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>>4088746
With the steel mill done and your gear finally upgraded, your attention fell on the Farsalos militia. Your most recent plan to bait the Monster King would have a chance of putting the village in the crosshairs so they might want an upgrade as well. You set off to work with making a stock of identical steel halberds to replace bronze spears that the militia was using at the time. You’ve filled up the armory with three hundred of these weapons just in case. If things go south it should allow for more people to take up arms, else it would be stored for the future use when the militia grows in numbers. You follow this up with sets of cuirasses and steel helmets to improve upon the existing gambesons. You finish this all off with sets of steel arrows and ballista bolts for scorpios. That’s probably everything that you can reasonably do now. There are only 64 men in the village militia currently. 40 of them use polearms while the rest operate scorpios. It is decent but not really enough to defend the village from an actual siege. It is possible for everyone who can hold weapons to participate but with the level of training they’d have you’d expect many casualties even with the new gear. You might want to leave some or even all of your allies here just in case it goes south.

Then you start preparing the bait. You go for two dozen of large firework shells. The mortar won’t really be needed since you can just ignite and fling them into the sky manually which would eliminate a possible point of failure. The plan is pretty simple: you move a certain distance away from Farsalos and detonate all of the fireworks in hopes that like last time it would attract the interest of the Monster King allowing you to narrow down its location. There are some risks to the village, but if you succeed the number of monster raids would drop drastically in the area so it is worth the risk. You’ve ran it through the village chief and later the village council that consisted of basically all of the adult villagers and they seem to agree with your plan, but they ask for Mina to stay in Farsalos just in case and they’d cease all activity beyond the village walls for a few days while you are executing your plan.

>>4088753
After the vote, Mina approached you with the call from Nike’: “Hello, Ag. Congratulations on becoming the biggest subject of our meetings for the last month. I won’t bore you with too many details, but eventually we decided to place the choice to your allegiance in your hands. We won’t be excessively pushing you to join us as it was decided that it would be just as beneficial for the pantheon if you form your own small allied state in that region.

Among other things, Yaw and Elspeth really want to see your pod. You are the first Synthetic Goddess from the “third wave” which we didn’t even know about before. Vera has apparently suspected that there was something going on with you. She could predict some of your behavior, but it was… limited. She’s not too worried since there are people like Apostate who are immune to precognition due to their psi nullification, but your type of interference is currently… unique, so to say. As you’ve probably guessed, everyone is very interested to find out why exactly that’s the case.

Mina has told me about your recent adventure. Great job with eliminating another threat to Labyrinth’s safety. These… “ghouls” are a common scourge in the Labyrinth. I have personally destroyed dozens of their lairs during my travels. They “reproduce” by creating these piles of mummified remains of local inhabitants that seem to work like very primitive afterlife anchors. From what we know, it is very... unpleasant to be captured in one of those. I’ve never met one with a floating chunk of glow- quartz though. Maybe someone didn’t have the heart to deal with the blight?

In any case, I need to head out now. Elspeth and Yawgmoth would like to either pay you a visit or invite you to Valhalla if you take your pod along with you. Please tell Mina when you have the opportunity and see you next time.”

So, looks like Elspeth wants to pay you another visit. You wonder why it took them so long, it’s been over a month since the last one. And what should you choose? A visit to Farsalos would allow you to impress them with your progress, but then again you could just take the pod along and minimize the risks. And you have your Monster King extermination planned…

>You can postpone your monster hunting for a few days, Elspeth can come over as soon as she wants
>Pantheon comes first in this case, you’re ready to go to Valhalla at the closest opportunity
>Tell her that you’d come back to this after you’re done with the monster king extermination
>Tell her that you’re sorry but you are currently up to your neck in projects. Maybe another month?

Monster King party:
>Go alone, everyone else should protect the village
>Go with Haven and Sig, Mina would defend Farsalos
>Go with Mina, a few monster hunters should be enough to protect the villagers
>Go with the entire team, village can handle itself
>Other?

>>4088754

>Tell her that you’d come back to this after you’re done with the monster king extermination
Ask for 1 or 2 days since the entire village is currently in standby for this


>Go alone, everyone else should protect the village

Coordinate something with Haven, prepare a differently colored firework, one that we can blow up if we need backup, assure her that we will be alright but tell her to keep am eye out fornit in case we fail and they have to defend themselves, we trust her to protect the villagers in our absense and lead them to the shelters if something happens to us, give her a winning and reasuring smile before we depart.

>>4088754
Do we have concecus about joining or not?

i was against joining them, but since changed my mind, while it might destabalize the balance of the 3 countries, i would argue that we have to strong a connection to their pantheon and the country to go independend, especially since i don't want to force farsalos to potentially make a choice

>>4088759
>>4088754

i agree with the plan thus far, but we really shouldn't put them in danger, so no emergency firework, if there is something that is giving us trouble even mina would be in to much danger.

instead, give them a timeframe, if we don't report back after lets say 4 days and don't fire of a specailly coloured firework, they should have mina report this to Nike asap.

>>4088760
I don't think that people reached a consensus yet and there is a lot of stuff between now and independence

>>4088763
The emergency firework was not for them to come tp our rescue but for them to prepare the village and lead the villagers to the shelters, having Mina tell Nika is good too

>>4088759
>>4088763
Support

>>4088760
I am too in favor of joining them eventually, but we can do it slowly, building mythos for the people and slowly integrating, remaining a protectorate for the time being

>>4088770
ah, then i missread that

>>4088759
+1

>>4088759
>>4088760
>>4088763
>>4088770
>>4088771
>>4088778
>>4088780
Writing

You tell Mina that you’ll come back to this once you’ve dealt with your current plan to hunt the Monster King. You don’t expect it to take more than a few days though. She nods and relays your message as you return back to preparations. The entire village is going into a high alert mode as soon as you leave and you’ve decided to keep all of your team in Farsalos. You’ve prepared a special flare that you can fire off if shit hits the fan too hard for you to manage so that the village could prepare for a massive attack or evacuate if it is too overwhelming. Mina should handle most of the threats, but if you have trouble that would mean that even she might not be completely up to the task. During the attack the villagers would be tucked into the bunker network and if the situation deteriorates, they would evacuate to Mirangi through the emergency exits. Your friends should help with that.

Haven can’t help but be worried about you and she approaches as you were making the final checks. You give her a reassuring smile and tell her that she shouldn’t worry, you’ll definitely come back home from this. And then you realized that you’ve just raised a death flag on yourself. Luckily, Haven was oblivious to the literature tropes of your time and you didn’t display any reaction to your minor foot in mouth moment so hopefully all is good. You walk out of the north- western gate and the guards close it behind you. A small running start and you float off into the air and head towards the river.

A small clearing on the other side of the Farsalos river seemed like a good place to start with your plan. The stream should isolate you from one side and monsters in that area should be less… depleted. This gives you the highest chance for the plan to work. You pull out the first package of fireworks. You have three of those in total. By blowing them up in several different places you should have a chance to triangulate the location of the Monster King. Well, here goes nothing. The first batch is lit up and flung into the sky where it explodes in a bright flash of light and a loud bang.

>Roll 1d20, time to get this party started!

Rolled 2 (1d20)

>>4088883
Lets find the bastard

Rolled 15 (1d20)

>>4088883
Poor Haven, let's hope we can make a heroic return

Rolled 9 (1d20)

>>4088883
and now my chant

pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1

Rolled 53 (1d100)

>>4088883
Lets see if we can get a nice trophy out of this, a monster crown from the king

Rolled 7 (1d20)

>>4088910
Sorry, wrong dice, could count as a 10 tho

>>4088890
>>4088891
>>4088895
>>4088911
Writing

>>4088883

Rolled 20 (1d20)

>>4088942

>>4088945
>>4088939
Aaaaaaaaaa

Me and my tardiness

>>4088939
>>4088945
well RIP

>>4088945
Of course

>>4088945
lol, fine, I was still in note checking phase. I'll account for it

>>4088954
Just so you know, it is an encounter roll, it is a matter of opinion if what will happen is good or bad

>>4088956
Well, a good thing would be finding the king, which would Also be bad, maybe finding him in a good situation for us

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>>4088954
The response didn’t leave you waiting and your position high over the trees gave you enough of a vantage point to allow you to detect the direction and rough distance to four separate Monster King signatures. Yes, four. Looks like the idea to use an order of magnitude more fireworks than last time was not the best one. You clearly hear one source 35-40 kilometers to the North- West in the rough direction of Holy Nation border, another one is 120-ish kilometers to the North- East- East somewhere in the disputed border region between Ceno and Valistrat. The third one was around 30 kilometers almost directly to the North-East which is roughly 2/3 of the way to closest Valistrat border. The last signature is a hundred or so kilometers to the North- North East wedged between Holies and Valistrat border region. Well, this explains why the wilderness is so hard to colonize. These “Monster Kings” are probably pushing against human expansion. If you wipe them out it is likely that the three nations would expand more freely into the region. Fascinating…

Your thoughts get interrupted once the waves of “confirmation” replies echo from the local monsters. As you’ve expected, numerous common monsters start advancing towards Farsalos along with several stranger, rarer and louder noises. In your region there is only one noise in general, a thundering sound of breaking tree bark as the massive swampy “Ent” of sorts rises just above the treetops about four kilometers away from you and starts to slowly head in your rough direction. Looks like that's the only "unit" that the North-Western King is sending against you. It seems that the Monster Kings are done playing around and they are throwing in heavier artillery. If the new sounds are other giant monsters Farsalos would be dealing with at least three of them while you’re hanging in here. However, it is unlikely that these huge creatures would arrive anytime soon, you have about an hour until the big guys make their way to Farsalos. Maybe you could manage to kill yours before they strike the village. Still, that’s not great news, can you even fight those titans? Maybe you can give the monsters enough casualties to force a retreat?

Roll 1d20 for combat and choose an option:
>Attempt to neutralize wooden giant here and now
>Head to Farsalos immediately and try to neutralize the closest giant
>Other ideas?

Rolled 16 (1d20)

>>4089050

>Attempt to neutralize wooden giant here and now

Time to chop some firewood


Go heavy on the tk, increase froction to create flames and try to find a core of some kind with out tk to destroy it

Rolled 5 (1d20)

>>4089050
kill this one before going there, time to rain some gadly wrath

Do not mess with the monster kings near valistrad and holy nation, they can handle their own, we just deal with this one closest to us

Rolled 20 (1d20)

>>4089050
We can use heavy bolders if we can find it or straith up chop and explode It with the bow

Depending on how we deal with this one we can think about calling nike for help

>>4089085
I'm on fire today

Rolled 12 (1d20)

>>4089050
kill this one, we need to know how to kill these to better help farsalos
if we don't make a good enough dent in this one, we make a run for farsalos, they would need our help to just help everyone flee

>>4089085
ok this one is dead

also the obligatory mantra

pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1 pls no 1

>>4089087
i would suggest a bath, but can that wait until we killed these guys?

>>4089085
Nice, male sure ro grab a part of it to make a hero entrance in Farsalos to impress and relieve Haven a lot lol

>>4089091
I would laught had I not realized that I just condemned myself to roll a 1 after that post

>>4089066
>>4089073
>>4089085
>>4089088
Writing

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>>4089126
You decide that you have to kill the giant tree monster right here and now. It could give you required experience to take on other giant creatures and Farsalos has no defenses against so you can’t let it get anywhere close to your home, or more likely the port and industrial area. If it would take too long or end up too powerful you would have to cut and run to get back fast enough to assist Mina with holding off the horde while villagers evacuate. What did you get yourself into...?

You push your powers and accelerate hard towards the monster while pulling out your bow and loading a heavy steel arrow. You know, it would be nice if you had incendiary ammunition. Your firecrackers would at best only tickle something of this size. In any case, you make a strafing run at speed targeting anything that could be important such as eyes, weird protrusions and so on and so forth. It seems that the eyes of this creature are similar to swamp monster cores, but their destruction only produces a pain response in the Ent. It wails around after being hit with your volley but it gets barely slowed down. You have to find another strategy to take down this mountain.

Thus, you find several huge boulders, rip them out of the ground and start divebombing the monster at high speeds. Resulting impacts produce huge craters in the creature’s body tens of meters wide and several meters deep, but that seems to only register as minor wounds at best. You don’t seem to be damaging any important organs. In fact, you aren’t sure if this thing has any important organs. One lucky boulder does take out the entire facial area of the beast and disorients it, but it becomes obvious quickly that this thing can regenerate in the matter of hours so if you don’t kill it now the advantage would be lost…

But then you get a brilliant idea. You position yourself in front of the creature, anchor yourself telekinetically to the ground and produce a powerful telekinetic “punch” into the creature’s torso. This instantly eats a fourth of your energy reserve and you feel a massive recoil, but the telekinetic push ends up so powerful that the creature is pushed off its legs and impacts into the forest behind it crushing numerous trees and producing a shockwave upon impact. You land on its chest and pull out Haven’s gauntlet. By activating the blue light targeted at you and the red targeted at the swamp Ent you’ve managed to start draining the “life force” from the creature. The wooden body starts withering and turning grey after which it starts breaking up into dust allowing you to basically “tunnel” through the creature’s body.

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>>4089344
Just five minutes later you discover its true core situated deep below its flesh somewhere around the large hump on the back. It takes you some time to drain it dry leaving the core as shriveled up raisin, but at this rate you are going to need all that energy. You’ve managed to get yourself back to 4/5 of your energy pool. Before you leave, you slice up the core to make sure the monster is dead, after which you fly out of it and back into the sky to get to Farsalos as quickly as possible.

As you return home you are somewhat relieved: the situation is fucked up, but not beyond repair. Outer wall is overrun but nothing has managed to make its way past the main walls. All villagers that could hold weapons are huddled up on top of the walls firing arrows down an absolute sea of various creatures or monitoring their sections of the wall to poke monsters that are trying to climb with halberds. There is probably most of the local population of wolves, almost a hundred swamp things, whole swarms of the owl-men and around three hundred of those mace- tails. Swamp- things are busy trying to pummel the iron reinforced gates that are currently holding while mace- tails are forming into actual turtle formations to defend themselves against ballista fire while some of them are flinging spikes off the tips of their mace tails at the defenders. Owl-men don’t have enough altitude to jump and glide into the inner perimeter so they are rushing the walls and trying to scale them up. Giant wolves are mainly inefficiently scratching the walls and making nuisances out of themselves. They are here for when the gates finally fall.

In this whole mess you can see a distinct bloody death canyon made by Mina leading to a body of the biggest freaking charcoal black wolf you have ever seen. This thing is three stories tall and currently lying dead as its body crushed a section of the outer palisade below its mass. It was killed by a precise cut to the base of its neck by a large sharp object, so you are going to congratulate Mina on her excellent kill when this mess is all over. It seems to be the first and smallest of giant monsters on approach.

Just as you get the hang of the situation the second creature arrives. It is a giant… snake- leech thing with four arms that end in sharp pincer- like fingers. This thing is titanic, almost twice as tall as the surrounding trees and easily capable of circumventing Farsalos walls. It has vaguely humanoid shape of its upper body with the “face” dominated by a large suction cup- like maw surrounded by rows of serrated teeth. What a nasty bugger, it has to die now.

>Roll 1d20 for the fight. Strategies welcome

Rolled 10 (1d20)

>>4089350
TK cut him, try to separate that head from the body, the neck seems vulnerable, if that fails attack with ranged debris accelerated and arrows inside it's mouth.

If we sense a weak spot take it

Rolled 4 (1d20)

>>4089350
Arg, I don't know.
We could use the shield to cut it too?

Rolled 3 (1d20)

>>4089350
Fuck his day with Tk and giant sword, as fast as we can

>>4089368
Shield is a blunt weapon. You can whack it with a shield

Rolled 20 (1d20)

>>4089350

>>4089374
*BOOOYAAAAH!*

>>4089373
Well, that can be a future project, sharpen the shields edges and put a leather sheet protecting it when we are not using it, we could use it a s a tk flying saw

>>4089374
Explode him from the inside kek

>>4089358
>>4089368
>>4089371
>>4089374
Writing

>>4089459
You pull out your greatsword and enhance your movements with telekinesis. Funny thing about greatswords is that they are too long to be used as swords. Normal movements would see them hitting the ground with each swing which means that they should be used more like polearms by swinging them from side to side. In this case, however, you have to hover in midair to hit the creature anyway so you have more control over your blade. Maybe some hovering could help your swordplay in general?

Unfortunately, even though you manage to make deep cuts in the creature’s body, it rapidly regenerates. Both halves of the cut spurt hundreds of small tentacles and pull themselves together in a very disturbing form of healing. You can’t seem to make a cut deep enough to hit any vital organs either. The creature’s flesh behaves like a non-Newtonian liquid and it hardens drastically upon impact. Even when chopping at full power you don’t manage to take off its head.

And here your luck runs try. The monster’s titanic hand manages to suddenly grab you from thin air. You didn’t expect it to move so fast. The claws pierce your cape and steel armor but they get stopped by your gambeson somehow after which it does a pincer movement with its fingers causing them to act like metal cutters. You end up getting two massive gashes in the back plate of your armor and your pelt. You attempt to dodge out of the way but the second hand catches you by your shield while another one catches your right leg in a pincer.

The creature pulls the arms apart ripping the shield’s leather straps off your gauntlet and leaving you hanging by the leg as it starts to clamp down on it with the strength of an industrial hydraulic press. The claws easily pass through the steel plate and dig into your flesh in an incredibly painful display of this beast’s raw power. It can’t clamp down completely which you presume is due to your body’s armor belt but it still hurts like hell. Eventually you beat disorientation and manage to twist your sword enough to cut off the creature’s wrist off which promptly gets you falling from 6 stories high into the ground with the giant pincers still attached to your leg. Once on the ground you do manage to pry them open and return to the fight, even if limping.

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>>4089583
However, it was not necessary anymore as a bolt of purple lightning impacts the monster straight to its ugly face and blossoms out like a giant ball lightning as the creature’s entire upper body completely disintegrates turning into ash followed less than a millisecond later with an explosion that shatters it to the four winds. You quickly get on your feet and gain some altitude before you notice that the majority of the smaller monsters in the area are deep fried with some remaining lightning charges hopping between the charred corpses. Mina is luckily alright; her area was untouched by the massive discharge of electricity. The kings made another echoing noise after which the monsters that were outside of the area of effect of that attack quickly turned their backs and fled in random directions. Looks like the party is over.

On the wall you note two figures: a tall woman with a huge sword and another woman with a spear and shield whom you quickly identify as Nike’ and Elspeth. The former was waving to you so a few moments later you’ve made your way to them. “Pardon the intrusion, Ag. Mina decided to call for help when you got caught and Elspeth insisted to go along” she said to which Elspeth adds: “I hope you won’t mind a little help.” as she makes a V shape with her fingers as a small electric arc climbs from the finger bases to the tips like Jackob’s ladder.
____________________________________________
And on this note we have to pause for today. Feel free to make suggestions, ask question and discuss. I hope you’ve enjoyed and I’ll see you next time.

>>4089585
Thanks for running

Time to hug Nika , thank elspeth and see if anyone got hurt. If Haven saw that grab from the monster she probably fainted kek

What fo you guys think? Maybe we could still track down the closest king

>>4089585
thanks for running, see you next week

>>4089585
Hey guys. Sorry, I overslept and I need to get to the bank before I start the game. I'll post a notification when I get to preparing the post.

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>>4089585
“Nika! Elspeth! Thank you for coming. I… might have gotten over my head with the Monster King slaying plan…” you say as you hug Nike’, who seems to consider such form of affection to be a bit awkward which Elspeth in turn finds amusing. “You’re welcome” she says “I bet you would have won this fight eventually, but I’m not sure if your followers would survive for long enough to see you do so.” Oh right, the villagers. You excuse yourself and quickly fly over to check on the situation.

It is not as bad as it could have been. Farsalos walls are sturdy and the addition of roofs and additional defenses on top of them probably saved a lot of your people. Unfortunately, it seems that there were losses. In one place an owl- man managed to get into the inner perimeter and it clawed a couple poor sods before being poked to death with halberds. The rest of the dead and wounded came from the spike barrage from mace- tails. You managed to save some of the severely wounded with the help of Haven’s gauntlet, but in total you’ve lost a dozen people. Gauntlet can’t bring dead to life and there were a dozen of people unlucky enough to be killed nearly instantly.

You didn’t know them that well, but you don’t think that it is supposed to be a good thing. One of the Potter Archippos students ate a spike just above his nose which entered the brain and was stuck halfway through, he was likely dead the moment it happened. Philan the carpenter was hit by the owl- man and bled out before you’ve got to him, looks like his son would have some big boots to fill soon. The others, you didn’t even remember their names. There were a couple militia members, although they were the most defended with their new armors. You’ve also found the body of one of the iron plant workers at the inner base of the wall. The spike hit him in the lung and he would have survived, but the agony caused him to fall over the protective fence and the four-story drop finished the deed.

Your friends are alright, luckily. Sig’s armor protected her from several direct impacts while Haven was unharmed due to some sheer luck on her side. Mina, while being covered in wolf blood from head to toe and high as balls from adrenaline, didn’t have a scratch either as her “shield charm” was not depleted in the fight. Amythos, the militia chief, was hit badly in the shoulder but you’ve managed to patch him up with the gauntlet. You note that healing eats much more energy than absorption provides and you end up tapping your own reserves. By the end of the cleanup you are just under half full.

>>4100853
This is the first time when your choices had real consequences. Villagers don’t seem to blame you, after all you’ve given them a chance to vote on the issue and an ample warning. In addition, the head goddess of their pantheon and a literal goddess of war came to assist you so there isn’t even a whisper of you being wrong, but why do you feel like it is? Twelve people were killed and many more were wounded because of your decision. If you didn’t try poking the bear your people would’ve been safe. And in addition, did you really get what you wanted? You wanted to find the Monster King and kill it, but you’ve found four and even if you locate and kill one it would allow for nearby states to expand into the nearby territory, so you can’t easily cash in on that information either. And it looks like there is a funeral for you to visit soon. Maybe you could do something for the ones you’ve lost…

The villagers have finished with their victory chants and are starting with the cleanup. It seems that this is going to take them quite a while to get everything sorted and you immediately see where the enemy came the closest to breaching. The walls have held amazingly well, which is not too surprising considering their thickness. Unfortunately, the attacked gates were jammed and damaged badly. You don’t think that they’d hold for more than an hour of such pounding so you are going to replace them with steel reinforced wooden gates. You are also adding steel bars behind them as a second layer plus all the way around the walls to prevent owl- men from climbing into the defender section again. The last thing that comes to your mind is spikes to discourage climbers even further. You’ll deal with that as soon as you have a moment of free time. Right now, you have too much on your plate

>We can’t lose the initiative! Pick the monster king and attempt to locate and attack it!
>North- Western king at the border of Holy Nation
>Northern king at the border of Holy Nation and Valistrat
>North- Eastern king at the closest border of Valistrat
>Far eastern king at the further border of Valistrat

>Alright, you know why Elspeth is here. Let’s show her the pod straight away
>You have a guest, what owner would you be if you don’t serve Elspeth some tea, right?
>You need to honor those who have fallen, time to plan the funerary arrangements
>You just want to lie down and your leg hurts…
>Other?

>>4100855

>You have a guest, what owner would you be if you don’t serve Elspeth some tea, right?
Make both Elspeth and Nika confortable, let the villagers handle the dead bvut tell Rheia to let us know when they are ready, we want to attend their funeral rites

>>4100855

>You need to honor those who have fallen, time to plan the funerary arrangements

Say that we are sorry to leave them alone after they came and did so much to help us but....we need to do this, we will be with them soon.

Leave our leg as it is, it will heal with time and we can use some limping right now as a reminder of what happened.

For the funeral procedures just go with whatever they do, do not interfere in their family mourning but pay our respects as any other would.

>>4100877
No setting up some elaborate funerary home? No statues?

>>4100880
Maybe set up the cemitery or some tombstones but nothing grand, I don't want people to think that dying for us is sonething great and worthy of praise. This was a clusterfuck, respect their traditions and pay our respects they way they did to the countless victims of monsters that came before them

Maybe thank their effort during the battle and say you are sorry this happened, we will make sure the village is safer

>>4100867
>>4100877
>>4100896
>>4100855
Cant write much atm, but I support this

>>4100896
>>4100877
>>4100867
Agreed

Thank the people that fought for Farsalos, the loss was high but with the help of Elspeth and Nike we managed to kill many of the local monsters, making the area safer for some time until they build their numbers back, giving us time to find a way to pacify the area too.

This is our first taste of loss caused by our actions, after our guests go away we should sit down with Haven and unload some worries on her, it will be good to talk about and she probably noticed that despite the victory we feel that something is wrong

>>4100909
>>4100902
>>4100896
>>4100880
>>4100877
>>4100867
Alright, writing

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>>4100925
You sigh and lead your two guests to your home while limping a bit. Your leg was pretty heavily damaged but you still could use it normally, if at a much reduced strength. However, you didn’t turn your pain reception completely down so it still produced a dull pain that made it a bit difficult to walk. You politely refused Elspeth’s proposal to heal it though, you feel like it is appropriate for you to limp after what has happened. You quickly get some tea going and get them something to eat for them after which you excuse yourself to attend to the cleanup and the dead. Both of them understand your position and agree to wait for you to do your thing. You’ll only need a few hours.

In Ceno burial ceremonies differ from place to place, but near the border it is usually done as quickly as possible. With the lack of morgues with modern powered cooling storage it is impractical to keep the body for later burial and it also risks infections. Plus, in the territory where monsters are common this is done to prevent the body from being devoured which in Ceno religion is considered to be endangering the soul of the deceased. Caskets are usually the norm in the more developed towns while the semi-nobility can afford more extravagant places for the final rest. In your case you don’t want the death related to you to feel great or worthy of a praise so even though you could set up an extravagant cemetery, you don’t think that it would be a good idea. Instead you’ll deal with the caskets, the tombstones and all of the digging as well as with the creation of the general cemetery area inside of the second defensive perimeter where the previous burial spot lied.

For that to work you’ve cleared out the area from monster corpses piling them up into a giant mound behind the palisade for later incineration. Elspeth char broiled them to the point that wolf hides and mace- tail shells are no longer useable so the only way to deal with them is to burn everything. Mina can decide what to do with the giant black wolf, it was her kill.

Then you chop down and process several trees straight into the new coffins along with some of your own stocks of linen fabric used for internal decoration and some varnish to protect the wood from rot. You gave them to the cleanup crews so they would have the place for the bodies while you flew to your improvised basalt quarry to do some masonry. Ceno tombstones usually come in the form of a single wooden plank or a rectangular stone plate with the name, age and some kind of message written on them, rarely with addition of some kind of symbol or a painting of the deceased’s face. Unlike Holies, Cenophilans don’t have universal religious symbols and only priests get the symbol of their deity inscribed on the tombstone. They weren’t your devout followers and you don’t feel particularly godlike today, so you go for more of the standard package.

>>4101064
Elspeth and Nika join you in their “mortal forms” once you return to prepare the graves. They said that they didn’t feel like sitting this one out and Elspeth assisted you a bit with telekinetic digging. Her approach was a bit more… organic than yours. Looks like this is the difference between your techniques. You’ve always imagined large mechanical machinery for heavy telekinetic labor, you wonder what does she do? What images occur in her head when she casts?

Then the three of you participated in the mourning. Since everyone’s family was here, there was no real reason to wait for tomorrow. No matter the era, it seems that humans grief as heart- wrenchingly as always. It reminded you of the only other funeral that you’ve been on, your parents. Your grandparents died before them, but you didn’t have an opportunity to go to their funeral due to your exams, so that was the only one that you’ve remembered. You gave a speech, nothing too fancy, they fought well, you are sorry for what has happened and you’ll do whatever you can to make the village safer. It then all turned into a blur that you barely remember… or barely want to remember. The coffins were closed, procession was held, they were lowered into the graves and you’ve covered them up with dirt after which everyone just stood there grieving before one by one people returned to their homes. You too returned home with Haven, Sig, Rheia and the two of your guests. Life must go on…

“So, the pod…” you start telling Elspeth: “I remember you wanted to invite Yawgmoth, right?”. “He is the head engineer who worked on the mark 2 pods, he would love to see them. May I invite him here?” she replies

>Yes, you don’t have any objections
>Yes, if he comes alone
>No, you’ll show it to her only
>You don’t mind to lend them the pod for research
>Other?

>>4101068
>Other?
>if you think it's ok I won't oppose

>>4101068
I don't mind, you two can look at it if you want.

>>4101068
>>Yes, if he comes alone

a one on one talk, so we can better evaluate his personality/how he works, since its about a kid, we rather want to be careful

>>4101085
It is not about a kid, it is about Ag's pod. We hid the second one

>>4101085
No need it's our pod, not the kids pod, I rather have Elspeth along all the time to be safe actually

>>4101086
>>4101089
oups, then skip my post >>4101085

>>4101081
+1

>>4101081
>>4101084
>>4101085
>>4101089
>>4101090
>>4101093
Alright, writing

File: Zxpfer-Ember-(Warframe)-W(...).jpg (155 KB, 811x1149)

155 KB JPG

>>4101129
“I don’t mind, if you think it’s ok, I won’t oppose” you tell Elspeth who in turn nods and glances at Nike. She leaves in the direction of her temple saying “Give me a moment…” returning back less than a minute later with the man in question along with what you assume to be one of his cups. Yaw is wearing the same outfit he had when you’ve first met him during your visit to pantheon’s headquarters, the same white grey and black cloak that covers ceramic- looking armor below along with his usual unremarkable black hair and his own brand of halo with white glossy parts hiding golden spinning clockwork below. His companion is a woman with pink hair combed to one side and cut shorter on the other side. Her hair and face are open, but her ears and everything below her chin is either covered or completely replaced, you can’t really tell which. The rest of her suit… or body is made from this strange rubbery material colored in light grey, gold or black. So that’s what Nike’ meant when she described his cups as “bio- mechanical”.

“Oh, you must be Agatha. It’s good to meet again, officially this time. Call me Yaw, and this is Ember, she’s my assistant for today” he says gesturing at his companion. Ember bows lightly to you in response. “Would it kill you guys to use a pin when visiting mortal villages?” Nike’ asks him with a sigh. “I didn’t have one on me, sorry. It’s not that bad, right?” he replies with a slightly awkward smile. “Yeah, great for living with a low profile” you reply with a joke and point at the villagers poking from behind the nearby buildings with curiosity. “Alright, just get in my house, the pod is downstairs”.

You lead them to your lab and grab the dwarven lantern on your way. You haven’t had the opportunity to add lighting and ventilation shafts are currently placeholders until you get power running in your home. Your pod is placed on the lowermost level of your lab for maximum isolation from the surface. Counting the two levels of cellar it is technically six stories below the ground. You unlock the thick door in that section from the stairs and here it is, your pod. A near featureless white “pill” that you’ve spent over two thousand years in.

File: Yawgmoth.jpg (1.78 MB, 2494x2480)

1.78 MB JPG

>>4101393
“Fascinating! So, the project was revived…” mutters Elspeth as Yaw produces an audible whistle. Yaw, Ember, Elspeth and you enter the room and you close the door behind you. “So, they continued the work on my original survivability concept. I wonder how much longer could this pod survive on its own compared to mark two…” he says as he pulls his halo down and it projects two “lenses” in front of his eyes. “No moving parts beyond the door mechanisms, fascinating. I can barely discern where the hull ends and the internal mechanisms begin. Manufacturing science must have taken a massive leap in the decade after us. I’m not even sure where to begin here… It can’t be disassembled, even for refueling. That’s strange. I can see the refueling port but it is under a 20-centimeter plug of diamondoid. I guess it might be possible to interface with it wirelessly somehow…” he continues muttering as he examines the pod Elspeth quietly listens to him and his endless stream of tech jargon that even you have trouble following.

From what you’ve gathered, the pod seems to be a direct upgrade over mark 2 design in terms of survivability. It is significantly tougher and much harder to damage externally. The internals are generally the updated versions of the same stuff used for mark 2-s but heavily integrated into the pod’s hull on almost molecular scale making it basically a single monolithic object. From a discussion that followed it also seems that mark 2 pod users had a lengthy list of smaller individual augmentations instead of four broad “slots” that you’ve had. Things like sensory organs or muscle augments had to be chosen one by one instead of being pre- packaged which extended processing time by an order of magnitude. Elspeth set the timer to two thousand years because that’s what it would take for the pod’s state of the art supercomputers to optimize and apply everything while you were probably done cooking in a couple centuries.

It doesn’t seem like Yaw would manage to complete the investigation here. Elspeth asks if maybe they could take the pod to Valhalla for further investigation.

>As long as you can take it back later it is fine
>Maybe you can request a trade…
>No, just no. It stays here
>Other?

>>4101397
>Maybe you can request a trade…

Of course I'd want it back, along with anything you discovered but on top of that, if I had suitable candidates, would it be possible to have our own...cups? Currently we don't have the technology nor the necessary power but we could certably use the extra help.

>>4101413
That is a neat idea!

>>4101413
>>4101397
i support this, also, since we are doing this much interaction with them, officially joining seems to be a good idea

even if going out into the open for the whole country and the neighboring nations can for sure be delayed
its my 2 cents

>>4101397

I'd appreciate if Ember could help me with a project of my own too, I have an idea for a power plant and could use some material
help with the heat rods to be specific, I don't remember if we had everything we needed to make them work as a power source

>>4101413
this is actually better, but not biomechanical for now, I would prefer them to remain organic

And I'd like to add that those who didn't believe our goddly nature mist be having quite a shock seeing a parade of gods through the streets of Farsalos

>>4101451
>>4101431
>>4101424
>>4101420
>>4101413
Alright, writing

“Alright, but on a few conditions.” You tell her. She answers that she is listening so you continue: “I’d like the pod back along with everything you’d manage to learn about it... in addition to the capability to create my own Cup Bearers”. Elspeth thinks for a few moments and says: “Well, I’m fine with the first two, but it might be a bit harder with your third demand. You see, the process of creating the new Cup Bearer requires input of several gods. I can teach you Psi Ascension, but using it on humans has risks attached to it and requires a biosculptor to make it safer. I don’t see any issues with the demand though, what do you think about us allowing you to use our assistance in the creation of your first Cups?”

You tell her that it is acceptable and explain your current plan to possibly make Haven and/or Sig into your Cup Bearers as opposed to Yaw’s option of making them from scratch. Elspeth nods and says that the process is relatively simple but requires a very powerful biosculptor along with your immediate presence. If you look into how Elspeth and Nike’ do their cups, the first step is a so called “Psi Ascension”. It is a process that unlocks the psychic abilities in sentient beings. Usually the result is similar but weaker to what the donor has, but the person might have their own talent which gets boosted along with the main ascension. However, it might be the other way around and the person might not be attuned to do something specific. For example, Nika is very bad at telekinesis at long ranges. She can do it, but it takes a lot more power and concentration to the point that some of her Cups have a comparable telekinetic output at range.

>>4101697
The second step is biological tweaking. Human brain is not well accustomed to the stresses that psi use puts on it. Thus, unless you want your cups suffering from stroke risks it is basically mandatory to visit a biosculptor to tweak brain's blood vessels and a few other things. While at that, things like biological immortality are also added and the third stage can begin, the so called “physical ascension”. Organic augmentations used on synthetic gods are too complicated to memorize or copy with biosculpting, but it is possible to attempt partial copy of certain traits. For example, Mina might not be as strong and fast as Nike’, but she is definitely stronger and faster than a human. For that you kind of need a couple hours and the constant presence of both the donor, biosculptor and the recipient. It is possible to “scan” a different god for your cup though, Nike’ is the “blueprint” for the majority of the organic Cup Bearers.

The very last trick is the joint invention between Valentina and people from other pantheons who have powers over the mind. This is also how oracles are made. Basically, a direct psychic link is made between you and your Cup. From your side it doesn’t interfere with the psychic protection but on the other side the recipient is fully open so technically you could at any time read their surface thoughts. Pantheon rarely uses that though since it is considered very amoral, but it is in place for emergencies. Also, you can opt out of this process, not everyone likes it for obvious reasons, especially Valistrat, who make their Cups in a more... traditional way.

_______________________________________________________________
And on this note we have to pause for today. It is 2 am here and I can no longer focus. I hope you’ve enjoyed and see you next time. As always, feel free to discuss, make suggestions and ask questions.

>>4101703
thanks for running and see you next week

would anyone be opposed for Rheia to become a Cupbearer as well, since with her intellect she might do some truly impressive works if she has semi immortality.
and i would advocate to not use the psychic link, aside from all those moral reasons we do like the three of them and trust them as well, so there is really no need for it

>>4101703
thanks for running

this sounds awesome, but we would have to talk with our girls to see if they are interested

>>4101713
I would not be opposed to have Rheia on it too, but I'd like to talk with Haven first about this, having a chat alone with her after our business here is concluded should be good regardless, see how was the battle from her point of view

>>4101703
Next thread is up: >>4111948

>>4111958
And the thread is archived