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Cherry Circles
2e6314
Oh my gosh. Finally. Finally finally! Uh, Fox here. You are relaxed, not in immediate danger, and, bonus of bonuses, you just leveled up! I'll explain what that means eventually, it's more jargon. I have SO MUCH to talk about!
I have a lot to say, so if at all possible, I want to say it interspersed at appropriate times. I'll do stuff like, for each topic, say things like ‘Fox here’, and I will make an effort to, if need be, have Tanna relay things or via extra effort, include others present in hearing what I say. Please interpret and place and adjust the context of the comments appropriately given this approach!
Okayyy. First thing! I wanted to disclose that we’ve been getting lots of choices about empowering you and choosing how you will grow in capabilities, and we’ve been trying to do right by you, but any guidelines as to your preferences to that sort of thing would be useful. Since we actually were JUST given choices on how to make your essence/soul/spirit/body more powerful, and chose some on your behalf, I personally feel kind of guilty that I didn’t get your input.
Second. Are you familiar with parlor games where people pretend to be archetypes or other people, like famous people from history or from fiction or whatever, but there are referees and rules to how it happens? How about tabletop miniature wargames, like for training generals (or just as a game, with little carved figurines and miniature scenery)? How about various ways to simulate ‘being an adventurer’ without actually being an adventurer and thereby risking dying horribly, like those sorts of plays people put on where there is audience participation and at various points they pause and give a few options for what happens next?
Various aspects of your world, and you, resemble and are presented to us in a way that relatively closely maps to one such game that comes with a few encyclopedias of detail that we have access to. It’s one of those cases where these encyclopedias, which have various different editions, are no doubt not correct as to the details, but are useful to us for guessing general patterns. For example, we can guess that there is generally considered to be nine tiers or ‘levels’ of spells that can be cast, probably with exceptions, but that is the general pattern for tiers of spellcasting. Like, if there are a handful of archwizards or archclerics or archdruids currently alive, do their spells go up to the ninth level/tier/circle? Again, this is definitely a case of ‘the map is not the territory’. Regardless, as an analog to how ‘anime’ is a distorted way we perceive you visually, these sorts of games are part of how we perceive your context and capabilities, with dossiers on you (which I’ll explain some bits of), for example.
Oh! Another prediction, since we were told that your world is superficially similar to an edition of an encyclopedia of those rules labeled ‘PF1e’, which itself is superficially similar to an edition of an encyclopedia labeled ‘3.5e’, we can make other predictions. Such as this: firearms probably exist in your world. Ask your companions if they have heard of ‘firearms’, ‘guns’, or ‘muskets’ or ‘flintlocks’. Ask your friends if ‘cannons’ have obsoleted really tall vertical stone walls yet and made modern fort design focus on low angled earthworks instead, or if traditional castles with curtain walls and drawbridges are still considered economically and militarily useful. If they exist, how do they defend against the Fireball spell and the arcing exploding shell, ie, something that explodes just behind and above the people standing on the battlements of a traditional castle? If firearms exist, do they all load through the muzzle, or have reliable breach-loading ones been invented yet? Does the substance which explode for firearms to function require magic in the creation or is it something anyone with the recipe can mix? Does the substance create clouds of white smoke when it explodes?
Anyway, these games have lots of jargon, and one of the pieces of jargon is the use of the word ‘level’, which, annoyingly, is used in LOTS of places. Recently, you just ‘leveled up’, that is, got more powerful. The games predict that you, as an adventurer, would ‘level up’ after sleeping in safety after you did all these things: just had a bunch of fights, risked yourself, stretched and tested your soul, achieved various goals, and got out of a bad place and closed a chapter on your life – which is exactly what happened. So! You can do more things now! In general, you are a ‘Bard’, that is, ‘one who uses music to access adventuring magic’, and ‘jack of all trades for adventuring utility’ as your ‘adventuring archetype’, which the jargon calls your ‘Class’. You are a Shadow Minstrel as your subcategory of Bard. So a Bard in the way we talk about it isn’t a dandy who plays music in a court or a tavern, remember.
Anyway, new stuff you can do: you have Bardic Music, as a magical effect separate from casting proper Spells. You can use this to counter effects that are sound or language or song based, or to distract enemies, or to create darkness and ‘Buff’ (that’s jargon for magically enhance) people’s agility and strength in the darkness. Any of your songs can make things a little bit darker if you want, too. You can see better in darkness now. You can keep Bardic Music up for 42 seconds in a day, split into 7 different 6-second intervals. Your Primordial Magic, unrelated to your Bardic stuff, can make someone (including you), once a day, do a single action extremely well or extremely poorly, your choice, right before it happens. Your spell list is now, Spell Level 0: Detect Magic, Phantom Noise, Prestidigitation. Spell Level 1: Charm Creature, Grease, Silent Image, Suggestion, Umbral Step, Vanish. Your cantrips are at-will, and you can cast a first level spell 5 times a day, any from your known options.
Since you are Character Level 2 (more jargon!), your Grease and Silent Image last two minutes rather than one, and your Vanish lasts 12 seconds rather than 6. You are now capable of more nuanced and skilled interactions with magic, lockpicking, disabling of mechanisms, tying things with rope or escaping bonds, identifying magical effects, lying, various sorts of performances, persuading people, an unknown profession or set of professions (you should investigate), and sneaking. You had most of those before going to sleep, but some should be new. For example, now you should be able to take out your lockpicking kit and know more about it. Get it out and see if you know what the different parts are used for, try getting different parts out and putting them in your hands and seeing if it is intuitive for how they'd move together, or even if you know the names of the specific tools, please. Note: these numbers may not match your experienced reality; think of how we see your eyes as being bigger to our perception than they actually are. You should test some things right before going to sleep when it is safe to do so. You should also meditate on if the particulars feel right or not.
Another thing was the mention of Lolth – we are familiar with that being, as she shows up A LOT in the 3.5e encyclopedia and other editions of it, though usually more powerful than a demi-god. Mostly, she exists to be creepy and evil and spider and evil dark elf themed and to get beaten up by powerful adventuring parties, then die, then come back. Oh! That’s another thing; you might exist in a reality with some level of narrative causality, that is, reality functioning slightly on storytelling rules and tropes, especially with the recent claim that your reality is somewhat of a Dream. Dream Logic might sometimes work in magic-drenched places. Magic especially should be story and belief sensitive, in at least some ways, though probably more your Primordial magic than the artificial Weave system. As a Bard, you can cultivate a sense for this if it exists. An example of a multi-part storytelling prediction I can make are these sets of hypotheses: 'If Black Stone can’t be affected by normal Weave based magic, it likely amplifies or interacts greatly with Primordial Magic. Find some to go test it, but on something simpler than The Box to start out with. Also, if there is an ancient civilization that has ruins of lost and poorly understood magic, it probably used Primordial Magic, and it probably did magic as physical infrastructure – that is, non-Weave-based wondrous architecture – to bypass the limits of people only able to cast so many spells a day to do many powerful and useful things.'
For reference, the two encyclopedias have various rules exploits that enable arbitrarily high wealth, but most of them are predicated on the existence of devices which can cast an arbitrary chosen spell (decided when the device is created) over and over again with a simple interaction without expending itself. Is the creation of such devices known?
Oh! I wanted to talk about Alignment. So, PF1e and 3.5e talk about this sort of bullshit cosmic morality system that realities like yours seem to be drenched in, called ‘alignment’, where things like ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘law’, and ‘chaos’ are metaphysical properties of reality that don’t map cleanly to real world morality of what causes flourishing vs what causes harm. I am very disdainful of these as overly simplistic and not generally worthy of structuring reality around if one is a being capable of defining or building a reality that is full of magic. Low-magic realities don’t need these concepts in a metaphysical way at all, and that’s an arbitrary choice for high-magic dimensions, which could have other cosmic principles instead.
In a slightly related concept, we talked with your other self, the evil one that wants to destroy reality. She claims to be more metaphysically real than you. Also she claims that her wants are your wants. She claims that your reality is a dream (I touched on this earlier), and she is enthusiastic about annihilating reality, presumably to make a new one, just because your local reality is apparently a flawed dreamscape. That’s a bit overzealous, to me. I can’t think of a scenario where that would be the moral choice if it runs the risk of destroying large numbers of thinking people, illusory reality or no. And if your evil alter ego somehow thinks that somehow the thinking, feeling people who presumably have some amount of inherent value would survive such an event (she didn’t say) – how does she know? How is she sure? Like there’s the setup of ‘everyone is trapped in a torturous simulated/dreampt reality and the destruction of the local reality won’t kill them, it will instead dump everyone into a more real and just and joyful reality’... but, uh… you have to be REALLY FUCKING SURE that’s what’s going on, you know?? Otherwise, it’s more reasonable to instead build a way to exfiltrate people from this reality to a more Just and Real one, if they want to leave.
Anyway. Here’s my suggestion of how you should view her: yes, she’s Evil. Yes, she stained you so still scan as Evil to Detect Evil spells (but remember what I said about those metaphysical systems being arbitrary and unjust earlier). But she’s still intimately related to you and you should make an effort to not just dismiss her. Think of her like, mmmm… an older sister that has joined a really nasty cult and believes lots of really bad things. Someone who believes and wishes to do evil and harm… but still your sibling and worthy of your time, effort, engagement, concern, care and love. As far as whether she has more metaphysical clout or claim to reality over you, that’s utterly irrelevant because you happen to be a thinking, feeling, self-aware being capable of complex thought, joy, and suffering that clearly exists at least as much as she does, whatever your origin. She may very well have a stronger soul than you or whatever, but that presumed fact, even if true, is utterly irrelevant for anything like saying her plans and desires or continued existence has more or less inherent value than yours.
Due to all of that, you should interrogate and meditate heavily on those deep desires that she’s likely pushing onto you, like the presumably omnicidal ones. What do you want to destroy? Why? Under what circumstances? How do you want to go about destroying it? What feeling is attached to the things worthy of destruction? What sort of emotion is attached to the need to destroy in particular? Is there a logical chain of knowledge and thought attached to these various desires, like a formal ideology, or is it just based on only emotion? Is there hate attached to this desire? Hate of what, and what style of hate? How about Fear? Rage? How about a passion for justice or a feeling of righteousness or moral correctness? Who or what was wronged, by whom, when, how? Are there any specific details attached to these emotions? Names, faces, events, terms, plans, hopes, contingencies?
Also: some point soon, please ask your companions to list and describe all the deities and demigods and very powerful beings they can so you can meditate on how you feel about each AND WHY, and whether the thought and belief and feeling seems intrusive or not. Also, can they please name and describe all the species of thinking people that they can as well. Hopefully there’s some spider people other than just Aranea (those are predicted to exist from the documents)!
Also, the Primordial Wyrm was mentioned, is that associated with your Primordial Magic? It seems likely. Another prediction (remember when I said the systems and narrative causality thing can generate predictions?) we have is: Dragons tend to be deeply involved with important history and lore and big things in the past. What is the history of Big Things with Dragons? What was life like before Dragons did whatever big thing they inevitably did or had done to them? Also, is there any lore of misotheistic groups (ie, those that believe that ALL Theothians are wrong/immoral/evil, and hate them all)? Perhaps groups that believe that reality is inherently flawed or unreal or not sufficiently correct or not stable in some dramatic way, and needs some large, destruction-based reset or adjustment? Is that a thing that cults try to do, only to be thwarted by stalwart adventurers? Also, are there any religions or religious lifestyles that… don’t have anything to do with Theotians, one way or another? If not, what prevents them? Also, what’s the history of religious conflict and war in your world?
Going to attempt to ask this of everyone, whether Tanna needs to interpret or I can do it directly
Fox the Wind here, I would like to ask – what is the most complex nonmagical technology that anyone can think of. How advanced are mechanical devices? How advanced are looms? What are some of the most advanced mechanisms that exist? How advanced is the process of making lots of steel (or similarly useful, do-anything metals) at once in large quantities? How advanced are things that use rotating power, what sorts of ‘mills’ exist? What forms of ways to achieve useful simple work other than muscle and wind and water power exist? What are the most advanced and complex sorts of weapons anyone can think of? Also, what is the most just, noble, good, wise, and responsible polity or state or civilization that anyone can think of? Does it still exist? How good or bad is the local civilization on the whole, ‘not being broadly evil’ scale? Is it the norm or an exception?
That’s all I wanted to ask for now of the group
Fox Again. Another thing! So do you have any long term goals that aren't related to 'adventuring stuff that it's obvious you will want to do'? Self-actualization sort of things. What lifestyle do you want to have, that kind of thing? Or do you expect to have that Adventurer lifestyle where you go from one crisis to the next for the foreseeable future and don't want to think about after? Like there's the things people often want; Fame, Fortune, Glory, Reputation, Family, Friends, Community, Respect, Recognition, Growth, Affection, Intimacy, Pleasure, Joy... any of that feel most important? For reference, we have a LOT of ideas, magical or no, about getting any of that stuff.
Also! Relationships! And flirting! Remember those games I told you about? There’s a series of humorous stories of people who pretend to be Bards, that is, Charisma-based folk in those simulation-games seducing dragons. It’s become a running joke in the culture of people that enjoy the games. The whole, ‘The Dragon looms over you, growling! What do you do?’ ‘Uh… I try to seduce the dragon!’ and then for whatever reason, the Bard does REALLY WELL and now there’s a seduced dragon in the story. Could you see yourself doing that? Being submissive and cute to a powerful, dominant DRAGON? Orrrr…would you be the one using magic to get really big and strong and fearsome and then tie someone up in silk ropes? More broadly, what species and gender is the hottest? What romantic and sexual role seems to be the hottest to you, for you to take or for your partner to take? You seem to remember stuff about spiders, there are probably multiple species of sapient spiders or spiderfolk out there! Also, when you finally get really good transformation magic or items, what are you looking forward to turning into? And what do you see in an ideal friend? How about an ideal romantic partner? How about in an ideal business partner?
I want to ask Evelyee this WITHOUT Tanna hearing, I will use extra effort to try and enable this.
Hey Evel'yee, Fox the Wind here. Could you tell me about how the wild, lowbrow sorts of parties go? What music do people make? With what musical instruments? What do they drink? What styles of fighting do people bet on? What sorts of gambling and similar games are popular? What items of clothing or jewelry are usually only seen in this context? How about performances that are specific to this sort of context? What board and dicing and tile games do common folk do, at least while it’s still light out at the earlier part of these sorts of celebrations or festivals? What sort of athletic entertainment and competition, I’m thinking stuff that usually involves accurately throwing something, do people do in or before lowbrow parties? What drugs do they do when they don't want to get so far gone that they can't party? What do they use for contraception when people seek out quiet places near the main party after dark for some fun? And how can we use this knowledge to get Tanna to let loose and be social?
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