Also Mistletoe is still living with her family if we take Mundanes and Building Upgrade we should be able to house her when her family suffers the typical protagonist family fate
Metrux
Gentle Demon Lord
- Location
- Brasil
Exactly! And that's why I'm going for the building upgrade this round, and taking Homer in. We'll probably meet more people next round, but we can still accomodate at least those two, and Homer will be a good upgrade for us, with more actions or better actions, if my understanding is correct.
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
From what Goodyear says, we'd need to invest in him, more then just keeping him around. It sounds like he'd be good at defenses, both making them and, if what he did to the witches is indicative, breaking them. Excellent support, maybe not so good item creation.
Metrux
Gentle Demon Lord
- Location
- Brasil
Yeah, I was thinking more of having him help with the upgrades and building, giving us time to create items instead of worrying for each new person at our doorstep... Because, let's be honest, we do worry about each of them, and want to help all of them.
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
In the hood, aka very poor neighborhood.
- Location
- USA
Not slums, that implies more people around than there are. We're better described as being in the hood as it's a very poor area with our abandoned motel not being unusual.
Week 3+1: When magic is a constant of life, superstition becomes perfectly reasonable paranoia in the face of the unknown
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
After taking Homer in, you quickly discovered a problem: the Commissary was not set up to deal with more than four people eating there. The stoves were inadequate, the sump couldn't drain fast enough, and most importantly trying to cram everyone in there was an utter bitch. Therefore, you'd be expanding it posthaste. Also, when the girls used it as a War Room, it got loud.
"I still think we shouldn't fuck with her." Trissa opined, glaring at the map of the city covered in Monopoly pieces, sharpie marker lines, and pushpins. "That nest of alchemists is still a major danger, and they've nearly killed me twice now. I don't want to make it three times."
"The witch dies." Calypso shot back. "I don't care if I need to grab that new girl and duct-tape a sword into her hand, we're killing her."
"Can we wait, like, maybe one week?" Trompdoy groused. "Seriously, why the hell is everyone trying to go off half-cocked?"
"Because it's a witch, full stop?" Eowyn griped. "The sooner we kill it, the less time it has to get dug in. I might have stopped it from setting up a bounded field last night, but there's no way for me to know if I can pull that off again- and you're still recovering for quite a while yet."
"I've already got most of the injuries healed up." Trompdoy replied.
"So you're vulnerable still because we know it takes time to recover strength."
Slamming a pot of ham and pea porridge down on the table, you glared at all of them and just started dishing out dinner. The conversation died down, and Trompdoy drew a circle around the map and started chewing on a lump of ham.
"The real question is can we get more supplies if we wait a week." Calypso said, glaring. "If we could get more gear, then there wouldn't be an issue with getting overwhelmed by defensive Familiars in a week."
"I'll see what I can do." You said, sighing.
"You won't see what you can do, you're gonna make something we can use to burn this place out." Calypso replied, voice harsh. "I am down to fuckall for supplies, and unlike some of y'all, I don't have a way to make up for that."
The rest of the table stared at her. "I thought you were a skill-girl like the rest of us." Trissa finally said, blinking.
"I was literally an old homunculus before I oopsed into a soul!" Calypso yelled. "I left that dump with a lantern sword, a pistol, and a Molotov; and since then all of it's been broken! I literally have two hands and some orisons and that's it!"
"Show of hands, all in favor of waiting a week?" Trompdoy asked tiredly.
Every hand went up.
"Great, meeting adjourned, now everyone eat your damn porridge."
-/-/-/-/
Once you got Homer settled into his room, you didn't really see him for the next three days. When you did, you found him in the room across the hall, now fully remediated and full of scrap lumber and cinder block bookshelves.
"Homer, what the fuck?" you asked blithely, staring at the room.
"You like it?" he asked, grinning. At some point, he'd aquired a pair of shutter-shades and smashed the face off a Wal-Mart Special watch, and stolen a pair of your cheapo work gloves. "Because personally, I like it."
"I'm trying to figure out what it all does." You replied, stepping around the room. A large war-mask stared out at you from the door-wall, and the south face of the room had the window completely torn out and replaced with shutters. In the center of the room, a wire circle had been pounded into the sub-floor, with layers building up from it steadily, before capping off in a large plinth with a non-insignificant amount of your moonstone on it.
"It's a ritual circle and enscribatory plinth." Homer explained, stepping into it. "Basically, I speak a word, and it steals it from a written source somewhere in the room, and transcribes it to another piece of paper."
"So you made a magical Xerox machine, when I could just go to the public library and use theirs."
Homer grinned at you. "If you trust a mundane scanner to handle sixth-dimensional witch-runes or copy over self-destructing recipes, sure. More importantly, it lets me create copies of spellcraft and magery."
You glared at him. "And you know how much spellcraft and magery?"
"Watch and learn." He said, grinning. Taking out a sheet of copy paper, Homer put it on the moonstone and unloaded a box of destroyed books onto a shelf.
"Bortom Svea rikes gränser
Hörs ett kall från ovan jord
Följer kristendomens regler
Offensivens man, soldat i Jesu namn!"
Watching the ruined texts on the shelf start to dissolve into motes of dust, the sheet of copy paper started slowly growing, edges curling as runes started covering the sheet. Homer sure as fuck wasn't speaking English, and like hell those were books in… well it wasn't German, but it was related. Sorta like how housecats and tigers were related, if you squinted.
"In i striden genom ett kulregn, Herrens vilja ske
In i striden går han på led-
Tills han vitögat ser karolinen marscherar fram!
Lade sitt liv i Guds han för sin konung och fosterland
Tills han vitögat ser karolinen marscherar fram!"
The sheet of paper had now started pulling from the ream, and you could feel the same dictum of power that you used to develop a wand last week rip into the working below. Mystic shapes pushed and pulled through the air, auras of power coalescing themselves around the scroll until the pressure was unimaginable. Coreward the motes flew, until the age of the paper reversed itself, becoming pristine velum as the ink scattered and settled. Finishing his narration with an explosive scream, Homer slammed his hands down on the scroll and the shelf of disintegrating books exploded outwards in a flurry of dust and cardboard covers.
Coughing, you felt the energy disperse, before you walked up to the pedestal. "So. What the fuck."
"I made a scroll." He said, grinning. "In this instance… a field-breaker, general purpose. A superimposition of reality onto whatever workings that some dumbass creates."
"I presume this is useful?"
Homer rolled his head, and if he still had eyes they'd be so far back in his skull the pupil would meet his brain. "I literally got blinded by the Familiars explicitly because I made sure they'd need to have a full Witch to create a bounded field. Most Witch-crafts are underpinned by a suspension of an aspect of reality- the behavior of light, the presence of gravity, a system of elements, the dissolution of magnetism… tons of shit. Unless you're willing to pay through the nose, you need a bounded field. Traditionally, you break the anchors to break it, but it's not terribly advanced fieldcraft to be able to hide anchors in the field itself."
"fucking A." you muttered. "Well, we can hawk it to the girls at least."
Homer winced. "Noooot really."
You stared as hard as you could.
"Okay so what if I told you there was a non-zero chance this could kill them?"
The room was void of sound as your glare intensified.
"Alright so there's a lot of ways to make a magical girl," Homer said, pacing. "Which I figured out because holy shit, Trompdoy will not shut up and can hold a conversation across the hotel because magic. Anyway, lots of magical girls use bounded fields with themselves as the anchor. It's how a lot of their tricks work: bottomless pouches, costume changes, superlasers, whatever. There's a non-zero number of Skill type girls though who's skill relies on a field bounded into their bodies. Break that field, and I have no fucking idea what happens next."
"So, in short, you built a magical nuke and we have no way to use it."
"Yeah pretty much."
You sighed. "Great. You can cook, right?"
"Yeah."
"You're cooking for the rest of the week. I need a fucking nap."
-/-/-/-/
It was two days later that you were cleaning up the lobby and something tall, dark, and smirking walked in.
"Evening, Medicine Boy." Ouroboros said, smiling. "A little birdy told me you had a library here now."
"Yep." You said, sighing. This was your life now. Magical girls, bloodstains on your tile lobby floor, and people playing coy.
"Let me guess, you accidentally built something you can't use." She said, smiling. "Because your Scrivener is still learning the ropes and rushed it, and didn't actually do any spell design other than 'fuck everything around me' because spell design is hard."
"A pound of salt for my privacy." You grumbled.
"These days, it would be worth closer to a ton of salt." Ouroboros said, smiling at you before coming over to pat your head. "That's ok though. I'll buy it still."
"How much?" you asked. Moments later, you were holding five dusty old tomes, and a giant scroll.
"Well, we've got here the entire Lesser Key of Solomon in the original languages, mostly Latin, German, and Hebrew because I'm old-fashioned like that; On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians, in the Ancient Greek; a copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in English sadly because I didn't have time to hop on over to Rome, and finally two Alchemical Notebooks because I've been frying bigger fish."
"Really." You said, looking at her.
"A magical girl grows in power with her experience, Medicine Boy." Ouroboros said, smiling slightly. "And I have experience dealing with threats older than this order of magi you now call Alchemists."
"Does it count as asking a woman her age when she dangles the question in front of you?" you asked rhetorically, "Since I would hate to start an incident, of course."
"It still counts." Another visitor said. Rose, right? Probably Rose. "Although some people should know better than to do that, right?"
"You take all the fun out of it." Ouroboros said, flopping down across the coffee table. Her dress showed more of her off than it covered at this point, the feathery portions layering themselves across everything but her pale leg and stockings. "I can't even tease the boy properly, he's so young."
"Oh the horror, ye who corrupt the youth." you said, sighing. "HOMER!"
Bumbling out of the library, Homer came into the front room, before you shoved Ouroboros' payment at him. "Nuke scroll, please."
"You're serious?" he said. "That could-"
"Boy." Ouroboros said, sighing. "Look at me."
"I still don't like it-" Homer started, before you moved out of the way. Striding off the coffee table, Ouroboros looked at him, one finger reaching to touch his chest, working it's way up to his chin as she towered over him, pulling him in closer to whisper in his ear.
"子供の頃夢に見てた
古の魔法のように...
光を呼び覚ます
願い"
Shaking out your ear, you didn't pretend to comprehend what Ouroboros had said, but you did rush up to catch Homer as she dropped him.
"She's good." He muttered. "really good. Ooof."
"You understood that?" you asked.
"Listen, there's understanding something, and understanding something." Homer muttered, trying to find his balance and failing. "Fuck, I need a smoke."
"Indeed." Ouroboros said, with a throaty chuckle as she accepted the scroll. Inspecting it, she continued going on. "Swedish? Bold choice, but it works for this. No obvious misandry in the circle, fairly well balanced implementation… oooh. I like your style, kid."
"Medicine, please." Homer begged you. "Don't let her get her hands on me again. I don't know if I can-"
"Give him my regards." Ouroboros said, smiling with a saccharine glint in her eyes. "With this, I'll be off."
As you finally got Homer to stop needing to cling to your arm, Ouroboros turned around in the doorway out, before blowing a kiss at Homer. The effect, even with his back turned, was rather like watching someone get hit by a car as he went down like a sack of bricks.
"REALLY?" you yelled out at her.
"Love you too, kid!" Ouroboros yelled. "Tschuss!"
/-/-/-/-/-
Build a Tool
[] Trinket
-[] Write in Level, between 1 and 3.
[] Wand
-[] Write in Level, between 1 and 1.
[] Bomb
-[] Write in Level, between 1 and 1.
[] No, you want to work on your building instead
[] No, you want to improve your workshop instead.
Last edited:
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
Yes. She paid for her goods, as recoded on the Spreadsheet.
No no, that was part of the set. No vote needed.
- Location
- USA
Time to crank out wands for the foreseeable future!
[X] Wand
-[X] Level 1
[X] Wand
-[X] Level 1
- Location
- USA
[X] Wand
-[X] Level 1
-[X] Level 1
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
Yes. They just have shit safety margins. Trinkets are generally a powerful offensive or defensive tool, so they alleviate failures in most cases.
Your base stats are bacon 1, homefries 3, eggs 2, grits 1, oatmeal 4, jalepeno 3. That may also be your preferred breakfast order.
Fixed.