wordcount: 1230 (+6) Bowser: Level 7 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (52/70) Bowser Jr: Level 6 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (49/60) Kamek: Level 6 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (53/60) Location: the End - central island
”GAHHHH, MY EYES” Bowser roared as he stumbled backwards into one of the towers as a result of having been showered, lightly, in the face with acid, crying with pain like someone who’d had jalapeño juice thrown into their eyeballs. Suffice to say was not pleasant. Fortunately for him, the combined assault by the team (which had saved him from having his face melted off in the first place) waylaid the dragon as well, who stumbled over into a tower, fell to the ground and proceeded to get shot and stabbed a whole bunch.
This provided the koopa king with enough time to summon Heel into one hand. He then proceeded to use the Rabbid supporter’s healing power as an eyedropper, holding the rather upset bunny over each eye in turn and giving him a squeeze to force a blast of healing energy out of his backpack and directly into the affected area. His nose and lips still stung from places where acid droplets had struck him, but at least the king could see again. This was right in time for him to block a powerful tail swipe from the dragon with the energy buckler on his mecha-mit, the orange shield defecting the blow from striking either the king and Geralt. Unfortunately the hit shattered the process of deflecting the attack, rendering both its offensive and defensive abilities unusable for the time being.
Gaige-tron was not so lucky to have Bowser there to tank the dragon’s blows and ended up being crushed while saving the courier from that vary same fate. Bowser barely noticed her being taken out of the fight (and in-fact was something of a danger himself to the team in a very similar manner due to his obviousness to the location of their tiny forms as he stomped about) while the other three members of the troop visibly winced when the bot was trampled, and then where relieved when the cats evacuated her wholly intact body to safety. It was, to the trio, very nice to know there was a way to survive trampling what with two giant dragons roaming around the increasingly cramped feeling island.
The Ender Dragon took wing again and proceeded to flap around at a low-ish altitude to spit loogies down on the team as they recovered from her wind blast. Bowser blocked a few of these with a scaly arm and hands, practicing batting them out of the air, to protect himself, his family and his allies. The acid bit into his scales, stinging and itching wherever it touched, but was unable to truly wound his armored and scaled form when it hit where he wanted it to and Blazermate’s lingering overheal quickly patched over any minor inconveniences it managed to cause. In retaliation he spat out numerous fireballs and, while most of these now equally enlarged flaming projectiles ended up simply slowly sailing past their intended target, a couple struck true, mostly against her massive wingspan, washing their impact sites with fire.
Jr meanwhile could mainly only watch as the others took shots at their foe while being frustrated at his lack of long ranged firepower. Still. He got to watch his father go to town kaiju style, which was, to jr, always cool to watch. Passive observation ended however when the dragon dive bombed them with another air blast. Fortunately for the trio Jr was prepared this time, having retrieved a fishing spear (that he’d meant to use for its intended purpose but never got round to practicing) from his duffel bag and jammed it into the spongy stone with a few smacks of the necro-smasher ahead of time. He grabbed Mimikyu with one hand, Kamek in the other and then bit the spear horizontally, gripping it with his jaw to prevent them all from being blown away just in the nick of time. The light trio where lifted off of their feet, but Jrs fangs held true and kept them all from smashing into something or being tossed into the void
As the trio blew in the wind Bowser’s enhancement flickered, the king losing some size as he completely shrugged off the air blast and simultaneously lessened its impact for those blocked by his bulk.
”Kamek! Keep it together down there!” the king yelled at his head minion as his form wobbled from the disruption in consecration caused by his powerup's power sources being waved around like a pair of windsocks.
”Yes sire! Sorry sire!” Kamek called back after the blast passed them and he and Mimikue were put back down by a panting jr. The boy’s trials were not over however, as the Ender Dragon then hovered up and over the top of the island, either completely oblivious or unfazed by the loss of its final healing crystals to an exploding rubber ducky, and started barfing up acid.
”Eww. ok. We should move” jr said as the flood of acid started to drain down from the summit of the island, threatening to make the entire area a deeply unpleasant foot corroding wet floor hazard.
”That’s it. I’ve had enough of you flying around like you’re all that. Get down here!” Bowser roared up at the Ender Dragon as she did this, thundering up the side of the hill and leaping upwards in a very floaty looking jump, hand outstretched to grab her tail and drag her down to the ground. Hard.
”or not.” Jr corrected himself as Bowser began his run, while the mage and Pokemon both eyed the incoming wash with concern. Rather than grab them to run away and disrupt their magic, jr stepped forwards and began drawing on the ground in front of them with the green goo he now secreted from his wrists and new pompadour like horn. As he did he summoned a small team of koopa troopas and commanded them to ”get my car!” to which the Koopa replied with a “yes your majesty” before hurrying around the back of the pillar to do just that.
After they left the goo started exploding, blowing a shallow trench-line in the soft end stone following jr’s drawing . When the koopas came back, carrying the car between them like a bunch of Pikmin, jr got them to toss him it. The much stronger jr caught the lips of the car in one hand and quickly dismissed his troops. Then he grabbed Kamek with the other hand and pulled him close while using the foot on the opposite side to scoot Mimikyu underneath him. Then, right as the acid was about to hit, jr pulled the clown car down over the three of them, turning it into a little bunker rimmed by a drainage ditch. The acid sloshed down from the island summit, and then down into the ditch, and then along its route to lower ground behind them, causing it to drain to either side of where the trio were hiding under the clown car. Splashes of acid leaping up from their fall into the ditch that might still have harmed them instead struck the hardy shell of the clown car, burning off its paintwork but leaving those hiding inside safe to keep Bowser big enough to wrestle with the dragon. Or, in Jr’s case, free to drink several bottles of water to quench the thirst his goop drawing had created.
Artifex stood within a war room. It was new, freshly built within the tower Artifex had hosted Gibbu in and its most prominent feature was a strategy map of Ha-Dûna and its surrounding area. The god still seethed at the offence given by this “Sigeran” and at (some) of Ha-Dûna’s practical excitement at the prospect of roaming out into the world and doing battle in his name.
Rather than lash out immediately, Artifex had first driven his rage into productivity, forging this war room and using what little eyes he had in the area to garner an understanding of the situation therein. The prospects for those upon which the blades of Ha-Dûna would fall were not good. It was true, they had their new walls and the knowledge of how to use them and together they could hold a numerical advantage over the city they were all to spread out and disunified to actually pose much of an opposition. They would need time to amass their strength against the coming storm if they were to stand a chance.
”If the people of Ha-Dûna won’t engage in more constructive distractions, if they want war and death and slaughter, then they shall have it!” Artifex announced to the floating sets of glass butterflies he basically set to follow him everywhere so he could keep a closer eye on their automatic business. The god (in imposing horned insect form) conjured a stone from the air and began to whittle it, carving stone with the ease of wood. Stone dust and splinters fell away until the god was satisfied with the small stone sculpture he’d made. The small statue was the size of a doll, and had a wide smooth base to help it standard upright. It looked like a humanoid grasshopper wearing segmented armor and what looked to be a full face helm with the top slit off around its neck that led into a dark interior.
The god examined the miniature a few times, before nodding and putting it down on the strategy map atop one of the rocky hills surrounding the city of Ha-Dûna.
The sun was setting in an alabaster sky above the highlands around Ha-Dûna. Below in the forest her exiled daughters and sons made camp. Fires were stoked. Meager meals were prepared. Libral amounts of nettle tea was set to boiling.
Spirits were low and perhaps none were lower than those of the Mothers. The nascent order of mothine women charged with upholding peace and protecting the weak had failed their first real challenge. The ascension of the war god Sigeran and the inevitable return of the ways of conquerors and raiders by the city’s people that would follow was antisma to everything they were supposed to uphold.
Aimil sat around a cock fire with a few of her fellows, the first and so far only of their blessed kind.but what did it mean to be blessed by gods who had been foiled, struck down by one that had been considered lesser. Their discussion then, as it had so many nights before,turned to theology. Aimil was getting sick of it, but some of her sisters seemed to have endless energy to invest in the matter.
“I say again. It must be a test! We have been brought low yes, but that does not mean we are forsaken! We must have done something wrong, which is why the gods allowed this to happen,” Mairead, a young mother with ruby and bronze colored wings insisted, “and only once we root out what has displeased them, and then we will be returned to the grace of the gods once more.”
“The gods did not allow this. They intervened, and yet all they could do was let the faithful run,” Sorcha, her wings black and her moonsilver helm still dining her head, retorted bitterly, “you are too young to remember the days when the gods didn’t intervene all willy nilly.”
“You make it sound like its a bad thing, that the gods are paying us special mind”
“All I’m saying, is it wern’t always like this. Who’s to say it always will be,” Sorcha continued “and really, who’s to say they’re able to manipulate things as finely as you say? What did they even do on that black day? Messed with the sky mostly. Made a deer-”
“They gave us wings and silver,” Mairead retorted
“Sure sure. And give the druids power too. But that’s the thing. It’s always people. And wasn’t power that the bastard used to turn the people against the other gods. It was words. It was words from the moon too when the city turned its attention to temple building.”
“And cursed the weapons and bones of those who attacked the innocent, and build the walls around the villages”
“It’s all words and gifts or curses. What I’m saying is they work through people, and if the people don't work with them then maybe they can’t do much.”
It would have been poignant for Artifex’s opening move to have revealed itself then and there, but instead it was about 20 minutes later after Aimil had wrangled the conversation round to the night’s smiting that the statue hit the table. When it did, the side of the hill close to Ha-Dûna exploded as a tall giant of stone and metal pulled itself from the earth, as if it had been entombed within it and had now come back to life. It stood, dirt and stone crumbling from its form and looked towards the city it towered above.
In the camp and in the city the humans looked at the distant figure with fear and awe even as it faded into the twilight and asked themselves “what does it mean”
Artifex next carved several dozen smaller statues, each depicting swarms of hulking insectile beasts with many wings, spikes ridging their limbs and two giant scythe-like blades in-place of hands. As each was placed down on the table next to the first figure, a swarm of man sized monsters spewed forth from the mouth of the statue down below, forming a growing swarm that buzzed around their new home and master.
”Let us see how they like to be the subject of raids, hmmm? If they wish to fight without honor or mercy, let them fight something incapable of either. Go, my titan, sweep away”
The statue, surrounded by a cloud of locustine minions, obeyed, marching forth into the night and vanishing from the sight of the exiles as it headed for the outskirts of the city. It struck the outskirts of it, the plague of giant locusts descending to devour crops of farmstead after farmstead. When the dawn arose, fields lay empty and those farmers that had attempted to fight the horde lay dead, their bodies rend in two by the monster’s blades. It also found the titan standing clear as day stood atop an insurmountable rocky mountain overlooking Ha-Dûna, making sure that they knew it was not going anywhere.
Aimil’s dreams were filled with a strange nightmare of grasshoppers attacking small anthills, descending upon them, ripping them apart and then carrying off their food and young back to their nest. It was a cycle that repeated again and again against hill after hill against all kinds of different ant hill they reached one where the ants closed off the entrances to their hive upon the arrival of the locusts. They did not sit idle inside their home till the locusts eventually tore them apart, and instead used runners to summon ants from other nests. They came, ants of all shapes and sizes, and hemmed the grasshoppers in against the ant hill, and then together the ants from within and from without crushed the grasshoppers between them.
Aimil awoke and had to mull this over for a while before bringing the ideas the dream had inspired to the others. They should go their separate ways, she suggested, to the towns around the Ha-Dûna, and try to convince them to not simply stand alone or submit to the city’s might, but to set aside old rivalries, grudges and animosities and come together as one people to stand against a common foe. Arguments were made this way and that about whether they should go, who would go where or what they should do and how they would keep in touch, but in the end it was agreed. The towns needed to work together if they wanted to survive the tyranny of the city and they would be their messengers and guids towards this new reality.
Artifex nodded satisfactorily as he witnessed this. With any luck his opening gambit would buy them time to do what they needed to do, but only time would tell if it would be enough.
The god stepped away from the table and awaited his opponent’s next move.
Artifex is pissed about Ha-Dûna’s return to war which directly opposes his and Gibbou’s attempts to prevent exactly that. He makes a war room dedicated to the area and then creates a giant animated statue filled with human sized locusts with synths for hands to give Ha-Dûna a taste of its own medicine and also distract them while the Mothers attempt to unite the villages surrounding the city into something like a federation or a mutual defence pact.
Mothers +5
Start 5MP/5DP
1 mp (3 insect discount) for Razor Locust, an extraordinary species of human sized blade armed locust monsters who are bound to the will of the Locust Titan. Ravenous and deadly, they plague the land around the titan, but are unable to travel more than a km beyond it and must lay their eggs within it, thus restricting their ability to spread.
The scythe-like blades that they use to reap crops are imbued with a power that makes the crops grow back faster than they normally would. Their chitien is as tough as copper armor but does not corrode and the teal parts of it make for useful reagents for insect related Magics or Inventions.
2 construction dp discounted by stoneworking to make the legendary beast, the Locust Titan, a giant animated statue 50 meters tall. The statue is incredibly resilient, and home to the ]Razor Locust swarm who dwell and lay their eggs within its hollow chest. The Locusts are its primary weapon as the statue itself deliberately avoids destroying structures, and while the beast can match the speed of a galloping horse its movements are too predictable to reliably trample anyone actively attempting to avoid being squished by it. The intelligence within the statue also keeps the swarm in check, ensuring that it only exacts vengeance upon the desired targets.
1 mp to teach the Mothers about relief armies
1 dp to teach the Mothers about federations
Diplomatic Adepts I (2 civlisation dp addition to the mothers): the order have a basic innate talent for negotiating deals and agreements between towns, cities or whole civilisations.
3mp claim port: Militia: A militia is a fighting force consisting of people whose main profession is not war, but in a time of strife nonetheless take up arms to fight. Milita can range from part time soldiers with some training or even experience in battle to citizens using whatever they can to fight off the barbarians at their gates. Militia are generally unable to hold ground against professional forces and require advantages in numbers, technology, magic, moral, terrain, strategy, fortifications etc. to overcome their disadvantage. They most often don't fight fair as a result.
Groups such as the Mothers can be considered a roaming Militia, for though they do fight it is not their only, or primary, function as an order. The fighters in revolts, revolutions or other civil uprisings generally consist of impromptu formed Militia forces as well. Typically however, a militia guards their own town, city, etc. or is subservient to/acting in support of a more professional army while out on campaign.
Artifex can use this power to create, arm, train, empower etc. Militia forces, their leaders or individual citizen soldiers.
Level 7 Blazermate - (29/70) +6 Level 4 Sectonia - (9/40) +6 Location: the End - central island
Through a combination of yelling and explosions the party expanded upon and clarified Quiet’s deduction and work, shutting down more than half of the crystals through a flurry of firepower. ”ahhh Bandages. Healing. I get it” the slightly confused kamek noted as he conjured a white orb and tossed it to one of the attack clones, switching it to a white mage to heal him.
”Right then, only four-” Kamek began before another explosion echoed from the tower Jr had been using as a firing platform for his minions after the boy hucked a glob of explosive goo onto it’s crystal ”Three left,” he corrected himself.
”Alright! Couple of fireballs should seal the deal. These better not regenerate, that’d be a pain” Bowser added, but before he, or anyone else, could take down the final three healing crystals the Ender dragon swooped in with another attack, and this one was a doozy.
She came in like a hurricane, flying low and dragging a howling gale of air after her. A brief initial impression that she wasn't going to hit anything where rapidly disavowed when the wind blast hit the troop. Kamek and his clones, all supremely light, were hurled along after her path like strands of straw, all clinging to their brooms. The true mage vanished in a panicked teleport, narrowly avoiding the fate of three of his clones who slammed into other towers and dissipated in an instant. Sectonia did the same thing that the koopa mage had done, teleporting to mitigate the wind buffet and keep her spot in the air.
Jr was far less fortunate, his clown car spinning end over end as he clung to its internals and Mimikyu clung to him in turn, long arms wrapped around her trainer’s arm several times over to avoid being tossed to the wind. The car smacked into a tower with a clonk, the ultra-hard obsidian cracking its pristine while surface and killing the engine, causing it to fall to the fortunately more spongy ground. Both the boy and machine were tough but the landing still hurt like heck.
Blazermate didn’t fare very well much like Jr, but unlike Jr, she didn’t have anything to shield her body from the impact against a pillar. Using her combat knowledge, she managed to lessen the damage dealt to her parts by rolling as she hit the pillar, but this still severely damaged her suffering arm part that she used to brunt most of the impact. ”Owwwww” Blazermate said as she glided down to the ground, landing beyond the pillar near where the dragon had stopped to watch its chaos unfold
”Owwwww” jr complained as he crawled out of the lightly smoking clown car along with Mimikyu, who’s cloud like body seemed to have absorbed most of the impacts without much of an issue. Jr. echoed the same discomfort Blazermate felt at hitting one of those pillars.
”Are you alright young master?” asked a suddenly repairing Kamek, who had returned from the high altitude location he had vanished to in-order to stabilize himself without fear of smacking into something. The mage offered the prince a hand, and helped him to his feet.
”yeah. No. Everything kinda hurts.” jr admitted, his body having been jarred by the impacts and aching in complaint about not being allowed to lay still far a fair while longer despite the danger.
”oh dear. Well that is no good. We’ll need to do something about that right away” the mage replied in a concerned tone, before glancing around and asking ”where did my minions run off to” while looking for the white mage clone.
Sectonia, having easily recovered from the air buffet of the Ender Dragon, watched the others as they dealt with it in a much less elegant way. A few slammed into columns, some actually rode the currents somewhat gracefully, and one…. Fell off the edge. ”sigh…” The bee queen exhaled as she began to rapidly blink, closing distance much faster than she could normally by flying in order to catch the falling Euden and bring him back to the platform much like she said she’d do. After all, a Queen doesn’t go against her decrees.
Around the area where the others had been scattered flew Kamek’s white clad doppelganger and the team of toadies, the stout propeller born minions helping to pick people up and while the white mage healed some of their lesser wounds.
”Who cares about them” jr replied to Kamek’s wondering about where his magical medical aid had gotten off to ”where is Papa!? Where is the dragon!?”
The answer was clarified by a roar. When Jr, Mimikyu and Kamek followed the noise round the side of the pillar jr had crashed next to they found the answer to both of the young prince's questions.
Bowser, thanks to his meowser transformation, had had a far better landing than most as, after being blown off the tower he’d landed on his feet (and hands) and used his cat claws and the Mecha-mit to dig into the ground and avoid being blown clean off the side of the island, leaving great scratch marks in the process. The fall being about twice of what the king regularly leapt around ment it had still hurt his legs and arms upon landing and, worse, he’d apparently drawn the ire of the ender dragon as she hovered over her scattered foes, looking for targets to snuff out.
As the king got to his feet her shadow fell over him, causing him to turn in surprise and then raor ind defiance as her claw came down to smash him to pieces, the king raising his claws to block the crushing blow. There was a flash of light as the claw of the dragon struck down onto the king, and then a shower of dust.
”no!”
The dragon sneered for a moment before a look of surprise crossed her face as her claw was pushed up and the dust cleared, revealing Bowser standing in a small crater, his body coated in a glowing blue metallic field and his eyes ablaze with golden light.
”Phew, just in time! Go beat her up big guy!” Blazermate said, her healing beam having just barely been able to attach to Bowser allowing her to ubercharge him and herself to make them completely invincible right before the claw hit the koopa king.
”GAHAHAHAHAHA! This feels great!” the glowing king laughed before spotting the relieved looking Kamek and Jr ”Kamek! Make me bigger! I want more power!”
”Yes Sire!” Kamek called back before brandishing his wand.
”Mimikyu, copycat Kamek!” jr instructed, the mon replying with a nod
”Swoop wings and salamander skin, look out dragon here comes the king!”
“Mimi. Kyu! Kyu! Kyu!”
The mage and mon chanted and then thrust their wand and tail stick towards Bowser, firing twin blasts of rainbow colored energy into the king who began to rapidly grow and grow and grow. Combining his own dark magic with Kamek and Mimikyu’s spells the ubered Bowser grew to immense size shoving the ender dragon back as she blasted his invulnerable frame with acid to no avail.
”NOW I’LL SHOW YOU WHAT A REAL BOSS LOOKS LIKE!” the now equally massive turtle dragon growled, right before the ubercharged timed out. ”UH OH,” he said in response to the loss of his invulnerability, eyes darting back and forth for a few moments of panic before they hardened and he went on the offensive. Roaring, he swiped at the ender dragon with a mecha mit bladed claw slash at her at the same moment as Tora and Poppie’s volley of missiles arrived. Thankfully Bowser did get 12 seconds of uninterrupted healing allowing Blazermate to build him some Overheal for his now incredibly massive health pool. The medabot also healed a much smaller amount with her passive healing thanks to the Uberheart, but her suffering arm was still in bad shape.
Over by jr the mage and mon where both kneeling (or just crouched down to give the impression of kneeling in Mimikyue’s case), the butt of their wand and tail planted to the ground and grasped in both hands as if each weighed a ton while they maintained the spell while a still shook and a little thirsty jr stood guard wearily.
Sectonia watched as the whole ordeal went down, a bit shocked and slightly intimidated at how massive Bowser had gotten. Apparently his ‘buffoonery’ was just how he was, but he could actually back up his ‘king’ title with a massive show of force. If anyone could see her face, they’d see that she was impressed and intrigued with Bowser for the first time, instead of just annoyed at his loudness. Even so, the cat look was still really, REALLY stupid, causing her to chuckle at the whole situation. She did still manage to bring Euden back to the platform, putting him on top of a lower obsidian spire away from the edge so that he wouldn’t be a bother again. She then followed up by firing a large light ring at another crystal.
wordcount: 1195 (+6) Bowser: Level 7 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (40/70) Bowser Jr: Level 6 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (37/60) Kamek: Level 6 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (41/60) Location: the Land of Adventure- spiral mountain
The dragons came down upon the group and proved Poppie and Kamek’s forced extraction of their master’s from its path to have been the best decision, as the bulk of the beast bowled over those too slow to get out of its way. The mage cringed under his oversized glasses at the beating their target’s opening gambit had delivered, but fortunately no lives had been ended and instead only some bodies and egos had been bruised by the blow.
Up above, the dragon soared onward, having received a couple of arrows lodged in its side and scratching from the bee queen’s magic ir retaliation as it climbed up and away from them. After it chased Jr and Mimikyue’s fiery balloons, the pair of shots slowly deflated as they failed to catch it until they eventually deflated entirely and fell from the sky as sad extinguished rubber bags of failure. ”OH COME ON!” came a cry from Jr in response as he raised his arms in exasperation exclamation while floating above them.
As the dragon began to wheel around for another pass Bower grunted, then retrieved the lucky bell from his pocket and clipped to his choker, transforming himself into Meowser ”Not just gonna sit here and take this!” he told Kamek before running towards and then launching himself half way up the nearest tower. Cat claws penetrated the strange stone as Bowser stopped his downward momentum and left gashes in the tower, before he began to rapidly climb it.
”Good idea sire!” Kamek called after him, before racing upwards towards another tower and calling out to jr ”Young master! Up up. We’ll punish the beast when it comes in low!”
”How does that help me I’m already flying?… oh wait I know!” Jr said after a few seconds of thought, before following their lead.
As the dragon moved in to bombard the grounded group with acid the troop all reached the top of their respective towers. Atop them floated strange pink floating crystals suspended inside two layers of glass framework hovering above a burning pierce of stone. These pieces of the environment were ignored for now, as the troop instead began to make use of the pillars as firing platforms.
”Primid Party! Form up and light up that dragon” jr called out, bringing out the pyramid spirits he’d collected from their first encounter on this boss run out as a striker team. The purple skinned, green clad mooks of the Subspace army piled up on top of the pillar at his command, each one coming equipped(this time round) with chunky, primitive looking Super Scope.
”Line up, give that big jerk three rounds rapid! No one makes me look bad and gets away with it!” Jr ordered, jabbing his paintbrush towards the beast. Complying, the goons formed an organized firing line on the pillar with one row of them kneeling while the other stood behind them. Together, they all scoped out the mighty beast before, as commanded, each one fired of a burst of three projectiles at the dragon.
On Bowser’s tower, the big man himself took a deep breath and began blasting fireball after fireball out at the dragon while on his Kamek commanded his clones to start tossing out classic magikoopa spells while the mage himself summoned Quiet atop his tower. All of this firepower was, befitting bad guys, big, glowing and slow, but there was a lot of it. Even Mimikyu, who jr commanded to shock the Ender dragon, somewhat fit this trend with their hurled electro balls, even if they were a fair bit quicker. Collectively they filled the air with shots, most of which were destined to miss.
The only expedition then would Quiet, who after being summoned and instructed by Kamek took one look at the bullet hell her turtley boss’s cohort was producing, mentally despaired at the utter lack of markswomanship on display and then got to work. She scoped in her rifle, tired to avoid going blind from the shower of glowing shots and found her target. She took her time, scanning the beast for weak points and as a result got a close look at the effects of the purple beam fired from one of the towers as it struck the beast. The wounds it had taken, both from the retaliation to it;s dive bomb and from any grazes from the Troop’s projectile vomit, were swept away in an instant. This, she knew, was a problem.
”Lit bob-ombs alive, good thing that wasn't one of ours,” Kamek said in alarm as he turned to look at the crystal floating next to them. He rubbed the chin of his beak as he examined the crystal with the eye of someone well versed in all things arcane before saying loudly ”Some kind of support magic I believe?” before adding a ”Wouldn’t you agree with your highness?” directed at Queen Sectonia, the only other mage in their party.
Quiet slammed the butt of her gun into the ground, getting Kamek’s attention, before pointing at the dragon (which was wheeling around again after being healed and mostly ignoring its hitchhikers) and mimicking applying bandages to herself.
”What? You aren't injured. What are you doing.”
Quiet pointed at the crystal and quickly repeated her action.
”The crystal? Look just, leave the magic to the mages and keep shooting while I study it” Kamek replied, waving her off.
Exasperated, the sniper simply took matters into her own hands, shoving the mage aside as he attempted to examine the crystal, drew her knife and plunged it into the dragon healing artifact. This caused it to explode, instantly dispelling Quiet as Kamek cried out in surprise and shields himself from a light shower of dust and ash the detonation caused.
”They explode? Fool of a... well I supposed that is good to know… oh. Oh dear.” Kamek noted as he looked down at the blast crater left atop the tower, before turning and warning the others ”Be careful! The crystals explode if hit!”
Atop their towers the two royal koopas had very different reactions. Bowser took one look at the crystal, recognized this as an instant kill boss kill switch (for himself) and promptly got the heck out of there. After a short run up he leapt from his own tower towards Kamek’s now explosive free tower, claws sinking into the side of it before he started hauling himself up it to a bomb free zone.
Atop Jr’s the Primid shooters all collectively glanced over their soldiers at the explosive barrel glowing crystal behind them with nervousness before Jr (who was safely floating away from the crystal) yelled at them ”Did I say you could stop? Shoot shoot shoot! Your almost out of time. Give it a charged shot!”
The Primids scrambled back into position, and began holding down the triggers of their weapons, causing a bright red glow to begin emanating from them. Once fully charged up the battery of guns unleashed a flurry of larger, faster moving projectile towards the Ender Dragon. The recoil from these shots collectively bowled the Primids over, causing them to collapsed comedically into a disorganized heap before their time ran up and they too dissipated.
wordcount: 1059 (+6) Bowser: Level 7 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (34/70) Bowser Jr: Level 6 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (31/60) Kamek: Level 6 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (35/60) Location: The End - Central island
Bowser’s blow connected, but only for a moment before the enderman vanished, causing him to overbalance, tumble over and hit the dirt.
The enderman reappeared nearby, ready to counterattack but jr was on the case, sweeping in and suffering only a gaze on his machine as he got close enough to deliver a follow up punch to it's ugly face, causing it to vanish again.
”wuss” jr yelled after it as the parrot sat on Kamek’s broom squawked “47°” when the warping monster reappeared far away, causing the End to swing his gun round and, with pinpoint accuracy, pop a dart in the eldritch thing’s neck.
“Somewhat disappointing” the End commented as the enderman dropped to the ground. He slung his gun and raised a hand down too which his parrot flew to land upon,”That cowboy has the right of it I believe, so I’ll take my leave. Maybe bring me back somewhere sunnier next time hmm?” he suggested before the two vanished.
”Well that worked out rather well,” Kamek noted, before parsing the Courier’s theory on what was causing the lanky denizens of the realm to attack them ”and we just need to not stare at them and they’ll be calm? Like the opposite of Boos. Interesting.”
A few moments of regrouping showed this to be the case, during which Bowser dusted off the end dust he'd gotten on his clothes after his tumble and Jr smacked the side of his clown car with the necro smasher to fix up the gash in its side.
After that the princess summarizes their situation, her uncharacteristic swearing receiving a pair of gasps and shocked looks from the elder koopas and a series of subsequently shooed off questions from Jr.
Once that had been dealt with Kamek added a touch to her comments ”and yes, for those who are… altitudinally challenged my toadies and clones”, the koopa waved his wand and summoned a quadrant of green helper copies of himself, ”can provide something of a lift. Jr could also fit one lighter person in his car.”
”Hay can’t just volunteer me like that! I’ve already got Mimikyu in here anyway. Isn't that enough.” Jr complained
The two stared each other down till Jr rolled his head and eyes with an exasperated sigh ”Fine!”
Having provided a rather undignified transport method for those lacking in the jumps or flight department the Troop headed for the central island, with Kamek and Jr casually floating above the bottomless pits, while Bowser performed some mighty leaps from island to island. Compared to platforming between much smaller floating cards he’d done that morning the run up to the end zone was a breeze. The Troop arrived in good time and stopped to wait for the others to catch up at the edge of the island.
”THAT WAS EASY. NOW THERE SHOULD BE A DOOR AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE LEADING TO THE NEXT SECTION.” Bowser said once they were all assembled, still on his subspace theory and ignoring any and all suggestions or evidence to the contrary ”LETS GET LOOKING”
The obvious spot was, of course, the center of the island between the imposing pillars which were topped by strange glowing crystals. The walk to the center was a tense one as the team had to constantly keep track of where they were looking to avoid setting off any more endermen, yet when they arrived at the climax of their trek there was nothing there to be found, ”WHAT? WHERE IS IT. COME-ON IT SHOULD BE RIGHT HERE!”, Bowser complained angrily as he stomped the island’s center.
All of a sudden the silent looming dread flooding the atmosphere erupted into a cacophony of enderman screams, causing the Troop to tense, come together and brace for an assault. Yet the lanky fields remained unaggressive even as the air itself began to fizz against their scales like it was suffused with static electricity.
”Over there!” Jr called out suddenly, pointing skywards, up and up into the void to two burning points. Burning eyes. Locked right onto them and racing straight towards them.
The ender dragon’s form suddenly appeared out of the black and landed atop one of the great towers. A mass of malevolent void given form, it snarled down at them, corrosive fluid leaking from its jaw as it did so.
”Ok… some kind of mid...” Bowser began to try to explain before giving up an roaring ”THIS IS IT. NUMBER TWO. COME AND GET SOME! YOU AIN'T GOT NOTHING ON ME!”
The beast obliged, hurling itself down at them, a black mass doom sweeping down to plow them aside. Like Toro, Bowser squared up and braced for impact. Also like Tora Bowser was hauled aside by his saner compatriots as Kamek, his clones and the toadies all grabbed him and practically dragged him out of the way of the dragon.
”What are you doing!” he roared as the dragon missed turning them all to paste, or bowling them off into the void, by only a scale.
”We’re not blocking that!” Kamek called back as he and his minions ”You four, get red or we’re all going to be dead!” he yelled at the greens supporter clones before summoning a quadrio of magical orbs and tossing them all at once towards his illusory minions, shifting them into attack mode as they caught them.
Jr meanwhile had had the common sense to not try to body block the obsidian tyrant and had instead risen up and above its primary strike zone.
”Mimikyu, copycat me!” he ordered his poke-minion out as he spun the car around while the dragon passed down below them and slammed a button on his car’s control console. The now well used Flaming Head cannon deployed and spat its balloon based payload, which inflated into a flaming head reminiscent of the clown car. Joining it this time however was a second balloon which Mimikyu acquired from the void, stuck the opening of under the bottom of her disguise, inflated to a three times her own size with a quick trio of puffs (revealing it to be shaped like their disguise’s head, horrible jaw and all) and then let go, causing it to rocket away as it deflated and ignited.
Together the two homing shots raced after the dragon while Jr yelled ”Eat this!” at its receding tail.
The enhancements that most citizens undergo allow them to have a near permanent connection to a VR chat room known as the Core. Here the masses can debate the issues of the day, deliver speeches, propose new laws, vote on the issues of the day and adjust their behavior based on any collective decisions made. Thanks to the multitasking capabilities of their cybernetics they can, if so wished, be permanently engaged with the politics and governance of their nations while simultaneously going about their lives in the real world.
Non hybrids can participate via other technologies but the system caters specifically to hybrids, leaving other options poorly maintained and less than optimal to use.
Hybrids: Cybernetically enhanced humans and demihumans who collectively refer to themselves as Hybrids. The most notable modification is the significant remodeling of the brain, which culminates with the fusing of a sentient ai installed on the hardware with the human’s mind. The two become one and also something greater, and granting the new being complete mastery over both its flesh and it’s steel components.
The sources of the Ai are numerous, with the most common being either a fresh Ai designed for the task which has the human’s mind imprinted/replicated onto it before the fusion process. More extreme cases may involve the fusion of an existing Ai or an Ai with someone else's mind imprinted upon it. Whatever AI is used, it must be a willing participant, both for ethical and practical reasons. An AI that wants nothing to do with the process can either potentially sabotage the process or render the resulting transhuman deeply incoherent and at war with itself. The reverse is also true. There are ways to allow domination of one subset of the mind over the other but these have been outlawed, and are considered heignouse by the vast majority of Transhumans.
Baseline humans/demihumans: Non upgraded individuals who live among the Transhumans.
Sentient Ai: Rare to find outside of those made for Hybridisation Ai are accepted as citizens and can participate directly in Core Discussions/votes etc. Most independent Ai come from either Hybrids who’s meat parts have been too damaged but who survived the trauma of this event, Ai who’s partner backed out or who themselves backed out of the hybridisation process or copies of Hybrid’s minds who’s original bodies have died.
The syndicate is rather heavily populated despite its megar holding for two reasons. Firstly is that the territory around the AL space elevator (absurdly large space elevator or ALSE) is heavily urbanised, with structures being built into the Andes mountains as well as along the flatter coastline beyond, megacity that was, and still is, fueled by the economic importance of the ALSE.
The Catequil economy is primarily structured around the Syndicate and subsidiaries of the Syndicate who own and manage most of the infrastructure in the Syndicate’s territory.
The central part of the Syndicate’s economy is the AL Space Elevator, one of the last and also the largest space elevators currently connected to earth. The surrounding ground and space based industry is equally key to their success as it can rapidly turn received materials into usable goods, which can then be rapidly redistributed across the system via railgun. It is a relatively cheap method of transporting goods vs spacecraft. The base’s location right next to the Panama canal means it’s relatively easy for earth territories to ship in or out goods via the ocean. Naturally they also manufacture sending and retrieval systems for orbital mass driver related deliveries.
They are undeniable masters of cybernetics and cybernetic compatible software, though not all hybrid technology is directly compatible with less invasive cybernetics. Hybrids are generally very good with technology as they are able to directly mentaly interface with it. They also produce some excellent programmers, resulting in a flushing software industry and digital artists who produce work for games, films or other high quality media.
The Syndicate imports large amounts of raw resources as well, either raw or processed, to fuel its industry. The most notable industries are the manufacture of computer technology, work in robotics and cybernetics and ships built within the orbital infrastructure surrounding the elevator’s spaceport.
The nation also has some terrestrial fishing and farming as a source of food, some of which is exported. There is also some very limited mining and a massive amount of electrical production, sourced from geothermal, nuclear and solar installations which is needed to fuel both the industry and the people.
The syndicate also does some of its own mining, both on planate and in the asteroid belt, which is used for its own manufacturing. They also perform salvage operations on space battle debris fields such as those littering earth.
Two things make the Syndicate’s military (something no sane group would go without in these troubled times) stand out.
The first is the fact that any member of the company can take control of nearby available automated assets in order to deal with a situation due to a guiding principle of “arm the workers” being taken to its logical (to the syndicate) extreme. This stems back to the early days of the syndicate when they were in the process of taking over the space elevator and attempts to institute locks on the access to military hardware have always been voted down. Various anti-friendly fire features and the ability for targets to paralyze automated weapons with contradictory commands means this system has not been as devastating as some predicted, contributing to the disinterest in restricting access to the syndicate’s war machines.
The second is the syndicate’s ability to produce digital copies of Hybrid minds. While primarily part of the hybridisation process, mental replication can be used to give sentient level intelligence to their warbots. To avoid issues of enslavement, these copies are generally made for war, mission or even single engagement by the present Hybrids front themselves, and then those that survive are reintegrate back into the Hybrid after their duty is complete, which bypass a lot of the ethical and loyalty related issues sentient warmachines present. Training is of course required to control a warmachine properly. To this there are two solutions. First is that the soon to be replicated Hybrid does vr or remote training with the machine. The second is that the Hybrid modifies their own body to be like that of the machine they will be controlling. The latter are the closest the Syndicate has to a professional soldier class, and they can often be found leading squads of Ai replicas of themselves on the field, human and robot utterly indistinguishable from one another.
There are limits to this technology, primarily the amount of Ai’s that can be reintegrated into a Hybrid at once is rather low, so they will rarely be copied into more than a dozen units at a time, restricting the mass use of this technique. Hybrid numbers are backed up by dumb Ai’s generally wirlessly mircomanaged by a nearby Hybrids and Ais. A syndicate squad can as a result consist of a single hybrid, a dozen Ai copies of themselves and dozens more dumb AI drones screening the scentient members of the squad.
The syndicate’s space power is focused around the AL Space elevator. The structure was already a decent fortification, sturdily built to withstand attempts of sabotage or accident, repurposable delivery mass drivers and defensively equipped with advanced detection systems, a tractor field and beams that could catch incoming objects (rail gun and asteroid deliveries), but the dangerous times have lead to its transformation into a fully fledged star fortress with heavy shielding point defence and weapon batteries being installed to war off hostile incursions. It also has the capability to artillery strike anywhere in the sol system or around or on earth, though this feature is rarely if ever used.
Syndicate ships are generally used to either protect the Space Elevator (Bulwark class) or varios Syndicate interests in the solar system (Negotiator Class). Crews are relatively small and generally plugged straight into the ships for the entire journey, with each member either directly controlling systems or microing teams of drones to perform maintenance, repel boarders etc. recreation is done via VR and cybernetics generally reduce the impact of muscle decay by replacing said muscles. Not having to be human habitable generally counteracts the cost of the automation, rendering their ships roughly the same in cost, more resilient physically and more vulnerable to electronic warfare when compared to the average ship.
Ships generally feature spine mounted railgun cannons as a primary armament, laser weapons as secondary and point defence and AI clone and drone fighters as support. Defensively the ships utilize reflector and tractor shields. They also utilize stealth fields though these are more often found on commercial ships attempting to avoid danger all together.
The syndicate also has a sizable nautical navy as well which operates on almost exactly the same lines to protect their merchant navy and coastal facilities.
The Space Elevator that eventually became the core of the Syndicate’s holdings was the first of its kind. It was created under the directive of The International Space Elevator Consortiumlong long before the conquests of the Terran Empire within the old earth nation of Ecuador. Since then it has been in near constant use with the only expectations being periodic expansions that resulted in it becoming one of the largest of its kind. It has survived the various wars centered around earth in part for being far too valuable an asset to simply destroy, and also because of its mass driver retrieval systems, which provides excellent detection and interception capabilities against long ranged ballistic strikes.
While obsessively a global asset it was in function controlled by the Catequil Corporation, a mostly unremarkable mega corporation notable primarily for first pioneered Hybrid technology, eventually required most of their employees to make use of it and their eventual restructuring into the Catequil Syndicate.
During the Great Collapse the elevator was a hotly contested resource, one which the Corporation used to turn a profit, charging exuberant rates for earth access and playing various factions against one-another to avoid repercussions. Sick of the Corporation’s wheeling and dealing three powers all boarded the elevator’s orbital facilities and attempted to seize control. Caught in the crossfire and completely disillusioned with the corporation's management, the Hybridized workers of the corporation took matters into their own hands and used their innate knowledge of the station’s every nook and cranny to expel the invaders (genearly into space) before turning the station’s orbital mass drivers and tractor beams on invading ships.
The invaders counter attacked and put the elevator under siege, but the elevator and its people were spared by the collapse of the Jump Gate network that occurred shortly after, something some label as highly suspicious, which rapidly ended any enthusiasm for further conflict within the system. The organisation which had formed to take control of the elevator then refused to follow the directives of the corporation's owners who had happened to be insystem upon the collapse and instead restructured itself and the company as a whole into a worker cooperative known as the Catequil Syndicate.
The lack of a central power to enforce the previous owners claims, combined with the war fatigue of the various earth stranded armies, ment no concentrated retaliation for this takeover came against the Syndicate. Those that attempted to re-seizes the station were thwarted via financial or violent means and often had their assets seized.
Over the following two centuries the Syndicate gradually expanded its territorial control and membership. The Syndicate now controls the region around the base of the elevator, located in the former nation of Ecuador, the regions surrounding the Panama Canal and the lands linking the two. In space it has acquired a great deal of the surviving empire orbital infrastructure and space wreckage from the war via financial, violent or archaeological means giving them a considerable space presence.
Technologically, they have been plumbing the depths of the hybridisation process, and have made numerous advances in cybernetic hardware and software advances related to their unique modifications.
It has also transformed from worker cooperative to something closely resembling a nation state as more and more people have joined the syndicate, seeking the stability and prosperity it provides and as the syndicate expands the scope of its business ventures within the area it operates.
In antiquity, the door of Artifex’s realm opened and out from it a large ant scuttled, heading for the noticeboard of the gods. Atop its back a small platform was stuck, holding a legless writing desk complete with parchment and a fountain pen and a large number of bees.
The ant dutifully trundled up to the board and stopped as if to read it. When it did, the bees grabbed the pen together, hoisting it into the air, and begin replicating the various notes written down about the nature of the zodiac and omens.
Deep within Artifex’s realm in his workshop at the core of the Acropolis, a stone chisel raised into the air and began copying the writing being done by the bees, making a more permanent record of their ink based writing.
A goblinoid Artifex watched this out of the corner of one eye till the process was complete. Once it did he set aside the reports Kallak had copied from the curators of the omen spire and parrused these new documents, sipping lightly from a watered down glass of wine as he read the detailed writings of another god.
”Ah, so that is why the Servants cant reach each other. Interesting.” He muttered while reading about the abilities of meteorites, before moving on to read about omens.
Once he was done he made a quick scan around Galbar and found The Augur's Legend and the books and records of magical hotspots located around it. Artifex briefly perused these, but primarily focused on the central power of the monument.
”How convenient” the god noted approvingly as he mentally walked around the monument ”Ways to communicate things to mortals without having to keep an eye on everything, or gauchely butt in whenever something needs to be conveyed.”
The wine glass was set aside and pen picked up in their palace ”Now let’s see what we can do with it”
drip drip drip
“What. huh?” grumbled the goblin who had been watching over the base of the omen spire as he awoke. He shook his head and then looked up at the drops of information imbued water falling from the top of the obelisk, caused by the structure’s detection of Omens by how they affected the ambient mana. The goblin dutifully wandered over to the bowl, and checked the patterns of the ripples against a chart of the known omens. Then he looked back at the ripples. Back at the chart with a frown before realization dawned on his face.
“Oh heck. Boss! Boss!” the goblin cried out as he ran to fetch the Itztli in-charge of the structure.
Several minutes later, the room was swarming with mages clamoring around the central vessel hurriedly writing things down while arguing about what the new patterns could mean. Little was agreed upon, but this much was clear: the number of types of omens had increased dramatically and the curators were going to have their work cut out for them figuring out what they all meant.
Artifex finished making the last of his adjustments, a special little machine based off the glass butterfly prayer autoresponders, which would create a butterfly or moth upon the ascension of a new ruler. Each one would have highly detailed patterns representing the reviewer (and thereby his own) opinion of the new ruler, as well as provide some subtle hints as to what they would need to do to improve or maintain his opinion of them or contain warnings about what threatened their position, either now or in the future.
He set down the little machine, which fluttered off to join the small swarm of autoresponders and picked up his wine glass again as he sat back to admire his work. Almost immediately, the reviewer started flashing, its triangular wings shifting thought patterns until it settled upon a design. Artifex squinted at it until he saw what it represented: a skull, being crushed between a pair of barbed horns like those he used to represent himself symbolically.
”What?!”
Down below, Teagan swatted a large and obnoxious butterfly that had flown into Ha-Dûna’s city hall before continuing to consolidate Sigeran’s (and by extension his) new command over the city. Outside, the work on the new temples to the druidic gods had been abandoned and the efforts of the workers turned back to the art of war. The people either clamored for blood, meekly complied with the new order or fled for their lives in the night, following the cities former leaders into exile. In the village to which they had fled, a rod of metal from the scattered debris of the Lanturn moon fell from the sky, striking the earth with a thunderous boom and heralding the doom would soon approach their temporary sanctuary.
Above in Artifex’s realm glass shattered against a wall as the god raged and cursed Sigeran's name.
Artifex marks copies of Sirius’ notes about the zodiac and omens from the notice board of the gods. After reviewing them he takes a look at the Augur's Legend and decides to make some omens (listed in their own hider).
In the library this new influx of omens causes quite a stir.
Artifex makes a small machine that reviews newly appointed rulers and makes a specially patterned moth or butterfly to commemorate their ascension and simultaneously review their worthiness in Artifex’s eyes. The first review happens to be Teagan, new master of Ha-Dûna who’s elevation of the war god Sigeran above all others spits in the face of Artifex and Gibbou’s work in the region.
Artifex is very, very angry about this.
Good: If a parrot lands on your ship while you are setting off on a voyage across the ocean away from the safety of the shore and doesn’t leave, then you will surely see land again.
If an Oceant boards a ship on its maiden voyage, and is not chased off, then the vessel is surly blessed by Artifex
If a structure pleases Artifex, then it’s foundation stone will transform into pitch black marble. This stone can be removed and put on display (as a cornerstone for example) but will return to its natural state if removed from the premises of its parent structure.
Neutral:
A large butterfly(or moth if the ruler is nocturnal) will try to land on a newly appointed ruler, even if it isn't the right season for them, and the patterns on its wings can communicate a myriad of things about the ruler. This can be anything from warnings of threats, blatant disapproval by certain gods or the people, predictions of things they will achieve and approval/veneration of previous events and so on. These patterns range from fairly blatant to highly vague depending on the strength of the feeling or the level of artistic whimsy that the splinter of Artifex handling these omens is feeling that day.
A close study of the behavior of bumble bees can be used for crude weather forecasting
If a cloud moth with black wool flies over the home of a birth in progress then that child is destined to leave a lasting mark on the world.
Bad:
Swarms of carrion eating insects forcing their way into a place of command is indicative of its leaders' actions have displeased Artifex.
If a shard of the Lantern Moon crashes down on an area then doom is sure to follow and the people of the area must prepare for the worst if they wish to survive.
If an Oceant bites the rudder of a ship then calamity is sure to strike its voyage if it continues along its present course and/or schedule.
The Library +4 prestige @Legion02 The Augur's Legend +4 prestige @Leotamer
Start 3MP/1DP 3MP, claim Port - Legitimacy: Legitimacy is right, respect and acceptance of the authority of a regime by the people a regime claims to command. A lack of legitimacy can prove fatal, as the regime’s commands may be ignored due to being seen as incompetent or unable to be enforced, challengers may rise to replace the regime’s rulers or sections of the realm may leave it entirely, preferring to strike out on their own. Conversely a high degree of legitimacy results in loyalty, compliance and/or enthusiastic support by those the regime rules.
Legitimacy is a fickle thing however, and comes from many sources that vary from culture to culture and place to place. Legitimacy might be drawn from the election of a ruler by a subset of the people, it may be claimed by ancestry, by success in battle, from the will of god, mastery of magic, by the erection of civil infrastructure or monuments and many other places.
With legitimacy Artifex can shore up, gift or provide opportunity for a regime he approves of to gain legitimacy, or he can instead damage or destroy that of one he disapproves of.
1 civilisation dp empowered by legitimacy to make the ruler reviewing Ai which handles the reviewing of new leaders and generates wing patterns based on Artifex’s opinions of them.
wordcount: 729(+1) Bowser: Level 7 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (28/70) Bowser Jr: Level 6 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (25/60) Kamek: Level 6 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (29/60) Location: the Land of Adventure- spiral mountain
The End - the greatest marksman in the world of Metal Gear. He offers just one service as an assist: pinpoint accuracy shots at incredible range. He can be called more frequently than one might expect, but when called he needs a moment to set up before he can fire, and not just to spot the shot. His custom Mosin Nagant fires tranquilizer rounds, and given the nature of tranquilizers he needs to adjust the dosage precisely based on the target, since too little can do nothing and too much can cause nasty repercussions. His durability is low, but he will self-destruct if hit while assisting, increasing the cooldown to call him again but offering additional utility
Quiet - a silent markswoman from the world of Metal Gear. She can be called upon as a striker to provide either super long-range or CQC assistance with her sniper rifle or knife. While her assists are quick and highly damaging, and she can be called with average frequency, her durability is low
Eventually everyone was ready to set out once more, though the amount of delays and side adventures meant that the troop had time for a quick snack before the final battle, one consisting of a few fire breath roasted sausages for Bowser and his son and a small plastic tub of fruit salad for Kamek and Mimikyue. The delay provided time for rest as well, something much needed after the long hike through the mountains and the subsequent nerve wracking sniper ambush, which left the troop raring to go once everyone got their act together and set off for the end of their journey.
One clunky and slightly hair raising trip across a bridge (which Jr, Kamek and the wizard’s toadies were spared by simply flying over it) later and they were ready to pass through the barrier. There was some hesitation from those to first break the barrier, but the troop had no such reservations. Bowser plowed through the barrier and barely avoided a collision with the piece of congestion Tora had caused, and then also barely avoided falling off the fleeting island they were on down into the void below.
”WOW. OK. A LOT OF PLATFORMING IN THIS ONE” he said, as Jr and Kamek both drifted up and over the crowd forming (on what could end up being a rather cramped feeling island once everyone arrived) in order to survey the area. Around them was a fairly ordinary, to them, infinite sky full of large floating platforms hovering over a bottomless abyss.
”It’s like a galaxy. Kinda plain one tho,” Jr commented, taking in the beige colored islands that reminded him of one of the many areas of space the Koopa troop had battled Mario in while trying to take over the universe, ”and no welcoming party either. Sky’s kinda creepy tho.”
”It might just be my memory sire, but this doesn't look a whole lot like how you described subspace when you regaled with the story about it all those years ago.” Kamek said as he looked around with bespectacled eyes
”Well that’s cause it can look like anywhere it’s stolen,” Bowser insisted with stubborn self assurance.
”Place with the pillers has gotta be the boss is right?” Jr asked from above, pointing towards the central islands
”Probably just the door to the next-” Bowser began, before they were interrupted by yelling from nearby. A lanky pick black distorted thing that blended in far too well with the black static sky had appeared from nowhere and was in the midst of flash stepping around and wailing on a panicked Tora.
The trio watched the battle for a moment before Jr noted in an off hand kind of way that ”I don’t think they’ve got this?”
”Gah. Let’s go.” Bowser growled before stomping his way towards them, followed by Jr.
Kamek meanwhile stayed back and instead brought out one of his new strikers: The End. The old man appeared below where the mage was hoovering on his broom, sniper rifle in hand and a green parrot sat upon his shoulder which squawked and flapped its wings while the End took in the realm he shared his name with.
“Hmmm... what sunless purgatory have you brought me to? I suppose it matters not. So. Who is my target” the man said slowly as he turned his eyes upon the old koopa.
”Shoot that thing if it jumps again,” Kamek instructed, pointing at the warping monster just before it jumped back in for a second strike.
“Oh? Hmmm about... 1.53 times the mass of a human I think,” the End noted, mostly unphased by the monster’s supernatural appearance, and began to load what he thought the appropriate dose would be for the strange monster into his tranque sniper. As he did he kept one bulging eye on the fight, while his bird took to the air and landed on the end of Kamek’s broom and began acting as his spotter, ready to squawk out targets for its ‘Grandpa’.
While this had been ongoing Bowser and Jr had rushed into the fray. Literally in Bowser’s case as he charged in a straight line at where the Enderman had reappeared, aiming a wound up clawed palm strike at its side. JR meanwhile fellow to Bowser’s side, and to the monster’s rear, boxing gloves deployed and ready to pummel the lanky creature if it survived the collision with Bowser and did not retreat as a result.
Gibbou sat on a bench in Antiquity, mopingly sipping on a cup of tea as she observed the brutalisation of the Western Highlands at the hands of Ha-Dûna. Her helmet sat low over her brow, giving her whole face a brooding shadow. Her lips slurped grumpily at the rim of her cup for every time she saw a Dûnan warrior strike at civilians, only for their weapon to vanish into dust and leave the warriors dumbfounded. Part of her was relieved that the curse was working as intended, but most of her was furious that she had had to implement the curse at all. When wouldn’t these baffoons just put two and two together and just realise that you shouldn’t butcher innocents?
She needed a break. These thoughts were not doing well for her positive energy and she couldn’t risk becoming jaded at a time like this. She finished her tea, snapped the cup out of existence and went for a stroll. Passing by temple ruins and places where portals popped in and out of existence, she came upon a large, rectangular notice board. She wondered for a minute why she hadn’t caught sight of it before, it being so woefully out of place. Her eyes took note of the announcement on how to make avatar and she couldn’t help but offer a quiet giggle.
”Huh… How about that…” Then her eyes looked up to see another note. She leaned in to read the print. ”... ‘What kind of god are you? A survey for the good of everyone’... Artifex? Is that someone I haven’t met yet?” She rubbed her chin with a metallic glove and noted that the bottom of the note had a row of untouched tabs one could rip off. The tabs were labelled with instructions on how to find this Artifex’ portal. Gibbou shrugged. ”Well, might as well give it a try!” She nipped off a tab and followed the directions, only getting lost three times in the process. Finally, she reached the god’s portal, a radioactive green circle radiating inviting levels of warmth and bug noises, all while showing an imagine of what seemed to be buildings upon buildings upon buildings. Gibbou breathed in deep and stepped inside.
”Mister and/or miss Artifex?” she asked the long underground street (built in the style of 1300AC Sancta Civitan architecture but lit by industrial era street lamps) she found herself in, drawing the attention of the insects, gigantic and small, presently using it for just a moment, before most continued on their way to destinations unknown. The one exception was a fuzzy pastel green moth with a ruby trim and small two trailing tails that fluttered towards her.
”It would be mister Artifex.” came a loud voice from the tiny insect as it hovered before her ”I see that I probably should have put gender on the cards, if that is indeed what brought you here. Ah well, what is done is done. To whom do I owe the pleasure?” it asked
Gibbou gasped and brought a hand to her cheek. ”Aaaaw! You’re a moth! I love moths!” She stopped herself from reaching out to poke at him and straightened herself up instead. ”I, uh, I’m Gibbou. I live on the moon and mostly just sit there, looking at Galbar below. I, uh, I saw your post about the survey.” She waved the tab in her hand.
”It is delightful to meet you Gibbou” the moth replied, before asking ”Ah the survey, glad to see it’s already caught an eye or two. Did you have questions about it? Suggestions? oh and would you like to move our conversation to somewhere more comfortable than the front door?”
Upon asking his final question the doors to a house just beside Gibbou swung open revealing a small brightly lit room, ”If so please, step inside this elevator and we can be there in a flash”
Gibbou swallowed. ”Elevator! Riiiiight, let me just… Step inside. Uh, cramped spaces…” Her fully armoured form forced her to take up the majority of space, her shoulderpads and cloak nearly doubling her width from the torso and down. Her ceremonial blades sticking up from said shoulderpads scraped at the roof. ”Sorry…”
”It’s quite alright” Artifex replied as the moth fluttered in with her and then bumped into a button on a long long list of available floors. The doors shut, but revealed themselves to be one way windows, still allowing a view of the street for a moment before the elevator lurched into motion and began ascending. Layer after layer of subterranean infrastructure began to flash by the small viewing window until they suddenly breached the surface of the city planate. they kept rising, sailing up a grand tower that loomed over the endless fields of buildings, monuments and streets made in a thousand and one styles from all across Galbar illuminated by a flawless (literally) copy of the lantern moon hanging above on high bathing the realm in twilight hues. The moon goddess blushed and felt included.
Finally, the elevator stopped and opened, revealing a cozy drawing room one of whole’s walls was entirely glass, allowing an unobstructed view of the city. Inside it held comfortable trappings such as a fireplace, a shelve of scrolls and tablets, a central table with a pair of cups and a flagon sat upon it, as well as comfortable sofas and recliners. It also featured a one eared goblin, dressed in a smart ruby jacket, yellow waistcoat, an onyx brooch with a pair of thorned horns enblazened upon it in silver and a practical pair of leather trouser and boots. He was wearing a blacksmiths apron over the top of his fashionable attire and hammering away at the cooling form of finely crafted, if heavy duty, throne made from steel adorned with silver decorations. With a final strike the last leg of the throne was bent into place, after which the goblins tepid back and snapped his fingers, causing the throne to be finalised with a covering of thick light blue upholstery.
As the goblin put away his tools into a series of belt pouches and tossed aside the aporin the moth fluttered over to him and landed on the side of his head where it was missing an ear. In the blink of an eye the moth was gone and the ear was back, completing Artifex’s goblinoid form who reached out, and up, a hand to shake Gibbou’s.
”Welcome to my parlor. Please, take a seat.” he said, before gesturing to the freshly forged armor proof chair.
Gibbou blinked and shook the hand politely, needing to bend her knees and back slightly to reach down. ”This all really is somethin’. Did you build all of this yourself? Including this, uh, parlor?” She took a long route to the chair, staring out the windows down at the millions of architectural schools competing for her attention. ”I happen to be a sucker for marble and glass myself, by the way - that’s a plus in the book from me.” She gave him a wink as she sat down, her armour scraping as quietly as possible against the texture of the chair.
”An excellent pairing,” Artifex agreed with a smile ”I’m very much looking forwards to when the mortals really get the hang of glass making inorder to see what they end up coming up with.”
”As for all this? Me and an uncountable number of communal insects of every shape at size. Working following my designs in the case of this study, my lab or MUSE. However it is the designs of mortals that are responsible for most of what you see out the window. That step pyramid over there?” Artifex began pointing out a few of the structures ”Just got built in a place called Zuanwa, over there’s the House of Perfection from Ketrefa and over there’s a lovely little collection of temples from the Kylsar Isles.”
”Whenever mortals set out to build something, it starts and ends here. First as a proof of concept when they dream it up, and then once it is complete it stands as an immortalisation of what they achieved. Wind or war or time or tide may take that legacy on galbar, but up here their triumphs will stand for as long as we will.” Artifex proclaimed dramatically, before picking up the flagon from the center of the table and, back in the realm of the mundane, asking Gibbou ”Also would you care for something to drink? Wine perhaps? or mead, water or fruit juice?”
”Fruit juice, please,” the goddess snuck in before continuing, ”Woah, that’s amazing! So you’re telling me, like, buildings from before the Lonely Days are here?” She couldn’t help but hop up from her chair again and shuffling over to the windowpane to look for those skin tents and lay-tos of old. ”Remind me that I gotta take a tour before I leave - oh, uh, if that’s cool with you, of course.”
Artifex tapped the side of the flagon before pouring them both a glass of mixed fruit juices from it into the two cups before sliding one over to Gibbou and taking the other for himself ”The Lonely Days? That is a good name for that time. As for the structures, there was a slight delay while I was focused dealing with the Lantern Moon, ah, debacle. So excluding the first two hundred and seven years more or less everything that has ever been built is down there, or at least that is the intent. It is somewhat difficult to verify.”
The god took a sip from his drink before getting up and walking over to stand beside her comparatively towering form.
”As for a tour, I’d be delighted. We’d have to go down a bit to see what once was but which no longer stands of course. The city of Solkra, as it stoon its prime, is down under...” he paused for a moment before pointing to a pile of Iskrill build dwellings, ”There for example, in mint condition. On the fresher end of the spectrum you have the Aiviri’s Solar bastion and Heart Piercer Spire over there,” He pointed to two opposing titans of construction, before gliding his finger over to a city upon which tiny specs could be seen rushing around building it up, ”and the expanding city of Ha-Dûna over there.”
Gibbou offered a soft ”woah” as she perused the mortal architecture from afar - it seemed that she missed the remark about the Lantern Moon. She squinted at Solkra and itched her cheek. ”Huh. Now -that’s- a new one. You know what lives over there?”
the god furrowed his brow at her question, ”Hmm. My knowledge and sight of the area it is in are fuzzy... let me check if MUSE has any idea, Artifex said, before he pulled out a small slate of stone from a pocket and laid a hand upon it, causing green energy to pulse over its surface. Once he took his hand away it revealed writing, freshly carved, that regarded details of the location that MUSE had picked up from its Inventors ”Mortals known as Iskrill captured it from humans who worshiped the sun goddess some time ago apparently. The Acadian human who MUSE got the info from considers them to be monsters worthy of using his gifts to create weapons designed specifically to kill them. To be fair the man did not seem to think particularly highly of any of the other non-humans in the area except the ‘Merelli’ who I can't say I’ve heard much of either.”
Artifex looked up from the slate and back at the crude works of the Iskrill and shook his head disappointedly ”Can’t say I am too fond of what the Iskrill have done with the palace however. It was rather beautiful. Still, they do seem to have been rather more constructive as of late, judging from the fresh works being added, so perhaps they will improve with time?”
Gibbou frowned. ”Yeah, I’ve heard of Iskrill. I get the occasional prayer about them, usually something akin to ‘OH GODS, PLEASE HELP’, so yeah, not a personal favourite either. That they have their own settlement now, too, is, uh, unsettling.” She turned to Ha-Dûna instead. ”Hmm… Say, Arti - it’s cool if I call you Arti, right?”
”If you wish” Artifex replied, sounding lightly pleased by this development
”If you compare Ha-Dûna to, say, Acadia or Ketrefa, what’s immediately missing?”
”Walls, though the entire thing seems to be a work in progress so I don't entirely blame them for not putting those up quite yet. You find the odd for where the builders had no forethought and everything ends up sprawled outside the walls, which is neither aesthetically pleasing nor particularly practical.” Artifex noted as he looked upon the latest addition to the endless cityscape.
The goddess nodded. ”Indeed. Well, sure, there are palisades, but as their, uh… Recent skirmishes… Ugh…” She created in an instant a pillow, held it to her face and screamed her lungs out in a muffled cry of frustration. ”Sorry, needed to vent…” she mumbled and snapped the pillow back into nothingness. ”As I said, as their recent skirmishes have proven, palisades aren’t nearly as safe as walls when it comes to shutting out attackers.” She squinted at Artifex knowingly. ”Shall we take care of that?”
”I don’t have any particularly pressing plans for my current reserves of power,” the god replied before finishing his drink, setting aside the glass and cracking his knuckles ”So yes. Let's do this”
Gibbou nodded and, with a twist of her hand, reached out to the citizens of Ha-Dûna down below, using the city model for reference for where to build it.
Sitting on a wooden fence overlooking their budding crops were two middle-aged men, each cradling a wooden pipe in their hands and sharing stories with one another.
“And then I said, that’s not a knife, that’s a spoon!”
The other guy raised a brow. “And?”
“What’re you talkin’ about ‘and’, that’s the story.”
There came a scoff. “That’s dumb. You know what that story needs?”
“What?”
”Better walls. Preferably something like rammed earth. Yeah, that’d be nice.”
“Wait, really?”
“I mean… It’d be better if it did.”
”So it would be! You should go tell your superiors about it and share these plans for them. I’m thinking they should be plaaaaced… Here, aaaand here.”
The men looked at one another, then up at the sky. “Did we just--”
“Less talkin’, more doin’ a goddess bidding!” shouted the other and the two went sprinting at full speed towards the town centre. Later that evening, many more in the town found that they were struck with the same idea, and the builders of Ha-Dûna thus understood how to switch out the palisade for a stronger rammed earth wall.
”I can’t help but feel a little sad about strengthening the capital of people who, just a few years ago, were butchering others all over… For safety, I’ll just do this.” With another snap of her fingers, rammed earth walls popped up around the villages closest to Ha-Dûna’s borders. She then looked to Artifex with a grin.
”What do you think?”
”Lovely work. Practical, easy to maintain,” Artifex replied, nodding approvingly.
”Of course, you need to be able to garrison them properly for them to be useful, instead of running around in a panic like headless cockroaches like the people you just gave those walls to so let's just add a little something here” Artifex replied, mentaly shifting the gears if a few suitable heads, instilling them with an interest in, and knowledge of, defensive and anti-siege military tactics including, conveniently, how to prevent or reduce panic in a population presently trapped behind their walls.
As the peoples of the outer villages calmed Artifex turned his attention back to Ha-Dûna ”As for the capital, you said they were butchering others all over? Why was that, and why did they stop?”
Gibbou sighed. ”Well, apparently, there was a food issue or something - y’know, threat of outgrowing their ability to feed themselves or whatever - so they wanted more land. Turns out, though, that ‘wanting more land’ included a footnote reminding them to also ‘butcher those living on that land’. It’s apparently related to their system of inheritance or something, from what I can see, where only the oldest child inherits, y’know. This, combined with the fact that Dûnans apparently must be related to rabbits, leaves a lot of people without anything to inherit. So they move out.” She sighed again, bordering on a groan. ”... Oraelia then blessed their fields so food wouldn’t be an issue - for a while at least - and I guess they have enough land to settle on for the time being?” She shrugged. ”It’s a bit of a mess. I’m not sure that they have entirely stopped, either. Their prayers don’t tell me a lot about -attacking-, to put it that way.”
”And despite all this… I find it just… Really, really hard to stay mad at them. They’ve done bad! Don’t get me wrong!” She crouched down and hugged her knees to her chest, comfortably rolling back onto her bum. ”... I guess that I’m just really, really bad at punishing things.”
”I see,” Artifex replied, putting his hand on his chin thoughtfully as he sat down cross legged next to the moping goddess ”Well if they’ve stopped, then in a sense continuing to be angry and punishing them would be counterproductive, be taken as a sign that you are displeased with where they are now rather than at what they did? What’s done is done, so maybe we can find ways to stop them entering that violently expansionist phase again instead?”
The goddess hummed, then nodded. ”Hey, hey yeah, that’s something! What’ve you got in mind?”
”I was thinking we find something for the non-inheriting offspring to do that doesn't involve looting and pillaging”
After much discussion and brainstorming, the two eventually laid their plans. First, they plopped down the Town Hall, a marble temple that took the place of an old cliff that had been both an eyesore and a logistical nightmare for downtown planning in Ha-Dûna. The temple was a mass of pillars, holding up a triangular prism for a roof. Within the pillars was one large room within which was a strategic table with real-life representations of the surrounding lands.
Immediately, it was employed by the Dûnans, praised as yet another great gift from the gods. The pair also taught the Dûnans to build temples in place of their altars - the megalith circle with the altars was very beautiful, naturally, but both Gibbou and Artifex agreed that a very convenient way of making certain the Dûnans wouldn’t go to war for a good while, was to teach them to build temples of wood, thatch, peat and stone. Hopefully, these would take so long and so many resources to construct that the Dûnans would virtually forget all about war by the time they were done. By the time the first temples were done, they so grand that they would eventually run out of druids to staff them if they kept building. Thus they were instead staffed with monks and nuns. Being ordained as a monk or nun within those temples gave those who would not inherit land another avenue to social status beyond seeking to acquire their own land. These received none of the privileges of the druids, necessarily, but the temples themselves could provide them with food, drink, community and work. Druids would lead these temples, but they would be staffed by the lesser clergy.
”Yaaay!” Gibbou clapped in celebration. ”Look at them go! They’re like ants - pink and brown ants dressed in wool, that is - building temples like their lives depend on it! Well, I guess if you set the alternative as ‘warfare’, their lives -would- depend on it, huh. Anyway, great work, Arti!”
”Thank you, you’re too kind and your work has been equally if not more marvelous.” Artifex replied grinning as he watched the city using a replica of the town hall’s three dimensional map table.
”I do have one more suggestion however, something to stamp our mark on the land and leave a lasting institution of peace,” he added before showing her a series of three paintings he’d prepared on the side, depicting women born through the skies on mothine wings. In one painting the woman stood between a child and a ravionosue Iskril, a warhammer held in her hands. In another between two armed humans, her arms and wings spread wide to keep them apart, causing the two warriors to pause in the violence they were about to commit. in the final one showed them spinning silk and using it to bandage an injured man while another used it to shore up a crumbling wall.
”Something to aspire to, a reward for those who are kind, noble and spread peace across the land,” Artifex explained as he showed them to her
The moon goddess gasped with eyes like the starry sky. ”All of my yes!” she shouted and shot a hand up into the air. Then she squinted at the paintings and brought a curled index to her chin. ”... Buuut I have some notes… How abooouut…” She drew at the paintings with her finger, twisting the images into new poses and shapes. The Iskrill instead faced a mothine woman dressed in silvery armour, surrounded by an aura of glowing, gray dust. In the image showing the lady separating two fighters, the image turned to her bringing them together to shake hands under an aura of the same glowing dust. In the final image, the silk appeared both as a bandage around the man’s leg, as building support, and finally, as armoured bracers on a third woman fighting off a shadowy threat.
Gibbou tapped her chin again thoughtfully. ”What do you think?”
Artifex, supremely pleased by Gibbou’s enthusiasm, took a moment to drink in the new additions to his proposal before nodding in vigorous approval ”Marvalouse additions one and all! Now all we need is to find mortals worthy of these gifts.”
”What sort of qualities are we looking for? I’m thinking protective, kind-hearted, generous, selfless and all that smooth jazz.”
”Noble virtues indeed. The skill and wisdom necessary to use their gifts, resilience in the face of hardship and the desire to nurture others so that they might be able to follow in their footsteps would be practical traits to seek as well.” Artifex replied after some thought.
”Sounds good! Let’s take a look!” She focused back down on the town.
Tonight was the night. Aimil could feel it in her bones even before she climbed onto the roof of her family home and gazed upon the two moons rising together in their fullness into a cloudless silver hued sky. It had been weeks since the gods had whispered in her mind, a thing not quite so absurd these days as it had once seemed, yet instead of orders or grand wisdoms they had praised her skill as a blacksmith and her caring heart that had led her to help several prisoners escape from slavery and to adopt a boy who’d lost his parents to the city’s agression. They had told her of the reward and responsibility they wished to give her, and instructed her to build a simple shrine in their honor.
There had been no specifics in how the shrine should be made, how complex or humble, but as she looked upon the construction she had made as she followed her heart she knew it was right. it was a deeply personal thing, cluttered with keepsakes and carved with images of those she held dear, of what good she had done, and what she had wished she had the strength to do. at its center sat a round shield with Gibbou’s crescent moon carved upon on half, mirrored by a crescent of thorned horns on the other.
She sat cross-legged upon the shield, surrounded by depictions of her achievement, failures, hopes and dreams and gazed up at the moons as they drew closer together in the dark sky. She took in a deep breath, cleared her mind of any doubts or fears, and meditated. Her head filled with thoughts of the calm night, of the peace and tranquility so evident in the world around her that it almost felt like a texture softly massaging at her skin like bands of silk. A purpose flickered at the back of her mind, and she concentrated to bring it to light. The sensations of silk grew stronger, and she felt her breathing slow to a beat. The purpose grew clearer and clearer, but it was still not clear enough to define. She felt the tranquility brush against her cheeks and her body felt embraced somehow. Her focus kept her from opening her eyes - she was too focused on finding this thought.
There - a purpose. She was a guardian - a shield that would defend those who could not defend themselves; a rescuer - she would save those in danger, even if it would cost her her life; a negotiator - she would be a diplomat between parties in disagreement.
She would be a Mother.
With that, the silk chrysalis that had formed around her as she had meditated cracked open, revealing her new form. High above her the twin moons hung atop the sky, their light reflecting in her eyes, one silver one purple, calling to her. with instinctual ease she rose, born upon gossamer wings. She rose, high above the city, chasing the light until she came to her senses and looked down upon the world so far below. at the sprawling city, at the villages beyond and at the vast tracts of land in between that made the works of humankind look like weak vulnerable specks. They were so small and yet at the same time there was so much that deserved her love and protection.
The weight of what she had accepted clawed at her mind till she looked up, and saw the others fluttering around her, banishing her trepidation. The task was mighty, the challenges would be great, but as she gazed at the other mothers and the looming moons, she knew she was not alone.
As the Mothers gathered together above the city of druids two alcohol free glasses clinked in Artifex’s high tower as the gods celebrated their handiwork.
”A toast. To peace in their time and all times that follow!”
”Cheeeeers!”
Artifex sipped from his drink though smiling lips, before plopping his cup down on the table ”Now that our work is complete, for now, I was wondering about that tour you mentioned wanting to go on earlier?” Artifex gestured to the open elevator ”I’d be happy to show you some of the highlights.”
Gibbou chugged her whole glass in uncannily few gulps. ”Would I?! Lead the way!”
and with that, the two gods stepped away from the diorama of the city they had been using, leaving the fate of the Dûnan in their own hands once more.
Gibbou mopes about Ha-Dûna’s continued attempts to brutalise people despite her curse blatantly foiling their every attempt and decides to go for a walk. She runs across the Noticeboard of the Gods and notices that Artifex is attempting to survey all of the gods in order to work out what gods exist and what they can all do. intrigues, she makes her way to his realm, meets a moth and then is invited up to his parlor, which sits in a tall tower providing great views of the city planet that constitutes Artifex’s realm.
there she meets artifex in his civilization goblin form, and the two get to talking a bit about the view, with artifex explaining that everything that is ever built on Gablar can be found in his realm, before pointing out some highlights. one is the ruins of Solkra built atop a perfect replcia of the city, which prompts a brief investigation by the pair who find out is infested by Iskrill, much to Gibbou’s concern.
Another is the expanding city of Ha-Dûna. Gibbou notes its lack of walls and then easily convinces Artifex to help her do improvement based meddling with the city. First they teach them how to make rammed earth walls around it, magiclay create a bunch of walls for the surrounding villages and teach the people how to properly utilize these walls to survive sieges.
Gibbou then talks about how the Dûnans used to be bloodthirsty conquerors and how she feels she should still be mad about it but can't, because she recognises that food shortages and the local inheritance system leaving all but the first sons without a guarantee of land ora futute drove them to expand. Artifex suggests that instead of focusing on that they instead see if they can prevent them from doing so in future by redirecting their energies elsewhere, namly temple building. They teach them how to build some swanky temples that the Druids use to show off their prestige while also providing potential positions of lesser status for the non first born children of the realm as nuns or monks carteaking those those temples for their druid leaders.
They also build a central temple/town hall featuring a top down holographic map of the area to help the druids with their city planning.
Finally, they collaboratively create the Mothers, a group of women chosen to be the champions of peace, compassion and cooperation in the area. They select a number of noble souls to become the first of their order, telling them to construct highly personal shrines within which they meditate beneath the moon and are transformed into holy mothwomen. The Mothers ascend to the sky and meet one another for the first time while the gods toast their own success.
Finally Artifex takes Gibbou on a guided tour of his realm, leaving Ha-Dûna free of divine meddling once again. For the time being at least.
Gibbou 4MP/3DP 1DP - Teach the Dûnans to make rammed earth walls. (⅕ for Walls port) 2DP - Perform godly feat. Give rammed earth walls to the villages outside of Ha-Dûna’s immediate borders, causing mass panic, but safety at least. 3MP - Claim portfolio - Armour: Armour is the heart of personal defense against those strikes too hard, too quick or too unexpected to dodge. From shields and plate to hides and pads - all falls under the compass of armour. It is restricted to what is worn, however - while a spear may be used to block, it is not born with the main intent of doing so, as opposed to the shield.
With this power, Gibbou specialises in providing and empowering all sorts of armour to withstand different kinds of attacks.
End 1MP/0DP
Artifex
5MP/5DP
Untarnished Stonework II (free stoneworking): The stone of the building will remain pristine as they day it was carved with but the lightest of maintenance, weathering weathering and staining with miraculous ease.
Organise the realm II (2 civ dp): the town hall features a table at the center of its main meeting chambers with a large 3d map of the surrounding area (with a radius twice that of the city’s walls) that keeps itself update with any changes made to the city or land around it. Useful for city planning, local military actions and for giving a general understating of the land the hall’s owner command.
1 construction dp to teach them how to build temples
2 mp and 1 construction dp for the Mothers
Drowsy Dust I (free with peace): the wings of a Mother produce a faint dust that induces calm in low doses and sleep in high ones
Silk Spinners II (1 construction dp, 1 free armor): Mothers can produce a fair amount of silk thread which makes for a useful building material, adhesive or fabric. The silk, when spun under the light of the moon, can be woven into moonlit silver, a strong and hardy metal comparable to bronze, though it is poor at holding an edge. This metal makes for excellent Armor and will glow softly when exposed to moon light. The highest quality moonlit silver is forged beneath two full moons on an anvil of metal that fell from the lantern moon eons ago.
Moth-body II 2 (insect empowered) mp): the Mother gains the antenna, and wings of a moth gaining flight and enhanced nocturnal senses as a result. They also develop a neck ruff, patches of moth fur and a fluffy tail styled after a moth's abdomen which provide primarily aesthetic benefits and a touch of insulation against the cool night air.
2/5 arcane monuments
3/5 for Biokinisis (+2 from moth body)
5/5 mad science
1/5 for medicine
5/5 for Legitimacy/govornance (+2 from organise the realm, +1 from temples (they are a theocracy))
4/5 for military (+1 for wall defence training + 1 for silk spinning (armor forging))
wordcount: 493 (+1)(+10) Bowser: Level 7 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (27/70) Bowser Jr: Level 6 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (24/60) Kamek: Level 6 EXP: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (28/60) Location: the Land of Adventure- spiral mountain
Before they set off everyone took a moment to camp out in the slightly battered tower where they were distributing the sprites, one of which got Torra going about the effects of combining with spirits of beings of different species or body types of their own upon seeing one of them was a very scantily clad human woman.
While Bowser pondered whether taking on human spirits would make Peach more receptive to his advances and simultaneously body blocked jr and the hat kid from getting a closer look at the bikini clad lady’s spirit Kamek grabbed her and the End's spirits and took them both on as strikers.
”I’m in the best position to plop these in similarly towering locations during future encounters” he said as he did it, which would conveniently put them far away from any innocent eyes. They could have crushed her of course, but Kamek felt that was a waste of what had been some incredibly dangerous opponents, and all they’d probably get would be a gun that the people who could actually use it already had access to some kind of equivalent.
A couple of other things happened before they set off.
Firstly, Donnie finally joined the group after wandering off to do some soul searching and instead ending up having a very confusing conversation with a being called The Lord of Games. The koopas where similarly stumped by his retelling, or rather Kamek was stumped while Bowser tuned most of the retelling out after the first few incomprehensible sentences and gleaned from it only a smug sense of self importance when compared to Donnie the “custom”, whatever that meant. Jr, who actually played video games quite, was positioned to at least understand some of the lingo the LOG had used, but failed to make any use of this knowledge in approaching the cataclysmic knowledge being so casually imparted by the screen faced stranger, leaving the fourth wall and everyone’s sanity mercifully intact.
Finally they where joined by a surprisingly talkative link. Bowser wasn't sure he’d ever heard the Hylian do anything vocal other than yell while stabbing things. Not that he’d spent that much time around him. At any rate, Link asked those present at the cliff for the first disastrous fight with Galeem what had gone down after he’d been smote.
”EVERYONE BETWEEN YOU AND ME GOT HIT BY THE SAME STUFF, AND LOOKS LIKE EVERYONE AFTER GOT GOT AS WELL, ‘SEPT KIRBY WHO RAN FOR IT. PUFF-BALL BAILED ME AND SOME OF THE OTHERS OUT A WHILE BACK, AND THEN WE BAILED SOME OF THE OTHER PEOPLE HERE OUT WHILE WE’VE BEEN TRAVELING.”
”EVERYONE ELSE, ‘CEPT A FEW BACK AT PEACH'S CASTLE, ARE STILL RED EYED AND DANGEROUS. WE’LL PICK EM UP WHERE WE FIND EM WHILE WE GO TO TAKE DOWN THE TWELVE BOSSES STOPPING US FROM HITTING GALEEM. PRETTY STANDARD STUFF FOR YOU RIGHT HERO?” Bowser explained loudly while taking the load of his legs, getting them some rest before they entered subspace.
Izurich
Drifting Pollen
Rezod92
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xxjessicaxx
Timemaster
Eviledd1984
pkken
VitaVitaAR
