>>3170186
You’ve never been much of a morning person, but you just can’t help but feel happy when you wake up. Your head is completely healed, nothing hurts, and you are almost overflowing with energy to do stuff, to create, to explore, to hang out with people or do whatever comes to your mind. You guess that’s one of the boons of being a pod person. This miraculous sensation of absolute freedom in thought and action. Your mother sometimes said that happiness is when you lose everything and then get back half of it. You can’t say that you agree with this completely but, to be fair, now every day is a great day when you are Ag. Speaking of which, you haven’t seen their photo for a while. You sealed it deep in your lab just in case so no one would accidentally see it. You wonder if your parents are watching you now. After all, over two thousand years have passed. What would they say about your recent adventures? Would they be fine with your choices?

In any case, you have stuff planned for today! Haven worked hard to find information for her report, so you should probably analyze it and act accordingly. From the report it seems that the village is separated in three groups. Newcomer group is unaffiliated, and they don’t have any strong thoughts on your nature so they can be ignored for now. They don’t have a coherent ideology or structure and thus they would most probably join whatever groups start forming in the village in the future. Thus, let’s see what we can do with the other two first.


Originals universally know about your powers and they have heard of your claim of being an Outsider. There is nothing you could really do about it. However, the main issue appears to be with how they view you. They are intimidated by your power and while they think that you are at least somewhat benevolent they fear that you might get displeased or angry. Gods in ancient history were not always nice people and Outsiders are sometimes considered to be gods without followers. They also fear that they might offend you if they ask you to do something insignificant. Taking all this into account you think that the more you increase their opinion and their trust the less they should fear you. It would probably never reach the point where they don’t feel a bit intimidated, but it should eventually make your presence more tolerable.

>>3170196
Just from the top of your head, you should probably improve the communication between you and the villagers. Maybe something like a mailbox where villagers can drop notes on what worries them. You could make one for the village chief too so that villagers could discuss and prioritize issues internally as well. Then you could make a kind of project board where villagers could arrange a list of things they would like to do. Just a general list of stuff they would like to deal with like new buildings or killing monsters so that it is easier to hire someone to do it. Such as other villagers or dwarves… or you in particular. As it doesn’t concern you and as it could be anonymous the villagers should feel safer asking you for smaller things.

In addition, it would make it seem less obvious that you do whatever the hell you want. Originals never told you what they wanted or what they didn’t like. They just told you that you knew what’s best for them and even if it worked out and their living conditions skyrocketed it still feels wrong. As if you are robbing their freedom. They are intimidated by your power and thus they fear of telling you if you balled up somewhere or if what you do inconveniences them. You could think of making a village council consisting of the most influential people in the village from all three groups and give them a veto power over your decisions. A kind of “dualistic monarchy” model but only regarding your projects. However, this is a big decision and it might have unforeseen consequences apart of laying groundwork for power-based stratification (aka nobility).


Looking at the Veterans, the situation is more complicated. While they don’t outright believe that you have godlike powers, they somewhat trust Originals and thus carefully observe you. They seem to associate you with the change to the village that happened between their departure and arrival. Because half of the remaining villagers straight up died from that hellish monster in the forest their opinion on you is… mixed to say the least. They also seem to dislike how Originals view you and the power that comes from that. It seems that increasing their trust, how much you relate to them and preventing bad things from happening should help with the former image while delegating decision making to the villagers should help with the latter. However, you currently don’t have any particular ideas on the subject.

>>3170201
The most important part of the Veteran situation is that they don’t universally agree on your nature. Almost none of them thinks that you are a goddess but most of them don’t think that you are human either. Their theories vary between you being just a normal mage to you being an undetermined supernatural creature. Like a spirit or a nymph but of local flavors. In any case they see you as unpredictable and dangerous. You could make an official statement and explain your nature or something but what would you say? There is an option to not use your powers for a while and that would make the problem less severe but then everything would take more time. Some limited power use could also be done but you can’t predict how they would react. You can also just say fuck it and go full swing and see how that goes but that would make it harder to hide from the pantheon.

So many choices, so many tradeoffs… Multiple or manually altered options can be picked as long as they don’t logically interfere with each other.

Power policy:
>Arrange an official statement to explain your nature to the newly arrived villagers
>No powers where people can see them. This will slow down construction projects but lower the power awareness of Veterans and Newcomers
>Limited power use comparable to local mages. Effect not predictable
>Full swing. Speed limitation on construction dropped, power awareness of entire village irreversibly set to maximum
>Write in?

Social projects:
>Village mailbox and to-do list: allows villagers to organize their own projects easier. Increases trust among all strata and decreases intimidation factor among Originals
>Village council: creates a backbone for centralized village government. Decreases your intimidation factor in general but creates foundation for power-based stratification (commoner/nobility classes)
>Economic kickstart: give out equal sums of money to every villager and fund some business startups to switch the village from primitive communal economy to capitalism system used in the rest of the country. More effective with more trade and population. Might fail if village lacks sufficiently varied industry. Creates foundation for money-based stratification (poor/rich classes)
>Other ideas?

>>3170207
>Limited power use comparable to local mages. Effect not predictable
But all limuts are off during emergencies.

>Village mailbox and to-do list: allows villagers to organize their own projects easier. Increases trust among all strata and decreases intimidation factor among Originals
Let's not start creating divides between them, the village is still to primitive industry wise for investment and the council will create privileged ones among the people, we don't need to adhere to those old models, lets build some trust first.

Write in
Hire Rheia as an assistant, we can show her some of our experiments in alchemy and medicine and she can advise us on the village comings and goings and tell us when we fuck up in some social situation.

>>3170207
>Limited power use comparable to local mages. Effect not predictable

>Village mailbox and to-do list: allows villagers to organize their own projects easier. Increases trust among all strata and decreases intimidation factor among Originals

>>3170232
>>3170227
supporting

>>3170233
>>3170232
>>3170227
Writing

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>>3170255
Concerning superpowers, you decided to limit yourself to what is considered to be “relatively strong mage powers” in these lands. It is hundreds of times weaker than you are used to and you are limited massively in stamina, but this shouldn’t be as risky as going full blast or as annoying as not using telekinesis at all. However, all bets are off if the village is in danger. You will go full power in case of emergency as your secret is not worth the lives of these people.

Now that you have decided what to do with your powers, you finally feel easier. Whether or not it was a correct decision, it is already finalized and it is out of your hands now so you can continue with other projects. After some careful considerations you have decided to ditch the ideas that would generate any more stratification. Village industry is not yet mature enough for investment (a single inn is not enough) and you don’t want any political inequality. However, the option of creating a connection between villagers, you and decision-making center of the village seems like a great idea. No major risks with all the benefits.

The mailing system will be set up in the following fashion: two metal mail boxes would be installed in the village. One would be placed in the door of your house and another would be attached on the wall of the town hall. A supply of paper and pencils would be provided so that a villager could come up and write whatever they would like to inform the village or you about. It can be anything from requests to worries to questions. Also, the village would receive a large “quest board” of sorts where villagers can put requests they might have with or without compensation.

However, to do all that you need to create a small-scale paper production. It consists of several parts:

First, we need raw materials. The material must be fibrous. First paper which was invented in China used silk for this purpose. The result was amazing but the price bit quite a lot. Thus, you have three choices: any rags, ripped nets or chunks of wool, any fibrous plants like flax, rice and hemp and the hardest of them all, wood.

The first stage is the grinding of plants or the unraveling of threads. A machine that does this is called a roll or hollander. A primitive hollander can be built in the Middle Ages, but at the initial stage the millstones will suffice. This method is not ideal, you need to experimentally select the time / size of the millstones in order to obtain fibers of the desired length. Also, is not bad to have animal glue, or at least starch.

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>>3170352
Then you’ll need a small tub filled with water and a frame with a wire net inside. Here the main task is to get as clean cellulose as possible. If we get pulp from wood, then there is a big task - to remove lignin. It is boiled in a mixture of caustic soda and sodium sulfide. And you’ll also need sulfuric acid. But even paper made from fabrics will not be of the best quality due to impurities in cellulose — it will be loose and uneven, but quite suitable for writing.

So, we pour the ground raw material into the trough and pour water with diluted starch or animal glue (about the same by volume). We shred the fibers so that they hang evenly in the water column. Then gently lower the frame with the grid and lift it up holding it strictly horizontally. Fibers remain on the grid - this is the process of casting paper. Then we wait for a minute or two while the water runs out and soak it with a sponge. Then we turn the cast paper onto the fabric, shift it with another layer of fabric and set it to dry under a press. This will continue for several days and from time to time we check for mold until it is dry.

The resulting paper is grey and uneven but there are too many factors to consider. From the purity of the water to patterns of the dry press fabric to the quality of raw materials and even the humidity of the environment. Thus, you’ll need a larger and more modern processing plant to produce modern grade paper, but this will do for now. Pencils from pulverized and pressed charcoal with glazed clay ink bottles and chicken feathers should be enough to write with.

After you have finished with the village stuff you decided to investigate the situation with Rheia. You decided that you’d like to officially hire her as your assistant and advisor. Her role would be to do some minor care of your residence and learn from you while telling us her concerns regarding our behavior. Essentially an “evil genius child advisor” role. Also, you promised her a reward. What would that be?

>This job opportunity is the reward! Wow that sounds a bit pretentious but oh well
>Just give her a bunch of cash. She can decide what she wants herself, right?
>Craft her something? Maybe some gear… or something frivolous but pretty?
>Let’s teach her something that is not available to locals. Like engineering or chemistry or basic physics and scientific method
>Let’s train her. She should get more skills to defend herself. Or maybe something practical?
>Let’s give her all the truth about us, the Pantheon and other pod people. Humans fear what they don’t know
>Other

>>3170361
>>Let’s teach her something that is not available to locals. Like engineering or chemistry or basic physics and scientific method

I'm on the fence on doing
>Let’s give her all the truth about us, the Pantheon and other pod people. Humans fear what they don’t know
too, what do you think? It would give her a better feel to filter all the requests and send us only those that are important to the village and power adequate

Dammit, I missed the vote but to be honest I can live with these limits for now. We can just use our powers all out at night when everyone is asleep to make some accelerated progress or set up an outpost deeper into the woods and just claim to have traded for them.


Also in regards to the whole counter-balance to our power thing, our best bet for any sorts of non-stratifying force is either a purely random system (Athens used this but you run the risk of the odds going against you) where any eligible citizen might get elected or a proportional representation system: that or we just go with direct voting on shit.

That or we just accept our fate to essentially be a human amongst ants and just get on with building up good faith / making them understand we don't honestly see ourselves as a superior. That could probably be accelerated by holding a few parties and actually acting like a ordinary human.

>>3170361
>All that paper making stuff.
Honestly my solution would've been to pay someone to set in a confessional style booth and wait while people come into the other section to report their wants / requests / needs for a few hours a day before reporting it to us but sure this works too.

>Let’s teach her something that is not available to locals. Like engineering or chemistry or basic physics and scientific method
Having someone who can conduct observation of long term experiments, logging results and maybe even resetting them would be damn useful. Especially if we can get to the point where she can perform some basic independent research since that'll be a decent start to creating a scientific team to work for us.

>>3170378
I'd be fine with giving her some details but we've got consider what we'd be telling her: we'd be shattering her world view and shit; short term that could be quite dangerous depending on how she handles it but long term it should be our goal.

>>3170361
>Let’s teach her something that is not available to locals. Like engineering or chemistry or basic physics and scientific method
We would be able to delegate some projects, like paper making we just did, to her.

About telling her.
How about we ask her?

"Rheia, you probably have some good idea about what I am, I plan on telling you, gradually, if the truth interests you, but I warn you, it may cause you some distress."

But even if we do, let's start slowly, telling her about our powers, about how we met some of the pantheon, and maybe, or maybe not, the rest.

>>3170361
Fuck i am late again, need to check more often or set a timer

>Let’s teach her something that is not available to locals. Like engineering or chemistry or basic physics and scientific method

also give her a starting bonus of cash, so she can equip herself in a way she sees fit/useful
(nothing to big, or it looks like favorism)

regarding the truth, lets watch her for now, she needs to know us more and we should better predict how she would react, it is a very dangerous truth to know

it seems we are gonna teach her science, so depending how well she takes to the principles, she might start piercing thing together, in that case we should need to tell her to be careful about knowledge its uses and its dangers

(in general a lesson/talk about ethics might have to be done in time, even if i doubt that she is gonna be troublesome in that regard)

>>3170407
>>3170400
>>3170398
>>3170388
>>3170386
>>3170378
Teach Rheia some stuff, tell her the truth but slowly and carefully. Also I can see one guy for some extra cash. Writing

>>3170418
You decide that you should teach Rheia some things that can’t haven’t been taught in this world for hundreds of years. The principles of scientific method, physics, astronomy, biology, engineering and many others. She doesn’t really need to even get a bachelor on all of them as the scientists of the era of enlightenment usually were specialists of dozens of different fields. It would take a bit of time, but she is a smart girl and thus you think that she would appreciate some polytechnic education. If you want any of your stuff to remain after you move on you would have to teach it to someone and Rheia seems to be the best candidate.

That would also allow her to perform some research with you. While it might seem that science is cool and amazing with your powers it will still consist mainly out of taking measurements, repetitive experiments and tedious calculations after you exhaust the simple stuff. For example, first steam engine was already calculated to a bolt even though pistons had clearance big enough to act as a piggy bank and this is not an overstatement.

If you want Rheia to trust you, you should trust her too, so you decided to tell her more about your world. On how people lived before the first apocalypse, what they did, what they achieved. Also, you would like to tell her about yourself, about who you were, where your powers come from and what you know of the other pod people. However, you guess that this would be quite a shock for Rheia as it would shatter her world view and glue it together piece by piece. You don’t want that to happen too quickly, so you will give out information slowly at first judging how well she digests it.

In addition to all that, she will be paid well. That way she would be able to afford not to think of other jobs or marriage while she hangs out with you as she is the only remaining child in her family and her mother would probably mostly retire in just over a decade. She might actually need to get some pay up front so she could afford herself something nice.

Well, this is decided then. As Haven packs up and leaves to deal with her stuff you collect a sizeable chunk of the Cenophilan money you had left, pack it in a small chest you’ve made for the occasion and head out to Rheia’s home. You really need to think of a way to earn money or convert dwarf currency into something you could use here…
___________________________________
And that’s it for today. It is half past midnight here and I need to wake up early so I have to pause the thread here. Tomorrow we’ll start off with a visit to Rheia and then we’ll need to decide what we want to do next. Feel free to discuss that and ask questions.

>>3170476
thanks for running

is dwarven money made of gold? can we just melt it into lingots and trade it at a city?

there are two things I would like to do.
First one is to try to figure out how to draw those scales from the mad goddess fight, it will probably hurt and leave us vulnerable but I think it's worth it.
second is to either explore the south region now that we went north before or to venture into the Labyrinth

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>>3170492
Dwarven money is an alloy of gold, yes. However, we took golden ingots and several other precious metal ingots as well. The problem is directly trading with that much gold. It is, let's say, really goddamn suspicious and government regulation officials would like to take a look where gold is coming from. Thus we are essentially limited in the speed at which we can convert gold into Cenophilan currency without drawing suspicion.

Also, about regional scouting, the Cenophila is to the south of us and we sureyed the wilderness area to the east(where we found a geyser). The area where we fought the mad goddess is to the west but it was not surveyed for interesting stuff or deposits. It appears to be mainly igneous in rock composition. We never checked out area to the north but guessing by the local topology the place is most probably composed of sedimentary rock. It will also be more "wild" as it is further from the border. It is really easy to forget, but we are in a southern hemisphere. It gets colder as you go south and hotter as you go north.

>>3170515
Also just FYI, we can scout further than one "step" in a cardinal direction. I will add the points to the map so we could see where we scouted when I unfuck it. Currently all font sizes in the map file got messed up after I had to reinstall windows several times so I will need some time to get to full QM potential.

>>3170492
We should go to the nearest big city and see there where we could find the nearest dwarven city, we could go to the one we found before but I feel its a bit far away and they would take top long to start repopulating the ruin, get that out of the way so they can astart settling there while we do other shit.

>>3170563
good idea, supporting

we might even be able to trade the coins we got into some that are more common to the area

>>3170563
Nearest polis would be Platania to the south- east. However, closest surface entrance to a dwarven settlement is near the polis of Ligoriana(the one on the lake). However, it won’t be the closest dwarven city in general. It could be faster to unblock the floodgates and travel through the Labyrinth river. But, honestly speaking, it would be more of a choice between sightseeing on the surface or taking a shortcut with possibly a few fights in the Labyrinth.

>>3172100
well, if we are going through the labyrinth I say we definitely research those battle scales before going
and if we use the transport system we already leave it clear of any hostiles that may have settled there and make the job of the dwarves of coming over easier

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>>3170476
After a little bit of searching you’ve found Rheia in Claudina’s shop drinking some of the underground elf’s mushroom tea. It helps the little girl to handle the flashbacks easier and it calms her down, so you think that it is a good idea. You don’t have a pharmacology lab to make some actual stress disorder medications so that’s better than nothing. With a little bit of interpersonal psychotherapy, she should be able to recover in time.

After hearing you out and taking some time to think she agrees to get hired as your assistant. You made sure she understood that it is voluntary and she can leave this job whenever she wants to, but she was fascinated by your promise to teach her more about yourself and about the world. You taught her some stuff before but you excluded things that would not exist in this world such as school level understanding of physics or biology, so the curriculum was a bit shortened. However, she digested mathematics well up to the modern school graduation standard in months which is impressive and should help her a lot with the other subjects. She might have a huge talent for math and precise sciences which was pretty rare even in your time when billions of people existed.

You gave her the first pay up front and showed her around your house. For now, she would be allowed everywhere except your lab for reasons of it lacking enough lighting and ventilation as well as generally being a health hazard for baseline humans. You’ll give her a copy of your keys and all the stuff she would need to maintain the place. She is also allowed to live there if she wants and you’ve refitted one of the many spare rooms into a guest room for her. When you are in the village and not tied in large projects you will come to your home and teach her about this wonderful and strange world.

For now, however, you need to make some plans. You ran out of things to do so it is once again time to take a look into potential projects.

>Construction: a list of projects that require you to build something. Industries, defenses, outposts, infrastructures, personal facilities, labs/bases and so on.
>Research: a list of projects related to gaining and using knowledge. Personal weapons and gear, prototypes, psychic techniques, insights into the world and yourself.
>Adventure: a list of projects that require you to go out into the world. Exploring the Labyrinth, nearby wildlands or going into Cenophila proper. Brave new world awaits!
>Social: [locked due to being last thing we did]
>Other? Whatever you feel like. Write-in
>Special projects: dwarf fortress repopulation stuff

>>3172470
>Research: a list of projects related to gaining and using knowledge. Personal weapons and gear, prototypes, psychic techniques, insights into the world and yourself.

We've got a bunch of research stuff still to work on, once we've got that done we can look into adventuring or some construction stuff but I'd be more confident in fighting giant death beasts if we have some more refined abilities.

>>3172470
>Construction: a list of projects that require you to build something. Industries, defenses, outposts, infrastructures, personal facilities, labs/bases and so on.
>Research: a list of projects related to gaining and using knowledge. Personal weapons and gear, prototypes, psychic techniques, insights into the world and yourself.

Let's work on a printing press and getting at least a consistent paper quality. If we're going to have an apprentice it's going to be for the best if we can leave her things to learn while we are away and that usually mean something to read.

>>3172470
>Research: a list of projects related to gaining and using knowledge. Personal weapons and gear, prototypes, psychic techniques, insights into the world and yourself.

We need that scales ability before going after the dwarves to settle the ruins.

When we get them here and they atart working we can take the time to do more research and construction

>>3172503
Unfortunately, consistent paper and printing press require industrial revolution quality machining which comes from consistent iron and steel manufacturing plus class 1 chemical plant(I simplified it so I won't have to juggle 50 different chemicals). We also need steam power to run it without telekinesis. We won't be printing anything before that. Sorry, mate

>>3172483
>>3172503
>>3172529
Research it is, writing

>>3172565
By printing press I meant something Like Gutenberg's which would require us to make movable type (which is the time consuming part). A screw press should be existing tech (or relatively easy for us to make) and having at least one would make our paper maker life easier anyway.

>>3172628
Ah, I see. I was expecting more streamlined device.

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>>3172572
Before you do anything else you need to make sure Rheia can learn without you always being around. To do so you need books and lots of them. Books in Cenophila are rare and most people use parchments based on primitive paper, cloth or tree bark. In addition, even though your handwriting drastically improved after the pod it would still be incredibly tedious to write down everything manually. Thus, you decided to make a printing press.

A true printing press is beyond your abilities at the moment. It needs gears, steel, steam engines, industrialized chemicals for paper production and so on and so forth. You definitely won’t get it this year even if you went for it like you did for penicillin. Thus, you needed something simpler. A primitive manual design which is one of the first kinds of printing presses ever made.

However, after painstakingly creating a huge pile of various letters, synthesizing correct consistency of ink and assembling the device it turns out that it is a really tedious process. It is optimized for making huge amounts of the same prints, not for making just one book. Luckily, telekinesis saves you here. It took some practice, but you’ve learned how to assemble the pages letter by letter and print them on the paper with only your thought. It still takes a couple days to make a book but that’s a huge improvement and you can now provide some study material for Rheia.

With the education out of the way, you turned your attention to research. You don’t feel comfortable after beating the forgotten beast. You were lucky and even though you weren’t prepared it died easily. Others might not be as simple, and you might end up losing something… or someone.

>>3172736
>Physical body research: During the fight with Mad Goddess you were somehow covered in strange scales that protected you from damage. If you knew how to summon them at will it would immensely help you with your natural defense. This experiment might end up… painful
>Mind shielding research: Due to running into three different psychic entities you’ve figured out more about your mental firewalls. You’d like to learn more without risking your mind too much…
>Sealant solution research: You’ve been wounded a couple of times and it seems that your body excretes several different types of solutions that help it to repair itself and defend against external threats. Maybe you could harness this somehow to produce powerful medication for your comrades?

>Telekinesis optimized weaponry: while throwing pebbles is fun and lethal it might be a better idea to carry some specialized kinetic ammunition.
>Self- propelled flight: With telekinesis you’ve figured out how to hover and propel yourself at a relatively small altitude. You need to find the way to fly easier, at higher speeds and altitudes if you ever want to get competitive with some flying creatures like the Fallen or visit suspendium islands.
>Melee optimized point defenses: your current point defense is not designed for repelling melee attacks and you would have a high chance of missing with countermeasures. This validates a redesign.

>Super heavy gear: The fight with Nike’ has shown you that your gear is not configured with your advanced physiology in mind. You could make an alternative set of weapons, armor and shields specifically designed to fit you. No one else would have enough strength to tug that much mass around.
>Tele- operation: Your precision with telekinesis has increased. Maybe it is time to design fuses and mechanisms to be remotely activated with your powers?
>’Nades: You need a more convenient timed explosive with smaller payload. Lugging a bronze barrel with a lot of gunpowder is too stupid and dangerous to do if you don’t expect a huge fight.
>Limelight projector: Your gunpowder and spirits production gave you access for everything you’ll need to create a primitive but powerful chemical torchlight. These projectors at first outclassed their analogues among arclights. Beyond producing bright lights these were also used to make “magic lanterns”- an early form of projectors.

>Other options: I’m always open for ideas

>>3172682
I see where the confusion is, I also fully understand that the town has several limitation to paper making venture. Which also raise the question of where do we want to take Farsalos industry (or if we even want to go there though it might create some goodwill).

>Melee optimized point defenses: your current point defense is not designed for repelling melee attacks and you would have a high chance of missing with countermeasures. This validates a redesign.

>>3172743

>Physical body research: During the fight with Mad Goddess you were somehow covered in strange scales that protected you from damage. If you knew how to summon them at will it would immensely help you with your natural defense. This experiment might end up… painful


This ability helped us greatly against our most difficult opponent, if we master it we will have a significant power boost

>>3172743
>Physical body research: During the fight with Mad Goddess you were somehow covered in strange scales that protected you from damage. If you knew how to summon them at will it would immensely help you with your natural defense. This experiment might end up… painful

We are fairly glass cannon currently, with this we at least have a lower chance of horrifying injury or death.

>>3172820
That concussion against the firebreathing giant monster got me worried

>>3172838
Yeah I've got no way to deal with that, at best we could try "automatic inertia compensation" to try and slow ourselves down more safely in future. That or we could try having ourselves automatically "dive" into other dimensions when we get struck since those seemingly lack anything hard for us to slam into meaning we could slow down under our own power carefully.

Honestly it might just be an idea to work on our senses, if we can anticipate their strikes before they land or fight from longer distances then this will be less risky.

>>3172785
>>3172813
>>3172820
Writing

>>3172869
The fight with the Mad Goddess has revealed that there is much more to your physiology. You previously thought that you were an augmented human with natural organs being directly improved but it seems that it might not be the case. The invader had a kind of internal armor belt that protected her inner organs and allowed her to maintain mobility even after losing everything beyond the armor while somehow hiding its existence from non- invasive observations. It also seems to screen the internal cavity from your telekinesis which appears to be a common technology among powerful creatures such as the Forgotten Beast you’ve just killed.

There doesn’t seem to be a way to test its existence externally. Trying to scan it with your senses would fail to discover anything out of ordinary. You could only attempt to force a telekinetic effect to occur inside of a person and if they survived it would mean they have a similar structure inside. Thus, the only way to check if you have a similar organ is to literally cut yourself open. Shit…

You’ve created a set of iron surgery tools which were quenched to make them harder and prepared a light and a flat surface in your lab... dungeon. You would attempt to get through to the armored layer inside of your left arm. This should be safer than trying to cut into your torso and easier to observe. As you squeezed a rolled up woolen towel in your mouth and zoned out the pain you’ve started cutting into your arm.

The process was long and tedious as your defenses immediately sprung into action and kept filling the hole with repair gel. Strangely enough, with time the gel became harder and harder to cut. It looks like your scars might be adaptive to damage. After trying to do the same with spirit torch you have confirmed this hypothesis. The more you get damaged the more resistant to the damage type your scars will become until you are fully healed. It doesn’t seem to be too useful in the middle of combat as it takes quite a bit of time and seems to exist for the sole purpose of sealing the wound no matter what. Interesting…

In the end, it became impossible to cut with iron tools completely as they rapidly dulled into uselessness. Cuts in new areas encountered a soft oily protective layer short distance below the skin that was highly resistant to both cutting and temperature. Unlike hydra from Greek myth your healing doesn’t seem to worsen if the wound is burned after cutting as the cut resistant gel is as resistant to fire as the first response gel, but it starts secreting faster to seal the new damage.

>>3173060
As it got more and more infuriating you decided to take out the alloy sword and try to chop through this oily layer. It took quite a bit of tries as the layer got more and more dense the deeper it went until you’ve finally managed to chop to the “bone”. This caused a crimson red liquid to spray from the hole right into your face before the wound sealed. The bone itself looked strange too, it was too smooth and white to be normal and there were no muscles that you could find. Looks like you do have an armor belt…

To conclude your research, it seems that your arm consists of the following layers:
1) Your skin, which is a bit more resistant to damage than it should
2) A network of capillary that pumps “scarring” repair liquid that is capable of adapting to damage within some limits
3) A thick oily material in the place where your muscles are supposed to be. It seems to have additional defensive purposes as well as it is the source of “scarring” liquid
4) A layer of pressurized “blood” that seems to be the raw material for the “scarring” liquid
5) The “armor belt” that most possibly contains your muscles, bones and internal organs while mimicking as your skeleton

With this nasty stuff out of the way, you decided to find out more about those scales. While you were fighting the Mad Goddess, you were protected by tiny hexagonal plates that could turn completely reflective. They protected you from intense heat, projectiles and shockwaves. If you find out how to summon them at will you will drastically improve your survivability. However, how should you do this?

Roll a 1d20 on success. You risk a lot of pain and healing time, you can’t die from this.

>Take a swim in an acid lake. It is said that if you dip your hand in sulfuric acid you can’t feel the bottom of the beaker
>Skinny dip into a geyser and submerge into its active zone. Water there is definitely beyond boiling
>Make a you sized furnace and light it up. The armor belt should save your ass even if it is a stupid idea
>Other ideas?

Rolled 1 (1d20)

>>3173063
>Skinny dip into a geyser and submerge into its active zone. Water there is definitely beyond boiling

Time to go for a swim.
Maybe, nust maybe, we should let someone know where we are going.

The thing protected from intense heat, I don't know if acid applies, lets go to the geyser.

>>3173099
Oh wow

Its the giants and t-rexes all over again

Hope nobody see us skinle

Rolled 10 (1d20)

>>3173063


>>3173099
Damn dude

Rolled 6 (1d20)

please be a twenty

Man, we are going to have sone time on our hands until we fully heal, guess Rheia's classes will start sooner than we though, and we will be covered from head to toe while we heal

>>3173121
At least, from the 3 options I think we went with the least damaging one, even if very damaging anyway.

>>3173099
Well, you guys are lucky, if you rolled that on the furnace option you would look really spooky for a couple months. Luckily this one would be relatively easy to heal.

>>3173137
Another 1

Brought to you by the same person who did it against t-rex and giant, but rolled 20s against giant monster and madgodess.

Dice gods only help in dire situations, not when we are fucking around apparently.

>>3173155
>Dice gods only help in dire situations, not when we are fucking around apparently.
That's better than my luck, when I'm involved the dice gods are complete assholes who love to watch us suffer or just barely scrape by.

>>3173160
Roll and save us, its you mosment to shine
So we can at least activate the plates after all this pain

>inb4 another 1

>>3173099
>>3173105
>>3173107
Ooh boy, writing. Also, that would be the last post for today because it is almost midnight.

File: Geyser lake.jpg (357 KB, 1920x1080)

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>>3173187
If these powers activate in response to a threat you should subject yourself to one, right? The prize is too sweet and the risk is minimal. What could happen in the worst case? Couple months of regrowing your skin? That’s nothing in comparison to becoming bulletproof on command. Let’s do this!

You briefly consider shoving yourself into molten bronze or sulfuric acid, but you feel like it might be a bit too much to deal with. Thus, you decided to try something milder. Like a geyser. The geyser is made when a cavity that is close to some hot rock gets filled with water. The water vaporizes and the steam rushes out of the hole. That means if you get to the cavity you’ll subject yourself to superheated steam which should be enough to trigger the safety feature. Or so you hope at least.

You decided not to take much with you and just walk out in some light clothes. Whatever lives in that area is no match to your powers so you don’t really need any weapons or armor. When you arrived to the geyser you took off your clothes, hanged them off a nearby tree and skinny dipped into the pit.

It was not a smart idea. While the water on the surface of the geyser was not really acidic, the water inside has much higher concentration of sulfur. In combination with intense heat it caused constant dull pain and irritation as you descended into the chamber. It was a surprisingly deep shaft that ended in a roughly spherical chamber partially made from the same material as the Labyrinth. It was lit up with dim red light of numerous red quartz crystals. Some of them were tiny while others pierced the cavity from one wall to another. It is a kind of shattered quartz geode that is partially buried in dirt and flooded with underground waters.

>>3173306
Unfortunately for you, your powers didn’t activate. Like at all. It seems that aggressive environment is far from sufficient for activation or maybe it was just not dangerous enough? The heat and acidic water caused huge burns on your skin. It could be worse. A guy once died in Yellowstone by falling into an active geyser and dissolving completely in a day. You just lost your hair and your skin now looks all wrinkly, red and painful like if you were really old and blacked out in a hot tub but worse. Fuck, that was not worth it. You hope that it heals quickly.

In addition to all that as you were pulling yourself out of the geyser you’ve met face to face with some peasant hunter. He was startled and ran away towards Istrio screaming. Hey, asshole, the fact that I’m two thousand years older than you doesn’t mean that you can behave like that! And at this moment you’ve noticed that he stole your fucking dress. A telekinetic smack later sent him face planting into the mud. You managed to recover your slightly dirtier dress as the guy got up and booked it into the woods. Well, that was embarrassing, you hope no weird stories would come from that…
___________________________
And that’s it for this week. I did not expect that we would fail so spectacularly so I had to improvise a bit. If you are wondering, those scales for now are limited to affect state in addition to environmental threats. Sorry for implanting “wrinkled bald Ag” in your heads but critfail is a critfail. This will get fixed in two- three weeks but we will have short hair for a while. In any case, see you next week and hope you enjoyed. Feel free to discuss and ask questions.

>>3173310
>>3173310
Thanks for running, I guess we will be stuck teaching Rheia while we heal, possibly using full body cover.

File: B48D7BEA-A779-4E21-9218-6(...).jpg (54 KB, 696x650)

54 KB JPG

>>3173310
Hard- boiled Ag

>>3178595
Lol
Poor Ag will have to take a page from Haven's fashion style and adopt a hood and cloth mask for a time.

Let's wait until nightfal to go back to the city, we don't want the villagers seeing us like this.

>>3178595
>>3178630

>yfw this is when Sig decides to visit.

That would be just the luck. How long until we can walk around without looking like a wrinkled hag?

>>3178673
Exactly two weeks for face but three weeks to the point we get our hair to reasonable length(appropriate for a woman by local standards). It would take a bit more than a month to get them to former length.

>>3178680
Yeah, full body cover for a time.

>>3173306
New thread is up >>3186337

>>3186347
Archived