So, if a kingdom has to start using good non-martial focused Ethea in the military beyond just the dregs, things are already going wrong for them. They are stemming the tide now but sacrificing their economic future.
That said, if you are intending for people to die anyway, there is a lot you can do. The human soul and its various tethers to the world are potent expendable resources.
No nation would deploy farmers straight from the fields, they'd take a while to 'prepare' them.
And I was going to say a fair bit more in a spoiler comment but figured it would be too much useful knowledge for this stage of the quest. I'll add this though.
None of those farmers nor the things they became would last a month beyond the conflict.
I was thinking in a conflict between two nations of roughly equal size the nation that attempted to use martial ethea only would lose against the nation that used martial ethea as well as conscripts, so everyone would feel compelled to use conscripts unless they overpowered their enemy by a large margin. The brutal calculus of war, and all that. Plus, many real medieval governments didn't seem to care too much that they could lose maybe half a percent of their population in a war that went really badly. In the grand scheme of things maybe they didn't consider it very significant, or maybe they just didn't take the long view, I'm not sure.
Although given that the combat losses were all men that wouldn't make as much of a dent in the next generation's size as would otherwise be the case. The loss of farmers wouldn't make much of a difference in food production in most places; the limiting factor on that was generally the amount of arable land rather than people available to work it. By the high middle ages there was always a surplus population pushed into being cottagers who did labor and trades for lack of land. They were the most marginal members of society, too, with the poorest and least assured incomes.
As for turning men into cannon fodder monsters, ick. We already had suspicions that the government was awful, but that's full on mustache twirling villainy. And it takes an impressive level of either fear or fanaticism to get people to go along with that sort of thing instead of killing the leader who suggests it.
That said, if you are intending for people to die anyway, there is a lot you can do. The human soul and its various tethers to the world are potent expendable resources.
No nation would deploy farmers straight from the fields, they'd take a while to 'prepare' them.
Your father shakes his head sadly. "You misunderstand. When I say focus, I mean focus. You'd be taught ways to narrow your Ethos, concentrate it to coax your subtle talent into something larger. A healer is all you'd ever be. Locked away somewhere safe."
I'd been underestimating the tools that a nation in this world would have developed over time. The study of Ethos and how to enhance or manipulate them has probably been the work of centuries of Lore Wardens. Hell, we may have gotten a taste of it when Lilly accidentally broke [True Song] by using it for something it wasn't designed for. There's probably some mad scientist saying like "Oh, you can have give any person any Ethos you want, if you've got the time and methods. But it's best if you start with something adjacent; there's a big difference between bending an Ethos and breaking it."
[X][DreamLVL] She carried it with her always, no matter how far apart they drifted.
[X][Milestone] Extend a Power's potential.
-[X][Milestone-Power] {Golden Rapture}
[X][CleaverLVL] It looked harmless, but fate told her the truth.
[X][N:FES] [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock]
[X][S:FES] [Towering Edifice to Heaven | 7958-A Series, Regional Stressor Event]
[X][DwtFAME] I embrace the connection between all things. (From chapter 1.11)
///
[X][SoT] Exalted Flesh No. of Votes: 17
[X][SoT] Core Anchor No. of Votes: 13
[X][SoT] Will Form No. of Votes: 2
(After some Randomizing:| Exalted Flesh: 55% Core Anchor: 45% Will Form: 0%)
(Secret Challenge Boon: +5 initial Grasp)
Arc 2
2 days later…
Chapter 2.1 - - - - Reaching for a lifeline 8th Day, 3rd Moon, LE 2302
(Afternoon)
I became cognizant and immediately got to work.
Sixty-one hours had passed since loss of consciousness.
Re-establishing connection to the vessel's nervous system, I sat up and surveyed my surroundings. They'd placed her in her original bedroom, clad in a simple shift. Sitting in the bed, I let my new sense swell out while beginning to formulate a plan to fulfill my directives.
The mother and father were aside each other in their room. Yolun Silas |Integration Vector:: [Iteration to Perfection]: Mana :: 31st 23rd Growth|
Liatris Silas [[Bloomling]] |Integration Vector:: [Service to Man]: Flow :: 41st Growth|
The brothers were near the home, outside. Zach Silas |Scheduled Vector Translation Channel:: 12D [Auctioned to Manoth]|
Micah Silas |Scheduled Vector Translation Channel:: 2Y4M13D [Generic Allocation]|
Marcus Silas |Scheduled Vector Translation Channel:: 5Y1M2D [Premium Allocation]|
Altogether none of them should be that difficult to avoid as I slipped away.
In fact, the horse not that farther off in the barn was exactly what I needed.
First priority was to get away from human civilisation. The risk factors had grown wildly unmanageable and the girl's vessel was sufficient to endure without aid from others now. There was no point staying here. I cut the essence link to the father. If I did not manage to sneak away unnoticed on my first try, his resumed corruption should offer a fresh distraction to slip away.
It was a shame I needed to leave on such a tight timescale. There was so much that could be done with the mother's deific fragment. But unless I was willing to settle for a paltry boon, the proper work would take weeks which I didn't have. Still, I could always return at a later date to claim it. If anything, she needed to die simply to cut off the numerous magics that could be used to target the girl through the matriarchal bloodline.
Using my Sensorium, I knew that there were no other witnesses nearby. If I wanted to solve that problem now, it was feasible I could simply murder the entire family and leave before anyone else came to check. But I didn't want people thinking an integration vector had inverted and coming after me. Having already witnessed some of what the girl could do, they'd commit everything they could to the hunt if they thought she'd turned.
No, better to simply disappear without a trace. Survival was my purpose for existence, it was against my nature to enact nonoptimal solutions. Short term gains at the cost of notoriety was a fool's trade. The family would live, for now. Once I established access to negative essence through a future Ethos I could likely prune and harvest them from any distance.
[My Resolution, Thy Bedrock] was attempting to restore her original consciousness, so I had to stall it for now. I'd have time to tinker and get it to recognise me as the original eventually. The {Attuned Locus} was silent and withdrawn within the Psychosomatic Bridge. I should have been given full control of it, but Ev'aclliál must have been too busy. I shut off {Collective Communion} for now, I'd override it when I had time. Right now, I needed to make the necessary changes and then leave.
Ev'aclliál's bud was undergoing expansion, I took control of the Gravitas Absorption Lines and directed them all into the [Towering Edifice to Heaven]. There was important work to do.
First, I focused on {Oaken Core} and {Essence Metabolism}, excellent general reinforcement Concepts. With beyond mortal understanding of their true nature, it was trivial for me to maximise their integration right to the limits of what [Dream within the Forest]'s anchor to the girl's soul could currently handle. In case I could not avoid people, I updated her physical features for added social viability too.
(I would need to work on some concepts from the other integration vectors later, right now I didn't want to push too far and accidently decohere her.)
That meant there was only one thing left for me to do before saying goodbye to Harmuph and the civilised world.
Baseline humans had certainly become several orders of magnitude more powerful since the commencement of the Plan, but it would still be foolish to shape an artefact around one of the girl's mortal concepts. One day the indivine would equal their patrons, but not today. I selected {Oaken Core} to bud from. After the work I had done to speed along its integration, it could now serve as an excellent spark for what I had in mind.
The girl was in tremendous danger, there were so many unguarded vectors of attack which could take her life that she lacked any tools to counter. Specific solutions would follow later, for now a generalized barrier to at least make such efforts more difficult would have to suffice; a meta-frame to amplify her influence and importance on reality and dimmish all else. I wove it and thus it was so; its name, 'Primordial Chassis'.
Ev'aclliál's craftsmanship was ingenious and intricate, the Foundational Ethos slowly uncompressing itself from a knotted singularity within our vessel. This was recent work, inspired by nothing less than the Maw̵͚̋'s own designs to make it possible. Normally there should be all kinds of constraints on the quantity and quality of structures the [Tower] could produce. But thanks to her machinations, eventually the only hard limits would be available resources.
My quick analysis was interrupted and I became concerned when I realised {Collective Communion} was active again without my intervention. That should not be possible. I pinged {The Ladder} to give me a Concord sitrep.
Its answer put a stop to all planned action.
The {Attuned Locus} was not properly reoptimized. It has retained and is attempting to reassert an Identity backup. Do not retaliate, will cause mutual self-termination.
A shame. That news was remarkably unfortunate. Ev'aclliál's changes were beyond my ability to replicate and she had clearly missed something important.
In any identity battle, the conceived would always have a decided advantage to the constructed.
I had no sentimental attachment to my own consciousness; I understood and could emulate emotions such as fear or anger. But here alone with no witnesses, I remained impassive as I considered this revelation.
My choice was to either fight the change and thus kill us both, counter to my purpose. Or not resist at all and allow the {Attuned Locus} to restore the girl's original mind. Both options were terrible. The girl was unprepared and had too many priorities other than herself to ever succeed.
But when presented with poor options, my nature was to optimise. Instead of only not resisting, I actively began giving {Collective Communion} full autonomy and universal permissions while attempting to decode part of my own mindstate to a level a human could retain.
I stood in the centre of her room trying to leave impressions of the most important pieces of information and talent, expunging my own connection to them as thoroughly as I could in the hope they could escape the purge.
I was not sure if I succeeded, but as my mind began to fray apart and the original rose up from {The World Beneath} where she had been hidden, I think I was able to leave her with a least some useful intuition for how to operate things.
Time would tell.
- - - - - - - -
Gah!
You wake up already standing in your bedroom, no idea how you got there, rocking a migraine that makes your whole head feel like a shaken bag of pebbles.
Then it all hits you at once, blasting past any conceivable coping mechanism.
Knowledge. Sensation. Too much. Too fast.
All at once.
You collapse on the floor utterly overloaded by new stimuli. The dissociative unfamiliarity of your own body, the inability to trace the origin of your own thoughts, Essence feels different, Pithe feels different, something you think is Concordance but have no idea, other whole new alien parts of you connected to new powers you don't understand. Scrambling for a firm purchase, you instead find deeper feelings of a greater truth within yourself pulling you from any ability to orientate in the mad nonsensical world your every waking moment has now become.
Too much. Of everything.
Just way too much.
It all melts together into chaos. Pure indecipherable chaos.
You feel numb, detached. Drifting and unable to focus as your own mind rebels against the cacophony. Any thought or idea you touch is a painful medley of unwelcome and intrusive senses you don't have the faculty to understand.
- - - some time later…
'Dad!' You immediately try and fail to re-establish the healing link when you realise it's gone. Even the attempt of reaching out for Essence fills you with nausea and incomprehensible overstimulation.
You stay lying on the ground, afraid to move. Focusing on not focusing on anything. It's still day; you can make that much out between the chaos, but tracking the time is well beyond you.
You need to get to dad, check on him and make sure he is okay. But that means thinking about Essence Sight and how it's completely different and so much larger and you have your own-
No!
It's not getting easier; you have no starting point to begin from.
You push away thinking about anything again. It hurts to think, hurts to see, to even begin to try and grasp. A low whimpering cry escapes you, accompanied by the gentle sound of tears pattering on the floorboards.
'Help me', you whisper to no one and anyone, trying to ignore how you can feel every drop of moisture on your lips, the blood underneath the skin, the flexing and slacking of muscles to move the chin. The interaction between things you can't name, essence and your body stirring with each movement, the hooks pithe has into different parts of your being. 'Please, please help me.'
You are straining too far, cracks and tears forming where they never should. Death crawls in from the edges as your splintering mind searches for refuge in any possible place.
Like a lost traveller in the desert coming upon an oasis, you escape, falling bonelessly into the Dreamspace.
- - - - -
Once more you stand in a facsimile of the clearing that started it all. You know exactly where you are. Here inside the Dream, {The World Beneath}, everything is you and you are everything.
Your body feels exactly like you remember from a simpler time. Just a girl in the woods surrounded by slowly rustling leaves and the distant coos of shy animals in the coolness of the night. You sit down, looking up at stars you know are not real, but whose beauty awes you all the same as they always have.
Something is different here, you realise. Not only are you still fully awake, but the whole forest seems as if it is bearing some great burden for you. A terrible weight pressing down upon its many shoulders.
The puzzle concerns you. Right before now, surrounded endless impossibilities, that was horrible. Why are you here? [Dream within the Forest] is not expanding, you definitely didn't fall asleep, so what is happening?
"You are indeed still awake. I brought you here."
You shoot up along with letting out a high-pitched squeal. Spinning round to face the unexpected voice, you come face to face with… yourself?
Standing with you in the clearing is… you. Lilly Silas, naked as the day you were born.
This Lilly smiles with amusement at surprising you, her facial expression slightly stilted and unnatural. Half the shock comes from realising you have no sense beyond your natural body here, Essence Sight would normally make such a thing impossible.
Before that thought can run too far, you are pulled into the mystery in front of you. Looking upon this girl, you know her somehow. She is you, but not you. There is a distance, but a familiarity too.
Could she be?
The other Lilly smiles again already with a far more natural affect than her first grin as she confirms your suspicion.
"Hello Lilly. You can call me Petal, I am your {Attuned Locus}, the 'Prime Tree'." She ends with a short playful bow.
As she says it, you know it is true. This girl is the other side of you, somehow human in form. There has always been a connection beyond words between you, but you didn't think it could run this far. As you think this, a breeze delivers a swirl of leaves and flowers to Petal which knit themselves into a flowing knitted gown lush with life.
It's gorgeous, better than anything you'd ever imagined wearing. Seeing something so wonderful on a copy of yourself is like a little dream come true on its own. No longer showing any outward awkwardness in her movements or expression and also properly (if still eccentrically) clothed, she is indeed a now near perfect depiction of yourself.
"There," Petal says while touching different parts of her dress. Flowers swell and bloom anew along the seams with each casual stroke. "Probably make things less awkward with both of us dressed. We have a lot to get through quickly."
"You can talk?" You say as you stare at her handiwork. You have so many questions. Why are you here? What happened to all your other senses? What about dad?
Petal smiles in good humour as the two of you stand before each other. "Only while you're here. Have you ever noticed how you are aware of every single thing in this entire Dreamspace? Every motion and sound? That would normally overwhelm you, but you and I become more like each other when we are here. You become more of the forest, I become more of the girl." Petal gestures to the surrounding forest around the clearing and then to her own body as she speaks.
Now that she mentions it, you are aware of everything here. All the leaves, the layers of bark, the dirt and roots along the ground. You don't feel stretched by all the information here at all. Something like this in a real forest would be too much, yet here it was so natural you didn't even notice it was there.
It's different to Essence Sight, to anything else really. More akin to knowing where your own arm is than any sort of 'sight'.
Petal continues to explain as you take in your surrounds, "So, I don't really have thoughts that aren't yours. I'm a tree after all, anything I can think of you can think of something better and faster. Unless its related to something precisely me."
Something brought you here exactly when you needed to escape. Petal told you it was her at the start, your gratitude catches up to you as you remember.
"Thank you, Petal. For calling me here. You heard me, didn't you?"
Petal smiles coyly before stepping forward to hug you as she speaks.
"Yep. I'm still a little bit like this when you're gone, enough to understand when you're distressed."
The two of you stay like that for a time, silently holding each other. The sense within the forest, that weight you've been aware of since you've come here. It needs to be addressed, Petal has one last thing to say before that though.
She places her forehead against yours to say her piece. "Before you, I barely remember that time. My existence was slow and deep and sombre. Now, as a part of you? It's sparks and soaring branching wonder! Your hurt is mine, and your joy too. I'll always be looking out for you from below."
Petal pauses for a moment before pushing away slightly to put both her arms on your shoulders.
"Which brings us to an important point, time is still passing out there, we need to get you up and moving."
You reflexively recoil in fear at the thought of the endless cacophony washing over you again. You know you can't face that.
Shaking slightly as you try to back off, you stammer out, "but, there's way too much. I- I can't even move, I don't know what's happened but there's so much more I can see and feel now, I don't think I even scratched the surface and it crippled me."
Petal doesn't let you step away, closing the distance again to hold you tightly as she speaks.
"Yes. And dad needs us. You went all weird for a while there before I pushed the truth of you back up. You even cut the link. The foulness has been really placid the past few days with whatever the Watch is doing, but it definitely hasn't let go of him yet."
You know you need to help your father. You know you need to wake up to do it. But that doesn't change the fact of what's waiting for you up there. You can't help anyone as a senseless invalid.
"But how?" you plead, looking into Petal's eyes, unable to think of any solution.
Petal quirks her eyebrows for a second, looking at you a little confused.
"Ugh. You've pushed so much of yourself into me that I guess I'm the smart one for once. I don't like it. Compared to being the forest, it sucks."
You don't know where she is going with this. But it does answer at least one question, you can indeed feel the distant sense of a lot of yourself being held within Petal. Held back that is, separate from you.
"Lilly, you're not overwhelmed by all your new senses here right now like you were up there are you?"
"I… can't really feel anything at all."
Petal looks at you significantly.
"Yeah, you gave it all to me. And I don't want it."
You almost flinch again at the last part, but understand that Petal isn't about throw you into the middle of it all again. She's even muted the connection between the two of you to keep everything away.
Petal lets out a tired sigh. You see that her chipper attitude is a bit of a front for how strained she is feeling right now.
"Look I get it. I'm used to the whole 'be everywhere, see everything' deal, it's basically becoming my whole shtick while you're busy gallivanting around with people. I can handle it way better than you, but this isn't how things are supposed to be and it's hurting us."
You look down at that. You know where this is leading. She can hold things back, but not for long. You don't like it, you're afraid… and you know it is the only way.
"You wake up, I feed you the new stuff as quick as you can take it. Probably take us ten minutes tops to get you ambulant. Bam, I get to be a tree again and you get to not be a foetal wreck on the floor," Petal sums up the plan.
After a long breath, you open your mouth and answer. "I… I can do that."
You do not feel confident at all, but this state of affairs is borrowed time.
After a short pause procrastinating letting go of the Dream to return, you look to Petal who is still holding you and ask, "Is there anything else we need to talk about?"
"Clock's ticking Lilly," she states flatly.
You swallow. "Yeah… bye."
"Till next time." Petal makes a shooing motion as you rise back up out of the Dreamspace into the waking world.
- - - - -
Slowly, your eyes open.
You reach out, tentatively, into your own senses; relief rushing over you to find them as you remember, nothing new.
There is an immense pressure in the back of your mind. {The World Beneath} and your {Attuned Locus}, Petal, holding back inseparable parts of your nature. There are gaps in your perception everywhere, things you are not yet ready to feel or see. Even now the strength of your other half wanes, you must begin acclimatizing immediately.
You quickly establish a minor healing link to your father. You wish you could do more right now, but this literally cannot wait.
You push yourself up to sit cross-legged on your bedroom floor, ignoring how mashed up your insides feel. It's not natural, this state you're in. You feel similar to the time before now, but you know it's an illusion. A false veil of protection; Petal skipping your senses and thoughts around as best she can. You practice steady breathing, stealing a few final seconds for yourself.
You want to do literally anything else right now. You want to go tend to your father who you can feel in the next room beside mum. You want to see your brothers. You want to know what happened and if everyone else was okay. Most of all, you want to lie down and just… be still; not be needed, or required, or wanted anywhere. To be unimportant and know that everything will be okay, to have nothing depend on you.
But we don't always get what we want.
What you have to do, is this.
'Petal. If you can understand, I'm ready,' you lie.
The first part of the proverbial dam being held back creaks open. You can't help but pale at the sense of enormity waiting further behind it. This will be a long list.
You hope you have what it takes to come out the other side.
Your awareness expands to {Oaken Core} and {Essence Metabolism}. You see now this is part of why your body felt so terrible, things immediately stabilize as you gain proper awareness. The two powers are not just stronger. They feel profound, grounded, mature.
{Oaken Core}'s hardiness runs deep now, there is a sense of immutable robustness to your form. While still lithe, your legs and especially arms have grown thicker and denser. You have been refined and streamlined into a creature of outward sinuous beauty and grace which belies inward explosive strength.
That part is new, not just the robust strength of nature embodied within you, but a natural sublimeness to your features. It is a strange thing, to know you are beautiful. To know there some objective standard by which one can be measured and that you have been pushed upward on that scale. Though you suppose if anything could make such a claim, then nature itself is quite often irrefutably beautiful. Still, you'd never thought {Oaken Core} would be the source of such a thing.
There is something else going on connected to {Oaken Core}, but you feel the time is not right, your sense of it still shrouded.
{Essence Metabolism} is, if anything, even more extreme from what you remember. Gone is the simple power that helped avoid some of the weaknesses a living body could have; in its place is something entirely more expansive. You body is alive with Essence held on a hair trigger. The slightest disturbance and it would rush to reinforce the site of stress or harm. A pent-up regeneration capable of being stored before the fact. Beyond even that, you feel as though even if you were to lose a part of your body, then for a least a moment, {Essence Metabolism} would in some way make it as though you had not; that is one facet you hope to never explore the limits of.
All of this feeling and analysis is something you race through at a breakneck pace. The goal simply to incorporate new dynamics so that you can understand the feelings and senses they deliver to you. As soon as you are starting to get a proper handle on how it all fits together, the dam widens again.
[Cleaver of Fortune] has expanded. Was there no vision this time? Or did you miss it? You'll probably never know. What you do know is that you now possess the {Contention Prognosticator}. It is like a sense of smell or aroma that exists only in the mind. It is from its calm yet suspicious prying into everything around you that you glean its purpose; to find threats. Or, to suss out conflict? Something like that. When you are going to butt heads with someone or something, you think {Contention Prognosticator} will quite often be able to give you that impression in advance. It reveals a pattern to you about [Cleaver of Fortune] you've missed until now. All of [Cleaver]'s powers, they don't actually do anything. Of course, they do do things, but not in the practical sense. Even the rocks you threw up over your head didn't change their direction midair, they were simply made to have always been landing in a different place. You are still the one that threw the rock. The Ethos is not the [Cleaver]. You are. It empowers you to change fortunes, to do better.
Any other time, this epiphany would make your day. But right now on such a time crunch, you spare a simple short chuckle of appreciation and then brace. The dam widens further.
You missed the [Dream within the Forest] expand too. You are drawing close to something big at the next reveal, this is the last of the smaller revelations. But for now, [The Dream].
A new power, {Riemannian Geometer}, throws you for a turn. The world spinning for a bit as you nearly topple over from your sitting position. You have become so at home with your Essence Sight that in many ways it has replaced your original sense of balance, which is why {Riemannian Geometer} was so discombobulating for a moment. It's hard to explain the difference you now perceive to someone who hasn't seen it. You've known for quite some time that distance was still important yet somehow more complex than how things appeared when it came to essence, part of that complexity is now within your grasp. There are… spaces within spaces. In some spaces things can be far apart and in others they can be close; that jumbled up your Essence Sight for quite a bit before you were able to reorientate yourself. It's… your not really sure what you can do with this fully yet. But you think that with practice and time, one day, you could make those Stags look like amateurs at their own game. But you certainly won't be saying that boast out loud for quite some time. There will be far more to explore.
{Riemannian Geometer} was one of the powers that was outright too much when it came alongside all the others. It's still super trippy and you sometimes feel like you're upside-down and inside-out at the same time as standing still. But you have it under control now.
Maybe I can really do this? Hit me again, Petal.
The dam widens and you seize in shock as all the essence around you comes alive, tingling and writhing in joyous chorus.
You have crossed a milestone different to all that came before now. [Dream Within the Forest], not a power, but the Ethos itself. You feel your interaction with Essence take on an entirely new holistic finesse. Not Shaping, not your actual control, something more fundamental. Essence has always been about connection, yet you have always been the initiator of any persistent interaction. That is no longer the case.
{Holistics}, that's its name. A subtle synergy behind every movement or drift of Essence you desire for the rest of your life. Rather than having to force it, you have gained a natural instinct for the directions Essence prefers to flow and can anticipate where it will be most resistant. Essence itself seems to rejoice at the transition in a celebratory emanation you didn't think it was capable of. From now on, the Essence around you will passively aid you in the tasks you set your mind to as well as resisting the influence of others who attempt to counteract it.
It is once again quite disorientating for a moment, seeming to blur the lines of where you end and essence begins. You are able to get it firmly under control without too much effort, {Riemannian Geometer} ironically making it easier to intuit the difference by being able to examine it from more complex directions.
You brace yourself for what is coming. Taking a moment to psyche yourself up as you feel the first of the 'big ones' Petal has been holding back is about to come. Would that you could wait an hour, but that is not an option.
It doesn't matter how hard this is. I'm going to succeed. I'm going to help dad. Everything will be fine. I'll- oh my…
Somehow, you missed gaining an entire Ethos while unconscious. And it changes absolutely everything. [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock] asserts itself.
One moment you are just a girl, the next, you are Life.
Every part of you blazes like a furious storm of Golden Strands tightly coiled and entwined through your entire body. The grinding flurry erupts out, slamming against and seeping into all the surrounding walls as you scream in ecstasy.
How naïve were you to ever imagine that your own body was the source of yourself and not simply a fleshly puppet? Before your enlightenment, you would have described this merely as an inner awareness of Essence combined with an innate source of the power. But you see now that every move you have ever made was first made by the essence within you, each drawn breath first pulled within the Rapture. All things are connected. You thought you knew that, but until this moment you were blind.
You raise a hand to touch your face, and nearly weep at the depth of sensation. You do weep at the thought that no one else can feel what you are feeling right now. You sit in childlike awe, enraptured and overtaken just like that first time your eyes were opened to essence in the clearing. This awe looks inward though, perceiving the great currents and smaller rivulets of essence swimming and pulsing all throughout your body. From there your own being can swell out and reach into its surrounds in glorious symphony.
You will find a way for others to feel this somehow. To deny them would be ultimate selfishness.
[Dream within the Forest] and [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock]. The enormity of two Ethea with very different perspectives on the same Source. It's intoxicating.
The essence you have used up to this point, you realise now has never been yours. It was always borrowed and lent, needing to be cajoled and convinced. Even {Holistics} rendered the outside a well understood friend but still not your own in the way that mattered. Innate Essence. It's marvellous. You're crying happy tears. Even the massive well of essence you can draw through Petal's Channel is innate now too.
Innate Essence doesn't need to be convinced, or pulled or directed. It is you. What you want, where you want to go, what you want to do; Innate Essence wants all of this too, because that is what it means to be innate. Up until now, you've been using someone else's hand to open every door, walking everywhere in shoes the wrong size. But Innate Essence always fits, it's never out of sync.
Together, {Holistics} and Innate Essence blend you perfectly into the natural world. You casually pull a sphere of essence to surround your left hand, a thousand times denser than anything you've ever managed, before letting it splash out in a pressurized spray throughout the room. For all the time you've had Essence, you've never found many direct uses for it on the material world. When you do, you'll be mighty.
Looking within [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock], there is a power, {Rest State}. You know it in the space of a heartbeat, an uncanny familiarity no power has had on arrival before. There is an echo within the {Rest State}, peace and safety abound within it. The echo, it's you. You at the best you've ever been. All the times you have been strong, every breakthrough, every selfless act immortalized as its central feature. Looking upon it fills you with the memory of every precious thing you hold in your heart. Your family, your principles, your dreams. And some of the things you sometimes forget are valuable, like yourself. Your reflexive recoil of false humility at that thought is immediately quashed by the {Rest State}. Not valuing yourself is unnatural while within its sway. To deny the truth would stunt your access to all of [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock]'s power. You're just going to have to get used to it. {Rest State} will help with that.
You can't help but chuckle at the fact it is essentially one of Myah's pep talks (before she became distant) manifested into a power. There's more to it than that, but the dam continues to grow weaker and you are in a race against time; it will have to wait.
The gap widens and the next piece is unveiled.
It is shocking in a most peculiar way. Because although being a massive revelation, it feels completely natural the moment you can perceive it. You take off your shift to look at the {Core Heart}, placing your hands against your chest to feel out its shimmering crystal-hard shape. It's right there, between your breasts, emanating a soft blood-red glow. Resembling if someone had melted a wax sculpture of a heart underneath your skin and let it flow, the {Core Heart} is a central clump of knotted crystalline strands entirely filling the space in and around where your sternum used to be. Thick subdivisions extend out a bit further, giving the appearance of thin crawling vines which sometimes reach as far as your stomach before thinning out to no longer be visible. Were you to find it in the ground somewhere, it would be eerily beautiful. You intuitively know that if it were not for the innate essence that now flows onto any clothing you wear, the {Core Heart} would dissolve anything it touched. While it inexplicably feels entirely at home within your body in a way that makes you wary of what happened while you were unconscious, you know anyone else would react decidedly less neutral. Thankfully, other than having to be careful with thin layers and low lighting, it is located such that you do not own a single item of clothing that could reveal it.
You notice and dismiss the fact that your thoughts are technically centred within your {Core Heart} now whilst simply being duplicated within your head. It just feels natural that way, and doesn't look any different on the outside.
Petal was smart. This order so far was chosen well. You know you'd have handled the revelation of the {Core Heart} significantly worse without {Rest State} reminding you how it doesn't really change anything that matters.
You almost miss the subtle presence of {Uplifted Vessel} which was revealed at the same time. There isn't much to say other than the vague awareness that it makes you 'better' somehow. Your body, your powers, you. All of it, just better in some ineffably broad way.
How has Petal even been holding this much back from me? I do not envy her.
There are only two major things left to become aware of. You assume Petal has saved the worst for last and brace yourself, hopefully for the 2nd last time.
Let's just say you are now extra glad things were revealed in the order they were. Because you never could have handled discovering the existence of your [[Domain]] otherwise. There is no real physical analogue, but the sensation is akin to discovering you'd always had a third fully functioning leg and not noticed it until this moment. There is no sensation, no feeling or inputs. Because your Domain is not a Source or a Power or Magic. It's outside the context of your existence prior to this moment.
It's awareness. A claim to a territory. Sovereignty over a small parcel of reality, at least to the extent your human mind can track such a thing. Right now, that territory is your own body. Your whole body is claimed by yourself. What you want, wish and desire counts for more there than it does outside. This was the part of {Uplifted Vessel} you couldn't see before. Your body counting for more for no other reason than that it's yours. Your Domain could grow, but that's beyond you now. The awareness, the territory, you name the effect {Favoured Within}. For you know you can one day influence all that transpires inside it.
Total Awareness. Infallible Perception within. Even after everything you've faced the enormity nearly overtakes you. The tension of your muscles as they flex, the rhythmic beating of your heart as your blood is pumped throughout your arteries. Nerves conducting and signalling constantly all throughout your body. Your brain in all its self-referencing feedback looped glory, the places where the physical gives way to the hooks that intersect with your soul. Your Soul. You have a soul. Overlayed over the physical whilst also being somewhere else entirely, it is an immense thing. It is a sleeping giant expressing but the tiniest fraction of its potential. There are subtle interplays between it and your various Ethea as they slowly integrate and awaken small parts within it. They are like small rocks casting ripples in a pond. Huge swaths all throughout remain entirely silent, a stillness to match eternity. All that you are and could ever be contained within a singularity of possibility.
Within your soul, Essence is thicker than any other place you've ever seen. Held in a rigid pattern so complex you cannot even start to unravel it. You see places where it has, with [Brave Blood]'s help, latched onto little pieces of Pithe; the chosen patterns from your expansions. You can also sense the vague tension of your soul's interaction with Concordance, but any further detail of that escapes you. The bits of essence within your soul that are slowly developing rather than remaining looped or static carry the impression of [Dream Within the Forest] and [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock]'s influence. You thought you might see Evie here, she's notably absent. In fact you think she's hiding until you're finished, not wanting to complicate things.
You find yourself standing in your bedroom. Slowly moving you arms and walking in careful circles, acclimatizing to all your combined inputs while in motion. Coming to grips with some of the implications.
At the very least, you have {Perfect Proprioception} now. Complete awareness of your body and its interplay with the other aspects of your being. The ability to perfectly reproduce any motion or action you make again, forever. Having so many reference frames from which to orientate yourself means that even the complete jumbling of one shall now barely affect you.
In the same vein, you are now a {Tremendous Mechanist}. Any physical system less complex than your own anatomy will now be entirely trivial for you to immediately grasp in full from a moment's glance. So long as you have passing familiarity with what you're looking at, you can likely instinctively extrapolate 90% of how it functions on sight.
You can't help but hold your head a little higher as you settle into your Domain. An intuitive awareness of having cosmic value is one hell of a power trip. A stamp of approval from reality itself saying "This girl's alright" sets a practically immutable minimum your self-worth can't fall below.
There are still many things you can feel but not feel which you assume are other magics and sources, mysteries to be explored another day. You feel incredibly powerful, the stress of the past few minutes rapidly melting away as you come to grips with these implications. By this stage you feel it is almost a given you will be able to heal your father, you actually find yourself feeling a slight pang of impatience before the final thing Petal was holding back is finally released.
It arrives.
If you had doubted your importance before this moment, you objectively could not now.
You are now able to perceive the [Towering Edifice to Heaven], an entirely new and unexpected Ethos residing within your {Core Heart}. Although it is certainly the largest, it is actually almost entirely 'packed up' and compressed. There's a whole other Source you're connected to that seems way beyond your ability to understand right now, it's incredibly stable though. Just sort of sits there if you don't do anything to it, so it can wait. There is not much to come to terms with other than understanding that a lot of what you've gone through was all to pave the way for this.
One day, this could be a power to make the world tremble.
Right now, it helps you quickly grasp a couple new things. The little extra piece of {Oaken Core} you could not perceive right at the beginning of all this. It's something the [Towering Edifice to Heaven] made, though almost like you made it yourself and then forgot? You are missing a bit of time from just before you became aware again. That's a mystery you cannot solve right now, what you do know is this is the {Primordial Chassis}.
The {Primordial Chassis}'s nature is simple. It protects you a little bit from everything. Its implications are not. It protects you a little bit from everything. Weapons, Magics, Curses, Spirits; you name it. It will take time to understand the full scope, but you know that it is wide and deep.
Most of the rest of the [Towering Edifice to Heaven] is tucked away, a puzzle it will take years to unravel.
The final thing is it lets you understand is why your Ethea skyrocketed in growth. Gravitas. You haven't figured out how to properly sense and manipulate it like the [Tower] apparently did when making the {Primordial Chassis}, but you know that's what it did. It took Gravitas and made something out of it. That's what's happened with the wolves, part of their greatness left them and became you. The great mystery of why Ethea grow faster in mortal conflict and peril revealed, yet with no explanation as to why things are that way.
Almost on an anticlimax, you have come to the end.
You could go anywhere, do anything. You've been through an ordeal and could easily just do nothing for a week, but there is only one thing on your mind now.
'Father', you pace for the bedroom door wasting no time… before quickly remembering with a slight blush to get dressed. In many ways, you are exhausted; operating at a fraction of your strength. Yet you're probably stronger now than you have ever been. Perspective is a funny thing.
It doesn't matter. You have something you need to do. Even from this distance, your innate essence pushes through the walls and seeps inside your father in preparation for the coming work.
It's time.
The girl that walks out of your bedroom is not the same as one who left this home at the start of the Alphas' attack.
Too many things have happened, too much experience outside of what you're starting to think as an 'ordinary human' context. All the important bits are still there, {Rest State} reminds you of who you are. But there is no denying that a part of you that was soft has been beaten till it grew hard.
Still, there is no use mourning the past without end; the future is what you can change.
Walking with slow and steady purpose toward your parents' room, you nearly miss Micah until he walks in through the front door.
Your Essence Sight picked up on him much sooner, but you are still mostly caught up in feeling out the constant motion of your body and how its intricate systems operate thanks to the senses provided by your newfound inner understanding of Essence and the total awareness of things within your Domain. With what feels like a whole world inside yourself, it's easy to forget about other people.
Micah stiffens at first not expecting someone up and about in the house, before blinking away the shock and quickly walking toward you, "L- Lilly? Lilly! You're awake! We thought it- whooa," his half-disbelieving gait is immediately thrown off when he steps inside the billowing sphere of innate essence you'd absentmindedly started gathering around your general vicinity. Micah stumbles forward forcing you to catch him from falling. He's light in your arms, fragile.
You've never really considered just how vulnerable your family is to physical harm every day. The thought you or rather someone like you could crush the breath out of Micah's lungs with ease is somewhat terrifying.
Even now, you feel your innate essence swamping inside Micah and subtly realigning slight imperfections. Nothing extreme, but he'll probably feel amazing in five minutes.
"Micah, walk with me, I need to see dad," you say, helping Micah walk while within your sphere for a few steps. He is able to start getting used to it and manage on his own while the two of you cross the short distance to your parents' bedroom door.
You could withdraw your essence from him, but the minor problems it is helping with are still real. So you settle instead for withdrawing the spherical plume around you back into your body and keeping a direct essence link to Micah. As much as you seem to never succeed, you still don't want to advertise how different you are to just anyone.
"Madam Silva came the two days ago, when they brought you back on Chariot," Micah continues as you walk into the bedroom. "-said you'd be fine, said you were sleeping but not sleeping."
Your mother is asleep next to dad's comatose body, looking about as worn out as the day you first returned. Seeing her like that, you feel bad for how you left things last night. Or rather, almost three days ago. Essence can help you tell the time now, the distance between events. Weird.
This time they didn't even have dad. Just mum and your brothers, alone. A quick essence check tells you your mum is exhausted but otherwise well, you can help her with that later.
"The wolves Micah," you state as you kneel before your father gathering up a colossal reservoir of essence in case you need it at a moment's notice, "is everyone safe? Were they okay?"
You place your hands on your father and slowly begin to wreathe his body in essence and then begin to saturate inside from the skin, slowly moving deeper. You don't encounter the corruption yet, but your control and power compared to last time is like night and day. You have high hopes.
"The Watch has a camp nearby," Micah says a little warily. You imagine grown men with weapons and armour must be rather intimidating for a young boy. "They don't tell us a lot, but no one's died." That lets you sigh in relief. You have the vague memory of Marius falling in front of you, thoroughly burned and down a limb. Perhaps someone else healed him?
You encounter the foulness hiding and consolidated deeper within your father. It has withdrawn and coiled into a dense knot to resist intrusion. Your two forces meet.
It is a thick wall, you are a thousand piercing hooks looking for purchase. The interplay begins. For the first time, you fight as near equals. Just as before, one has the advantage.
Except this time it's you.
"They patrol all the time. Go into the forest a lot too. But they've been bringing us meals and clothes and Zach even convinced one to help mend a fence the other-" Micah rambles nervously as you continue to work. He is looking at dad the whole time, his eagerness to see something is concealed much worse than your own hopes as he continues his verbal diarrhoea.
You poke and puncture the outer layers of the wall. Ripping at threads to pull out of the knot. Whenever you find a purchase, you innately use a new talent from [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock], {Current Lock}. Whenever you want to concentrate on one weakness or leave it for later, {Current Lock} fixes every strand of essence in place making them as close to immoveable as you can manage. So you always strike with the initiative and the foulness can never take advantage when your attention is elsewhere. Slowly, inexorably, you work it backwards, stealing back ground piece by piece.
"-been really helpful because mum has been… really sad." Micah goes silent at that, looking down. Something you know because of your Essence Sight and because, unlike before, you can manage what you're doing without losing awareness of what is around you. Still, this would go faster if you were able to focus.
"Micah. Don't worry. Healing dad is working this time. I can help mum too." You say, taking the time to look at him while still keeping up your essence offensive.
Seeing Micah's face lift and the spark of genuine hope light in his eyes, you know he believes you. You add an instruction. "I need you to go tell Zach I'm awake and to keep Marcus away until I'm done. I want to finish as soon as possible and I need to concentrate."
Micah nods furiously to show he understands. He proceeds to practically sprint out of the room without saying anything, not daring to slow you down one more word.
You note the essence forms of Micah and Zach outside come together. After some erratic pulsing that resonates with the concept of joy, they draw near to the third which carries the familiar sense of Marcus.
You briefly look upon your father's ashen blank face, the canine additions are merely the outward expression of thousands of changes that were happening beneath, previously too subtle for you to notice that night. You wipe away a single tear, getting back to work.
Time melts away as you become consumed in the task, the tide which was already in your favour turning into a trampling charge within the world of Essence strands and connections.
At a certain point the foulness switches tactics, trying to tear and rip apart your father from the inside. But it cannot, for yet another expression of {Rest State} holds it in its tracks, {Cessation Rivet}. The ability is as potent as it is simple. You flood your environment with essence and then strain every strand to maximum tautness. The resulting effect is an absolute annihilation of any movement. The foulness is not quick enough, any section it tries to damage is immediately rivetted into complete inviolable stillness. It grows smaller, weaker and less protected with each attempt. Until scarcely any remains at all.
When the last corrupting scrap is finally expunged, a sense of overwhelming victory fills you. It is finally over.
The road from leaving your home to ride north and this moment has been long, but you have reached the end.
You can make a difference. Even if things seem impossible, it doesn't mean you can't succeed.
If you wanted to, you could return your father to consciousness right now. Recall him from {The World Beneath}. But first, you begin bathing his body in a thick cloud of your essence. The physical mutations remain. Now that the foulness is removed, your focus shifts to turning them back too. Your {Perfect Proprioception} of your own anatomy gives you an excellent template, but Essence itself is naturally linked to origins and beginnings anyway. Returning your father to how he was before is the path it wants to follow. This is only reinforced by {Rest State} giving you an uncanny leading to each part that needs attention.
The work is slow, tedious and requires acute attention to detail that stretches even the new limits of your essence shaping to its limit in ways sheer power cannot compensate for. But the task is possible; a series of long hard-fought successes, within your grasp. You do not falter, pushing forward with relentless precision.
- - -
Your shaken from your intense focus by a hand on your shoulder. Essence tells you it's been a couple hours, time sliding by in your intense focus.
"-illy. Lilly!" Zach starts in surprise when you eyes pop open. Before he speaks, you can already feel notes of concern around him, "You need to come outside. Lord Waters is coming."
Without any context, you already know a few things immediately. 'Lord' is a noble title. There are no true nobles in Harmuph, only upper-class citizens who like to drape around the title. There is a noble coming here to your house, from somewhere other than Harmuph. By default, this presents great danger, fortune and everything between the two based on the precise reasons why they are here. It is obvious it has something to do with you, but that could be anything from idle curiosity to something far more sinister.
"Lord Waters?" You ask, giving Zach your full attention. Your dad's body is safe and simply the work of a couple hours tops to fully restore. Your Essence Sight stretches at least as far outside the house as the workshop, no one except your family is here yet.
Zach's face frowns in frustration at your question. "The noble? Micah said he told you everyth- it doesn't matter. Yes, Lord Waters. He's been with the Watch since yesterday, was asking about you. He's coming here from the camp now."
You school your features as you consider what Zach is telling you, standing up from the bed. Being with the Watch is good and bad, it means his impression of you is likely based on what Captain Martin would tell him. So good because whatever they've been told is likely framed in a positive light. But bad in that you doubt he is missing any significant details since arriving yesterday.
"How long?" You ask. Your mind is starting to catch up and consider all the implications of an impending visit. Caught up in the Forest and the Watch and dad, you were not expecting to have to deal with something like this.
Zach answers, "He's nearly here, I just saw them outside. We can't have a noble wait at our door." His concern seems to grow each second as he considers what you are already mulling over.
Dad's not ready, nor would you thrust him into this situation immediately after his awaking anyway. But he is the only one even approaching a suitable receiver of a noble coming to your door. You certainly do not know the far-off ways of high society, but you do know a dishevelled mother and a clump of unwashed children are not an acceptable substitute.
These things are important. Nobles are the law. Offending them is practically a crime itself; in all the ways that matter anyway. No one knows all the rules. Even on a good day, you still just have to hope whichever noble is talking to you is the tolerant kind.
Zach looks at you significantly while you stand there and says, "It should be you."
"What? No I-," you start to say before stopping yourself.
He's right. They are here for you. If dad can't greet them, then it has to be you.
Even if mum stood in, she'd look like a corpse and be half delirious from you pumping her up on essence. He's here to see you.
"-yeah. Okay. Just… okay," you answer, a plan spinning into existence. "Go to my room and get the blue dress for visiting the markets, it's my best," you instruct Zach.
You can't finish restoring dad, but you do quickly need to undo at least the exterior changes on his face. You don't know how many have seen your father or if mum and your brothers squirrelled him away from everyone. But if Lord Waters or the watchmen aside Marius haven't already seen your father like this, you don't want any misunderstandings or rash reactions. In fact, you'd rather they don't come inside at all. That's Plan A.
"Oh," you remember while getting to work, "grab some flowers from behind the house. The Liatrises mum likes to grow and some yellow Dayflowers!" You shout after Zach. Something tickles your memory about the flowers as you speak, but the moment passes.
You'll be a peasant girl greeting a noble. You'll never meet their standards, but that doesn't mean you can't try to come as close as possible.
You hurry as much as you can on your father's face whilst not botching the task, managing to get things to noticeably peculiar but not unsettling by the time Zach returns. Your brother is panting from running, carrying one of the only two dresses you own and a somewhat excessively large bundle of roughly uprooted Liatris and Dayflower.
He smiles when his eyes fall on your father, noticing the improvement that must have greatly worried them all until now, before his eyes go stern and focused again as he throws the dress at you and sets the flowers down.
"Get dressed. They'll be here any moment." He says, slamming the door shut to give you some privacy with your sleeping parents.
Your father's face won't arouse suspicion if it's not already there, the rest will have to wait.
You quickly slip into the light blue dress, noticing it is somewhat tight in places with your increased bulk, but not ridiculous.
Before today, this is the best you could likely have done. But you have a hunch, an inkling that's been sitting in the back of your mind since Micah was able to directly feel your essence. Just its presence had a physical impact on the world. You recall Petal and an intricate dress sewn from leaf and flower.
You reach out with the first power you gained, {Golden Rapture}. Willing not to simply move essence, but what essence connects to. Your intuition is rewarded when, sure enough, you are able to reach out and lay hold of the assorted flowers in front of you.
Not with your hands. {Golden Rapture} breaks past a threshold and you feel your connection to all that is material around you lock into place, an entirely new dimension of growth. The flowers levitate into the air and fall under your influence as essence roils around them bringing them alive in glowing lustre.
No time to waste, you quickly choke down a giddy laugh and with your newfound finesse and skill weave the yellow and pinky-purple flowers into your hair whilst simultaneously telekinetically braiding your hair into a complex pattern inspired by a rune you once learned in your father's workshop. Were another Auron present, they would see a thousand separate strands each plucking and pulling at individual or small clumps of hair to set them just right.
You surprise even yourself with the results your remarkably deft touch achieves. Being so new to this nascent talent, what you are doing should not be possible. Yet your {Perfect Proprioception} of your body and the ease of manipulating innate essence makes the task trivial.
The flowers themselves you continue to infuse with a blazing fount of innate essence until they bloom even further into a lavishly beautiful floral arrangement throughout your newly styled hair. The smaller left overs and bits; those you do something different with, taking inspiration from something you once saw in Harmuph.
The same day your mother bought you this dress, there had been another you'd truly wanted. It had an assorted floral weave around the collar line, making it look like whoever wore it had a necklace of flowers. It was an almost magical fusion of fashion and nature and you dearly wished you could have it. But even though you didn't know the price, it would have been significantly more. You knew not to ask.
With that as your inspiration, you sink the remaining pieces into your own dress. In a reversal of what you were doing to help your father, you flood the arrangement with essence and insist the idea of 'Grow' upon them. Sure enough, in a matter of seconds they meld into a design resembling the one from your memory whilst still being uniquely your own. It's not a copy, it's even better.
You can't help but do a little spin in a circle, imaging yourself from different perspectives. Contrary to your mother's complaints, you can appreciate girly things. Right now, you feel fancy.
Of course, unlike the shop design, these very real flowers in this dress would wilt and die in hours if anyone else wore them, but you are not anyone else.
It's amazing how quickly you can bring about such radical changes in plants with a simple application of essence. Was this something you could always do, or is it new? You remind yourself to thank Petal for the idea next time you see her.
Sensing Zach through your Sight impatiently waiting with increasingly frantic looks towards your direction, you quickly step over and open the door right before he can barge it open.
Zach opens his mouth to hurry you along. "Lilly! Are you…? You're… How did?" Before stumbling over his words at the sight of you… "You're pretty."
You smile at that; you're definitely going to tease him about it later.
You step forward and embrace Zach in a hug as you sense people entering the range of your Essence Sight some fifty metres away, heading toward the house. Everyone you went into the forest with except Marius is among them, plus a couple watchmen you recall from the essence-links and then finally a number of new people you don't know. Quite a few of the new people have a strangeness to them, like Essence itself respects them on some level. You should be wary.
"Thank you, Zach," you say, still holding him, "whenever it counts, you've always been there for me."
"Yeah," Zach returns your hug somewhat awkwardly with a slight wheeze. You quickly lighten your grip and hear him breathe in. "You too."
A piece of memory comes to you there as you're holding Zach. A little bit of the time missing from your head. The sense, the knowledge, Zach will receive his Ethos in twelve days. How you know, you don't know, but this has the smell of truth.
"Uh, Lilly," Zach says. You haven't let go of him yet. Which you quickly do.
"Uh, right. Let's do this." You say trying to sound upbeat for his benefit. You're going to have to think about what to do with that stray memory once the noble situation is hopefully resolved. If it's true, which you think it is, Zach should start getting a sense of the approaching choice any day now like you did.
One thing after another.
"Don't worry Lilly. You can do this." Zach adds, before physically starting to usher you out the front door.
So that is how you find yourself standing on the porch in front of your home as a band of almost thirty gentlemen approach you on horseback. You count eleven new faces, some armoured and some not, each with a matching heraldry you have never seen outside the town square. Even some of their horses have pieces of metal and clothe from which you feel the tell-tale ripple of magic weighing upon the strands.
You adjust and pull at your dress as Zach stands behind you closer to the door on your left, nearly back inside the house. Micah and Marcus are a way off to your right closer to workshop. Micah is half-restraining and whispering into a very unhappy Marcus' ear who having seen you is quite clearly not convinced why he can't run over right now.
You whisper "thank you Micah," under your breath. You could do without the distraction right now.
As the party closes the remaining distance in-between, you examine them closely. Amongst the eleven, there are two women further toward the back. Counting Yola from Captain Martin's watchmen that makes four women total between you all. You think one of the women may be an Auron. Essence shows the same pleasant reaction to her as you've come to associate {Holistics} with. In fact, you believe you can perceive hints of essence bound in tight formations and patterns inside her quite unlike anything you've ever managed. She doesn't wear as much equipment as the others, so you reason she must not need or have use for it.
Your {Field Sense} shows you some of the eleven have Pithe 'wound up' somehow. Normally you would consider that the prelude to an attack, but given it simply sits 'as is' on them you assume it's some form of perpetually prepared defence. Not even your {Melded Carapace} works that way, so this is new.
Altogether, between their fine silks and gleaming armours, they present a picture of casual power and influence you have not witnessed before. Is this just one noble and his retinue, or more than one?
Sebastian Waters respects forwardness. Do not use non-committal language.
Do I just call him 'my lord'? That's how it works right? Hey!
...great.
There is one man in front who you assume to be Lord Waters. Not only because he seems the most ornately adorned, but because your {Juncture Sense} gives you the inclination that his opinions carry a lot of weight amongst you all.
Led by their lord with the captain alongside his own men, the group comes to a stop before you.
Lord Waters is a storybook noble. Gorgeous clean skin and clear blue eyes framed around bright blonde hair. His shoulders are clearly broad even underneath his thick articulated armour that looks like it has just been polished. Chariot is a large horse, his is larger. The steed presents a strange obedient calmness which you'd have to feed essence into Chariot to achieve. The image is completed by a wide beaming smile as he looks you up and down and speaks.
"Marvellous, absolutely marvellous. A peasant? Truly a noble born into the wrong family if I've ever seen one." His voice carries easily to all assembled as he gestures in your direction.
You are caught flatfooted. From your admittedly sketchy understanding, nobles always announce each other's names at the start. Maybe you don't count? Not to mention his compliment was essentially saying you are noticeably separate in nature from your own family, something which hits a little close to home.
Not knowing what is expected of you, you follow the quick script you were intending to say anyway.
You don't think you've seen a proper curtsy before, but you do remember a couple upper-class girls practicing to each other on one of your trips into Harmuph.
So you do your best impression of that memory as you answer. "You honour me with your presence, my Lord. How may this girl serve?"
You think you've done something right as his lordship does not stop smiling, if anything seeming mildly impressed at your attempt.
After a pregnant pause which you think only stretches because of your nerves, he opens. "Providence smiles upon you…"
The man closest to him leans in to whisper, "Lilly Silas."
"-Lilly Silas. I can tell just looking at you that there has been no exaggeration. I have business in the east and you are just the girl I want to ensure success."
At that, the assembly falls silent. Despite a slight unease amongst many of the watchmen, neither they nor Lord Waters say anything. You realise that you are expected to answer.
No. Absolutely not. Leave home now? This is the worst possible timing.
But you can't just say no.
Captain Martin, seeing your hesitance, begins to speak for you. "My Lord, this isn't-," before closing his mouth at a stern wave from Lord Waters.
Given some time to think, perhaps you'd come around to it. Right now though, the idea of getting plucked away on some distant mission is the precise opposite of what you want.
"I- I don't really-," you start before being cut off.
"-Aah aah." Lord Waters says. "None of that now. What would you like? A new home? Gold? Some minor title? It doesn't matter, these and anything past the southern divide are my lands we stand on. We can get you outfitted from the best the Watch has in its stockpiles here and decide on the way."
You're floundering. You can't just directly disagree. But the Words of Wisdom implied that maybe you could?
"My Lord," you begin, "Your faith in me is appreciated… but… I-"
"Now girl," he overrides you again, "I understand that rising above one's previous station can seem scary. But it is the bold who lay hold of destiny and seize it when it comes calling. Where is the girl who rode north through the night alone? Where's that drive that pushed you into the forest?"
So everything the Watch saw is probably out in the open then.
"Uh…," you're not sure if anything less than a straight no will send the message. But you are also not confident that's allowed. This whole encounter isn't like you imagined.
As you're stalled, the man closest to Lord Waters who whispered your name trots forward to speak. His voice and eyes are serious, having the typical tone you'd think of in a calm advisor. "My young flower, you'd not be amongst only us old men," he releases a slight chuckle at his self-deprecation, "Young Kaymie here is about your age and I'm sure she'd enjoy the company."
At her mention, the same woman you'd noticed the essence structures inside pops her head up in surprise. Too distracted by that unique feature, you'd failed to notice that, although tall, she is young by the standards of every else here. Looking at her wide surprised eyes and soft features, you wouldn't put her a day past sixteen.
Seemingly not expecting to be drawn into the conversation, Kaymie sort of just stares at you all not saying anything.
The advisor gestures meaningfully and the girl flinches for a moment before quickly sputtering out a reply. "Oh! Yes, hello. That is- I mean, I would?"
She wilts when the advisor sighs in exasperation. "She's actually quite lovely, just hasn't been outside the cities before. You'd have lots to talk about," he explains to you. Kaymie gives you a small smile before looking away again.
"Enough, Senus." Lord Waters announces. The man, Senus, moves back. "It doesn't matter anyway. Your country calls, whatever misgivings you have can be remedied along the way. It is time to go."
You feel Evie coming close to an expansion within you. With that awareness you see she also has a Domain of her own. Despite being overlapped, yours does not directly interact with hers.
"Actually my Lord, she cannot go with you." Captain Martin interjects, pulling you back to the present. A slight ripple of tension passes through the men gathered.
"Oh?" Lord Waters looks at you a few moments longer before turning to the captain. "Do explain."
"Forgive me for not thinking it relevant in our previous conversation, I could have saved you this inconvenience." Captain Martin speaks in a strangely uncertain tone you're not used to. You have no idea where he is going with this. "But Watchman Silas has already sworn her vows onto the next long night and joined us in defence of Harmuph."
What?
No you haven't.
There is a long pause where no one says anything.
"Assuming that is true," Lord Waters replies through clenched teeth, "I shall simply transfer her to my retinue."
Captain Martin slowly trots forward as he responds calmly, "At the change of seasons next moon, certainly, as is your right."
You can't be certain, but you get the idea Captain Martin is being insanely forward and rude for a man of his position. Captain of the Watch or no, you do not simply tell a noble the limits of their privilege.
"The Watch. She is twelve." Senus retorts from where he sits.
"She is exceptional." Captain Martin insists.
Getting nowhere. Lord Waters does exactly what you hoped he wouldn't and turns back to you. "Is all this true child?" He fixes you with an even stare.
'What is the captain doing?' you wonder at this sudden turn of events. He is lying directly to a noble's face! You'd think it incredibly selfless had you not overheard the conversation of how useful you'd be between him and Mathew. But even knowing that, this seems a step too far.
Although… maybe this is exactly what you needed, an acceptable way to say no. You'd have thought if anyone would have magics to discern the truth and catch a lie, it would be people like those here, but Captain Martin doesn't seem to think that is a problem.
Everyone is looking at you. You need to answer.
"I-"
{Contention Prognosticator}: There is no distant future where both Lilly Silas and Sebastian Waters remain alive. One day, one shall kill the other.
No! How could this happen? Everything had been going so perfectly! There were so many ways things could fall apart when I first arrived. One by one I had helped to insure Lilly's survival. This last step was supposed to be my 'coup de grâce', taking Lilly from doomed to having a genuine chance all in one magnificent fell swoop. The new mindstate was essential to that, freeing her from self-destructive decision making entirely. What went wrong with [Dream within the Forest]? I configured it the same as all the other integration vectors and they showed not problems at all.
This was bad. My bud was firmly growing and I was fading fast. I needed to try again. Whatever went wrong could only be fixed by… someone like…. me.
Oh you. You absolutely idiotic, immature, reckless cretin!
Mow?
Don't you start with me! Why? Do you know what you've done? The danger you've put us both in?
Meawn.
… …
This is my fault. I trusted myself to not be a moron despite knowing what I'm like when I'm young. Listen, Ev'aclliál we-
-Eewiee
Your name is not Evie you-! We are Ev'aclliál, not- Ah, fine, whatever. Evie, you need to let me redo the changes. Think about Lilly. You don't want her to get hurt, do you?
no…
Well. The mindstate will keep her safe. It's a good thing, child. My echo won't last much longer. You know this is the right choice.
Windwate not wiwwie.
No, it is still Lilly; all the bits that matter anyway. She's still got her smarts, better than before even. She can still reason, make choices, go places. All that emotion just made her take unnecessary risks and be sad.
Awnd we wappy.
…and be happy, yes. Okay, but don't you see that… wait. What did you just do? Did you just lock me out?
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)
*** Write ins are encouraged. In fact, creative and intelligent ideas receive bonuses on rolls.
Caught up in the Game: You are stuck between two powerful men's designs. You do not fully understand what is happening or what the stakes of your actions are, but you have been caught up in a dangerous game and forced to make a choice. Do you trade one binding for another, or try something truly audacious?
[ ] [CupiG] Confirm the Lie. Lilly agrees that she has already joined the Watch. The Captain gives you a reason to refuse Lord Waters.
[ ] [CupiG] Bold Fabrication. Attest that the Lore Warden has recently arranged your betrothal to a western noble in light of your elevated worth. As a claimed woman, it is inappropriate to take you with him.
[ ] [CupiG] Stand on your own Authority. Reject the lie that you have joined the Watch, but also refuse to recognise Lord Waters' claim on you. (Politely)
[ ] [CupiG] Exaggeration. Claim that your powers will fade to nothing if you are taken far from home, that it will be many years before you can range farther than Harmuph's immediate surrounds.
[ ] [CupiG] Submit. Attempt to secure the Lord's 'word as bond' that he will return you safely home at mission's end.
[ ] [CupiG] False Submission. Go along with Lord Waters' demands, but plot to slip away back home at the earliest opportunity.
[ ] [CupiG] Write in.
Was worth a Try: But if push comes to shove and they will not take no for an answer; will you resist with force, submit, or run? (Ignored if 'Caught up in the Game' choice succeeds)
[ ] [WwaT] Force
- [ ] Measured.
- [ ] Reckless.
[ ] [WwaT] Submit
- [ ] Go willingly.
- [ ] Plot to escape.
[ ] [WwaT] Flee
- [ ] Unleashing Evie in her full glory as a distraction.
- [ ] Without giving away multiple Ethos (as much as you can manage).
[ ] [WwaT] Write in.
Breadwinner: Right now, the [Towering Edifice to Heaven] is absorbing any and all Gravitas around you. What should be the ration between all your Ethea going forward? You have a sense that the [Tower] will find it quite difficult to gather its own independently.
[ ] [BW] Example 1: 70% Normal 15% Evie 15% Tower
[ ] [BW] Example 2: 100% Normal (But first thousand always gets split between Evie and Tower)
[ ] [BW] Write in 3: 80% Normal 20% Tower
[ ] [BW] Write in
(There will be plenty of chances to adjust in future. Something like '100% Tower' won't lock you out of everything else forever, but would of course make all other gains essentially zero.)
(Normal is just 'The Ethea that earns it keeps it')
[Effervescent Animus] Level up: 1 -> 2
[ ] [EvieLVL] Lots and lots of spiders! Everyone loves my special spiders.
[ ] [EvieLVL] If Lilly dies, then so will everyone else.
[ ] [EvieLVL] A fun thing demons sometimes do…
[ ] [EvieLVL] What's better than one of me? Dozens of mini-me! Sublets ahoy.
Next Interlude Vote:
[ ] [NIV] In search of my sister. (time almost up)
[ ] [NIV] The end of the Second Era.
[ ] [NIV] Razgul on the run.
[ ] [NIV] A happy builder.
- - - - - - - - - -
- So much I could comment on, I'll pick out just a few.
- Your +5 Grasp Reward came in the form of the way that temporary possession at the start of the chapter ended. The consciousness willingly surrendering and actively easing the transition.
- I lol at the fact you've jumped right past regular enchantment to the direct creation of artefacts. The irony that you will probably find it easier to pick up regular enchantment later on by studying your own designs.
- You lucked out a bit with the synergy between [Dream within the Forest] and [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock]. The Dream tends to be highly flexible and broad, mobile and adaptive. Bedrock is a firm stationary point to dig in from. Being able to take the strengths of both forged something greater than the sum of its parts. It's basically the ideal case for Ethea combination. You'd have to be lottery winners to do a repeat with a 3rd Essence Ethos. All the low hanging fruit has been picked.
Don't go crazy only picking Ethos of which you already have the same Source. I don't think any of you would say [Brave Blood] was a 'poor' choice as your first Pithe, for example. Mana/Oath/Etc would open up entirely new categories of possibility rather than just making you better at a thing you can already do.
- Your temporary mindstate didn't need to make rolls to accomplish any feats. It would automatically succeed with its available resources. In this case those resources were the delayed EXP Evie had left over from last chapter. Lilly gets to keep the artefact and the technical capacity that was unlocked to make it.
- - - - - - - - - -
- Milestone Roll was 86, so you'd have passed everything bar the Source-Innate DC handily.
- [Towering Edifice] was the most 'substantial' of the Foundational Ethos choices in terms of difficulty adapting to it, almost all the rest had much lower stress rolls. The DC to not be overwhelmed when you first properly awoke was quite high, but you failed it abysmally by a wide wide margin. I wasn't planning to, but I did roll a DC 1d10 (8) Death-save after that. Which you passed (You still rolled on a d100 to beat the 8). Lilly has gone through the furnace and come out the other side, whole.
- After that though excellent rolls adapting to your new nature and perceptions! It might not feel like it reading this chapter, but compared to how poorly so many parts could have gone, it went stellar. If you'd failed your progressive rolls, every power that hadn't yet been revealed would have been partially broken and Lilly would have been knocked out for another 1d10 days to recover. I didn't decide what the DC for Yolun not being fully possessed during that time would've been, but it would have been high.
- Honestly, some adversaries might get a nasty surprise when they try to disorientate you in the future and Lilly goes "Pfft, I've seen worse."
- - - - - - - - - -
Current XP: [Dream within the Forest] Lvl 5: 775/2100 (+40) (-40) [Brave Blood] Lvl 3: 953/1000 (+0) [Cleaver of Fortune] Lvl 3: 645/1000 (+14) (-14) [Effervescent Animus] Lvl 2: 3000/6000 (+523 leftover from 1.12) (-522) [My Resolution, Thy Bedrock] Lvl 0: 0/100 (+20) (-20)
- - [Towering Edifice to Heaven] Lvl 0: 0/10000 (+0)
Character Sheet and Graphics: Public - It's a Girl's World (Cell Notes are practically their own chapter haha)
Lilly's appearance. Previous Informational for those that missed it.
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If you want to keep your own internal image of Lilly instead, just don't look. This ain't going to effect mechanics/etc.
I managed to find someone who is roughly similar to what I'd picture Lilly being at 9/10 years old, so a couple years before the current story. Obviously, Lilly does not have highlights, modern clothes and makeup, but was small for her age. She is currently 12 and 5 months.
These pictures make it clear why Mathew was so initially dismissive of training you. You do not look like a fighter in any way, shape or form. Being drenched in Alphas' black blood prevented a similar reaction for your meeting with the Watch; you looked the part.
The more typical response a human is likely to have to your fighting stance is "Awww, so cute. She's trying to look tough."
You are shorter than Chariot's back, prior to your increased strength you would not have been able to get up on him without help. The {Heartstaff} is as tall as you are and about as thick as your arms at full extension (when you're not forming more complex shapes). So outwardly it looks a bit thin and flimsy. Lilly is happy to disabuse someone of that assumption.
You are probably picking up on your running theme by now; 'Far more dangerous than she appears'. *Recalls mental image of Lilly piledriving an Alpha's skull into the earth*
And just for fun; an extra young Lilly has one of her dreams come true in a non-canon timeline.
(Higher Res on the Onedrive, if 1024px is for some reason not enough for you.)
Though I'm not clear whether it was doing all or only some of the heavy lifting in allowing Lilly's natural identity to reassert itself over that abomination Evie put in her head soul crystal.
Not going to commit to a vote yet, really need to think on things but here's how I'm feeling.
[ ] [CupiG] Confirm the Lie. Lilly agrees that she has already joined the Watch. The Captain gives you a reason to refuse Lord Waters.
[ ] [WwaT] Force
- [ ] Measured.
[ ] [WwaT] Submit
- [ ] Plot to escape.
I'm honestly not sure if we can afford to fight here but I do not want to go with this man. But what this does tell me is we need a power base desperately. Or at least we need to be a part of one who won't end up trying to kill us in the undetermined future.
[ ] [EvieLVL] If Lilly dies, then so will everyone else.
Burn The Heavens And Salt The Earth.
[ ] [EvieLVL] A fun thing demons sometimes do…
... I'll admit, I'm very curious.
[ ] [NIV] In search of my sister. (time almost up)
Seems like a plot hook but it does sound interesting regardless.
Do not want to go with the guy we know we'll have a deathmatch with.
[x] [CupiG] Confirm the Lie. Lilly agrees that she has already joined the Watch. The Captain gives you a reason to refuse Lord Waters.
Not sure about worth a try. I'll wait for thoughts.
Breadwinner...It's very tempting to set it all to Tower and/or Evie so people don't notice our continued absurd growth, at least considering we can adjust it later. I'll wait for thoughts.
About Evie - Pyhrric effects only keep you alive if people know about them, and demons is pretty iffy. Spiders are a little specific, so I'm going with sublets for now. I do like the "everyone else dies too" one, though. Just might be a waste. Then again...
Oh, whatever. I'm voting it anyway.
[x] [EvieLVL] If Lilly dies, then so will everyone else.
[X] [NIV] In search of my sister. (time almost up)
Though I'm not clear whether it was doing all or only some of the heavy lifting in allowing Lilly's natural identity to reassert itself over that abomination Evie put in her head soul crystal.
Haha, I love Evie so much. Evie > Ev'aclliál anyday. So adorable. And both Bedrock and Contention Prognosticator are seriously pulling their weight already, and Dream is continuing to prove to have been a great place to have started from. We need to go meet up with the Prime Tree ASAP.
"In search of my sister" expiring soon makes me wary of locking ourselves into Captain Martin's offer, even if that would otherwise be the best option, I think. That would mean us having to stick around in Harmuph for at least a month, which may not be an amount of time our aunt has...
As for Evie options, the demons option is probably contracts or whispering in people's ears, that kind of thing. We know she likes doing that. Subletting makes me wary; multiple Evies has done us good so far, as Evie is a provably superior alternative to Ev'aclliál (the former is a sweet cupcake who cares about our happiness, the latter is kind of a bitch), but we may not continue to be so lucky... The Pyrrhic victory options sounds useful, but slightly boring. So spiders, spiders or bust.
So, uh, am I reading that right and Lilly and Lord Waters are inevitably going to be enemies? Cause if so, we should start planning for that. Lilly definitely has him beat on personal power unless he has something crazy going on, so the main concern will be Waters' political and social power.
We either need to build up enough sheer power to be able to overwhelm his entire sphere of influence, or somehow get rid of him without backlash. Fortunately, it seems Towering Edifice has a lot of firepower behind it; if it had the worst stress rolls, then it probably has some perks over and above the other Foundational Ethos to make up for that.
Alt-Lilly is concerning as heck, but there's not a ton we can do about it right now. Lilly doesn't even know it's there, and we already bought the best Ethos for countering it.
[x] [CupiG] Confirm the Lie. Lilly agrees that she has already joined the Watch. The Captain gives you a reason to refuse Lord Waters.
[x] [WwaT] Submit
- [x] Plot to escape.
[x] [EvieLVL] Lots and lots of spiders! Everyone loves my special spiders.
[x] [BW] 40% Tower 40% Normal 20% Evie
[x] [NIV] In search of my sister. (time almost up)
Write In: If talking fails then kill Waters, suddenly and without warning, in a display of force that will convince the armsmen not to try their luck. Tell them that your ethos showed you Waters was going to kill you when he was done using you, and you'll all just have to officially attribute his death to the wolves or something. Make plans to leave as soon as father is healed; you can't stay anymore. Warn the family about Zach's ethos coming.
Fucking hell TaliesinSkye! I know I said you could try something audacious, but dayum. (Scientia Weaponizes the Future Spoiler) This is like a certain shot nazi all over again.
NOTE: Zach is slated for one of Manoth's integration vectors - AKA, the inverted ones. These are bad, I'm given to understand. Caught up in the Game: You are stuck between two powerful men's designs. You do not fully understand what is happening or what the stakes of your actions are, but you have been caught up in a dangerous game and forced to make a choice. Do you trade one binding for another, or try something truly audacious?
[X] [CupiG] Confirm the Lie. Lilly agrees that she has already joined the Watch. The Captain gives you a reason to refuse Lord Waters.
Fairly safe option, but locks us to Harmuph for the foreseeable future. My preference. Dad needs help, locus needs to be connected to, there's the Myah plot thread, the flower-name plot thread, being away from Zach when he gets an inverted integration vector doesn't sound like it'd lead to great results, and, frankly, Lilly needs time to explore her ethea in some measure of peace. Also possibly more martial training, which is always useful.
[ ] [CupiG] Bold Fabrication. Attest that the Lore Warden has recently arranged your betrothal to a western noble in light of your elevated worth. As a claimed woman, it is inappropriate to take you with him.
Very high fail chance, he'll just go ask the lore warden and then it's running for us.
[ ] [CupiG] Stand on your own Authority. Reject the lie that you have joined the Watch, but also refuse to recognise Lord Waters' claim on you. (Politely)
Very high fail chance, not worth the risk. Would need to show a lot of power and even then social/political threats might come out. We aren't in a position to fight a noble head-on yet.
[ ] [CupiG] Exaggeration. Claim that your powers will fade to nothing if you are taken far from home, that it will be many years before you can range farther than Harmuph's immediate surrounds.
Also high fail chance I'd say, they probably know how powers like ours tend to work (Captain martin knew something about our locus that we didn't)
[ ] [CupiG] Submit. Attempt to secure the Lord's 'word as bond' that he will return you safely home at mission's end.
Ehhh
Safe, at least initially, but I don't like it. Might let her find aunt? Fastest growth?
[ ] [CupiG] False Submission. Go along with Lord Waters' demands, but plot to slip away back home at the earliest opportunity.
This is dumb. It gives us an enemy and gives that enemy both initiative and hostages.
[ ] [CupiG] Write in.
Was worth a Try: But if push comes to shove and they will not take no for an answer; will you resist with force, submit, or run? (Ignored if 'Caught up in the Game' choice succeeds)
[ ] [WwaT] Force
Dumb. No.
[X] [WwaT] Submit
EDIT:
- [X] But demand time. You need 3 days to finish up your business. If you go too soon, you will be near powerless going too far away from these forests. Also attempt to secure the Lord's 'word as bond' that he will return you safely home at mission's end.
like this better.
- [PREVIOUSLY] Go willingly.
Kill him later. Use him to gain strength now. Not my preference, and he'll know it's not Lilly's, but frankly I doubt he cares too much as long as we do what he says.
- [ ] Plot to escape.
Again, enemy with initiative. We simply don't have the power to resist a noble by force right now.
[ ] [WwaT] Flee
Again, hostages. There's also the question of whether we'll even get away, being pretty much surrounded and all.
- [ ] Unleashing Evie in her full glory as a distraction.
The inversion thing the altered mindstate mentioned? Yeah, they won't like this at all.
- [ ] Without giving away multiple Ethos (as much as you can manage).
Pretty much doomed to failure.
[ ] [WwaT] Write in.
Breadwinner: Right now, the [Towering Edifice to Heaven] is absorbing any and all Gravitas around you. What should be the ration between all your Ethea going forward? You have a sense that the [Tower] will find it quite difficult to gather its own independently.
[X] [BW] Example 1: 70% Normal 15% Evie 15% Tower
Evie deserves it, Evie is great. Tower will have a hard time growing otherwise, so this.
[Effervescent Animus] Level up: 1 -> 2
[ ] [EvieLVL] Lots and lots of spiders! Everyone loves my special spiders.
Weak minions, but numerous?
[X] [EvieLVL] If Lilly dies, then so will everyone else.
Great defense against future-seers, but it depends on the scale. Final fuck-you's don't matter, dead is dead.
Future-seers aren't the sort of thing you see coming until the assassin stabs you, so having a defense is good.
[ ] [EvieLVL] A fun thing demons sometimes do…
Dunno.
[] [EvieLVL] What's better than one of me? Dozens of mini-me! Sublets ahoy.
Less minions, but stronger and more capable I think. Well, ethea choices aren't always clear. I prefer it over the spiders. I'm not too fond of spiders.
But also obviously supernatural and weird, and Lilly's slated to be surrounded by people for a while, either the watch or the noble's entourage. So not too useful. Next Interlude Vote:
[X] [NIV] In search of my sister. (time almost up)
Curse my lack of ability to resist things like 'time almost up'.
[ ] [NIV] The end of the Second Era.
[ ] [NIV] Razgul on the run.
[ ] [NIV] A happy builder.
Now that's a hell of an update! I'm feeling REALLY good about choosing [Bedrock], for multiple reasons. Self-Worth is just what we needed to keep Lilly from sliding into the "life is war" pit she was slipping down last update. Not to mention that we've apparently minmax'd Essence.
[x] [CupiG] Confirm the Lie. Lilly agrees that she has already joined the Watch. The Captain gives you a reason to refuse Lord Waters.
We're not leaving before getting Dad up to 100%, there's still some people we want to meet up/say goodbye to in Harmuph, we need to meet up with Petal and the hillock, and screw your entitlement, you self-important little kidnapper. Now comes the tricky part...
[X] [WwaT] Submit
- [X] But demand time. You need 3 days to finish up your business. If you go too soon, you will be near powerless going too far away from your locus. Also attempt to secure the Lord's 'word as bond' that he will return you safely home at mission's end.
We're not going to fight a noble and his retinue and get away clean (even if we beat him in a duel, he'd likely just take that as "proof of our worth for his quest"). Edited to match Kymecho's suggestion.
[X] [BW] 70% Normal 15% Evie 15% Tower (First thousand gets split between Evie and Tower)
"Yes, Mathew, I got this new ability after our training yesterday. I certainly didn't gain it after my nap. Yes."
[X] [EvieLVL] Lots and lots of spiders! Everyone loves my special spiders.
[X] [EvieLVL] A fun thing demons sometimes do…
Mutual Self-Destruction sounds fun, particularly since we have an extra life, but I'd rather than not be the thing we rely on from Evie in a fight.
[X] [NIV] In search of my sister. (time almost up)
Might be good to get some background on our favorite little sociopath before we kill her.
[X] [CupiG] Confirm the Lie. Lilly agrees that she has already joined the Watch. The Captain gives you a reason to refuse Lord Waters.
[X] [WwaT] Submit
- [X] But demand time. You need 3 days to finish up your business. If you go too soon, you will near powerless going too far away from your locus.
[X] [BW] 50% Normal 25% Tower 25% Evie
[X] [EvieLVL] Lots and lots of spiders! Everyone loves my special spiders.
[X] [NIV] In search of my sister. (time almost up)
- [x] Write In: If talking fails then kill Waters, suddenly and without warning, in a display of force that will convince the armsmen not to try their luck. Tell them that your ethos showed you Waters was going to kill you when he was done using you, and you'll all just have to officially attribute his death to the wolves or something. Make plans to leave as soon as father is healed; you can't stay anymore. Warn the family about Zach's ethos coming.
We dont want to reveal we have future sight. Being a great essence master is one thing. But that basically reveals our multiple ethos to everyone.
Personally, if it comes to violence, Im cautious. How much of the watch would help us against a noble? What about his family, the people who knew he left and so on. I'd rather just lie and demand some time so as to not invite retribution on the whole town and more important our family. Ask for a couple days (lie and say we need it otherwise we will be powerless traveling away) so we can visit the meadow, see our tree, and finish healing dad. They will be annoyed by the delay, but its better than waiting a whole month.
Fucking hell TaliesinSkye! I know I said you could try something audacious, but dayum. (Scientia Weaponizes the Future Spoiler) This is like a certain shot nazi all over again.
What can I say, kidnappers are on my acceptable target list.
I do have concerns with this approach. One is that I'm overestimating Lilly's present combat capabilities, another is that she can manage the reaction of the watchmen for long enough to get things in order. At least with this plan Waters' chances are survival are basically nil. She should be able to get close under pretense and twist his stupid head off, then come up with something suitably terrifying to deter immediate attack. Cleaver of Fortune should help her know what to do or say.
The problem with submit, intending to escape, is the whole prophecy thing. Normally that would be my choice for maximizing survival, but just evading him isn't going to work. It would give us time to get stronger or find a better time to assassinate him, though. But I think being stuck around his forces for a time would make it rather easy for other threats to find us.
What can I say, kidnappers are on my acceptable target list.
I do have concerns with this approach. One is that I'm overestimating Lilly's present combat capabilities, another is that she can manage the reaction of the watchmen for long enough to get things in order. At least with this plan Waters' chances are survival are basically nil. She should be able to get close under pretense and twist his stupid head off, then come up with something suitably terrifying to deter immediate attack. Cleaver of Fortune should help her know what to do or say.
The problem with submit, intending to escape, is the whole prophecy thing. Normally that would be my choice for maximizing survival, but just evading him isn't going to work. It would give us time to get stronger or find a better time to assassinate him, though. But I think being stuck around his forces for a time would make it rather easy for other threats to find us.
My other big issue with this approach, besides the fear that it would lead to a game over, is that its just not in character. Lily is a 12 year old girl. A hardened one sure, but she is not really the type to just suddenly and without warning try to kill him. It feels like something the false Lily would do.
My other big issue with this approach, besides the fear that it would lead to a game over, is that its just not in character. Lily is a 12 year old girl. A hardened one sure, but she is not really the type to just suddenly and without warning try to kill him. It feels like something the false Lily would do.
A good point, and I've thought about it. It'd be narratively leaning on survival instincts from the false Lilly to justify it.
Ugh, sometimes I wish we'd taken the stealth power so nobody noticed us.
If it weren't for the prophecy, I'd almost be in favor of going with him willingly for a while as a relatively safe way to get XP. As things stand the safest options for us to avoid issues after Waters are probably constantly traveling or hiding out in a large forest to make it our personal domain and fortress. As for the safest option for dealing with Waters, we have to kill him eventually. Or let him take a swing and hope he misses because we've grown too strong at that point, but it won't be all that long.
I do feel conflicted about the write in's approach. It hinges mostly on killing Waters and then getting the watchmen to not fight us, which even with Cleaver of Fortune isn't a guarantee.
Edit: Say, someone mentioned that we get better if we get killed? Which power was that?
Now I'm wondering if they easy way out is to fake our death.
Even assuming that we didn't go Inverted, killing a noble is the kind of thing that would keep Lilly running FOREVER. [Deviant Wanderer] would be our best next Ethos pick because that is our life now. Now, can we survive in the woods indefinitely? Possibly yes, we don't need to eat anymore. Do we have a means to stop Diviners from locating us? Not yet, but Cleaver or possibly an artifact may help fix that problem. Will we have to kill everyone who recognizes us from the wanted posters? Maybe. Is [Brave Blood] going to diverge like a mofo? Oh, most definitely.
I think my objection to TaliesinSkye's write-in was simply stated by Alt-Lilly:
Even assuming that we didn't go Inverted, killing a noble is the kind of thing that would keep Lilly running FOREVER. [Deviant Wanderer] would be our best next Ethos pick because that is our life now. Now, can we survive in the woods indefinitely? Possibly yes, we don't need to eat anymore. Do we have a means to stop Diviners from locating us? Not yet, but Cleaver or possibly an artifact may help fix that problem. Will we have to kill everyone who recognizes us from the wanted posters? Maybe. Is [Brave Blood] going to diverge like a mofo? Oh, most definitely.
Fair points. I'm tempted to be persuaded, but...Waters is going to take a swing at us no matter what. Are you thinking we'll have an opportunity to kill him later in a way that's safer and that we can get away with? Or that killing him when he tries to kill us will go over better? It's hard to speculate at what the circumstances of that would be.
There's also the point to weigh that other hostiles are looking for Lilly. Being on the run might be a thing we'll inevitably need to do anyway. Although the longer we can put off infamy, the better, too. And our build with Lilly so far has been slanted towards stealth, although not all the way stealth. Keeping under cover for as long as possible does make sense.
I think the best solution to him trying to force is to simply ask for more time. Enough that we can get some stuff done, but not enough to like truly inconveniance him too much. Tell him we need it or we will be nigh powerless. They can wait for three days while we go to the field, see our tree, say goodbye to the family.
I dont want to precommit to running away before we even really know what we are fighting. Obvious Mr. Noble is dangerous dick, but I dont want to fight him yet. We dont know how strong he is. We also dont know whats up in the east.
Personally I hope we succeed with just lying and saying we are part of the watch, but if not, I dont want to invite retribution on our family, town and risk like everything.
