-2A, Efficient Tension Sustainment] (Foundational): (Essence)
Ideal placement would be regions wherein dominant occupants are no more than an order of magnitude beyond typical imbued predators. Recommend limits on level of sentience allowed in constructions unless local entities are sufficient to resist oversaturation. Typical opening parameter should be to evenly contest integrator forces with upscaled facsimiles of existing wildlife and coordinate their movements, then tweak to keep stress levels within the optimal zone of development. Advise life-analogous constructions be rendered infertile to avoid non-productive exponential threats. Recommend limits on quantity of streamlining boons so as to not trivialize related Vector incentives. :::GEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION ONLY:::
[Towering Edifice to Heaven | 7958-A Series, Regional Stressor Event] (Foundational): (Deific)
Recommend use only to rebalance conflict trending too far toward an unscheduled genocide resolution; re-establish status quo through new equalising variables. Pseudo-matter imposition constraints relaxed, though care should be taken not to generate synergy cascades and unintentionally disrupt an otherwise stabilized situation. Strength of initial ranging entities should be severely constrained so as to not eliminate existing inhabitants; the goal is redistribution not eradication. Toleration of Domestication has not been granted for this iteration, upscale investment arbitrarily to resist any long term group suppression. :::GEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION ONLY:::
[Reinterpretation Seed | 566-B, Manoth Placement Approval Only ] (Foundational): (Oath) {Inverted}
{{Oh my. What have you done Ev'aclliál? Hmm… Here, pick mine.}} Case by Case implementation only. Manoth has agreed to not disrupt the overall plan, but is permitted minor experimentation in sidelined regions. Placement preferable in static environmental conditions not suitable for more subtle progression stimulation. Regions with low biodiversity would be a pragmatic choice. Artefact generation is forbidden due to risk of regionally disruptive synergies being too great; specific appeals tentatively allowed. Exponential Threat Creation is henceforth explicitly restricted. :::GEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION ONLY:::
[Malleable Elemental Pioneer | 1000-A, 'No Focal Concept Selected'] (Foundational): (Mana)
Density should never drop below a single instance per 20000 square kilometres in identified high-magic regions. Sideline regions may diverge upward to one per 200000. Recommend progression not be left in omni-state on placement, but customized to tangentially match nearby premium Integrators. Spellworks should likewise be situated within a reasonable and reachable scope for suppression attempts. Defensive focus is recommended as overall temperament to avoid permanent loss of biodiversity to surrounding region, though ambient leakage to hasten discovery is appropriate. :::GEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION ONLY:::
[Malice Labyrinth | 0017, Discontinued Indefinitely] (Foundational): (Pithe)
Has proven counter-productive to stimulation goals, suppression attempts are either totally routed or so overwhelming as to be equally fruitless. Lack of clear goals and use of misdirection instead of direct confrontation results in loss of promising resources for little gain. Meagre benefits of enhancing mental frameworks could be better inspired by Flow Harvest Vectors. Recommend repurposing as an area-denial placement option, but significant redesign will first be necessary. Compensation approved for inconvenienced Weavers. :::GEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION ONLY:::
[Infernal Realm Anchor | 0414-C, Demi-plane Overlay] (Foundational): (Mana)
Discovery chance should be tightly controlled, Layer Magic holds unacceptable chances of Integrators breaching Melange boundaries, endangering both their kin and the plan. Lesser Infernals also often exceed secondary treaty conditions. Should only be used to introduce specific innovations at required critical points for ongoing stimulation as the Melange Tapestry continues to mature. Arbitrary limiters and complications should be implemented in all associated Spellworks and black-boxed beyond indivine capacity. In the event of inappropriate progress, a genocide resolution may be necessary as a forestalling remedy. :::GEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION ONLY:::
[Blanket Weaponiser | 7441-C, Generic Inspiring Obstacle] (Foundational): (No Set Source)
Offcuts and deprioritised weavings can be freely incorporated into this general purpose placement. Temperament set to match hostility of surroundings, overall effect will be to increase number and potency of imbued over time to stall permanent populating of the local area and allow more premium iterations to be expressed. Produces novel designs surprisingly often. Place between moderate to large powerbases to encourage healthy conflict. Resource generation limits moderately loosened, construct availability further restricted. :::GEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION ONLY:::
[Championed Uplift | 0000-A, 2nd Integration Stage Initializer] (Foundational): (Legend)
Tailored placement; should be attuned only to one identified Premium Integrator at a time. Provided identity fracture trials do not result in a decohered subject, the sponsored Integration Vector can have its layer-limiters removed. Weavers are reminded that inducing Melange bleedthrough on a subject who has failed their trials may irretrievably scatter your Divinity, the trials are there by definition to test compatibility before the fact. We have patched most loopholes and if we catch you, you'll be Identity-Wiped at best (all your Vectors will also be moved to the back of the queues when you reincorporate.). Current projections before widespread 2nd Stage Initialisations can be reliably applied without prior testing; fourteen Millennia. :::GEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION ONLY::: :::IMMEDIATE RECALL MANDATORY:::
[Library of Achievement | 5034-CD, Ancient Recaller] (Foundational): (Concordance/Legend)
The true purpose of this placement should always remain hidden, intuitive concordant rearrangement would be too difficult to keep contained within mortal hands and would restrict the ability to use finesse instead of brute force in future adjustments. An on-plane agent is necessary to shepherd otherwise promising candidates that are off track on dead-end integration paths toward the temporary placement site. Realigning fates in more conducive directions shall be occluded from mortal notice by more obvious boons for their suppression attempts. The specific feats granted should be tangentially related to an existing Integration Vector such that the subject assumes it is merely a divergent expansion and does not investigate further. Placement sites should be recalled on decade timescales to prevent examination of such a non-standard methodology. Provided Feats should only be tied to those of us more than half integrated, to prevent application instability.
:::GEOLOGICAL INTEGRATION ONLY::: :::CAUTION: 5034-CD UNSTABLE:::
SPECIAL: Foundational Ethos Selection:
[ ] [S:FES] [Rapid Iterator | 2873-2A, Efficient Tension Sustainment]
[ ] [S:FES] [Towering Edifice to Heaven | 7958-A Series, Regional Stressor Event]
[ ] [S:FES] [Reinterpretation Seed | 566-B, Manoth Placement Approval Only ]
[ ] [S:FES] [Malleable Elemental Pioneer | 1000-A, 'No Focal Concept Selected']
[ ] [S:FES] [Malice Labyrinth | 0017, Discontinued Indefinitely]
[ ] [S:FES] [Infernal Realm Anchor | 0414-C, Demi-plane Overlay]
[ ] [S:FES] [Blanket Weaponiser | 7441-C, Generic Inspiring Obstacle]
[ ] [S:FES] [Championed Uplift | 0000-A, 2nd Integration Stage Initializer]
[ ] [S:FES] [Library of Achievement | 5034-CD, Ancient Recall]
Scope of Transmutation: I'd have to alter the internals of Lilly's Soul on a level deeply fundamental such that she could not possibly remain as she was before. The functions I was mating her to were so alien that I needed to ask myself how far I was going to go? Whatever choice I made, there would be no going back. Lilly would be what she would be.
The Exalted Flesh:
An Improved Human.
I didn't think this could actually be an option. But Lilly already had a hint of Divinity within her, so I could simply further entwine that link into the incoming Vector. It would mean she'd easily lose any progress she'd made asserting her Domain whenever she was significantly harmed and would not possess an innate talent for utilizing her new capabilities. But some of what was lost could be reclaimed with effort and time. It would also allow me to limit the amount of internal modifications necessary, making her less obviously inhuman to those suspicious enough to check. She would still possess a Crystal-Analogue, but it's functionally would be restricted and unfamiliar to her. On the plus side, magics designed to find Foundational Integration Vectors would often fail to notice Lilly.
The Core Anchor:
The typical setup, modified to function with Lilly's vessel.
Harm and influence on the extremities of her vessel (anything outside the Crystal Analogue) would rapidly be overwritten by the norm over the course of minutes. The only method of long-lasting influence others could have over her would be to directly target the core of her vessel. This is a compromise between the greatest strengths and weaknesses of each side of the dichotomy, she would be neither completely vulnerable nor invulnerable to various forms of attack. Still, destroying her body would temporarily incapacitate Lilly for hours and those capable of destroying Crystal Analogues could do so just as easily to her through raw application of might. This level of transmutation would open up entirely new opportunities, though it might be hard to fully hide external evidence of the change. I'd keep those signs confined to sections she normally wore clothes over.
The Will Form:
Would be practically invulnerable, until it suddenly wasn't.
Although destroying the crystal analogue is often the cue for decoupling from the Melange Layer, it is not an actual limitation of such an integration, merely an arbitrary restriction I need not apply. This would cause Lilly's vessel to be no more real than any other pseudo-material within her Domain. Harming it would not harm her, as her self-conception would simply reassert itself within moments of any change, including complete disintegration. This would however render Lilly into a Concept without a Form, making her uniquely vulnerable to Concept-targeting modes of attack such as many subsets of Oath and Mana. I am quite skilled at cutting off most things that could reach her, but I am not omniscient. Many magics would interact counter-intuitively with Lilly and it would be a constant effort to evade widespread discovery of this change.
Scope of Transmutation:
[ ] [SoT] Exalted Flesh
[ ] [SoT] Core Anchor
[ ] [SoT] Will Form
/\ Final result will be a blend skewed toward highest vote (unless more than 80% are for the same one I guess).
- - - - - - - - - -
- In case I didn't make it clear in Chapter, Lilly identified whatever is affecting her father is using Essence at least in part to do it.
- Point of note: [I Tear the Veil] feels quite threatening. There's more callous anger there than Lilly thinks she's ever actually felt on the issue.
- A Unique Ethos will never appear on another character, that's all. It can come up again later, don't read too much into it.
- Just another friendly reminder that higher rarity Ethea are not inherently better, they are defined to a narrower more focused concept (in general).
- Lilly as you can see knows basic access Glyphs and miscellaneous utility Runes. Not really relevant outside of circumstances like opening an unlocked magic door.
- Choice awaits you. Do you pick an Ethos with a new Source and explore it, or do you pick an Ethos for a Source you already have and find out how that works.
- The Foundational Ethos you choose will dramatically impact and extend the way you interact with that Source, including all current and future Ethos of that type.
- Lilly is getting a little more cynical as the night/morning wears on, poor girl. Her hopes for dad being okay getting dashed has been the biggest contributor.
- /\ Which was my main reason for the chapter title.
- Look, I wish I was a good enough writer to reliably convey someone gaining magical insight into concepts like inertia and momentum/etc without using those technical names. I'm not. Just assume that's not what Lilly is actually thinking word-for-word. I'll make sure it never shows up in actual spoken dialogue.
- Technically I should make the winning Foundational Ethos a probability distribution in line with my new rules for Evie… but it would be a bit of jerk move for such a crazy important choice. So, we'll just say she goes with the one she thinks Lilly would like best so you get to choose.
- Point of note: [I Tear the Veil] feels quite threatening. There's more callous anger there than Lilly thinks she's ever actually felt on the issue.
- A Unique Ethos will never appear on another character, that's all. It can come up again later, don't read too much into it.
- Just another friendly reminder that higher rarity Ethea are not inherently better, they are defined to a narrower more focused concept (in general).
- Lilly as you can see knows basic access Glyphs and miscellaneous utility Runes. Not really relevant outside of circumstances like opening an unlocked magic door.
- Choice awaits you. Do you pick an Ethos with a new Source and explore it, or do you pick an Ethos for a Source you already have and find out how that works.
- The Foundational Ethos you choose will dramatically impact and extend the way you interact with that Source, including all current and future Ethos of that type.
- Lilly is getting a little more cynical as the night/morning wears on, poor girl. Her hopes for dad being okay getting dashed has been the biggest contributor.
- /\ Which was my main reason for the chapter title.
- Look, I wish I was a good enough writer to reliably convey someone gaining magical insight into concepts like inertia and momentum/etc without using those technical names. I'm not. Just assume that's not what Lilly is actually thinking word-for-word. I'll make sure it never shows up in actual spoken dialogue.
- Technically I should make the winning Foundational Ethos a probability distribution in line with my new rules for Evie… but it would be a bit of jerk move for such a crazy important choice. So, we'll just say she goes with the one she thinks Lilly would like best so you get to choose.
- - - - - - - - - -
- Luck. Stupid dumb luck that your expansion came while with Marius who cannot easily sense Pithe.
- You had some real easy DCs for Namesake based Ethea given this chapter's events, nevermind you failed them. 🤷
- You just missed a roll that would have given you an excellent new insight into one of your [Cleaver of Fortune] powers, maybe next time.
- You also missed a roll that would have shown a really cool innovative use for {Wood Memory} in a fight. Oh well.
- Stealth Ambush and 'Triple Alpha Dogpile' were the two major 'death flag' scenarios where I was actually doing rolls that could have led to immediate death-saves. You never got that close though, every time you failed your rolls an assistance roll made its DC to intervene.
- You did nearly have the bear absolutely wreck everyone after you failed the 'Evies poor timing' roll (not entirely in her control). I let {The Ladder} do a retroactive advice roll which it passed, took a bit of tweaking to go back and edit. Good thing too, Legle would have taken much longer reversing those wound-transfer Essence links the bear busted out. The Party had a good shot at winning without you, but not without casualties.
- You passed it easily. But just up and fleeing at the start of the Ambush was on the cards.
- Unfortunately a lot of your recent emotional coping rolls have been trending toward 'bleak acceptance'. Better than being paralysed with fear, but brings its own problems.
- You had some real easy DCs for Namesake based Ethea given this chapter's events, nevermind you failed them. 🤷
- You just missed a roll that would have given you an excellent new insight into one of your [Cleaver of Fortune] powers, maybe next time.
- You also missed a roll that would have shown a really cool innovative use for {Wood Memory} in a fight. Oh well.
- Stealth Ambush and 'Triple Alpha Dogpile' were the two major 'death flag' scenarios where I was actually doing rolls that could have led to immediate death-saves. You never got that close though, every time you failed your rolls an assistance roll made its DC to intervene.
- You did nearly have the bear absolutely wreck everyone after you failed the 'Evies poor timing' roll (not entirely in her control). I let {The Ladder} do a retroactive advice roll which it passed, took a bit of tweaking to go back and edit. Good thing too, Legle would have taken much longer reversing those wound-transfer Essence links the bear busted out. The Party had a good shot at winning without you, but not without casualties.
- You passed it easily. But just up and fleeing at the start of the Ambush was on the cards.
- Unfortunately a lot of your recent emotional coping rolls have been trending toward 'bleak acceptance'. Better than being paralysed with fear, but brings its own problems.
- - - - - - - - - -
Current XP:
[Dream within the Forest] Lvl 5: 775/2100 (+944)
[Cleaver of Fortune] Lvl 3: 645/1000 (+314)
[Brave Blood] Lvl 3: 953/1000 (+353)
[Effervescent Animus] Lvl 1: 2999/3000 (+993) (Additional +523 Delayed, Evie's too busy right now)
Character Sheet and Maps: Public - It's a Girl's World
Last edited:
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Holy cripes.
That was Bad
But we still apparently are threading the god damn needle? Holy hell this fucker doesn't fuck around, but Lilly was clutch for all she was the rookie here, and while Papa's hurt beyond healing we could at least stop the spread hopefully until we're stronger.
And somehow, hilariously, nobody noticed Lilly picking up another Expansion.
But apparently Lilly was born as part of some sinister divine plot? And Evie just noticed the divinity and is taking advantage of that to do... Things?
Man though, fucking {Inverted} Ethae, it really does look like they're all about taking a traumatic experience and turning it into power. Which gets horrific results as a direct result of "Power from trauma is never pretty"
And Foundational Ethae appear to be 'Correctors' when something in the universe breaks. Which involves becoming meguca apparently?
That was Bad
But we still apparently are threading the god damn needle? Holy hell this fucker doesn't fuck around, but Lilly was clutch for all she was the rookie here, and while Papa's hurt beyond healing we could at least stop the spread hopefully until we're stronger.
And somehow, hilariously, nobody noticed Lilly picking up another Expansion.
But apparently Lilly was born as part of some sinister divine plot? And Evie just noticed the divinity and is taking advantage of that to do... Things?
Man though, fucking {Inverted} Ethae, it really does look like they're all about taking a traumatic experience and turning it into power. Which gets horrific results as a direct result of "Power from trauma is never pretty"
And Foundational Ethae appear to be 'Correctors' when something in the universe breaks. Which involves becoming meguca apparently?
Last edited:
- Location
- Who Knows Where
I'm still re-reading this absolute firework of an update, but I implore people to check the Character Sheet before casting votes.
I don't want to be selfish especially after how amazing this narrative climax has been, but given the amount (and importance) of these vote choices, would a moratorium on voting be okay @Slyvena ?
I don't want to be selfish especially after how amazing this narrative climax has been, but given the amount (and importance) of these vote choices, would a moratorium on voting be okay @Slyvena ?
Slyvena
I don't like pie.
- Location
- Pie Shop
Can you find the end of a circle?
She's managing.
I won't force one. Lilly already has an unfair advantage by having a group of older people help shape her decisions. That's practically a super power on its own.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Well, as long as she's doing her best!
Cripes though, I dunno what's going on here, some kind of corrupted Elf or something is doing this? He mentioned something about "If this was Broken we'd all be dead" but we would have died probably if [Cleaver of Fortune] didn't come back online at exactly that moment. We also failed to take down that ninja ranger with the fucking apocalypse arrows who may very well be our Enemy.
Also, apparently a {Locus} isn't an OCP? Good to know! Though it's curious that he's so insistent that we need to do this first....
Oh.
OH
I get it, if Lilly just jumped right in, she'd have to go through the corruption first, and it would have restrained her ability to act. By taking out the Relay, we've disrupted the... Rampant One? Broken One's? Control enough that it can't just mass spread its influence so easily anymore--which means we would have a good opportunity to act.
Well, right up until Evie decided to bring Meguca mode online in the middle of a terrifying ambush and forgetting that humans don't cope well with important body parts turning into Soul Gems.
Last edited:
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
[My Resolution, Thy Bedrock]
I want this one so MUCH...
[Overlooked Maiden]
...This would be SO handy for avoiding complications, though it would come with complications of its own if we ever have ambitions of being a mover or shaker.
I want this one so MUCH...
[Overlooked Maiden]
...This would be SO handy for avoiding complications, though it would come with complications of its own if we ever have ambitions of being a mover or shaker.
Slyvena
I don't like pie.
- Location
- Pie Shop
If you read her 'Pick Me' Ethos pitch, she aludded to knowing of some weird family connection between the two of you. She wasn't expecting to find what she did though..
Honestly the whole party would have probably still won without you. The Ambush was way more than what they were expecting, but most if not all of the forward group would have likely survived along with at least one of the rear.
Of course you probably want to ask yourself why Captain Martin took such a small group in in the first place.
Mystery abounds.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
The thing about [Overlooked Maiden] is that it's almost certain that any society that has existed a non-trivial amount of time in this setting probably has counterplay for this kind of perception-fuckery, and the very presence of it would be a deep red flag.
And I don't think it'll be strong enough out the gate to hide our contribution here. So I feel as nice as it is, it's more trouble than it's worth.
Bedrock though? Bedrock is very appealing, but so is the Stenvoker. Sorcerer looks super cool but also looks like it'd take a lot of investment to work, while Stenvoker lets us put Lilly's runecraft knowledge to use in the real world in a pinch.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
...
Oh my god, Evie is the being tied to these flowers, isn't she?
She did mention she was only 'Nine years old'... Lilly didn't get her Name until she was 3, didn't she?
Or alternately, it took that three extra years for her to 'Cook' before gaining self-awareness.
Slyvena
I don't like pie.
- Location
- Pie Shop
Lol. Lilly was named at birth.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Hey now wild mass guessing is fun!
Anyway, I'm just doing my analysis here. You Are confirming at least that Stennovoker isn't going to be locked out if we don't take it here, right?
That aside... The fact the Arc is over does seem to suggest that the Guard is going to have things under control from here on out, which means we're probably don't need to choose our current Ethos with immediate survival in mind.
Oh! Just checking BTW, if we fail to hit the DC for our Milestone Expansion, do we just get nothing or is there a backfire?
Last edited:
Slyvena
I don't like pie.
- Location
- Pie Shop
Correct.
Sorceror and Stennovoker are both Mana based, so there would be similarities in how you'd develop them. Sorceror you can lean on what [Dream Within the Forest] has/can teach you. Stennovoker on your solid foundation in runic theory.
- Location
- San Ramon, CA
In the character sheet, the "Soul Maw" seen in 1.9 has been fully replaced with "Geological Meta-Anchor" in 1.12. So the "Maw" portion of her soul structure seems to not be a problem. It's the "to make this work, you need to not quite be human anymore" bit that's a problem.
At any rate, some comments on our options (but it's midnight where I'm at, so I'm not voting on sleep deprivation):
- Manoth seems to be unlocking Reinterpretation Seed as a favor to Evie. Assuming that they are "on the same team", that might be a helpful tiebreaker if we can't parse out the language. Of course, the Spirits may have a different interpretation of what is "helpful" than we do.
- The theory is that [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock] can be used to restore Yolun, but can we use it as a stabilizer for ourselves? Lilly's losing a lot of emotional supports right now, and what with the Spirit's changing the hardware, the chances of "value drift" are starting to rise.
- I'm almost glad we didn't get a [Namesake] Ethos. I thought it would just be the name of Sarah's dead sister who died adventuring, not more Spirit nonsense.
- Yeah, Inverted Ethos seem to be a response to pain. I think we should skip this one; Lilly's not in a good place to have access to this type of power.
Slyvena
I don't like pie.
- Location
- Pie Shop
New Title: "It's a Girls World - And it's always more Spirit Nonsense"
Also. Someone over on the Spacebattles mirror of this thread just met a Secret Challenge. Feel free to pop over there and see what they uncovered.
Huh, I thought Rapid Iterator made monsters, but never connected it to dungeon, now that you mentioned it, the rest of the other options does show hints here and there about locations
- Location
- Europe
I actually think that cleaver of fortune would make nearly impossible to break the overlooked maiden defenses.
If you can't rely on fate to eventually find out your target, it would be really hard to catch one with this new ethos, especially if they have already done the screening process and had the core of their abilities already recorded.
Last edited:
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Anyway, I've got a plan materializing, but while I work on that, here's some thoughts on the Foundational Ethae.
OVERALL FEELING:
Foundational Ethae are Moderator Intervention, full stop. Just reading all of these and the overall thrust seems to be a combination of "Take measures to ensure that the setting doesn't catastrophically collapse" paired with "Take measures to neutralize situations of high stability". It seems that conflict of some kind is necessary to handle... Whatever the fuck it is that gods and spirits do, and they neither want everyone to die nor do they want everyone to get into a comfortable rut and just stagnate there forever.
Foundational Ethae exist as Correctors, the fantasy setting equivalent of a mod dropping in and giving someone supernal abilities to ensure that things get back on trac... Except as we're learning here--the gods are currently under siege and something seems to be stirring up all of the seeded plotlines at the same time.
So, with that in mind.
Let us begin.
[Rapid Iterator | 2873-2A, Efficient Tension Sustainment] (Foundational): (Essence)
The name suggests that it's a "Throw shit at the wall until you find something that sticks". When you include the hypothesis of "A Foundation Ethos exists to balance an unbalanced equation", and the Source being Essence--when we read the description, what comes to mind for me is "Someone who shows up, generates a shitton of monsters from local wildlife, grants them supernatural powers, and rapidly adapts to..."
To...
changing circumstances, evolving and developing new countermeasures to counter local integrator forces.
Son of a Bitch! We're fighting a Rapid Iterator gone out of control, aren't we? That's why the Captain wanted us to move in here! And why if it was Broken we'd all be dead! If it was Broken it could send its best forces out of the fucking dungeon it's turning the forest into
So, yeah, Rapid Iterator is "Basically the boss we're fighting right now"
[Towering Edifice to Heaven | 7958-A Series, Regional Stressor Event] (Foundational): (Deific)
Towering Edifice to Heaven, Regional Stressor Event, Deific source... So it taps directly into the spirits for patronage. Reading the description, it suggests manifesting material ex-nihilo, and the purpose is that when 'Unscheduled' (And isn't that an example of Blue and Orange) Genocide is undergoing, that this is a correction that exists to get everyone to back off and stop trying to murder each other... Presumably by producing a new threat that requires at least tacit cooperation with one another. It also further limits how much strength can be 'Ranging'. Taking it all together? It looks like this is "Dungeon Core" mode where a Dungeon shows up and starts spitting out monsters, a dungeon that scales up to counter whenever people seem to have it under control. Notably, it establishes that this iteration cannot have the monsters be tamed. I suspect this will turn the Forest into a dungeon with Lilly as the master--and gives us a functionally inassailable base of operations to work with, since a Foundational Ethos usually isn't paired with an ambulatory human as its heart.
[Reinterpretation Seed | 566-B, Manoth Placement Approval Only ] (Foundational): (Oath) {Inverted}
Notably, Manoth is also the mastermind behind {Inverted Ethae}, something that's still in beta mode (Though I wonder if the fact we've had two show up in two consecutive activations got his attention? Either that or he and Evie are just friends and/or colleagues to begin with, which is why she had the authority to flag Lilly as a beta tester in the first place). Knowing what we know about {Inverted} Ethae, Manoth is... Uh, fascinated with the idea of trauma, and seems to be producing content that takes trauma and turns it into power. With that aside, we look at the description and we get... Not really a whole lot! Just that the Powers That Be would very much prefer that this only be used in areas of 'Low Biodiversity', and that 'If we can achieve our goals in a more subtle fashion please do it that way'. Whatever this is, it is very fucking vulgar and the equivalent of taking a gigantic hammer to the status quo.
--Temporary delay to scream at the fact I was putting this all together and missed the secret challenge because I was too busy trying to be comprehensive!
OVERALL FEELING:
Foundational Ethae are Moderator Intervention, full stop. Just reading all of these and the overall thrust seems to be a combination of "Take measures to ensure that the setting doesn't catastrophically collapse" paired with "Take measures to neutralize situations of high stability". It seems that conflict of some kind is necessary to handle... Whatever the fuck it is that gods and spirits do, and they neither want everyone to die nor do they want everyone to get into a comfortable rut and just stagnate there forever.
Foundational Ethae exist as Correctors, the fantasy setting equivalent of a mod dropping in and giving someone supernal abilities to ensure that things get back on trac... Except as we're learning here--the gods are currently under siege and something seems to be stirring up all of the seeded plotlines at the same time.
So, with that in mind.
Let us begin.
[Rapid Iterator | 2873-2A, Efficient Tension Sustainment] (Foundational): (Essence)
The name suggests that it's a "Throw shit at the wall until you find something that sticks". When you include the hypothesis of "A Foundation Ethos exists to balance an unbalanced equation", and the Source being Essence--when we read the description, what comes to mind for me is "Someone who shows up, generates a shitton of monsters from local wildlife, grants them supernatural powers, and rapidly adapts to..."
To...
changing circumstances, evolving and developing new countermeasures to counter local integrator forces.
Son of a Bitch! We're fighting a Rapid Iterator gone out of control, aren't we? That's why the Captain wanted us to move in here! And why if it was Broken we'd all be dead! If it was Broken it could send its best forces out of the fucking dungeon it's turning the forest into
So, yeah, Rapid Iterator is "Basically the boss we're fighting right now"
[Towering Edifice to Heaven | 7958-A Series, Regional Stressor Event] (Foundational): (Deific)
Towering Edifice to Heaven, Regional Stressor Event, Deific source... So it taps directly into the spirits for patronage. Reading the description, it suggests manifesting material ex-nihilo, and the purpose is that when 'Unscheduled' (And isn't that an example of Blue and Orange) Genocide is undergoing, that this is a correction that exists to get everyone to back off and stop trying to murder each other... Presumably by producing a new threat that requires at least tacit cooperation with one another. It also further limits how much strength can be 'Ranging'. Taking it all together? It looks like this is "Dungeon Core" mode where a Dungeon shows up and starts spitting out monsters, a dungeon that scales up to counter whenever people seem to have it under control. Notably, it establishes that this iteration cannot have the monsters be tamed. I suspect this will turn the Forest into a dungeon with Lilly as the master--and gives us a functionally inassailable base of operations to work with, since a Foundational Ethos usually isn't paired with an ambulatory human as its heart.
[Reinterpretation Seed | 566-B, Manoth Placement Approval Only ] (Foundational): (Oath) {Inverted}
Notably, Manoth is also the mastermind behind {Inverted Ethae}, something that's still in beta mode (Though I wonder if the fact we've had two show up in two consecutive activations got his attention? Either that or he and Evie are just friends and/or colleagues to begin with, which is why she had the authority to flag Lilly as a beta tester in the first place). Knowing what we know about {Inverted} Ethae, Manoth is... Uh, fascinated with the idea of trauma, and seems to be producing content that takes trauma and turns it into power. With that aside, we look at the description and we get... Not really a whole lot! Just that the Powers That Be would very much prefer that this only be used in areas of 'Low Biodiversity', and that 'If we can achieve our goals in a more subtle fashion please do it that way'. Whatever this is, it is very fucking vulgar and the equivalent of taking a gigantic hammer to the status quo.
--Temporary delay to scream at the fact I was putting this all together and missed the secret challenge because I was too busy trying to be comprehensive!
Last edited:
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Okay, so, since it's been confirmed that a Foundational Ethos is creating a Dungeon with Lilly as the Dungeon Master, everything makes a lot more fucking sense--we're basically selecting the parameters of the Dungeon here, and how obvious it is that Lilly is the Dungeon Core--and that's why she needed to change Lilly's body! You can't have a Dungeon Core inside a human without replacing important parts!
Christ, Foundational Ethos. It's literally right there!
You build things on top of Foundations!
Christ, Foundational Ethos. It's literally right there!
You build things on top of Foundations!
Last edited:
- Location
- Who Knows Where
At the risk of sounding petulant, I was going to guess that hahaha. Thanks teancum007, having confirmation is great!
Good points @darknessworld , it would work especially well with the Exalted Flesh choice. My concern is that Lilly's ability to hide is ultimately secondary to her developing abilities, more specifically, ones that will make Valerie and Abby no longer a problem. We don't know that Overlooked Maiden would hide her from them.
Dungeonmaster Lilly is a big twist to what we know of the existing elements here (really wishing we knew what was happening Across the Ocean). That alone makes me inclined toward Manoth's choice, little that we know of them as it is (Evie knew them enough to be aware of their "pet project", and Evie promised to help Lilly in good faith). The others seem situational, or even dangerous to the proprietor, though I'm not ruling anything out yet.
Good points @darknessworld , it would work especially well with the Exalted Flesh choice. My concern is that Lilly's ability to hide is ultimately secondary to her developing abilities, more specifically, ones that will make Valerie and Abby no longer a problem. We don't know that Overlooked Maiden would hide her from them.
Dungeonmaster Lilly is a big twist to what we know of the existing elements here (really wishing we knew what was happening Across the Ocean). That alone makes me inclined toward Manoth's choice, little that we know of them as it is (Evie knew them enough to be aware of their "pet project", and Evie promised to help Lilly in good faith). The others seem situational, or even dangerous to the proprietor, though I'm not ruling anything out yet.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Man, what an update!
I would very much recommend we go for [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock] as our Ethos choice. This is still a Supernatural Horror kind of game, so getting an ability that lets us retain our sanity and sense of self in face of that inhuman horror is going to be vital. It's probably also going to be useful for dad and whatever happened to our friend from several updates ago, so while Sorceror and Overlooked Maiden both sound excellent I think [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock] is the best choice here.
I would very much recommend we go for [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock] as our Ethos choice. This is still a Supernatural Horror kind of game, so getting an ability that lets us retain our sanity and sense of self in face of that inhuman horror is going to be vital. It's probably also going to be useful for dad and whatever happened to our friend from several updates ago, so while Sorceror and Overlooked Maiden both sound excellent I think [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock] is the best choice here.
Slyvena
I don't like pie.
- Location
- Pie Shop
Holy Fucking Shit you don't need to scream long because-
-that's the other secret challenge phrase.
Yes. You are.
It's why you even have it as a selection option. Do bare in mind your Foundational Ethos will be modified to function with a human, so don't expect Dominion over an entire geographic region without putting in work.
+5 to Grasp on Foundational Ethos
There were the only two secret challenges this chapter guys. Freaking congrats.
Last edited: