TBQH I thought it was less of a difference of emotions and more of a "this was made in Japan, there's probably a Yin/Yang duality hiding behind Kyubey's data". Megucas burn the bright-pastel-joyful Yang magic harvested from their sacrifice for collection, Kyubey burns the eldritch-goth-nightmarish Yin magic harvested from Witches for sustenance, etc. This quest being what it is, that duality is mangled a bit to fit within Pathfinder rules, but gradient changes are definitely how power generation usually works when magic isn't involved.
To be specific, based on Kyubey's explanation I think the normal Meguca metaphysics(ignoring crossovers) is that you start with a human. They are complete emotionally, their spiritual mass is how much they will change things in the future(as mentioned by how most powerful magical girls tend to be either influential or else heir to influence, along with how girls have so much more potential than boys[since at a population level each mother is more significant than each father]).
The Incubator splits Yin from Yang using the Wish as a catalyst, and the temporary surge in Yang from having your greatest wish granted. It has to be the wish, because its the girl's power to begin with, and will not respond to a purely external extraction(and tbh given Incubators, they likely wouldn't bother with a model where the cattle has a say if they had a choice).
The process of using magic uses this split, every time you use magic, you split Yin and Yang, using up Yang for flashy, largely transient effects and leaving a pool of Yin behind, which is then siphoned out using Grief Seeds(which as emptied containers of Yin attract Yin).
Witches are when the Yin overwhelms and consumes Yang, by the metaphysics Witches only generate energy during their transition from Girl to Witch, but the amount generated is massive, because all their destiny and life is consumed in that instant and turned to Yin. After that they are running on stored energy, and thats why their Familiars are created, to harvest more, and thats why Witch victims don't immediately get slaughtered but get thematically tormented unto death, they too undergo the same transition.
When Witches are defeated, they become a void that sucks in all the stuff in the area to try to replenish sufficiently to reform, and so the magical girl can cleanse with them.
So what is Yin good for?
Yang is good for swift, transient effects. Magical girls create bursts of energy, temporary objects and such, but it all goes away fairly swiftly.
Yin is good for solid, lasting effects. Witches create Witch Barriers, lasting dimensional pockets, and Familiars, which are so permanent they can outlive their progenitor's fall. We know Witch-matter can be used as programmable matter from Kazumi Magica.
Naturally from a resource gathering perspective, gathering Yin is so much easier and useful.
Rolling a die for a character thing. Currently 4k words deep--if all goes well these next two days on my end, we might have Althea resurrected on the exact calendar day this thread started!
Flavor \\ Severity
Severity 1
Severity 2
Severity 3
⚫ No Lies Spoken
1
2
3
⚪ Trust Freely Given
4
5
6
🟢 And Life Goes On
7
8
9
🔴 A Song Unfettered
10
11
12
EDIT: >:3c
EDIT2: Gah, might need to disregard this roll. It's not working the way I envisioned it--can't talk about details for spoiler reasons, but I'll figure something out.
EDIT3: Got it, just had to shift the target slightly. Writing continues apace.
Fixed a mild continuity error (wrong month listed on Thousand Realms time) in Turn 001a. RWBY (for Vytal tournament reasons, mostly) and Mitakihara (for loop reasons) should be {Turn Number} months past April, while everywhere else should be that many months past June. Vertumna is a special case, as it has a 13-month year.
Morsel gets hungry looking at Althea's corpse, which is assembled on-site by M0 out of cloned pieces. No actual damage occurs, but you know how Morsel's instincts get, and the description is, if you'll pardon the intestine pun, a bit visceral. It is also contained entirely between "keep your secrets" and "No. You're better than this" for ease of skipping.
As the monthly tea party crawls to a stop, you go around the table and make sure you're bringing who you need to. Sierra and Isabella are coming, obviously, and Gor'lo-nos can be summoned on-site.
Homura and friends will be coming, as Jaminah volunteered to transport them home afterwards. She wanted to meet your family anyway, and with Jaminah serving as transport, she should get back before Madoka'sMiracles are late enough to cause delays in the Meguca Unfricking. M0's going for organ reasons--you need someone who can assemble the cloned Althea pieces they've made for you into a corpse, and not a catering tray.
Cho'Xlantzan, Chimalli, and that Life-artifact-carrying ankylosaur of theirs could fit if Jaminah brought them there, but... Cho is somehow worse than you at understanding human emotions, and seems continually frustrated at things you had long-since learned to deal with. About the only reason they've managed to function at the tea parties is M0's expertise in psychology allowing them to rapidly assess and explain unintuitive social cues. You and Cho both have benefitted from this, even if most of these gaffes were things that you learned to avoid by reflex in earlier settings.
Regardless, you're not bringing Cho--given how snippy the village was at you when you were first learning how to wear a mask, you don't think they'd enjoy being dragged from conversation to conversation just to see you demonstrate a spell they were interested in seeing--and neither would your family enjoy hosting them. You'll give them a demonstration later.
<Appointment action created!>
Grimaldo is going to be busy settling in with Segismundo at that monastery of his. He wished you luck, but offers you and your family hospitality again at the monastery instead of asking to join you back home. You say you'll send word by way of Jaminah if you ever plan on it, and he nods, before giving you a warning.
"Morsel, do you know why, even after all the power we displayed last night, I'm not making any plans to single-handedly rampage through the aliens' holdings?"
You shake your head.
"Because power without stealth is a beacon to your enemies, letting them know exactly where you've been by tracing your footprints and broken opponents. Whenever word gets out of what you've done, the desperate and the greedy will flock to you, and you will not be strong enough to help them all."
You nod. "And I will defend the people I care about, and work at a pace that feels right for me."
"Good," he nods, "but what about while you're off somewhere else? Even if you were there, do you know how to defend against social pressure, against leveraged debts and obligations?" You frown, but he continues, "As I'm sure you know, famine makes monsters of us all. I've done things I'm not proud of to protect my people, and I know others will be tempted to do the same. You have a very rare opportunity--you know what it is like to want and to have the thing you so desperately need. Remember that you owe them nothing--but never forget that you once stood among them."
You nod, and also go to ask Lhakpa, but the way they stiffen when you even start to bring up the topic...
It's like Homura's books on religion said, isn't it? Suffering may be defeated by letting go of attachments. How do you expect them to move on when you keep talking about a way to put those anchors back in?
Don't they deserve to live, though?
They are people of Air, are they not? You've heard Lhakpa's anecdotes about their own faith's thoughts on motion--what could be more anathema to them than being forbidden to move?
Perhaps it's best not to ask.
You Walk home, to the cliff where this all began, letting its breezy thread of Black tie a loop on this journey. With a bow and a playful request--received with a roll of the eyes and an amused snort--you convince Sayaka to fly you home, where you'll meet up with Jaminah, Analise, and M0, who will likely be making a similar trip within Jaminah's p̸e̷r̸f̷e̷c̶t̴l̷y̵ ̷n̵o̶r̶m̸a̶l̸ pocket dimension.
...Actually, on that note, have you ever seen her cast Warp magic for that? Odd.
There was once, you've been told, a girl named Althea.
There was once, you found out, a monster named Morsel.
Everyone you've asked about her has told you she was a wonderful little girl who brightened up the room wherever she went.
It took a while for people to get used to you. People were scared--and you don't blame them!
There was once, you've been told, a little picnic Althea attended with her loving parents. A little picnic where Althea went to play in the woods while her parents were getting things set up.
Case in point--those same parents took you on a picnic once. You were still a bit feral, then, and took a bite out of the wicker basket.
A little picnic where Althea met the mushroom patch that spawned you, which shot up a little cloud of spores when she stepped on the wrong mycelial thread.
You went to that clearing, you know? Tried to find your sire. You think they burned down after... well. The incident.
...It was four months until they figured it out.
Seven months of living in their home.
Another two weeks before you did.
Another three of being an adventurer.
It was three more months, where the three of you genuinely tried to get you functional in polite society, before you found out you were capable of spellcasting.
Nine more, of being a Planeswalker.
Twenty minutes to run home and tell them.
And of those, you spent seventeen weeks--nearly half--on some kind of spell research.
Five seconds of them sharing your hope. After all, if the gods could bring a hero back--
Assuming, as you found, either a priceless diamond to fuel the spell or a fresh corpse to inhabit--
But you aren't a goddess.
But you have met one--
You're a parasitoid fungus stringing along the body of her first victim, back then barely able to piece two spells of Nature and Lifetogether each.
--and she eagerly bows to your expertise in the healing arts.
They smiled, they pretended to be happy, by all the gods above and below they tried.
And so did you. And here you are.
Five more hours until bedtime.
Another hour, flying in on dragon-back.
Thirty minutes until they were sure you were asleep.
Ten minutes to walk home.
You never told them that skintaker fungi don't need to sleep, that you'd been sneaking books in bed to read by moonlight as you soaked nutrients in from the mud in your shoes. It wasn't relevant until they started crying themselves to sleep.
You never told them that you were leaving--but you did write home to tell them you'd be coming back.
Again.
Finally, back home again.
But you cared this time.
You never stopped caring. Even when it was hard. Even when the world itself fell out from underneath you.
It was three days before you broke under the stress and ran away from home.
A single week, between having the knowledge and having the power to finish what you started.
You dare not return without your sister.
And you won't. Because she's right here, in the pages of your spell-notes and the depth of your spell-pool and the clanking canopic jars within M0's backpack.
She just... needs a bit ofreassembly, you smirk to yourself.
2nd Day of the Month of Stretching (February-equivalent), 1264 SG
Hillscorch Village, Telen County, Duchy of Southcoast, Kingdom of Hennia, Folix'na Archipelago, Thousand Realms-251.
Sayaka's keen eyesight sees Jaminah fly in, and she swoops down to a bend in the road south of your village--technically this adds travel time, but Jaminah offered to keep her shapeshifted to something that could actually participate in these festivities, so you bite down your impatience.
You turn the bend around the forested hill, passing by the orchards to reach the village center. Scarcely a neighborhood in Homura's world, it's a vaguely starfish-like splatter of dirt roads trailing down the gaps between the mail-house, general store, blacksmith's, and the modest chapel huddled around the central gazebo. Every couple of hundred feet down the line, a house springs up, haphazard wattle fences strung between them serving moreso as location markers for the history and agreements that actually hold the plots apart than as any physical boundary (ignoring the reinforcement around the livestock pens and near the roads, of course). You remember, in your time here, often hopping those fences to play with the village children on those occasions that they chose to tolerate you.
The houses are rarely so close to the street as in Homura's world--better to be central to your little patch of farm, more often--but those you can see look out from the lumber orchards on this cold winter's afternoon. The fields lie empty, snowed over save for what trodden and shoveled paths connect the houses, road, and outlying buildings. Winter is lumber season this close to the forest, as Hennia's ocean, despite the kelp forests, is too cold-water to blunt winter's breath enough for any but the most cold-resistant crops. With nothing else to harvest, and an influx of fires to keep fed, the scythe is exchanged for the axe for the season so that one has enough fuel, with a little left over for the odd chill here and there throughout the next year.
You note out of the corner of your eyes that you have a few people following behind your group at a distance, but it's not until you pass by the general store that someone within earshot calls out to you.
"Morsel?" asks an old gnoll woman, knitting in a chair on the general store's porch despite the cold. "I'd ask if you were a ghost, coming back after so long, but your friends here all look so lively!"
"Hi Mrs. Oakleaf!" you wave. "I can't stay and chat, I have a sister to resurrect!"
Her face remains carefully neutral, but you, conveniently, have proof.
"I'm serious!" you say, pivoting on one foot to gesture to the red-haired Magi behind you. "Ask Kyoko!"
Kyoko nods, and you pivot back and keep walking. You're slower than everyone else, so you know she'll have time to catch up.
"Yeah, Morsel rezzed me back in a fight against a... pretty nastyWeather mage last summer."
You keep walking, and note a few kids playing in the snow ahead of you.
"Dearie... I don't know what game you kids are playing, but--"
"Hey, Jim!" you wave, trying to be friendly. He opens his mouth to respond, but you're interrupted by the sound of a thirty-foot ruby-and-gold colored folding-spear--Kyoko's signature weapon--being summoned and driven point-first into the ground by gravity, followed by the Magi in question jumping to its top, balancing on one foot as she flashes a smug smile at Mrs. Oakleaf.
"Oh. Oh, stars above, she's actually done it--"
The playing children seem stunned by the display, and you're in a hurry, so you call out, "I'm going home! I'll be back with Althea in a bit!" and keep walking down the road.
Probably for the best, to be honest. Jim doesn't trust you after...
Well.
The problem is fixed and it won't happen again, is what matters.
Kyoko rejoins your entourage as her spear fades back into nothingness, taking a handful of long, leaping strides to catch up to you. In another hundred feet, you're at the front fence-gate. Pushing the feeble wood aside, you march on, opening the unlocked door when you're across the fallow field.
"Mom! Dad!" you shout. "I'm home!" Your mom looks up from her sewing on the rocking chair, clearly startled by your entry.
Probably would've helped if you knocked, but it is your house.
"Alth--" she starts, before shaking her head. "Morsel, sorry--you are still using that name?"
You nod. "Althea will be here soon, though--I've got the spell ready!"
Your mother doesn't say anything--her face is threadbare hope, nailed in place by trust across a chasm you simply refuse to notice. She is trying her best. Why would you judge her for lacking something as trivial as success?
You look around the room--there's room for everyone to sit, but it'll be boring for everyone to wait around for you to get everything drawn out. "Mom? Could you make some food? We do have guests, after all."
She nods, eager to have something she can fix in this situation so her unease has somewhere to go.
"Your dad... out in the woods at this time of day, I imagine?" Analise asks. You nod, and she says, "Hit me with a mantle, I'll go looking for him."
You tap two Red for Weather (Base) + Clear Skies (Mantle), shielding her from the winter's chill as she slips out the door in search of your adopted father.
<Weather: Clear Skies (mantle, all): Creatures bearing your mantle treat weather as one step less severe, plus one step per 10 caster levels. Other Mantles give their bonuses based on Weather before this reduction. As with most Mantles, this lasts for {CL} hours.>
<This brings Cold 4 (-20 F to 0 F / -28 C to -18 C) up to Cold 2 (40 F to 60 F / 4 C to 16 C)>
You get to work--first summoning Gor'lo-nos, and then, with his help, drawing the chalk circles on the floor customary for Conjuration magic. Althea isn't here to be bound, of course, but something inside you wants all three legs of this triangle present for this event.
(And quietly, a piece of your soul burns in dim emerald--)
"...She's not going to introduce us, is she?" asks Sierra, who sighs and walks into the kitchen to talk to your mom.
Also, because it takes less than a minute and provides a visible barrier between Althea and the living. You and Gor'lo-nos talked about this, and there's something very important here that he needs to do, that you won't have the time for and that only Homura or Kyoko would have the cold-heartedness to do without him.
"Mrs. Hawthorne? I'm Sierra Tenor, one of Morsel's traveling companions over this past year..."
It's easier with his height, too.
You look around the room, now finished with the circle. The Magi and Planeswalkers are still here, while Sierra and Isabella are in the kitchen with your mother, helping her make sense of all of this. Now given a slight spoonful of normality to get herself organized, she turns to you with a question.
"Morsel, what would your frieeeeee--" your mom trails off, looking at Gor'lo-nos.
"I'm her eidolon," he offers, pointing to the symbol glowing on his head.
"He helped with some of the targeting circles," you say, brushing your bangs aside to show the matching mark on your own forehead. Honestly, you might need a haircut at some point--it's starting to get in your eyes.
Your mom nods, slowly, and Sierra sighs. Mami and Madoka look at each other knowingly, and slip into the kitchen to provide reinforcements for her sanity.
Gor'lo-nos looks around the room and mutters, "...Anyone got chairs? I think someone's going to get a bit testy if someone else is made to stand for two hours."
"Ah... Not enough," you mutter.
"I can handle that," offers M0. They cast a Creation spell, and suddenly the four corners of the room each have a well-made couch in them. "Though... is there a place where the new body can be, ah, assembled?"
Homura blinks. "It's not already?"
M0 shakes their head. "Smaller sections made for easier transport and cloning."
"Is there a reason you don't do it here?" Jaminah asks.
"Humans are often uncomfortable with exposed internal tissue," M0 starts.
"Eh," Homura shrugs. "Not like anyone here hasn't seen a dead body bef... wait. No, Madoka hasn't... not thistime, yet."
M0 glances around the room. "If... there are no objections..."
"NOPE!" Sierra shouts from the kitchen, storming back over. "Not in the living room!"
"...I would've thought that Morsel's mom--" Homura starts.
"Has seen. One. Very. SPECIFIC. Dead body," Sierra hisses, speaking Japanese through clenched teeth. "That very probably overrides whatever desensitization you're expecting here!"
"...Oh frick, right," winces Homura.
"I... do have that pocket dimension," Jaminah offers.
"I'll take you up on that," says M0. Jaminah leans against a wall, and a p̷e̵r̶f̶e̵c̵t̴l̴y̵ ̷n̶o̶r̷m̸a̴l̸ door quickly appears beside her--
"Uh," you ask, "Do you mind if I... watch?" you ask.
"Not at all," M0 says. Turning to Jaminah, they continue, "I trust it's spacious enough?"
Jaminah nods, and you prepare to enter the room--
"What the--?!" Homura says. You turn, expecting danger, but she's just staring at you.
Or rather, the door behind you. You turn, see nothing wrong, and turn back. "Is something wrong?" you ask.
"You--It's--!"
"You know," Jaminah whispers, "and I know,but let's let Morsel go without knowing, hm?"
Everyone in the room looks over--most see nothing wrong, but Sayaka and Kyoko subtly twitch at whatever they see--
What, are they worried that the door is going to eat them, or something?
"I... you've been in there before, right, Morsel?" Homura asks.
"Yeah? It was perfectly normal, why?"
She pensively looks between the two of you and sighs. "Alright... fine. Keep your secrets."
Jaminah smiles with a grateful half-bow, and you shrug and walk in. Inside, M0 is unpacking the canopic jars holding individual muscles, organs, and strips of skin to be assembled into a coherent whole. You--and one of Jaminah's hair-tentacles (...mane-tentacles?)--watch from a convenient bench as they finish unpacking, every scrap of delicious meat in an organized grid sorted by--
You wipe the drool off of your chin. Best not to think too hard on how it's sorted.
For the next couple of minutes, what you see is a beautiful mixture of a spider cocooning its prey in silk and a food-cartsman stuffing a burrito--M0's four arms and their multitool sub-mountings branching out from the forearms move at speeds you would think reckless to perform surgery with, and yet leave naught but disturbed air in their wake, each motion precisely calculated to accomplish its task, and only its task.
You see each individual bone pulled out of the pile, then used as a weaving-anchor for each of the tendons and ligaments that attach to their little bone-spurs for leverage. Each muscle, thus attached, is layered on like petals on a rose until the time comes to sheathe the limb in its skin, sewn together at the joints with speeds blurring like wheel-spokes. With each limb done, M0 begins a delicate dance of viscera and peritoneum, anchoring each organ in the appropriate membranes, unfolded from their box like wet laundry as the tissue transforms from a jellyfish-like blob to a web-like scaffold.
The lungs, mercifully, were cloned in full, only needing to be reattached to the trachea before being woven into their rightful seat in her ribcage. Her heart follows soon after, and then the collarbone, the neck, the skull--
You look at the final result. This delicious meal--
No. You're better than this.You breathe in. You breathe out.
Your sister lies before you, dead as the last time you met.
For now.
"We're back!" you hear from Analise, as she pulls your father into the door.
"Hi, Dad!" you shout, briefly looking away from the chalk circle before returning you your hour-long windup for Death (Advanced): Summon Spirit.
"Morsel?" he says, "I--you're actually back--" he starts, before being held back by Homura.
"Let her finish the ritual," she says, "the room is crowded enough the first time through."
Your dad sighs, and awkwardly takes a seat in the northwest couch alongside your mom. Analise and your fellow Planeswalkers are in the northeast, the Magi in the southeast, and finally your adventuring party in the southwest.
Or, at least, that's where you'll be when you finish chanting. Your mouth is so insufferably dry.
Jaminah and the Magi seem to have cleared up whatever misunderstanding happened earlier, at least. You didn't hear what they were whispering, but Kyoko thought it was funny, at least.
You reach the end of your chanting--at least, for the first hour of this. You technically don't need the chanting, but only in the same sense that you technically don't need paper or a calculator to do a math problem. Keeping your place is more important than keeping your voice, for now.
However, you do stop chanting, right at the end, because there's something that needs to happen.
"Gor'lo-nos," you say, "Get me a drink, and then do the thing."
He nods. After a brief dip of your canteen into the snowmelt pot--which tastes delicious to your parched lips--he walks over to the couch holding your parents, splits them apart, and sits between them with his hands over their mouths.
Sierra facepalms while your parents and the Magi look on in confusion--your parents more shocked than the others--as Gor'lo-nos explains, "We need you idiots to stop. Talking. For this next part. It's originally built out of Death: Gravetongue, which means that if you ask the ghost too many questions, the spell ends." Your parents' eyes widen, and Gor'lo-nos continues, "So in the interest of not having us look like liars in front of the whole village as we wait the full month before we can try again, Morsel elected to resort to this buffoonery."
"Don't complain too much," Sierra smirks, "That should come naturally to you!"
"Listen here, fishsticks--!"
"AHEM," you say. The spell's reaching its final moments--you look around to the people in the room with you. Your parents, fragile hope held together by the showmanship of your circle and chanting giving them something to see in the absence of any knowledge of the arcane, despite the spell circles your magic naturally forms around you. Gor'lo-nos, respect and boredom quietly mixing behind his eyes. Your friends, beaming with pride even as they chitchat to pass the time--
You know exactly what to say.
Your spell reaches its zenith, amethyst strands linking your Witchmarked circles to the chalk one on the floor. A grand, clawed, spectral hand, terrible and jagged in form, rises before you, forming the end of a hundred-jointed lightning-like limb coiling around you. Its "shoulder" is a centerpoint-sphere formed from those amethyst strands tangling each other, braiding like rope-fibers for strength until the sphere is nearly as tall as your torso.
You inhale. You exhale.
The strength of your lungs captures the air, and you push it aside once more.
With an act of will, you bring the world into yourself--and you hold the breath this time. You do not merely exhale. You put yourself into the world--
You SPEAK, and the world LISTENS.
(And another fragment burns amethyst--)
"AND I PULL THE GATES OF DEATH ASUNDER," you cry, clenching your fists and spreading your arms as your metaphor bleeds into motion.
"WITH MY SPELL OF WHITE AND BLACK,"you say, as the claw stabs into the floor, elbow after elbow flapping about in the air like an overeager well-rope.
With a brief glance to Madoka, you add, "AND THE GODS LOOK ON IN PRIDE AND WONDER--"
You can't help it anymore. A smile threatens to tear your face open. Like a fishing rod, you have cast your hopes on this spell--
"--AS I BRING MY SISTER BACK!" you say, as the line
goes
taut!
Your name is Althea Hawthorne, and it is very cold where you are.
Your name is Althea Hawthorne, and it is very dark where you are.
When a body dies, the Ka-soul is the first to go. Definitionally, the absence of one's life-force is what causesdeath. Mere life-energy, it dissipates in the wind, eager to return to the Ethereal from which it was formed.
The Ib-soul follows soon after. The body rots, the color fades, and all those little molecules grind to a halt as the physical form separates from the soul that allowed magic easier access to change it.
The Ba-soul, then, takes longer to go. Usually held in the afterlives until such a time as it forgets everything that it is, it lasts as long as the person cares to remember who it was.
The Shuet-soul, however? That tether that a voodoo doll traces, that ancient source of the notion that a man does not die until his name is last spoken?
The Shuet remains so long as the world remembers you. And how could it not? Every life you touched, every step you took, every molecule of air as it passed your lips--these things are eternal. What is past can be remembered--in the spells of an archmage of Time, in the equations of a physicist, in the records of the historian--different traces, different threads. Different memories in different heads. But all can agree--all can see--that you left a mark on the path you tread.
And the Ren-soul? One's True Name?
Fate has a long memory. And thus, the Ren never fades at all.
And it comes to pass that you feel something deep within you. Something burrowing, something clawing, something yearning, something calling--
A HAND REACHES OUT FROM YOUR CHEST
CLAWS WRAP AROUND YOUR VEST
AND THOUGH YOUR SCREAMS DO MUCH PROTEST
IT COMES TO BREAK YOUR ETERNAL REST
<Althea: Will Save vs Summon Spirit: d20+2 (WIS)+2 (1-10 years dead)-5 (Familiar Target)-10 (Shuet Connection: Corpse Fragment) vs DC 10+5 (Morsel's CL/2)+6 (Morsel's CHA) = Althea Auto-fail; Morsel Success!>
Your name is Morsel Hawthorne, and you watch with joy as elbow after elbow pulls itself back into the amethyst sphere hovering in the room, excess energy arcing out in crystaland mist before dissipating as limb-mass no longer needed is unbound.
Soon, the hand pulls itself out of the floor, snapping back into the sphere--and that sphere melts, reforming into Althea's spirit form. She breathes in--
and SCREAMS. Your parents try to stand up, to comfort their daughter, to ask what's wrong--but Gor'lo-nos holds them back. You only have so many questions to spend--best make them count.
"My name is Morsel Hawthorne," you start. "Do I have your permission to resurrect you?"
<19/20 Questions Remain!>
At the sound of your shared last name, her screams falter--and though she is still clearly panicked, she responds, "No! There's a demon attacking my parents!"
You sigh, and turn to the northwest couch. "I hope you guys can stay quiet," you sigh, "Gor'lo-nos... you might want to leave for this part."
"Eh, never been one for emotional stuff anyway," he says, standing up and moving to the kitchen.
"A--Althea!" your parents cry, but you raise a hand.
"See tho--" you start, then bite down on the rhetorical question. "Each of those amethyst sub-circles around her are questions left to answer," you say, gesturing to them. "We only have 19 left, and I need at least one to get her permission for resurrection."
"But how--" your father starts, before a loud AHEM from Gor'lo-nos cuts off his question. "I... We..." he sighs, then starts again, "It would be nice to know how we can help."
You nod, and look to Althea. She's still shivering with fear, so you say, "I would like to know if you are now willing to be resurrected."
She looks around the room again. "...The--the demon's not gonna eat me, is he?"
You can't help it. You let out a barking laugh, wiping a bit of moisture from your eyes. "No, no. He's on vacation. My eidolon, in fact."
"Y...you're not going to eat me, are you?" she asks.
"Hm?"
<18/20-->
"Oh for frick's sake," you mutter, glaring at a shattering amethyst sub-circle.
"But you--you're--you ATE ME!" she says, finally piecing it together.
"We can talk about that later," you say. "For now--look at Mom and Dad. They lost you, when I... showed up," you wince, "and they lost me, when I ran away to learn how to resurrect you."
You wince. Using a question puts pressure on the spirit, and you really don't want to do this, but if she's this panicky...
"Do you want to make them lose their daughter a third time?"
<17/20 Questions Remain!>
"...No," she mutters, as your parents flinch back.
You nod. "I would like to bring you back, then."
"...I'm scared," she shivers.
"You're dead," you say, with a gentle smile. "I hear it's a very scary thing to be."
She gives a soft chuckle--comedy conquering fear, however briefly--so you strike while the iron is hot.
"Are you ready to come back?"
<16/20 Questions Remain!>
As the spell presses into her, she smiles faintly, then blinks in surprise at her own answer.
"I think I will be."
You smile, and nod, then turn to your fellow Planeswalker. "Alright, Jaminah! Bring out the new corpse!"
"The what?" your sister and parents ask, jumping back with a shriek as Jaminah pulls the replica Althea corpse (draped in a robe for modesty, of course, courtesy of M0's Creation magic) out of her pocket dimension.
<15/20 Questions Remain!>
You started chanting once more, and Gor'lo-nos let your parents know it was safe to ask more questions now that your Life magic had a hold of her. They caught up on some things she missed while she was dead--but then the last question ran out, and Althea started getting lethargic.
"What--is this--?" she asks, clearly afraid of being sent back.
"You asked the last question," Gor'lo-nos says, "so the spell can't keep you awake anymore. Sleep well, little one. Your sister will wake you when your body's ready."
Althea nods, and drifts off--but not so far that you can't still sew her back into her skin, something that takes the majority of the minute-long Resurrection process. Bodies are complicated, as it turns out, and a spell to restart things has to rebuild an entire Ka-soul from scratch, and then have that rebuild its Ib-soul from the body's composition and the Ba-soul's memory. Your spell-circles, too, aid in this--they provide hooks and reference table and all manner of other things to help your mind keep track of the task at hand.
You weave the last of your sister's soul-threads into her new body. Now, all that's left is to take the Life magic that surrounds you and jump-start the Ka formation. You let the room know, and they all stand back--
And you get to work. You breathe Life into every cell, stir the Blood into pumping, re-anchor the hooks that let Fate guide her path.
For a moment,
(And your soul flares jade--)
for a brief moment,
(--but the three flames find nothing to burn--)
she shines like the sun.
(--and so they wait. They will flare again, when the time comes.)
And then your sister breathes in.
She stands up.
She looks around the room, picking at her robe for a bit before sprinting over to your shared parents and burying herself in their laps.
A cheer rises up from the room, and your parents close in around her. You step forwards, trying to join in the hug--
But Althea pulls away.You see in her eyes a sudden shift, nervously glancing between you and your shared parents.
And it hurts. It hurts to not be trusted, it hurts to be pushed away, and it hurts for your sister to be in such a hurry to get away from you--
But it's not about you.
It's about making things right.
"I think," you say, "Althea might need a bit of space."
Building her trust isn't going to be easy. It's going to hurt.
But you're gonna be well.And you'll give her your best shot.
<Main Quest Complete: Bringing Althea Home! All characters present complete one Mythic Trial!>
<Hidden Goal Complete: More Alive Than Dead! For resurrecting Althea before so quickly, all characters present complete an additional Mythic Trial!>
<Debt to Althea: 1x Body: PAID IN FULL>
<Debt to your Parents: 1x Daughter: PAID IN FULL>
<Promise from Isabella: "I'm gonna help you get your sister back, Morsel": FULFILLED>
<Morsel has reached Mythic Tier 4!>
<Self-Confidence Achieved! A Secret Option has opened up in the Mythic section of the level-up menu!>
<Morsel's Semblance has its requisite emotional charge, and only needs life experience and a bit of directionto fully bloom.>
A/N: Thanks for playing The Kindling We Live In! It's been a wonderful first year, and I look forward to seeing how the rest of it plays out. Next up is a Media post about Morsel's history OOC, Morsel's level-up post (Lv10, MR 4), and a brief chat with Gor'lo-nos to introduce some new actions pursuable when the rest of Turn 008 rolls around.
What was this all about? It's been a while since I was PMMM, so I don't particularly recall transdimensional being an issue other than just standard entry-into-witch areas
What was this all about? It's been a while since I was PMMM, so I don't particularly recall transdimensional being an issue other than just standard entry-into-witch areas
It's not a PMMM thing--it's something on Jaminah's character sheet. Specifically, because Ozodrins like her are eldritch shapeshifters (a piece of data you've had since Character Selection 2), they get to do a lot of weird things with their bodies. In this specific case--
Ozodrin Class Ability: Features said:
Features (Ex) ι 1 ιYou may change your physical components.
You may add or remove features and augments to your true form only when in your guise.
The ozodrin gains a list of features, by default an ozodrin may use the Eye, Mouth, Tentacle, Limb and Organ features.
Ozodrin Class Ability: Feature Unlocks: Stomach Augments: Various said:
Chamber
Your second stomach's volume expands to double it's normal space, this has no effect on your primary stomach.
The augmented stomach loses it's ability to maintain a grapple with a creature in it's stomach and may only make a single grapple attempt against creatures who attempt to exit, if this attempt fails the creature may climb out.
Your stomach's walls no longer fit it's contents, it appears to be a spherical or cubic room with a diameter or width equal to it's volume.
Mimic
You may extend your stomach's membrane to create structures, different terrain or mimic objects in your stomach.
You may fill a volume of 16 squares full of mimicry , this may raise and form in whatever manner you wish.
Mimicry counts as part of your stomach and must keep connected to the walls or physically connected through other mimicked squares, and may not move on their own or out of their native squares without breaking them (damaging the stomach).
Mimicry alone does not have the color, temperature, texture, smell, sound or tactual feeling of what it is duplicating, it only effects the shape of it.
Glamer
You may alter the color, lighting, temperature, texture, smell, sound or tactual feeling of your stomach walls and Mimicry however you wish.
However this is not a perfect effect. Once per 10 minutes a creature attempts a (DC = Level + Charisma Modifier) perception check. Success means it notices something you've failed to alter correctly or something you've simply forgotten.
This does not interfere with the Natural or Infernal stomach augments, succeeding this perception check does not mean a creature ignores other factors that would prevent them from noticing the stomach's nature.
Arch
Your stomach augments that duplicate appearances or create illusions do not allow saves or perception checks while creatures are outside the stomach.
You may transform one of your Mouth features with the Small augment into any manner of door, known as an Arch.
Your Arch leads to an identical door inside your stomach attached to your stomach wall or mimicry.
Willing creatures may pass through Arches without realizing they've entered a mouth, unlike the Glamer augment Arch is a flawless effect and in all ways appears to be a mundane door.
Your stomach walls gain the ability to hear from any point on them.
...The characters in the room who specifically have more Perception skill ranks than Jaminah has levels were able to see past the cuttlefish-style camouflage that was disguising her extradimensional stomach as an extradimensional room. Morsel even directly lampshades how this ability works, looking at a mouth disguised as a doorway and subconsciously realizing--
Morsel said:
What, are they worried that the door is going to eat them, or something?
As for why Jaminah is going through all this effort? Well, Hennia, as mentioned, is a mountainous, cold-ocean island nation. Like Scotland. Which means it's going to have a similar climate. Which means it's going to have a similar food culture.
Morsel is a parasitic fungus whose species takes root by devouring internal organs from the inside-out.
Jaminah, in light of all this, is trying to avoid letting Morsel realize that she could make Eldritch Haggis.
A/N: This one's a bit of an emotions post; I'm understandably sappy about all this.
Also, spoilers for turns 000-008a, if you're coming in the thread from a later date.
I make it no secret here that I'm autistic, but what I've been somewhat circumspect about is Morsel being autistic. She originally wasn't, but bouncing around my skull eventually had it rub off on her over the years. I can list out symptoms with in-story examples if people want, but a special interest in Knowledge: Arcana; low empathy especially, around other people's pain (most notably around Alteration magic, see the Sayaka Becomes A Dragon scene and her solution to X3027's tattoos); and extreme under-sensitivity to her own pain (see the Remnant Turn 005 sidestory) are the ones that stick out to me most. Given that we're in her home village this chapter, a lot of her social inexpertise is going to show up now in ways that would normally fade into the background of this kind of adventure, as Madoka, Homura, Mami, Sierra, and Isabella have all been smoothing social situations over in ways that the metaphorical camera hasn't been focusing on.
Here's the thing, though--Jaminah was made around the same time, and outside of shared backstory themes of "something is Wrong™ with this child but supportive parents have helped them be functional", she's... not. So why Morsel, and not her?
The answer is that Morsel was something of a comfort character for me--I'm the kind of person who wakes up every morning wishing e was in a robotic body rather than an organic one, so I'm naturally drawn to robotic characters (hi, M0) for aspirational reasons and ones with a background level of body horror for relatability reasons. You'll note that the Golgari girls of this quest are both literal monsters, Sunmist had biological terrors of his own (lifespan) that he coped with through violent pursuit of his goals, and Grimaldo has had his own discomforts quietly tidied up by M0 in the background. Morsel's, though, naturally comes with it a level of social ostracization that the others lack--and I think that's where the autism slowly started bleeding in.
You'll note, though, that I specified 'years'. Morsel and Jaminah are actually old characters, hence that one bonus Mythic Trial--
<Hidden Goal Complete: More Alive Than Dead! For resurrecting Althea before so quickly, all characters present complete an additional Mythic Trial!>
--what this means is that you guys resurrected Althea not before her tenth birthday in-character... but before the tenth anniversary of when she was created as a character.
When I started this quest, I assumed that I had made Morsel sometime in 2015--April 22 is when her first character sheet shows up in my Google Drive. To my surprise, though, while writing this quest, I found Morsel's original concept art--and based on where it was placed, the actual creation date would be either May or June 2014. Jaminah's actually in some of the last pages of this same composition book--and Analise in some of the first few pages of the one I used next.
Morsel's not the first, or the last, character that I felt some catharsis thinking about when I struggled with my own body issues, but she was the one that stuck around longest because hers were largely perpendicular to mine--I didn't have to envy her, the way I did most robotic characters. Conversely, her social isolation was close to home at the time--in 2016, I had a conversation with a family member who, upon hearing my plan to try to build a social group through online TRPG's, told me that if it had taken me this long, I was better off giving up and focusing my efforts on things that I would actually get done.
In 2018, my TRPG server on Discord ran its first campaign. In 2019, it ran the campaign that would introduce me to the person who I currently consider my best friend, who in turn introduced me to the majority of my current social circle.
But around this time I began to wonder--when was it going to be Morsel's time? If I had clawed my way out of social isolation, didn't she deserve a chance, after all the times she helped me stabilize? I had other comfort characters before, but the big one before Morsel was a character meant for written works, not the table--and unlike a written character, a TRPG character needs to be played to get their happy ending.
So, in 2020, the first opportunity I had to step out of the DM seat, I played Morsel. The DM of that campaign decided to abandon it, but I refused to let Morsel's chance die that easily--instead of letting it die, I asked that DM for permission to run it on my own, running it as a Play-By-Post campaign in that server from March to November--but at that point, player participation was slowing. Sierra and Isabella (and Gor'lo-nos) were originally from this campaign, and Isabella's player was becoming increasingly busy IRL--and I was getting the itch to get back to a more standard DM'ing setup, as--somewhat predicably, given my monthly update schedule here--the smaller, faster updates in a PbP campaign weren't meshing with my writing style. As a result, Morsel's first chance eventually petered out before she really got to do much...
But a necromancer is never dead, only sleeping.
In 2022, I played in a Star Wars Saga Edition campaign that ended horrendously. In an effort to wash my mouth out of the bad taste, I ran a quest with Planeswalker!M0. The table I was walking away from could have their version of M0, but I liked the character too much to leave them behind in the split. M0 eventually broke the system--it turns out that MtG's "infinite capacity, finite generation" magic system and Warhammer Fantasy's "entire moon made out of dark magic whose main downside is mutation" setting data do very silly things when you're immune to biological mutations--so I knew that if I ever wanted to do this quest idea again, I would need a more rules-heavy system, and at this point I had already been playing with Spheres of Power for years.
And so, I prepared to do a reboot of that quest on this site--but something struck my memory. There had been a Planeswalker quest here before that I was interested in during chargen--but which picked, for some reason, Selesnya as their color identity. W/G in default MtG's magic system is about the most boring color identity you can get, sacrificing the more esoteric sides of both colors for Maximum Healing/Strengthening, and so I stopped following that thread.
But... we know someonewho's almostSelesnya, don't we? Someone who's been waiting for quite a while. Someone who, with the comfort of distance from that disastrous Star Wars campaign, was feeling like a better lead than even M0.
And so, instead of building a character from scratch at the start of this quest, I dug M0, Morsel, and Jaminah out of hibernation, and created Sunmist and Grimaldo to round out the color pie so that, since I clearly couldn't predict people's taste, there'd be a character here for everyone. To hide my blatant favoritism for our resident medics (and the audience draw from Sunmist being a Pokemon and Jaminah being a larval Great Old One), I filtered the character selection through the five colors, hoping that a narrower scope of description would bleach out some of my enthusiasm. While Sunmist turned out poorly, I feel that Grimaldo has served his purpose quite well, as "translating Wikipedia for the Dragon Pope" is exactly the kind of stupid nonsense that Planeswalkers should get up to, but that the official stories rarely get into in favor of soft High Fantasy Superhero Plots.
And, because I didn't want Morsel to lose what few friends she had, I called up the players from the Play-by-Post and asked them if they were cool with Sierra and Isabella being included in this quest. They both agreed, and while Isabella's player and I aren't in contact much these days (hence why, alongside the issue of not speaking Japanese at first, Isabella took longer to find her metaphorical voice), Sierra's player has been willing to review my Sierra dialogue to keep her in-character (and very interested in the thread's reception of her).
And then, last year, I finally bit the bullet, accepted that my half-written intro chapters were never going to be full intro chapters without the pressure of having an audience, and opened the thread.
And so, with barely a month to spare, we managed to get Althea back before she spent more time dead OOC than alive in-character.
And so... Thank you. Without this quest, my writing speed is somewhere around one-fourth what the update schedule would otherwise show, and Morsel would've never gotten there this quickly. Thanks for giving me the pressure I needed, and thanks for sticking with me in this elaborate scheme to get my darling fugus child some therapy.
It's been a great first year, writing this--let's have a great second.
I really love this quest as I find the characters to be engaging, and grew attach to them especially Morsel, and just like multi-crosses when done like this.
Time for Morsel's next level-up vote! As a reminder, sometimes you'll see (Ex), (Su), or (Sp) after an ability name. (Ex) and (Su) means it cannot be dispelled, whereas only (Ex) means it functions in an antimagic field. Antimagic fields are exceedingly rare--unless you fight an archmage of Mana or Protection, you're unlikely to ever encounter one.
As usual, a d4+4 for Morsel's HP, and a d5+5 for Gor'lo-nos.
+1 Favored Class Bonus (can boost HP or Skill Ranks, auto-assigning to Skill Ranks for the sake of consistency)
Even Level:
+1 to Good saving throws (just Will for now)
Sorcerer Level 10:
+1 Caster Level (total +10)
+2 Spell Points (total +27)
+1 Magical Talent
Summoner Level 10:
+0.75 Base Attack Bonus from Summoner (total +7) (This also improves accuracy, CMB, and CMD)
+d8 HP
+2 Skill Ranks
+0.75 Talents (Any (total +7))
+Ability: Aspect: When recovering Spell Points, you can "borrow" a (Form)-tagged Conjuration talent from your Eidolon and gain its benefits for yourself instead of letting your Eidolon have it.
Any Tier:
+2 Mythic Power.
+HP as per your Mythic Path (4/Tier for Spheremasters)
+1 Mythic Ability
Even Tiers:
+2 to an ability score of the character's choice (Auto-assigned to Charisma)
Conjuration: Link: Gain telepathic communication with all summoned Companions while they're on your current plane.
Conjuration: Otherworldly Audience: While unsummoned, you may patch any number of companions into your sensory input and/or communicate with them at will. Companions can perform nonphysical Intelligence or Wisdom skill checks through you while unsummoned. If you have the Conjuration: Link talent, your telepathic communication is no longer limited by planar boundaries.
Conjuration: Animal Companion (Form): Your companion gains the Scent ability and +20' Land speed, +10'*HD/2.
Conjuration: Bestial (Form): Companion gains a Gore attack (d6+STR Bludgeoning/Piercing). This is primarily useful for hitting things within his halberd's dead zone.
Conjuration: Natural Aspect (Form): Companion gains Fast Healing 1 (1 HP/turn) or Pounce (can full-attack after charging). The first means you basically never have to heal Gor'lo-nos, the second means he can attack twice on a charge now that he's Lv6. There's also an Advanced talent keying off of the first option to give him Regeneration, meaning he needs specific damage types to actually die when damaged.
Conjuration: Sage Companion (Form): Companion gains 2+HD/2 Intelligence, and a bonus of HD/2 on rolls to identify a creature's abilities and weaknesses.
Conjuration: Willful Companion (Form): Companion gains 2+HD/2 Wisdom, and one favorable reroll (roll twice, take the highest) on Will Saves.
Death: Sustained Necromancy: Reanimate duration increases to {CL} hours instead of {CL} minutes. Morsel's not really interested in necromancy without this one, especially since Death (Advanced): Permanent Undead lists it as a prerequisite.
Death: Curse (Ghost Strike): Bestow a permanent curse on the target with 2 spell points and a failed Will save. See the wiki page for details--this talent allows custom curses. You're not exactly the most threatening spellcaster around, so it'd be nice to have something to Intimidate with that wasn't just third-degree acid burns.
Death (Advanced): Create Soul Gem: Target a dead or dying creature and lock its soul in a gem for {CL} days on a failed Will save. While in the gem, any attempt to resurrect them must first succeed on a free Dispel check against the gem.
Death (Advanced): Permanent Undead: Requires Sustained Necromancy. The duration of your undead changes to "Instantaneous", freeing them from time limits or Dispel attempts, but not your command capacity.
Death (Advanced): Project Spirit: Your ghost exits your body and travels in the Near Ethereal for {CL} Rounds. Mostly useful for relaying Plane-locked data from in-plane to fellow Planeswalkers in the Deep Ethereal or vice-versa, but it's also a cheap way to peek through walls, if need be. Unlocks Astral Projection and Possession, which both have longer durations.
Buy Off Drawback: Energy Focus: Currently, Morsel is locked into Acid-flavor Destruction blasts.
Buy Off Drawback: Shape Focus: Currently, Morsel is locked into the default laser shape for Destruction blasts.
Destruction: Admixture: Spend 1 spell point or increase the casting action by one step (Standard -> Full-Round, currently) to apply two (Blast Type) talents. Apply both talents' rider effects and average their damage. Note: This opens up some feats to mix Destruction magic with that of other types, for those who want to spend extra spell points to do damage and status effects simultaneously.
Destruction: Damage Control: Set your damage to be Nonlethal or even set to 0. Rider effects (ex: Adhesive Blast's Entangle effect) still apply.
Destruction: Extended Range: Increase range by 1 step (Close (25'+5'*HD/2) -> Medium (100'+10'*HD), currently).
Destruction: Gather Energy: Optionally increase the casting action of your Destructive Blast by one step to reduce its spell point cost by 1.
Destruction: Wingbind: Your Entangling blasts now cause creatures with nonmagical flight to fall to the ground on a failed Reflex save.
Destruction: Alkali Blast (Acid, Blast Type): Your Blast does d4's instead of d6's, but you get a free Trip attempt on hit.
Destruction: Custom Blast Type (Acid, Blast Type): Consult the custom blast talent builder table at the bottom of the Destruction page and send in something within 8-12 construction points. Because of her Casting Tradition drawbacks, Morsel must do Acid damage with her Blasts.
Destruction (Advanced): Penetrating Blast: Ignore {CL} points of Energy Resist against your Blasts, or twice that number if you spend a spell point. "Immunity" is downgraded to "Resist 40" when resisting your Blasts.
Life: Affliction: Reverse the effects of your (Cure), or a (Restore) you can do. A nice damage and status talent for your "I'm a healer, but..." needs.
Life: Esoteric Healing: Your (Cure) works on Constructs, Undead, and any other creature not healed by Positive Energy. More cost-efficient than the Death thing to heal undead, frankly.
Life: Lingering Resilience: When you remove a status effect (other than ability drain/damage, death, or negative levels) from someone, they're immune to it for 2 rounds.
Life: Mass Healing: Heal {CL}/2 people at once for the cost of 1 spell point.
Life: Painkiller: Invigorating also heals an amount of Nonlethal damage equal to the Temporary HP granted. Useless in 99% of situations and then hilariously effective in surviving a blizzard. Only offering this because it's not worth tapping Mana over this when you could Revitalize instead.
Life: Restorative Cure: Spend an extra spell point to Cure and Restore in the same spell.
Life: Ranged Healing: Heal in Close range instead of Touch.
Life: Self-Renewal: Pay an extra spell point to heal specifically yourself as a Swift action, or two to do this when status conditions would normally prevent it. Death is, hilariously, a status condition.
Life: Taste of Victory: Pay an extra spell point if you struck a creature whose HD is at least half of yours with an attack roll to use a Life sphere effect on a willing creature within range as a Swift action. This is free if the attack was a critical, if the creature was knocked unconscious, or if it was reduced to 0 or fewer HP. Do note that Destructive Blast triggers this, but Morsel's Nature(Plant) branch shotgun does not. Normally this is Paladin Nonsense, but Destructive Blast is reliable enough that it might be worth your time.
Life (Advanced): Transfiguration: As a Full-Round Action, supercharge a touched creature. For {CL} hours, raise the creature's current and max HP by 5 per Hit Die (maximum total equal to twice the default max), render it immune to poisons and diseases, and suspend its old age penalties. This also ends if the creature drops below 0 HP. Unlike most HP increases, the max HP decrease at the end of this duration does not consume current HP equal to its decrease (that is to say, you keep any extra HP that doesn't overcap you).
Nature: Expanded Geomancing: Gain a new element for Nature (Air, Earth, Fire, Metal, Water)
Nature: Grant Spirit: When you take this a second time, you may affect {CL}/2 targets with your (Spirit) effect. These effects count separately after being granted.
Nature: Ranged Geomancy: Geomancing range increases from Close to Medium.
Nature: Nature Lord (Geomancing): +5 CL for range and size purposes of your Geomancy effects.
Nature: Plant Lord (Geomancing, Plant): Increase the radius of your Entangle, optionally spend a spell point to affect more branches with Pummel, and grow {CL}*2 magic berries of +1 HP (healing, not max) whenever you use Harvest.
Nature: Pummel Mastery (Geomancing, Plant): Branches may taunt or inflict Fatigued instead of dealing damage. Additionally, you may issue commands to your branches as a Free action instead of a Move.
Nature: Purify Nature (Geomancing): With the Plant package, you may purify food within a 10'+5'*CL/4 radius by spending a spell point and a Standard action. This auto-clears mundane rot and spoilage, but needs an MSB check against Poison or Disease. This talent's Earth use clears out curses of all things, which is exceedingly useful in a plane you have not been to yet.
Nature: Thrown Pummel (Geomancing, Plant): Your branches can make ranged attacks with a range increment of twice their melee reach.
Nature: Destroy Element (Spirit): With Plant, you deal 1d4+{CL}/5 Constitution damage (Fortitude Half) and interfere with their magical healing. By violently growing fungus inside their body. Viciously effective against high-level targets, as -2 Constitution means -1 HP/level and there's no way to completely shake this off without healing. Makes Morsel very self-conscious, though.
Nature: Ride the Elements (Spirit): Spend a spell point as a Move action to gain 10'+10'*{CL}/5 to all movement speeds and double the results of your Acrobatics checks made to jump for {CL} minutes.
Nature: Speak with Wildlife (Spirit): Spend a spell point to be able to talk to animals for {CL} minutes. Normally you'd have to choose between Animals and Vermin, but I am too autistic about bugs to listen to that. You get both.
Alteration (Base): Cause a touched creature to undergo aesthetic changes and/or minor physical transformations (ex: gaining a Claw attack) on a failed Fortitude save. HEAVILY relies on subsequent Talents to assemble a more interesting transformation.
Blood (Base): Cause a creature within Close range fall under your Blood Control on a failed or waived Fortitude save. At base, you can only use Blood Control to start/stop bleeding, but further talents can do things like burn out diseases--or accelerate them.
Enhancement (Base): Add a minor bonus to weapon accuracy and damage. Mostly a minionmancy/team-buffing sphere due to Animated Objects and all the weapon-enhancing talents.
Fate (Base): +1 Luck to certain rolls within a small radius of you as a (Consecration), or replicate Magic Circle Against Evil and its siblings of other alignments as a (Word). A rather underwhelming base sphere that later opens up to some tasty Cleric staple spells. Fate: Exorcism (Word) in particular REALLY screws over mind-control mages, and Fate: Harm (Word) does some very, very silly things with minionmancy builds.
Protection (Base): Give a target a Deflection bonus to Armor Class as an (Aegis), or make a forcefield wall as a (Ward). Starts out very basic, but has nice forcefields, area-denial, and utility spells. Of note is Protection (Advanced): True Protection, allowing you to treat your Protection spells as 10 levels higher if you focus them to work against one specific creature--nice for breaking some bosses, but be careful not to trust too much in the spell scaling.
Time (Base): Bestow combat bonuses as a (Haste), or combat penalties as a (Slow). Time is a small sphere, and one that Morsel's build doesn't interact with much--but Homura is a strong influence. There's a couple strong Advanced talents, but this is mostly here as a mechanical way to push Morsel towards looking up to Homura more.
Warp (Base): Teleport yourself or a touched target within Close range--or Medium, if you spend a spell point. Again, not something that Morsel's build benefits from much--but if you ever want to bypass the 1/day limit of Planeswalking right now, this is where to go. The ease of travel is a nice benefit, too, as Morsel's not exactly a professional mountain climber.
Weather (Base): Adjust atmospheric conditions within Medium (100' + 10'*CL) range over time. View the linked page for more details, it's a long description. More of a siege weapon than a direct-combat spell, but there's a few interesting combos in the dual-sphere feats that might be interesting to Morsel.
Full rules text for these abilities can be found at the Mythic Heroes page of d20pfsrd.com, or the Mythic Spheres... abomination of web design on the spheres wiki. Seriously, why this of all places to ditch the helpful table-of-contents navigation tool?
Any Path:
Mythic Spherecaster: Your sphere talents are much harder to dispel or counterspell. Add your tier to the DC of all counterspell or dispel attempts non-mythic creatures make against your magic, and add half your tier (rounded down, minimum 1) to the DC of all counterspell or dispel attempts mythic creatures make against your magic, and add your tier to your MSD for the purpose of suppression effects such as Spell Ward (ward, aegis).
Divine Source (Su):(UNLOCKED VIA PLOT COMPLETION) The demigod ascension ability that Madoka has. Can grant folded spells (vanilla spellcasting) equal or lower than your Tier to your Clerics, etc., and can cast folded spells (1 per Spell Level each day) from your own domains. You must fill out Alignment domains before any other kind. Votes for this must include a write-in for what Domains she would gain. "Law" is the first she must gain due to her Alignment, and I'm going to assume few here would dispute Healing (Resurrection subdomain) as her natural second.
Enhanced Ability (Ex): You gain a permanent +2 bonus to one ability score of your choice. You can select this path ability up to six times. Each time you do, it must apply to a different ability score.
Eternal Soul [Gravecaller's HB]: You're immune to non-Mythic forms/sources of energy drain and negative levels. As a Free Action, remove {Tier} negative levels from yourself. You are immune to non-Mythic sources of magic such as Magic Jar, Trap the Soul, or other soul-trapping or soul-consuming magics. Mythic magics of this type that would not grant a saving throw are forced to grant a Will saving throw (DC 10+(CL/2 or HD/2)+CHA) to negate. You may spend a point of Mythic Power to gain advantage on this save. This save is granted regardless of your health, actions, or even continued existence, is offered once every 24 hours in the case of failure, and makes you immune to that source for 24 hours on a success.
Spheremaster-Specific:
Abundant Casting (Ex): You may add your Tier to spells with variable number of targets (ex: "{CL/2} targets"), or spend a Mythic Power to make a single-target effect instead target two targets.
Curse-bearer (Ex): Non-Mythic item curses cannot affect you without your consent. You may spend a point of Mythic Power to negate a Mythic item curse for one round. At Tier 6, you are instead immune to all curses, item-based or not, Mythic or not.
Eldritch Breach (Su): Gain Advantage on MSB rolls such as Dispelling or bypassing Spell Resistance. This also applies to Life: Break Enchantment, which is where Morsel would get most of her use for it. Sierra's getting this for her Counterspells.
Gor'lo-nos is taking Guardian-sphere talents for better bodyguarding.
Isabella is getting Fencing: Fast Feint for some self-sufficiency, and Eternal Youth (Ex/Su) because she quite likes her current age, thank you very much.
Sierra is getting Illusion: Suppression for invisibility, etc. and getting Eldritch Breach (Su) to make her battlefield control and Counterspells stronger.
24h moratorium, plan votes preferred, etc. etc. If you have any questions or need clarification, please take advantage of the moratorium to ask them so that everyone can see the answer before voting.
I'll update Morsel's sheet in the morning; for now, it's late, and my sleep schedule is recovering from my earlier writing sprints.
does this open up ways to heal consucts of more than damage? Could we,at later level ups, pick up something like "cure virus","clear corruption", oer even "remove outside control" ?
would be thematic, and help out M0. we may want to look into star wars regeardless. There are a LOT of people to help, and most of the tech should be usable by anyone on any plane.
Right now, Morsel knows of Esoteric Healing (that is, she reflexively taps for it whenever she needs to heal a Construct or Undead), and M0 has it on their build, so this would be more of a spellcasting assistance than a teaching assistance. Status conditions on Constructs function identically to status conditions on other creature types--the status-removal Life talents that Morsel already has would apply to similar effects on Constructs (ex: disease removal vs computer viruses). Trying to clear remote control, therefore, would therefore be manageable with Fate: Exorcism (Word) as per possessor-ghosts. I could hear an argument for Life: Restore Capacity (Cure) fixing it as well, given that it's originally designed to fix Grapple checks in line with the vanilla PF spell Freedom of Movement, emphasis here on Freedom. 🦅🦅🦅
-[X]Eternal Soul [Gravecaller's HB]: You're immune to non-Mythic forms/sources of energy drain and negative levels. As a Free Action, remove {Tier} negative levels from yourself. You are immune to non-Mythic sources of magic such as Magic Jar, Trap the Soul, or other soul-trapping or soul-consuming magics. Mythic magics of this type that would not grant a saving throw are forced to grant a Will saving throw (DC 10+(CL/2 or HD/2)+CHA) to negate. You may spend a point of Mythic Power to gain advantage on this save. This save is granted regardless of your health, actions, or even continued existence, is offered once every 24 hours in the case of failure, and makes you immune to that source for 24 hours on a success.
-[X]Fate (Base): +1 Luck to certain rolls within a small radius of you as a (Consecration), or replicate Magic Circle Against Evil and its siblings of other alignments as a (Word). A rather underwhelming base sphere that later opens up to some tasty Cleric staple spells. Fate: Exorcism (Word) in particular REALLY screws over mind-control mages, and Fate: Harm (Word) does some very, very silly things with minionmancy builds.
-[X]Life: Esoteric Healing: Your (Cure) works on Constructs, Undead, and any other creature not healed by Positive Energy. More cost-efficient than the Death thing to heal undead, frankly.
[ ] Plan Fantasy Trauma Team
-[ ][TALENT] Warp (Base)
-[ ][TALENT] Life: Taste of Victory
-[ ][MYTHIC] Eldritch Breach (Su)
Morsel has been helped a lot by her friends and doesn't need to go quite as far down the resurrection/life chain anymore with her sister brought back. So, I think that she would now focus on helping her friends do their tasks. Being able to get around faster to help them is important, as she saw with Grimaldo's assault. She is a bit offensively weak and she now knows that combat is going to be heavily involved in her future, so being able to heal while still doing some damage will double up her usefulness. Sheer healing might is for M0, she can be a hybrid controller/healer/off DPS to fill whatever her friends need. Eldritch breach is another big help when it comes to removing enchantments, etc for her friends
This is... backwards, actually. M0's going for versatility for item crafting reasons--as of right now, due to quest completion, Morsel has 14 Life Talents on her sheet. M0 has four. Part of the discrepancy here is that M0's been going for Spheres of Might / Spheres of Guile options (Alchemy and Herbalism, specifically) to get consistent nonmagical healing--Morsel has better combat healing and status removal, but M0 has a higher max HP/day, assuming they have enough patients to help.
EDIT: To give some raw numbers, Morsel currently has 27 Spell Points. Assuming she uses her Heavenly Cure Implement to boost her Life caster level, she can make 27 castings of Life: Rejuvenate, which heals 5 HP/turn (due to all the (Cure) Talents) for {CL} minutes, each of which is 10 turns. That's 27 x 5 x 10 x 12 = 27 x 600 = 16200 HP Healed/day before using Land-mana.
M0, using Herbalism: Physician's Efficiency to reduce the time to use the Heal skill to Treat Deadly Wounds down to a Standard Action, can heal 1 HP/Level + 2x{INT}. If we assume M0 is performing this on an infinite conveyor belt of level 1 NPC's, that's (1+2x6) = 13 HP/round, 10 rounds/minute, 60 minutes/hour, 24 hours/day, for a total of 187200 HP Healed/day without magic. However, unlike Morsel's 16k HP/day, none of this is combat-useful--while M0 can definitely patch someone up in a firefight, this healing can't be happening in the background of them shooting something.
The flipside of this is that, due to Life: Empathic Healing, Morsel can cure diseases and poisons effectively instantly, and effectively without cost, making her better in a plague outbreak.
