Subsumption (PMMM Faux-Quest) (Witch MC)
Emergence 16: Weak
Flairina
Least Omnipotent Goddess
- Location
- The next infinity over
> Cloak yourself in illusion.
Hang on... this is the perfect time for you to start using your illusions, isn't it? It's no longer a waste of magic, since it's for an actual purpose now, and you can use them to go in totally unseen, which theoretically should allow you to slip by any potential lurking dangers without difficulties. That's actually kind of perfect, and right in line with how you're used to doing things anyways. Nice!
You call upon your magic and will it to lay an illusory veil over you, making you utterly transparent from every angle. Invisibility powers, activate!
A moment passes before you look down at yourself, still plainly visible. Given that you were able to see your illusions before, you doubt it's just because you're immune to them.
Er, you guess your illusions do seem more centered around the projection of images than obscuring them, so fair enough you suppose. That just means you can't go totally invisible though, not that you can't wrap yourself in an illusion. It'll just have to be one that completely covers you, is all.
...admittedly, that does make things quite a bit harder. What are you supposed to cover yourself with? Of the relatively few things that look like they belong in the barrier you're heading into, you're too big to be anything besides a tree, and you feel as if a roving, upright, apartment-building-sized piece of lumber might look even more out of place than just forgoing the illusion entirely. It's possible that the witch's familiars might be stupid and/or mindless enough to buy it anyways, but in that case you're not sure why you're even bothering with this.
Bah. Well, you might as well at least give it a try. If nothing else, at least your fairly obvious monochrome coloration will be covered up.
You reach for your magic again, attempting to wreathe a copy of one of the nearby trees around yourself. Maybe you should make it a little smaller than the others? But it also needs to be wide enough to cover Tome-
This canvas has already been completed. As we are, to paint over the work of another will be… costly.
The moment the image begins to take form, you find yourself flinching back in the air as something rather immediately becomes clear. You slam the gates of your magic shut again, completely cutting off your efforts.
Your witchstincts told you that was a bad idea, but they didn't really need to, because you could actually feel the demand trying to form the illusion was putting on your magic. In comparison to your shatterwords — which must take little enough that you don't really notice it — a simple illusion of a tree was going to take so much that you felt like you were going to drain yourself halfway dry trying to make it. Apparently, outside of the white void at your barrier's center, your illusions take massively more magic to create.
...
What kind of asinine limitation is that?! You've only got two real "abilities" so far as you can tell, and one of them is basically unusable when you're not in your inner barrier?! That's just freaking pathetic!
You make to throw up your arms in frustration, but of course you can't, because they're still utterly fixed to Tome. In a fit of anger, you look down and begin thrashing your trapped appendages back and forth, desperately trying to tear them away from the unmoving, unyielding pages. This isn't FAIR-!
After a few seconds, you force yourself to stop, your dying rage overtaken by the worry that your fragile-looking, semi-transparent limbs will be at risk of ripping in two if you continue. You might not be able to use them, but you can certainly feel them, and you'd rather not end up accidentally mutilating yourself, regardless of what horrid cards you seem to keep getting dealt.
Ugh... well, you suppose you might be able to get one use out of your illusions before you have to figure out how to "refill" your magic, and at least you found out before you tried to use them in battle. Doesn't mean it doesn't still suck, but it's better than being blindsided by it.
In any event, since you're definitely not willing to try that again if it's truly going to cost you that much, you suppose you'll just...
[-] Pass over the canals, through the "halls".
[-] Float over the treetops.
[-] Write in.
[-] ...aren't you forgetting something? [Write in: What?]
Hang on... this is the perfect time for you to start using your illusions, isn't it? It's no longer a waste of magic, since it's for an actual purpose now, and you can use them to go in totally unseen, which theoretically should allow you to slip by any potential lurking dangers without difficulties. That's actually kind of perfect, and right in line with how you're used to doing things anyways. Nice!
You call upon your magic and will it to lay an illusory veil over you, making you utterly transparent from every angle. Invisibility powers, activate!
A moment passes before you look down at yourself, still plainly visible. Given that you were able to see your illusions before, you doubt it's just because you're immune to them.
Er, you guess your illusions do seem more centered around the projection of images than obscuring them, so fair enough you suppose. That just means you can't go totally invisible though, not that you can't wrap yourself in an illusion. It'll just have to be one that completely covers you, is all.
...admittedly, that does make things quite a bit harder. What are you supposed to cover yourself with? Of the relatively few things that look like they belong in the barrier you're heading into, you're too big to be anything besides a tree, and you feel as if a roving, upright, apartment-building-sized piece of lumber might look even more out of place than just forgoing the illusion entirely. It's possible that the witch's familiars might be stupid and/or mindless enough to buy it anyways, but in that case you're not sure why you're even bothering with this.
Bah. Well, you might as well at least give it a try. If nothing else, at least your fairly obvious monochrome coloration will be covered up.
You reach for your magic again, attempting to wreathe a copy of one of the nearby trees around yourself. Maybe you should make it a little smaller than the others? But it also needs to be wide enough to cover Tome-
This canvas has already been completed. As we are, to paint over the work of another will be… costly.
The moment the image begins to take form, you find yourself flinching back in the air as something rather immediately becomes clear. You slam the gates of your magic shut again, completely cutting off your efforts.
Your witchstincts told you that was a bad idea, but they didn't really need to, because you could actually feel the demand trying to form the illusion was putting on your magic. In comparison to your shatterwords — which must take little enough that you don't really notice it — a simple illusion of a tree was going to take so much that you felt like you were going to drain yourself halfway dry trying to make it. Apparently, outside of the white void at your barrier's center, your illusions take massively more magic to create.
...
What kind of asinine limitation is that?! You've only got two real "abilities" so far as you can tell, and one of them is basically unusable when you're not in your inner barrier?! That's just freaking pathetic!
You make to throw up your arms in frustration, but of course you can't, because they're still utterly fixed to Tome. In a fit of anger, you look down and begin thrashing your trapped appendages back and forth, desperately trying to tear them away from the unmoving, unyielding pages. This isn't FAIR-!
After a few seconds, you force yourself to stop, your dying rage overtaken by the worry that your fragile-looking, semi-transparent limbs will be at risk of ripping in two if you continue. You might not be able to use them, but you can certainly feel them, and you'd rather not end up accidentally mutilating yourself, regardless of what horrid cards you seem to keep getting dealt.
Ugh... well, you suppose you might be able to get one use out of your illusions before you have to figure out how to "refill" your magic, and at least you found out before you tried to use them in battle. Doesn't mean it doesn't still suck, but it's better than being blindsided by it.
In any event, since you're definitely not willing to try that again if it's truly going to cost you that much, you suppose you'll just...
[-] Pass over the canals, through the "halls".
[-] Float over the treetops.
[-] Write in.
[-] ...aren't you forgetting something? [Write in: What?]
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SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
How does her subsumption ability even work?
Dermonster
The Shittiest Wizard
[X] …aren't you forgetting something? [Write in: What?]
-[X] Move the combined barrier into the sky to prevent intrusions.
-[X] Move the combined barrier into the sky to prevent intrusions.
mCooperative
meanderingCephalopod
- Location
- Back in Mitakihara after like 1000 years.
Hora.
Rather, huh. Interesting. Does that say something- or rather, what does it say- about Ashtaroth's nature, her witch nature? Or about the wish she made and why she made, it, maybe?
Tempestuous
Words are wind, so I write.
- Location
- CA
Sounds to me like the illusions are significantly more expensive if she's changing herself. If her wish lead to some sort of shapeshifting and/or illusion powers, the inability to change seems like an inversion, a specific limitation that directly contradicts factors of her former/other powers; the power to change oneself versus inability to change oneself. Perhaps related to the Wish/Despair duality mentioned between Meguca and Witches.
On a tangent, now I can't help but compare Magical Girls and Witches to stars and Black Holes - from a shining point of light to an all-devouring void.
Huh. Last time, Ashtaroth was quite capable of putting an illusion over herself while in another witch's barrier (section). It was subject to other last-time limitations, but no power issues. In fact, power depletion issues never manifested at all in the last version, as far as I recall.
I wonder what would happen if Ashtaroth "completed" a "canvas" of her own.
Flairina
Least Omnipotent Goddess
- Location
- The next infinity over
Give it a bit. You'll find out eventually.
Hehe... won't say anything in response to this specifically, but do keep in mind that some witches outright keep their magical girl powers (Candeloro uses ribbons, Ophelia uses Kyoko's spears and illusions, etc.), so that duality isn't necessarily a blanket concept.
Yep, that's intentionally different. Last time it was a question of range, background, and a couple other rules that were never introduced. This is similar, but not quite the same thing, and the question of power-depletion... well, more on that in the update this afternoon, but it would have had to be addressed eventually, else Kyubey's problem should have been long since solved.
Emergence 17: The Desolate Fields
Flairina
Least Omnipotent Goddess
- Location
- The next infinity over
> Float over the treetops.
You unhappily pull yourself into the air, slowly floating upwards until you've crested even the tallest branches of the barren forest before you. Once there, you begin moving forward over the path traced by one of the canals below, trying hard not to brood.
You realized from the start that life as a witch was unlikely to be a particularly charmed one, but must it keep beating you down like this? Every time you turn around, you discover yet another thing you don't have, or can't do, and it's really starting to affect your morale. You wish you at least had someone to talk to — and if the other witch is sapient, you suppose maybe you will? Given how things have been going so far however... well, you're not holding high hopes.
You pause for a moment, as your present elevation happens reminds you of something important. Oh, right, you should probably place your barrier somewhere high up again, so as to not risk getting "interrupted" by anyone while you're doing this. Assuming you still even CAN, at least — based on your rather minimal luck of late, and the fact that your barrier was refusing to do what you wanted from it just a few minutes ago, you wouldn't be surprised if this impromptu barrier fusion means you only have half your previous control over it now, if any at all.
To your relief, this particular worry turns out to be unfounded — your loss of control appears to have been only temporary, as your barrier obeys, no more difficult to move now than it was before you arrived. At your will, it ascends into the sky, before stopping in the range of about twenty to thirty stories or so above the river, which you figure is probably enough — you don't want to spend ages just getting back down to Earth again later, and somewhere between 100 feet up and 10000 feet up, you imagine there stops being much functional difference. No one should be able to get up this high anyways.
With that done, your mind ends up drifting back to your newly discovered... deficiency. Honestly, it kind of reminds you of back when you first became a magical girl, and not in a good way. You were so determined to avoid the mistake of not knowing what you could do before rushing into battle, that you ended up making an entirely different mistake, using up almost half your magic just testing your limits before Kyubey properly explained it was a limited resource. As a result, you ended up with a far-too-dark soul gem before you ever even saw a witch, a self-inflicted deficit that it took you almost a week to fully recover from.
You sigh internally. Yeah, things never do seem to go the way you would hope... although, you suppose that the issues aren't exactly analogous, because while one was a problem of you using up way too much magic for no tangible gain, the other is a problem of your abilities requiring way too much magic to begin with. Assuming that your illusions are supposed to be usable, either you're not really meant to move out of your inner barrier, or you're just a very poorly-specced witch.
...or, maybe you're just not really understanding how witch magic works? It wouldn't surprise you; Kyubey never really explained witches to your satisfaction to begin with, which you suppose is no wonder given what you know now. Unfortunately, whereas before not knowing much about them was a curious annoyance, now it's a genuine problem. For example, magic is clearly still a limited resource for witches, but how do they, and thus you recharge it? Surely it has to be possible, or else witches would eventually just burn themselves out on their own with no magical girl assistance needed, but you never heard a single word about the subject.
Do you... have to eat people to get it back? That's going to be a problem if so, not just because you don't particularly want to, but also because you don't even understand how that would work, given your utter lack of a mouth. For that matter, what happens if you overdraw on magic? For a magical girl, the result is... well, this, but for a witch...?
The thought of the process inverting itself and turning you human again crosses your mind for a moment before you brush it aside. Somehow, you doubt it's that easy. More likely, given that you're fairly sure witches are in fact made of magic, you'd instead end up literally tearing yourself apart. But that just leads right into another question — since the transformation happens when a magical girl runs out of magic, how is it that witches come out of it with any at all? The dichotomy there doesn't really seem to make any logical sense. Do witches really even have magic, or are you getting this all completely wrong?
Frustratingly, your witchstincts remain deafeningly silent on each and every one of these topics. Evidently your body has no more idea how it works than you do. Being a witch is so confusing...
In the corner of your vision, you suddenly notice something dark moving in the water of the canal below. You hurriedly refocus on your surroundings, but lose sight of the object almost immediately, already vanished
...what was that? A familiar? A boat? The shadow of a passing cloud? Between the barely-there light of the moon above and the inconsistent light of the streetlamps below, it's hard to really be sure, especially when your viewpoint is currently over six stories off the ground. Were you just imagining things? You don't think so...
Either way, you think you're glad you didn't take the lower path.
You put a pause on further musings as the canal you've been floating over splits in two, leaving you a minor crossroads. You ultimately decide to follow the left one... only to find it dividing into two slightly tinier streams itself not long after. Again, you take the left path, and not even half a minute passes before you come across yet another split. Okay then...
This pattern continues forward until the canal becomes a fractal, dividing into hundreds of tiny rivulets that each hold a bare trickle of water, each and all of them visible from where you float high above. Right when they finally become so small that you can no longer see them, the treeline ends, and you find yourself looking out upon the barrier's inner layer.
The dark green clouds of the barren forest transition into ones of a deep indigo, spiraling upwards like a looming titan to cover the sky in its entirety, the tempest they threaten to unleash larger than any you've ever even imagined. At the same time, countless colorful flowers drift lazily down from above, slowly descending towards the nearly black mud of the wide, flat field below. Pools of pinkish water are interspersed throughout the morass of land, some with what look like entire overturned buildings hidden underneath the surface, while small green hands with fan-like propellers in place of wrists dart around the area, snatching falling flowers from the air before jetting back to the mucky ground to rapidly replant them anew.
Under the distant eye of the brewing storm, a single ray of soft white light shines down upon a small hill, the only part of this place that appears to have any actual grass left. At its peak lies a circular patch of vividly-colored flowers, each one large enough to engulf a person whole, surrounding the base of a tall, jagged stone windmill. The structure faces away from you, its blades still and unmoving.
[-] Prep for battle. Best to be ready, even at risk of provoking a fight.
[-] Go in unarmed. You didn't come here to fight, you came to talk... or rather, to see if talking is even possible in the first place.
[-] Talk to the hands. These are definitely familiars, and they don't actually seem that dangerous. You're already going to try this with the witch, so why not them?
[-] Write in.
> Put your barrier back in the sky.
You unhappily pull yourself into the air, slowly floating upwards until you've crested even the tallest branches of the barren forest before you. Once there, you begin moving forward over the path traced by one of the canals below, trying hard not to brood.
You realized from the start that life as a witch was unlikely to be a particularly charmed one, but must it keep beating you down like this? Every time you turn around, you discover yet another thing you don't have, or can't do, and it's really starting to affect your morale. You wish you at least had someone to talk to — and if the other witch is sapient, you suppose maybe you will? Given how things have been going so far however... well, you're not holding high hopes.
You pause for a moment, as your present elevation happens reminds you of something important. Oh, right, you should probably place your barrier somewhere high up again, so as to not risk getting "interrupted" by anyone while you're doing this. Assuming you still even CAN, at least — based on your rather minimal luck of late, and the fact that your barrier was refusing to do what you wanted from it just a few minutes ago, you wouldn't be surprised if this impromptu barrier fusion means you only have half your previous control over it now, if any at all.
To your relief, this particular worry turns out to be unfounded — your loss of control appears to have been only temporary, as your barrier obeys, no more difficult to move now than it was before you arrived. At your will, it ascends into the sky, before stopping in the range of about twenty to thirty stories or so above the river, which you figure is probably enough — you don't want to spend ages just getting back down to Earth again later, and somewhere between 100 feet up and 10000 feet up, you imagine there stops being much functional difference. No one should be able to get up this high anyways.
With that done, your mind ends up drifting back to your newly discovered... deficiency. Honestly, it kind of reminds you of back when you first became a magical girl, and not in a good way. You were so determined to avoid the mistake of not knowing what you could do before rushing into battle, that you ended up making an entirely different mistake, using up almost half your magic just testing your limits before Kyubey properly explained it was a limited resource. As a result, you ended up with a far-too-dark soul gem before you ever even saw a witch, a self-inflicted deficit that it took you almost a week to fully recover from.
You sigh internally. Yeah, things never do seem to go the way you would hope... although, you suppose that the issues aren't exactly analogous, because while one was a problem of you using up way too much magic for no tangible gain, the other is a problem of your abilities requiring way too much magic to begin with. Assuming that your illusions are supposed to be usable, either you're not really meant to move out of your inner barrier, or you're just a very poorly-specced witch.
...or, maybe you're just not really understanding how witch magic works? It wouldn't surprise you; Kyubey never really explained witches to your satisfaction to begin with, which you suppose is no wonder given what you know now. Unfortunately, whereas before not knowing much about them was a curious annoyance, now it's a genuine problem. For example, magic is clearly still a limited resource for witches, but how do they, and thus you recharge it? Surely it has to be possible, or else witches would eventually just burn themselves out on their own with no magical girl assistance needed, but you never heard a single word about the subject.
Do you... have to eat people to get it back? That's going to be a problem if so, not just because you don't particularly want to, but also because you don't even understand how that would work, given your utter lack of a mouth. For that matter, what happens if you overdraw on magic? For a magical girl, the result is... well, this, but for a witch...?
The thought of the process inverting itself and turning you human again crosses your mind for a moment before you brush it aside. Somehow, you doubt it's that easy. More likely, given that you're fairly sure witches are in fact made of magic, you'd instead end up literally tearing yourself apart. But that just leads right into another question — since the transformation happens when a magical girl runs out of magic, how is it that witches come out of it with any at all? The dichotomy there doesn't really seem to make any logical sense. Do witches really even have magic, or are you getting this all completely wrong?
Frustratingly, your witchstincts remain deafeningly silent on each and every one of these topics. Evidently your body has no more idea how it works than you do. Being a witch is so confusing...
In the corner of your vision, you suddenly notice something dark moving in the water of the canal below. You hurriedly refocus on your surroundings, but lose sight of the object almost immediately, already vanished
...what was that? A familiar? A boat? The shadow of a passing cloud? Between the barely-there light of the moon above and the inconsistent light of the streetlamps below, it's hard to really be sure, especially when your viewpoint is currently over six stories off the ground. Were you just imagining things? You don't think so...
Either way, you think you're glad you didn't take the lower path.
You put a pause on further musings as the canal you've been floating over splits in two, leaving you a minor crossroads. You ultimately decide to follow the left one... only to find it dividing into two slightly tinier streams itself not long after. Again, you take the left path, and not even half a minute passes before you come across yet another split. Okay then...
This pattern continues forward until the canal becomes a fractal, dividing into hundreds of tiny rivulets that each hold a bare trickle of water, each and all of them visible from where you float high above. Right when they finally become so small that you can no longer see them, the treeline ends, and you find yourself looking out upon the barrier's inner layer.
The dark green clouds of the barren forest transition into ones of a deep indigo, spiraling upwards like a looming titan to cover the sky in its entirety, the tempest they threaten to unleash larger than any you've ever even imagined. At the same time, countless colorful flowers drift lazily down from above, slowly descending towards the nearly black mud of the wide, flat field below. Pools of pinkish water are interspersed throughout the morass of land, some with what look like entire overturned buildings hidden underneath the surface, while small green hands with fan-like propellers in place of wrists dart around the area, snatching falling flowers from the air before jetting back to the mucky ground to rapidly replant them anew.
Under the distant eye of the brewing storm, a single ray of soft white light shines down upon a small hill, the only part of this place that appears to have any actual grass left. At its peak lies a circular patch of vividly-colored flowers, each one large enough to engulf a person whole, surrounding the base of a tall, jagged stone windmill. The structure faces away from you, its blades still and unmoving.
[-] Prep for battle. Best to be ready, even at risk of provoking a fight.
[-] Go in unarmed. You didn't come here to fight, you came to talk... or rather, to see if talking is even possible in the first place.
[-] Talk to the hands. These are definitely familiars, and they don't actually seem that dangerous. You're already going to try this with the witch, so why not them?
[-] Write in.
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- Location
- Sealed away in a pure maidens heart
I like music! And, perhaps more importantly, i think adding background helped this scene immensely! Ok that maybe i'm exaggerating but it's nice to have background music and i like it! Also, even if you had made the others work as you intended, i still think Old friends to fit better. Probably personal preference, but it's currently 1 in the morning, i dunno ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. So, uh, that's what i think. Have a good day!
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
Indifferent. I read a lot on my phone, so I can't play Youtube and read at the same time. Even then music tends to distract me if I haven't read something a few times before. It's more an okay add on then then anything I need.
[X] Continue forward unarmed. You didn't come here to fight, you came to talk... or rather, to see if talking is even possible.
[X] Continue forward unarmed. You didn't come here to fight, you came to talk... or rather, to see if talking is even possible.
I pretty much always just ignore it when stories have background music suggestions.
Locos_Docos
Eater of slightly aged toast
- Location
- 'round the corner
- Pronouns
- he him
Ambience setting is nice, especially for me since my musical repertoire is very limited and allows me to hear from sources I would have never have otherwise have known. As for my vote:
[-] Prep for battle. If talking isn't possible, you'd prefer to be ready, even at risk of provoking something to begin with.
>[-] Your preferred set of Shatterwords will be "Don Quixote" for the Witch itself.
[-] Prep for battle. If talking isn't possible, you'd prefer to be ready, even at risk of provoking something to begin with.
>[-] Your preferred set of Shatterwords will be "Don Quixote" for the Witch itself.
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Do you perhaps mean the left bank of the river?
It's interesting that this got our attention so suddenly. Not a gradual recognition and strengthening of something which we had only noticed subconsciously, but an abrupt stimulus. That implies that either the sensation came into existence abruptly—a finite detection radius with a sudden cutoff?—or it was recognized abruptly. Either one would have implications.
Two questions spring to mind. First, what's the acceleration profile? Is it actually like magnets or gravity, i.e. obeying an inverse square law, is it constant acceleration, something else? Second, what initiated this involuntary attraction? Ashtaroth's attention? Sufficient proximity? What can be done to avoid having this happen unintentionally in the future?
I have to wonder what this did to the topology/geometry of the place. Both what it is now and how it changed over time. Geometry can generally shift smoothly, but there are discrete topological invariants which might have changed, and the transition would necessarily be discontinuous. And some of our barrier seems to have been replaced. I wonder how much… and how big the combined barrier is.
Hm. "Almost perfectly straight". Slight curve, or slightly wobbly? Could indicate something about the geometry. Not that you can tell all that much from just the local picture.
Speaking from personal experience, are we?
Ah, irony.
No, they're pretty good at obscuring things too. They just can't make you transparent. If you want invisibility, you'll need to either simulate light passing through you, which is hard, or actually let light pass through you, which is a different category of ability.
Interesting. Very interesting.
NO. "Massively". "Enormously". "Absurdly". "Stupidly". "Unbelievably". It is not an exponential.*
…Sorry, I've been noticing this a lot lately. "Exponential" has a specific meaning which is relevant and useful even in non-technical contexts, and the misuse to mean any rapid growth pollutes its meaning and inhibits understanding of actual exponential growth.
*Technically there could be an exponential relationship, but (a) you're not going to do that and (b) knowing that would require more than a single datapoint.
Says the girl could turn into a bird.
Functional difference stops at maximum reasonable altitude plus detection range, where maximum reasonable altitude is the height of the tallest buildings plus a few hundred feet. So, call it 3000 feet or so? Unless you get a girl with an absurd detection range, of course.
Good questions all. A couple more: how well can you judge your available magic and how much a given action will/did expend? Do your familiars have magical abilities (beyond just existing), and do those draw on your magic, or do they have their own pools? What kinds of routine—possibly even involuntary—tasks cost magic? Familiar creation? Barrier repair? Movement? Existence?
No more so than being human, yet.
How, exactly, are you planning to talk, Ashtaroth? You don't have a mouth, which leaves the telepathy that didn't work on your own familiars and shatterword messages which they may or may not be able to read.
I think it adds something. Maybe not much, but something. And it certainly doesn't hurt.
Not necessarily. Even if witches were self-contained perpetual motion machines, the total power needed by an advanced civilization is vast, and likely to increase over time. (Here I'm treating witches as creating energy ex nihilo instead of decreasing entropy; the two differ significantly but they serve equally well to stave off heat death.)
Hm… I'm inclined to try as hard for diplomacy as possible. Not the most safety-conscious plan, but we won't get anywhere without a little risk.
[x] Announce yourself. Telepathy broadcast, shatterword messages, shatterword fireworks, interpretive dance, anything you can do to signal your presence and intentions.
- Location
- Earth... maybe
Embedded YouTube video should play in the webpage itself, same as it does off the phone. It's all HTML5 now. YT hasn't used the flash video player that would mess up phone browsers in years.
The iPhone HTML5 video player takes over the whole screen. If you try to un-fullscreen it, it stops playing.
Flairina
Least Omnipotent Goddess
- Location
- The next infinity over
Overall response seems to be about indifferent to positive on the music, so I'll take that as a success. When I see the chance or it seems appropriate, I'll probably insert a few pieces in the future. 
Update will be later tonight, after the downtime ends. I'll also probably be slowing my post rate a little sometime soon.
Honestly, I think the real question is what kind of effects this has on the outside of the barrier.
Slightly wobbly due to the trees being not perfectly spaced.
Oh, very well. I'm perfectly well aware of its meaning in the mathematical sense, but you're not wrong that perhaps that was poorly worded. Fixed.
I'm not actually sure if detection range changes between girls. It's possible to track a witch's "footprints", but it's unclear whether that's possible if said witch is completely out of range, or how long that footprint trail lasts for. You can track familiars, but do they give off a different signature than witches do? How, when said signature is just the soul gem flashing more or less? It's a very ill-defined bit of canon, which has led many fics to outright avoid the question. I do not blame them.
Technically, that's MORE confusing. But this is what's relevant in the moment.
True, but there's definitely a more efficient system in there if witches could be used the same way as magical girls, energy-wise. Not to say that Kyubey's race would necessarily make use of it, but you'd think they'd sort of have to, given the posited circumstances.
Update will be later tonight, after the downtime ends. I'll also probably be slowing my post rate a little sometime soon.
Honestly, I think the real question is what kind of effects this has on the outside of the barrier.
Slightly wobbly due to the trees being not perfectly spaced.
Oh, very well. I'm perfectly well aware of its meaning in the mathematical sense, but you're not wrong that perhaps that was poorly worded. Fixed.
I'm not actually sure if detection range changes between girls. It's possible to track a witch's "footprints", but it's unclear whether that's possible if said witch is completely out of range, or how long that footprint trail lasts for. You can track familiars, but do they give off a different signature than witches do? How, when said signature is just the soul gem flashing more or less? It's a very ill-defined bit of canon, which has led many fics to outright avoid the question. I do not blame them.
Technically, that's MORE confusing. But this is what's relevant in the moment.
True, but there's definitely a more efficient system in there if witches could be used the same way as magical girls, energy-wise. Not to say that Kyubey's race would necessarily make use of it, but you'd think they'd sort of have to, given the posited circumstances.
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Emergence 18: Flowers Drifting Down
Flairina
Least Omnipotent Goddess
- Location
- The next infinity over
> Prep for battle.
You bring yourself a little closer to the ground, a gentle breeze lightly pushing at your paper thin arms.
Okay, so barring the apocalyptic-looking clouds up there, this doesn't seem too bad. The familiars in this section aren't immediately swarming you, which means they're probably of the variety that won't attack you unless you disturb whatever it is they're doing. That windmill is a pretty clear indicator of where the witch most likely resides, unless she's way up in the center of the storm or something. And, since you can float, the ground shouldn't even be an impediment in getting over to said hill.
That being said, your view on witch barriers hasn't exactly changed within the past five minutes. Rarely can you trust everything in one to be what it seems, and the witch herself is almost certainly going to be dangerous in at least some fashion. This has a good chance of turning into an outright fight if she isn't still self-aware like you, and it's one which you will likely lose if you don't prepare ahead of time, given how relatively weak you apparently are. As such, while it may risk provoking that fight to begin with, you're not moving in without being as ready as you can be for things to go south.
You proceed to scrawl out a description of your surroundings — the easiest material you can think to write about right now — onto the pages of Novella, as well as a few pre-prepared simple phrases for potential communication. The text peels away from the paper as a steady stream of shatterwords, each one growing into solidity before joining its brethren in orbit. Soon enough, you have an entire swarm of the alien-looking symbols circling around you, ready to be used or thrown at your leisure.
Unfortunately, with any illusion you could make likely requiring a lot more magic than you're willing to spend before you know it's even needed, there's not much else you can really do to gear up beyond this. Hopefully, this preparation will turn out to have been unnecessary anyways.
Tentatively, you set out over the field, doing your best to avoid the disembodied hands whizzing about it. This task is made easy by the fact that they seem to be making a similarly concerted effort to avoid you as well. At least one thing is going right.
The short trip to the island at the center of the sea of mud is quiet and uneventful, save for the fact that flowers keep falling on top of you, and you have no way to get them off save repeatedly rocking back and forth. It's only a minor irritant, but you're still glad when, about 30 feet out from the base of the hill, the last of the flowers begin to finish their descent.
...and then, just before the final blossom can touch the mud, the blades of the windmill suddenly tremble, then begin to rapidly spin, as if suddenly freed from something that was keeping them invisibly locked in place. Strange, you're almost right next to it at this point, and it doesn't feel like there's nearly enough wind to turn them that-
The breeze you've been feeling, previously so light that it was barely even noticeable, abruptly intensifies to near hurricane-level strengths. You find yourself blown, or perhaps more accurately thrown backwards through the air by the force of the gale, struggling to retain your equilibrium as it shifts direction, tilting you almost sideways in the process. A seemingly-impossible updraft then hits, ripping the recently-fallen flowers from the ground and sending them flying back up into the heavens, along with the many hand familiars still struggling to replant them. Petals and propellers whip and tumble through your vision in an incomprehensible flurry, making it impossible to see what's in front of you, or whether you're even still upright as you're pelted by things from every direction.
You can hear your shatterwords breaking.
[-] Attack!
[-] Get out of there! [Write in: How?]
[-] Wait it out...?
[-] Write in.
You bring yourself a little closer to the ground, a gentle breeze lightly pushing at your paper thin arms.
Okay, so barring the apocalyptic-looking clouds up there, this doesn't seem too bad. The familiars in this section aren't immediately swarming you, which means they're probably of the variety that won't attack you unless you disturb whatever it is they're doing. That windmill is a pretty clear indicator of where the witch most likely resides, unless she's way up in the center of the storm or something. And, since you can float, the ground shouldn't even be an impediment in getting over to said hill.
That being said, your view on witch barriers hasn't exactly changed within the past five minutes. Rarely can you trust everything in one to be what it seems, and the witch herself is almost certainly going to be dangerous in at least some fashion. This has a good chance of turning into an outright fight if she isn't still self-aware like you, and it's one which you will likely lose if you don't prepare ahead of time, given how relatively weak you apparently are. As such, while it may risk provoking that fight to begin with, you're not moving in without being as ready as you can be for things to go south.
You proceed to scrawl out a description of your surroundings — the easiest material you can think to write about right now — onto the pages of Novella, as well as a few pre-prepared simple phrases for potential communication. The text peels away from the paper as a steady stream of shatterwords, each one growing into solidity before joining its brethren in orbit. Soon enough, you have an entire swarm of the alien-looking symbols circling around you, ready to be used or thrown at your leisure.
Unfortunately, with any illusion you could make likely requiring a lot more magic than you're willing to spend before you know it's even needed, there's not much else you can really do to gear up beyond this. Hopefully, this preparation will turn out to have been unnecessary anyways.
Tentatively, you set out over the field, doing your best to avoid the disembodied hands whizzing about it. This task is made easy by the fact that they seem to be making a similarly concerted effort to avoid you as well. At least one thing is going right.
The short trip to the island at the center of the sea of mud is quiet and uneventful, save for the fact that flowers keep falling on top of you, and you have no way to get them off save repeatedly rocking back and forth. It's only a minor irritant, but you're still glad when, about 30 feet out from the base of the hill, the last of the flowers begin to finish their descent.
...and then, just before the final blossom can touch the mud, the blades of the windmill suddenly tremble, then begin to rapidly spin, as if suddenly freed from something that was keeping them invisibly locked in place. Strange, you're almost right next to it at this point, and it doesn't feel like there's nearly enough wind to turn them that-
The breeze you've been feeling, previously so light that it was barely even noticeable, abruptly intensifies to near hurricane-level strengths. You find yourself blown, or perhaps more accurately thrown backwards through the air by the force of the gale, struggling to retain your equilibrium as it shifts direction, tilting you almost sideways in the process. A seemingly-impossible updraft then hits, ripping the recently-fallen flowers from the ground and sending them flying back up into the heavens, along with the many hand familiars still struggling to replant them. Petals and propellers whip and tumble through your vision in an incomprehensible flurry, making it impossible to see what's in front of you, or whether you're even still upright as you're pelted by things from every direction.
You can hear your shatterwords breaking.
[-] Attack!
[-] Get out of there! [Write in: How?]
[-] Wait it out...?
[-] Write in.
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I understand it takes how long it takes to write, but I kind of wish you would save up and post longer sections less frequently. All these breaks in the narrative from the story being posted only a few paragraphs at a time really throw me out of the story.
Flairina
Least Omnipotent Goddess
- Location
- The next infinity over
I see where you're coming from, but if I want to keep the quest format then this is sort of just required. Segments will likely get longer when more characters are introduced and things become more complex, but the natural stopping point is still wherever there is a choice to be made, so that people have the chance to respond to said choices. Wasn't any different in the old incarnation of this.
That said, if enough people happen to agree with this sentiment, I suppose I can shift to posting several consecutive segments for each update, or grouping them into singular longer posts. I'd rather not do that, but if it truly would be preferable...
Takareer
Words and feathers
- Location
- Ontario, Canada
I would definitely prefer that.
Ultramandalore
Errant Quester
- Location
- just south of Parts Unknown
personally I'm fine either way
