- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't really have anything. Been busy with other things.
[X] Plan Making It Official
[X] Plan Making It Official
Doctor Cid
Delurked on Jul 13, 2019.
- Location
- Canada
[X] Plan Making It Official
Vote Closed -- Turn 009 Plan (Morsel)
Turn 009 (Morsel) -- Orzhov Squad Saves Nanairo
New
- Pronouns
- E/Em/Eir
Winning Vote said:
Discussion of unethical medical experiments
Moved Sunmist's character sheet from "Informational" to "Sidestory".
Tea Party Followup
As the tea party winds to a close and people start to wander off, M0 pulls you aside to ask a question.
"Morsel, that anchor you're building for Gor'lo-nos... how are you planning to get the materials?"
You shrug. "This is more of a long-term project. I... honestly hadn't considered that part yet?"
M0 blinks. "Wait... you didn't realize?"
"Realize what?" you ask, tilting your head.
"The infinite bacon trick works on magic items."
"...Excuse me?"
M0 taps on their eye-lenses and draws some Divination enchantment out of them, rendering them useless--only to repair them, allowing the Creation magic thus cast to restore the ethereal components of the enchanted item, rendering the item fully-functional once more.
The ethereal pieces that M0 drew out still remain in their hand, rapidly evaporating into the Ethereal Plane from which mana originally came in the absence of an item to contain them in.
"This saves so much time!" you shout, "How did you find it out?"
"I was experimenting with what Creation magic can and can't do," they shrug. "It seems to preferentially use the item's cast-off materials--sawdust for a broken chair, for instance--to repair the item, but pushing with my spell pool seemed to generate small amounts of material from nothing. When a magic item of mine was damaged, I noticed that only the pushed version was capable of repairing it--and then, while scanning it," they say, tapping their eye-lenses, "I noticed the spell in question scanning its magical structure and repairing that as well. Presumably, producing this semi-solid form of mana that item enchantments are comprised of is a relatively simple state change to perform programmatically, but difficult enough to do by hand that salvage from other enchantments or naturally-occuring forms of mana of this state is necessary for those without Creation magic to fall back on."
You nod, focused on figuring out salvage methods to more efficiently piece together what components you need for the anchor, starting from what you already have. "Especially because that trick doesn't work most of the time--you need to be equal or stronger than the item in question to repair it like that, and it's rare that anyone with that kind of magic doesn't just make their own items--but anyone else seeking to repair items would have to use the material salvage method!"
<M0 has found a glitch in the system! Magic item costs removed when you have access to Create: Potent Alteration and an item with a Caster Level no higher than yours!>
<By Pathfinder RAW, repairing an item with the Broken condition (<50% HP remaining on an item) takes half its crafting cost and time--implying that half the "value" of the item was removed when Breaking it. However, certain spells bypass this, simply removing the Broken condition by restoring the item's HP.>
<What M0 is doing here is Breaking the item in the process of removing 50% of the value from the item, rather than the other way around. RAW is silent on whether this actually works, but conservation of mass would certainly imply it.>
<Given how little gold I tend to give compared to the Wealth By Level tables, it's a useful loophole to use to maintain the game's intended power balance for characters of a given level and allow characters in this quest to have a better estimate of how many actions it'll take to create an item.>
Week 1 -- A Shining Jewel pt. 1
After you finish talking to M0, you bring your friends and family over to Lhakpa, who has stayed behind to help guide you to the spot in the White-Blue-Black Plane that their starship is waiting. After the usual jump, you arrive at--
Wait.
Why is the planet out the window?
"Quite a view, eh?" Lhakpa says, joining you at the viewport. "That's Kollin out the window--the planet that this world's humans are from. Or, this system's humans, at least," they say, chuckling as though at a private joke. "They built these rings! Quite an industrious lot."
You look at the twin rings of Kollin, built like skyscrapers stretched long enough to encircle the world twice over. Formed into two perpendicular circles akin to the planetary-model orbitals of a helium atom's electrons, these curved towers are a bustle of activity at all times, a city above the clouds that connects the world below to its sibling-planets throughout Nanairo. Here and there, spaceships dock, with all the cargo-transfer, repair work, and basic construction that you'd expect from a marine port.
"Why's the moon blue here?" Althea asks, pointing at Kollin.
"That's not a moon," you say, "That's a world. We're just a couple thousand miles up."
Althea blinks, struggling to process that. "...What?"
"You know how mountains look the size of your thumb when they're on the horizon?" you ask. Althea nods weakly. "That thin blue blur is the sky, looked at sideways."
For a moment--a brief moment--Althea manages to hold her world in her mind's eye, and zoom out, and out, and out--
She takes a shuddering inhalation and looks to the sun. Weakly, she asks, "How... far...?"
"Around ninety million miles, or so I've heard," Lhakpa smirks.
The human brain is fairly good at trigonometry--without the ability to judge distances and angles, it never would've managed the creation--or at least, the proper operation--of the bow, the javelin, or the sling.
It is very, very bad at large numbers.
"But--that's forever away!" she says, her cosmological stunlock broken by her mind's eye simply refusing to process the distance.
"It's only about eight minutes, if you travel at the speed of light," you correct, eyes still focused on the activity down...wind? rotation? A few miles closer to the night than you are, at least.
Your parents blink in confusion. "Light has a speed?" your dad asks.
You open your mouth to give the value, but are quickly interrupted by the sound of a certain reptile you know barking orders. The seven of you here turn, and see that Chimalli has arrived with some... clothes?
"I have been instructed to educate you on the operation, maintenance, and importance of these spacesuits," they start, gesturing to a cart full of reinforced fabric. Your family is unfamiliar with the concept, but Lhakpa's experience with this world and your hunting party's experience with Homura's extensive library of mecha anime have the four of you familiar with the dangers of going without one of these.
You are quickly led into an airlock/changing room area near the ship's ports. Undergarments are provided for the seven of you, and your spacesuit in particular has armored blisters on the exterior mid-thighs to hold the fungal shelves growing out of them.
You step out of the changing room, grateful that the helmet has enough room to fit your beret in it when deployed. You're not entirely sure how they managed to get a near-spherical self-assembling shell of glare-resistant transparent aluminum into the admittedly-beefy suit-collar, but you're grateful for the fact that the suit will handle that little trifle itself should your ride suffer a hull breach.
Your family--who you're just now realizing have likely never worn armor in their lives--takes a bit longer to get themselves calibrated to the suits, but eventually walk out to join the rest of you. Chimalli then leads you to a particular docking bay, where your helmets deploy as a void-proximity precaution as you wait for Cho'Xlantzan to arrive.
You note, idly, that the bay you're in is unusually small for how big the ships you saw outside were before klaxons blare and alarm lights flash, startling your family and sending you and your hunting party into a period of tense awareness. Lhakpa, however, doesn't flinch, and you take the social cue to mean that this is normal proceedings--something confirmed when the blast doors pretending to be a roof open, exposing a--
...Is that sandstone? In space?!?
The craft before you is made of three octahedrons and a strange, three-armed nosepiece whose arms end in barrel-like structures notched in the front like the face of a flathead screw. Though you can't see it from this angle, the central octahedron is actually a dodecahedron--there's an elbow-bend above and below its forward horizontal edges where the forward faces diverge from the pyramid-corners they would normally slope down to to make something of a dagger-shape extending twice the diagonal width of the pyramid's base before connecting to the bolt-arms.
All three segments are split along the horizontal midline, joined to the central plane on their bases, forming a thin flat gap from which three different colors of energy protrusions that you can only describe as tail-feathers stream from the rear and sides--while shaped more like blades of grass or unusually long tongues of fire, they trail behind and seemingly assist in flight as if they were feathers, the outside octahedrons gently flapping as though bird-wings while a couple of thicker "feathers" tether them to the central mass of the vessel.
The craft slows to a halt, and a brief green light shines from its hull--and then twin rings of green light akin to spell circles, stacked atop each other, appear over the docking-bay floor.
<Morsel: Spellcraft: Identify Spell: d20+3 (CS)+1 (INT)+10 (Ranks) vs DC 15+5 (Technological Mimicry of Magic)+7 (CL/2) = 7+14 vs 27 = Failure>
"Step into the circles," Chimalli orders, and you obey, stepping into the--
Light
You blink, and find yourself on a platform inside of a different building where Cho'Xlantzan, a few of their fellow Skinks, and a human with copper hair and a bushy beard straining against his helmet are cataloging a pile of rubble in the corner, Red and Chamon mixing in a whirlwind of scanning and repair. In the center of the far wall, a welded mess of scrap metal blocks out the void of space in the gap between a thirty-foot hole in the wall and the stern of a smaller, sleeker spacecraft whose entry ramp is deployed, spilling out onto the floor like the tongue of a yawning frog. You hear noises close behind you, and turn to see the rest of your group appearing one-by-one behind you, though your family appears a little shaken up to--
Your parents hug you in a slight panic, and you realize that you, from their perspective, likely just disappeared with no prior explanation.
Whoops.
Social 0 -- Cho'Xlantzan
After a quick round of introductions, Aldous--the human helping catalogue what used to be this ship's control mechanisms--goes back to piecing together the command console with the skinks, while Rallen and Jeena--the Nanairo Planetary Patrol officers who have been ferrying and fighting alongside Cho and Lhakpa--retreat to their cruiser along with Lhakpa and your family, while Cho splits off from the repair squad to have you test your resurrection capabilities. They bring three white mice as well, kept in small cages isolated from outside light and sound.
After quickly killing the mice and placing them a few feet apart, Cho activates a Divination spell to examine your work. First, as a control group, Cho activates the Revivification Crystal on their Bastiladon, sending a wave of Ghyran to mend the first rodent.
<Morsel: Spellcraft: Identify Spell: d20+14 vs DC 15+5 (CL/2) = (13)+14 vs 20 = Success!>
The resulting spell is nigh-identical to your Life: Resuscitate, though it seems to be intended to be spread out over an entire military squad--fragments of something akin to Life: Mass Healing and some internal control circuits about conserving energy exist that just wouldn't make sense if it was single-target. You then follow up with your own Resuscitate on the second mouse, moving on to properly Resurrect the third. After a minute of chanting, you bring it back fully, watching as it gets up and scampers over to its brethren. Cho squeaks something out under the effect of Nature: Speak With Wildlife (Spirit), and the three scamper back into their cages.
"Got what you need?" you ask.
"I did," they confirm. "I was also curious about your séance spell?"
"I'd rather avoid casting the whole thing, since it takes an hour," you say, as you flare up the spell-circles for it, "but I have the notes I made while creating it, if this is insufficient."
Cho nods as their eyes glance over the various circles. "This would be sufficient to cast it... but I would also like the design notes. This targeting circle uses a coordinate system unfamiliar to me," they say, pointing to the one that searches for a lost soul.
You nod, and the two of you step into the NPP cruiser to find somewhere more comfortable to figure out a file transfer method. As you walk, you look over and note the other Skinks working away, and ask, "So, what are your kinsfolk looking at over there? I know you mentioned it was once the command console..."
"Ah. Yes, that. The locals seem to have enjoyed a period of superior technology at some point in their past, making heavy use of optical computing and micro-glyphs that allow rudimentary Hysh manipulation without exposing themselves to the usual dangers of Aethyric energies. Quite precocious of the warmbloods, though I must admit it is good to be somewhere like home, even if they never managed the other seven Winds."
You nod, and ask them more about their world's eight-aspected elemental system--and find that there are even more than the main Eight Winds known to them. Earthbound, Elemental, Runic, and Glyph-based magics at energies below what would be considered Winds, Dhar and Qhaysh for the Winds in conflict or harmony respectively, and reluctant whispers of combination magics performed by servants of their Great Enemy--Umbramancy formed of shaded Ulgu and Dhar, Necromancy of Death-like Shyish and Dhar--
"Wait, necromancy is a forbidden lore for you?" you ask. They raise an eyebrow--or at least the region of tissue that a brow would be, were they a mammal--and you tentatively bring up the spell-circles for the reanimation package of the Death sphere--
"What the actual @#$%," they deadpan, suddenly very close to you, "that--pure Shyish should be able to do that--!"
You shrug, "Maybe we just don't have any Dhar? I know your world doesn't draw on the Elemental Planes I'm familiar with--"
Cho'Xlantzan squints, then hisses to themself, "...Of course, there's nearly-zero Warp presence in most of these Planes, without the taint of--nevermind," they shake their head. "You continue to be full of surprises, Morsel. One of these days, I'm going to need to do a proper survey of magic beyond my home Plane--but for now, we have a solar system to save. Come along, I'm sure Jeena can help us bridge our devices' transfer protocols."
<Cho'Xlantzan has gained Spell Familiarity: Life (Studied) and Death (Studied)!>
<Morsel has gained Skill Familiarity: K: Arcana (Mallus, Familiar)!>
Trip to Himuro
Over the past few months, the Krawl have attacked various places throughout the Nanairo system (including the twin moons Akaboshi and Aoboshi, which are apparently magnetic monopoles? You asked for a couple of rock samples which carried that property--you have no idea what that phrase means, but you remember Homura talking about it like it was some kind of sci-fi invention), and over the past few months, they have been beaten back by the NPP, Aldous, and your fellow Planeswalkers. Now all that remains of their holdings is the planet Meido, cold and abandoned in the outer reaches of the solar system where conventional spacecraft cannot reach. The newfound starship once thought to be ancient ruins, however, has a much greater range, and can bring the fight to the Krawl themselves. Thus, you are now onboard as Jeena brings your vessel to their homeworld and--
A harsh shudder rings out through the craft, and your family huddles together in shock. You and your adventuring party look to each other and Aldous to figure out what's going on, exactly, but are soon answered by some of the ships' speakers carrying Jeena's voice down to you.
"Change of plans," the pink-plaited police pilot proclaims, "There's too many Dark Vortexes in the air--we're landing on Himuro to look for other options."
"...What's a Dark Vortex?" your mom asks.
"Dark-Air quasi-element tornado," you say, "the Krawl use it for protection and transport."
Your parents nod, and after another brief sprint across the interplanetary void--one much shorter than you expected, less than a tenth the distance from here to Kollin--lands you on a massive glacier-gemstone of a planet, shaped like a cut diamond and ocean-blue like a deoxygenated iceberg.
Well, mostly deoxygenated. There's a few patches of bubble-white ice around the edges and surfaces.
You and your adventuring party head upstairs, leaving your family to pass the time talking to Aldous. You catch a glimpse of Chimalli suited up and swiftly walking out of the ship as you walk to the cockpit to sit in on the strategy meeting.
"Scans showed some evidence of artificial structures in the area," Jeena says, "We're seeing signs of some decrepit walkways and a few entrances to what seems to be one large complex. Chimalli's gone to scout the perimeter--any preferences on division of labor here?"
"I would prefer," Cho snarks, side-eying Rallen, "that we leave the ruins intact this time."
"Hey, how would I know that some siege-Krawl was going to bust through the wall?" he counters, gesturing to the mass of scrap metal holding the patrol cruiser to the ancient starship, "I solved the problem as soon as I could!"
Lhakpa chuckles and brings the conversation back to order by adding, "I think our usual scouting pattern should suffice, though... perhaps Rallen should bring Morsel along with him? If we are splitting up again, it would be prudent to have a healer in both squads."
Rallen nods, then turns to you. "Lhakpa says you're good at healing, right?"
You nod. "I am, in fact, an archmage of Life magic."
"...Is that better or worse than Cho's dinosaur?"
"It's a Revivification Crystal," Jeena corrects, at the same time that Cho elaborates, "It's a Bastiladon."
The two look to each other and share an amused snort before you respond, "Better, though more suited to single-target magic than the Crystal's squad focus."
Rallen nods. "Alright, let's head out then. You've got something to keep the Bastiladon warm, right?"
Cho'Xlantzan nods.
"Cool!" Rallen says, as confusion flickers across Cho's face over the contradictory temperature adjectives. "Alright, girls, follow me," he says, as his helmet deploys and he sprints out of the ship. "Iku ze!"
"Oh joy," Sierra snarks, "we got the one with a catchphrase."
Himuro's surface has a relatively sparse amount of Krawl--something that Jeena has attributed to its relative translucency, meaning that there's very few truly dark places for them to congregate in strong numbers.
The ruins, though, have stretches of failing lights where they've gathered into fiercer vortices than their normal patterns, requiring an application of force to pierce through--and this is where your adventuring party shines.
Rallen rapidly switches over to ranged-attack Spectrobes, creating a firing line behind your group as Isabella forms a field of death across which no Krawl can pass. You plink away with your Destruction spells when able, but it's only when those few ranged-attack Krawl appear that you're anything more than a contingency, as one or two bullets slip past Isabella and put chip damage on the Spectrobes. Gor'lo-nos (borrowing one of Aldous's spare spacesuits, thanks to his mild shapeshifting) is also here, though his summoned bazooka strongly dislikes Himuro's cold atmosphere. You have to dismiss and resummon him a couple times from how brittle the barrel gets after a while.
The ruins, however, are large. It takes multiple days of clearing places out, securing new ground, and stringing up lights to keep the area well-lit as you slowly march down those few precious floors between you and the locations of interest down below.
Soon, though, you arrive at a room with a control console of some kind, and Rallen calls his patrol partner for assistance.
"Hey, Jeena. We got something here," he says, angling his electronics to carry a glimpse of the device over the video call.
"Hm. Any idea what it is?"
"I'm getting... Light magic signals?" Sierra says, scanning it with her trident. It wasn't until Cho mentioned that thing about Hysh that you thought to look more closely, but that teleporter circle isn't a Warp spell--it's some kind of Light-adjacent thing that seems just as much technology as it is magic. You suspect it's mimicking Light (Advanced): Light Speed to, as the name suggests, zip people around in a straight line and reconstitute them at the other end.
"Like the rest of the Ancient tech?" Jeena adds, coming to the same conclusion. "Anything specific?"
Sierra shrugs, then makes an Illusion of a circuit diagram. "I... think this is just a switch?"
Jeena looks over the diagram through Rallen's suit-camera. "Yeah, looks like it. Shame about the light-lag this far out, I think those markings on the walls might explain some of the place."
Sierra shrugs, then pushes the button. The console-light turns green, away from its earlier yellow. Sierra listens for a response for a few seconds, then says, "I feel like we're missing something," before ringing is heard on Jeena's end.
"Hold on, guys, I'm getting a call from Lhakpa. ... Hey, what's up? ... OH! Yeah, Sierra just pressed a similar-- ... Yeah, it should be safe. ... Really?" she says. As she does, a gentle rumbling sounds out from deeper in the ruins, down a path that had been closed off before.
"...Guess that explains that," Isabella smirks.
"Huh, that happened on both calls," you hear from Jeena's end. "Are you all alright?" A chorus of affirmatives sounds out from your group--and apparently Cho's as well, because Jeena nods and says, "alright, looks like both groups opened something? Let's pull back for the day and see if whatever we just opened stays that way."
After a night of rest (and watching movies, for the warmbloods aboard), both scouting parties make the trek down to the recently-unlocked room. Vast, cavernous, and surprisingly well-lit, the room contains what appears to be a live-display feed of Himuro and Meido following their impossibly-close orbits and another command console, though this one has more detailed input mechanisms.
"Jeena, what do you make of this?" Sierra asks, showing her another circuit Illusion.
"Huh... vehicle controls, I think? I'm not familiar with the kind layout here, though. I wonder if--WHAT WAS THAT?!?" she shouts, as Rallen wiggles something on the panel. "RALLEN! DO THAT AGAIN!" Rallen blinks, shrugs, and complies--prompting Jeena to shout over comms, "IT MOVES THE PLANET!"
"IT DOES WHAT?!?" shout Rallen, Sierra, and Cho'Xlantzan.
"Holy frick, that's awesome!" continues Rallen, "Did the Ancients make some kind of jet engine on Himuro, then? I didn't see anywhere to hide something like that--"
"No," says Cho, sounding rather shaken and falling to their knees. "This--Hysh has some bleed into aspects of Time, which itself is tied to gravity--they--these ruins--they are the engine! This--this shouldn't be possible with their limited knowledge of the Winds--!"
"Hey, Sierra!" Jeena interjects, "You mentioned being a mermaid, right? What's the index of refraction for water?"
Sierra blinks, reflexive smugness quickly masking her surprise at the question. "It's--there's math to it I don't have memorized, for the same reason you don't have random meteorology questions memorized, but it's four-thirds for water and a smidge less for ice, why?"
You hear frantic tapping come through the comms, and then a cheer of triumph. "It's a lens! Rallen, see if you can rotate it!"
"On it!" he shouts, pawing at random controls and listening to Jeena's feedback from a ship with enough of an upwards view to astronavigate the precise changes being made, slowly spiraling in on the correct controls to manipulate while cleaning up the mistakes from incorrect guesses.
You turn to Cho for an explanation of what's happening, but they're staring agape at the display in the back of the room showing Himuro wobbling, so you turn to Sierra instead.
"You know how water makes things in it look... off, distance-wise?" she starts, "Like, your legs look shorter, things are slightly to the side of where you thought they were?"
"Unless they're your legs," Isabella smirks.
"Yes, yes, it does get ever-so-inconvenient to return to my true form when I'm trying to just wade across a river," Sierra smirks in return. At your nod to her earlier question, she continues, "It's because light bends when it changes what fluid it's traveling through--or solid, when ice or glass are involved."
You blink. "They're... braiding it?"
"Uh--no. I think that's... polarizing?" Sierra says, running on memories of different kinds of 3D glasses from Mitakihara, "More of just a ponytail, here."
You nod--and then finally process where Himuro's now pointing. "So the vortices on Meido--!"
"Exactly!" Jeena shouts, as Rallen finally gets the planet pointing in the right direction. On the screen, a thin beam lances out from the diamond-cut glacier-world's tip, slicing a hole in Meido's shadow-storms nearly a half-continent in diameter. "The Ancients must've left this behind after the last time they fought the Krawl! With Meido being such a weak point against them, they must've made Himuro as a weapon in reserve for if they ever tried it again--!"
"And now we have a way forward!" shouts Rallen, posing dramatically with a raised fist. "Come on, let's get down there before this runs out of power--!"
"I--doubt that would happen," Cho croaks out, "It's running on Hysh. While channeling a beam of sunlight over a mile wide. There's fuel enough to spare."
"...Ah. Right," Rallen sheepishly admits, "In any case, best not to wait longer than we... need? Hey, Jeena, can you get Aldous on the line? I think I found a data cube," he says, reaching into an overlooked corner of the console to find a fist-sized cubic crystal with some odd refraction patterns. Jeena does so, and the group turns to leave, mission seemingly complete--
"Was this what the Great Plan was aiming for?" Cho'Xlantzan asks, still knelt on the floor in shock. "To raise you warmbloods up as equals?"
Everyone turns to look at them. "What... did you think we were before?" asks Isabella.
"I--we were given instructions on how to prepare the land for you, same as any other animal we were tasked to look after. Sapience necessitated more complex guidance and environmental needs, of course, but... But this--"
"What, this your first time seeing a superweapon?" Gor'lo-nos asks.
"No," Cho shakes their head, "It's my first time seeing one built by humans."
"Does it scare you," he jeers, "to see them exceed your restrictions on them?"
What's he trying to do here?
It's a demon thing, I think--trying to "educate" Cho on the inherent futility of a Lawful plan for society.
Sierra glares at Gor'lo-nos, but Cho brushes aside the attempted dig. "No, I--I think... I think my emotional state is pride, actually." You feel Gor'lo-nos minutely recoil at the unexpected turn, and Cho continues, "We sacrificed multiple digits of our population to buy you warmbloods more time, back during the Calamity. For millennia, we wondered what it was for--but now? Now I see," they say, pushing themselves to their feet and walking to the console to be closer to the planetary hologram, reaching a hand out as if to touch the beam now shining from Himuro's sharpened point. "When given all the world to live in, free from pain, when the threat was slow enough for you to react to--you made this. A weapon to save the world. A work of beauty, a work of kindness... and all with only one Wind, grasped half-blind in electric tongs and fiber-optic nets! Before, I thought all your accomplishments on Vertumna were the sum extent of humanity's potential, a hollow recreation of the Old Ones' silver ships and Azyr-based Divinations--but this? This isn't an imitation. This is convergence, as the dolphin is to the shark."
"So, how are you going to look at us going forwards?" Isabella asks, "Or is that pride just hot air?"
Cho pauses for a moment and considers. "I think... I think there are many situations back on Mallus where we didn't know what to do with humans, or we left you to your own devices at a time where you clearly needed help for fear of ruining whatever ambush your suffering was bait for... but that's not good enough, now. We thought the best you could do was break even, but if this is what you can do, then we need to help you get ahead. I... I'd likely need to speak with the Sublime Communion before anything would really change, but..."
They pause.
They inhale.
"...But, Morsel, if you could convince M0 to go with you to the place called Praag, I would owe you two a Favor. There's something there that your expertise in Life and Death, and M0's expertise in low-maintenance enchantments, could solve quite well together."
For a brief moment, you think to ask Cho if they really want to offer that, considering how you are about debt--but then you look into their eyes as they wait for your response.
They already know.
<Cho'Xlantzan, Lhakpa, and Morsel: Gained Land: Himuro Orbital Control Chamber {WUR}>
<Cho will task some Agents with fully researching and cataloging Himuro's unusual mechanisms and ruins--but they're now willing to team up with other Planeswalkers on Quests and the like, intending to start participating in the Favor-debt economy you've built together.>
<Speaking of...>
<Gained Quest: Trouble in Praag!>
<Cho'Xlantzan is offering a Major Favor (redeemable for whatever flavor of debt you choose to collect) to Morsel and M0, as well as some minor magic items to any relevant companions to keep them from feeling slighted, for the two of you to investigate and solve a problem in this northern city. They have not specified what that problem is. You'll know it when you see it.>
<Gained Contacts: Rallen and Jeena (NPP Officer Duo): CG/LG Human Rangers>
Social 1 -- Althea Hawthorne
You spend the weekend playing video games and watching anime with Althea back at Kollin's rings while the locals resupply. Sierra is babysitting--
Babysitting? What are we, ten?
...Yeah? Technically one-point-five--
--a word which has your internal monologue arguing with itself about chronological versus mental ages with another side-tangent about why you're uncomfortable with the phrase.
Don't ten-year-olds usually express discomfort with the phrase?
Yeah, but usually they deserve it. We're more mature than that!
...But why are we more mature?
We went on an adventure!
That's not a cause, it's a sibling-effect, and you know it.
You shake your head to clear that line of thought from your mind. You don't want to think about this one.
In any case, you're hanging out with your older sister. After seeing a cartoon about kids gaining spellcasting (abnormally strong spellcasting, at that!), she expresses some interest in learning magic of her own.
"Come on, Morsel! You learned magic, how hard can it be?" she asks.
"I learned magic from my bloodline," you say, flaring some Nature (Plant) spell-circles for dramatic effect. "And I really, really think that's not where you want to get yours."
She winces, but presses on, "There's--there's gotta be some other way, right? Bloodlines are just for Sorcerers, right?"
"And Bloodragers," you add, "but otherwise yes. Magic usually takes years of study, but I... I ran away to bring you back nearly as soon as I found out that I had the talent."
"...Could you... show me?" she asks. You nod, and start walking through the basics of mana manipulation--but then you remember something.
"You know... Mr. Perez-Dalí happens to teach magic," you say, "Perhaps he'd have a better way of getting this across?"
Althea frowns. "Why can't I just have it like you do?"
"I... don't think you want to stay at the library for eight days without sleep or breaks to teach yourself," you caution. "Especially since you need sleep," you add. That was an interesting conversation to have with your family, but you did need to explain why you were slinking off to work on Gor'lo-nos's anchor.
Althea sighs. "You're right. It's just annoying to see my little sister outshine me."
You don't know what to say to that, so you hug her and hope that'll fix things. She seems to recover quickly, and the matter is apparently forgotten by the end of the day.
Week 2 -- A Shining Jewel pt. 2
When Cho returns from setting up a survey team on Himuro, your little warband winds up taking a hike on Genshi, first (and most volcanic) planet in Nanairo, to retrieve a "Geo" that contains an "Ultimate Form Spectrobe", which was decided to be a worthwhile detour before returning to Meido. The matter was resolved with little opposition--while the Krawl presence here was stronger than expected, your warband was stronger still.
You did get to see Cho'Xlantzan uncover the artifact in question by using Nature (Fire) to split a lava-pond in half like a certain other Red Sea, which was very pretty to watch. A bit bright for your tastes, but how often do you get to see an archmage make their will known on a volcano?
When you heard the term, "Ultimate Form Spectrobe", you assumed it'd be something slightly larger than the Evolved Form Spectrobes, which in turn are slightly larger than the Adult Form ones, which are significantly larger than the Child Forms.
What you got--or what Rallen got, technically, due to being the resident expert on the creatures--was a two-mile-long siege-kaiju.
The Spectrobe in question was a bright Red, both in color and color to your eyes. A feline face--more cheetah than lion--rests atop its neck, twin-pupiled in each eye with a green iris surrounding each. A purple mane of fur cloaks a scarlet mane of flames around its neck and scalp much like an elytra cloaks a beetle's flight-wings, and yellow markings trail all across its skin beneath a light wreathing of scarlet flame. The creature has three hands--one of fire larger than its head at the tip of its serpentine tail, and two at the ends of more proportional arms holding swords the size of skyscrapers wreathed in blue flame that it holds in a relaxed grip. The creature has neither legs nor any discernable pelvis, instead floating like an Imperial dragon--or perhaps an Outer dragon, given that it's currently bombarding asteroids as a form of weapons-testing without any indication of discomfort from being in the void of space. With each strike, it crosses its swords to produce a ball of flame larger than its head--which works out to be roughly the size of Rallen's entire patrol cruiser from wingtip to wingtip--and sends them flying into one or more space rocks as a test of power and skill.
"Hm," Cho'Xlantzan hums, "Target acquisition continues to be slow, even with linking the Geo to the ship's sensor-comms."
"Definitely an improvement over before," Jeena frowns, looking at the errant fireball hurtling through space, with even odds of hitting something in the local Kuiper Belt in a week or dispersing into a warm gas cloud before it gets there.
"You two are remarkably calm over such a powerful spirit's rampage," Lhakpa says, a hint of nervousness in their voice.
"I think you, Cho, and Morsel have a higher density of Destruction thanks to your magic," says Jeena, "and we could probably match that power if we ever made a battleship that size--but save the Krawl, we've never faced a foe that warranted that kind of strength."
"And they are unlikely to give you the time to change that," Chimalli grunts. Tapping the microphone on their comms, they add, "Rallen, move to Repetition 37 of Test 8. Tindera's recharge rate is holding steady."
"On it!" Rallen voices back.
The assault on Meido likewise goes smoothly--while the Krawl presence is clearly strong here, Himuro's light thins out all but their champions from your path on the surface. When you step into the planet's cavernous interior, even the light reflecting off the sands flowing into the sinkholes is enough to keep your path largely clear.
You idly note that there are ruins here--most of them too degraded to derive any kind of purpose from (except, perhaps, for Cho--but they're not commenting on them)--that slowly give way to large fungal roots branching from place to place, with odd nodes here and there forming flattened cylinders that provide good places to catch one's breath. Strange, you thought the Krawl had long stripped this planet bare, even beyond the defoliating chill from being so far from the sun.
Actually, why is this place this temperature? Himuro was colder, but it was closer to the sun!
Greenhouse gases, maybe? Himuro had a rather thin atmosphere...
Soon, though, you arrive before what appears to be the center of the fungus--a giant ascomycete looking like a vine-encrusted birdfeeder three stories tall sat atop a half-kilometer-wide fungal net akin to the "bridal veil" on some species of stinkhorn mushroom. Vivid orange spikes adorn its top, and the air is full of its turquoise spores as you approach--
"So what's that giant mushroom thing?" Rallen asks.
"...Rallen," you start.
"Yeah?"
"We've been walking on its hyphae for the past ten miles."
"...THOSE WERE ROOTS?" he asks, nearly jumping from the node he's standing on.
"Yeah? Didn't you notice the springiness?" you ask.
"I thought they were just weird rocks!" he defends.
You, Cho, Chimalli, Sierra, and Jeena (through video call) all share a Look.
Mercifully for Rallen, it is at this point when the mushroom's bodyguard makes itself known, leaping down from a higher root onto the large platform your warband stands on, which shakes wildly from the impact. Four red-veined limbs held the coal-black body up in a gorilla-like gait, while two caged orbs--one purple and one red--formed its left shoulder and right pectoral. The latter seemed as a heart, but the shoulder-cage was shaped more like an egg whisk than the other's organic webbing. Its head was horned like a rhinoceros beetle, and so deep-set in its over-thickened shoulders that it could scarcely look thirty degrees to either side. Its right shoulder had something like fungal shelves decorating its top, and stalagmite-like growths extended from its wrists nearly to its shoulders, one snapped off near the elbow as if to hammer home its asymmetrical form.
It was immediately pelted with fire from Rallen, Chimalli, and Gor'lo-nos, though a strange barrier seemed to prevent any kind of damage, and Gor'lo-nos's bazooka seemed to make brighter explosions than usual. Rallen's Spectrobes--a red-and-yellow panther-like creature and a green-and-yellow brute with sharp claws and a morningstar-like tail-club--charged into melee with the creature, but were knocked away by a shockwave attack in return.
<Morsel: K: Arcana (Identify Spell Already Cast): d20+3 (CS)+1 (INT)+10 (Ranks) vs DC 20+7 (Spell Level) = (16)+14 vs 27 = Success!>
You blink in surprise. Protection magic can't do total mitigation of attacks like that--which is why this isn't Protection. It's Creation magic, making a foot-thick field of force energy--a type of magical construct that exists simultaneously in the Material and Ethereal planes, and is capable of hitting ghosts because of that quirk. More importantly, it doesn't break line-of-sight, is weightless, and is comparable to solid wood in durability once damaged, but--thanks to the strength of the caster--is more akin to mithril in terms of how much it can shrug off before taking damage. Worse, it's not being maintained by the large creature, but by two tetrahedral caster-Krawl floating behind it within the bubble.
Theoretically, one could teleport inside the sphere, but then whichever caster isn't currently maintaining the sphere could create another around the teleporter, and unless they were especially quick about their next teleport, they'd be battered by whatever shockwave the primary Krawl saw fit to inflict upon them.
"...Oh, that's why--" you hear faintly from the comms, before Jeena speaks up again, "The atmosphere here is rich in methane! Too little to self-propagate, but that's why those bazooka shots were so bright!"
Cho'Xlantzan huffs and dismisses the lightning spell they were making, pivoting to studying the barrier. You tell them what you've gathered, and they agree, barking an order to Sierra. She nods, and the two of them hold up a Counterspell to try to create an opening after prolonged bombardment.
You, on the other hand, remember something important: Everyone is standing on fungus.
<Morsel taps three Green for Nature: Ranged Geomancy, Nature: Nature Lord (Plant, Geomancing), & Nature: Plant Mastery (Plant, Geomancing) and two Red for Nature: Expanded Nature (Fire) & Nature-Sphere Feat: Smolder Resin>
With a casting of Nature (Plant) + Create Nature (Geomancing) mixed with the talents you just tapped for, you cause the fungus to grow branches within the sphere, four "trees" of fungus three stories tall shooting up and slapping the tetrahedral caster-Krawl until one of them shatters, quickly evaporating into the shadowstuff they seem to be made from.
The bodyguard, predictably, unleashes a shockwave against your branches, rattling the life out of them--but the fact that you need five spell points to use this mess matters little when you only need to do it twice. Sierra, realizing the situation, releases her held action and instead simply attempts to Counterspell the force field outright--
<Sierra: Counterspell: 2d20kh1 (Advantage--read this as "two d20's, keep highest 1")+10+2 (Counterspell Mastery) vs DC 11+15 (Enemy CL) = (11,6) + 12 vs 26-- >
<Sierra: Mythic Surge: As an Immediate, expend one Mythic Power to add a d6 to a roll = (d6) = +3 to previous roll!>
< --11+12+3 vs 26 = Exact Success! Shield Dispelled!>
--at which point the remaining shield-Krawl tries to restore the field, an action to which Cho'Xlantzan objects--
<Cho'Xlantzan: Readied Action: Counterspell: d20+10 (CL)+2 (Counterspell Mastery) vs DC 11+15 = (18)+12 vs 26 = Success!>
--with the practiced skill at unraveling spells that one would expect of a Skink Oracle, sending shards of Azyr forth like taser-hooks to perform disastrous acupuncture upon the gathering flows of mana that would otherwise bring the forcefield into existence.
Bereft of their protective shell, the shield-Krawl finds itself blown towards the waiting jaws of Cho's Bastiladon by Lhakpa's Nature (Air)-sourced winds, accompanied by the katas you always see them doing whenever they wield Nature spells. Once the Lustrian dinosaur is done with it, the various Spectrobes summoned join in, shattering it as well as Rallen, Gor'lo-nos, and Chimalli resume their ranged assault against the bodyguard Krawl as originally planned.
While durable, the beast is slow--designed for phalanx tactics with its shield-casters, it has little recourse against ranged assault. It attempts to strike with a massive beam from its caged shoulder, but by that point, Cho and Sierra had the time to prepare another Counterspell, with predictable effects.
As the beast falls, Rallen, Cho, and Chimalli speculate on its leadership role in the Krawl--but then Rallen notices a problem.
"Uh, guys? My Spectrobes are fully healed. Without me doing anything."
Heads turn first to him--and then to everyone's own parties, checking their relative health. Those with spacesuits are still suffering the minor bruises and scrapes from the way here, but those without are... healed...
You look to the giant fungus, sending out its turquoise spores.
Spores that are sinking into the forms of Spectrobe and Krawl alike.
The rage of niche infringement fills your soul. "EXCUSE YOU," you shout at the towering ascomycete, "I'M THE HEALY FUNGUS AROUND HERE!"
Your thoroughly uninformative war-cry causes little more than confusion among your party--but then Rallen realizes what you just have, and repeats it in a form more comprehensible to the party. "That giant fungus is healing the Krawl! As long as it's here, they can just come back to Meido and heal off all the damage we've done to them!"
"Morsel!" Sierra shouts, "Diagnose the bodyguard! Tell us how long we have until it gets back up!"
You bite back your unhelpful thoughts of vengeance and do so, but you have directions to give in turn. "Cho! Get me a whirlwind around it, and work up a dry thunderstorm! We need the spores to be dense around its trunk!"
Cho, after a moment's confusion, scampers over to a platform closer to the fungus's center with Weather-magic brewing in their outstretched hand after directing Chimalli and the Bastiladon to stay back with you and Lhakpa to keep the beast down. Its caster-minions are being... handled by the Bastiladon, wearing protective Alteration changes instead of a proper spacesuit, as it decides to eat the fungal growths "repairing" the caster-Krawl, tearing out chunks of shadowstuff faster than the spores can heal them in the process. There's potential to do the same to the bodyguard--but you don't know if the spores would heal the fungus as well, and most magic that counters healing specifically counters positive energy healing, which isn't what's happening here. Your best option would be Fate (Advanced): Entropic Aura (Consecration), but that's an area spell without friend/foe differentiation, and you really, really need to warn people before you deploy it.
Plus, given how it's a fungus growing on a corpse, you're not sure if stopping the corpse from healing would actually stop it from rising. It wouldn't have helped Althea.
Your Diagnosis returns data quickly after tapping a White to do so at range--you have a scarce few seconds before it returns, but as long as the spores are in the air, it will heal faster than you can damage it. Lhakpa and Chimalli look at each other and nod, the former casting spells on the two of them while the latter turns to Sierra and asks for a cloak of invisibility among those gathered here--except Lhakpa and themself. Nodding, she casts two layers of Illusion--a false wall portraying the area behind and below you as if you weren't there, and another layer of Illusion: Suppression (Glamer) to mask your presence behind the wall.
A layer of Ghyran-sourced Alteration surrounds Lhakpa from a magic item gifted by Cho alongside an Enhancement spell targeting both them and Chimalli, both aimed at boosting their Natural Armor. A Protection spell likewise rings out, shielding the two. Lastly, Light: Encompassing Light (Light) wraps around both, making their apparent size--and, more importantly, their reach--expand to three times its normal length.
While Chimalli and Lhakpa are getting ready, you look out from the Illusion to see spores swirling around the fungus. You ask Rallen to stream it to you so that you can see Cho's progress. The fungal cloud gets denser, denser, denser--
"Cho!" you shout, intentionally in all-chat instead of a side-channel, "Get somewhere stable and hit it with lightning, now! EVERYONE CLOSE YOUR EYES!"
Everyone does so.
The lightning made by Weather magic normally has thunder of a pitch different than natural lightning--the reduced distance from cloud to ground simply means there's less sound-lag to make its characteristic rumble, and less overall lightning to provide the volume.
The lightning made by Weather magic usually does not cause a thermobaric explosion throughout methane-enriched spore clouds freshly past their minimum ignition concentration.
A wave of heat and sound announces a minor earthquake throughout the cave, and when you open your eyes again you see--in addition to a few landslides in the distance--
Oops.
--the... decapitated? Amputated? Still-burning and rather shredded stump of what once was the fungus's fruiting body. The massive fire begins to stir up an updraft, slowly drawing in spores (and methane), clearing the air of the fungus's medicinal spores.
Concerningly, you also notice the skirt-hyphae evaporating into shadowstuff. You would've liked to take a cutting for research--to say nothing of how Cho would react to such an opportunity.
Cho, noticing the same, clicks their tongue in displeasure. "It... was a Krawl? Unfortunate." After a few seconds for everyone to get their bearings, they continue, "Incidentally, how did you know the optimal density for that kind of explosion?"
"I, uh--" you say, not wanting to embarrass yourself too much over stories of failed spore disposal methods, "--may be on my second attempt at growing eyebrows."
Stupid campfire should've come with a warning label.
"Warmbloods," Cho sighs. There's a smile beneath the rolling eyes, this time.
Your friends are having a harder time concealing their amusement--but then, the laughter feels warmer coming from them.
As you and Gor'lo-nos stand back up from the force of the blast, so too does the bodyguard Krawl. Its form is much thinner now, and more traditionally bipedal--it could almost be mistaken for the kind of tree that children imagine evil faces on, were its arms not so distant from branches. Its right arm has grown and fused into a long structure akin to the bark of a rot-hollowed log, while its left bears a hoop-like structure where its shoulder once was that drags behind an emaciated arm like keys on a ring. Its head and "heart", if that's what it ever was, are gone now, leaving nothing but an eye on the right pectoral. Its abdomen opens up like a mouth, as well, glowing just as purple as its left shoulder once did. This rectangular beast's form sits atop two stumpy legs, ruling out any chance of this beast traveling any distance to hunt its prey.
Seeing Lhakpa, it howls in rage and makes a jumping charge--diminished or not, it still outmasses your warband (sans Spectrobes) from sheer size, and you fear for Lhakpa's health. The beast's trunklike arm, nearly as big around as its torso, swings in as the beast focuses its entire weight on the strike, aiming to reduce Lhakpa to a smear on the fungal hyphae-nodes upon which you walk.
Lhakpa, in turn, holds up a single finger.
<Lhakpa: Guardian-Path Mythic Ability: Sudden Block!>
<As an Immediate Action when you or an adjacent ally are attacked, you may spend a Mythic Power to force the enemy to roll with Disadvantage. The target's AC is increased by your Tier, and may counterattack with a melee attack that bypasses all damage reduction after the attack resolves.>
You are once again hit with a pressure wave as the conservation of momentum sings a shockwave song in protest of so large a mass coming to a halt while denied its intended drain of kinetic energy. Chimalli and Lhakpa both move, after, as gravity slowly remembers its errant toy--and while you can't see what Chimalli accomplished, you can see what Lhakpa did. With a swirl of wind around them, Lhakpa turns a spinning uppercut into a grapple around the arm with a diameter over half their height, looping both arms around the monster's wrist. Their spin continues, briefly held in the air before they slam the Krawl into the ground besides them.
While the creature recovers its footing quickly, it's now stuck in melee with two of the finest defensive fighters that Lustria and the Western Air Temple, respectively could offer. And from that position, surrounded by Spectrobes and the fire coming from Rallen, yourself, and both Sierra and Gor'lo-nos's summoned bazookas?
It, and the shadowstuff it was made from, was quickly reduced to ash in the wind.
<Lahkpa: Readied Swift Action: Snag>
<From Wrestling (Base): As a Swift Action, inflict the Battered condition (-2 CMD, cannot make AoO's triggered by combat maneuvers) on a target within melee reach for the longer of (1 round, or the duration of Grapple or similar grabbing done to target).>
<Goblada, Bodyguard of Thoraxa: Melee Attack: 2d20kl1 (Disadvantage; read as "2 d20's, keep lowest 1")+15 (BAB)+15 (STR)-3 (Size)+2 (Charge)+1 (High Ground)-4 (Power Attack) vs 10 (Base AC)+3 (DEX)+5 (WIS (Monk AC Bonus feature))+2 (Monk AC Bonus feature)+6 (Armor (Wandering Hex: Air Barrier))+2 (Armor Enchantment (Defiant (Krawl)))+2 (NA (Alteration w/Plant Transformation Trait))+3 (Enhancement NA (Enhancement: Natural Enhancement))+3 (Deflection (Protection (Base)))+3 (Dodge (Boxing: Floating Butterfly))+3 (Shield (Boxing: Tight Guard))+4 (Chimalli Shield: Cover Ally)+1 (Tier) = min(7,15)+26 vs 47 AC = 33 vs 47 = Failure!>
<Due to Active Defence (Shield (Base)), Chimalli may activate a (Deflect) talent!>
<Shield: Smashing Counter (Deflect): When an attack misses a creature benefitting from your Active Defence, you may make a free melee shield bash against the attacker.>
<According to the core rules, Disarm, Sunder, and Trip Combat Maneuvers may be made in place of a melee attack.>
<Chimalli: FreeAttack Trip: d20+10 (BAB)+5 (STR)+3 (Shield's Weapon Enhancement) vs CMD 10+15 (BAB)+15 (STR)-2 (DEX)+3 (Size)-2 (Charge Penalty)-2 (Battered) = (12)+18 vs 37 = Failure!>
<Lhakpa: Readied Action: Counter Punch: d20+10 (BAB)+3 (DEX)+3 (Weapon Enchantment) vs 10-2 (DEX)-3 (Size)+20 (Natural Armor) = (13)+16 vs 25 = Success!>
<Duelist (Base) + Invigorating Sights activates! +5 Temp HP (1/5 Stacks)!>
<Lhakpa: Fist Damage: 2d6 (d10 from Monk, up one step from unarmed Spheres)+0 (STR)+3 (Weapon Enchantment)+d6 (Weapon Enchantment: Merciful) = (3,1)+3+(1) = 8 Bludgeoning>
<Lhakpa: Grapple Attempt: d20+10 (BAB)+3 (DEX)+3 (Weapon Enchantment)+2 (Armor Enchantment (Brawling))+3 (Wrestling: Iron Grip) vs 37 = (17)+21 vs 37 = Bare Success!>
<From Wrestling (Base): As a Swift Action, inflict the Battered condition (-2 CMD, cannot make AoO's triggered by combat maneuvers) on a target within melee reach for the longer of (1 round, or the duration of Grapple or similar grabbing done to target).>
<Goblada, Bodyguard of Thoraxa: Melee Attack: 2d20kl1 (Disadvantage; read as "2 d20's, keep lowest 1")+15 (BAB)+15 (STR)-3 (Size)+2 (Charge)+1 (High Ground)-4 (Power Attack) vs 10 (Base AC)+3 (DEX)+5 (WIS (Monk AC Bonus feature))+2 (Monk AC Bonus feature)+6 (Armor (Wandering Hex: Air Barrier))+2 (Armor Enchantment (Defiant (Krawl)))+2 (NA (Alteration w/Plant Transformation Trait))+3 (Enhancement NA (Enhancement: Natural Enhancement))+3 (Deflection (Protection (Base)))+3 (Dodge (Boxing: Floating Butterfly))+3 (Shield (Boxing: Tight Guard))+4 (Chimalli Shield: Cover Ally)+1 (Tier) = min(7,15)+26 vs 47 AC = 33 vs 47 = Failure!>
<Due to Active Defence (Shield (Base)), Chimalli may activate a (Deflect) talent!>
<Shield: Smashing Counter (Deflect): When an attack misses a creature benefitting from your Active Defence, you may make a free melee shield bash against the attacker.>
<According to the core rules, Disarm, Sunder, and Trip Combat Maneuvers may be made in place of a melee attack.>
<Chimalli: Free
<Lhakpa: Readied Action: Counter Punch: d20+10 (BAB)+3 (DEX)+3 (Weapon Enchantment) vs 10-2 (DEX)-3 (Size)+20 (Natural Armor) = (13)+16 vs 25 = Success!>
<Duelist (Base) + Invigorating Sights activates! +5 Temp HP (1/5 Stacks)!>
<Lhakpa: Fist Damage: 2d6 (d10 from Monk, up one step from unarmed Spheres)+0 (STR)+3 (Weapon Enchantment)+d6 (Weapon Enchantment: Merciful) = (3,1)+3+(1) = 8 Bludgeoning>
<Lhakpa: Grapple Attempt: d20+10 (BAB)+3 (DEX)+3 (Weapon Enchantment)+2 (Armor Enchantment (Brawling))+3 (Wrestling: Iron Grip) vs 37 = (17)+21 vs 37 = Bare Success!>
Celebration abounds in the Nanairo system upon news of your warband's victory over the Krawl on Meido--while you thought that there would be a longer campaign against them, taking out their logistics hub was enough to send them fleeing to Nanairo's Kuiper Belt.
You voice to Cho'Xlantzan your concerns that this may just be a remission rather than a cure, but they remind you that Krawl grow by eating planets--and only in numbers, not in relative strength like humanity does. Denying the Krawl access to Meido forces them to rely on the slim pickings of the outer system, all while Nanairo's humanity has time to research new technologies and rediscover those of the Ancients. In addition, they tell you with a self-satisfied smirk, someone helped them reverse-engineer the Prizmod that Spectrobes are deployed from, in effect providing nonmagical Conjuration items that Kollin's factories can make--assuming, of course, one can find a Spectrobe to fill it, which has not been a problem considering how many fossils were found while Rallen, Cho, and Lhakpa were running around Nanairo.
Satisfied that your part in this is done, you and your Agents stay for a couple days of celebration before heading off to Mitakihara. Sierra and Jeena in particular seem to get along quite well. It's nice to see her get some friends this time, as usually the disparate ages among your party make it hard for everyone to make the same friends.
<Normally, I'd give an XP tally, but a realistic count of foes defeated here would rocket you to Level 20 immediately, so I'll just give a full level-up instead.>
<Unlike other end-of-plotline quests, this does not complete a Mythic Trial--the sequel's plot starts a few months after the original Spectrobes game, and you'll get your chances then.>
<Additional [WEEKDAY] [POWER] Actions have been added!>
<+2 Favors each from Lhakpa and Cho'Xlantzan!>
<+1 Monumental Favor from the NPP! Nanairo is a fairly advanced, but not post-scarcity or multi-solar, spacefaring society--expect Material use cases to extend farther than other types.>
Social 2 -- Kyubey
You bring your friends and family over to Mitakihara, making your way from Homura's abandoned apartment to Mami's. For space reasons, Isabella and Sierra are sleeping at Homura's old place (in different bedrooms, of course), which gives those two a chance to take a bit of a break while you get situated with the growing church.
Mami is, of course, thrilled to have houseguests, and gladly welcomes your family back from their brief stay last month. They find themselves familiar seats to watch TV with, resolving to pick up a bit of Japanese during your stay here.
You'd love to stay, but you have a certain rat to talk to.
A quick word with Mami gets you a quick word with one of the Magi being cured by Madoka today, who in turn gets you an audience with Kyubey at a local park.
"Good evening, Morsel," Kyubey says after you settle down on the park bench. You imagine that he got here earlier and has been waiting for you to arrive, but you try not to react to his sudden appearance.
"Hello, Kyubey," you respond. "I was hoping to get your side of the story on what happened when Madoka ascended. I know you have some way of measuring... Karma, Homura says you called it? And was wondering if you had anything wide-area scanning Mitakihara at the time."
He nods, and begins his side of the story. For the most part, it lines up with what the Magi have told you of the fight. When he shifts to what happened in the storm shelter (despite not saying how he got there, you note), it then largely lines up with what Madoka's parents describe, barring a bit more detail on how Fate magic was flowing at the time.
"You wouldn't happen to have any graphs or the like that I could attach?" you ask.
Kyubey shakes his head. "None in a format designed for human-readability. A more raw format is available, but likely useless to those unfamiliar with our studies in the field."
You nod. "Send me a copy anyway, it's something the temple archives should have, at least." He does so, and your tablet struggles to keep up as the multiple-gigabyte raw data is fed to it through a torrent.
You didn't think Homura teaching you how to pirate anime was going to come in handy, and yet here you are.
"If I may also ask," you add, "How many bodies did you have deployed at the time?"
Kyubey goes still for a few seconds. Eventually, he asks, "What led you to that conclusion?"
"The uniform nature of your body, the sudden jump between perspectives without any mention of travel, your relative lack of combat capabilities despite clear knowledge of near-magical topics, and a few hints of... similar crafting techniques, let's say, from my homeworld," you say.
"...Clever," he compliments. "I was unaware of such a... tradition in your homeworld. I will withhold the exact number, save that it is more than Homura would like, and less than she would fear."
You nod. You were unlikely to get a clear answer anyway. "Also, I've been meaning to ask," you continue, "what did you do with the samples you took?" At Kyubey's confused head tilt, you elaborate, "Back before Walpurgis--when I was fighting that Witch?"
"Oh! That, yes. After a series of unsuccessful attempts to cultivate clones of yourself from tendril-clippings, we managed to get some to take root in the corpse of a human child--"
"And how was this corpse sourced?" you ask, squinting. If he killed even more people in pursuit of knowledge--
"Oh, we found him floating in a river," Kyubey shrugs. "You'd be surprised what kind of violence 'civilized' humans are willing to dismiss as a rounding error."
...This doesn't feel much better.
"--at which point your offshoot, following a 24-hour incubation period, behaved in an extremely feral fashion, attempting to--Morsel? You appear agitated."
"I have strong opinions on the desecration of corpses", you respond.
"Fascinating," he says, looking to you more intently. "Might I ask why you diverge on this front compared to others of your kind?"
"Because I had parents that loved me."
"Loved you, or loved who they thought you were?" he asks. "I doubt a member of your species would instill such a taboo."
"Both. Even when they realized what I am."
"...It would appear you were fortunate, then," he says, declining to pry further. "In any case, we initially assumed that this was due to the unstable, emotional nature of humans. We were quickly proven wrong, however--while spores allowed to flourish in more logical creatures did inherit that logical nature, the fugal mimics consistently prioritized propagation beyond the point of sustainability, even upon pain of personal injury or cessation. A redrawing of in-group/out-group lines and instinctive language was also noted, wherein the fungal mimics would switch to a language we've never heard you speak--"
"Sylvan, I presume?" you ask, in that same language.
"--Ah. That cleans up that hole in the data," Kubey nods, "--would frequently band together and attempt to break free of the labs. Regrettably, none of them showed your potential for negentropic magic, and attempts to use their ability to retain the host's muscle memory for anything useful failed when it became clear that their records of the host's memory were too threadbare for use in specialized positions, especially given their repeated propagation attempts. The idea was floated to use them in remote positions that would require little in-person contact with others, but the limited memory-retention and cost of improved airlocking around any installation they were employed in saw the whole project shelved. To my knowledge, all test subjects were purged in favor of more useful experiments with a reduced chance of causing a galaxy-wide... 'Zombie Apocalypse', I believe it's called."
"...And the remaining samples?"
"Sent off to a storage facility in an Oort Cloud somewhere," Kubey shrugs. "If memory serves, they're filed under 'Samples / Biological / Biohazard / Biological Weaponry / Partial Ecology Collapse / Impractical / Insufficient Spread Rate / Fungal / Aerosolized'. If you belive your parents could raise more of your kind in whatever civilized form you turned out...?"
You shake your head. "They probably could physically, but it was emotionally taxing for them. Between that, the standard variance of human children, the mistakes people make when emotionally unwell, and the fact that they only know how to raise humans--and human mimics, apparently--I doubt they'd be of use in a way beyond what other loving parents would." Staring intently at Kyubey in return, you add, "And I think, if you were specifically raising species that weren't as emotional as humans, you would have to find--and would have tried--analogous skills that would've actually mattered for your chosen test subjects, rather than peak human parenting."
He nods. "We tried a large slew of negotiating tactics, to little avail."
You choose not to tell him about the whole reverse-axolotl problem you ran into with your bones needing host (or host-like) DNA to grow and heal. If he's coming at this like a coercive negotiator, bait like that might be a strong enough hook for him to reboot the project--assuming, of course, that he hasn't figured it out himself. You never got timestamps on those events he described, and you don't know how to ask without revealing that time matters here.
"What do you intend to do with the samples in the future?" you ask.
"They will be kept in a stasis chamber until we have reason to empty the chamber," he says. "Honestly, I'd expect the heat-death of the universe to arrive first, should we fail to meet our harvesting goals."
You blink. "Wait--how are those related?"
"Oh, this whole Magi and Witch operation was designed to harvest energy," he says. "Isn't it obvious?"
What? That--that's not remotely energy-efficient!
Calm. That's bait. Do not blurt out the real answer.
You take a deep breath and respond, "I... find that unlikely. I would need more data on the system by which the Witches are assigned their magic specializations to give an informed opinion."
Kyubey shrugs. "In truth, we don't fully know. It seems--loosely--to be tied to their Wishes somehow, but we have a hard time parsing human symbolism even in the best of times."
You nod. After a moment to plan your speech, you say, "I think I would like to end the conversation here. I am satisfied with the answers you have given--mostly, but I know you don't want to give an exact body number--and I have given what data I am comfortable speaking of."
Kyubey nods. "A productive exchange. Were that all humans were as pleasant to deal with as you."
You stand up and almost walk away, but... "I... must admit some discomfort, knowing you still have the ability to clone my kind at will."
Kyubey tilts his head. "...For reasons of infection, I presume?"
You nod.
Kyubey... it isn't a smile, not really. It is a softening, though you can taste the factory-fresh artificial chill laced through its attempted warmth. "Then allow me to put your mind at ease: Despite what your fellow humans might believe, there is no such thing as a monster. There is only life, its hunger, and its prey's misfortune. Anything more is a story, a lie told to ease one's mind. We have worse weapons than you--natural and otherwise. We have seen, and will see, worse horrors than you. There is simply no reason for us to use your species to attack anyone that we could not find more efficiently with something else's."
...But there's still something not quite--
"Your species".
--Frick, right. "...Even with genetic engineering?" you ask.
He nods. "Even then."
"...And do you mind if I put this conversation in with the other writings used for Madoka's scriptures?"
"Not at all," Kyubey says, "A clear head and accurate data, we find, does wonders to dispel the irrational stories that religion so frequently gathers."
<Gained Knowledge: Kyubey's Data Readings: Useless for the moment, but if Mitakihara (or even just Madoka's church) ever becomes fully magitech, this will provide a useful insight into the nature of divinity.>
<Kyubey Material Wealth Revealed: Viable Skintaker Fungus Sample: An intriguing, but not particularly virulent, wide-spectrum natural bioweapon capable of mimicking sapient thought, matching that of its host. Unfortunately, it's too slow-acting and slow-spreading to use as a weapon against suitable targets, and not virulent enough to be suitable against much of anything, either. Its use as an extender on the effective life of worker units is impractical, as well, due both to the combined difficulty of training / containing the fungal mimics once sapient, and the lossy nature of their memory-recovery abilities from the host's fresh corpse. The short shelf life of their spores doesn't help, either. Currently in Deep Storage.>
Week 3 -- Formally Joining the Church of Madokami
After you told her about your home improvement plans, Homura helped you order a septic tank for the family farm. These things take a week or so to make, but that gives you a week to attend to the church business you have in Mitakihara anyway. Before setting out to make this official, though, you head over to Homura's old apartment and talk to your friends to get their opinions on taking the jump to sainthood.
"I think this is good for you, Morsel," Isabella starts, "For most of your life, you've been runnin' yourself ragged trying to make other people happy, and having recognition like this will keep ya from lettin' yourself get taken for granted. But for me.." she sighs, "Kiddo, I signed on to this life for money to fuel my desires for food, drink, and women. I wanted people to sing my name, sure, but maybe just a village or two at a time. To have a whole world know of my deeds--!" She sighs. "I... I'm still coming to terms with what it means to have this kind of strength, how I'm supposed to connect with the world from such heights. It's awful lonely at the top, you know?"
"You'll always have us, at least," you assure her.
"Yeah," she sighs. "And that's great, don't get me wrong, but I still gotta figure out how romance works when the hard part isn't finding someone, but filtering out all those who are too fawning for their own good."
"Sure would be useful if you knew someone specifically trained for that situation," Sierra smirks.
"I know, right?" Isabella says, throwing up her hands as she leans back in the recliner. "We'd have to find a princess or something!"
You snort, though your friends manage to hold back laughter. "Who knows," you counter, "maybe we'll find one in a haystack!" After you and Isabella have calmed down (Sierra, of course, remained dignified throughout), you ask, "So, Sierra, your thoughts?"
She sighs. "Morsel--as much as I love traveling with you--I am entirely too busy to deal with being a saint. I have an entire kingdom to rebuild from its literal ruins with barely a town's worth of survivors! I'll still travel with you, and I'll still accept the honor--but don't expect me to make decisions for them. That work is reserved for my homeland."
You frown. "Is traveling with me... interrupting that?"
She shakes her head. "Past a certain point, we'd just need more people. You can't rush that."
You think of the additions you were thinking of having constructed at the farm. "What about greenhouses?"
"I appreciate the attempt, Morsel," she sighs, "but... our pride is all we have left. We need to heal from this on our own, or else we'll lose faith that we can heal from this at all. If we're going to build something like that, we'd have to do the design work on our own, so that it felt like something we did and not something that just happened to us--gods know we don't trust our luck anymore." Blinking, she shakes her head. "Alright, that's enough emotions. Let's get to Madoka's."
You call Homura once everyone's ready (including your family, after Sierra found out that they were about to skip this on account of feeling unworthy), and the two of you quickly clear out some time that evening to get the ceremony done. Madoka, of course, is happy to count you among her saints, even when the list is currently just "those who fought Walpurgis".
You arrive at Madoka's house, and after meeting with her parents, head up to one of the rooms on the second floor, recently converted to be Madoka's audience hall for goddess business. Madoka herself is there, waiting in an ornate white-and-pink dress, shining her halo as she sits upon a comparatively modest couch alongside Homura.
Mami and Morishita Choko--the maid you met last time--are also here, the latter filming for the sake of Sayaka and Kyoko, who were too busy with their jobs to attend on such short notice.
"Morsel Hawthorne," she says, standing from her seat. "For your deeds, you are recognized. For your kindness, you have our gratitude. And for your abilities and quick thinking, you have made our victory possible." She takes you head in her hands, lifting your chin to face her as she asks, "Do you take on the duties, responsibilities, and priviledges of sainthood?"
You nod. "I do."
Madoka smiles. "Then be known as my saint, and help me make the world a better place."
<New [WEEKDAY] [BINDINGS], [MATERIAL], and [CONNECTIONS] Actions added!>
Madoka decides to keep the 'fancy dress' on for her meeting with the three Magi to be converted to the new circuit architecture today after Isabella and Sierra complete their part of the ceremony, and asks that you stay in the audience hall for their visit. Apparently, she has a few people lined up who were quite reluctant to take the leap without knowing exactly what the Miracle was going to do to them, so your presence here is a good excuse to assuage their fears while still keeping the line moving.
You don't quite remember all of their names--over the course of the week, you sat in for the conversion of nearly eighteen of them--but you got to see your research make Miracles possible--to see some cry tears of joy and some just collapse from all those problems put off until 'tomorrow' waiting for them as they escaped from a nightmarish 'today'. Madoka was there for all of them, helping them recover emotionally as she ushers them into a new chance at life.
After the first day was drawing to a close and all the petitioners were gone, however, you asked for a quiet moment, and the clock went tick--
"What is it?" Homura asked, holding you and Madoka in a different part of the room than you were just a second ago.
You take a deep breath. "Kyubey said this whole operation of his was for gathering energy." He also said that he has no control over what magic Witches get, which means that it's rather unlikely that he has this," you say, tapping two Red for Creation: Plasma Production (Material). "It's the spell I've been using to recharge my tablet. If he's looking for energy production, it's probably the easiest one to make use of. Since a Magi's magic--and their Witch's magic--is based on their Wish, I don't think anyone will stumble on the idea of never running out of electricity as their Wish when power flows so freely in your cities."
Homura stares at you as if she wants to tear your throat out to ensure silence on the matter, to deny Kyubey even the smallest victory--but then remembers who you are to her, and shakes her head to dispel the instinct.
"Do you believe that Kyubey would leave us alone if he got what he wanted," Madoka asks, "or if he would just consider this another reason to squeeze what he can of us?"
"I don't know," you reply.
"Well," she says, "You are my saint now, and you have saved us all once before." Placing a hand on your shoulder, she continues, "I trust you to make the right call."
You take a deep breath. "Kyubey said this whole operation of his was for gathering energy." He also said that he has no control over what magic Witches get, which means that it's rather unlikely that he has this," you say, tapping two Red for Creation: Plasma Production (Material). "It's the spell I've been using to recharge my tablet. If he's looking for energy production, it's probably the easiest one to make use of. Since a Magi's magic--and their Witch's magic--is based on their Wish, I don't think anyone will stumble on the idea of never running out of electricity as their Wish when power flows so freely in your cities."
Homura stares at you as if she wants to tear your throat out to ensure silence on the matter, to deny Kyubey even the smallest victory--but then remembers who you are to her, and shakes her head to dispel the instinct.
"Do you believe that Kyubey would leave us alone if he got what he wanted," Madoka asks, "or if he would just consider this another reason to squeeze what he can of us?"
"I don't know," you reply.
"Well," she says, "You are my saint now, and you have saved us all once before." Placing a hand on your shoulder, she continues, "I trust you to make the right call."
--tock, and everything was just as it was a moment before. After a brief glance with Homura to express nervousness, you pretend nothing happened in that gap.
Wouldn't want to let Kyubey know something had happened, in case he's listening.
<Gained Land: Kaname Manor (PMMM) {WW}>
As much as you would've liked to spend the free time you had working on Gor'lo-nos's anchor, a more pressing matter came to your attention--interacting with Madoka's church. In the absence of a proper temple, especially given how widespread Magi were across the globe, Homura had elected to center the community on a website of her own design. While your interactions with Mami and Madoka had given you the assumption that they would've relied on something more fast-paced, such as a social media platform or chat room, they had actually arrived at an old message board format.
A brief comparison of how well the conversations archive, and how often conversations repeat on the faster formats, gives you all the explanation you need on why Homura chose this.
Madoka thought it would be best if you made a writeup on how Magi soul gems work so that you wouldn't have to do more of these sit-ins for more anxious Magi's conversions, so you spend the week organizing, posting, and re-explaining your notes to those who don't grasp the intricacies of necromantic command channels and War-sphere memory engrams.
Which, to be fair, is most people even in worlds with magic, but you keep forgetting that expert information isn't common knowledge. Even then, a depressingly small number of the people asking these questions have bothered to read the explanation of magic that you spent so much time on a few months ago.
Your time spent on the rest of the site, however, gave you a nice overview of what the rest of the church is doing overall--while Homura and Madoka keep working on administrative and community-management tasks (the latter in particular starting a book club focusing on psychology books, presumably so she has a good starting point on being able to offer guidance to her followers), there's a fair few people more concerned with Sayaka's recent interplanetary journeys, or Mami's cooking.
You're not sure why people would be more concerned with pastries than space, but you know better to judge others for caring about food when in the same postal code as Althea--or Kyoko, for that matter, who is very clearly struggling to hold the opposite opinion out of loyalty to her girlfriend despite her famine-ridden past.
Madoka mentions to you that there will likely be an interview soon with a local news station--some of the Magi have gotten lazy about stealth (Kyubey's perception field, it appears, doesn't apply to the recompiled Magi), so world governments are starting to get wise to the existence of magic, and she thinks it'd be best to try to ward off some of humanity's more... paranoid impulses.
As for the average recompiled Magi... for the most part, they're either returning to normal civilian life, or else continuing the hunt for Witches to help feed their local original-flavor Magi neighbors. Homura's message board has sub-sections for different regions, which is apparently a moderation nightmare but seems to help establish credibility for those Magi trying to stay connected absent Kyubey's telepathy net.
<Gained Contact: Megucanet (Madoka's Fanlub): Much like Hillscorch, this is a container for various Magi, rather than a true Contact in its own right. Taking [SOCIAL] Actions or Favors with it will represent passing meetings between whoever was available at the time.>
Social 3 -- Necro Meguca
After interacting with Choko for a week, you start noticing... familiarity in her silence. "Hey, Madoka," you ask, "Can I borrow Choko and Homura for a bit?"
Madoka blinks, unsure of the situation at first--but she trusts you, and nods. Homura pouts as you pry her away from Madoka, but accepts that you have your reasons.
Choko, of course, says nothing at all.
You pull the two Magi away from earshot of anyone in the house, closing the door behind you as you herd them into a guest bedroom.
You inhale.
"Alright," you say, "we're far enough away now. We can stop pretending to be human."
Homura blinks in confusion, but all you get from Choko is a minute head-tilt. "Morsel," Homura starts, "What... what do you mean?"
"What are you, Homura? Like, existentially," you ask.
"Madoka's shield," Homura says, near-reflexively. Pausing to process what just happened, she adds, "I... I do like being human, though."
You figured as much. Homura's shield--her shield-body, perhaps?--has an enchantment density only seen in legends and at the hands of deities--you figure that it absorbed whatever increase in strength was her share of what was feeding Madoka and Walpurgis. "For Madoka reasons, or actual human reasons?" you smirk.
"...Madoka reasons," she blushes. "I... it's hard to be a normal human again after... Time."
You nod. "And I think Choko is having similar problems after famine. It does tend to make monsters of us all," you say, looking to Choko.
"I... do confess to a bit of... discomfort, going back to humanity after everything I've done," she replies.
You press the matter further. "Did you choose to be a maid because you liked the honor of serving someone you admire? Or were you banking on how often everyone ignores the maid?"
"I--" Choko starts, a single flicker of indignation crossing her face--and then subsiding. "...The latter, I must admit."
"Where are you going with this, Morsel?" Homura asks.
"Where I'm from, there's a legend--an old magic sword that could grow a human body to wield itself, when needed." You pull out the steel heart you've been enchanting each night. "My demon companion from the Walpurgis fight--we're closing out our contract soon, and I've been making him an anchor that would summon and heal him without needing to be bound to me. With your permission, I--or another artificer I know--could do something similar for you--turn your Soul Gem into the central enchantment on a weapon of some kind? That way you can still be human enough for social stuff, without it being really you--if you want to be."
Choko stops. While her body still stands upright, you know that--for a few brief moments--she cannot perceive or act upon the world around her for lack of brainpower not devoted to tasting this future on her tongue. "Give... put the gem in the hilt, and make it... needle-like, if you can," she says. "I used to enjoy sewing, and while a sword is impractical for weaving due to the thread size--"
"Counterargument: fishing nets," you smirk. "Plus," you shrug, "Alteration magic can shrink things. Just ask Sayaka!"
Choko says nothing. Her face, however, briefly sings.
<Gained Contact: Morishita Choko (Lifeless Puppeteer): TN
<Project Added! By turning Choko into a needle-like sword (think something like Fire Emblem: Awakening's version of the Falchion), she will be allowed to reconnect to her Passion of sewing without the pressures of being human.>
<Due to Morsel's absence of any Craft Construct feat, this must be outsourced to M028.>
<Madoka is cautiously optimistic about your forays into... unusual ways of giving Choko a happy place to retreat to. Don't let her down.>
Week 4 -- Installing a Septic Tank
You spend a good chunk of the next week at home, cross-referencing the ground beneath your house against the instructions that Homura gave you to install it properly. Sierra and Isabella have run off to the south for Atlantis and the city nightlife, respectively, but one day Althea comes running over to you with urgency in her voice.
"Um, Morsel? There's a voice in my head that says she's Sierra."
You blink, then grab her face. Sure enough, it's Mind: Project Thoughts (Charm). "What does she say?"
"...why are you grabbing--?"
"Sorry. Scanning cantrip."
"Ah," she says with a tired smile, "of course. Uh, she says that her dad is home?"
You blink in surprise. "He is? Frick, uh... I guess she won't be coming to the tea party, then."
Althea stops for a second, then shakes her head. "No, she says she'd rather stay with him for the month."
You frown. You remember M0 mentioning that they were going to head to the brain slug-infested version of California once done in the White-Blue-Red plane--and that Khalla's stories to Sierra of it being peaceful is the first you heard of the place. "Tell her to tell him that the Blue-Black version of California is under attack by slugs that can control brains."
Althea stares off into the distance for a bit, then smirks, "Sierra says they're going on a 'Tenor family field trip'? I assume there's another adventure afoot?"
You nod. "Yeah, but you can't go."
"Why not?" Althea whines with a stamp of her foot.
"Brain slugs," you counter. "Magic's the only way to kill them once they're inside of you, and you don't know any yet. I'm not even bringing Isabella to this one."
Althea pouts--but if Isabella isn't safe there, she understands the severity of the danger. "Bring me a souvenir, at least."
<Expended Wealth: -3 gp>
<Hawthorne Family Farm has gained facility: Septic Tank!>
<Sierra's dad has returned to Atlantis! He will be available for [SOCIAL] Actions until Turn 12!>
<Morsel: Perception vs Olesano: Stealth: d20+2 (WIS)+10 (Ranks) vs d20+3 (CS)+4 (DEX)+12 (Ranks) = (12)+12 vs (1)+19 = Comedic Success!>
You've run down to the general store to get another earthenware pot of pickles, and are debating on splurging for some peach marmalade when you see a familiar face out of the corner of your eye, asleep and slumped standing up against some of the shelves. You hold the pickle-pot in one elbow, and--carefully--tap the drow in question on the arm.
"You know, Morsel, you are a very difficult woman to find," says Olesano, desperately pretending he did not just do something as undignified as jump. "You have--clearly--had me running ragged trying to find you."
"Sorry, Lord Olesano," you say, idly wondering how curtseying is supposed to work when you're holding something. You settle for a quick bow, instead. "I... I think you know what I am, by now?"
"Yes, yes, me and the whole county--"
"I mean... The other thing I am," you say.
"...I have my suspicions," he nods, "and if you're being this open about it, we may need to move somewhere private."
It's a trivial matter for Olesano to commandeer a space in the mail-house, given both your support and his noble capabilities of If You Make This A Problem For Me I Can Make This A Problem For Your Entire County. You spared a couple coppers before leaving the general store for some warm sweetbreads to give him his energy back while the two of you talk business.
"So, no longer pretending to be just a normal girl, then?" he asks.
You shake your head. "I'm normal enough to participate in village life. But I'm not human--which you knew, and I'm... well. You've noticed my disappearances."
He nods. "Terrifying business, having something like you disappear on you." After a moment, he adds, "No offense."
"None taken," you say. "Though this does put a damper on all the times we thought we were being stealthy about Sierra."
He snorts. "Oh, that mess. No, you were subtle, not stealthy. Better one than none, at least. Teaming up with Ms. Lobo was a great use of refuge-in-audacity, though--clearly, whoever's with her must be normal by comparison, or else what kind of madhouse are we living in?" he chuckles. Seeing your frown, he backpedals, "I--you must agree that she has a certain... reputation."
"I mean, yeah," you pout, "but you don't have to be mean about it."
With a sigh, he puts down his sweetbread. "Look, I--let's cut the niceties here. I'm trying to figure out why you didn't respond to the priority messages."
You blink. "The gloomwing and Ability Drain things?"
He nods.
"Oh. Yeah, I was busy."
"With... what, exactly?" he asks.
"Helping to save a solar system from darkness elementals, becoming a saint in a demigoddess's church for helping her and her high priestess out of a Quintessence Clock, and getting the septic tank I've been installing at the house cast by a team of blacksmiths." You pause. "At least, I think it's made of an iron alloy. Could be bronzesmiths, for all I know."
He raises an eyebrow. You pull out your tablet and show him bits and pieces of your time in Nanairo and Mitakihara.
"...Huh. This..." he sighs. "Morsel... we originally hired you on because you were a piece too dangerous to lose track of, but not hostile enough to justify imprisoning. Sierra was a surprise resolution to a completely different plot we were looking into, and we kept quiet about it because we knew that whatever magic Isabella had done to keep you tame--"
"She was nice to me," you interject. "She was nice to me and my parents loved me. Just because I'm a monster doesn't mean I'm not a person."
"...Right," he surrenders, changing topics, "We've had to move those requests to the general boards by now. I thought that you'd be eager to prove your recent accomplishments as an archmage by repeating them for a broader audience. I won't guilt you by telling you how many died against the gloomwings--you are very clearly working on a scale where such a thing is rightfully a rounding error to you--"
"Oh, we found him floating in a river," Kyubey shrugs. "You'd be surprised what kind of violence 'civilized' humans are willing to dismiss as a rounding error."
You wince.
"...Apologies, that could've been worded better." Sighing, he continues, "Look--you've grown beyond our abilities to control you. The priority messages weren't sent to you as a command, they were sent as a question--are you still loyal to Hennia?"
You almost--almost respond with, "Of course, that's where my family lives!"
And yet... your family could very easily uproot. There are houses that you could buy--for gold or for services provided--in Mitakihara, Vertumna, Nanairo... Heck, if you leaned on Grimaldo, Jaminah, or M0, you could very easily have one in Fódlan, Remnant, one of multiple Earths, or even worlds in the galaxy beyond. They could live like royalty very easily, and you wouldn't even need to upgrade your house...
Sure, it would likely mean never seeing Hillscorch again. But if you had to choose between family and hometown, you--and everyone in your family--would choose the former.
In any case, you've spent more time in Mitakihara than you have in the Thousand Realms since Sparking. Especially given the responsibility you've just taken on, that's unlikely to change soon.
"I think... regardless of how loyal I am to this place, it's still home," you say. "If I didn't have any attachment to the place, I wouldn't have paid to upgrade it."
Olesano sighs. "That... will have to be enough, for now."
Social 4 -- Hillscorch Village
At 27 Spell Points per day, 10 points of Green mana, and the Harvest submodule of Nature (Base, Plant)--which can make twenty-four potatoes per spell point--you can make a total of a clean 888 potatoes per day--about nine-eighths of the large wooden barrels your family has in the storage cellar. With sixteen houses in your village, carrying an average household size of eight, you have just shy of enough to give everyone in the village seven potatoes each--easily enough to get you some favor among the village.
Beyond that, though, you mostly spent the time playing with Althea and the other village kids. Jim's still skittish around you, but better that than how he is when he's confident.
<Gained Capital: 4 Goods (Hillscorch Village)>
Tea Party Closeout
As you arrive at Vertumna, Jaminah asks you to speak privately--"monster-to-monster".
How could you refuse?
She arrives in lion-form--but something is wrong. Her tentacles are limp and listless, all but their most basal eyes either closed or a few millimeters from it. Her fur seems... painted on, as an afterthought, almost. Her teeth...
What once were ivory daggers, now seem more like a fan of rapiers--almost baleen, as the filter-whales use to eat.
She sighs, and her fur retracts into skin that rapidly discolors to the iridescent black of an oil spill, spreading even to her tentacles and scleras. Her mouth, too, becomes nebula-purple on the inside instead of its usual sanguine burgundy. She collapses to the ground as this happens, and you wonder just what happened to put this much weight on her.
"How do you recover, when you find out who you really are?" she asks.
"...For me, it... clarified things," you say. "It explained why everyone was afraid of me, and why my hunger was different from the people around me."
She doesn't meet your eyes. It's honestly quite impressive, given how many chances her body gives her. "I... I saw things. Things like me. Things... like that crystal-beast we fought." She crosses her paws, resting her chin on the corner between them. "This lion-form... for a long time, it was me. When the fey that raised me found out about my monstrosity, they didn't seek a new home for me, as my human parents did. They... caged me. Wrapped me in story and resonance, anchored me in theme and pattern. It was fun, for a while."
She wilts.
"But now I know. And... it hurts, a little, to pretend I don't."
Jaminah is vulnerable before you. The power of your words could make her repress even harder, or spiral further into monstrosity--
"I think your new teeth suck," you say.
"...Pardon?" she asks, dumbstruck. Her eyes are open now, though most of them are too shocked to focus on you.
"You picked a lion because that, even if it wasn't you, was the closest thing you had within the framework you were assigned, right?"
She nods.
"And lions are big and strong and bite things, right?"
Another nod.
"So why are your new teeth so fragile? Like, I could probably break them!" you say, putting your hands on your hips.
"I... it's..." she pouts. "I mean, it was either this or a beak, or worse, a lamprey mouth--" she shudders, "Or the ones that use human jaws for some godsforsaken reason--"
"Why would you give up a piece of yourself just because your kinsfolk don't like wearing it?" you ask. At her confused stare--her hopeful glance--you continue, "I'm only sapient because I fed on Althea in my youth. Even if humanity is just the shell you hatched from, isn't it still part of your story?"
She sighs. "And if I don't want to be defined by a story?"
"If you reject your own blood--your own history--why submit to the dictates of that of your kinsfolk?" you ask. "If you cut away your joy, but not your sorrow, is that peace? Or just dismissal?"
She frowns. Her eyes close, save for those near the bases of her tentacle-mane, and she is silent for a long time.
But soon, her fur grows back, and her eyes are yellow again, and her teeth are sturdy daggers--
And the inside of her mouth still glimmers like the night sky.
"Thanks, Morsel," she says, taking a feline stretch before shifting into human shape again. "I needed a bit of perspective."
"Anytime," you smile.
Another round of introductions ring out at Vertumna this month, as one Agent X3027--birthname obscured even to him by the government that "helped" him "train" his psionic potential--arrives to the colony. Originally part of a multi-planetary polity called "The Confederacy of Man", he and his fellow "ghosts" were used as highly-trained Magic Space Ninjas up until last month, when a rebellion finally took the capital world. Now, he intends to roam the multiverse looking for something to fight back with--though given Fluorescence's rapidly-thinning smile, you think that somewhere along the line, he said something unfortunate about his homeland that's raising the old revolutionary's hackles.
Probably some politics issue. You'd say you'd worry about it when random solar systems stop catching fire, but if you're hearing his story right, politics is causing random solar systems to catch fire.
Bleh.
<Agent X3027 Main Quest Revealed: Arcturus Must Die!>
<While the Confederacy was not kind to you, it was still a duly-elected government--and now this scumbag dissident has burned it all down. Make him pay.>
Additionally, as much as he'd like to rally your club to his cause... that's not the way power flows here. There's something evident from the way he talks, and something especially evident about the way he refers to you--
He owes you a life-debt, and he intends to pay in full.
<Gained Debts Receivable: Monumental Favor (X3027)>
Project Queue Progress
<Project: Heart of Steel (CL 12 Conjuration Apparatus): 10d20 @ Level 10 + 10d20 @ Level 11 = (16,5,10,3,8,6,19,16,17,4)+3 (CS)+1 (INT)+10 (Ranks)+2 (Laptop) vs DC 10+12 (CL)+5 (Insufficient CL) + (15,3,5,9,2,14,20,16,19,8)+3 (CS)+1 (INT)+11 (Ranks)+2 (Laptop) vs DC 10+12 (CL) = (32, 21, 26, 19, 24, 22, 35, 32, 33, 20) vs 27 & (32, 20, 22, 26, 19, 31, 37, 33, 36, 25) vs 22 = 12/144 Successes!>
<Note: If you get some other bonus to Spellcraft during the level-up vote, I'll retroactively apply it here to the second batch of rolls.>
- {WUR}: A9G-M028: I was volunteering at medical tents on Tarsonis this whole month. Nothing much to tell beyond the usual devastation following a planetary siege.
- {WUR}: X3027: I was also still on Tarsonis, mostly finding ways to evacuate Confederate VIP's and other targets of Arcturus's purges.
- {BG}: Jaminah: The thing's allies are here, and use Time magic. Its enemies are here, and use Blood. There's a noble house trying to solve things... I... don't want to go into detail right now.
- {WUB}: Cho'Xlantzan: I spent some more time in the Nanairo System after Morsel and friends left, likely for the last time for a while. I'll still check in on my Agents there, but it's peaceful enough now that I can move to other places.
- {WUB}: Lhakpa: So this is what it's like, to be remembered... to be a strength to others, thousands of years after you're gone... Hm. It's kinder than I thought.
- {WUG}: Grimaldo: Paid some debts back in Fódlan and dealt with that... thing. I never want to see that again in my life.
ABSENT THIS TURN -- CHECK [BINDINGS] ACTIONS
<Gained Debts Receivable: Monumental Favor (X3027)>
<+2 Favors each from Lhakpa and Cho'Xlantzan!>
<+1 Monumental Favor from the NPP!>
<Morsel has gained Skill Familiarity: K: Arcana (Mallus, Familiar)!>
<Gained Knowledge: Kyubey's Data Readings: Useless for the moment, but if Mitakihara (or even just Madoka's church) ever becomes fully magitech, this will provide a useful insight into the nature of divinity.>
<Expended Wealth: -3 gp>
<Hawthorne Family Farm has gained facility: Septic Tank!>
<Gained 1 Level!>
<Cho'Xlantzan, Lhakpa, and Morsel: Gained Land: Himuro Orbital Control Chamber {WUR}>
<Gained Contacts: Rallen and Jeena (NPP Officer Duo): CG/LG Human Rangers>
<Gained Land: Kaname Manor (PMMM) {WW}>
<Gained Contact: Megucanet (Madoka's Fanclub)>
<Gained Contact: Morishita Choko (Lifeless Puppeteer): TNHuman Magi>
<Gained Capital: 4 Goods (Hillscorch Village)>
<+2 Favors each from Lhakpa and Cho'Xlantzan!>
<+1 Monumental Favor from the NPP!>
<Morsel has gained Skill Familiarity: K: Arcana (Mallus, Familiar)!>
<Gained Knowledge: Kyubey's Data Readings: Useless for the moment, but if Mitakihara (or even just Madoka's church) ever becomes fully magitech, this will provide a useful insight into the nature of divinity.>
<Expended Wealth: -3 gp>
<Hawthorne Family Farm has gained facility: Septic Tank!>
<Gained 1 Level!>
<Cho'Xlantzan, Lhakpa, and Morsel: Gained Land: Himuro Orbital Control Chamber {WUR}>
<Gained Contacts: Rallen and Jeena (NPP Officer Duo): CG/LG Human Rangers>
<Gained Land: Kaname Manor (PMMM) {WW}>
<Gained Contact: Megucanet (Madoka's Fanclub)>
<Gained Contact: Morishita Choko (Lifeless Puppeteer): TN
<Gained Capital: 4 Goods (Hillscorch Village)>
Select Four Actions of Each Type (Weekday, Social)
-
-
- [] [BINDINGS] Knight-Errantry
- Accrues Favor Debts from the relevant Planeswalker(s) (that is, ones they owe to you) and progresses the Plane Quests of the relevant worlds.
- [] [ERRANTRY] [Plane: UB] Alien Brain Slugs Kidnapped My Dinner Date
- You feel a bit concerned about the fact that this has been left unattended for multiple months? Like, you're an abomination of nature's uncaring cruelty against mankind, but at least you're not a cordyceps--and it looks like you don't even need to be a fungus to puppet someone like that anymore! You don't really have a plan--and M0 will be here next month to investigate on their own--but maybe you could have... what was the term? "An enthusiastic walk"? In the general direction of this world's California. Empathic Healing, after all, can remove parasites... and place them directly into your own hungrier flesh.
- Can be taken multiple times.
- For this turn, M0 is co-sponsoring these Favors (as in, you gain one from Sterling and M0, separately, per action). The whole Tea Party--and King Khalla--is headed here for the first two weeks of Turn 010. M0 has, additionally, developed some magic items that deal damage to parasites, allowing Agents brought along to be Yeerk-proof while they still have the item.
- [] [BINDINGS] [CHURCH] [Plane: WB]
- Call Those Codex Archons Back
- Back in Turn 004, you contracted Prudence of a Dilligent Life and Wisdom of the Path Less-Traveled to help with some of Madoka's scriptures, and they mentioned their willingness to work in a temple archive... do you think they'd accept a web server?
- Double Goddess Jumper Cable Gambit
- When Grimaldo rescued his husband, you noticed one of his coworkers was an aasimar (just like Madoka), had that telltale mana hum of a deity answering prayers (just like Madoka), and was glowing with Blood magic far beyond your strength--strength you've only seen before in Homura. You think you know who Byleth's headmate is, and you think you know how to wake her up.
Ascend(Requires Mythic Ability: Divine Source)- Step alongside Madoka and her four Magi friends into the heights of power in the church. The eyes of the world will be upon you--as will their prayers, given your accomplishments.
- Call Those Codex Archons Back
- [] [BINDINGS] [Plane: U] Mech License
- Incurs a Favor Debt and a Major Boon Debt owed to Jaminah when taken the first time. Jaminah and Analise are willing to guide you through the steps to get a mech license from the Blue plane--though they'll need to get creative about somehow leaving out the minor (heh) complication of your age.
- [] [BINDINGS] Knight-Errantry
-
- [] [RESEARCH] Expedition
- [] [Plane: G] Space Plague Zombies
- Venture into the place Jaminah ran from for physical health reasons. You can grab spacesuits from Nanairo on your way, so you should be safe from the vaccuum until something cuts the suit open. Empathic Healing and your own disease immunity should keep your party safe while you investigate, at least.
- [] [Plane: BG] Ruin Has Come to Our Family
- Venture into the place Jaminah was most unsettled by. The thing makes its nest here--and there's a noble house who shares your emnity towards it, and the master it serves.
- [] Write-in a Plane. Morsel will travel to that Plane for a week, camping and exploring as needed to establish some combination of Land Bonds and information on the local quests and inhabitants.
- [] [Plane: G] Space Plague Zombies
- [] [RESEARCH] Teach a Language
- Help a Contact learn a new language. A language needs four actions to learn. Write-in which language and which Contact. Assume each character knows their home nation's primary language. (ex: Esperanto for characters in Vertumna, Japanese for Mitakihara, etc.)
- [] [RESEARCH] Learn to Teach
- Teach magic, that is. You know plenty about magic itself, but it comes so easily to you that you're having a hard time teaching people the basics.
- [] [Plane: RG] Fódlani Techniques Overview
- Limited Blue techniques means this world's magic is more raw and elemental--but that's not too bad when first starting out. Scout out what's even available to learn here, unlocking a more detailed list.
- [] [Plane: WBG] Hennian Techniques Overview
- Your world has a longer history of magic--but also bleedthrough from other places in the Realms, making it often a bit jumbled and plagued by inertia. Making any kind of sense of it will require sifting through the noise to find coherent strings of teachings where you can.
- [] [RESEARCH] Expedition
-
- [] [MATERIAL] [Plane: WBG] Take a job from the League of Extraordinary Ratcatchers
- Grants Gold and combat XP. A very convenient excuse to travel around finding new Lands to bond to, or even more... esoteric secrets hidden around your homeland.
- [] [RATCATCHING] Ghastly Caravan
- A pair of Marrowstone Golems have been sighted in the caves connecting Hennia to the Darklands--but this information is old, and you wonder what they could've gotten up to in the meantime. These things rarely wander alone--what could've led them here?
- [] [RATCATCHING] The Third Humor
- A tribe of Charda--four-armed, somewhat insectoid, somewhat reptillian Monstrous Humanoids--is migrating through the mountain caverns. They're not a threat if they stay down there, but their vicious nature and immense strength means that each one could easily wipe out a village before the army caught up to them. It's unheard of for them to be even this close to the surface--what could've driven them upwards?
- [] [RATCATCHING] Eldritch Magenta
- A strange plague on the northern shore seems to be causing Ability Drain in its victims. However, its spread is oddly limited for such a plague, and it seems to be affecting more than just the people up there...
- [] [RATCATCHING] Xenomoth
- There's a Gloomwing infestation. All else is location data.
- [] [MATERIAL] Sell low-level Life-sphere spellcasting
- The market for this is rather... finite. Frankly, only the desperate and the rich are willing to spend 20gp on medical care they could get from sleeping for a few days. Most of your day here is searching for doctors who know a patient in need. Grants gold.
- Write-in which Plane this takes place on.
- [] [MATERIAL] Sell Latent Healing
- ...On the other hand, being able to have ten minutes of Death Is For Other People is insane, and can actually get you swimming in gold. Very few people would be able to afford this, so you're unlikely to get more than one client per action... but they'd be wealthy ones, ones that might have Connections that you could exploit, or gossip about something you were looking for...
- Write-in which Plane this takes place on.
- [] [MATERIAL] [Plane: WB]
Upgrade the Temple{Requires a suitable Agent skilled in local architectural proceedings} - [] [MATERIAL] [Plane: WB] Inventory Homura's Apartment
- You're pretty sure there's corners in here that even Homura doesn't know about, anymore. Produces detail on what's even going on in here, and produces sub-votes on what to do with the discovered rooms.
- [] [MATERIAL] [Plane: WBG] Upgrade the Farm
- The farm lacks amenities you're used to having now that you've been exploring... ones that make your sense of hospitality rankle at the absence of. Buy some upgrades for your home and see how you can fix up the place. Further Adaptations of K: Engineering increase the available options.
- [] [UPGRADE] Homura's Solar Scheme
- Costs 3gp. Homura, in a fit of Loop Madness some cycles back, decided to learn enough mechanical engineering to make steam turbines and sterling engines. She thinks she remembers enough of it to make a solar boiler with enough steam storage to fuel the generator overnight, as long as you aren't running a fridge. Realistically, this is mostly for the water heater--you're not sure how more complicated wiring works.
- [] [UPGRADE] A Monster's Home Is Her Cavern
- You can compact earth into stone through Nature: Earth Mastery. Maybe it's time to replace the wooden walls with something more sturdy?
- [] [UPGRADE] Homura's Solar Scheme
- The farm lacks amenities you're used to having now that you've been exploring... ones that make your sense of hospitality rankle at the absence of. Buy some upgrades for your home and see how you can fix up the place. Further Adaptations of K: Engineering increase the available options.
- [] [MATERIAL] [Plane: WBG] Take a job from the League of Extraordinary Ratcatchers
-
- [] [POWER] Firearm Acclimatization (Requires a Plane with Common Firearms)
- Firearms are considered Simple weapons to those who grew up around them. You can't teach an old dog new tricks--but can you teach an old goat? It would be very funny if Gor'lo-nos could swap out his longbow for something more... explosive. (Morsel and Gor'lo-nos treat the selected category of Firearm as Simple weapons. If a weapon is in multiple categories, it requires all categories to be taken to be considered Simple. You must have access to a weapon in order to train with it.)
- [] One-Handed
- [] Siege/Heavy
- [] Early (ex: Muskets)
- [] Technological
- [] [POWER] Accelerate Project
- Puts more time into the first valid Project in the Project Queue. Can be chosen multiple times.
- [] [POWER] [Plane: WUB] KrawlCombat Gauntlet
- On each planet other than Kollin and Ziba, and then also on both of Ziba's moons, all the remaining Krawl seem to have gathered into a sizable vortex around a specific location on that world. What could be drawing them there?
- [] Choose a planet (or moon): Genshi, Daichi, Nissa, Akaboshi, Aoboshi, Himuro, Meido
- On each planet other than Kollin and Ziba, and then also on both of Ziba's moons, all the remaining Krawl seem to have gathered into a sizable vortex around a specific location on that world. What could be drawing them there?
- [] [POWER] Firearm Acclimatization (Requires a Plane with Common Firearms)
-
- [] [CONNECTIONS] Rolo-dex Building
- It's time for the true endgame of being a Planeswalker: collecting a bunch of little cardboard rectangles detailing the various people you've encountered so that you have an easy reference point for when you need to call upon them. Results vary by plane, but generally produces Contacts or Agents relevant to the search criteria.
- [] Write-In the criteria you're looking for and what Plane you're looking in--a given Skill, class, etc. More specificity results in a more difficult search.
- [] [CONNECTIONS] [Plane: WB] Church Interviews
- Some of Madoka's new followers are playing fast and loose with their newfound depth of mana to spend--and this is letting a few secrets loose where cameras can see them, now that Kyubey's perception field isn't concealing it. Eventually, someone's going to need to break the Masquerade--and Madoka would rather it was done by a kind face. Your assistance would be appreciated, as you're the church's best Knowledge: Arcana expert.
- [] [CONNECTIONS] [Plane: WB] Puella Magi Madoka Miracles
- Life: Empathic Healing and your natural disease immunity combine to make one of the most effective advertisements of competence that a church can offer--especially one that knows how to give its members magic. Utterly shatters Mitakihara's Masquerade, and greatly increases the reputation and notoriety of yourself and Madoka's church.
- [] [CONNECTIONS] [Plane: BR] Starving But Forbidden To Die
- There is, apparently, a world whose ecology completely collapsed. If you could teach them Nature (Base, Plant), they could replicate your feat of Potato Mitosis, to at least feed themselves until another breakthrough is made... but there's only one way you know works just yet.
- [] A Hope Reflected
- Ask Madoka for a Miracle. Take a starving child from their home and bring them unto the holy places. Let them taste the food of the gods--and then, like Plato's cavern-prisoners, send them back into the dark to share it with their fellows.
- []
Blood Calls To Blood(Requires knowledge of how to create Sorcerers/Bloodragers)- You learned this from your Bloodline--but to inflict that upon someone anew would be months--at minimum--of training the new Skintaker, and you're not ready for motherhood yet. Maybe if Gor'lo-nos could make a Pact?
- []
Carve This into Your Thick Skull(Requires knowledge of how to create Wizards)- Maybe using Mana to let people copy your Talents would let them get muscle memory on it?
- [] A Hope Reflected
- There is, apparently, a world whose ecology completely collapsed. If you could teach them Nature (Base, Plant), they could replicate your feat of Potato Mitosis, to at least feed themselves until another breakthrough is made... but there's only one way you know works just yet.
- [] [CONNECTIONS] Moving Day
- Alternatively, you could help your parents move to Mitakihara or Vertumna... It'd be a big shift for them, and they'd need to find something to do in Mitakihara, but in the face of such prosperity elsewhere, they would understand if you didn't want to be a farmer anymore.
- [] [MOVING] [Plane: WB] Mitakihara
- Live in Homura's old aparment.
- [] [MOVING] [Plane: B] Vertumna
- Live in the crew quarters of the Stratospheric, with easy access to the colony outside.
- [] [MOVING] [Plane: WUB] Nanairo
- Live in the solar system you helped save.
- [] [NANAIRO] Genshi
- [] [NANAIRO] Daichi
- [] [NANAIRO] Kollin (Planetside)
- [] [NANAIRO] Kollin (Rings)
- [] [NANAIRO] Nissa
- [] [NANAIRO] Ziba
- [] [MOVING] [Plane: WB] Mitakihara
- Alternatively, you could help your parents move to Mitakihara or Vertumna... It'd be a big shift for them, and they'd need to find something to do in Mitakihara, but in the face of such prosperity elsewhere, they would understand if you didn't want to be a farmer anymore.
- [] [CONNECTIONS] Rolo-dex Building
-
-
- [] Social Connections
- Use the relaxation of the weekends to bond with people in their free time. By default, this is a simple social visit, though you may write-in specific topics to talk about. Plot-relevant conversations will appear separate from the write-in option, and Morsel's Contacts are provided below for ease of planning. Other player characters are also available to talk to, if desired.
- Additionally, this action has replaced [BINDINGS] Trading Favors--if you wish to trade Favors to gain assistance on a given action, you can do it here.
- [] [SOCIAL] Write-In a character.
- Write-in what Favors you're offering, or which ones you want to cash in, and what you're planning on getting in exchange.
- [] [SOCIAL] Gor'lo-nos
- Cho mentioned that their Great Enemy has mana signatures a little bit like the Krawl, and a little bit like Demons. Gor'lo-nos has been taking K: Religion and K: The Planes ranks to keep himself useful--maybe listening to his war stories would give you the context you two need to make the connection?
- [] [SOCIAL] King Khalla
- A veteran Planeswalker that Sierra has spoken highly of--and is the daughter of. He mostly travels beyond the Ethereal Lagoon--"Fivefold Reef", as he calls it--but he's here to visit family for the next couple of months.
- [] [SOCIAL] Magnetic Monopoles: A9G-M028
- Oh yeah, you almost forgot--Ziba's moons are magnetic monopoles! M0 knows about science stuff, surely they know why that's a big deal.
- [] [SOCIAL] Magnetic Monopoles: Homura
- Oh yeah, you almost forgot--Ziba's moons are magnetic monopoles! Maybe Homura would have a cool science project to use them for?
- [] [SOCIAL] Grimaldo
- With Althea taking an interest in magic, it'd be wise to get some advice on how to teach it from someone with experience on the matter.
- [] [SOCIAL] The Other Planeswalkers
- Mostly just here if you want to make a series of deals at the Tea Party before you leave--some socializing is already assumed.
- [] [SOCIAL] A New Villager
- Adds a Contact from Hillscorch Village.
- [SOCIAL] A New Username
- Adds a Contact from Megucanet.
Agents
Isabella "The Sharp" Lobo (Always Has My Back): CG Human Conscript (Duelist/Fencer focus)
Sierra Tenor (Princess In Exile/Sharp Mind and Sharper Wit): LG Merfolk Fey Adept (Seelie Disciple Archetype)
Gor'lo-nos (Loyal Eidolon/Royal Pain In My Side): CE Schir Demon Eidolon
Althea Hawthorne (Sweetest Sister): TN Young Human Commoner
Bartholomew and Daisy Hawthorne (Best Parents A Monster Could Ask For): NG Human Commoners
Contacts
Hillscorch Village (My Hometown)
Kaname Madoka (Recently-Ascended Demigoddess): NG Aasimar (formerly human) Zealot/Soul Weaver (Ghost Sovereign Archetype)
Akemi Homura (Archmage of Time, Cleric of Madokami): LE Human Meguca/Cleric (Time-Scarred Cleric Custom Archetype)
Miki Sayaka (Solar Dragon of Mitakihara): LG Young Adult Solar Dragon Warrior/Meguca
Tomoe Mami (Baroness of the Silver Bullet): NG Human Meguca
Sakura Kyoko (Fightin' and Feastin'): CN Human Meguca
Dys (Potential Druid): CN Young Human Expert
Tangent (Potential Arcanist): LN Young Human Expert
Rallen and Jeena (NPP Officer Duo): CG/LG Human Rangers
Megucanet (Madoka's Fanclub) - [] Social Connections
-
Current Queue Items:
- [Q] [RESEARCH] Adapt a Skill to Local Conditions
- [Q] [Plane: WB] Knowledge: Engineering (Familiar)
- Example Conditional Statement: Morsel is hyperfixating on K: Engi for architecture reasons, but will only reasearch this while actually in Mitakihara. Target familiarity is "Studied".
- [Q] [Plane: WB] Knowledge: Engineering (Familiar)
- [Q] [POWER] A King's Ransom x5 (12/144)
- Attempts five Spellcraft skill checks against a DC of 22. Each success adds 1 Progress to the list. When completed, Gor'lo-nos will no longer be your Eidolon, and will instead be a lich-like Conjuration Companion set loose on the world. When complete, a sub-vote will open on where to drop him off.
- [Q] [POWER] Seamstress's Sword (0/40) [REQUIRES OUTSOURCING]
- Attempts five Spellcraft skill checks against a DC of 20. Each success adds 1 Progress to the list. When completed, Choko will swap one level of Magi for one level of Intelligent Item and one of her feats for Decievingly Innocent Form, using a minor variant of the "arcane item" alternate class feature for Spheres compatibility. From there, she can retrain the rest on her own time. This is considered to be the domain of the Forge Construct feat, despite her new shape as a sword.
- These two pieces of homebrew are effectively just a pre-Spheres way of pulling the Honedge build from the replacement squad, but fit Choko a bit more than the Spirit Blade-archetype Armorist.
- Attempts five Spellcraft skill checks against a DC of 20. Each success adds 1 Progress to the list. When completed, Choko will swap one level of Magi for one level of Intelligent Item and one of her feats for Decievingly Innocent Form, using a minor variant of the "arcane item" alternate class feature for Spheres compatibility. From there, she can retrain the rest on her own time. This is considered to be the domain of the Forge Construct feat, despite her new shape as a sword.
Queue Options:
- [] [QUEUE] Add an Item
- Write-in something from the Potential Queue Items spoiler as a sub-option. Can be taken multiple times.
- [] [QUEUE] Rearrange Queue
- The queue works from bottom-to-top, skipping invalid options, but you can add conditionals like "if on X plane" or "until we have X copies", etc. to also adjust order of activation.
- [] [QUEUE] Adjust Speed (Current: 0)
- Each stack of Speed increases the DC of item crafting by 5, but adds an additional 1 Progress on a successful skill check. Max 4.
- [] [QUEUE] Remove an Item
- Proceed with caution. Can be selected multiple times. Only viable on in-progress options if a story reason permits it or if you have redesigned the item.
- [] [QUEUE] Outsource to M0 (Repeatable)
- M0 has a +30 Spellcraft check and some assorted crafting abilities--enough to reliably gain 6 Progress per day on most projects--12, if the project is a Charm, Wondrous Item, or Construct. Call in a Favor, or choose to owe one, to have them work on one of your Magic Item [PROJECTS] on your behalf for a week.
- If no item is specified, M0 will work from the top of the queue on down.
- [] [RESEARCH] Teach yourself a new language (0/4)
- Can be taken multiple times, each time advancing the counter. Max 2*(INT+1)+Linguistics_Ranks languages known.
- [] [LANGUAGE] Write-in the language to learn.
- [] [RESEARCH] Adapt a Skill to Local Conditions
- Raise a skill's adaptation to the local conditions by one step (Unfamiliar -> Familiar -> Studied -> Fluent). Progress is separated for each Plane, though similar planes may share progress in certain skills (ex: K: Engi may be shared across two planes with similar tech levels, while K: Nobility relies so much on individual people that it almost never does). Increasing adaptation to a given plane requires either a teacher who commonly lives there or a textbook written there.
- [] Mitakihara
- [] Appraise (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Engineering (Familiar)
- [] Knowledge: Geography (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: History (Familiar)
- [] Knowledge: Local (Familiar)
- [] Knowledge: Nature (Familiar)
- [] Knowledge: Nobility (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Religion (Unfamiliar)
- [] Vertumna
- [] Appraise (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Engineering (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Geography (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: History (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Local (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Nature (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Nobility (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Religion (Unfamiliar)
- [] Fódlan
- [] Appraise (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Engineering (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Geography (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: History (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Local (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Nature (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Nobility (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Religion (Familiar)
- [] Mallus
- [] Appraise (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Arcana (Familiar)
- [] Knowledge: Engineering (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Geography (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: History (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Local (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Nature (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Nobility (Unfamiliar)
- [] Knowledge: Religion (Unfamiliar)
- [] [POWER] +2 Hit Points
- Eat your vegetables and exercise regularly, and one day you too can be SWOLE. Cannot bring you above the maximum value of your combined Hit Dice, calculated before other modifiers such as CON.
- [] [POWER] Craft/Upgrade Implement
- Write-in what you're looking to craft or upgrade. Implements boost one's Caster Level, and in addition to a few specific abilities unique to them, allow you to place Talents within the Implement instead of on a character sheet. The cost is 2 Progress*{Effective Bonus^2}, where Effective Bonus is the boost, increased by 1 for each Sphere past the first that the boost applies to, +2 for each Bonus Talent the Implement contains.
- Example Implement: "Magic Stick of +1 Talent Slot": +1 Bonus Talent: {Talent} Implement of {Sphere}: CL 6, DC 16, (0/18) Progress.
- Write-in what you're looking to craft or upgrade. Implements boost one's Caster Level, and in addition to a few specific abilities unique to them, allow you to place Talents within the Implement instead of on a character sheet. The cost is 2 Progress*{Effective Bonus^2}, where Effective Bonus is the boost, increased by 1 for each Sphere past the first that the boost applies to, +2 for each Bonus Talent the Implement contains.
- [] [POWER] Craft/Upgrade Charm
- Write-in what you're looking to craft or upgrade. Charms offer passive boosts to any one of the following: Ability Scores (each sold separately), Deflection AC, Natural Armor AC, Saving Throws (all simultaneously), Energy Resistance, Spell Resistance, CMB/CMD vs a specific Maneuver, or Skill Checks. Most of these require a CL of thrice their bonus and 1 or 2 Progress times {CL^2}, but Skill Checks and Energy Resistance are far cheaper.
- Example Implement: "Artificers' Toolbox": Charm of +10 Spellcraft: CL 10, DC 20, (0/10) Progress
- Write-in what you're looking to craft or upgrade. Charms offer passive boosts to any one of the following: Ability Scores (each sold separately), Deflection AC, Natural Armor AC, Saving Throws (all simultaneously), Energy Resistance, Spell Resistance, CMB/CMD vs a specific Maneuver, or Skill Checks. Most of these require a CL of thrice their bonus and 1 or 2 Progress times {CL^2}, but Skill Checks and Energy Resistance are far cheaper.
- [] [CONNECTIONS] Capital Acquisitions
- Using the Capital resources (Goods, Labor, Influence, Magic) is faster than normal skill checks for raw gp/hour wealth gain--but it decays (1/week) when you spend too long outside the community you earned it in, and requires some buy-in cost. The fastest way to get the materials for a magic item or another large project. Current stock: 2.5 Magic (laptop).
- [] [CONNECTIONS] Land Bonding x5
- Harder here than it was in Mitakihara--but the more spread-out nature of these Lands means it's a good way to set up a travel network around the country, should you ever need one.
- [Q] [RESEARCH] Adapt a Skill to Local Conditions
-
Assignments
Isabella "The Sharp" Lobo:
Your first real friend, along for the ride on this adventure of yours.
- [] [AGENTS] [ISABELLA] By My Side
- Bring Isa with you on your adventures. Significantly decreases the difficulty of large fights.
- [] [AGENTS] [ISABELLA] Acclimate
- Write-In a Plane you have Contacts or Agents in--Isabella will stay with them (or a suitable hotel) and learn the local language--or, if she already knows it, will get Skill Familiarity in K: Local or K: Nobility.
- [] [AGENTS] [ISABELLA] Go Have Fun
- Drop her off in Hennia and let her go Ratcatching. She'll miss you, but she won't miss having to share the loot.
Sierra is currently on a "Tenor Family Field Trip" to the {UB} Plane with her father and brother. The slugs won't know what hit them.
Mom and Dad and Althea:
Your dearest family. Not particularly powerful, but you love them.
- [] [AGENTS] [FAMILY] By My Side
- Bring your family with you on your adventures. Mom and Dad are just happy to be around you again, but Althea is a bit tired of getting stuck in the spaceship while you have all the fun.
- [] [AGENTS] [FAMILY] Acclimate
- Write-In a Plane you have Contacts or Agents in--your family will stay with them (or a suitable hotel) and learn the local language--or, if they already know it, will get Skill Familiarity in K: Engi, K: Local, K: Nature, or K: Nobility.
- [] [AGENTS] [FAMILY] Tend the Farm
- It's April, which means planting season for the summer crops--if this action is not taken now, the farm will lie fallow this year. Generates various Capital for the family farm, some of which will go to facility upgrades.
- [] [AGENTS] [ISABELLA] By My Side
Current Bindings Report
-
Plane Quest (B): The Massacre of Glow 4
Solanaceae has warned you of the dangers of Glow--and has asked for help resisting the siege that will come on turn 037. A further request was made regarding turn 039, though for a reason other than the seasons.
Plane Quest (WB): Unfrick The Megucas
Every single Magi is a burning candle keeping away a monster of their own making. Killing and reviving them can free them from the curse, but it would be so much easier if there was a way to simply fix the mana taps within their circuits.
Plane Quest (BRG): Trouble in Praag!
Cho'Xlantzan is offering a Major Favor (redeemable for whatever flavor of debt you choose to collect) to Morsel and M0, as well as some minor magic items to any relevant companions to keep them from feeling slighted, for the two of you to investigate and solve a in this northern city. They have not specified what that problem is. You'll know it when you see it. -
Debts Receivable
- From the Vertumna Colony: 6x Minor Resource Debt
- From Cho'Xlantzan: 1x Favor
- From Lhakpa: 1x Favor
- From the Nanairo Planetary Patrol: 1x Monumental Favor
- From X3027: 1x Monumental Favor
- 1x Year of Life
- Emotional damages
-
Outgoing
- To Mami (previous loop): Get Life: Restore Spirit items for the megucas. (0/10,000?)
- To Althea: "But I can promise you that I'll never hunt you. Never set traps for you, never chase you down or trick you into something. Not even setting out bait and waiting--none of that for food. Not of your flesh. And I promise not to beg for scraps of you, lest you feel obligated--nor will I ambush you, not even if I'm mad at you. Not even if I'm starving. Not even if you're marinated in the Peaches of Immortality--"
- Eidolon contract.
- "For as long as I live, you and yours will always have a place with me."
And Lastly, that little matter with Kyubey--?
[] [SECRET] Keep
-- Tell him nothing.
[] [SECRET] Share
-- Add a quick little Creation proof-of-concept item to Morsel's Project Queue. When complete, she'll hand it off to Kyubey for examination and reverse-engineering.
A/N: Sorry about the delay! This chapter was cooperative, but IRL stress wasn't. Usual 24h moratorium and 3-day voting period apply. As usual, plan votes preferred.
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Because Cho is offering Favors for Praag (so you don't have to), and because the Tea Party is specifically designed to make multi-Planeswalker collaborations like this easier, you could do something like--
--which would lose out on one of the Favor pairs from the second week of Brain Slugs, but would take some stress off of Olesano. Cho heads home on the fourth action of each month anyway, so this minor carpooling is a Trivial Favor from them that they won't bother counting.
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Voting is open! Some extra actions have been added, and the Plane Catalogue has finally been updated with data from Turns 007-009.
- Mentioned that M0 has some Destruction trinkets that will shred any Yeerks that try to assault your Agents this time
- Fixed improperly tagged [RATCATCHING] Actions
- Added a [SOCIAL] Action to take care of a plot point I just plain forgot to have a conversation about.
-- [] [SOCIAL] Gor'lo-nos
--- Cho mentioned that their Great Enemy has mana signatures a little bit like the Krawl, and a little bit like Demons. Gor'lo-nos has been taking K: Religion and K: The Planes ranks to keep himself useful--maybe listening to his war stories would give you the context you two need to make the connection?
- Added some example [RESEARCH] Expedition sub-options
-- [] [Plane: G] Space Plague Zombies
--- Venture into the place Jaminah ran from for physical health reasons. You can grab spacesuits from Nanairo on your way, so you should be safe from the vaccuum until something cuts the suit open. Empathic Healing and your own disease immunity should keep your party safe while you investigate, at least.
-- [] [Plane: BG] Ruin Has Come to Our Family
--- Venture into the place Jaminah was most unsettled by. The thing makes its nest here--and there's a noble house who shares your emnity towards it, and the master it serves.
-- [] Write-in a Plane. Morsel will travel to that Plane for a week, camping and exploring as needed to establish some combination of Land Bonds and information on the local quests and inhabitants.
- Added a [RESEARCH] Action opening up some future options
-- [] [RESEARCH] Learn to Teach
--- Teach magic, that is. You know plenty about magic itself, but it comes so easily to you that you're having a hard time teaching people the basics.
--- [] [Plane: RG] Fódlani Techniques Overview
---- Limited Blue techniques means this world's magic is more raw and elemental--but that's not too bad when first starting out. Scout out what's even available to learn here, unlocking a more detailed list.
--- [] [Plane: WBG] Hennian Techniques Overview
---- Your world has a longer history of magic--but also bleedthrough from other places in the Realms, making it often a bit jumbled and plagued by inertia. Making any kind of sense of it will require sifting through the noise to find coherent strings of teachings where you can.
- Added a [CONNECTIONS] Action relating to Madoka's church
-- [] [CONNECTIONS] [Plane: BR] Starving But Forbidden To Die
-- There is, apparently, a world whose ecology completely collapsed. If you could teach them Nature (Base, Plant), they could replicate your feat of Potato Mitosis, to at least feed themselves until another breakthrough is made... but there's only one way you know works just yet.
--- [] A Hope Reflected
---- Ask Madoka for a Miracle. Take a starving child from their home and bring them unto the holy places. Let them taste the food of the gods--and then, like Plato's cavern-prisoners, send them back into the dark to share it with their fellows.
- Fixed improperly tagged [RATCATCHING] Actions
- Added a [SOCIAL] Action to take care of a plot point I just plain forgot to have a conversation about.
-- [] [SOCIAL] Gor'lo-nos
--- Cho mentioned that their Great Enemy has mana signatures a little bit like the Krawl, and a little bit like Demons. Gor'lo-nos has been taking K: Religion and K: The Planes ranks to keep himself useful--maybe listening to his war stories would give you the context you two need to make the connection?
- Added some example [RESEARCH] Expedition sub-options
-- [] [Plane: G] Space Plague Zombies
--- Venture into the place Jaminah ran from for physical health reasons. You can grab spacesuits from Nanairo on your way, so you should be safe from the vaccuum until something cuts the suit open. Empathic Healing and your own disease immunity should keep your party safe while you investigate, at least.
-- [] [Plane: BG] Ruin Has Come to Our Family
--- Venture into the place Jaminah was most unsettled by. The thing makes its nest here--and there's a noble house who shares your emnity towards it, and the master it serves.
-- [] Write-in a Plane. Morsel will travel to that Plane for a week, camping and exploring as needed to establish some combination of Land Bonds and information on the local quests and inhabitants.
- Added a [RESEARCH] Action opening up some future options
-- [] [RESEARCH] Learn to Teach
--- Teach magic, that is. You know plenty about magic itself, but it comes so easily to you that you're having a hard time teaching people the basics.
--- [] [Plane: RG] Fódlani Techniques Overview
---- Limited Blue techniques means this world's magic is more raw and elemental--but that's not too bad when first starting out. Scout out what's even available to learn here, unlocking a more detailed list.
--- [] [Plane: WBG] Hennian Techniques Overview
---- Your world has a longer history of magic--but also bleedthrough from other places in the Realms, making it often a bit jumbled and plagued by inertia. Making any kind of sense of it will require sifting through the noise to find coherent strings of teachings where you can.
- Added a [CONNECTIONS] Action relating to Madoka's church
-- [] [CONNECTIONS] [Plane: BR] Starving But Forbidden To Die
-- There is, apparently, a world whose ecology completely collapsed. If you could teach them Nature (Base, Plant), they could replicate your feat of Potato Mitosis, to at least feed themselves until another breakthrough is made... but there's only one way you know works just yet.
--- [] A Hope Reflected
---- Ask Madoka for a Miracle. Take a starving child from their home and bring them unto the holy places. Let them taste the food of the gods--and then, like Plato's cavern-prisoners, send them back into the dark to share it with their fellows.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Might not be IC to focus this hard on do-gooding, but is this plan valid?
[] Plan: the other kind of humanitarian
-[] [BINDINGS] Knight-Errantry
--[] [ERRANTRY] [Plane: UB] Alien Brain Slugs Kidnapped My Dinner Date
-[] [CONNECTIONS] [Plane: BR] Starving But Forbidden To Die
-- [] A Hope Reflected
-[] [BINDINGS] [CHURCH] [Plane: WB] Double Goddess Jumper Cable Gambit
-[] [MATERIAL] [Plane: WBG] Take a job from the League of Extraordinary Ratcatchers
--[] [RATCATCHING] Xenomoth
-[] [SOCIAL] King Khalla
-[] [SOCIAL] Magnetic Monopoles: A9G-M028
-[] [SOCIAL] Gor'lo-nos
-[] [SOCIAL] Grimaldo
-[] [QUEUE] Outsource to M0 (Repeatable)
--[] Seamstress' Sword
[] Plan: the other kind of humanitarian
-[] [BINDINGS] Knight-Errantry
--[] [ERRANTRY] [Plane: UB] Alien Brain Slugs Kidnapped My Dinner Date
-[] [CONNECTIONS] [Plane: BR] Starving But Forbidden To Die
-- [] A Hope Reflected
-[] [BINDINGS] [CHURCH] [Plane: WB] Double Goddess Jumper Cable Gambit
-[] [MATERIAL] [Plane: WBG] Take a job from the League of Extraordinary Ratcatchers
--[] [RATCATCHING] Xenomoth
-[] [SOCIAL] King Khalla
-[] [SOCIAL] Magnetic Monopoles: A9G-M028
-[] [SOCIAL] Gor'lo-nos
-[] [SOCIAL] Grimaldo
-[] [QUEUE] Outsource to M0 (Repeatable)
--[] Seamstress' Sword
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It is so far, it just lacks Agent assignments.
I would also recommend people check out the example projects--there's more informative text on what Forge Charm applies to, and an example item there that would allow for painless addition of Speed stacks to the Project Queue with regards to magic items due to counteracting the DC increase that that causes.
Oh right this is the WHF city thats basically as maximally Dhar tainted as it gets and still be livable right?
Something about the old magic school being fucked up?
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More specifically, the Everchosen at the time--that is, the one guy that all four main Chaos Gods can agree to sponsor--decided to siege the place on his way south. Unfortunately for Asavar Kul, Praag was a tough nut to crack, so he had to get the Chaos Sorcerers to cast siege magic.
For a solid year.
In a latitude that's already rich in Dhar.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Also, I refuse to make the same mistake as last time, of extending even the slightest trust toward marshmallow Mephistopholes.
[X] [SECRET] Keep
[X] Plan: the other kind of humanitarian
-[X] [BINDINGS] Knight-Errantry x2
--[X] [ERRANTRY] [Plane: UB] Alien Brain Slugs Kidnapped My Dinner Date x2
-[X] [CONNECTIONS] [Plane: BR] Starving But Forbidden To Die
-- [X] A Hope Reflected
-[X] [MATERIAL] [Plane: WBG] Take a job from the League of Extraordinary Ratcatchers
--[X] [RATCATCHING] Xenomoth
-[X] [SOCIAL] King Khalla
-[X] [SOCIAL] Magnetic Monopoles: A9G-M028
-[X] [SOCIAL] Gor'lo-nos
-[X] [SOCIAL] Grimaldo
-[X] [QUEUE] Outsource to M0 (Repeatable)
--[X] Seamstress' Sword
-[X] [AGENTS] [ISABELLA] By My Side
-[X] [AGENTS] [FAMILY] Tend the Farm
[X] [SECRET] Keep
[X] Plan: the other kind of humanitarian
-[X] [BINDINGS] Knight-Errantry x2
--[X] [ERRANTRY] [Plane: UB] Alien Brain Slugs Kidnapped My Dinner Date x2
-[X] [CONNECTIONS] [Plane: BR] Starving But Forbidden To Die
-- [X] A Hope Reflected
-[X] [MATERIAL] [Plane: WBG] Take a job from the League of Extraordinary Ratcatchers
--[X] [RATCATCHING] Xenomoth
-[X] [SOCIAL] King Khalla
-[X] [SOCIAL] Magnetic Monopoles: A9G-M028
-[X] [SOCIAL] Gor'lo-nos
-[X] [SOCIAL] Grimaldo
-[X] [QUEUE] Outsource to M0 (Repeatable)
--[X] Seamstress' Sword
-[X] [AGENTS] [ISABELLA] By My Side
-[X] [AGENTS] [FAMILY] Tend the Farm
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I was wondering why both proposed plans only had one copy of Alien Brain Slugs... and then I remembered that I never specified the action could be taken multiple times, despite mentioning that other Planeswalkers would be there for two weeks (aka taking two copies of the action).
Whoops.
M0's staying there for three weeks for cleanup, but everyone else is taking two Actions on the matter. None of this is mandatory for Morsel, of course, but it might affect plans made.
Whoops.
M0's staying there for three weeks for cleanup, but everyone else is taking two Actions on the matter. None of this is mandatory for Morsel, of course, but it might affect plans made.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] [SECRET] Keep
[X] Plan: the other kind of humanitarian
[X] Plan: the other kind of humanitarian
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
@MrRageQuit @veekie Adjusted my vote. Giving the Resistance a human demigoddess of Blood will be a project for another time, unless you wish to Frankenvote something identical to the original.
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- He/Him
It's fine by me.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Eh... kinda sorta? It'll be another month where whoever the fuck this is can't help the Resistance with fucked up blood magic. The same reasoning that caused me to pick clerics now instead of wizards later for Chrono Trigger post-Day of Lavos.
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You've actually met Sothis before... kinda. She is Rhea's dead mom, but due to a convoluted resurrection scheme that Grimaldo only halfway knows about, she wound up as Byleth's headmate.
Sothis, being a dragon-goddess with kids and a church of her own to take care of, isn't likely to sign up for XCOM--but thanks to Rhea, the church has no shortage of militant zealots ready to solve problems with violence. Given Grimaldo's previous teamwork with Edelgard, establishing any manner of transport between the two planes would effectively give XCOM an entire Fantasy Europe to ally with.
And then there's the benefits Madoka gets from having another goddess in her debt. If the Chrono Trigger action is the do-gooder option for building her church, this is the appeal-to-authority one.