Topic: [Suggestion game]Choice of Magics (Read 29534 times)

Enemy post · « **Reply #708 on:** November 21, 2021, 02:55:57 pm »

We're being more careful.

Quote

You assure Tal that you're being more careful than the ancients were. "They never even realized the monsters might go feral," you say. "I can be more cautious because of it. We put down monsters that seem too rebellious when they're young."

"Well, dragons tend to be submissive when they're young but get more aggressive when they get old," Tal says. "You probably can't tell whether they'll be rebellious until they're older. What are you doing about that?"

"We're…playing it by ear," you say.

"Hmph." Tal seems unconvinced.

Your hope is that by rushing the dragons to maturity, you'll cause them to retain the submissiveness that normally accompanies their youth. But Tal is probably right to think you don't have all the answers. (Increased Caution.)

In the illusory crime drama, the diviner tracks down the Abraxas cultist to a dark lair with a blood-spattered altar. The Abraxas cultist is a bald man wearing a black cowl with an Eye of Abraxas tattooed on his forehead. He is brandishing a dagger at the diviner: "Stay back! This is a holy place, yessss!"

"Aw, hey Noods, it's just an illusion," Tal says, trying to comfort the cowering Noodles. She pats the monkey on the head, but this just spooks him further, and he runs into the corner.

"Just tell me one thing that my spells could not reveal," the illusory diviner says. "Why did you do it?"

"Abraxas told me to!" the cultist says. "He speaks…in my head! Then, as now, he says: kill!"

The cultist lunges at the diviner, who quickly puts up a shield of negative energy: "Antitha!" The illusions then go dark, and the cultist screams.

The diviner's voice-over says in a hardboiled voice, "Another Abraxas cultist, dead before I could bring him in. Did he really hear the dark ghost of Abraxas? Or was he just another nutjob looking to explain the voices in his head? Sometimes, you've just got to let questions go unanswered."

"Boo," Tal says to the disembodied diviner. "You had one job!"

But the illusion show says nothing further. It's over, apparently.

Tal glances over at Noodles. "You can come out now, Noods." The monkey crawls back from his hiding place.

As you remove the crystal from the depression in the back wall, you notice a concealed panel that you overlooked before. You swing it open and reveal a crystal hemisphere, like half a crystal ball. You experimentally touch it, and it glows red.

"No crystal inserted," a disembodied woman's voice warns. "Please insert crystal to record."

"Huh," Tal says. "So we can record our own illusion program for posterity. Kind of neat." She smiles. "Do you want to?"

Noodles jumps in front of the crystal and shimmies with arms outstretched. He's ready to be a star.

"Yes, I do," you say.

1.Let's tell the future that even though our world was bleak, we were happy.
2.I want to tell the future all about Tal.
3.Apologize in advance to the future. I had the best of intentions.

Spoiler: Stats (click to show/hide)

brewer bob · « **Reply #709 on:** November 21, 2021, 03:20:47 pm »

Yellow Pixel · « **Reply #710 on:** November 21, 2021, 04:04:46 pm »

Glass · « **Reply #711 on:** November 21, 2021, 04:47:27 pm »

Enemy post · « **Reply #712 on:** November 21, 2021, 05:02:32 pm »

We apologize to the future.

Quote

"Here, I think I know what I want to say," you say. "I'll go first." You put the crystal you had been watching in the depression at the back of the room and touch the crystal ball.

A disembodied female voice says, "Recording in three…two…"

You stand at the center of the recording stage with your hands folded in front of you. Tal stands by the wall with her arms crossed, watching with curiosity.

"…one."

"Hello, people of the future," you begin. "I'm Royal Sorcerer Foo, and I suspect that you know who I am, because I'm the one who has brought magic back to Eirinia on a grand scale."

Tal rolls her eyes. She clearly thinks you're being a little conceited. But you press on.

"I have the dreadful feeling that this is not going to go as I planned," you say. (Increased Caution.) "So you might wonder why I'm going ahead with it. You, the future, might have preferred that I not disturb the delicate balance of this world any further.

"But there is a chance that I'm talking to a different future. One where vivomancy can take care of disease and automation can create wonders that delight on a daily basis. I have always dreamed of that future. I wanted that for you, for us. I believed we could work out the details somehow. Somehow, we would calm the Eternal Storm, tame the beasts, cure the rot.

"My optimism is looking more and more silly now, and I'm sorry if I caused more trouble than I—hey!"

Tal fires up her luxgladius and slashes the recording crystal in two. The shards fall out of the wall socket.

"Sorry, I couldn't listen to any more of that crap," Tal says. "You don't get to apologize until you fuck up, and you don't get to fuck up until you try your damnedest. You started this magic revival. You had goddamned better well finish it. You want a good eulogy, I promise to write you one when you're dead. Neither of us is writing it before."

Noodles, oblivious, starts to juggle crystal shards.

You hesitate. "You want to go next?"

Tal shrugs. "Between Noodles and Dad, I've got enough imaginary people to talk to. Come on, let's get ready for bed."

Tal's speech did leave you feeling more optimistic—although you still have a bad feeling about all this. (Increased Optimism.)

As you're setting up camp in the recording room, Tal says, "You know, I've been thinking," Tal says. "You've never seemed…completely into this relationship. And now we're spending a lot of time apart as well. Maybe it's time we admitted we really have more of a friendship than a relationship."

You protest that a romance is definitely what you want, but Tal won't have any of it, and you realize that your protestations are for naught.

"Still friends?" Tal asks.

"Still friends," you say, although you've never been sure how that can work.

You go to bed on opposite sides of your two-person bedroll, facing opposite ways. As you're starting to go to sleep, you think you hear Tal sniffle, not once, but twice.

"Tal?"

"I'm fine," Tal says. "Or I will be. Go to sleep."

You arrive in Akriton, and you and Tal part ways to visit your mothers.

"Tell me all about life at court," your mother is saying as she pours you some tea. The smell of peppermint pervades her living room, which is full of quilts and lacy pillows she made herself. "Did you meet any of the noble families? Did you meet Queen Thecla herself?"

"I did," you say. "The queen is a fascinating woman. Strong. You would like her, I think." You proceed to relate some stories about life at court. Your father taps out and leaves the house after about two hours of such questioning, claiming that there is some pressing business at his construction site.

As you relate these stories, you're vaguely aware of a kitchen drawer opening and closing behind you. But you think little of it until you turn and see that your mother is holding a large butcher knife.

"What is that for?" you ask, imagining the answer is something like "cake."

Your mother lunges at you with the butcher knife. You quickly stand, and though she aimed for your neck, she stabs you in the chest instead. The pain is excruciating.

She lunges at you again, and you raise your other arm to block, only to have that arm sliced open. Quickly losing blood, you feel as though you may pass out.

You splash your steaming tea in your attacker's face. She shrieks, and you use the distraction to topple the tea table, sending the tea set crashing to the ground. You hide behind the wooden surface.

That's not my mother, you have the presence of mind to think.

You have moments to decide which spell to cast.

1.Use vivomancy to heal myself.
2.Use a glamor to demand she stop.
3.Kill her with a bolt of negative energy.

Spoiler: Stats (click to show/hide)

Glass · « **Reply #713 on:** November 21, 2021, 05:20:48 pm »

Goddamnit.

1

brewer bob · « **Reply #714 on:** November 21, 2021, 05:53:30 pm »

BlackPaladin99 · « **Reply #715 on:** November 21, 2021, 08:49:02 pm »

Enemy post · « **Reply #716 on:** November 21, 2021, 09:10:24 pm »

Vivomancy.

Quote

You keep your hand pressed to your chest and will the dormant life energy in your mother's wooden house to flow into the wound. Motes of light stream in from all directions. "Me medico therapevo," you murmur, and the wound seals. You still feel queasy, however.

Your mother's impersonator kicks the table away just as you draw your sword. Humble though it is, it's still longer than the butcher knife.

"Tell me who sent you," you say, clambering to your feet. "I'll find out one way or another."

Seeing that you've healed yourself and that you're holding a more intimidating blade, your assailant apparently thinks better of attacking you. She runs for the front door.

"I'm aborting the mission!" she cries to nobody in particular. "It's time for the backup plan!"

Someone is listening with a divination. But who?

You can't afford to give chase—you're too worried about your real mother. You cast a divination to find out where she is.

"Mysterion gnomai, reperio mater mea!"

Your divination reveals your mother tied up in her own cellar. The stone room is mostly empty save for the kegs that stand as a monument to your father's long-abandoned attempt to brew beer.

Your mother is lightly dozing as you cut her bonds and gently wake her up.

"Where am I?" your mother asks. "What happened?"

"You're in your cellar," you say. "As for what happened, maybe you can tell me."

"Fruitseller Fran, she came to…borrow some sugar, I think it was," your mother recalls. "When I let her in, I had hardly shut the door when she knocked me off my feet. She started to tie me up straightaway, and that was all I knew about it."

Just then, the ground shakes, and you hear a crash from above.

"Something tells me we need to get out of here," you say.

"Lead the way, my dear heart," your mother says.

You run up the stairs, pause to note that there is now a ragged skylight filled with negative-energy residue in the living room, and continue out the front door.

You leave your mother's house just in time. Another negative-energy explosion levels the house, leaving only a black cloud where it once was.

"My home!" your mother cries. The shrieks of fleeing Akritonians seem distant as you contemplate the loss of the home you grew up in.

Looking up, you see a Magisterian airship, its sleek metal hull looking entirely alien above your normally quiet hometown. The vessel is a smooth half-sphere flanked by large black cannons. A white shaft on a swiveling mount stands at the bow of the strange ship; its barrel is as wide and tall as a person, making it unlike any cannon you've ever seen. These weapons are manned by figures wearing bowl-shaped helmets, gray cloaks, and black-enameled chain mail.

The powerful automation magic keeping the airship aloft makes all the hair stand up on your body.

"What in the name of Abraxas is that?" your mother says. "Oh, please let this be a dream!"

"It's a Magisterian scout ship!" Tal calls from down the street. She unslings a longbow from behind her back. "Foo, just get your mom to safety!" She takes aim at one of the Magisterian crew.

"Tal, are you crazy?" you say. "You're the one who needs to get inside!"

"Magisterian…she means the Neighbors?" your mother asks you.

"Sorry, mother," you say. "I think they've come for me, and you're…" Collateral damage? You can't think of a polite way to put it, so you just trail off.

The black cannons on the side of the airship swivel and fire to your left and right, leaving craters and clouds of negative energy in the street. As soon as you turn to look behind you, they cut off that means of escape as well, with another blast of negative energy.

The blasts are interrupted when the Magisterian gunner gets one of Tal's arrows in the face.

"Thanks, Tal!" you call out.

"What would you ever do without me?" she replies. "I—oh, crap." She leaps back in time to avoid a negation blast at her own feet, lobbed by another wand-wielding Magisterian on the airship.

"I'm okay!" Tal says, though it's unclear who she's reassuring.

Your mother grips your arm in fear. "Another one is stepping up to the cannon! Do something!"

1.Blast the airship with negation magic.
2.I cast a glamor and demand the airship leave me and Akriton alone.
3.Take control of the vessel with automation magic.
4.I surrender.

Spoiler: Stats (click to show/hide)

Glass · « **Reply #717 on:** November 21, 2021, 09:27:07 pm »

3
3
3
FUCK YOUR RELIANCE ON AUTOMATION
STEAL THEIR HECKING SHIP

Maximum Spin · « **Reply #718 on:** November 22, 2021, 01:07:36 am »

That would be pretty funny. 3.

King Zultan · « **Reply #719 on:** November 22, 2021, 02:52:57 am »

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Author Topic: [Suggestion game]Choice of Magics (Read 29534 times)

brewer bob

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Glass

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King Zultan

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Enemy post

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brewer bob

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Yellow Pixel

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Glass

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Enemy post

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Glass

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brewer bob

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BlackPaladin99

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Enemy post

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Glass

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Maximum Spin

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King Zultan

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