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>>5846486
Your name is Ezreal Van Houtzmann, born Ezreal Mious, and better known to your dearest friends as ‘Tips’. You had come from your mother’s country in the Sylvan lands of the elven race to Hawksong, birthplace of your father, to study magic in the prestigious Mages’ Tower of Hawksong. In your years here—almost half your thirty-five years, now—you had achieved truly tremendous things.

You had found friends, and become more comfortable with the stigma of your mixed blood.

You had met your father, Rudolfo Van Houtzmann, and adventured with him into the Goblin Wastes.

You had studied the traditions of the True Fey and of the Neme-Ashurati, and learned some of their sacred secrets.

You had mastered The Alchemy of Life, becoming a truly great manipulator of flesh and blood, to heal and to transform, and even developed applications never before seen.

You had uncovered conspiracies of Hawksong’s dark and troubled past, including that of the Tower’s own Archmage and her enigmatic adoptive daughter. You had become Mage Apprentice to the one, and lover to the other…

And then, eager to hide your holy mysteries from the Archmage and to mend your lover, to heal all Hawksong and its people of the plague and restore normalcy to this troubled world, you had allowed Izirina Henzler to trick you, to lead you into the beyond and into her fantasy of abandoning her afflicted body, transfiguring her tainted soul, and leaving her history, her biology, and this whole world behind.

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>>5846486
It has been a month since then. You keep expecting to wake up and to feel as you used to feel, to be as you used to be… But you aren’t. Neither you nor the world will ever be the same.

You had become…
>Aetherial
[You are no longer fully material in your default form. When you do not focus, or lack mana, you cannot interact with physical objects that are non-magical, your voice becomes faint to mortal ears, and your very existence becomes difficult to perceive without the second-sight of a mage or magical being. However, you can benefit from the effects of <Free Movement> far more readily, and can see and grasp spirits as surely as you once could physical beings.]

>Elemental
[You are specifically attuned to fire, wind, and electricity now, such that you require gloves and shaded glasses to hide your glowing eyes and protect others from your burning, shocking touch. Your skin glows subtly shedding a faint light, and all Elemental spells have reduced difficulty, as does unarmed combat against vulnerable beings.]

>Paragon
[The mixture of bodies and spirits between yourself and your two fellow-travellers shed all impurities in either. You have become uncannily beautiful and graceful in the way of elves, with the versatility and hardiness of men, and the strength and sinuous dexterity of the reptilian race, and a perfect bill of physical health and a deeper reserve of mana than before… But you feel different, and you don’t entirely recognize your reflection anymore.]

[Previous threads (and previous quests set in the same universe, though they’re not required reading) are at https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=ReptoidQM]

>>5846493
>Paragon
Mostly because of Costella

>>5846493
>Aetherial
what's with the material-focused options!? Away from +here+ and into mystery!!

>>5846493
>Paragon

>>5846493
>Elemental

>>5846493
>>Aetherial

>>5846493
>Paragon
Has Tips become a gigachad? No wonder he doesn't recognise himself. What a chad.

>>5846486
>There were mountains in the mountains
how unusual

>Aetherial
get fucked spirits

>>5846493
>Paragon
Based new reptile race

>>5846572
Paragon option sounds dangerously like a femboy to me

>>5846493
>>Paragon
We already have Elemental Infusion and Free Movement

>>5846589
*monsters in the mountains
[Fuck's sakes, I'm the worst proofreader]

>>5846891
[Elemental infusion and free Movement pale in comparison to what following those specific paths will enable, if either of those are the direction you desire to follow.]


>>5846834
Tips is a half-elf. he's already effeminate

>>5846834
Bro have you seen our pic? It's in >>5846487
We're as femboy as possible. I can't even call Logan gay.

>>5846959
and it's weird because rudolfo is such a chad...

>>5846493
Is the form we select going to be shared between Izirina&Costella. Or are they going to have a different change?

>>5846493
>Aetherial
>>5846922
still funny though
>>5846834
nigga we're already a femboy

>>5847006
Mentally, physically he's old and busted and really sounds like more of a dex build even when he was in his prime.

>>5846493
>Aetherial

>>5847099
>>5847006
>Rudolfo van Houtzmann, Human Rogue 5, 14 STR, 14 CON, 16 DEX, 10 INT, 8 WIS, 16 CHA, Weapon Finesse & Skill Focus (Perform, Lute)
[Tips could have ended up more muscularly built, but he's more bookish and spiritual and even in the Goblin Wastes didn't really get into the thick of things athletically or martially when given the options.]

>>5847018
That's a spoiler.

>>5846493
>Aetherial

This one fits tips the most.

>>5846493
>Paragon

>>5846493
>[You are no longer fully material in your default form. When you do not focus, or lack mana, you cannot interact with physical objects that are non-magical, your voice becomes faint to mortal ears, and your very existence becomes difficult to perceive without the second-sight of a mage or magical being. However, you can benefit from the effects of <Free Movement> far more readily, and can see and grasp spirits as surely as you once could physical beings.]

>>5846524
[Sole Elemental anon, if you have a preference, you may wish to choose a secondary vote. it's a very close race between the other two options.]

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>>5847171
>>5847165
>>5847155
>>5847106
>>5847044
>>5846891
>>5846592
>>5846589
>>5846572
>>5846539
>>5846524
>>5846517
>>5846507
>>5846502
[Locked and writing!]

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>>5847381
You had become… Aetherial, you supposed. It was as if when you returned form that other world, not ALL of you came back. You slept atop a bed as normal, sure, but as you then stand up and step off of it, you fall to the floor slowly, and it requires a moment of concentrated effort to avoid falling through your floor and into the abode below. When you wash yourself, the soap slips through your finger—not between them with wet slickness, but THROUGH them, right through what should have been solid flesh and bone! You look into the mirror and see yourself, clear as <Daylight>: you were no ghost, no <Free Moving> spiritual entity.

You were… You. Yet you weren’t.

You had become something else, something that other people stare right through… WALK through, if you’re not careful. The people are the worst, too: other objects barely register when they transpose your body, but the ensouled… They make you feel a profound discomfort, when they share your space for more than a moment.

As for the others who had made the journey there and back again with you, who had danced in the space-between and been transformed… Well, they were changed, but differently. The shining bright spot of the whole experience was Costella. You’d barely known the young woman before the dance, only as a test subject for your efforts to cure the ‘dragon-pox’ plaguing Hawksong, and deformed into a yet-more reptiloid monstrosity by your (semi-successful) efforts to cure her. You knew only that she had valued her appearance above all else, and had sought to return her some of that pride and comfort, while simultaneously proving your fairy cure to Hawksong’s queen and her council… And you’d succeeded.

Costella had returned more beautiful than ever she had been before—taller, stronger, somehow ‘fuller’ in her substance, and with a touch of the grace which you had inherited from your mother’s people… And which, after a fashion, she had inherited from you, when your souls and bodies had mixed and mingled. Her skin was still faintly scaled, when one looked closely, but they had become so fine and so evenly intermingled with her skin as to appear faintly greenish freckles across perpetually sun-kissed skin. Where people seemed to often lose sight of you as soon as they took their eyes off of you, she now drew stares from every quarter, like a goddess descended from the Heavenly Realms above. She hadn’t only changed on the outside, though.

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>>5847429
“It’s like… I was sleep-walking through life, you know?” Costella had told you. “I just wanted to sell stuff at my parent’s store until, like… I don’t know, I landed a husband, or maybe just until something, ANYTHING interesting happened. But interesting things are ALWAYS happening, when you know what to look for! Since we got back, I’ve been reading—like, not the Grey press and junk like that, royal gossip or whatever. REAL books! There are so many, like… BIG ideas out there that I guess maybe I always felt were too big to really understand. Maybe I was just, like… Thinking small?”

(You were fairly confident she could now perform magic, too, with the right tutelage. Certainly, she could see you in a way that non-mages rarely could)

And as for Izirina…

“Izzy,” you whisper to yourself.

What HAD become of you and Izirina Henzler—your oldest rival, your dear friend, your first lover, and the young woman whose origins and peculiarities had dominated your waking and dreaming life for almost a decade? The woman who had transformed you into a living spectre, sabotaging a simple experiment in her endless quest for transcendence?

The woman with the glowing eyes like holy fire, whose flesh crackles with electricity, and whose hair now blew in an unseen breeze? Who seemed scarcely human—or even elven, or reptilian—any longer?

>You haven’t spoken with her much since the incident—you aren’t sure how to feel about her, and what she did
>You feel closer to her than ever, for good or for ill, for who else can you share in this new existence with?
>You turned away from her, actively avoiding her—you still haven’t forgiven her, and you suppose you're on something of 'break'
>Write-in

>>5847432
>You haven’t spoken with her much since the incident—you aren’t sure how to feel about her, and what she did
is she a pretty elemental at least ? And it seems Costella became the dumb Bimbo <---> Nerd Stacey meme, but in this case more bimbo and more nerdy.

>>5847432
>You feel closer to her than ever, for good or for ill, for who else can you share in this new existence with?

So everybody got one of the options? Good thing we didn't take paragon, I feel like Costella would have been miserable with either of the other 2.

>>5847432
>You feel closer to her than ever, for good or for ill, for who else can you share in this new existence with?

>>5847432
>You haven’t spoken with her much since the incident—you aren’t sure how to feel about her, and what she did.

she almost got us killed, she defiantly has to make up for what she has done before things become all fine and dandy.

>>5847432
>You turned away from her, actively avoiding her—you still haven’t forgiven her, and you suppose you're on something of 'break'
What the hell, Izzy.

>>5847432
>>You turned away from her, actively avoiding her—you still haven’t forgiven her, and you suppose you're on something of 'break'
BETRAYAL

>>5847432
>>You haven’t spoken with her much since the incident—you aren’t sure how to feel about her, and what she did

Okay now we have Parangon Costella, I really really wish to get her into a strange and messy relationship with Izzy and us.

>>5847432
>>You turned away from her, actively avoiding her—you still haven’t forgiven her, and you suppose you're on something of 'break'
she's stinky. and not in the good way! stinky witch!

>>5847432
>You turned away from her, actively avoiding her—you still haven’t forgiven her, and you suppose you're on something of 'break'
Had I realized this was back, I would’ve chosen Paragon. Why the fuck did anons think turning into a ghost was a good idea?

>>5848259
>Why the fuck did anons think turning into a ghost was a good idea?

Because it is? The old spriggian once said that our material form holds back our potential. Now we are part sprirt and can turn into an invisible and intangible ghost whenever.

>>5848259
Because it was a good idea.

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>>5848292
>>5848326

>>5848259
Because it allows both Izzy and Costella to be literally and figuratively smokin' hot?

what happens when we clone ourselves now?

>>5848429
>picking physical buffs as a mage over intangibility and a greater connection to the spiritual
Not sure why you think this is a good idea. Plus Costella would have been miserable.

>>5848512
You've never tried before, but now... Well, that IS an interesting question

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>>5848259
>>5847888
>>5847736
>>5847733
>>5847706
>>5847611
>>5847546
>>5847504
>>5847476
[Locked and writing!]

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>>5848628

In truth, you’ve seen relatively little of Izirina Henzler since your return. You’d spoken, when you first came back… But perhaps ‘spoken’ was the wrong word.

“IZZY,” you’d shouted, “what the HELL?!”

“We did it,” she’s whispered excitedly, the smile not leaving her face as she regarded the crackling energy radiating from her outstretched fingers. “I feel… Wow. This is AMAZING!”

“You could have gotten us KILLED. You realize that, right?”

“This is just the beginning,” she’d said. “Yous aw that place… Formless, shapeless, but WE could shape it! Make it over in our image—now that we’re better! THAT could be the better WORLD that we’ve always wanted, Ezreal!”

“You mean that YOU’VE always wanted,” you noted sourly.

But she hadn’t heard you—or hadn’t been able to pull herself out of her own tempest of emotion to properly respond. You’d reached out to help Costella instead, and had taken her away from that place, while Izirina slowly levitated and radiated energy behind you, reveling in her new power—a beautiful, terrible, living sun, purged of impurities and made almost divine…

And yet only then did you truly see how deeply flawed and broken she was.

It wasn’t that you hated her, exactly. You hadn’t been AVOIDING her. But… You couldn’t go back there, to the Tower, to her room or to yours. Too many memories, and the pain was too fresh. It was only when you were making your way through Hawksong to your new (temporary?) residence that you realized what exactly had happened to YOU, and how profound the changes had been to Costella.

No longer able to remain in the Hawksong Mages’ Tower, school and then home to you for years now, you instead found yourself bedding down… Elsewhere.

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>>5848680
As for the entire purpose behind your jaunt into esoteric magic and extradimensional spaces… Well, Izirina was cured of her affliction, and then some. She is no longer the sad and isolated shut-in with scaly skin and chimerically-crippled reproductive tract but instead some sort of… Of elemental super-human! And Costella, well, she is delighted with her ‘perfected’ body and mind, a purified and refined paragon of physical and mental being. Despite this, even Costella—perhaps ESPECIALLY Costella—recognizes that you could not reasonably utilize this process as a remedy to the dragon-pox.

“Not THERE, anyway,” she notes, with a small shiver and a cute frown. “Not like what we—well, YOU TWO, I guess—did. Not everyone’s going to like, turn out like ME.”

“No,” you noted quietly, “they might turn out like me.”

“Oh!” she gasps, bringing a hand to her lips. “I’m sorry. That was TOTALLY insensitive of me. I didn’t mean it like that, Ezreal, really!”

In truth, you were still grappling with how you felt about the ritual and what it had transformed you int—not quite a ghost, fully alive, and yet apart from the rest of the world. At dusk and sawn, in hidden and liminal spaces, though… Well, you saw clearly things now which you had only perceived in a shadowed, fragmented, or faded state before. You could see the shades of the deceased around graveyards, exchange glances and nods with the spirits of streams and the small spites which flitted around flowers even in the urban sprawl of Hawksong, and the floating luminous parade of dreamers ascending beyond their bodies each evening, and the angelic, demonic, and fairy spirits which hovered amongst them, playing their strange games and dancing their cosmic dance.

Your existence was complicated, but it wasn’t all bad… But it wasn’t something you could necessarily expect most people to choose, nor could you guarantee that they would turn out like YOU, and not different in some undefinable—maybe TERRIBLE—way, if you were to guide the afflicted in a dance, even on this material plane.

How did you plan to approach the ritual?
>Perform it as originally planned—here in the Material Palne, it sound function normally… And maybe even help to bind you back to Earth!
>Teach the ritual to Costella—she should be capable now, sharing as she does in your elven essence, and if SHE leads others in the rite they are likely to end up more like her, which is safer for everyone involved
>Abandon the use of the sacred fairy-ritual which transformed you—it is too dangerous, you have concluded, and you do not yet fully understand itrite-in

>>5848683
>Teach the ritual to Costella—she should be capable now, sharing as she does in your elven essence, and if SHE leads others in the rite they are likely to end up more like her, which is safer for everyone involved.

Seems like a reasonable option if we are worried about the plague victims becoming ghost-like due to our changed essence.

>>5848683
>Teach the ritual to Costella—she should be capable now, sharing as she does in your elven essence, and if SHE leads others in the rite they are likely to end up more like her, which is safer for everyone involved
double the dancers, double the subjects

>>5848683
>Show Costella as your example of a perfected cure to the Queen and Council so they'll approve the land grant and you can uphold your deal with the Fey.

Sure they all won't turn out as good as Costella did, but she's the best example we could possibly find. If they don't approve it after seeing her, they never would have.

>>5848683
>>Teach the ritual to Costella—she should be capable now, sharing as she does in your elven essence, and if SHE leads others in the rite they are likely to end up more like her, which is safer for everyone involved
>Starting a cult, the quest
this is gn' go great

>>5848683
>>Perform it as originally planned—here in the Material Palne, it sound function normally… And maybe even help to bind you back to Earth!
>Abandon the use of the sacred fairy-ritual which transformed you—it is too dangerous, you have concluded, and you do not yet fully understand itrite-in
Absolutely do not teach it to Costella. She is 100% the kind of thoughtless, selfish human the Spriggan would hate, even if she has some bit of elf 'blood' now. She would see it as a way to become beautiful, or something to sell, or something she can USE, rather than as something solemn or valuable or deserving of respect

>>5848847
>I accidentally fused >">Write in> with the last option
[Eurgh. Sorry, anons. Please ignore that.]

>>5848683
>Abandon the use of the sacred fairy-ritual which transformed you—it is too dangerous, you have concluded, and you do not yet fully understand

>>5848847
[Also, I'm not sure I understand: do you wish to try to perform the ritual as originally panned, or abandon its use?]

>>5848683
>Teach the ritual to Costella—she should be capable now, sharing as she does in your elven essence, and if SHE leads others in the rite they are likely to end up more like her, which is safer for everyone involved
Accidental lichdom with a race of homegrown frankenstein fairy dragonborn under our command?

>>5848683
>>Teach the ritual to Costella—she should be capable now, sharing as she does in your elven essence, and if SHE leads others in the rite they are likely to end up more like her, which is safer for everyone involved

>>5848683
>Perform it as originally planned—here in the Material Palne, it sound function normally… And maybe even help to bind you back to Earth!
Anon might be on to something regarding Costella's personal qualities

>>5848445
kek, you got me there

>>5848526
>choosing the spiritual over our physical ties to the world
Is what you mean. Like, fuck, our poor chimera, family, and friends must be worried sick, and we put additional challenges to our physical magic cause of this. At least the Paragon turns us more into fey, and not some Harry Potter specter like Headless Nick.

>>5849502
Wrong on all counts I’m afraid. According to the update our transformation is nowhere near the handicap you imply, and Paragon would have diluted us with human and reptilian, not concentrated us.

>>5849521
>>5849502
>Aetehrial implications
[You have to expend effort to be fully tangible and detectable to mundane humanoids and some animals, and if you expend all your mana (ie cast three spells in a single short period like a combat encounter) you cannot do so at all.]

>Paragon properties
[If you'd chosen Paragon, you would have had a subsequent vote as to whether you being more manly, more elven, but you would have taken on some degree of reptilian properties as well (mostly superficial, some added height and strength). It would have largely presented you the best of both world of your parentage, +1 Athleticism and +1 to your mana pool. There may have been a hidden downside as well, aside form the fact that, yes, Costella would have become Elemental or Aetherial and hated it\

>>5849521
We haven’t used any spells yet dude- the moment we run low on magic, our utility changes to useless. Paragon is frankly superior, even with the gene nonsense I don’t give a shit about.

>>5849559
What you call useless I call very difficult to kill. We’re nigh invulnerable to mundane weaponry.

>>5849645
So we get to watch impotently as all of our friends and family die in combat? Greeeat.

>>5849868
I’m sorry you struggle to understand why people wanted a spiritual boon over a physical one in a quest called seekers of the esoteric, where we play a mage. Hopefully one day it will be clear to you. In the meantime, please stop whining.

>>5849914
People wanted a physical boon lol, and excuse me if I think a three spell limit on our physical utility is not worth the ‘spiritual boon’, whatever the fuck that means in your head. The whole thing with Tips was that we’re supposed to be the ones semi-grounded to the material plane, not fucking off to lala land like we’re Izzy on shirin.

I’ve said my piece.

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>>5849914
>>5849935
[The voter went the way it went. Adjusting fro IDs which turned out to be 1-post, Aetherial won by an even larger margin. I appreciate the passion, but no one can win every vote in a quest with any number of voters, and no vote was objectively wrong for the direction of the quest or will lead to me punishing you all.]

At least not on that particular vote, dun dun dun

>>5848962
>>5848932
>>5848920
>>5848850
>>5848847
>>5848829
>>5848810
>>5848762
>>5848739
[Locked and writing.]

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>>5849946

There’s a certain draw to the idea of performing the ritual yourself, so automatic it verges in the instinctual. This is fairy magic—YOUR magic. It’s been half your lifetime, almost, since you lived among the elves, but that almost accentuates this urge: the urge to keep this secret safe, specific to you and yours, and to thus set yourself apart. It has become YOUR thing, your secret edge and a core part of your identity as a stranger in a strange land. You're understandably loathe to give it up, even for a good cause. There’s good practical reason to be concerned, as well: just look at what happened when you shared such secrets with IZZY, who you trusted and l—

…Who you held very dear.

Costella is… Well, she’s grown on you, but she is a shallow creature in many ways. She reminds you a bit of Testa, but where Testa is a gifted mage with a fair for the aesthetic and the dramatic, Costella is no aesthete, no beautician, no performer of grandiose illusion. She’s just… Costella Fanucci, merchant’s daughter. The ritual that so changed you and Izirina Henzler just made Costella MORE COSTELLA. She isn’t a BAD girl, or a MEAN one, not CRUEL or AVARICIOUS. She’s just… Normal. A regular, pleasant young woman whose principle concerns are simple, material ones. Her new passion for reading has focused on fiction and historical dramas and romances, or (despite her assertion that she is now ‘above gossip’) civic politics that amount to little more than public feuds between nobles and guild-houses. She understands them better now, draws connections between them in ways you strongly suspect were beyond her before, and she delights in sharing these ‘revelations’ with you and anyone who will listen, but even now she is no great thinker. What if she uses this sacred, secret knowledge for some petty, vain, HUMAN purpose?

But she is beautiful.

This isn’t necessarily a LUSTFUL thought on your part, or a romantic observation. It’s just objective. She is a gorgeous woman, statuesque and shapely in a perfect, unattainable fashion now. With her interest in reading, she has also acquired an interest in fitness and health, but you suspect she has no great need for such measures to maintain this physical perfection. It’s simply part of who and what she IS now, just as your semi-tangibility and attunement to dreams and spirits is a part of you. The addition of her daily exercises only accentuates the striking success of the procedure that made her this way, though, such that simply showcasing her to Queen Ekaterine and the Royal Privy Council is enough to instantly authorize the grant of Old Maple Hill and the surrounding lands to the fey that live there… Just as you knew it would.

But to make sure that the other afflicted victims of the pox turn out like Costella, and not like you or like Izirina, you must teach HER the words, and the dance.

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>>5849976
“I don’t know, Ezreal…” she says, in a rare moment of less-than-total self-confidence since her transformation. “I’m not, like, a WITCH, you know?”

“Female mages are still called mages,” you gently correct her. “or ‘sorceresses’. Witch is considered pejorative.”

“See?!” she throws her hands up in the air. “I don’t even, like, know the LINGO! I haven’t been to school EVER, you know? Not even grammar school or for, like, MATH.”

“But you can see me,” you point out. “You can touch me.”

“Well, I mean…” she trails off, twirling her hair around a finger.

“That’s a mage thing,” you say, “or an elf thing, and ALL elves are mages, by human standards.”

“That’s just because of me and you dancing together,” she says quietly. “I didn’t… It’s not ME doing all that. It’s you.”

“It’s us,” you correct her.

She blushes slightly, but smiles.

“Jeez, Ez, you sweet-talker. You really think I could be a… A mage?”

“I don’t know,” you joke, “but you make a damned fine half-elf.”

“More like a third,” she replies, grinning wider now. “Can’t forget the lizardy bits.”

But she agrees, and the lessons begin. Over the next few weeks, you tutor her first in the words. She remembers the meanings well in the Northern Common-tongue of Man, but less so the elven. Still, she doesn’t struggle as badly as you’d feared—perhaps another side-effect of the admixture of your essences, during your first dance. And speaking of the dance…

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>>5849978
“This is awkward, right?” she asks, as you hold her hands in yours, fingers intertwined, mirroring one another’s footsteps in a slow mimicry of your earlier whirling in the astral sea.

“No,” you lie through gritted teeth. “Why would it be awkward?”

“Just… Like, a guy and a girl holding hands like this and dancing while staring into one anotehr’s eyes…”

“I’ve been avoiding eye contact, actually,” you note, with a clearing of your throat. “Which… Yes, alright, perhaps it’s a BIT awkward.”

“RIGHT?” she says.

You continue in silence for a moment.

“Have you… Like, talked to her?”

“Not in a while,” you admit for you both know who you mean—HER, Izirina Henzler, the remaining third of your trio.

“But you want to, right?” she presses.

You say nothing.

“It’s just… I barely know her, but whenever I see the Mages’ Tower, I like… Can’t help but stare, and think about her,” continues Costella, as if oblivious to your turmoil, or just desperate to share her own. “I feel this PULL. Like… Well, it sounds silly, especially for a girl talking about another GIRL, but like my soulmate is there. My other half, or… Like, THRID, I guess?”

You still say nothing, but your feelings must show on your face, for Costella queezes your hands a bit more gently.

“Sorry,” she says. “I know it’s… I know you two were close.”

“Yes,” you admit. “We were.”

“I guess I’m lucky you’re spending all this time and effort, like, teaching me your ‘moves’, you know?” Costella continues to blather, almost criminally free from angst and self-consciousness now. “It takes the edge off, since at elast both of US are together. I wonder… I guess I wonder how she feels.”

Your expression must REALLY have darkened, because Costella lets go of your hands and hastily cups your face.

“Oh! Oh no, I’m sorry! Don’t cry okay? If you start crying, I’LL start crying!”

“I’m not going to cry!” You protest, grabbing at her hands and pulling them away from your face…

Only to find her deep blue eye fixed on yours, and your bodies and faces remarkably close.

>Cry, and embrace
>Kiss Costella [initiates romance]
>Continue the lesson normally
>Write-in

>>5849980
>Cry, and embrace
Turn on the waterworks!

>>5849980
>Cry, and embrace
I hope this isnt our only chance to romance Costella, I just dont feel like this is the right time as Id like to explore the whole "soulmate" thing by having Costella and Izi bond first, and then initiate the traditional reptoid polycule of course

>>5850003
>traditional reptoid polycule
[Entirely feasible, but point of order: Kamunu/Ismena The Infiltrator simply fucked around and/or raped people, and her brief stint of polyamory with Paula and Edwin ended with them getting hitched and her sulking about it, and Theral had less of a polycule than a traditional patriarch's harem; none of his wives were into each other.]

>is this the only chance?
[Never say never, but after my initial offer of a romance option, I'll usually only offer it one more time if it's rejected. Glowie and Iri were exceptions because they had designs outside of love. After that, it's up to anons to write-in their intentions.]

>>5849980
>Cry, and embrace

>>5849984
>Kiss Costella [initiates romance]

Izzy tricked us, risked our lives to further her theories into the planes. And she didn't even brother apologizing or saying anything about it.

Until she shapes up, she doesn't deserve the waifu spot. Also the last thing she said to us
> “Yous aw that place… Formless, shapeless, but WE could shape it! Make it over in our image—now that we’re better! THAT could be the better WORLD that we’ve always wanted, Ezreal!”

Sounded a bit sociopathic, i feel that chasing after izzy at this point might encourage her increasingly bad behavior.

>>5848853
my intent was an approval vote for anything that wasn't teaching costella. such is questing, that anons do not instantly agree with all of my amazing, indubitably correct ideas and opinions.
>>5849980
>Kiss Costella [initiates romance]
Tips is an unfortunate soul, to say the least.

They just met so I'm not gonna vote for romance now...is what I would have said but I think it's a terrible decision and therefore very funny!

>>5850079
>They just met
[Technically you've known each other for a few months, but Costella spent most that time as essentially 'Test Subject 7' to Tips, and was in an increasingly deep depression, and sometimes appeared to be a terrifying gecko/crocodile woman]

>>5849980
>Cry, and embrace

>>5849980
>Kiss Costella [initiates romance]

>>5849980
>>Kiss Costella [initiates romance]
if mixing up souls doesn't count as a valid reason for three-people couple, I don't know what would.

>>5849980
>Continue the lesson normally

>>5849980
>Cry, and embrace
I'm all for polyromance, but we barely know her.
Backlink: >>5846502

>>5850258
Would’ve preferred Zi desu, but such is the quest

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>>5850258
>>5850179
>>5850150
>>5850148
>>5850102
>>5850079
>>5850060
>>5850013
>>5850003
>>5849984
[We've got a close call here... Luckily, I'm at work for a while, giving late voters a chance to roll in and break the tie more decisively, or those with non-backlinked 1post IDs to backlink!]

I'm >>5847476 only now noticed the id changed

>>5850608
[You weren't the 1post; k71nfQff was.]

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>>5850459
You both remained like that for a long time—well, what FELT like a long time. At times like this, you’d noticed, time seemed to stand still. Perhaps time, like space, like the various dimensions, was just another matter of subjective perception? Maybe it all only meant as much as you believed it to, when you got down to it? Maybe a moment could stretch forever, or the space between two people could close up in an instant, collapse in on itself until they were—

Oh. Oh! She’s kissing you. And… You were kissing her back. Costella’s hands still cup your face, one slowly sliding around behind your head, knocking your hat to the ground and tangling in your hair. Your own hands find her sides, just above her shapely, hourglass hips. She softly squeaks into the kiss, surprised; the reaction only encourages your automatic response, as you pull her hips to yours. Her lips part, inviting you; your tongue finds hers, accepting the invitation. She clutches you closer, moaning into the embrace.

“Ezreal…” she breathes.

“Izzy,” you gasp.

A pause. Your breathing hitches. Your heart catches in your throat as you realized what you said, and what you’re doing, and aren’t sure which one you should regret.

“Ah, I mean…”

“I… Oh. Oh gods, I’m sorry,” Costella says, releasing you and stepping back so abruptly so quickly you actually fall forwards at her feet. “I’m sorry! I didn’t even think about—”

“No, no, it’s okay,” you lie, not yet sure if it is. “I mean, it wasn’t entirely YOUR doing. I was also—”

“But you’re vulnerable!” she exclaims, tears welling in her eyes. “Your heart’s all, like, broken and you’re CONFUSED and I just went and GRABBED you and—"

“Costella, HONESTLY, I’m… It’s fine.”

“I’s NOT!” she wails. “You LOVED her!”

You hesitate to reply to that., your concentration wavering such that you began to sink into and through the floorboards of the room where you were practicing your dance a few moments before.

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>>5850871

“I don’t… I don’t know if I did,” you admit. “I never really allowed myself to properly… We never had time for all that. It was always one crisis to the next, or one adventure after another. I CARED about her, and I wanted to help her, but I…”

You stare down at your hands, passing through the wood below them, and fear the sting of tears forming in your own eyes.

“I failed, didn’t I?” you whisper. “I didn’t help her. I just… Enabled her. Let her lad us all into her spiral, her obsession, and now…”

The tears begin to fall-curiously tangible, unlike the rets of you.

“Hey, hey, no!” Costella admonishes you gently, kneeling in front of you. “You did your best. You always do. I’ve seen how hard you work… Like, for everyone, not just you. When I and the others were all poxy, you spent MONTHS trying to fix us. And when you found the first cure and I was… Well, you know, all gross and scaly… You still kind of DID IT, right? You’d won? That was a big deal! But when you saw how… Like… How sad I was…”

Her own tears start to bubble up again, and she reaches out to take your hands in hers—in that way only she, and Izzy, and a scant few other beings can. She lifts them out of the floor, guiding you back up onto your feet and onto solid ground—quite LITERALLY grounding you in the here and now.

“You saved me, Ez. Really, I… I couldn’t have lived like that. And if Izirina’s your soulmate… Well, she’s lucky to have you, and she’ll see that!”

“I was just doing my job,” you murmur.

She shakes her head, glaring almost angrily, only for her expression to melt.

“Nobody asked you to do all that!” she says. “You MADE it your job to help me, and to help her, and even now when you’re all hurty, you’re STILL making it your job, you know?”

You meet her eyes, and she smiles at you, and places your hat back on your head, taking a moment to play with your hair as she does so.

“You’re my hero, you know that?” she tells you.

You can’t help it—the tears come back. True to her word, this elicits tears in Costella as well. You don’t kiss again, but you do hug one another, holding each other tight, and finding comfort in each other—in a moment that lasts only an instant, yet stretches on forever, but romantic and not. The bond between you, two people who have barely known each other in the grand scheme of things, is profound in a way you cannot yet define. It is beyond friendship, not quite romance, too impassioned to be familial… But you feel in in your soul, suffusing you and making you whole—or nearly whole—once again.

“We should finish the lesson,” you sniffle.

“Yeah!” Costella agrees, messily wiping her eyes and nose on her sleeve in a way that makes you both cringe and laugh. “We’ve, like, got more people to help, right?”

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>>5850873
Together you dance, and sing, and somehow it all seems to come more naturally now to the both of you. The heartache isn’t gone, the ambiguity of your emotional connection remains, yet the awkwardness abates. By the time evening arrives, you’re confident—REALLY confident, to a degree that surprises you—in Costella’s ability to lead the ritual, and to thus share the gift of her ‘paragon’ physiology in some small part with those others afflicted by the pox.

But for you, it’s bed-time.

Your attunement to a realm without sun or moon ahs alleviated your automatic solar-lunar response, whereby the onset of darkness plunged you immediately into a soporific state without magical aid. However, od habits are hard to break—when dusk comes, you find yourself seeking home, and hearth, and a warm bed in which to take your rest. Costella, by contrast, seems to need less sleep than she did as a regular human.

“I guess I just, like… Sleep BETTER? Like, efficiently, I mean?” she muses, tapping her lip and looking towards the ceiling in thought. “I don’t know, I guess I just thought it was an elf thing?”

“It’s not,” you confirm, stretching and yawning.

“Well, sleep tight Ez!” she says and, after a moment’s hesitation, gives you another hug and a peck on the cheek.

(You only blush a little, or at least that’s what you tell yourself.)

With the Tower an absolute impossibility for you right now, in your current emotional state, where have you been making your bed these last few weeks?
>In your best friend Logan Pearce’s apartment, in the mage district known as the Initiate’s Village
>With Costella’s family, above a small shop near the central commercial hub of the city
>With your human father, Rudolfo Van Houtzmann, and his sister’s family
>Outside of Hawksong, on Old Maple Hill, with the True Fey, away from mankind
>Write-in

>>5850876
>With your human father, Rudolfo Van Houtzmann, and his sister’s family

>>5850876
>With Costella’s family, above a small shop near the central commercial hub of the city
Or
>With Zi and Hershy
Figured I’d add them as an option

>>5850971
>Zi and Hershy
[They're still out-of-town adventuring with Efron... But not for long, and if people are eager to see them back and vote accordingly, I may be willing to expedite their return, especially since you've essentially cured the dragon-pox epidemic.]

>>5850876
>>With your human father, Rudolfo Van Houtzmann, and his sister’s family

>>5850876
>With Costella’s family

>>5850876
>>With your human father, Rudolfo Van Houtzmann, and his sister’s family
family strong, toretto, cars, corona beer

>>5850876
>With your human father, Rudolfo Van Houtzmann, and his sister’s family

>>5850876
>With Costella’s family, above a small shop near the central commercial hub of the city

>>5850876
>In your best friend Logan Pearce’s apartment, in the mage district known as the Initiate’s Village

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>>5850889
>>5850971
>>5851032
>>5851033
>>5851130
>>5851144
>>5851236
>>5851237
As you walk home, you cannot help but steal a glance at that ivory tower splitting the dark sky, jutting out amongst the stars like great dagger, as if to threaten the throat of the moon itself… The Hawkson Mages’ Tower. It had been your home for years and somewhere inside—probably in her musty room near to the top, though who could say given her current state—was Izirina Henzler. So too your master, Theresa Henzler, Izirina’s adoptive mother and the Tower’s Archmage. How would she react, to see you now? What had her reaction been to Izirina?

Maybe one day you would find out… But not tonight.

Your fairy-soft footfalls stir leaves like a subtle breeze rather than crunch them, and which scarcely shift even light gravel. In due course, they carry you away from Costella’s family home. Even at this time of night, this area of the city would normally be a bustling hub of activity—this area and, perhaps, the Red Lantern District known for bathhouses, bawdy entertainment, and libations. Both are all-but-empty tonight. Liquid refreshment, bodily fluids, close proximity… All of them are possible vectors for the pox. As the person principally in-charge of the city’s disease-response for many months now, you know better than most that this is an over-reaction… And yet, it CAN be spread, rarely, though intimate acts at least, and perhaps kissing.

Kissing… Intimacy…

You shake away thoughts of Costella, memories of Izirina, and even grim reflections of the plague which—gods willing—the city shall soon be free of. None of those brave or desperate few who brave the curfews and contagions notice you pass by them; you give them wide birth, so that they won’t pass THROUGH you. Your spectral stroll carries you in due course to where you woke this morning, and where you have called home since you returned from your journey beyond Earth and sky: to the home of your father’s family, and your cousin Fenna, in the city’s poorer southeastern region, a few blocks from the foundries and workshops of the ciy’s Smithing District.

“Who goes there?” asks your father, absurdly and with great pomp, as you open the door.

Your old man—truly old now, his lustrous head of hair and thick, well-kept beard fading to grey where they had once been black, and beginning to thin. His eyes are still bright as ever, his senses sharp, and even seated at the table in the centre of the humble home with a bottle of spirits and a freshly-empty glass at his side, his hand is swift to his sword upon his hip.

You will yourself to be just a BIT more ‘present’ on the prime material plane, that he might perceive you properly.

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>>5851454
“Oh, I should have known!” he responds with an easy smile. “Well, come in my child! Sit down! Did you have a good time at—hmmheh heh---‘dance classes’ with you lovely lady friend?”

You feel your face heat up, and will yourself not to blush. The words ‘it’s not like that’ come to mind, and almost reach your mouth, but…

Well…

“It was fine,” you say instead, more curtly and with greater delay than you’d intended; your father’s grin widens.

“That’s my boy!” he cheers. “Let me pour you a drink. Tell me everything—except that which must be, a sthey say, never told for the sake of a lady’s honour, ey wot?”

“It wasn’t like THAT,” you say truthfully, attempting (and failing) to refuse the drink.

“Of course, of course,” your father murmurs faux-seriously, with a saucy wink, pushing the rather floral-smelling liqueur into your hand and pouting himself another.

“I’ve told you before: the water in this area isn’t contaminated with the pathogen,” you tell him, as you gingerly sip the potent beverage. “You CAN drink something other than alcohol.”

“I do, I do!” Rudolfo Van Houtzmann protests. “This is just my after-work reward. You know, after a hard day’s adventure, your mother and I and all our party were LOYAL patrons of whatever tavern would have us. Likewise, ey, for responsible work-day in what passes for civilized company toiling for those copper-counting magpies at the Engelson Storehouse Company—Hells, I may just need the drink more, haha!”

Despite his complaints, your father’s spirits have remained bright all these years since you convinced him to retire from adventuring life. Still, as you sit with him, you cannot help but be cognizant of how much he, too, ahs changed. He has not traveled between planes, not be transformed in an instant, but he is a full-blooded human—born of a short-lived race, in comparison to that of your elfmaid mother. Every subtle liver-spot, every crinkle of smile-liens around his bright eyes like yours, reminds you that he is now in his seventies. You have been sharing his room in the home of his niece this last month—space being at a premium, with her four children, and his brother and HIS wife and child. You are well aware of the aches and pains with which he rises on cold mornings, the cracks and pops which accompany his exercises. You have scarcely changed in appearance from the day you me him—a few inches taller, a bit more developed, but still barely a young adult, while this man—still working on the docks, a hard and physical job—sometimes seems as weakened by age as any man or woman of Hawksong by the sickness sweeping the city.

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>>5851456
“So you’re saying the bloody dragon-pox is all but dealt with, then?” you father asks. “Well cheers to that! I knew you would do it. My son, Ezreal Van Houtzmann, DRAGON-SLAYER!”

You smile a little at that, shaking your head.

“Nothing like that, I’m afraid,” you said.

“Well, slayer of the dragon-POX, ey wot?” your father presses, clinking his glass against yours.

You both finish your drinks, and return to your respective beds. The floors creak slightly under your father’s footfalls, though—of course—you pass over and through them with ghostly silence. Your father used to stay up late into the night but, between the plague and his advanced age, he has been nearly as early-to-bed as you have this last year. He always stays up to see you return home, however.

When morning comes, you are awoken by the commotion of your cousins and their kin. Your father’s sister’s husband’s brother’s child wake the house as always, by loudly voicing his displeasure at being awake, and yet unwilling to return to sleep. He’s barely two years old, at that stage of development you would have reached by three or four years, you suppose—when a child tests boundaries and is most eager to assert a personality before it is even built. His parents, young people who both live busy lives working in the nearby Smithing District as a steel-grinder and a mess-cook respectively, have little energy or inclination to correct him. Luckily for you, you are half-elven, and an early riser—you are already up. You drift out of your bedroom and down the stairs, willing yourself into corporeality, to greet the family.

“Good morning,” you greet them each in turn—younger Gustaaf, Marlien, Susan, Anne-Marie all around your age, little Addison and his mother and father Adolf and Marit, and of course Fenna.

They are all humans, many of them younger than you, and yet by your elven youth and newness to the clan, they treat you much like the ‘kid’ of the family, Addison aside. Fenna, de facto matriarch of the household since her husband’s passing, dotes on you in particular. The woman, your cousin by way of your father’s sister and only a few years older than you, is perhaps the hardest worker and the most generous spirit you’ve ever encountered. She is employed at a nearby shop, and yet also toils to take care of her four children AND has taken it upon herself to help tend to her baby nephew… And, in all honesty, takes care of you and your father as well, and without hesitation.

“Good morning, Ezreal!” she greets you. “Sit down, sit down. I’ve cooked up a big breakfast for you. Eat it ALL this time, hm? You’re a growing boy!”

“I’m thirty-five,” you pout, but sit down.

“Even so,” she says, her voice sing-song as she shovels bacon and roast vegetables onto your plate, and pours you…

“Is this BEER?” you ask, sniffing it.

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>>5851458
“Can’t trust the water,” notes Adolf.

“I’m telling you,” you say, frustrated, “you CAN trust the water. The pox hasn’t reached the wells around here, and it’s being well-isolated and tracked by the Paladins.”

“Some of the men down at the foundry near my work caught it last week,” Adolf argues. “We don’t know exactly how it works yet.”

“I’m LITERALLY in charge of figuring out that exact thing for the Archmage,” you sigh.

“Yeah,” scoffs Adolf, “and how’s that coming along?”

“Actually—”

“Your rotten friends probably got that over at the Red Lanterns,” Fenna chimes in, plopping some breakfast noisily in front of her brother-in-law. “Keep an eye on this one, Marit.”

“That’s uncalled for, you know!” Adolf grumbles.

Your father, latest to rise and eldest in the house, soon joins you, interrupting the argument before it begins. You’re grateful for the interruption. Adolf is a good enough sort, but prone to rant at length about all manner of worldly inequity, and mistrustful trust the opinions of experts and authorities on general principle. Which… Well, the Archmage and Queen ARE both woven into a tapestry of lies and secrets, including some related to the plague. You suppose you cannot exactly say he’s WRONG to be suspicious. He simply takes it too far, and his theories are often scattershot—directed at travelers from afar, and non-humans, rather than those you know—or suspect, or believe, but cannot exactly come out and SAY—are more proximately responsible for his woes. He is an exemplar of the fear and mistrust which has seized the city in the last few years.

“Addy!” Marit cries, surprising you all.

“What? You can’t be taking Fenna’s little joke seriously, Mare?” Adolf grouches.

He pales when he sees the actual cause of her alarm. You all do.

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>>5851459
Little Addison, who has been whining in his usual manner, has particular cause this morning. At first it appears a rash, all up and down his abdomen and leg, but as his mother frantically removes his clothes for a better look, you recognizes that the blisters and scabs beginning to form around the edges are not the result of scratching or chafing under clothes…

They are the beginnings of scales.

“You were saying?” growls Adolf… But then casts his gaze around. “Hey, where did you go?”

Your concentration broken, your fork slips through your fingers, and you fall through your chair to the floor. You stare at the afflicted child for a moment, and then stand to your feet.

“I need to go,” you say, but nobody in the house hears you.

Focused upon the Addison and his burgeoning pox, they do not spend long looking for you. Not possessed of a magical sense, they do not see or hear you as you stand and leave.

The next few weeks take on an increasingly personal dimension as your dancing, singing, and ritual rites become your paramount focus. Your father’s family succumb are isolated in their home until the vector by which the disease reached them can be ascertained… And, though it does not spread easily between people with casual contact, it CAN spread. Washing their clothes together, sharing dishes… It can happen. You’ve SEEN it happen.

The cure cannot wait.

“We’ll save them,” Costella promises, with confidence she frankly has no basis for but which nevertheless brings you comfort, giving your hand a squeeze.

You seek special dispensation for your father’s family to be first among those who will accompany you and Costella to perform the rite, out on Old Maple Hill. There, in the parcel of land around the ancient maple where the spriggan who taught you this holy ritual holds court, there is enough nature to make it really work to its utmost—to allow Costella to guide the energies of nature and life into the souls and bodies of the afflicted, rather than the impurities and filth of even quite-civilized metropolitan living. Your tutelage has been paying off, as has Costella’s enhanced intelligence and her spiritual attunement to you—her pronunciation is perfect, her movements precise without being stiff, and you can even SENSE that her mind and spirit are as they must be to enact the ritual.

There is just one problem.

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>>5851460
“You want us to do WHAT?” Adolf busters, while Marit clutches their bundled-up baby boy close, staring with wide eyes—eyes with yellow rings, and slit pupils, veins visibly from lack of restful sleep. All three of them are, by now, victims of the chimeric plague.

“It’s just a dance and a song,” you try to assure him.

“The dance and song that turned you into a ghost, you mean”

“I’m not a ghost,” you protest.

“You might as well be,” he counters.

“I’m not sure…” Marit murmurs.

“Look, it’s that or the injections,” you try to explain. “Which, even then, you refused. And the results are unpredictable. And you’ve SEEN Costella! This WORKS!”

“Sometimes,” Adolf says. “One out of every three times, as far as I know.”

“That was different,” you say.

“So you don’t even know this will work, then!” he snaps.

“If my son says it will work, it will work,” your father speaks up in your defence. "Ezreal is the Archmage's own APPRENTICE, Addy! And you should have seen the miracles his mother worked, back in the day... We never could have defeated that sphinx without her magic, wot! Elf magic... You can trust it to get the job done, every time."

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>>5851462
You look to your father appreciatively, but as your gaze lingers, your heart sinks. In the period of isolation, Rudolfo Van Houtzmann miraculously avoided contracting the dragon-pox, but he looks worse off than any who did. You fear you had misunderstood him, and what it is that keeps him going: that hard work, those late nights of partying and drinking with rowdy men and women half his age or younger… You’d thought they must have been aging, but now you suspect they were somehow invigorating him, the activity keeping him energized. Now he is like one of the Smithing District’s clockwork contraptions, without anyone to turn his key and wind him up, gradually slowing and sinking into inactivity. He still drinks—more than he ought to,--and still tries to maintain good cheer…

But age is catching up with him.

The ritual, for maximum effect, must be performed tomorrow night. It can only be performed on a new moon, and can only transform (and thus cure) a small group of people at a time, one time, each month. Others have been waiting far longer, and perhaps require it more urgently, but a young child like Addison is especially vulnerable to the worst effects of the dragon-pox—including death. And Adolf, for all his blustering, is a member of your extended family—the family which has put you up, and taken care of you for months now.

What will you do?
>Argue with Adolf, and try to persuade him and his family to come with you
>Leave them to their fate for now—perhaps you can help them next time
>Steal the child away from them—frankly, they cannot stop you—and save Addison at least
>Write-in

And what of your father? His ailment is… Well, simply AGE. He is no pox-victim. He is not SICK, but he is-slowly, but surely—dying. This ritual infuses a person with something of the True Fey—it could very well help him to regain some of his lost vigor, though you can’t say how much time or energy it will grant him. But… Is it right to do so? To forestall a natural death, and at the expense of another person’s opportunity to be cured this month, potentially risking someone else’s life? And if it works… if you can extend a human’s life this way… What will it mean, when the Race of Man learns this?
>Invite your father
>Do not invite your father
>Consult with someone [who?]
>Write-in

>>5851465
>>Steal the child away from them—frankly, they cannot stop you—and save Addison at least
Stealing kids in the night? We ARE fey now
>>>Consult with someone [who?]
>>>Ask HIM if he wants to live for longer by becoming similar to you

After the ritual works and he gains mystical vigor, we sent him to the elf lands, fuck yes

>>5851465
>Argue with Adolf, and try to persuade him and his family to come with you
>>Do not invite your father

>>5851465
>Argue with Adolf, and try to persuade him and his family to come with you

>Ask HIM if he wants to live for longer by becoming similar to you

>>5851465
>Argue with Adolf, and try to persuade him and his family to come with you
>Ask HIM if he wants to live for longer by becoming similar to you

>>5851465
>Argue with Adolf, and try to persuade him and his family to come with you

>Do not invite your father

Rolled 16, 10, 1, 9, 19, 17, 19, 15 = 106 (8d20)

>>5851515
>>5851532
>>5851564
>>5851664
>>5851668
[Alright, locked and writing, and wrapping up this arc.]

>>5851742
You know the outcome you desire, of course. It’s obvious: it is in the best interest of your father and of Adolf and his family that they should all participate in the ritual. The difference between you and Izirina is this: even if you believe you know what’s best, you have no intention to force it upon anyone else.

“Adolf… Addy… Come on,” you appeal to him. “You trust me, right?”

“I…” he trails off, exchanging a quick look with Marit.

“I’ve been spending all this time on this to make sure it goes right,” you tell him. “What happened to me… It’s not going to happen again. I’m making sure of it. It’s why I’ve taught the rite to Costella—so she can perform it instead.”

“It’s still foreign, fairy magic,” he protests. “Who really understands it?”

“Less foreign than what’s already inside of you,” you point out. “Adolf… Amrit… Even if Addison survives the pox, it’s not…”

You take a breath, but resolve to do what you must to get through to them, even fi it means telling them the truth.

“It’s not just some disease. It’s a weapon. It’s meant to cripple and sterile humans.”

“I knew it!” Adolf almost shouts, looking furious—as well he might. “Bloody lizards! And the Queen and the Tower have just been hiding this from us?! I bet they’re behind it all!”

You frown. It’s an oversimplification, and you aren’t ENTRIELY certain what has been going on between closed doors. The Queen is married to a member of the reptilian race responsible for the pox, or so you’re told, but then why would she be helping you to alleviate and stop it? There’s too much you don’t know, so all you can do is shake your head.

“I don’t think that’s it,” you say.

“But you don’t know?” Marit asks. “Not even you, Ezreal?”

“It doesn’t matter,” you state firmly. “I’m not doing this for them, for the Queen or the Council ro the Archmage.”

(Not even for Izzy, not anymore.)

“I’m doing this because people are getting sick and dying,” you tell them. “Because Hawksong has been good to me, and so have you. You’re my family, Addy, even if not by blood. You opened up your home to me.”

“Fenna did,” Adolf grumbles, looking awkwardly away. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You’ve been welcoming,” you assert.

It’s mostly true, too. Even if he’s no great fan of non-humans or half-humans, Adolf has been cordial with you, and never made you feel unwelcome. Marit has always been kind, and helpful, and little Addison… Well, he’s an innocent, and a cute kid, and it hurt syour hear to see him suffer—so much so that a part of you is tempted to steal him away and heal him if this approach doesn’t work. But you’re not Izirina Henzler, and so you must ask:

“Please, let me help my family.”

>>5851848
19 thousand characters... Okay, gonna' split this update. It really got away from me!

>16, 1, 10 for Sociability

Adolf looks back to you, lower jaw jutting, eyes narrowed… And he puts out a hand. You stare at it for a moment and then, with an effort of will to force your corporeality, you shake it.

“I’m trusting you,” he says, meeting your eye and pumping your hand. “Trusting you with my only son. Don’t let me down.”

“I won’t,” you promise.

“Of course not!” you father says with a grin, placing a hand on each of your shoulders. “You’re a Van Houtzmann now!”

You mull on what that means—to be a Van Houtzmann, ‘one of the strong men’ by its ancient meaning. Right now, it feels like a heavy burden to shoulder… But perhaps with that name, that lineage, comes the strength to bear all of this responsibility.

And speaking of the Van Houtzmanns and your responsibility to them… There is one more matter that you must discuss.

“Rudolfo… Dad… Can we speak for a moment?” you ask, as Adolf and Marit begin making preparations to depart.

"What are we doing if not just that, hm?" he asks, grinning too widely at his own dumb joke.

You roll your eyes, but can’t suppress a smile—if just for a moment. But this is a serious matter which you must now discuss. The smile cannot last.

"I want to know… If you’d like to come with us, to join in the ritual?"

Your father looks a little surprised by this, and then confused.

“I’m not sick, though.”

“Right,” you agree. “But, well… The ritual does more than heal illness. You’ve seen what it did to Costella… FOR Costella.”

“I never saw her before, but if that ritual has anything to do with how she looks…”

Rudolfo gets a peculiar look in his eye and chuckles quietly, and a little lustily. You give him a sharp look, feeling protective over the young woman even if you’re not ENTRIELY sure of your relationship to her yet. Your father seems to catch your expression and its meaning, and bows his head apologetically.

“Ah, sorry, I know that you get first crack at that!” he says, with a cheeky grin and a tap on his nsoe. “But I tell you now, my child, if I was a few years young…”

“Well, what if you were?” you ask.

Rudolfo pauses for a moment, before replying: “Wait, so you AREN’T interested in her, then…?”

“I’m not talking about y-you and Costella!” you almost shout, before calming yourself. “I’m saying that this ritual can DO that for you… Can make you more like, like me, or Mom. It can make infuse you with… Some of the youth you used to have. No, more than that… it could make you more like an elf.”

>>5851863
Your father’s eyebrows shoot up.

“What? You mean… Eternally young? Living for two, three hundred years?”

“I’m not sure,” you admit. “Not exactly. But When Costella performed the ritual, she became… Energized. Taller, stronger, smarter, healthier… Just BETTER.”

“But the ritual you did with her and that Henzler girl was different,” he notes, spoking his scraggly, grey beard. “Is it really going to work the same for me?”

You expect him to think deeply on it, but instead the man just looks back at you and grins, slapping you on the back.

“Well Hells, it’s not like I have a lot to lose, ey wot? One last adventure—let’s give it a try, my boy!”

Costella is waiting for you outside the home when the time comes. With her, bundled up in rags and bandages like the outcasts of a leper colony, there are a half-dozen other people—women and girls from her experimental group, sick old people and young people chosen by the Council for their advanced stage of the pox. You can make out deformed and diseased limbs, fully or mostly sheathed in scaly skin and with claw-like nails. All of them look thin and ruddy or pale, a telltale sign of the onset of organ failure, where organs have been partly or entirely transfigured by the pox into a form incompatible with other portions of their body which have remained in their default state. It’s truly a terrible thing.

“Ready?” you ask.

“A Van Houtzmann is ever ready, ey wot!” declares your father, cracking his back and hobbling forward with vim you haven’t seen from him in some time.

“As I’ll ever be,” Adolf merely says.

You lead them to Costella and her group. She must sense your anxiety-in fact, she OBVIOUSLY does, with your spiritual bond—and so reaches out to hold your hand. You allow it and, admittedly, it does help. Hand in hand, you lea the first group of those whom you hope to save through the gates of Hawksong, out along the southerly trade road, and eventually off of it and through the now Crown-owned, fairy-designated fields around Old Maple Hill. There are still cultivated grasses here, but they are overgrown and wild now, mixed in with weeds… And here and there, you see places where the earth ahs been churned up and a maple sapling set down, the beginnings of a true Sacred Grove, and a useful way to demarcate that territory which the Queen has ordered unavailable for agricultural or economic usage.

This is holy ground, now, belonging to nature and to the True Fey. It is here where you make your camp and wait for dusk… And when dusk comes and you light the <Faerie Fire> and a miniature <Daylight> sun for all to see by, it is here that you explain the ritual.

>>5851865
“The rite isn’t a spell,” you explain. “Not really, not like humans understand it.”

“I don’t understand spells at all,” Adolf chimes in.

“Human MAGES,” you correct yourself. “It’s more like… A religious ceremony.”

Immediately Adolf and Marit look uncomfortable, and they’re not the only ones, so you hastily amend:

“We aren’t worshiping any gods, or anything like that. We’re just… Opening our might and spirits to the esoteric. To holy, or… Well, to mysteries, anyway. To the universe, and to each other.”

You see a great deal of confusion among the dozen people here gathered, and so you turn to your lovely assistant.

“Costella?” you plead.

“Right!” she says, stepping forwards and smiling that bubbly, disarming smile of hers. “What Ez means is that it’s like… You know that feeling you get when you see something magical? Like, REALLY magical, like it makes you think that it’s bigger than this world, and you’re really small? But, like, you don’t HATE it, and you’re not SCARED-you’re just all tingly and wowed and can’t help but feel like you’re PART of something bigger? Like EVERYTHING is part of something bigger? And the bit of you that’s, like, YOU, for a second it just kind of goes fuzzy at the edges? That’s what it’s like! And then you just need to let the sickness out, and let the goodness and light in!”

The confusion doesn’t fade from all faces, but a few people tentatively nod along. Even those who plainly don’t get it seem automatically more at ease, dealing with this captivating and charismatic young beauty rather than… Well, a spooky, half-spectral half-elf.

“Don’t worry,” Costella tells them, “Ez is genius, and he’s been teaching me. We’ll keep you safe.”

You wish you had half as much faith in yourself as Costella plainly has in you. You borrow some of hers, and put on a brave face for the others.

“Let’s begin,” you say.

Amongst all these robes figures, you feel faintly cultic, out here beneath the new moon and the luminosity of magic lanterns, speaking sacred words away from prying eyes and listening ears of the uninitiated. One by one, you approach the afflicted and with needle and a vial containing your modified chimeric pox-creatures, you inject them with the more ‘material’ cure for their physical affliction. Only then can the spiritual healing can begin—or at least, only then does their condition mimic Costella’s own to the extent that you can feel confident that no untested variables will affect the outcome. You feel, perversely, like a priest administering blessings or alms.

>>5851867
Costella takes the lead when you are done, as you step back and away. You cannot participate directly in what comes next, lest your own aethereal state taint the ritual and spoil the result with your extraplanar energies. You relax yourself, and fade from the perception of most of the participants. In the dark, like a voyeur, you watch.

And you aren’t alone.

Dozens of fairies gather around—pixies, sprites, flower-fairies and will o’ wisps. You watch them cautiously, worried they might interfere, but they do not. They, too, merely watch.

“Do you think this is smart, little eladrin?” asks one sprite, whom you recognize a regular in the court of the old spriggan on the hill. “What you’re making… It’s something new.”

“What did you call me?” you ask, bewildered.

“The balance,” the sprite replies instead, ignoring you. “What of the balance?”

The centrepiece of the ritual is about to begin. None, not your nor this sprite nor any other fairy present, would dare interrupt it to ask or answer questions, then... But damn it all, you have so many!

Choose one question to ask him:
>What is an 'eladrin'?
>What is this 'balance' he's speaking of?
>What is the original purpose of this ritual?
>Has this ritual ever been done in another plane before?
>What makes a human so different from an elf, anyway?
>Write-in

>>5851872
>What is this 'balance' he's speaking of ?

>>5851872
>What is this 'balance' he's speaking of?

>>5851872
>>Write-in
>>I do not worry about balance when we are making something entirely new.

Also eladrin are elves but from there that visit here. Good 'ol elves are from here that visit there

>>5851872
>Has this ritual ever been done in another plane before?
hypothetically, asking for a friend

>>5852012
>>5851955
>>5851911
>>5851889
“Wait…. Balance?”

The words remind you of those of the Spirit of the Old maple, over a year prior… The warning he’d given you, about creating ensouled beings.

“I don’t understand,” you mutter, and then turn back to the sprite. “Please, what do you mean? I don’t understand, what is this balance? How do I avoid… Disrupting it? What does it mean if I do?”

The sprite looks at you incredulously, as if at first he believes you to be joking… And then, gradually, with dawning and simultaneous amusement and horror, he realizes you’re not.

“Are you not a child of the elves, eladrin? Surely you understand the words you’ve been singing? Why we sang them in the first place, when we first came here?”

“What?” you ask dumbly. “First came here….? What do you mean—came to the material plane?”

The sprite laughs , as if you’d told a delightful joke, which only confuses you further.

“Planes?” he asks, wiping a tear from his eye as his laughter dies down. “The planes are all just different flavours of ‘here’, elf-child. It was the natives who we struck the deal with, to maintain the balance. Every time a new soul is created, or changed and modified, the balance shifts. If it shifts too far… If the pact is broken… The others will take actions of their own. Down THAT path lie wonders and horrors best forgotten.”

“Natives?” you ask, more confused than ever. “You mean… The humans? Or… Elementals? And… What sort of—"

>>5852146
Before you can get anything else out of the sprite, the whirling circle of the dancers breaks. It collapses in and radiates out as one after another, the dancers separate from those whose hands they hold to take centre stage, twirling, and exclaiming the words:

“Belbau nossta ulu uns'aa ghil!

Ori'gato uns'aa el lu'tlu rosin 'sohna, 'sovah, xondyerna lu'k'olah.

Ori'gato uns'aa dro ghil lu'nin; ori'gato nindol k'lar lu'draeval dro wun uns'aa, mziln.

Ori'gato uns'aa ssinssrigg, lu'tlu 'che, erl'eleeus 'zil l'dalhar wun nind ilhar, lu'tlu rosin natha seke ligah d'nindol sel thac'zil, dalninuk ulu nindel vel'bolen dron lu'dalninil ulu nindel vel'bolen elar!”

As the others hold their hands aloft, emulating a gate—or perhaps simulating a birth—the individual at the centre passes through. When they emerge, they are not QUITE as Costella is… But they are not the same as they were, either.

> 9, 19, 17, 19, 15 for Feycraft
>DC 17 since you’re not leading it personally, but dedicated time to teach Costella

Each of them gasps or cries out, you note, their eyes suddenly bright and perceptive in the gloom-able to see by light of dusk as an elf can, able to perceive the swarming fairy-spirits who have congregated to bear witness. This being but the first of several such rituals which they must undergo to fully restore themselves, they are nevertheless healthier-looking almost immediately: their afflicted limbs are no longer misshapen, the patterns of scales fade more naturalistically into the tone and texture of their skin, and their eyes, tongues, and talons are more akin to those of their human birthright. Even blemishes and deformities which predate the pox—or which you presume to have done so—are alleviated, and those who your earlier Chimeric cure stabilized… Well, they are the most changed, but also the most like that young woman leading the ritual, tall and strong in a way now less inhuman than somehow SUPERhuman.

…Though none, you must admit, is quiet as awe-inspiring as Costella herself. You wonder how much of that is your personal bond, and resulting bias? Even now, it’s tough to take your eyes off of her.

>>5852148
You do so eventually, if only because you are now tasked with helping these confused, sometimes somewhat fearful humans navigate the new world they find themselves in. The fairies tease and taunt them—not in any greatly evil way, but they simply cannot pass up the opportunity to swoop at them, to pull faces, to sing mocking rhymes or to poke and prod at the peculiar, transformed humans. You wave them away, parting them to make a path. Then, you lead the humans to gather together, one by one, on the edges of the sacred grove.

“Is this how you see the world all the time?” asks Marit, wonderingly, clutching a much more hale-looking Addison to her chest.

You suppose it is. By the way that Adolf anxiously shifts next to her, eyes flitting this way and that, you suspect it may not be for everyone, however…

The last one to finish the ritual is your father. It is a testament to his advanced age that his own dance is so stiff an awkward—sad to see, for all that the man loves to dance and sing and caper about. You watch as he dances with you—with Costella, and you are delighted to see that his passion and exuberance—and flexibility—seems to gradually improve. Finally, she leads him towards you and the others, and you see a man who, if he is not YOUNG, at elast more resembles the Rudolfo van Houtzmann you have come to know and cherish.

“Welcome back, Dad,” you say with a small smile.

“It’s good to be back,” he admits, looking about. “Say, you never told me that this very court had so many fetching young lasses, ey wot?”

“The pixies?” you ask, incredulous. “Dad, they’re ageless beings beyond conventional material existence. They’re probably hundreds of years old.”

“Age is just a state of mind!” you replies boldly, shooting one a wink and a grin that she giggles at and returns. “Anyway, thanks to you, I might just have time to catch up!”

“Did I do good?” asks Costella softly, after your father has—regrettably, mortifyingly—wandered off to try his hand at seducing a member of the True Fey.

“You did very good,” you reassure her.

“Well,” she says with a grin, “I had, like, the BEST teacher.”

Costella gingerly steps closer and, with noticeable trepidation, leans against you. She makes no further moves towards a deeper or more overt intimacy and, while you aren’t sure whether you WANT that or not… Right now, this is very nice. Together, you watch the changed humans mill about, stretching their revitalized limbs and reveling in their new feelings of vitality and wellness, and it in the new expanse of spiritual and magical experience opened up to them in the process. How long will they live? What will become of them, as they live those lives? What will THEY become?

>>5852151
“What happens now?” Costella eventually asks.

It’s a good question, honestly, and one that’s difficult to answer immediately. Ultimately, you resolve that…
>You will perform this ritual only until the pox’s victims are all healed, and only for those who need it to the extent it is necessary to help heal them
>You will offer this rite to anyone who desires it, for any reason… After all, look at the good it did for your father!
>You will train others in how to perform the rite, and initiate them into the Fairy Court if the local Fey will hear you and have them—this could be the start of something wondrous
>Write-in

“I meant what’s next for you, silly!” Costella laughs. “Or… Us, I guess?”

“Oh,” you reply. “Well…”

Hm. You’ve forestalled your own dreams and ambitions for some time now, to help and heal others to chase THEIRS. No longer are you bound to pursue the path of a Tower Mage—you are surely graduated from all that, in practical terms if not necessarily on paper. The Archmage ahs not sought to call you back to her side, to admonish or correct you, nor to instruct you.

(Nor, you note, has Izzy come calling…)

The world—MANY worlds, perhaps—are open to you now! You are well and truly free to pursue that which your heart and soul desire. In this instance, here and now, that means…
>It’s time to talk to Izzy, and to discuss her talk of a ‘new world’, and to determine if there’s a place in it for you
>Someone has to deal with the threat of these reptilian demonists who created the plague, and you’re the half-man for the job
>Finding a cure for your own condition—a way to become more corporeal again, and to anchor yourself in this reality
>That niggling feeling you have about this ritual… Its words and their meaning, its history and origins… You want to understand it more completely
>You still desire the prestige, power, resources, or opportunities which come with being Mage Apprentice to the Archmage… And perhaps, if the position is still open to you, you might yet become Head Chimericist?
>Write-in

>>5852152
>You will perform this ritual only until the pox’s victims are all healed, and only for those who need it to the extent it is necessary to help heal them.

That pact, placing limitations on the creation and modifications of souls. Is probably why divine beasts and new monsters aren't being spawned everywhere. If some being of power catches wind of ritual and decides that the True Fey have egregiously violated the pact. That faction might start forcibly mutanting people and making new monsters in response.


>That niggling feeling you have about this ritual… Its words and their meaning, its history and origins… You want to understand it more completely

>>5852151
dad will really fuck any female, be it non-human or immaterial
>>5852152
>You will perform this ritual only until the pox’s victims are all healed, and only for those who need it to the extent it is necessary to help heal them

>That niggling feeling you have about this ritual… Its words and their meaning, its history and origins… You want to understand it more completely

>>5852152
>You will train others in how to perform the rite, and initiate them into the Fairy Court if the local Fey will hear you and have them—this could be the start of something wondrous
ALL humans WILL respect the supernatural

>That niggling feeling you have about this ritual… Its words and their meaning, its history and origins… You want to understand it more completely

>>5852152
>You will offer this rite to anyone who Is worthy of it, and the responsibility

>Finding a cure for your own condition—a way to become more corporeal again, and to anchor yourself in this reality
We need to anchor ourselves and visit Logan and or pet again.

>>5852202
Father has the right idea- we should take more after him just to spite our mother.

>>5852152
>You will perform this ritual only until the pox’s victims are all healed, and only for those who need it to the extent it is necessary to help heal them
Gatekeeping Paragon so they can develop their own unique culture with a shared bond as well as keeping this "balance" by only focusing it on the pox
>Someone has to deal with the threat of these reptilian demonists who created the plague, and you’re the half-man for the job
The Pox was made by Prosecutor cultists so Im hoping we get to work with Theral on this, get some insight from our divine enemy made strenuous ally, presumably we can get some magic knowledge he has access to being a direct line to our antithesis, plus Id love to see Tips interact with Szesty and possibly learn traditional fleshweaving to add some spice to our chimeric magics

>>5852152
>>You will perform this ritual only until the pox’s victims are all healed, and only for those who need it to the extent it is necessary to help heal them
I'll be okay with few, selected exceptions. But let's be wary of the Balance;

>Write-In
With Grove secured, time to proceed our Extraordinary Creature Preserver road

>>5852152
>You will perform this ritual only until the pox’s victims are all healed, and only for those who need it to the extent it is necessary to help heal them
>It’s time to talk to Izzy, and to discuss her talk of a ‘new world’, and to determine if there’s a place in it for you

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>>5852482
>>5852379
>>5852296
>>5852263
>>5852216
>>5852202
>>5852188
[Locked and writing!]

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>>5853038
Woops, forgot to update my equation. Still, percentages aside, same result

The words of the sprite, and the spriggan before him, stick with you. You resolve to only perform this rite of transformation sparingly, for those who truly need it, and to end the education of those thus healed at that point. This having been what you discussed with the spriggan, it is you hope that it will not cause any undue disturbance to this… ‘Balance’, whatever it actually is.

And as for this mysterious balance… Well, that is what is next on your list to determine. This ancient ritual clearly has its origins in antiquity… In the ‘arrival’ of the True Fey. If you’re to understand the balance, you must determine the nature of the ritual… And if in the process you can find a way to restore your own earthly corporeality, well, more’s the better.

(You’re not sure what it says about you, and who and what you have become, that your condition is of secondary concern)

You spend the next month preparing for the journey, and you find yourself curiously torn. With the afflicted in your family household cured—and even in spite of Adolf’s obvious discomfort with his newly-expanded sight—things return to the cozy normalcy which you had come to count on to ground you…. But you cannot stay here. Hawksong does not contain the answers you now seek, and not even the True Fey of Old Maple Hill can teach you much more—or, if they can, they seem reticent to do so. After over fifteen years, you must at long last leave.

Your father’s youthful vigor being partly restored, he insists on taking you out to celebrate your recent successes with a night on the town—

“After all, if we catch the pox, you can just cure us again, wot?”

—and to your surprise, you are joined not just by your father, by Fenna and Adolf, and (of course) by Costella, but also by Logan Pearce… And, for that matter, by your one-time classmate and good friend James Efron, and the goblin wanderer Zith-Zi!

“I didn’t know you were back in Hawksong!” you greet the pair.

“We just got back,” Zith-Zi says, squinting and her ears wiggling and turning. “I hear you traveled a lot further than us, though. Came back all blurry ‘n shit, too, didn’t ya’?”

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>>5853101
Right… You suppose that it makes sense that your aethereal form would be particularly difficult for Zith-Zi to perceive. Goblins are an inherently unmagical race, on a fundamental level. By some metrics and measures, they might not even qualify as ‘ensouled’ at all, though it’s always incredibly difficult for you to accept that when you’re in the lively company of the green-skinned girl before you. Or, well… Maybe ‘girl is the wrong word. She doesn’t look BAD, or HAGGARD by any means, but she HAS noticeably aged—refined into a more mature sort of appearance in the last few years.

“You’re looking a little ‘different’ yourself,” you note wryly.

“Asshole!” she laughs, and attempts to swing at you with a playful punch.

Zith-Zi’s tiny-but-mighty haymaker to pass right through you. She stares at her fist for a moment, and then at you. You shrug, and allow yourself a smirk.

“Huh,” she says. “Fuckin’ weird, not gonna’ lie. You’re like some spooky prepubescent ghost-boy forever now, then?”

“PREPUBESCENT?” you balk. “I’m not—"

“Speaking of weird, how was your ‘adventure’?” Pearce asks, smoothly segueing the conversation, while Costella pats your arm.

“Ha! Yes, let’s hear it—let’s live viviparously through you, oh noble purveyors of that most storied profession!” you father raises a toast.

“Vicariously,” you correct him.

“Well, you know how it goes,” Efron says with affected cool, sipping his drink before he continues. “You’ve seen one ancient crypt of the southern demonists, you’ve seen them all, as they say in the BIZ.”

“‘The Biz’?” Pearce mocks.

“Southern demonists?” you ask curiously.

“Yeah,” Zith-Zi says with a grimace. “Al kinds a’ creepy wizard shit—no offence intended for any of you ‘cept Tips.”

“Hey!” you protest .

The goblin gives you a signature shit-eating grin in response to your half-hearted glare, and continues: “Not in the actual south, of course… or not in any of the parts that are all allied against your government. They wouldn’t let Pasty James in there without a LOT of tanning. No Northmen without a permit and a collar—and Jimmy here don’t have no permit kink!”

She laughs, and Efron nearly chokes on his drink, turning a floral pink. You balance between them, wondering if they… No, it couldn’t be, could it?

“Anyway,” Efron hurriedly pick up the story, “there are some old ruins in the northern mountains there—southern from here, but they call them The Northern Range, I mean—where the old empires used to have outposts and fortresses, and something sort of like our Mages’ Tower maybe. We got hired to make sure it wasn’t in use by the Southmen anymore—and to see if it could be used by our lads, if it came down to it.”

“That psycho-bitch Archmage wanted us to see what we could find any relics or books or whatever, too,” ZIth-Zi adds.

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>>5853103
“The Archmage?” you ask surprised. “She’s not… FOND of demonism.”

“If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle,” Costelal chimes in, forehead scrunched in concentration as she summons the quote.

“That’s an Easterling saying, isn’t it?” Pearce asks.

Costella smiles brightly, and shamelessly admits: “I read it in a horoscope! The ones in the paper are kind of, like, basic, you know? I’ve been reading these ones you can get with, like, a seasonal almanac over at this shop near the church of the Lesser Temple of Marese, over on, like… You know that street with all the bakeries and linen shops, down past the Lacewing Boutique?”

“Sorry,” Zith-Zi interjects without sounding at all apologetic, “WHO are you?”

“Oh, sorry,” you apologize. “Zith-zi, meet Costella Fanucci. She’s…”

“I’m Ez’s newest bestie!” Costella slides into your awkward pause, coming to your rescue. “Well, except for Izzy, and Pearce, and maybe YOU from all I’ve heard about you! I kind of pictured you, like, limey-green and warty though, like a toad or something I guess?… Ez never said you were PRETTY!”

Zith-Zi stares blankly for a moment, before her gaze slides back to you, and she quirks an eyebrow. You shrug helplessly, and she laughs.

“You’re not too hard on the eyes yourself, Costella,” the goblin finally says with a grin. “I mean, for a human chick. Not that I swing that way or nothin’, so don’t get your hopes up!”

Costella laughs, and gingerly taps her cocktail to Zith-Zi’s own flagon of ale, before they both take a swig, tension broken. The rest of the evening carries on more or less like that and—even with the warmth of alcohol making it difficult to maintain your concentration, the good cheer of this welcome reunion helps keep your grounded.

(Though Zith-Zi and Efron both laugh uproariously when you pass through your chair and spill your drink all over yourself as a result, towards the evening’s end, and after a moment you join them)

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>>5853107
“So,” Pearce asks, catching you a little ways away from the group as you are returning, having wrung the beer from your robes, “you’re leaving town?”

“How did you hear?” you ask, and then after a moment intuit the answer yourself: “Costella.”

“She’s a nice girl,” Pearce says, reaching out to pet Muffins--who you brought, of course, and who has always had a particular fondness for your friend and eagerly butts up against his thighs with lion-head and goat-head both.

“Can’t keep a secret to save her life, though,” you note sourly.

“Must be a nice change of pace, huh?” Pearce asks, moustache twitching with a small smirk.

You frown.

“Sorry,” he sighs, looking away and crossing his arms. “I’ve got to say, though… I’m glad you didn’t just go running back to her.”

To Izzy, he means, of course.

“Me and Costella aren’t like that,” you insist.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Pearce says, a little too quickly and defensively. “I’m just glad you’re not following after her like a lovesick puppy. It wasn’t good for you.”

“It was good for my career trajectory, though,” you half-joke.

“Bad for your health, though,” he retorts, reaching out and passing a hand through you.

“H-hey, quit it!” you shine, taking a step back.

Pearce chuckles, then looks away again.

“But you ARE leaving.”

“Yes,” you confirm.

“Where to?”

>You planned to return to the Goblin Wastes—to find the Neme-Ashurati, elemental fey-descendants who seem to have some manner of hidden knowledge of the planes and the spirits that dwell there,a nd maybe more
>You have been away from your birthplace for half a lifetime now… But after all these years, you have been thinking about returning, to consult with the elven mystics of Iternagreyn or the True Fey of those most ancient and well-maintained sacred woodlands
>You have heard tell of True Fey to the Far East, the yokai, who live freely among beastmen and even humanity, and who keep sacred secrets which they share with initiates into their monastic or bureaucratic courts… You thought you would travel there
>You were, in fact, thinking of speaking to Izirina Henzler about that… After all, if anyone could help you reach the True Fey who live out-of-reach of this plane, it is she… And THOSE fey, living in the Heavenly Realms, are the ones you need to speak with
>Write-in

>>5853110
>H-hey, quit it!” you shine, taking a step back.
*whine

>>5853110
>You have been away from your birthplace for half a lifetime now… But after all these years, you have been thinking about returning, to consult with the elven mystics of Iternagreyn or the True Fey of those most ancient and well-maintained sacred woodlands

>>5853113
I prefer with the typo, meaning we "reflect" emotional swings with our condition.

>You have been away from your birthplace for half a lifetime now… But after all these years, you have been thinking about returning, to consult with the elven mystics of Iternagreyn or the True Fey of those most ancient and well-maintained sacred woodlands

>>5853110
>You have been away from your birthplace for half a lifetime now… But after all these years, you have been thinking about returning, to consult with the elven mystics of Iternagreyn or the True Fey of those most ancient and well-maintained sacred woodlands

>>5853110
>You have heard tell of True Fey to the Far East, the yokai, who live freely among beastmen and even humanity, and who keep sacred secrets which they share with initiates into their monastic or bureaucratic courts… You thought you would travel there.

Sounds like the most exciting of these adventure option's.

>>5853110
>You have been away from your birthplace for half a lifetime now… But after all these years, you have been thinking about returning, to consult with the elven mystics of Iternagreyn or the True Fey of those most ancient and well-maintained sacred woodlands

>>5853110
>You have been away from your birthplace for half a lifetime now… But after all these years, you have been thinking about returning, to consult with the elven mystics of Iternagreyn or the True Fey of those most ancient and well-maintained sacred woodlands
We've reconnected with dad, let's do the same for mom

>>5853110
>You were, in fact, thinking of speaking to Izirina Henzler about that… After all, if anyone could help you reach the True Fey who live out-of-reach of this plane, it is she… And THOSE fey, living in the Heavenly Realms, are the ones you need to speak with
We should at least make sure she isn’t planning something else to do in our absence.
>No Northmen without a permit and a collar—and Jimmy here don’t have no permit kink!”
Lol- and if true, a shame. I really like Zi.

>>5852151
>“Is this how you see the world all the time?” asks Marit, wonderingly, clutching a much more hale-looking Addison to her chest.
>
>You suppose it is. By the way that Adolf anxiously shifts next to her, eyes flitting this way and that, you suspect it may not be for everyone, however…


>>Remember to avoid looking too much into the fey, because if you do so, then you will bring atenttion of other fey...
that was a warning in the first thread when the kid learned fairy fire. Dang, this is going to get IFFY if they are naturally attuned to the inbetween

>>5852152
>>You will offer this rite to anyone who desires it, for any reason… After all, look at the good it did for your father!
CULT CULT CULT CULT CVLT CVTL
>>Write-in
>>As you declared before, you will travel the land and preserve its mysteries

Oh LOL I kept scrolling and I noticed I am very, very late to the party
>You have been away from your birthplace for half a lifetime now… But after all these years, you have been thinking about returning, to consult with the elven mystics of Iternagreyn or the True Fey of those most ancient and well-maintained sacred woodlands
>Look mom I did it. Now you won't outlive me

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>>5853126
>>5853139
>>5853143
>>5853158
>>5853177
>>5853212
>>5853318
>>5853338

“Well, I guess I won’t be going SOUTH, if what Zith-Zi was saying was true,” you joke.

“Half-true,” Pearce replied, with a frown. “She’s exaggerating, but at least a few southern blocs have cut all ties and started enforcing a hard border against the nations under Hawksong’s protection. I hear that the Queen is trying to smooth things over but… Well, you know how crazy everything ahs been lately.”

You nod.

“Well… Honestly I was thinking about going home. You know, to the Sylvan Realm… Iternagreyn, maybe.”

As you speak the words, the memories float to the surface of your mind as if summoned: the seemingly-endless sun-spackled forests, the silvery sheen of the leaves under moonlight, the grown and shaped bridges of roots and branches bridging chasms over pristine and primeval rivers. It does make you smile to think of those vistas, and the abundant natural beauty. So too the feytouched wildlife—some said to descend from the stock of those first beasts and birds ever created, sculpted directly by the Bonum Chaoticum themselves and akin to those of the Feywild, or who dwell on the Sun and Moon with the gods themselves! Their magnificence and majesty is unmatched in the realms beyond—or rarely, at least, and only by those creatures of great rarity such as your precious Muffins, or exceptional chimeric creations such as golden-fathered Hershy perched upon your goblin friend's pauldron.

Of course, it’s also the land you were so strongly ‘encouraged’ to depart, treated like one who did not belong for your half-human heritage… The home of your estranged elven mother, Mylaerlea Mious. Now that you are thus changed, more akin to a True Fey even than any other elf that you have encountered, how will they perceive you? After all this time, why should you even CARE? Ugh, the Sylvan Realms always elicit such conflicting feelings in you…)

“You’re traveling there by yourself?”

The question—or perhaps the tone of voice it is asked in—catches you off-guard, pulling you out of your thoughts.”

“I’m FROM there,” you remind your friend, “and they’re allies. It shouldn’t be a problem…”

Pearce’s worried expression tells you otherwise. As a Twoer Guardian, Pearce’s principle concerns are the security of the Tower itself, rather than Hawksong’s walls or roadways. Nevertheless, his role means closer proximity to Hawksong’s security apparatus—including the Hawksong City Guard, the Royal Hawksong Legion, and the Paladins of the Holy Order—than many others. As with the matter of the Southlands, it would not be surprising to discover he kenw something… Unfortunate… About the situation in your homeland.

“What’s happened now?” you ask anxiously.

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>>5853376
“Nobody’s really sure,” he admits. “Well, nobody I’ve talked to and who’s been willing to talk to ME. The elves have just… Closed themselves off. Cut all ties, except the bare essentials. No complaints, no threats, nothing like that… But they’ve also cancelled all diplomatic visits to and from the Silver—err, Sylvan—Realms.”

That’s… Troubling, to say the least. You wonder what it could mean, both for your planned journey and for the future of, well, the WORLD. You are mulling over this when Pearce reaches out to lay a hand upon your shoulder; almost without thinking, you will yourself to materialize, just enough that he can squeeze it—something you suspect brings as much comfort to your friend as it does to you.

“Tips… The world isn’t the way it used to be,” he says.

“You’re telling me,” you mutter.

“Just… be careful, alright? Might not be a bad idea to bring a friend, or at least to invest in a wand or staff or sword.”

You arch an eyebrow.

“Are you volunteering?”

Pearce scoffs, pulling his hand back and touching his chest—the place where, years ago, a poisoned goblin arrow had struck him.

“I have responsibilities here,” he began.

“I know,” you reassure him. “I was only jok—”

“But… Well, if you need back-up…”

You shut your mouth, startled by the intensity and affection with which your dear friend regards you.

“You ever need me, and I’m there,” he said, jaw squared, eyes hazy from the alcohol he’d consumed but his tone betraying no drunkard’s false courage—only friendship, love, and unwavering support. “I’m there. You should know that by now.”

“I know,” you reply. “Logan… Thank you.”

>>5853377
You consider Pearce’s words as you lay in bed that night. You know that any of your friends would be happy to come to your aid, and to travel with you—as well as your father, of course, who you suspect is raring for the prospect of adventure after being reinvigorated by the fairy-ritual. With so much uncertainty in world, perhaps it would be a good idea to travel with some form of accompaniment… Maybe even to see about hiring professionals, if you didn’t wish to pull them away from their own personal passions and responsibilities?

Not having had to pay rent for some time, the stipend of gold provided by your mother’s people has been simply accumulating—easy enough to purchase some arms and armaments, potions, tools, or even hirelings, such as a carriageman or some adventurers for protection and expertise, though that of course would be a bit more expensive. If you were to return to the Tower, you could easily finance any sort of party or procure any equipment you might need… But then you would be advertising this expedition to Archmage Theresa Henzler and… Her adoptive daughter.

…

You let out a breath which you had been holding. There’s no point in stressing yourself out over this, and there’s no rush to decide—certainly not while still tipsy. You shut your eyes, and drift off to sleep.

When morning comes, and your eyes open, your decision is made. You will…

>Make this a formal matter of the Hawksong Mages’ Tower
[Means approaching Theresa Henzler, encountering Izzy, and looping them in; gives you access to a far deeper pool of resources, to recruitment options you wouldn’t otherwise have, and to formal diplomatic status]

>Keep the journey private, and personal
[Means fewer resources, more limited recruiting options, but more secrecy and fewer obligations and complications, plus more control over the nature and duration of your journey]

>Write-in
[???]


[The next couple updates will likely focus upon party composition and equipment, but feel free to discuss ideas and options in the interim; I'll try to integrate or address those you discuss.]

>>5853378
>Make this a formal matter of the Hawksong Mages’ Tower
Diplomatic immunity, plus a chance to pick the brains of the greatest elven magicians in the world? Sign me the fuck up!

>>5853378
>Make this a formal matter of the Hawksong Mages’ Tower

>>5853378
>>Write-in
>>Convince Izzy to cast dimension door for you to get as close as possible to the elven realms, saving up on costs and dangers... ideally we will do the ritual with our father, but this time it will be the aetherial third, no more of over-human!! This way our father, the one adventurer an companion I am willing to take, will be buffed as fukkk (and be easier to be recieved by the elves)
>>Use the funds to buy a magical sword for our dad and a wand for us. And trail rations...

>>5853378
>Keep the journey private, and personal

>>5853378
>Keep the journey private, and personal

>>5853378
>Make this a formal matter of the Hawksong Mages’ Tower

>>5853378
>Make this a formal matter of the Hawksong Mages’ Tower

>>5853378
>>Keep the journey private, and personal

>>5853378
>Keep the journey private, and personal.

Don't feel like begging Theresa for a support.

>>5853421
[Given we seem to be looking at a tie between the other options, would you count this vote as more in favour of Tower collaboration (as I am currently interpreting it) or keeping it on the down-low from your boss/master?]

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>>5854118
>>5853684
>>5853668
>>5853587
>>5853573
>>5853568
>>5853421
>>5853416
>>5853403
[Welp, here goes nothing.]

>>5854383
You decide to take a middle path. Diplomatic immunity would be nice, but with the Sylvan Realms essentially cutting off communications with the domains under Hawksong’s aegis, is that really on the table? And if it isn’t, is it really worth crawling back to your master—the Archmage—and inviting whatever ulterior motives she might have into the mix? On the other hand, there is one person in particular in the Tower who you DO wish to talk to… or at least, who you can’t put off talking to any longer.

After all, this might be your last chance to talk to Izirina Henzler for a good, long time.

Your current state of semi-corporeality allows you to easily bypass most protections and defences, but not necessarily all of those around the Tower. Paranoid of being detected, you await outside and send a <summoned> air elemental to send your message—using one of the same envelopes and the same style of parchment with which you once begged Izzy’s forgiveness and friendship, during a falling out. It feels peculiar to be using the materials in this way, now, when the situation really IS the opposite—it’s SHE who owes YOU an apology!—but it has the desired effect. A short while later, with flash like lightning, a <Dimension Door> opens and Izirina emerges.

She looks much as she did the last time you saw her: brilliant, and beautiful. Her bronze skin shines almost golden, no longer blemished or marked by pox-like affliction or by her sometimes-questionable lifestyle choices. If she isn’t quite the paragon of human femininity as Costella, she is stunning in her own extranormal fashion. Even with her hands hidden by dark brown leather gloves, and her sparkling eyes behind shaded glasses, she glows with energy, and her smile—small and subtle though it is—sparkles radiantly.

And besides… This is Izzy. Even without all that, even when she was sickly and unwashed, your heart always ached for her. The time apart, and the reasons for it, they all have done nothing to change the way you feel when you see her—if anything, your heart ahs grown fonder.

“Ezreal,” she greets you, not curt but nor as shy and soft-spoken as you had gotten sued to her being.

“Izirina,” you reply. “You’ve, uh… Started wearing sunglasses.”

She lifts them, and her eyes glow and crackle with the energy within her.

“Ah,” you say.

She lowers them again.

“And the short hair?” you ask.

She lifts her somewhat-rumpled wizard-cap—black now, you note, like those of the Archmage’s private agents—and reveals it not been cut but instead tied up in a bun, in Easterling style, with a single stick through it.

“It sort of… Blows around, if I don’t,’ she says, sounding almost embarrassed. “Like there’s always a breeze. It kind of… Gets in the way.”

“I see,” you note.

>>5854418
“You’re still wearing the same robes,” she replies, mirroring your won commentary, before quickly appending: “B-but that’s not a criticism. They look, um, really nice on you!”

“If I try to wear any other clothing, it passes through me when I lose focus,” you note with a cringe and a blush at the memory. “I guess the ritual affected what I was wearing that day, too.”

“I guess it’s a good thing that you always smell nice,” Izzy says quietly, so quietly that you wonder if she even realizes that was out loud.

Humans always seem to think that of your scent, when it comes up. You’ve been accused of wearing floral perfume before, especially when sweaty… Something Izzy was always, ahem, very into.

...Not that you really seem to sweat anymore. Not since the incident.

“Look, Izzy—”

“I’m sorry!” she blurts out.

You stop, genuinely surprised to hear here say so without prompting. Her reaction when you’d first returned… It had been almost frighteningly excited, and utterly remorseless. Has she finally understood that what she did was wrong, and a violation of your trust?

“I should have come and seen you sooner—and Costella, too—but I’ve just been so busy! Ever since I returned, Mother has been running all these tests, and she’s been giving me all these resources… There’s so much to explore, so much POTENTIAL!”

…Oh.

“And I’ve got, ah… This other teacher now, sort of an… Expert in the field of other planes, and a lot of the other things you and I have been studying!”

“Y-yeah,” you manage to reply. “Well… You know, I’ve been busy, too.”

“I know,” Izirina Henzler replies, with a knowing smile that informs you she really does. She—or the Archmage more likely—has been keeping tabs on you.

“It’s really good, what you’re doing for those people,” she adds. “I only hope they all appreciate it… AND maybe by doing this, you’ll make them better people, too.”

“They aren’t BAD people to begin with, by and large,” you protest, feeling the strange need to defend those who were infected and whom you have begun the work of curing, most of them strangers. “They’re just normal.”

“Yes,” Izirina agrees sadly, as if speaking of the limitations of a drunkard or one with a mentally handicapped. “They are, aren’t they? But you’re doing your part to fix that! I really admire it, Tips.”

You aren’t really sure how to respond to that.

>>5854419
“You said you needed to talk about something urgent, though?” Izzy prompts you.

“…Yeah,” you say. “I’m leaving for the Sylvan Realms—not permanently or anything, necessarily, just to research the ritual a little bit more… To really understand its history, and what it MEANS.”

Izirina’s eyes light up brighter—so brightly that the sparkle and flash is visible through the shaded glass in front of them.

“That’s a wonderful idea!” she says. “So you wanted me to use my spatial magic to transport you there? I think I could do that… Though I’ll need your help, of course, to pinpoint and anchor us to a destination. I’ve barely EVER been more than a couple days’ walk outside of Hawksong, until this last month… And not even THAT really, before you took me to the maple tree to see that fairy court!”

“Uh, well…”

>Yes, that would be good—just the transportation
>Actually, you were hoping to bring Izirina with you, to help with your research
>Actually, you were hoping Izirina could get you access to the Tower’s resources, while keeping your involvement secret
>Write-in

Do you have anything else to talk to Izzy about right now?
>Your feelings and your relationship
>Your kiss with Costella, and her crush on you
>The soul-entanglement and its implications
>Your misgivings about her mother and the tower
>Her own research this past month
>Something else [write-in]
>No, she's kind of weirding you out actually...

>>5854420
>Yes, that would be good—just the transportation

>Your feelings and your relationship

>>5854420
>Actually, you were hoping to bring Izirina with you, to help with your research
>Actually, you were hoping Izirina could get you access to the Tower’s resources, while keeping your involvement secret

>The soul-entanglement and its implications
>Her own research this past month
Oh god what is she up to now

>>5854420
>Actually, you were hoping to bring Izirina with you, to help with your research

Get her attached to our home and elf family so she doesn't magic nuke it later

>Her own research this past month
>The soul-entanglement and its implications

>>5854420
>>Yes, that would be good—just the transportation
>>Let's do a propper apology
If you know what I am saying

>>5854420
>>Actually, you were hoping Izirina could get you access to the Tower’s resources, while keeping your involvement secret

>How soothing it is to be with her or Costella, and you want to experiment with the two of them to measure the depth of soul entanglement

>>5854420
>Actually, you were hoping to bring Izirina with you, to help with your research
>Your feelings and your relationship
>The soul-entanglement and its implications

>>5854420
>Yes, that would be good—just the transportation.

>Her own research this past month

Cringe izzy simps.

>>5854420
>Yes, that would be good—just the transportation
>No, she's kind of weirding you out actually...
Gonna do a 180 on Izzy honestly, but she is giving off a lot of manic energy right now, and its not like she wont see/hear about what we are doing unless our hometown has antiscrying shit which honestly would be great to have the henzlers off our shit for a minute, Izzy doesnt have a good sense of social cues especially now that she has all this confidence, plus shes got a new teacher she can interact with outside her mom, we just need a ride and we can talk more when theres actually something she doesnt already know from her spying
>tldr Izzy doesnt understand we're upset and likely wont until she isnt able to spy on us anymore, Emotional detatchments wont get the memo until its at risk of leaving, Izzy cares about Izzy, she took an opportunity to take advantage of us and in turn cost us our physical form, we both lost our virginity but we lost the ability to continue a physical relationship not that she gives a shit

>>5854420
>Yes, that would be good—just the transportation
>No, she's kind of weirding you out actually...

>>5854703
No body, and good luck focusing on maintaining a physical presence and sticking it in her newly magicked poon, if I get what youre putting down

>>5855233
I mean, we never tried did we? It’ll be fucking funny if THAT what maintains our physical form

>>5855228
>we lost the ability to continue a physical relationship not that she gives a shit
[Point of order: Costella, Izirina, and any other normally-intangible or extremely and intrinsically magical creature can still interact or 'interact' with you physically without difficulty.]

>>5855283
So Logan and Zi bros lose out? Smh

Is Muffins and Hershey considered a sufficient enough magical creature, or are they considered more mundane in this quest?

>>5855233
>>5855244
>>has to concentrate real hard or he stops being corporeal
>>Just like counting backwards while doing you know what
>>I-i-i-it's bb-b-b-b-beeen three -hhhhours please ssshshtooop aaaa
izzy says
>>captcha GG

>>5855351
>So Logan and Zi bros lose out?
[They both already got shot down across multiple votes, so barring write-ins I think they're already disqualified from the Waifu Wars anyway.]

>Is Muffins and Hershey considered a sufficient enough magical creature
[Given the context of this question involved sexual relations, you are making your poor QM rather nervous, anon... As far as general contact like patting your animal friends, you can do so if you concentrate, and they can both see and perceive you very readily at all times thanks to their heightened and paranormal senses (though with Muffins, only the snake head can do so. They cannot be easily interacted with in the way a ghost, demon, angel, demigod, or true fey could, however. The beings who can touch you and be touched are those who straddle the material plane and another, such as the realm of the divine, demonic, or elemental, or the boundary between life and death.]

>>5855474
>they're already disqualified from the Waifu Wars anyway
;_;

>They cannot be easily interacted with in the way a ghost, demon, angel, demigod, or true fey could
Shame, but that was the just of the question. *Sad Muffins and Hershey noises*

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>>5855230
>>5855228
>>5855107
>>5854864
>>5854794
>>5854703
>>5854559
>>5854470
>>5854464
[Alright, locked and writing!]

>>5855853
You can’t help it—even as you find yourself feeling a little weird about Izzy, seeing her like this, you really want to bring her with you. Costella is right: she draws you like a moth to a flame, an analogy perhaps particularly apropos with how she radiates light and heat these days. Every fibre of your being, material and immaterial, aches for her. You long to reach out and grab her hand, to pull her back into your life…

But how much of that is the soul-entanglement?

“Thanks, Izzy.” You force yourself to say these words, and nothing more than that—no invitation, no offer, no pleading for her proximity and fiery embrace.

She just smiles, seemingly unbothered by the idea of you traveling so far without her, and of being away for an indefinite period of time. You’re not sure if that makes you feel better or worse about your decision.

“Hey,” you say, hearing the words escape before you can stop them, “I was… Talking to Costella, and she mentioned feeling some sort of affinity, for us.”

“Affinity?”

“You know… Like a connection, or a pull. A sort of… Entanglement. Ever since the… Incident.”

“Experiment,” Izirina corrects you gently. “There was intent, after all. Purpose!”

Maybe from HER, there was intent! You bristle a little, but say nothing, searching the girl’s expression for understanding, for sympathy for the feeling… For evidence that she ahs felt what Costella ahs felt, what YOU have felt… What you feel for her. The shaded glasses make it rather difficult, though, and in a fit of desperate pique, you give in.

“You really haven’t… Felt anything like that?”

“I don’t know,” Izirina admits, frowning a little.

“It’s tough to tell,” she admits after a moment, trailing off and looking away, as a LITERALLY luminescent blush glows across her cheeks. “I’ve always felt that about you. And Costella…”

She frowns a bit more deeply at that.

“I guess I feel pretty attached to her, yeah. I mean, she’s sort of like our own creation, together, isn’t she?”

“What, like a CHILD?” you feel faintly repulsed at the analogy, not least of which because of the fond memory of her body—her lips—pressed to yours.

“No, more like a…” Izzy chews her lip, tilting her head back in thought. “A prototype. The very first of our own sort of person, you know?”

Even as the strange girl regains her bright and cheery smile, you can’t help but feel a little uneasy at the way she says it… And at the implication.

You part company with Izirina Henzler, for the moment. Despite having just reunited, and a part of you hating to depart her warm glow, you have preparations to make before you leave… And you definitely intend to go on this journey without her. You think it might be good for you, and certainly much less complicated and distracting.

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>>5855906
Without the direct involvement of either of the Henzler women, your options are more limited. You will be bringing Muffins, of course—he’s essentially your age-familiar by this point—and you have your ensorcelled robes and hat and—as you rediscovered upon stuffing your hands into your pockets and slinkling away from the rendezvous, you still have a packet of the ‘mind-expanding’ shirin stimulant which you purchased years ago, the greenish powder safe in its little treated-paper envelope. You’ve also obviated the need to hire transportation on to stock up on rations or other staples of travel through unsettled and uncertain lands—you’ll be essentially teleporting directly to the Sylvan Lands.

What you DON’T have is any companions capable of conversations to travel with you, or other equipment. Then again, if you aren’t traveling by conventional means, do you NEED any? Looking at it from another perspective, do you have anyone or anything else you WISH to bring?

Who will you bring with you?
>Rudolfo Van Houtzmann
[Experienced but elderly adventurer, freshly energized; has a complicated history with your mother and her people]

>Costella Fanucci
[No combat experience or aptitude, and not an especially talented scholar or mage, but she is a Paragon who speaks a bit of the Elven language, and is an initiate into the rituals of Feycraft]

>Zith-Zi & Hershy
[Crude, crass, and from a rather unpopular race, but she is a stalwart friend, strong, fast, deadly, and experienced]

>James Efron
[Your old classmate, a flashy elemental specialist with a fondness for powerful, devastating spells and a history of reasonably-good grades; also an adventurer]

>Logan Pearce
[It would be an unofficial and unauthorized absence, since you have not involved the Tower, but he is a powerfully-built man specializing in defensive spells, physical buffs, and he would die for you]

>Hirelings
[Create an NPC! Each one you create and which gets at least 50% of the vote costs you 5 points, though, or 10 if they’re a skilled adventurer or spellcaster (like a fully-graduated Tower mage, a beastman with magic powers, a reptilian, or a Paladin) or mage or from a race/exotic race.]

[You may NOT recruit Izirina, Testa, or Blanchette because you chose not to involve the Tower or Izirina personally.]

[You also only have 20 points total, and that which remains represents what wealth you have available for equipment in the next vote.]

[Note: you don’t need to take anyone, and can also vote…]

>Nobody else

>>5855909
>Rudolfo Van Houtzmann

>>5855909
>Rudolfo Van Houtzmann
>Costella Fanucci
>Zith-Zi & Hershy
>Halle- a newbie adventurer, who seems to have an insatiable curiosity about current events
>Laskar Endingray, elven bard

>>5855909
>Rudolfo Van Houtzmann
>James Efron

>>5855909
>Chlotsuintha
[A witchlet from a distant land which prosecutes magic, this shy still-growing giant of a young woman is trying to learn her strange magic in this new world. Her height and blank, bright snow-white eyes are unnerving, to say the least]

>>5855909
>Costella Fanucci

Good leaning experience for her. She might gain knowledge from the mystics there.

>Logan Pearce

One of our most solid companions.

>>5855909
>Zith-Zi & Hershy
>James Efron
>Rudolfo Van Houtzmann
if he wants to

>>5855943
>Halle- a newbie adventurer, who seems to have an insatiable curiosity about current events
>Laskar Endingray, elven bard

>>5855943
>>5856020
>Laskar
[Holy callbacks! Guess there's no point in paying 'spot the RIQ players' with you vets. Sure, I'll allow it if it's a majority pick.]

>>5856020
>>5855943
>Halle
[Wait... THAT Halle? From DAQ? Oh my.]

>>5856013
>Chlotsuintha
[I've never played The Graverobber's Daughter or read it, so I must confess I doubt I'll do the character justice. I'm open to working with the description provided, but I caution you to be aware she may resemble Chlotsuintha from TGD in name only.]

>>5855909
>Rudolfo Van Houtzmann
>Costella Fanucci

>>5856042
Figured she might be a good fit. Got some some other ideas from some of my favs if you’re interested.

>>5855909
>Halle- a newbie adventurer, who seems to have an insatiable curiosity about current events
>Laskar Endingray, elven bard
Haven't played RIQ or DAQ, but why not.

>>5855909
>>Hirelings
Let's hire an ELF ADVENTURER WITH OUR 20 POINTS

>>5855909
>Rutherford ‘Ford’ Jefferson-Jackson
[Born from the ashes of an advanced civilization long dead, a lone warrior in worn, ancient armor, almost dwarven in mechanical sophistication and design, signs up. Former fanatic puritan, he adheres to his own uncompromising moral code, play fast and loose with the rules, and carries a worn and chipped symbol of freedom painted on his armor.]

I was thinking of writing him in, and low and behold, Enclave Quest revived! If that ain’t a sign, I dunno what is.

>>5856755
[I'm sorry anon, but I'm vetoing including something this jarring to the lore I've gotten written up to reference another quest I've never played.]

>>5856697
[Should I count this as support for Laskar Endingray? Also, an elven adventurer would only cost 10 points.]

>>5856863
they elf? sure thing
+1 to Laskar Endingray

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>>5857016
>>5856755
>>5856697
>>5856292
>>5856276
>>5856020
>>5856017
>>5856013
>>5855992
>>5855943
>>5855912
[Writing!]

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>>5857201
>>5857201
Not being in ay need of defence, you really have no need to form much of a party at all. Oh, some people would be NICE to have along, but they all had other matters to attend to. Pearce had all but volunteered, but he was also a Tower Guardian, and his absence would not go unnoticed by the very Archmage whose involvement you wished to avoid. Costella could probably learn a lot from such a trip, but she had a role to play in Hawksong, continuing to cure the pox-bedevilled; if you both went, and took longer than expected, people would suffer or even die for it.

However, there was one person who you knew had literally nothing better to do, and would absolutely LEAP at the opportunity:

“RUDOLFOOOOOO~!” sing you father, drawing not his blade but his lute, strumming it a little tune that, as he had repeatedly informed you by this point, was something of a leitmotif. “Yes, RUDOLFO VAN HOUTZMANN is always ready for adventure! Gald to see you getting into the spirit of things, my child!”

Sure, his rejuvenation hadn’t exactly made your father ‘young’ in the way you or your friends were, but he looked at least as spry and spritely as, say, a forty or fifty-year old of his race. Moreover, the man was an experienced adventurer, good with a blade, implicitly loyal… And he was your dad. Traveling to your birthplace meant the possibility of running into your mother—by now twenty years estranged, even since before you had been away. There was something comforting about bring your other parent, and his personal (he would say ‘intimate’) cultural knowledge would be invaluable.

“Though I don’t actually speak any Elven,” he admits.

“WHAT?” you demand. “You… You had a child with an ELF.”

“That I did!” he laughs, ruffling your hair until, with some smug satisfaction you release your concentration to let his hand pass through your to send him tumbling.

“Then how on EARTH do you not know any Elven?”

“We mostly spoke the language of love,” Rudolfo explained.

“Eurgh,” you vocalized with an involuntary shudder.

“That is to say,” continued you father, strumming his lute, “I know a few tones by rote, most especially those to do with fair countenance, favourable weather, and the setting of the mood, ey wot?”

You ignore the waggling of his eyebrows and increasingly furious strumming of his lute—something made difficult by the fact that your dear old dad is, in fact, pretty good. His accented elven is atrocious, but somehow charmingly so.

“Well, I speak it” you sniff. “Obviously. Still, someone who’s bene there more recently could be invaluable. Someone with connections…”

“I know just the fellow!” your father proclaims.

You’re surprised, but pleasantly.

“He works at The Pretty Kitty,” your father elaborates.

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>>5857261
Your surprises wanes, and turns to disgust and disappointment. The Pretty Kitty… With a name like that, your father can ONLY be referring to one of the ‘gentleman’s establishments’ of the city’s Red Lantern District, home to dancers of an especially exotic sort often pliable to financial compensation for services being merely shaking what the gods gave them.

“Dad,” you chastise him.

“He works as a house musician—a professional bard! Nothing more untoward than that. And he’s an elf—full-blooded—and actually mentioned just last night that he was planning to make a trip back to the motherland, ey?”

“I don’t know…”

“Just give the man a chance,” your father advises (or begs). “you’ll see, he’s a great chap!”

You agree to meet with this full-blooded elven bard who plays music for strippers and harlots, after some cajoling.

“I am called Laskar Endingray, or Laskar Ndeirusune,” he greets you. “Dalninuk, al tha!”

To your total shock, your father is right: Laskar Endingray (his Common-tongue performing name) is indeed a gentleman and, as he said, ‘al tha’, or ‘well met’. He reminds you a bit of your father, which you suppose makes senses considering who made the introduction, and their shared profession. For all your father’s flash, bombast, and bluster, Endingray treads the same waters with greater grace and deeper subtlety: like your father he is well-traveled, and seems rather preoccupied with beauty—

“The glistening speckles of sunlight across the water, and the murmur of friendly conversation broken by laughter in a dockside tavern,” he sighs wistfully, “the flow of energies and affections, and pure aesthetic wonderment, in even the bawdiest brothel… I’ve always found much to love and admire among the other races.”

“Plenty to admire in the brothels most especially,” you father laughs, and Laskar Endingray’s own lip quivers and quirks in a supressed smile.

“Well, beauty takes many forms,” the elven musician demurs, “but music enhances it all.”

“Cheers to that!” your father concurs.

“Why are you returning to the Sylvan Lands, then?” you ask.

Laskar frowns a little, in a small display of discomfort.

“I find myself missing home more and more these last few years,” he admits. “The locking down of districts made this place a lonelier and less beauteous one… And the increasing xenophobia has made it less welcoming as well. And financially trying…”

Ah, yes, that matter.

“You would be paid for your time, of course,” you answer his half-spoken concern. “And if you can helps et us up with accommodation and help us to find who we need to speak with, you’ll be compensated further.”

“Thank you,” he sighs happily. “Dos ph'natha zlabak quortek.”

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>>5857262
‘A generous soul’? Well, it remains to see how generous you are, relative to what this Elfman can do for you… But at the very least, he claims to have a cousin of some renown in the mystic circles outside of Iternagreyn’s academy, which could be useful, and is proficient with a bow and with a sitar his small bandolier of woodwind instruments. And Muffins likes him, which is important!

This leaves only your equipment. You reflect on if there is anything you need, to make this trek, and settle upon…

>A wand [5 points]
[A small channeling, focus, useful for casting magic more quickly and accurately and with less footwork, requiring no somatic components and only a single keyword for simple magic missiles and basic healing spells; gain Magic Missile and Stabilize as spells while wielding it, -1 DC to ranged combat for mages only]

>A staff [7 points]
[More conspicuous than a wand, a large staff can store enough mana to essentially increase your point of available magical energies to draw from, and can also be used as a cudgel; gain +1 Mana and -1 DC to ranged and close combat for mages only]

>Light Armour [3 points]
[+1 HP against physical attacks; your father and Laskar will benefit from this sort of thing more than you, since you may pass through it when low on magic]

>Medium Armour [5 points]
[+2 HP against physical attacks, see above]

>Dagger [2 points]
[-1 DC to close combat, easily concealed]

>Sword [3 points]
[-1 DC to close combat and to intimidation; your father already ahs such a blade]

>Bow & Arrows [3 points]
[Enables ranged combat without magic; Laskar would benefit from this, and is skilled with such a weapon, though he currently lacks one.]

>Potions of Healing [2 points each]
[Restores 2 HP per use]

>Potions of Invigoration [2 points each]
[Restores 2 mana per use; mages only]

>Shirin [2 points per use]
[Mind-expanding stimulant, useful in the past as a trade-good or a means to invoke camaraderie and even revelatory visions…]

>Write-in
[Anything within reason, prices TBD]


[You have 10 points, and don't necessarily NEED to buy anything. Points which carry over will reflect more resources in the future.]

>>5857264
>Shirin [2 points per use] X10
We Walter White now

>>5857269
>X5*
Correction- turns out I’m bad at math xD

>>5857264
>Light Armour [3 points] x2
>Bow & Arrows [3 points]

>>5857264
>A staff [7 points]
As a proper mage we need one eventually. Would come in clutch if we have to up cast a spell.

>Bow & Arrows [3 points]

>>5857264
>Staff

>>5857264
>>A staff [7 points]

>>5857264
>>Light Armour [3 points]
>Potions of Healing [2 points each] x 1

try not to die or go broke

>>5857264
>A wand [5 points]
>Bow & Arrows [3 points]

Yeah, that should let us not being dirt poor

>>5857264
>A wand [5 points]
>Bow & Arrows [3 points]
>Potion of Invigoration 1x [2 points]

>>5857264
>>A wand 5
It comes with free spells? Sick
>>A bow 3
>>Potion of healing 2
We will be the dedicated support who will be able to shoot magic missile. The stabilization is MEH since we have a bonus to all magic of our school (albeit at a higher dc). Bow, yes a 100% so our bard is of any use outside of talking ei wot? And potions of healing BECAUSE WHAT IF WE GET KONKED AND THERE IS NO ONE TO HEAL THE PARTY? Yes this is only to heal the eladrin. Plus I hope some bullshit-fu that says we are more sensitive to magic so that potion is a +3 for us and a +2 for the rest...

>>5857264
>A staff [7 points]
More mana is good
>Light Armour [3 points]
Only if father doesn’t have armor- if he does, switch it out for shirin.

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>>5858106
>>5857663
>>5857595
>>5857533
>>5857531
>>5857375
>>5857371
>>5857319
>>5857284
>>5857271
>>5857269
[Locked!]

>>5858398
how did wand beat staff?

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>>5858399
[I deferred to the majority that preferred to keep some money is reserve rather than spend it all (50/50, but in a tie I break with 1post IDs), but noted that that the majority wanted at least SOME form of self-defence; since neither staff nor wand had a clear majority, I made a judgement call. In the future, there will be options to change up your equipment, so don't sweat it.]

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>>5858398
>>5858407
Even if you’re not anticipating combat, you decide it wise to make sure you aren’t TOTALLY defenceless… And anyway, if you’re going to be a Mage Adventurer, a wand or staff or some sort only seems appropriate.

“It’s tradition!” your father insists.

You indulge him, and yourself, purchasing a gem-capped and pearlescent blue-and-gold number from a shop which Efron recommends most highly. A wand of this make and model, enchanted with the aid of a skilled combat-mage, comes with a few distinct advantages: for one, you will have an easier time casting the <Stabilize> spell, which could easily save a life. For another, and perhaps most importantly, it will allow you to cast that staple of all combat wizards which you have sadly neglected: <Magic Missile>.

“Honestly, nobody bothers learning how to cast that old chestnut,” Efron intimated to you over drinks one evening. “Every damned wand comes with it these days. If you run out of Elementals, though, you’ll be glad to have it in your back pocket!”

This matter settled, you bid farewell-for now—to your father’s family and to your friends, and join the elven bard Endingray—who took the extra money you’d provided him to purchase himself a bow and some arrows as well. You feel better knowing that, if worse comes to worst, your hireling can do more than talk his way out of a bad spot… Even if you hope these precautions won’t prove necessary.

“Have fun fun!” Costella says, giving you a warm, soft, all-too-enjoyable hug, and a fleeting peck on the cheek.

“Bring me a souvenir,” Zith-Zi instructs you. “Something proper elfy, alright?”

“Bring me back one of those proper elfy WOMEN!” Efron quips, earning a kidney-punch from Zith-Zi.

“Right,” you say with a roll of the eyes and a smirk.

“Be safe,” Pearce simply says, as the two of your clasp hands.
“I always am,” you reply.

“Bullshit!” he laughs. “Just don’t turn yourself into an ACTUAL ghost this time, Tips.”

“You two are, like, SO cute,” Costella remarks.

You both blush, Pearce somewhat more vibrantly than you, and the two of you quickly release one another’s hands.

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>>5858434
You, your father, Laskar Endingray, and Muffins all depart shortly thereafter. You make your way to the edge of town, close to the docks, where Izirina Henzler awaits. She is still wearing his purple-lined, deep black cloak—her favourite these days—and her shades glasses as well, but she has forsaken the wizard’s cope for a hood on this occasion—less conspicuous, you assume. You still wear your own but, well… All it takes is to relax yourself, and few humans or demihumans notice your presence anyway.

“Ezreal,” Izirina greets you. “Ah, and Ruldofo, and…”

She pauses, appraising Laskar Endingray, who stands indulgently still In the sort of effortlessly-flattering pose which comes natural to elves… And which, seeing it second-hand after all these years, you wonder if you yourself have adopted. You feel suddenly self-conscious, not sure what to do with your hands or feet.

“…And Muffins!” Izzy chrips, kneeling to pet the lion head of your chimera with one hand and the goat head with the other.

The monstrous mythical beast nearly bowls her over, being easily the size of a fully-grown lion by now—with the goat head much larger than any normal goat’s would be as a result. Both mouth at her in harmless play, though they recoil in mild irritation and in plain confusion at the heat and light which crackle from her form in response. Endingray’s eyebrows arch at the display as well, and he glances towards you for explanation. You offer none, simply asking:

“Are you ready?”

Izirina pushes Muffins gently away, scratching the lion’s chin and gently massaging the goat between the eyes, before offering the snake-head that forms your familiar’s tail a gently stroke as she stands. She looks to you, not smug but with the easy confidence of expertise and experience—apparently earned over these last two months.

“Traversing space within the same plane is sort of just child’s play now,” she says.

“Oh,” you say, because what else do you say to a statement of overwhelming power like that?

“I’ll need you to help guide me, though,” she reminds you, and holds out a hand.

You stare at the proffered digits for a moment, your heart racing queerly. You steel yourself, reminding yourself to be strong—that this is just practical necessity. You take her hand.

It’s warm. She squeezes your hand tight. Your heart melts. You lock eyes. Your lips part. You really, REALLY want to kiss her, hold her, tell her that—

…

“Ready?” you ask, swallowing the sudden onslaught of emotion.

“Ready,” Izirina Henzler agrees.

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>>5858435
You close your eyes as she—presumably, behind the tinted glass—closes hers. You both breathe in, and commune. Mind-to-mind and soul-to-soul for the first time since… The incident… You allow your childhood memories of the green glades and majestic vista of the Sylvan realms to return. Memories of elf-song, or dancing, of fairy-friends and sacred beasts, of rot-bridges and trees so great and old and healthy that an academy can be built within while they yet live thrivingly. Of Iternagreyn, and of Dappulyet, your smaller ‘home-town’ (insofar as that term ahs any direct translation or meaning in the communal, collective, somewhat seasonal structure of Sylvan Land traditional lifeways).

“It’s beautiful,” Izzy whispers quietly, a you share the memories effortlessly between your entwined and enmeshed spirits.

“Yeah,” you agree softly.

The <Dimension Door> opens: a circular space above the waters of the bay, beneath the waxing half-moon above. Through its astral opening, you glimpse the moon-speckled silvery ferns and wide trunks of that unspoilt and primeval forest, said to be heir and offspring the moon’s own holy nature, and your heart suddenly aches for home in a way that you didn’t expect.

You reluctantly pull your hand from Izirina’s own, and with one last meaningful glance and a nod of thanks, you pass through, Muffins at your side. Your father and his friend follow shortly thereafter….

But it is not the Sylvan Realm where you emerge.

You KNOW what you saw on the other end of the <Dimension Door>,, and as much as you have misgivings about Izirina Henzler’s priorities and intentions you ABSOLUTELY trust her abilities. Nevertheless, when you step into space and set foot upon distant ground, the beautiful and lush forest of the Sylvan Lands are replaced—or rather overlayed—with an entire other dimension, and it is FAR less welcoming. Here, fiddleheads curl about trees and transform into choking vines. Mushrooms sprout up amongst the trunks, the size of children and dewy with blood-red, droplets that reek of poison. The soul is ashen grey rather than rich and loamy brown, and the sheen is not of silver moonlight from that most holy satellite, above, but of the unnameable and unplaceable colour for <Faerie Fire> which appears only to the supernatural senses of those with second-sight… Which, luckily for you, includes every member of your party this evening, including the reptilian tail-head of your chimera.

“What’s this, then?” your father murmurs, hand already reaching for his sword’s hilt.

“Trouble,” Laskar says, though with a careful calm, as taut as the string of a bow—though he keeps his hands at his side and CAREFULLY does not reach for his.

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>>5858436
A spore-filled mist rises from the floor of this forsaken and forlorn forest—this woodland outside of conventional spacetime. Three figures emerges from the gloom, one for each of the (humanoid) members of your party… And at their side, a curious beast like a great, tan hound, with ridged back, catlike tail, and long, elfin ears.. And intellect behind the eyes. The three humanoid figures beside it each have their own eyes hidden by cap—mushroom caps, though whether they are low-slung hats or part of their faces, you cannot yet be sure. What you DO know is that they are each a member of the True Fey.

“You have a lot of nerve,” one of them says with a sneer, “coming here, bringing foreigners and unholy magicks.”

How do you respond?
>Quick—flee back towards the portal to Hawksong!
>Draw your wand, and open fire—a warning shot should suffice
>Hold up your empty hands and attempt diplomacy
[potential bonuses if you include details of your approach]
>Summon Elemental II to even the odds
>ATTACK! Panic and fight to kill!
[specify a tactic and/or primary target for better results]
>Write-in

Also, I'm going to busy for a couple days as I get drunk on fancy scotch for my birthday, just a heads up!

>>5858441
>Hold up your empty hands and attempt diplomacy

>"I'd call them neutral magicks actually. Not like we're summoning demons or raising undead here. Portals don't really lie anywhere on the divine spectrum, they're just in the middle. Also I know for a fact that one of these foreigners has been here before, so it would be weird to get all fussy about it now."

>>5858441
>Hold up your empty hands and attempt diplomacy
"harmless magick and it isn't unholy as a matter of fact. Only one of my friends is a true foreigner and I can asure you he means well."

>>5858441
>>Hold up your empty hands and attempt diplomacy
supporting >>5858522

>The Chimera? A certain Spriggan I know have absolutely no problem with artificial Chimera, and this is a borned one.
>My Elemental-soul self? Well, it makes me more half-Fae than the half-man I used to be, don't ya think?

>>5858441
>Summon Elemental II to even the odds

>Write-in: Warn them and tell them leave our path.

>>5858441
It was good to know you. Thanks for running and hopefully your next life is a better one.

>>5858441
>>5858968
oh shit that's right
I got distracted by humorous write in and forgot to say happy birthday pogchamp