"I thought you'd bring the demihuman." Mim observed idly, glancing around the assembled team. "Wouldn't she have been the best?"

"I considered it." At length. Kara would have made much of this outing an afterthought. "But there's something here I'd prefer she be present for."

"Oh?" Mim blinked. Interest gleamed in her eyes, all too quickly followed by understanding. A terrifyingly swift process to behold. "Well, that's fine!" The little Luna Representative let the matter drop, stepping up to hug you instead. "It's gonna be great, right? We're gonna get out of Carona, Marchovic told me we'll be camping, I won't be attacked by fairies, no more stuffy attendants..."

She doesn't mention the actual reason you're going, a fact which strains your smile as you very awkwardly attempt to navigate this unexpected affection by patting her on the back. Ari had somewhat accustomed you to someone being in contact with you... But it wasn't quite the same, and you still weren't used to it.

"So that's your strike zone?" Yet even as those thoughts jerkily worked through you, Raid saw fit to finally count himself present. He whistled while approaching, well aware of the eyes he'd drawn to him when he called out, stretching his elbows back as his fingers laced behind his bandana'd head. A fanged smile lazily graced his face, golden eyes twinkling mischieviously when he came to a stop and looked Mim over. "Guess I know why you invited me and not my sis for this."

"You have a sister complex and are scared when she talks about someone she spends time with because you're no longer the most important thing in her life." Mim intercepted flatly, arms unbudging from around your midrift.

You could hear the crack that ran through Raid's friendly expression like a fractured pane of glass. "Touchy, touchy." His hands rose in mock surrender. "Guess I would be too if I didn't have any friends willing to put up with me."

"Demihumans don't have friends; they have, and are, tools."

"Hey now," Marchovic slung an arm around Raid's shoulders, using the young demihuman - much to his chagrin - as a post to lean against. "A man's tool is his best friend!"

Your face contorted in some peculiar form of disgruntlement, trying and failing to level a dignified response. Even the reflexive thought of reproach seemed as if it would break over his irrepentently shit-eating grin. Blonde strands caught the sun as you shook your head, conceding a frustrating sense of defeat in the face of his sharktoothed beaming.

"So, these bandits we're after have been a thorn in our side for a while." Marchovic forged along shamelessly, "Thought it'd be just blondie and I spending some quality time out in the woods, but seems like we've got an interesting team assembled. What kind of surprises you got in mind for our first date?"

Incorrigible.

"I don't know how many we'll be facing, and as Marchovic has noted-" You take a moment to nod towards the man while addressing the assembled team. "-We're not quite sure where they are, either. Our first priority is to track them down. From there... Subterfuge. Trick them. Trap them. Hunt them." Your arms cross, meeting the varied expressions around you. "Thoughts?"

"When y'say trap." The elder knight ventured, "What's the plan to deal with them after they're caught?"

This was a manhunt, and one of your own making. Marchovic had of course meant for them to be slaughtered to a man no doubt, but he'd ceded plans to you. For the moment. You're not sure just how well he would heed your whims when the hunt was actually underway. To that end, you doubted either Marchovic or Raid were disused to bloodshed, and Gehr himself had likely killed before as well - That left Mim and yourself as the unblooded outliers.

...You hadn't killed anyone yet, right? With your own hands? You wracked your mind for an answer, feeling mildly uncomfortable that you may have shrugged off the act and forgotten it already.

>I want to make a show of executing them.
>Secure and restrain them. You used to be in their shoes.
>Same thing you do with any other game you catch: Put it down.
>Other? (write-in)

40 threads to caught up to and I can participate

Previous Threads:
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=Valen+Quest

Where things are said: https://twitter.com/Riz_QM
Where things are asked: http://ask.fm/RizQM

Assorted Supplemental:
Current Abilities - http://pastebin.com/PchcdWpw
A List of Forgotten Things - http://pastebin.com/kPEscJ3h
Irue's Memoires - http://pastebin.com/sWnicrK7

Write-ups:
Kara's Day Out - http://pastebin.com/8ZbiSKLs
Adventures with Asche - http://pastebin.com/RNviCBJu
The Reclaimed Doll - http://pastebin.com/n6miP1qT
In Your Shadow - http://pastebin.com/EfeeHFAE
Friends Forever - http://pastebin.com/Yn0QaTVB
The Woman Beneath Steel - http://pastebin.com/pMGgiHC3
Paper Flowers - https://pastebin.com/Pk0W7rEm

Misc notes:February 14th is the optimal time for a Christmas thread!

Memo:
1. Make Asche explain everything about the bracelet
2.
3. Mim said "When are you going to tell her?" Tell what to whom?

>>3261153
>>I want to make a show of executing them
FIRE FIRE WE'RE BACK

>>3261154
I'm always a little surprised when I crawl back out of a multi-month long abyss and find new anons trying to catch up.

I hope you're enjoying the archives!

>>3261153
You came back!
I knew I stayed up to 4 for a reason, I just didn't know it at the time.
>spoiler
Sure is. It was a long week, multi-month week. But hey, better than the 7 months between treads last time.

>Same thing you do with any other game you catch: Put it down.
Too much trouble to drag them back to any sort of civilization.

>>3261154
Congrats, and welcome to suffering. I should do another archive dive sometime, it's been a while...

>>3261166
I was undecided whether or not to make this thread an interlude focusing on one of the Testament you left behind (Kara or Asche), but decided that could wait. Waiting 3 months to pop back up with an interlude felt dirty.

>>3261153
>I want to make a show of executing them.
That's the just way to do it, yes? Capital punishment

I was just lamenting in another thread about Valen and now all out of a sudden it's back! Hooray

By the way I had this idea that we should ask the Jinn adepts if they've noticed any teleportation business happening around the shrine

>>3261153
Capturing them and putting them to trial. The people of Carona need to see rule of law is upheld around here.

A publicar trial Will make those rebels think twice about messing with US, as well as better our reputación as a just lady with the folk of Carona

>>3261158
>>3261190
Execution!

>>3261200
Prisoners!

>>3261166
Put down the dirty animals!
---

I forget if the voting window was an hour or two, but I'm going to say it's an hour and start writing! And making lunch.

Speaking of lunch, I'll leave you guys with this while you wait.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzXQD-2TfZ8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9GANkplxig

>>3261196
>teleportation business happening around the shrine
I mean, I don't see anyone else falling from the sky...

>>3261222
It's about Maran. Might be a long shot but in the ask.fm someone pointed out that Maran pops up out of nowhere wherever there is a shrine

"Restrain them." Your knights were brigands at one point as well so there was some measure of consideration to be had, but their circumstances were all too different. "Marchovic, you said our marks were affilitated with the former mayor's failed rebellion?"

"One that we know of for sure." The man returned casually. "A Wisp Adept who backed it as a mercenary. Mim, you should know more eh?"

"Yes! There will be more." She supplied proudly, "The Shrine has been keeping careful watch on the missing person's list. We have reason to believe that many of the discrepancies we've filtered out suggest that other backers of the former Mayor of Carona have chosen to disengage from town after leadership transferred. Their names are-" The little Luna Adept trailed off as Marchovic shook his head. "-Not important, I guess." She concluded mildly deflated.

You blink at the exchange, turning towards her curiously. "Were any of them particularly important people?"

"I know what they did before leaving, their names and families." She supplied. "I can give you descriptions as well, but none of them held any positions of note. The ones who did are still in Carona blending into the recovery effort."

You curb the urge to ask if she's sure. Mim's word on these matters may well be the word of Luna itself - The absolute confidence she delivered those statements with attesting to just how familiar she was with delivering such edicts. You nod, humming briefly to yourself before continuing. "To that end, I want as many as possible secured as prisoners to drag back to Carona."

"Been a while since I took prisoners." Marchovic yawned, leaning heavily on Raid as he poked the golden eyed demihuman in the cheek. "How 'bout you, runt?"

"Caught a redhead couple months ago." He deadpanned, apparently accepting his fate while cutting his eyes towards you with a lopsided smirk. "It ended poorly."

"Reds make bad prisoners." The Shade Adept commisserated knowingly. "Specially the ones back home. Nasty tempers, let me tell you. Break into their house once and you never hear the end of it!"

"Maybe you shouldn't have broken into her house." A retort leaves your tongue before you could think better of it.

"He broke in mine first." The taller man waggled his finger back and forth. "And don't change the subject blondie, taking prisoners is rough! They'll talk and scheme when you're not paying attention, slip their bonds, suddenly they've stolen all your things and slit your pretty little throat while you slept. If you want us making a haul of it with two kids, an old man, a piece of eye candy-" Your eye twitched. "-And yourself-" Twice. "We'll need some impressive accomodations."

If the Dyrad apparition you'd bound was along for the ride that wouldn't have been an issue, but without it... You were forced to cede that Marchovic had a point; Probably experience with the point on top of that. This team could capture someone, but keep them captured? In bulk? While transporting them?

You had some ideas still. Using the bracelet was a last resort for this, not just because of what Asche had revealed to you before, but... Its damage radius could be measured in miles at the best of times. The closest thing to anti-infantry you'd managed was driving the whole of Kara's pack into a suicidal depression. No point in dragging them back for a public spectacle if their minds were already broken.

...Or maybe the bodies were all you needed?

Failing that there was 'A Spider's Web'. It'd been made physical once before; Lethally so. You'd never managed a feat like it again though... You're not sure where to begin on that.

"Leave their restraints to me." You murmur, unwilling to back down on this for now. There was still time to think about it. "It's important we take as many as we can alive."

"Alright." Marchovic grinned, voice lilting in the sort of amusement which made you itch. "Let's say you wrap em up in your little locks and tote 'em all back to Home, Sweet Carona. What then? They already made their stance clear once. Gonna toss em in a cell somewhere to think about what they've done?"

"I plan to have them executed." You grind out a retort, crimson eyes narrowing as the final syllables roll off your tongue. "More of them are lurking in Carona, and as Mim's supplied they're likely in positions I wouldn't expect. I want to make a spectacle of this. This is more than a simple bandit hunt, it's about sending a message."

Throaty chuckles escaped the Shade Adept. A casual font of mirth which failed spectacularly to reach the sharp eyes he let rest on you in passing. "So says the heir, eh?" But like that it was over. He strode on, arms stretched skyward as the man meandered away.

You watched him go, catching Gehr and Raid following not long after. Whatever answers you wanted, his back didn't have them.

"Ready, Irue?" Mim interjected herself infront of you with her hand held out. "I wanna see as much as I can before the sun goes down, come on!"

"Yeah, I'm coming."

No use brooding over it. You had a few days to think things through, after all.

>Your first day travelling you spent most of your time with...

>Marchovic. You had questions and mild violent impulses. Most of them were both caused by, and directed towards, him.
>Mim. You invited her to hang out after all.
>Raid. Kara's little brother was relaxing to get along with.
>Gehr. One of your knights, and a new face at that.

>>3261253
>Mim. You invited her to hang out after all.

>>3261150
Based Mim

>>3261250
Based Marchovic

>>3261253
>Marchovic. You had questions and mild violent impulses. Most of them were both caused by, and directed towards, him.

>>3261253
>>Mim. You invited her to hang out after all.

>>3261253
>Gehr

Let´s talk strategy anons

I think we're well past the point where I can remember things from this quest, but I'm happy you're back!

>>3261253
>Mim. You invited her to hang out after all.
>Ask her if Jill is there

>>3261254
>>3261265
>>3261298
Mim!

>>3261258
Marchovic!

>>3261269
Gehr!

A landslide victory for Mim! Writing!
---
>>3261298
A Forgetting now would be horrible, anon. Give me a couple updates to think of one for you.

>>3261269
We don't really know enough yet to make a strategy. If we're wanting to use A Spider's Web as a restraint, we're going to need to practice weaving while walking again, as well as figuring out how to maintain those threads over long periods, including sleep.
Did we not just bring rope?

>>3261373
You have rope!

>>3261375
Small favors. Do any of us actually know how to tie knots useful for prisoners?

>>3261425
Marchovic and Raid have first hand experience in it. Gehr knows plenty of knots and Mim is a Luna Adept.

Irue knows how to tie shoes and bows. The decorative kind.

File: 1549741124408.png (9 KB, 400x400)

9 KB PNG

>>3261375
Oh! I saw someone posted this in the QTG and remembered how you like to save all your anon's art no matter how simple, so I grabbed it for you. Take it out and look at it whenever you want!

File: Saved.png (53 KB, 566x138)

53 KB PNG

>>3261427
I'm not sure that counts as fanart, but since you went out of your way to get it for me, I'll keep it.

>>3261427
Hey I drew this. I don't know why you would want to save it though

>>3261453
They're all precious memories, anon. These things may not mean much to you now, but long after Valen is over, and maybe after I've stopped visiting qst, I'll still have these files to help me remember all the time I spent writing with you all. The good times in thread, and the silly times between threads where this or that would lead me to not running as much as I wanted to. I've saved just about everything you guys have ever given me, they're all important.

>>3261456
Aw shucks

>>3261456
>100% bullying failure

o-okay

"Irue, come here! Quick!"

You'd not known the little Luna Adept to be so demanding. Fair be it to say that you honestly didn't know Mim all that well in the first place, but as the day wore on you'd lost track of how many times she'd called your attention back to her with all the urgency of fatal wound.

"This one's called a Danaus! That's the official Shrine nomenclature anyway, but they're really common and that means they've got all sorts of names! Milkweed, Tigers, Wanderers..."

Fortunately there'd been significantly little bloodshed in your first day away from Carona. What there had been was a crash course in every weed, flower, and insect you'd stumbled across. Currently the topic was on butterflies - Or one in particular, as Mim had enlisted your aid to tag-team this hapless thing in an effort to catch it.

Results were inconclusive.

"Every year they migrate east to breed in the Queen's Garden. So in East Heaven you'll hear them called Monarchs, or sometimes Queens. That's 'Queen's', as in 'The Queen's'." Mim's lectures continued apace even as the subject of it fluttered up, up, and far out of reach. A feat it had accomplished inspite of your dexterity being tested to its limits. The reward for its victory was freedom, and your own, the honor of enduring Marchovic and Raid's cackling.

"In this case the Queen's Garden actually came second. After locating their breeding grounds, architecture was built there to facilitate viewing during the seasons they swarm in, and later, are born. It's a big cultural affair."

"Like a festival?"

"Exactly!" She beamed. "I've never been but I hear it's amazing! La'Fiel doesn't have a whole lot of seasonal festivals like that, you know? It's always pretty temperate here. We've got harvest seasons, I guess." You'd learned and sequentially attempted to not forget a great deal of useless trivia you were almost certain you'd never use today alone. It was, in a word, exhausting. "Teranford has jellyfish seasons. They're actually Medusozoa though, people call them jellyfish because - Oh you've never seen one! They're fish but they jiggle! Not wiggle, completely different."

Raid and Marchovic's continued amusement does well in hiding your own as you raise a hand to obscure your twitching lips, watching Mim's best attempts to visibly convey the key differences between jiggling and wiggling.

"They're blessed by Undine you know? They're basically immortal and they've got stingers as long as your hair which turn people to stone! Not instantly though, I've read it's a very slow process akin to necrotic spider venom. The victim is left alive and aware of their body petrifying while the Medusozoa carry them off and deposit them out at sea, and that's how the Screaming Reef grows! It's a vital hotbed for marine life. It's a big deal to Teranford since most of their meat comes from fishing."

Could Rinnier fish...? Wait-

"Screaming Reef?"

"Victims drown screaming and they petrify like that, so the entire reef is composed of thousands and thousands of screaming people clawing at each other as they try to escape and swim to the surface before- Oh, Irue look!"

And like that you're tugged along, digesting yet another piece of trivia you desperately pray will remain useless and unused.

"All this stuff is pretty normal to you, huh?" She murmured "I noticed most of these plants when I went to your house."

"Maybe too normal." You agreed, feeling the now familiar cling of sweat-soaked cloth as you stood behind Mim and idly ignored the ache in your calves. "...I couldn't tell you if most of what we talked about today was around my house or not."

"They were." She insisted firmly, slender shoulders slinking as she sighed. "It's all really common stuff. I remember you kept roses around your house, too. Do you like those kinds of flowers?"

"..." You slid a hand under your hair, lifting it to allow a precious breath of fresh air along the nape of your neck. "They're not actually mine. They've been growing there for as long as I can remember."

"Oh." She fell silent.

"I guess I'm fond of them." You didn't know their name, or any particularly distinguishing features of them. You'd thrown up on them on a number of occasions. "Seeing them brings up memories. More so, I guess, now that I don't actually live there anymore. Why?"

"Oh, uh... I'm... Not sure." She admitted, stumbling over her words. "Priat told me I should ask more questions."

You make a face. "He said that to a Luna Adept?"

"No- I mean, yes, but not like that." Her finger sunk into dandelion fluff as she poked the little fuzzball perched atop its stalk. "I talk to much? People have to put up with it at the Shrine but they get annoyed after a while. He said asking them questions would help."

"Don't you already know the answers?"

"...Yeah." She admitted quietly. "I don't think it helps that much, either. You were annoyed today too, right?"

"I'm exhausted." You admitted with a breath. "Mentally, mostly. No more tired than I've normally been lately. If we'd done this a year ago, I'd be splayed out on the ground an hour ago."

Mim got to her feet, brushing broken strands of grass from her knees. As much as they had scraped across the ground today, the effort was a well meaning one... If done entirely in vain. "I don't know how to have this conversation." She turned about, shrugging with resignation as she proffered a small, complicated smile. "I have a lot of opinions about today, and you have questions, and I think we're both doubting things, but I really wanted to come and I'm glad you invited me and... And I've been talking a lot today. I wanted us to talk." Her eyes fluttered awkwardly, averting to find something interesting south of your own. "When I think about something the answer is pretty obvious. I don't actually have to ask you, because I can imagine simulations of how you react to a question. How you answer it. I used to do that a lot. I still do that a lot. It saves time. It annoys people too, they really don't like knowing I do that. Invasions of privacy or something... Um."

She trailed off, clearing her throat softly. "I... We're... Friends?" She chose her words with care, slowly stringing them together. "I don't want to save time with you, but I don't... Know how this works, or where to start. I talk a lot, but I'm not used to... Talking."

Mim fidgeted as she fell quiet.

"...I'm really curious though so maybe we could figure it out before I do it anyway?"

Mostly.

>?

Probably going to leave this open until later, as the skyfire has risen.

>>3261531
Oh geez. Because, you know, we don't have enough trouble talking to normal people.

>?
uhh, sure, we can talk (are we not talking right now?). Just maybe talk a little slower cause we're exhausted and you kinda talk fast anyways.

>>3261531
>?
Of course, we are friends after all.

>>3261531
>?
Well Irue doesn't really know much about how to make friends or what friendship feels like, so an honest but optimistic answer would be something like -
>I hope so, you do too right? Maybe that's enough.
>Pet Mim

Sounds like Mim lives in a pretty colourless world desu, I don't suppose she can turn her wikipedia-vision off, or at least resist the urge with any amount of consistency? What if she used the diary?

>>3261531
So Mim can simulate us, eh?
I hope she's not going to spring a Roko's basilisk on us
>Confess we don't know much about it either
>Theorize that as long as the participants obtain enjoyment from the relationship, it counts.

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46 KB JPG

lol tl;dr ain't gonna vote

Riz where the heck have you been

>>3261650
He took a really long thanksgiving break.

>>3261603
Supporting this.

File: Spoiler Image (1.12 MB, 3264x2448)

1.12 MB JPG

>>3261427
10000 hours of slave labor by someone with an actual artistic bent.

>>3261526
. . . how often are her "simultaions" correct?

Does she think she could find the Monster Tamer sisters with us? We could be detectives together. She lines 'em up, we knock 'em down.

>>3263089
That ship sailed a long time ago, anon. She might have been useful back when they first disappeared, but the trail went cold months ago.

Though we still don't have a long term solution for dealing with the behemoth without them. That thing is going to get loose and wreck this wretch of a city a second time, right as things are starting to really recover, with our luck.

>>3263044
Just realized that sounded arrogant. I bullied my roommate into it, I didn't do it myself. I wish I could pull off something like that.

>>3261253
Just tossing this out there, but if we're going to execute them anyways . . . .

Well, we could cripple them. Slice some tendons.

Oh! And another reason for capturing them - some of them might be just disgruntled people being used who didn't intend to harm Carona or its people. They might not all need to be killed, we can probably negotiate with some of them.

Also we need information on where the Tellanford sisters are before the Behemoth wakes.

>>3261619
>>3261531
Supporting this. We're not good with people either, so that's something we have in common. We're probably going to annoy the crap out of each other, but Mim knows how stubborn we are so it's not like she has to worry about driving us away with being annoying.

She's our friend now, and we'll fight the entire world to keep our friends.

> I wonder what Mim will think when we say that in entirely serious fashion. Because, you know, we already committed to that with Anri.

Also >>3263103
We just gotta get the Shrine on it. They have a vast network throughout the land. Also we should ask our Aunt to help us find them, or if not them a Beast Tamer. The Behemoth is too big for us to insist on handling alone.

And who knows, the Bandits might know about them.

Also

>>3261153
> ...You hadn't killed anyone yet, right? With your own hands? You wracked your mind for an answer, feeling mildly uncomfortable that you may have shrugged off the act and forgotten it already.

> Are you forgetting someone

We killed the Mayor. Choked him with his own chain.

>>3263257
>Well, we could cripple them. Slice some tendons.
While it would be effective in hindering their escape, it would also slow our travel speed way down.
> some of them might be just disgruntled people being used who didn't intend to harm Carona or its people
If we're going to the flashy execution not a fan of needing to drag them all the way back just to kill them, but whatever, we're doing it properly. We're on this manhunt to send a message. It undercuts the point of the execution if half of them get away with it.

>Also we need information on where the Tellanford sisters are before the Behemoth wakes.
see
>>3263103
>the trail went cold months ago.

>>3263278
>We just gotta get the Shrine on it. They have a vast network throughout the land. Also we should ask our Aunt to help us find them,
We tried to find them back during the Testement, when they first disappeared. That entire family was deliberately killed off; even if they survived the initial attack, they are either dead in a ditch somewhere, or in chains on the other side of the continent. We tried and failed to leverage our resources to find them back when the trail was fresh. Even if we would get anyone to listen to is now, there won't be anything to find. We're better off working on a percent way to kill the thing.

>>3263301
I disagree.

And like >>3263278 said, there is the Shrine to ask for aid, and also our Aunt.

The Behemoth won't just be Carona's problem if it gets free.

Maybe we could contact the Royal family and sell it to them. They most likely have a tamer.

Y'all are a bunch of ShadowRue voters, giving up like this.

>>3263301
Actually, Asche did find them. Then Kara betrayed us and they disappeared again.

You people need to understand that Riz won't have a shred of mercy for us once we fuck up. I would really like to try and save the girls but the seemingly impossible odds of finding them combined with all the other things we are preoccupied with right now mean that keeping the beast alive is just too big of a risk. The bohemoth must die, and soon.

>>3263512
This has come up before; I seem to recall we'll only get one shot at trying to kill it, as the attempt will wake it up. And no one's really sure what it'll take to guarantee ending the thing. I do agree killing it is still an easier option than trying to run down a months-old trail we failed to follow when it was fresh.

>>3263525
Mim might be of help in telling us how to end it as fast as possible, maybe

>>3263525
>>3263512
Nothing says we can't do both.

And I've been here literally since the first thread, so believe me I know what the risk of fucking up is.

Killing it should be our last resort plan, because of the risk. Until that point, we should be looking for the Terranford girls.

OR another tamer. Probably the only place we'd find out how to kill it anyways.

>>3263525
I wonder what would happen if we planted a seed in the Behemoth.

A seed from our Dryad tree.

>>3263546
>Nothing says we can't do both.
Opportunity cost does. We have a (very, very) finite amount of resources an time available to us, and we're trying to put this dumpster fire of a city back together. Asking for any assistance in looking for the girls will cost us something, something we could have been using to put the city back together or push the killing plan along further. Getting halfway to finding the girls (it they're alive) and halfway to killing the beast doesn't count for anything when it wakes up.

>Killing it should be our last resort plan
Once we have a proper plan in place to do the deed, we should enact it before the window closes. We don't even have a use in mind for the thing.

>>3263564
One of the little saplings from that merchant? Absolutely nothing good, though undoubtedly interesting.

>>3263568
Asking our Aunt and the Shrine to help us find the Teranford girls will be in their best interest.

After all, the Behemoth won't just destroy Carona and vanish.

> All these ShadowRue killers, giving up is in their blood.

Seriously, you all have been wrecking any hope of dealing with the Behemoth for a while now.

>>3263568
And once again, the best way of finding out how to kill it is to find people who know about it, which is pretty much just Tamers.

>>3263572
Aunt takes time, Shrine is already busy rebuilding Carona. I get you want to keep it alive and I do too, but I'm gonna have to vote to kill it once the time comes to decide.

>>3263572
I'd rather go fight another Oakenbear than try to get anything out of Aunt; it doesn't matter if it's in our mutual interest, she'll make us pay for it. Trying to get anything out of her is like trying to get blood out of a stone. And isn't she still off trying to recover cousin from his stupid "heroics"? Furthermore, didn't she make it clear we were pretty much on our own for "practice" or somesuch?

>giving up
We ditched that option a long time ago. It's not giving up, it's cutting our losses and working on plan B.

>>3263593
A) The Shrine is more than just the people in Carona, they could ask the Shrines in the surrounding area to be on the look out for a Tamer, specifically the Teranford girls if possible.

B) Our Aunt isn't Son Goku, she isn't going to risk a magical WMD equivalent going off because "muh self sufficiency". Refusing to go to her for aid for THIS, that would be a reason to consider us unfit to rule people even if we somehow succeeded. This is important, not just to Carona but the Behemoth could decimate the nation.

C) Finding a Tamer is probably the best way to find out what is likely to actually kill the Behemoth, short of us shredding our soul and destroying Carona in the fight entirely. Again.

>>3263614
None of your points really strike home... but I'd rather not argue now so I suppose we will someday decide with a vote

>>3263568
Nope. From our Adorable Abomination.

And personally I'm all for asking the Shrine and our Aunt to put the word out to find the Teranford girls, but that's about it.

It's not like that would be a huge investment of resources.

>>3263623
Hopefully not a vote at 3am with only 3 ip's.

>>3263635
No, I meant somewhere in the future

>>3263639
Only so long as you don't then claim they got even further away.

>>3263639
Just out of curiosity, what exactly IS your plan to figure out how to kill the Behemoth without a Tamer, then?

Just asking Mim?

>>3263647
Dude, give it a rest. The topic is worn out for now.

>>3263647
Mim might have ideas, yes, though I imagined we would do the actual killing with the help of an adept. Though depending if Mim knows anything useful we might not even need that. At the end of the day it's a mortal beast and with a good head start I don't doubt we can cull it

>>3263645
This is the second thread I participating in live. I would have strongly voted to search for the girls if I was here earlier, but I am an archive-binger.

>>3263652
Yeah, but I'm saying we should find ANY Tamer, preferably the girls if possible (while we're searching) but any port in a storm.

>>3263657
I already told you I'm done with the discussion itself

>>3263647
>Tamer
You think they grow on trees or something? Their family was employed by ours specifically for beast training, their family was considered the best of the trade, and they had only just begun dabbling in Behemoth taming. Even if we could reach someone in the right highly specialized profession and they were willing to come here, despite us not having really any funds and the city being a wreck, they will almost certainly not have the knowledge we need.

>Mim
Being a Luna adept doesn't mean you have access to every bit of knowledge. Otherwise they would act more like libraries than priests in their duties, and would have much more power in the shrine itself.

>>3263652
We stopped searching because we hit a dead end. We can't just "search", we need something in to work with, and then have to make the proper connections ourselves.

>>3263669
>Even if we could reach someone in the right highly specialized profession and they were willing to come here, despite us not having really any funds and the city being a wreck, they will almost certainly not have the knowledge we need.

I imagine they would come for the chance to interact with the Behemoth alone, and if other Tamers don't know how to kill it, where exactly do you hope to find that out?

Window is closed! Belatedly. Going to through all these posts and see what I can tally up and address!

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>>3261557
>>3261562
>>3261603
Image.

>>3261603
Pet Mim

>>3261619
>>3263278
It's fine as long we're happy, I think?
---
>>3261603
>I don't suppose she can turn her wikipedia-vision off, or at least resist the urge with any amount of consistency?
Leaving this here to make a note to address this in the update.

>What if she used the diary?
Give it to her and find out!

>>3261650
>Riz where the heck have you been
I can't answer this without several paragraphs of insulting myself! You guys get upset at me when I do that.

>>3263044
Also saved! I adore the shade fuchsia used in the font.

>>3263089
>How often are her simulations correct?
Yes. Unless Luna itself has an interest in denying Mim information, questioning their accuracy is insulting.

>Does she think she could find the Monster Tamer sisters with us?
Mim CAN do a lot of things. She will do very few of them because she's the Luna Representative and the Shrine is already overstepping its bounds aiding you.

>>3263278
>We killed the Mayor.
You didn't. He died, and it was absolutely your fault, but Irue didn't actually kill him. He was left stranded to slowly dehydrate/starve to death in the dark until he committed suicide.

>>3263564
>A seed from our Dryad tree.
You know I've never considered this outcome, but this is entirely possible to accomplish.

>>3263669
>Otherwise they would have much more power in the shrine itself.
The Luna Dominion did indeed call most of the shots in the past, and to this day maintain lead direction of the Shrine's affairs even after the checks and balances were put into place by the other Dominions after the events of the Abandoned Child's Atelier.
----
And finally since it's been a hot topic.

>The Tier survivors, the sibling heirs, etc.
No progress has been made on this front, and yes, quite some time has passed. That said it's not that you don't have a lead on finding them. You've just Forgotten it. At least twice.

>>3263752
>No progress has been made on this front, and yes, quite some time has passed. That said it's not that you don't have a lead on finding them. You've just Forgotten it. At least twice.

I am going to archive binge in about . . . . 12 hours.

I am disappointed in >>3263669
>>3263659

Specifically if they don't go through the archives as well.

>>3263752
>tfw that spoiler

>>3263753
>>3263752
So give me like 24 hours to read through all of this.

I bet it's wherever we got them to move to Carona from.

Also - is it overstepping her bounds to save herself, the shrine, and the bloodline that's keeping Dryad from waking up and killing everyone? We don't have to ask her that specifically, we can just have her ask Luna if it's okay and roll with that.

>>3263755
It shouldn't take you 24 hours, anon. The answer you're looking for will probably make you hate yourself.

>>3263757
Pft. I'm not one of the pussy anons who thinks we have to be perfect. We're doing a big job here.

Unless the answer is "They're dead".

Fuck, did we ever check back at their house for them? Did the Treebomination drive them off?

What about the Inn?

Or our old mansion?

Or . . . . I gotta read through when I'm not at work.

>>3263752
So . . . We could try out the Treehemoth?

I say let's do that instead.

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>>3263752
TREEHEMOTH!

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>>3263752
Am hyped.

>>3263753
Okay I am going on an archive-binge for answers then

>>3263765
Stop it, we just found a lead and I don't want to want an abomination that will probably be a BAD END but pretty cool despite that.

>>3263766
We can do it, Anon!

>>3263772
You know you want a Treehemoth. What could go wrong? The Treebomination loves us, Anon. Planting a seed would just give us more of it to love back.

Okay, I haven't dug up too much so far but as far as I know the Tier sisters were rescued by Asche (in the Adventures with Asche write-up) before being double-crossed by Kara and taken someplace by "normal humans" working for the Mayor. Now we just need to find out where these humans could have taken them

>>3263808
inb4 to the Mayor's basement.
Where they later died of hunger.
Because of us.

"We're talking now, aren't we?"

"We're talking about talking, we haven't started the actual talking yet." She disagreed matter of factly. "You don't know how to do this either, huh?"

"...No." You don't bother making an excuse for yourself this time, taking a surreptitious glance to ensure you weren't about to air your private thoughts to a crowd. Towards the beginning of a campfire, Gehr seemed to be engrossed in the process of explaining something to his two rapt audience members. "Talking about my feelings hasn't been my strong suit." You sigh, stooping down to make yourself comfortable on the grassy field. "I imagine simulating me answering questions about that is as frustrating as talking to me about it."

"A little... Are you curious? About the simulation stuff?"

"Wanna talk about it?" You lean back, snorting at your own ill attempt at humor.

"Yeah." But muddled as it was in your own uncertainty, it was the bridge Mim needed. "It's kinda like..."

Sitting down next to you, the little Luna Adept's enthusiasm filtered back in through her words. A constant slew of explanations which gave you a fascinating glimpse into the mind of someone favored by Luna - One of several minds you'd tried to cultivate in yourself to no success for years. It was that effort which helped you better understand the more esoteric pieces she struggled to convey. With each hurdle you crossed in this manner, the tension in her frame drained into the dusk air.

"So it's less like a word for word recreation. I just take everything I know about something and then make connections, assembling the relevancy of all collated information into a list of outcomes and then consider and filter each of them based on specific qualifiers. It lets me absorb the raw answers to a given scenario while annotating the process leading to their establishment."

From any other source it was far too many words to describe making predictions, but as one of Luna's beloved that same description took on an entirely different gravity.

"The less you know about the scenario the less accurate it gets?"

"hrrmm..." She murmured, a sign you'd come to recognize as her having too many answers to give at once. "If we accepted that, then... Potentially, yes." She chose her words with a careful sort of deliberation. "Otherwise it just takes longer. You've seen it take longer."

You frown, drawing your knees up to serve as an arm rest. "You haven't looked have you?"

"No!" There was nothing stopping her from lying to you about this. Nothing you could do to prevent Mim from simply divining all of your secrets while away from you one day. "I promised I wouldn't, and I haven't! But... It's not that easy, Irue. I can't just stop like that."

>>3263810
No, it definitely wasn't the mayor's place because I distinctly remember someone saying that they were taken "someplace else"

Crazy thought, but what if they are with these bandits?

"You can't just... Not think about digging through someone's secrets?"

"It's not like that!" She insisted, "When you think about something, don't you immediately think of more things about it? If you have a pet and remember its name, don't you remember what it is? What kind of personality it has? All the memories you've made with it? How long it is from tail to nose? What it eats? Its entire family tree?"

That list got unrelatable at an alarming rate. Still, you took a moment to consider it while resting your eyes a little. "You start piecing things together even when you're not trying, huh."

"The safest way is to not think about you at all." A melancholic answer. One that started to hurt you the more thought you gave it. "I don't think I can do that. I... Don't want to do that."

Mim leaned into your side, tentatively and gingerly bridging the space between you in the grass as her head found rest against your shoulder. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come. This whole trip, I'll be..."

>?

>>3263813
That wouldn't be something we could've Forgotten

>>3263814
>?
Sharing secrets is what friends do, isn't it? I don't think we mind

>>3263814
Well we aren't sorry she came. Hey, she thinks too much about doing things, and we do things without thinking enough about them sometimes.

We'll just have to become more obtuse.

> Rinnier facepalms, then wonders why she just did that.

Maybe we'll rub off on each other. But we aren't sorry Mim came along.

>>3263817
Who was it that took then "some place else"?

Raids pack maybe?

>>3263822
Explicitly voting against this

>>3263825
Well how about you write something yourself instead, because admittedly I was a bit lost on what to write personally

>>3263822
No.

We are hiding Dryad from her.

It was a big thing.

>>3263822
>>3263814
Holy crap anon NO

>>3263814
>We're not sorry she came.

Ah fuck please disregard my write-in, I was stupid

>>3263814
>hug Mim
>do your best

>>3263834
>>3263814
Pat the Mim. On the head!

We aren't going to ask her to not think for us. But, no guarantee she won't hurt herself trying to figure us out.

We're gonna go for a cathartic violent bonding experience now.

>>3263822
>>3263823
>>3263829
>>3263832
>>3263834
>>3263840
Sharing secrets!

>>3263825
Not sharing secrets!

Writing!

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>>3263850
>Sharing secrets!

>>3263850
Ya know, it occurs to me that if Mim is really bothered by her connection to Luna, we could possibly break it with the Faedeka.

Or the Tree sap.

I'm sure Luna would be cool with that.

Anyways next Atelier we find? Mim is definitely coming.

>>3263850
>Sharing secrets!
Riz no stop wat r u doin

After everything you went through to make her promise not to dig into your secrets, this revelation... Didn't come as much of a shock to you as it could have. You'd made the decision to keep your promise with Mim - and Priat - to try and make this friends thing work. You had to have known, on some level, that you were asking for the impossible to get closer to a Luna Adept without them discerning the things you wanted hidden. The things you needed hidden. The choices you'd made that set you against the Shrine, if not the world, in a vain attempt to protect someone in front of you. The things which Mim, as an Adept of Luna, was the very last person you wanted to become aware of.

"How long?"

"What?" You felt rather than saw her head shift towards you.

"How long can you keep yourself in the dark?"

"I don't know." She grumbled. "I could know, but..."

It would only speed things up. You sighed, dislodging Mim from your shoulder as your arm shifted restlessly. It wasn't what you meant to do; A message you hadn't meant to send.

"I'll ask Marchovic to walk me back."

"Mim, no-" Cloth and grass shifted against one another as the two of you made to move. "I'm not sorry you came!"

"You've been second guessing inviting me the entire time!" You grasp her wrist, holding the little Luna Adept in place even as she rose. "I've been having second thoughts. We both know me coming was a mistake. I'm not going to be mad at you, I know you meant well, we can try this another time!"

"What's going to make then different from now?"

"We won't have to worry about me in a fight? Or anyone getting killed?"

"That's not what I meant, Mim." Though they were wholly valid concerns you'd agonized over. Ones you weren't surprised she herself had been wrestling with in regards to her decision to be here. You never thought you'd actually be saying this, but... "You're using that as an excuse, and next time there'll be another one!"

You shuffled to your feet, ignoring the muffled gasp of pain from Mim stumbling back towards you when the grip on her wrist held firm. "Yes, the moment I invited you I knew I'd done something stupid. I thought for days about whether or not to do something about it... I didn't. I'm still not sure I made the right decision, but I'm not sorry that I made it."

"It's going to end badly." She murmured, eyes rapt to the hand around her wrist.

"This trip?"

"No." She choked. "Us. I'm going to find out what you're hiding, and you're going to be angry, and other bad things are going to happen that I don't understand yet. It's going to happen because I can't stop what I am!"

"Mim I'm going to be furious." No point in lying. "And I know you can't help it. Just... do your best, alright?"

"My best isn't good enough!" She hissed, jerking her hand away.

... When next we meet, tell me how you did it. I'm sorry.

My best isn't good enough. Just kill me, please. I never wanted this, I didn't want to be here, I can't make it stop.

My best isn't good enough. I don't... Want to experience this again.

My best isn't good enough. Talk to me again if you need to, alright?

My. Best. Isn't. Good. Enough! You've earned at least a fraction of the pointless pride you had when we met.

Is it strange? You remind us of all we lost. That we care for you, even still? To be unforgiven, yet cherished. Nothing is simple anymore.

"...We're never going to be good enough." A simple truth. It burned in your chest, every syllable forced through your throat through sheer force of will. Contrary to what you expected though, you felt... Calm. Each breath measured and steady. "We're going to hurt each other. We'll get through it. This isn't... About having the right answer, it's what I want."

You held your hand out.

"You came because you wanted it too, right? To not be alone anymore?" Too dark to see her eyes. She wouldn't look at you anyway. "Then be more stubborn about it. Take what you wan-"

Your body stiffened reflexively when Mim slipped past your hand, giving you a far rougher hug than the greeting this morning.

"I'm sorry." She muttered into your shirt as your arms hung awkwardly in the air, still unsure how you were supposed to react. "It's not supposed to be this hard, I'm making things really difficult, I'm sorry."

"..." You at least wanted to finish your speech first, but the moment was ruined now. Slowly, gently, you wrapped your arms around her in return. "Stop that. You don't have anything to apologize for."

"But-"

"If you have to apologize, thank me instead." You sighed.

"..." The arms around you tightened. "Thanks, Irue."

>The rest of the night was tame, but Mim will be giving you a little more space for a while. Did you have any topics to close the night with?

>>3264006
That hurts. I still miss her. So close to saving her, yet so far. She could have been the friend we so desperately want. What could have been...

>>3264007
>?
I'm dry on topics. I suck at normal conversation, never mind whatever this is.

>>3264007
>3. Mim said "When are you going to tell her?" Tell what to whom?
I'd like to clarify this one. It's unlikely we'll have a better opportunity.

>>3264024
(;_;)

>>3264007
>Did you have any topics to close the night with?
Did anyone bring any cards?

>>3264007
We can tell her about us growing up in the mansion! Like, from our personal view.

>>3264007
Or we could talk about our lost humanity, how what we've been through has cost us some of what . . . People, are.

Kind of like how Adepts become like their mana, except we don't really HAVE a Mana. Straight truth. So it's kind of concerning what we might be becoming.

So there's that.

>>3264058
>>3264007
Not a vote for this. It's a bad idea. But it would be nice to talk to someone about it. Kara wouldn't understand, Ari would care to understand, Rinnier would just think we're retarded and be not wrong necessarily. Asche would probably freak out.

I thought I'd get another update out but it's 11:30am and the skyfire's been risen for some hours now. I'll leave things open for now.

>>3264095
Sleep well!

>>3264030
Not a bad idea. If we can resolve that, I'd suggest we replace it on the list with a note about how the behemoth is still around; it's going to wake up at some point, and we need a plan for ending it.

>>3264030
Voting for this.

Also my archive binge had to be cut shortly, because I had to leave. Here's to hoping that other anons are more successful!

>>3264024
Nothing!

>>3264030
>>3264114
Clarifying memo note!

>>3264038
Cards!

>>3264055
How we grew up!

Writing!

With the immediate turbulence over you found yourself relaxing on the ground again. Sore legs were becoming a common experience, and you'd begun making a point to favor footwear that was more comfortable and durable over the sophisticated things you used to enjoy. They were to perhaps no one's surprise, ill equipped for trekking through woods and caverns with.

Small changes. One of a handful which had been accumulating all but unnoticeably since you'd started the Rite.

Muscles ached, where they used to scream. You were tired now, but you could move. It was too dark by half now to see the hand you held in front of you, fingers opening and closing testingly. Days prior had revealed the presence of callouses forming; Light ones, barely worth mentioning in comparison to Caylen's, or Shade forbid, Alouette's, Or... anyone in your family, really. You had mixed feelings about that.

"You're a lot better at this than I am." Mim observed tiredly, limbs spread out in the grass as she watched the stars. "I'm not used to being outside."

"It's harder at first. I used to spend a lot of time outside growing up, but nothing like now."

"Exploring the woods around your house?"

"Sometimes." You meandered those woods with Asche more than a few times. "I spent most of my time studying. Outside, under trees, in the grass, on rocks... If I wasn't outside I was in my library. I've never been the physical type."

"It suits you. Sorta." Even Mim sounded dubious about that. "Like, maybe if your hair were shorter you could be a hunter or something."

"I like my hair." You retort defensively. "Someone else can go hunting, I can't even use a knife, much less a bow."

"Do you like being outside?"

"I don't... Dislike it." If given a choice you'd always prefer to be inside, on proper furniture and well out of the sun.

"So what changed?" Grass rustled as Mim rolled over to face you. "Didn't you used to like it?"

"I don't think I liked it any better back then. I had this dream when I was little that if I meditated enough I'd become an Adept... Being outside helped with that."

"I never went outside." Mim pointed out wryly, flopping over onto her back when you reached out to poke her.

"You're a special case, and I did say I was in my library too, didn't I? Reading Luna's manuscripts are some of the most frustrating memories I've got."

"But they're all really simple..." The most beloved Luna Adept in the entire Valen territory whined. "What'd you do when you weren't studying?"

"Study other things. Talk with Asche. Sometimes we'd play games." Teaching Asche to play games was an experience. "We played hide and seek for a little while, but it got boring fast. She'd find me almost immediately every time... I was convinced she had to be cheating, so we never played again."

"Why not just make her hide instead?"

"Asche wasn't allowed to hide." The rueful grin splayed across your lips went unseen in the dark. "I uh... Couldn't find her."

"I guess that would get-"

"For several days."

"-Oh."

It'd been nearly a year since your sister and parents had died when that happened. You thought you'd gotten over it... But that resolve crumbled the longer you wandered that empty mansion. The first night you went to bed angry. The second betrayed. By the third it was in tears. Then she showed up the next morning, as if nothing had happened.

"The house was too big for the two of us, anyway." You continued nostaligally. "We'd eat in the dining room, but it was made for formal events you know? With this long table, and it could seat fifteen, maybe twenty people in there comfortably." And the echo of silverware as it clinked against the dishes never felt more damning. "...But I couldn't get used to Asche standing behind me while I ate. She couldn't sit across from me either because the table was so wide. We ended up eating in the kitchen most of the time, clearing off one of the islands for a table."

That was exactly how you'd spent your morning before the Rite began, too. Talking idly to your maid and closest friend. Trying to soothe your nerves with her taciturn nature.

...Probably the happiest memories you had in that house were of a scant few months ago when the whole host of your knights and Testament moved in with you. The feeling of emptiness had finally evaporated.

And then it was gone.

"I'd like to rebuild it one day, maybe. I can't imagine staying in Carona any longer than necessary, and now that it's more than just Asche and I, maybe I can put all that space to good use?" You shrugged to yourself, gazing up at the pinpricks of light dotted across the sky. "I guess I could move into Caylen's place instead. It's basically a fortress... Or take over the main estate. I'm the heir, so it's all mine, technically."

Options for the future. One which felt too far ahead to be worth anything more than errant thoughts for now. Carona was still shaping up in its recovery. You suspect that by the time it was over and done with, you'd have quite a barracks there as well.

"That reminds me." You snapped fingers, "What did you mean back before I convinced you to leave things to Priat and I? Who was I supposed to tell?"

"...Oh!" It took a second for your question to process, the little Luna Adept sitting up with a start when she caught on. "Oh, you didn't realize... That demihuman you brought, I believe his elder sister is one of your Testament?" You nod slowly. "She doesn't know you meant to do it."

You frowned.

"Her pack. Something happened to them that was your fault, but she doesn't know it was you. Or... I guess that it wasn't an accident."

"That..." You shook your head, expression deepening into a confused scowl. "That doesn't make sense, she was there. She saw it happen. She was the one who asked me to stop."

Mim shrugged. A helpless response, not that you were in the position to do anything about it now anyway. "I don't actually know what to tell you. I'm kind of curious what happened, too."

"You don't already know?" You blink, once more finding yourself off-balance.

"I didn't pay any mind to it beyond trying to find something to use as leverage so you wouldn't leave me." She admitted smally, "At least not until later... The night you came to see me. When I was trying to figure out what you were hiding, I... Stalled. Not for time, but like- It felt like my brain just stopped working? I had to try and find ways to work around it, but then you made me promise not to, so..."

Despite said promise, and the conversation you'd had tonight, the sense of curiosity was almost palpable in her explanation. Just because she'd agreed to not try to uncover your secrets didn't mean she'd lost even the slightest bit of interest in them - If anything, this anomaly had entrenched that curiosity even further.

"I'll keep that in mind." You mutter, filing away this new knowledge to be dealt with later. You don't know how much it changed, but knowing it set you ill at ease.

But it seemed your private time had stretched to its limit, as Marchovic's voice broke across the clearing. "Hey Mim, blondie, get in here!" You craned your neck back to catch his silhouette waving from in front of a campfire, "The old man's got cards!"

"And?" You squint against the warm light.

"And there's no point playing strip-anything if all I have to look at is a kid and an old geezer, duh."

You squinted harder.

"I know a couple games." Mim volunteered, "I'm good at cards!"

Casting a doubtful glance at the little Luna Adept, you heaved a reluctant sigh. "Alright, we're coming."

The next morning saw you breaking camp and setting off once again. Marchovic expected to start finding traces of your marks soon, but how soon was a question of luck... But regardless, that meant your time was ticking down. The party you'd assembled wasn't fit for direct confrontations, but they were more than capable of subverting and hunting. To do that you needed that first sign, someone to attach yourselves to.

You still weren't sure just what Marchovic's reason was for inviting you on a trip like this. Simply asking him gave you more agitating answers than satisfying ones, but you knew for a fact that you were being watched.

If he was looking for a showing, you didn't want to disappoint. The question, then, was what - exactly - was he hoping to see out of you?

Still, the second day of travel was calmer. The five of you had gotten more at ease travelling together after yesterday, and last night's activities in particular. For all intents and purposes the tension should have risen, but it felt much calmer as you mingled through the morning. Mim and Raid posing as the sole exception, having done little but snipe at each other with varying degrees of spite.

Your attention on the other hand was occupied with...

>Gehr. This band was eclectic, how was he fitting in?
>Marchovic. You've never met someone who kept you so off-balance.
>Raid. Kara's little brother, and perhaps for that reason her second in command. What did he think of being yoinked out of Carona?
>Experimentation. You were by far the least capable member of this team, you needed to figure out how not to embarass yourself.
>Other? (write-in)

>>3263546
If you were her since the first thread you would remember the girls have nothing to do with Teranford.

>>3266354
>Experimentation. You were by far the least capable member of this team, you needed to figure out how not to embarass yourself.

>>3266354
>>Experimentation. You were by far the least capable member of this team, you needed to figure out how not to embarass yourself.
We are completely dead weight here currently. We have no martial skills whatsoever. Our only tricks are A Spider's Web, which takes hours to set up, and the Bracelet, which... lacks finesse. We need to figure out how to be useful here.

>>3266354
>Experimentation

>>3266382
>>3266386
>>3266423
Experiments!

Your own abilities. Or inabilities as the case may be. It was hard to deny that you were the weakest link among the five of you, which considering that list including two children left you in a poor position. So what if they were born with supernatural foresight or inhuman strength and reflexes? The hard facts at the end of the day were that if you got into a fist fight with Raid, the question wasn't 'will I lose?' but 'how embarassing will it be?'. You might fair better against Mim. You had reach, stamina, and raw strength on her. All you'd have to surmount is her knowing your every move the moment you committed to it.

...At some point though, you had to accept that spending several hours despite yourself trying to imagine how you would not get absolutely destroyed in a fight against two children still meant that you lost. If not against them then in some intangible way you'd probably never feel entirely secure trying to explain to someone. And they weren't even the enemy - You were apt to be engaging adult men and women in their prime. People who by all rights would have the same advantages over you that you had over-

You shook your head with a frustrated growl, physically divorcing yourself from slipping back down into the inevitable, if morbidly depressing, comparisons.

It wasn't as if you were helpless. If push came to shove you could abuse the bracelet's power to bring forth devastating tides of force - It was something you'd become accustomed to doing. Probably too accustomed, bearing Asche's warnings in mind. It wasn't something you wanted to rely on if you had any other choice. But what did that leave you? Your only other recourses were 'A Spider's Web' or using the Diary of Reflections and showing off your Relic. You knew for a fact the web could be weaponized to terrifying effect, but how? And could you afford to risk dabbling in it long enough to find out?

Maybe you were going about this entirely wrong, though. Did you really need to fight? Was there an alternative?

>Try the bracelet (How?)
>'A Spider's Web' has never let you down before, nor will it ever let you down. (What do you want it to do?)
>Could you... Misuse the Diary of Reflections? (How?)
>Other? (write-in)

took longer than expected. Feel free to think this over as I'll be leaving it up for a while. I've got a campaign to DM later today.

>>3266728
>Could you... Misuse the Diary of Reflections?
If it can physically shrink Rinnier's boobs, can it physically enlarge our muscles? If we turn into a huge buff guy/girl/sexless golem?

>>3266738
Yeah this. Can we obtain the body of a skilled fighter?

>>3266738
She accomplished this by reverting to a younger age, so rather than shrink just they hadn't grown as much at the time. However...

>>3266750
It gives you the form and identity of someone, so if you take on that identity, you naturally gain their body.

>>3266769
Now we just need to find out if we can wield weapons while using another body

>>3266769
Well we could turn into allouette I guess, but that's a bit conspicuous and it's not a misuse. Could we do the opposite of what Rinnier did and become an older version of ourself? Would that even be helpful?

>>3266793
You cannot become an older version of yourself as their identity does not exist until you've gotten older.

>>3266793
Alouette is probably helped by her Wisp affinity. If we're going for raw strength, it should be Kara or Dullem.
That being said, can't we construct a fictional identity as well? Didn't we do that when we used the Diary the first time?

>>3266807
Can demi humans even use relics? I wouldn't like to be stuck as Kara.

>>3266795
Can we turn into dead people? If we turned into doppelrue we should be able to use razor wire again. How was that accomplished again? I forgot.

>>3266825
You can become dead people.

>>3266833
The question is can we become alive again.

>>3266728
All right, ideas.
1, attempt to use Irue's ability to attune her mind to different ways of thinking on the diary to create an "edited" version of herself that venerates strength and fighting, fight club Irue.
2, turn into mint and see how strong she is even if we can't use her powers.
3, turn into doppelrue and try to use razor wire
3, try to activate razor wire by running Dryad mana through our Web. Focus on what we learned about the fae in our aunts library to meditate.

>>3266728
I guess we could also ask Mim if she knows a way to misuse the diary for a boost in fighting ability.

>>3266728
>>'A Spider's Web' has never let you down before, nor will it ever let you down. (What do you want it to do?)
Try to get it to manifest quicker. We had some success in spinning while walking, see if we can build on that.


The diary stuff isn't a bad idea, especially
>>3266793
but being more buff is only partially useful without their weapons or skills or mana affinities, even if we could wield them with the bracelet.

>>3266728
Dunno if the diary is a good idea. We'll have to expose it to the rest of the party, and adding muscle without understanding how to use it is just going to make us hurt ourselves. Also we cann't wield even makeshift weapons while wearing the bracelet.

>bracelet
Try meditating on a person. Why fight directly if we can summon a copy of someone to fight for us? what could go wrong?

Can anyone remind me why is the crown enemies with artemis?

>>3267172
I'd really rather not spawn some fresh natural disaster just to experiment a bit with the bracelet

File: what could go wrong.jpg (35 KB, 594x383)

35 KB JPG

>>3267342
Current guesses have Artemis corrupted by the same thing Dryad is. It was never quite clear why the Corruption is bad (iirc), but The Shrine betrayed and entombed on of their Gods to contain it, and Artemis is trying to spread it as far a possible. Even if the royalty doesn't know about the Corruption, Artemis has been acting rather cult-like, so that could be reason enough.

>>3267472
>pic related

>>3263753
I talked all that good shit then got into a car accident. Super spaced on painkillers, I won't be any use

>>3266346
I did note that Luna might have blocked Mims thoughts here when she tried to figure out our secret

>>3266728
>Could you... Misuse the Diary of Reflections? (How?)

It changes our physical form, not just superficially as an illusion but our whole body, yes?

So that means that we were keeping our Irue brain in a different body. But what if we used it to change our identity as well as our shape?

Maybe we can use the Diary to become someone else entirely. My vote? Use it to become someone we know intimately enough to completely become them. Someone so close to us, they are practically ourself already.

That's right, I'm saying we should use the Diary to become ShadowRue. Then we can use the Spiders Razor Web.

We can probably use the bracelet as a focus to get in touch with our Shade aspect to make it work. That's not the same as forcing it to summon ... whatchamacallums mana spirits.

If anything, we can just use it as a focus to attune ourselves instead of forcing it to act on the world.

>>3268663
If we're going for the Diary tests, trying to be shadowRue sounds like the best option, at least as far as avoiding showing off our disguise Relic. I kinda doubt we'll get her powers for the same reason we're not trying to dup an Adept, but it's worth trying. No telling what the mental damage will be though

>>3267472
Better in a controlled environment than in a panic or in a fight, not knowing if it's even possible.
I mean, it's still not a good idea, but it would be nice to know if it's a slightly less destructive option.

>>3266738
>>3266960
>>3266983
>>3268663
Diary misuse! The thing we had a special talk with Rinnier about not doing.

>>3267159
The best ability ever which is the best answer for all things at all times!

>>3267172
Meditation!

Becoming Dopplerue, huh...

Writing!

The bracelet was right out for now. Nevermind its track record, you didn't want to make it anymore public than absolutely necessary at this juncture. Not that ruling it out left you many better options; Between an ability gained from an Atelier and a Relic obtained from that self-same place, which was going to give you the least questionable weapon? Even that wasn't a real choice, though. The last time you'd weaponzied 'A Spider's Web' you hadn't exactly been yourself.

...But nothing said you had to be yourself now, either. If you were resolved to use the Diary of Reflections in the first place then any identity was available to you - Shade bless, if you were Alouette this wouldn't even be a problem!

As suddenly as the idea had breathed excitement into you, common sense stamped it mercilessly back out. Becoming someone as high profile as Alouette was as good as trumpeting to the world that something bizarre was afoot. You hesitated to even consider Kara or your knight captain either, present company considered. Even if Kara's monstrous strength was a tempting solution, wearing his sister's face was something you didn't want to do in front of Raid without preparing first. You needed someone they wouldn't question too hard. Someone they wouldn't necessarily already be affiliated with, with the power to stand on their own.

And for a split second, you seriously considered the late Queen of East Heaven. An honest to Luna Saint of the Shrine. If anyone was strong enough, wouldn't it have been Mint? It was a thought you had to shelve - forcibly - as there was no doubt in your mind that Mim would recognize her instantly, if not her and Marchovic both.

Every option you considered came with glaring flaws. Anyone you knew strong enough to be worth an attempt was too notable to be written off. How were you planning to 'write it off' in the first place? Who was going to believe 'oh, yeah, Irue called in a total stranger and is conspicuously absent'?

If you were going to do this, you needed to think... Closer. An identity similar enough to you that you could pass it off as a change in composure. Attitude. Like the one you'd worn in Carona. Like the one your doppleganger had...

You blinked, feeling a catch in your chest. You were used to this by now. You'd begun to accept the memories the Doppleganger had left behind, to reintegrate... But this thought - This singular, traitorous thought. You remembered their last words with crystalline clarity. With absolute Clarity, you remembered, as if they were your own. In a way they were; Your doppleganger was born from you, of you, and by your will. It had lived in your shadow, under your thumb, and at your side its entire life. THe only face - The only name it had ever known was your own.

Yet the liquid pages of the Diary were unflinching, just as you knew they would be. The answer stared back at you, just as you feared it would. Another identity, entirely distinct from you. One strong enough to stand on its own. One you could pass off as yourself.

Looking down at your own reflection - At the reflection of your doppleganger staring back at you - A single, trecherous thought whispered to you.

Isn't this it? The proof we screamed for? That it had been so much more than just our shadow?

Isn't this all it ever wanted to be?

If... If you had been in a better state. If you had been more understanding. Would you have been able to save them? Would they have still stayed with you when they had well and truly outgrown your image? Too many What-Ifs. None you could answer anymore. At the very least they were a different brand of question than the ones which used to haunt you. Saying you regretted what happened was insultingly understating the baggage you still carried, but you'd become strong enough to accept that weight and work through it - Each filtered memory another drop of poison. Doses small enough to become your medicine.

A mirthless smile went unreflected in the pages of the diary. Just what would your doppleganger have thought of this? All the time it spent trying to do more than borrow your identity, and yet here you were seriously considering... Seriously thinking of...

Foundation Solidified.

"Haha..." The face reflected in its pages never changed as you snapped it shut, yet your skin felt uncomfortable all the same. A body that was yours down to the smallest detail which didn't belong to you in the slightest. "You really were something else." You mutter, unable to keep the admiration from tinging your voice.

Formulation of Aeonic Nature beginning.

You regretted so much of what happend with your doppleganger. At times almost suffocatingly so. But buried in that morass...

>...Am I jealous of my Doppleganger? (Explain your answer)

Not to alarm anyone, but this vote is important.

And will segue directly into another one just as esoteric and important.

They're technically unrelated, but you've triggered the conditions for both of them simultaneously.

Don't regret your answers.

fuuuuuuuuug

>>3270417
We're dead. Tune in next week for Lamandra Quest.

>>3270410
>A bit yes, because Dopplerue was surprisingly competent despite having the same background and the same anons at controls
>But much more no, because feeling what she felt is something one wouldn't wish even for their enemy.

>>3270410
>Am I jealous of my Doppleganger? (Explain your answer)
Yes. She solved the Ice Queen's Altier; the reason we even have the Diary of Reflections and A Spider's Web I wonder if she wouldn't have succumbed to its addictive nature so easily. She's the reason we have the Knights, and she kept them alive through a direct test of leadership and in some sense they'll always be hers. In her brief and troubled time as Shadowrue, she did as much or more than we had during our entire life. and had the end of her brief time, she got to end. without giving up.

>>3270515
Anon, she actually did give up.

>>3270410
>no
Doppelrue had a hard life. It's true that she accomplished a lot more than we did up to that point and probably left us in a much stronger position than we would have earned for ourselves, but crutially, she did all that alone. Even more alone than we were. Isn't that the exact state of affairs we're currently trying to fix in our own life? It's hard to envy.

Admire or idolise might be better words, she did more with less but we're trying our best to keep up the momentum she left us with.

>>3270410
>...Am I jealous of my Doppleganger? (Explain your answer)

Yes. She as as troubled as us (maybe even more so), but in her short time "alive" she accomplished more than we had at the time, and much of what we have done since was possible because she laid the groundwork.
It's not entirely jealousy, though that is the majority. There's also a little pride in her being able to accomplish what she did, being born from a part of us.

>Foundation Solidified.
>Formulation of Aeonic Nature beginning.
I, uhh. I don't know how I feel about that. I've always thought it would be an interesting option to pursue, but in the sort of way you contemplate base jumping or playing in traffic.

>Mimicking a Shade doppelganger while in the company of a Shade adept
I wonder if he'll notice anything...

>>3270527
I dunno, you could make a case either way. Was she killed, or was it assisted suicide? Can you call it giving up if you're not given a choice meta considerations aside? There was no way she could have fought or fled from Asche, and attempting to do so would have made for a very undignified death; she did still have some pride.

>>3267172
That's why it's best to turn into Shadowrue. Physically there's. No difference.

And because you killed her, arguably there won't be any spiritual difference either since we'll just be an aspect of ourselves.

>>3270410
We're both jealous and sympathetic. She had a lot of things that we want, but in the end it wasn't enough for her either. We haven't chosen to die, so I guess we're ahead of the game.

We'll have to find some way to muddle on. Maybe we'll end up integrating fully and gaining some of what she had. Maybe not.

Regardless, we're going to keep moving forward.

DoppleRue left so much behind when they decided to let go, and while we're thankful to inherit it, we also recognize that we have an obligation to those people as well as possible support if things start to feel too much.

She may have left it behind, but we aren't going to waste it just because we didn't make it ourselves. And eventually, we will make it . . . *ours* in the plural.

After all, if people still remember and care for you are you really gone, or just far away.

>>3270515
Bitch what? Anons didn't even realize Dopplerue was us for like, forever

Any "handicap" she started out with was already something we had.

She also had an affinity with Mana ro help her use the bracelet and the Spicer's Web, as well as had mich easier challenges to face.

Shadowrue bailed before resolving Caronas problems, before gaining the loyalty of our Testaments, and was fucking it up with Rinnier until we had a fistfight.

And we then rescued all our friends, sorta saved Carona, got a bunch of Demihunans, continued to take care of our Knights and truly, we've made them OUR Knights now as well, handled not just an Atelier but the Atelier of a sealed God that could end the world.

And we've resolved to oppose not just them, nor to join them, but to do what we feel is right despite them being LITERAL GODS that are literal parts of the underlying fabric of existence right up to the destruction of the world of that's how it plays out.

All we've done is gotten stronger, because we've continually faced greater and greater challenges that Dopplerue never had the chance to, because she took the easy way out.

For all the benefit of the things she left us, she also left the obligation to care for them and she couldn't even see that despite the Knights liking her so much.

Meanwhile, we made a Friend.

I'd love to have her abilities and affinity with mana, but quite frankly we've maybe not gone farther than she could, but we've absolutely gone farther than she did, and we did it while having to catch up to the things she had grown into dealing with while we were sleeping.

Without her Haxxor mana affinity, and with a massive blow to our self confidence due to suddenly being thrust into a fucked situation that we felt guilty and unworthy of handling because intentionally or not, she DID end up stealing part of our actual life from us.

>>3271352
Bro are you okay?

>>3271493
Just . . . I've been watching the descent into self loathing in this quest, literally for years.

I'm fucking sick of it.

Go here for Priats perspective of us.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/553737/#p560971

> 567066

Irue is a mess mentally because that's how Anons characterized her. And that will never change unless we actually do.

We're really doing quite well given the situation.

>>3271493
Also, that thread was super painful.

Guess who made the write in when we fought with Mim?

Yeah. Jesus Ibam so glad we managed to be friends.

>>3271493
I swear to god though, I will be so . . . Just sad if Anons choose to ignore all the progress we've made, both in our peer support network as well as keeping things together given the situation.

Either lower the expectations for ourselves, or raise them for Dopplerue.

If you can't do that, then let's just get angry instead. Angry at ourselves for making excuses for why we didn't do as well, "if only we were someone else". Angry at other people, for having those advantages and still not fixing things. Angry at the world itself, which seems to exist merely to throw bullshit in your path. Like, we don't even have a real goal per se in the sense of finally being done. We don't really want power for it's own sake, or to elevate ourselves. It's just that almost everyone else in the running is insistent on making the wrong choices.

Except for our Aunt, and that's almost as frustrating as the fact that despite outmaneuvering us at every turn she still isn't actually 5aking care of business. Her own son joined a goddamn death cult.

Honest to god, if it weren't for a) the whole world ending, and b) *spite* for our Aunt neglecting while we were young and then throwing us to the goddamn wolves to "make up for it" and honestly sobering a little ridiculously excessive about the whole thing,

True, maybe she really just actually believes in us if we try, but that possibility makes it worse.

If it weren't for those two things, I'd be tempted to just say fuck it, we're going to take care of our Testaments personal business and the whole place can just fucking hang.

Caylee is out of the running for head of House Valen now, but fuck they can just adopt. It won't be any different to them from us officially taking the position, we never really developed a relationship with them anyways guess we should have gotten on that, being a child who just lost their whole family and was left in the woods is no excuse.

See. Now I'm definitely angry. Fuck jealousy, that's for people who don't believe they can improve sure, we might feel it on occasion as impulsive emotions are want to occur, but instead of just chewing sour grapes, let's take action.

Sick it, Shadowrue. Your powers are now (temporarily) ours!

>>3270410
>>...Am I jealous of my Doppleganger?

Jealousy? I only feel regret. Unknowingly to both of us making her live our life, and then simply sulk in her shadow when it dawned on us. She was killed by Ashe when she had the chance to become her own person. Regret that we only feel anguish when we think of her instead of being thankful, who wants to be remembered like that? It's just so hard to be happy for the short time she was alive. Life isn't meant to be that short and so filled with strife

>>3271850
I'm with you man I think this can be the catalyst we need to stop this downward spiral revolving around doppelrue. But I don't think hating the world is making much sense right this second. It's the next step. God knows I've been yelling at the moon more than once and called for us to just say fuck it and not get involved with more of this shit that is so, so far beyond our league.

And then that child abuser made us mayor. I want to abdicate, go pimp slap caylen then go with the wind and hello Rinnier. But we're committed now

>>3271288
Seconding this

>>3271870
Well, the thing is that anger is a familiar voice for Irue, so I tend to use it to power through shit.

It's probably not healthy, but at least it's productive. Far more than always viewing the slightest failure as proof that we're incompetent.

Seriously, the write up from Priats perspective was specifically to point out that we, both as players and as Irue, have a distorted self perception. For instance

>Though it's a bit late now, I'm not sure if the anons really understood that a major theme of Dopplerue's development hinged on "Identity". They treated Dopplerue like Irue the entire time, when the last thing it ever wanted to become was Irue. Much of its internal dialogue and progression revolved around slowly trying to establish its own thoughts and values, separate from Irue entirely; I'll reiterate it again, but dopplerue resented Irue from the moment it was born, even if some measure of bitter empathy was beginning to come around.

> Ultimately I think this disconnect of not mentally treating Dopplerue as it's own character is what led to voting for suicide. It was assumed that "I can't give up" would just inherently be there, because it always was for Irue.

We are the autists. And that gap of understanding is why O believe that ultimately Irue would be confused by Dopplerues choice to die and unable to truly accept it as a valid decision.

I think she doesn't see it as Dopplerue preferring to die instead of being a version of Irue. Herself, but instead that Dopplerue was ultimately unable to live as her own self. Because while Irue may of thought of Dopplerue coming from her like some weird mama baby, she never really thought of Dopplerue as being a part of "herself". For evidence I would like to point out Irues rejection of any claim on Dopplerues accomplishments, and her discomfort and rejection of absorbing Dopplerues memories.

Especially since she views what Dopplerue did as truly death. Attuning with our memories of her and becoming "Dopplerue" doesn't mean she'll be back. Even if it's a good enough illusion to fool reality itself and change the rules it applies to us, we'll still know we're still is and are just pretending.

Man. Honestly how are we not attuned to Dryad. We can't handle weapons, we feel overwhelming excessive responsibility for people even if we hate them, and we're pretty damned forgiving.

Has Dryad gone mad and split it's own personality, locking away its destructive side and shoving its whole "caring" aspect onto us?

Window closing in roughly an hour! Prepare for part two.

>>3270410

> Did you ever kill anyone with your own hands?

Haha, you were talking about Shadowrue here, weren't you?

Honestly I don't know why you thought we ever considered her as anything except, not a part of us, but a replacement for us.

Someone that could handle our responsibilities, better than us we thought, and so we indulged in hiding away and leaving it all on this being that was newly formed, who had no real understanding of personal connections that we took for granted, and was blessed with our self awareness at it's birth as its crash course before we offloaded all our responsibility onto them.

Personally, that's why I feel guilty about the whole way that went down. Maybe we couldn't have changed Dopplerues mind, but we didn't even *try* to see her doubts about herself because we were consumed by our own.

Honestly this is a kind of cathartic moment for me, coming the realization about why her choosing to die hit so hard, why we couldn't just accept it as a choice she was entitled to make.

We were a shot mom, we went for the metaphysical pack of cigarettes and left our kid with all our debt to deal with on their own.

Wow. Now I honestly can't feel jealous of Shadowrue at all, just really guilty. Also angry, angry that we didn't act when we owed it to her, angry that it will always be too late to make it up, angry at Shadowrue for making the wrong choice - because while there's a lot of "could have" on our part the choice was ultimately still here but she never asked anyone for help about it.

Probably because she was pretty much abandoned by the person who really should have been there to support her.

Like our Aunt did to us.

And now I'm so sad I'm back to angry. Looking forward to giving these bandits a chance to surrender then lowering THE MOTHERFUCKING BOOM.

We won't even need to use Spiders Razor Web with our shade attuned self, we probably have enough regret right now to Simmon a Shade of Regret without the bracelet. Maybe even by accident.

>>3271815
>I'm fucking sick of it.
I hate the absolute adoration and willingness to sacrifice anything for Ari. It's part of the collaborative nature of quests that you don't like everything about the PC.

>>3270565
> but crutially, she did all that alone.

Actually she had our Testaments helping her, as well as the Peasant Knights. We didn't get the chance to make friends before she subsumed us, either.

Pretty much she just didn't have Asche on her side. But honestly, looking back on things and realizing what we lost on, I think I'm actually finally ready to forgive Asche for how she . . . Destroyed Dopplerue. No matter what Asche might think, Dopplerue was a person to us, and it hurt to see her destroy them like that.

But at the flame time, if she hadn't, we might have simply stayed under forever.

It wasn't really Asches fault that we let her run out of options, but in the future it qpild be nice if she tried to save us by helping us be better instead of killing relatively innocent people as collateral damage.

Anyways, my point is that Dopplerue wasn't more lonely thanil is, if anything being a mana construct that started out with a detached state probably made her better at handling it.

But Dopplerue was definitely more lonely than she could have been if we had properly stepped up to the challenge instead of giving in to self doubt and hiding. That was a mistake, it did not make things better, and if people are going to suffer I'd rather it be in spite of everything we could do, not because we did nothing at all.

>>3271993
>It wasn't really Asches fault that we let her run out of options,
Asche hadn't seen Shadowrue until she sprung her from the catacombs, but immediately after tried to kill her. She never considered any other options, even after showdowrue explained things to her, so she get no benefit there.

> think I'm actually finally ready to forgive Asche for how she . . . Destroyed Dopplerue.
Murdered her in cold blood, you mean. I'll consider forgiving her if she shows remorse at what she did at a minimum, but not otherwise.

>>3271990
Did you read my posts, and why I'm sick of it? I'm sick of it because it's a stagnating characteristic for Irulen.

I'm sick of because it no longer fits her character growth, unless she's actively trying to wallow in her misery and self doubt. It has passed its narrative point, Irue has passed beyond the issues that epupd make her feel jealous of someone that not only died but that she failed to save. Unless werl jealous that she's dead.

As for the Ari thing? I agree, but confirming to the theme we became hyper focused on not letting others down after Shadowrue died, as opposed to proving ourself to people. We had to start proving ourselves to ourself. And part of that is recognizing our accomplishments and not giving up again.

Funny, how Anons always expected Irue to never give up, but also never struggled to establish themselves after Shadowrue took Irues spot in the world.

Ah, I see now, she didn't want to not be "Irue". She didn't want the responsibility of all our obligations we dumped on her.

> of you think I'm wrong, feel free to argue your own points. If you're wanting to play a character that insists on remaining flawed despite all the evidence to the contrary, and the presence of friends and allies compared to when she started to have this problem, then can you not?

One can always quickly check and, you know, ask someone if they think we're doing okay. Instead of just giving up and always feeling bad. Because that leads to killing yourself.

Honestly, we've worked really hard for the things we have in the quest, and I find it upsetting that you want to refuse to allow the character to grow or accept the results.

>>3272015
Shadowrue was a parasite that took over our body, and we weren't able to come out.

What was she supposed to so, hope that it would somehow work out some day? Asche isn't perfect either.

And if we can explain to Asche why we're upset with her for what she did, you also have to accept that we were pretty much forcing Shadowrue to take over our life. Not even Shadowrue wanted that, and it he concept of self is different for Mana.

The question of whether or not Shadowrue was a unique existence is debatable. Arguably, she was still "us" until the point where she faced the decision to become someone else, or reabsorb into the general mana. How can you kill what was never alive? The question is where you draw the line, like with abortion.


How long was she supposed to live ourlife before that happened? It's not like there's a set timescale.

And look at how it hurt us to miss out on that time, on that opportunity to grow, and how that hurt our self worth and identity.

I still don't agree with what Asche did, but Shadowrues present was harmful and possibly deadly. If someone was slowly killing the person you love most on the world, even if it was for their own survival, would you trade the life of the most important person in the world to you for theirs?

Keep in mind that Irue recently decided it was worth destroying the world to protect her friends.

>>3272046
Our position at the time wasn't viable long term for several reasons, but there wasn't the urgency Asche used to forcefully deal with it. Shadowrue sprung her and was killed in the same evening, after having been in that setup for weeks, at least. There was plenty of time to look for less violent options. If at least a couple of days had been taken to explore what could be done, and nothing had been turned up, I would have been more accepting of her death. I'd still be upset, but I'd understand. That more than anything is the source of her guilt to me, her unwillingness to even look for alternatives.

>>3272015
>>3271990

I would also like to point out in regards to choosing to risk the world for the sake of our friends, specifically Ari in this case but I feel reasonably confident that we would do the same for any of our friends, is because we believe that there's at least a decent chance we can somehow resolve everything.

Because if the Mana would destroy the world over this, they might destroy it over anything at any time. So fuck playing their game until they get tired of it, we'll smash the board ourselves and die with dignity and smug spiteful satisfaction that least they aren't happy with the result either.

So it's not like we just wrote the world of for Aris sake and believe it's now doomed.

Want me to pull up the relevant posts from when we made the decisions and our reasoning?

So it would be perfectly appropriate to continue urging Ari to have more independence, even if last time she did that it ended up with the Fae taking her to the Atelier where she was made anathema to slither security of existence.

Because we were too busy indulging in our self doubt and drowning our worries in booze

> I DON'T LIKE THING

Honestly, we have enough obstacles and opponents already with continuing to be our own biggest one.

>>3270463
>>3271288
>>3271916
Yes, sort of.

>>3270515
>>3271010
Yes, absolutely.

>>3270565
No, but there's admiration for everything it accomplished.

>>3271856
No, there's nothing but regret.

Window closed.

>>3272028
>I'm sick of because it no longer fits her character growth,
That's subjective. I find flawed characters much more interesting, and like it or not, self doubt has been something rue has struggled with (rather literally at some points) the entire quest. The struggle (and often failure) to overcome those flaws are much more interesting than deciding that "I'm going to fix that problem now".

this is entirely subjective, but I find non-perfect characters much more interesting, as there are more ways to be broken than whole. I'm tired of characters with interesting flaws and subsequent personalities "fixing" themselves into perfect boring people.

>>3272079
My dislike of Ari runs deeper than that. I've never seen her as more than a pet, a mascot, a motivation for a plot hook. She's always been the token "cute girl doing cute things", not a friend. That implies some level of equality. Further, I think leaders should be willing to make personally sacrifices for their domain. If sacrificing a friend keeps the things together a while longer, you should do it. It will be painful, and you'll hate it, but needs must.
Of course, my opinion here is sharply in the minority, so when it's relevant I make my case then get over it when things don't go my way.

>>3272115
> Wow. Now I honestly can't feel jealous of Shadowrue at all, just really guilty. Also angry, angry that we didn't act when we owed it to her, angry that it will always be too late to make it up, angry at Shadowrue for making the wrong choice - because while there's a lot of "could have" on our part the choice was ultimately still here but she never asked anyone for help about it.

Actually I'm firmly in the NO camp now. O know I wrote a lit, I had to figure things out.

>>3272131
Sometimes I wonder if my anons go through more internal development and catharsis than Irue during these votes...

>>3272131
That changes the result from 5 yes 2 no to 4 yes 3 no. Doesn't change the result.

>>3272129
I'm not saying Irue should no longer have self doubt, I'm saying she should stop wallowing in it like it's crack cocaine. She's gotta start recognizing her own abilities and achievements and draw strength from that. Also she has to trust that her friends and allies won't abandon her if she isn't useful like how her Aunt did.

Anger is also her flaw, but it's one she actively works to control, unlike the self doubt which just runs rampant.

We have plenty of flaws, but the self doubt is becoming an outright indulgence at this point. We would have to be completely rejecting of our accomplishments, deny the value of our friends opinions of us, and steadfastly refuse to consider anything else to continue on the way we're going.

At this point, keeping it at this level isn't a flaw, it's being outright broken.

I don't expect it to get better right away, but we have to at least work on it. Right now is an important time because we have to actually recognize our accomplishments and be honest with ourselves instead of keeping up this whole insecure self flagellation act.

And I also agree that Ari is still more in the responsibility zone than the friend zone. And you'll note we WERE working on it until things went wrong.

You know, when she took the initiative on her own and went into the woods and dried to be more independent, so that's just something to work towards with her.

It'll take time and effort though, if we just dump it on her, well, that's how you drive Shafowrues to commit suicide. Last thing we need to do is overburden the one person who has even worse self esteem and self perception than we do.

>>3272155
I mean? We can admit there are some things about her that we wished we had, without wanting to actually be her over ourselves

>>3272129
If it makes you feel better, you could think of our indulgence of Ari like it was . . .some sort of .. .flaw? Perhap?

>>3272129
Actually, could you explain what you find appealing about flaws? Because I actually also enjoy have them as a recurring issue for the character to deal with, molding and shaping them as the story progresses. They provide a challenge that can't just be directly solved.

My issue with the whole insecurity 5bing is that while we haven't accomplished everything we wanted to, we still have done quite a lot both objectively in establishing ourself and at least not cocking things up even if they aren't getting better themselves, and also personally with developing healthier and lower relationships with people.

So I really don't feel like we have any excuse for keeping the insecurity at the level it's at. Much like our reckless arrogance in the beginning, events and our personal growth should be allowing to temper the severity of the flaw by now. Same as how our arrogance is still present but it's intentional instead of just us carelessly assuming we'll fix everything. Now we've been actively trying to focus on accepting doing "enough'

Heck Rinnier forced us to take a day off and everything, going to great lengths to reassure it would be fine.

>Shade Attunement-

"I was jealous of you." A silent, embittered and awed admission. "Of everything you did that I didn't. That I couldn't." Your fingers flexed experimentally, chuckling under your breath - a self-depreciating laugh spurred on by how long it had taken you to realize that. How hard it had been to accept.

>G̡̢ơ̶̵̶͡ḑ̵d́͜e̷̸̢͘s̨̀͘ş́͢͟͠ ̷͠À͡u̸̷̴̵̕t̸̸̛h̢̛͡o̢̕͜͡ŗ̸̕͘i͢ţ̀͝ỳ̷̡̢̀ ̶̷̸̡͠Ó͘v̡̡͜͞e̸̡̨͠r̵̵͞ŕ̷̢͘͢i̷̸̧d̷̢͘è̷̡͘͟

>Ś̸̀̕ ̶͡H̶͝͞ ̛A̧̧̛͠͡ ̸̨D̴̕ ̸̡͠È͠͝ ̀͟R̴̡ ́͡͝E̸͢͠ ̵̀͝͡J̸̀ ̡͞E̶͡ ̸̢̡̀C̷̨͘͢͠ ̴̀͟͝T̨͝ ̵̧͜Ȩ͜͢͜ ̡̢̀͞D̷͞

You released a heavy breath, feeling lighter despite yourself. A bitter sort of weightlessness where you couldn't help but laugh at yourself, but it felt good to accept it. Fear held you back. Fear had driven you into a corner. That you would fail, that behind your bluster was a disaster waiting to happen. That one day your bluffs wouldn't be enough and that misstep would unravel the razor's edge you were walking. It was right. You would run away, despite every thing you'd said to the contrary. You did run away. Its life was proof of your own hypocrisy and false bravado, and at the end of it all, you had been jealous that it had found the courage you lacked.

How small had you been? How much had you needed to grow just to see this? ...How much further did you have to go?

"Just a fraction." Your fists clenched. "...Of that pointless pride. Like she said... I've earned that much."

It wasn't perfection... But maybe it was enough. You... At some point, you had to accept that you couldn't do everything. You couldn't be everything. You made mistakes. You had weaknesses and shortcomings. You had to try and accept your failures, even when it hurt. Even when they couldn't be fixed.

You knew it was going to be hard, but it wasn't impossible. You'd just... Fail along the way. Fail to accept them and try again. You failed your doppleganger. You were jealous of it. You admired it. You regretted so much about it. You were so angry over everything that happened, you- You couldn't just feel those things forever. They wouldn't go away in time. You'd stay right where you were, nurturing this bleeding vein in a stupor if you did that. You know you would, because you'd bathed in that blood. Submerged yourself in those feelings, acclimating to them this whole time to sort them out. To understand exactly what ichor was flowing through you.

You knew now... And this wasn't something you could fix. Something you could remove or surmount, or move past. You had to accept that. These mixed and confused feelings with no clear answer - They weren't temporary. And maybe they didn't need an answer. They couldn't be fixed because maybe there was nothing wrong with them. Nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to be scared of. It was alright to hurt, it was fine to grieve.

It's alright.

As your fingers unraveled so too did your awareness, and with it, the world around you. That familiar, absolute nothingness which signalled the transition between yourself and 'A Spider's Web'. Dryad greeted you there, as it had before, concerned and frantic that you had come again - But it was only a moment in passing. A second split into far too many moments.

And then you were back, the soul soothing awareness of intangible threads telling you that everything was as it should be. You had outgrown your dreadfully pale human senses. Lost touch with them in their entirety. This was all you needed. To expand, to fill the web with yourself, and...

A spider always returns to its web.
...Are you sure you understood this?

Something's wrong. Something's fundamentally wrong. This incongruence which couldn't be ignored once realized. You Solved the Atelier, you know that answer is correct, why is it wrong? Why are you wrong? What are you doing wrong?

A spider always returns to its web.
This ability... A blessing? The Atelier's blessing, its recognition that you were alike. Its acceptance. It carried its blessings.

No. Your fingers shone white, trembling as the cogs of your mind turned. Trembling as they ground, screamed and stalled.

This is the kind of thing they were supposed to rise above.
It was a curse.
You erected a monument to failure!
A malediction.
You gave up, and revelled in your inability to move on! You stopped trying!
An abyss you had been all too happy to lose yourself in, enthralled with its power.
We believed in you, but you couldn't even believe in yourself! You ran away from it all!
The answer was correct; you were wrong. It carried its blessing, its sentimental edict, that you and she were the same. You were the same.

>Explain the curse borne within 'A Spider's Web'.

>>3272287
Key word "was", there?

Well, we ARE attuning with Shade so being able to face our insecurities is probably more important then trying to refuse them, so we can overcome them.

That's what shade is all about, after all.

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>>3272287
>Override
UM.
There's not a Goddess in the Pantheon of Mana, but there is one elsewhere isn't there?

>>3272291
This... is going to require an archive dive. Not sure why A Spider's Web activated. How long have we been sitting here? Is it conflicting with the Foundation? Being boosted by it? Are the rest of our powers going to go through the same issue?

> 'A Spider's Web'. Dryad greeted you there, as it had before
I don't remember that, but it has been a while.

>>3272293
>Well, we ARE attuning with Shade
Read that post again. The corrupted text is very important.

>>3272189
The ship with Ari sailed at the end of Dryad's alter, but that's not a terrible way of looking at it.

>>3272253
The spoiler mostly covers it, honestly. I have an odd position that I like imperfect characters because they are more colorful and varied, but I detest drama and "because the plot demands it".

>>3272291
Oh, that's not good. Time to brush up on the Ice Queen.

>>3272291
We didn't solve the Atelier. Simple as that. But we carry the responsibility of doing the best we can with what we have if order to not repeat the same mistakes that we did with Shadowrue.

We aren't her, and we never were. But as she was create by us, so in a way we we created by her. Not when she came into existence, not even when she died, but right now when we finally accepted the relationship we had and and were changed not because she did while she was with, but not what it meant to us that she was there. Good and bad.

The Spiders Web is just a tool, one that has its risks surely, and in the past we relied on it to solve our problems even though it may not have been the best way. We used it as a crutch, to run away the same as we did with Shadowrue.

But now that we're facing our fears and working on overcoming them, choosing to not use the Spiders Web because we are afraid of the risk is just running in the other direction.

We are Irue Valen, we have a job to do, and people are counting on us. While we may have misused the Spiders Web in the past, and while we may have to accept failure along the way, we will absolutely not accept losing one of our few friends such as Mim and possibly Marchovic, eventually, at all.

And our allies such as Raid we will also balance the risk to ourselves using the web versus losing them. Kara would be heartbroken anyways, and we just had a very painful reminder how the death of the self can kill as much as any blade.

So now the bloody Web better either do as it's told, or prepare to be broken and cast aside if it's merely going to be useless at best and a risk at worst.

We don't have time to be dicking about trying to convince it or coax it into believing we're good enough. And honestly, we just had this revelation so honestly we might not actually be as time goes on and old habits loom.

But right now the possibility of failure is something we have to accept, and we can't let its keep us from exercising our full potential and ability to protecting what we care about.

Including also ourselves, we're the squishiest and really don't want to die.

>>3272318
It's probably Shade, since Shadowrue was a Shade mana creature and solved the Atelier. The curse was probably a reflection of her desire to give in and escape through death.

And we just had a revelation that we've been doing the same thing.

If anything this isn't a theat but a sincere warning that the risk of temptation is in the spiders web. Awfully considerate really, making the curse all scary and stuff instead of letting it continue to be a seduction.

>>3272318
I have literally never been able to read any of the corrupted text, and have responded off of contextual clues.

>>3272347
Goddess Override
S H A D E R E J E C T E D

>>3272327
> The ship with Ari sailed at the end of Dryad's alter, but that's not a terrible way of looking at it

Oh? Giving up on your obligation to help her be the best she can, even though she will probably always view us as above her?

I mean, all we did was walk into a forest full of dopplerue golems that were inscrutable and innumerable to confront mysterious beings not bound by any law but their own within their domain, then proceeding to challenge and solve an Atelier instead of escaping alone or risking her life to save ours, and decided to face down literally everything in the world because we felt that she didn't deserve what was done to her, after a life of being not just a slave but a useless one that was nothing but a burden and had negative value?
.
Well tough titties for her, all we did was show that it was possible, and anyone can do it if they put their will towards it. And sometimes, even if you can't you just gotta go down swinging.

Don't worry about the flaws getting removed. Think of it this way, we now have the chance to make brand new mistakes instead! Excitement!

>>3272359
Well, what ever. It let Shadowrue use it, an actual effing shade, so she can let us use it.

Honestly she's lucky we just had a revelation about acceptance of failure, because otherwise I would be tempted to use the bracelet to force it to allow us to use it.

Not like she ever gave a damn about us before, she never wanted us but now that we're just using another Mana she gets all petty about it, but she not only let Shadowrue use it but manipulate and adjust it?

I want her to know that we're pretty confident we could force the issue. We won't, because we don't want to be that kind of person who just takes with the justification of need

If she really refuses to let us use it, fine then whatever. Guess it just goes to show that letting people die for convenience and pride isn't a trait exclusive to Dryad.

She's lucky that we live in this world, otherwise it would be soooo tempting to just let it fall apart.

But it would be rather nice if maybe, in exchange for not just shunning us our whole life, but also saddling us with the problem of maintaining the half asked bandaid solution they settled on, she might be interested in helping us stay alive so that there's eventually a new generation of Valens to handle Dryad?

Because we are also capable of being petty as duck, and our dying breath will be a scream to let Dryad know we're gone, and the only other option for an heir has joined team "wake dryad back up*.

So. You know. We'll take her shit if we have to but we won't be happy about it.

>>3272395
>>3272332
>>3272291

I would like to merge these, then.

If she's rejecting it now because didn't "solve the Atelier" then she never should have left it on us as a curse. That's a dick move.

If it's because we took on the aspect of Shade, then again a sick move because she didn't do that for anyone else.

If she did it to warn us of the curse, why fucking now of all times when we just faced the flaw it targets by tempting our weakness and urge to run away from failure, then it's a dick move to pull right before a life and death situation.

If she has her own game plan other than that an explanation would be nice we don't need something that we don't know when it will work our not which brings us back to the whole "cursing us was a dick move".

If we have to bear the responsibility of Shadowrues actions, and let's be honest we're going to take them on anyways, then there's no shame or cowardice also using what she accomplished with her deeds in order to uphold those responsibilities.

>>3272364
>>3272395
>>3272438
I don't actually understand much of what's going on here, so I suspect that maybe you've misunderstood something, or I've conveyed it wrong.

You Solved the Ice Queen's Atelier and in return it bestowed you with a couple of abilities as gifts. Blessings, if you would. Representations of the Aeon's final conclusions.

You may read those same blessings as curses, however. The Atelier exists because the Aeon failed, as Dopplerue despaired. By Solving the Atelier it acknowledges that you've empathized with, and perhaps understood, why it struggled and came to the conclusions it did.

You solved the Atelier. You gained its power. You inherited its curse.

Identify the curse inherent in 'A Spider's Web' and explain it. Failure to do so changes nothing, as the web will continue to function as it always has.

>>3272438
Those are both walls of text, and this isn't clear what this is proposing either. Something short and to the point is better for votes, though explanations underneath them are helpful.
I assume 'she' is referring to Shadowrue, and from what I can tell you are ascribing intelligence to her as we wear her disguise. That's not how the Diary works. When using the diary, you pick up elements of the personality of who you're cloning, with an appearent risk of it completely overtaking you when used for extended periods. It doesn't bring about a ghost of sorts that rides shotgun with you.

>>3272474
Ah, so the curse is a new thing, not the previous risks of using it.

In that case it's probably because Undine considers its home to be the most sacred thing, and the Aron Ice Queen lost hers when her brother was banished, "jinn calls to me", and never regained it, nor Built a new but instead made an Atelier of what could never come back and trapped herself in her failure instead of failing forward.

So, I guess, we have make a hone, a web for us to return to and the phrase wasn't referencing the seduction of the web itself but instead what it represents.

Oh God.

God no.

We're going to have to accept Carona as our home? Our place of comfort and safety, that we hold dear and always return to? Where our teleportation returns us to?

You fucking bastard.

>>3272480
Yeah at first I thought the curse was the seductive comfort of using the web.

But no.

That's just because a spiders web is where it's most at home, and we don't really have any other home to pull us back from it.

A Spider Always Returns to its Web doesn't refer to the magic web itself, but to creating what the Ice Princess lost, a home.

The Mansion was always too empty, much like the Princesses home.

And when she returned to hers, she was swallowed by it and trapped by the loss and never actually rebuilt it into a home, merely a shelter.

>>3272291
>>Explain the curse borne within 'A Spider's Web'.
/We/ didn't solve the Atelier, shadowrue did. I always wondered why the powers transferred, but gift horse, mouth, etc. I on't think that's terribly important here, but it might contribute to the... malalignment? we're dealing with.

More importantly, the Queen's brother was her emotional home, and thus in theory her web. So when he was lost, she lost her home, her grounding, her support web. Without him, she eventually became the Ice Queen proper, and made her palace beneath the city they should have met up in. But without him, was it really a home? Or just a place to wait and watch until the end?

There was also the deception involved with Jinn, but that didn't manifest in any of the powers (diary only), so I don't think it's important here.

I still feel like I'm Forgetting something...

>>3272607
>>3272291
Extending a little.
When using the Web itself it absolutely drinks time. We burn hours in the blink of an eye. You could spend you entire life in a subjective month within the Web.
It is seductively addictive. It is powerful and useful in the right circumstance, but using it makes you crave using it more.
You can't use your normal senses while using it. This contributes to the perception of time, and means once you start using it you must further rely on it to understand what's going on around you.
It is most effective while still. It encourages waiting, watching, reacting, indead of doing.

In short, it encourages it's own use when it's only situationally effective, and actual use encourages being passive and defensive over getting out and interacting with the world.

I have to run to work, but here's a quote from the Atelier finish:

"She lived a life of deception, gradually becoming further estranged from everyone around her; Even the brother she had so desperately tried to stay near.

In the end, she could no longer understand the people around her. Locked away so far beneath her surface, that princess became a Queen of Ice - An enigma that could no longer communicate her true feelings with the world"

I think the answer might be here. Or might be not.

>>3272666
Actually reading the archives now.
Undine and Jinn are both fluid and adaptable - ish, but the Atelier and the web are all about being static.
There are several references about the original palace being her home. This clearly wasn't the actual case. A sense of loneliness or emptiness or falseness, instead of comfort or warmth? I hope we get a chance to visit the real palace someday.
The web does encourage being solitary, despite ostensibly bering about making a home. What is a home if you can't interact with anyone? Furthermore, while you can see people within the web, they appear as simple, almost rudimentary things, and can't be interacted with besides the stabby blades. Not really conductive to meaningful relationships. I suspect this is a significant part of the answer, though maybe not the entire solution.

>Its decorations are ornate, intricately carved, and depict a woman clad in flowing cloth, surrounded by eight orbs.
I knew I'd heard of a Goddess somewhere. This implies it's a part of the Shrine's history though...
Did we ever discover why the brother was banished?
>you realized that to the princess, it meant that to lie became normal. To live a life disconnected from her own, and don a mask that did not resemble herself at all.
This sticks out as well.

>You suppose that the moment her brother had been banished, that palace had ceased to be a true 'home' to her.
>That for the princess, home was where her brother was.
>If her brother had stayed in Carona, and her home had been with her brother, then of course she would return. She would always return to pilgrimaging; Always return to Carona.
>She would return because this was her home.
>Because...
>"A spider always returns to its web."
>She learned that 'Home' was not a house, but where your heart was. She lived a life of deception, gradually becoming further estranged from everyone around her; Even the brother she had so desperately tried to stay near.
>In the end, she could no longer understand the people around her.
This is the crux, I think.

On the flip side, maybe the curse is more that the usefulness of A Spider's Web is sharply limited without a long term base or home? Most of it's functions benefit from laying down web heavily in one location and returning frequently, which we've never really been able to make use of.

>>3272291
>?
I think
>>3272963
>>3272996
Have the right of it. A spider always returns to its web, but what is an empty web? A house is not a home. A Spider's Web wants you to stay put, to put down roots and see all in your domain, but you can't interact with people like that. Secure, but alone.

Is this going to be up all night? I'm not in a rush, just want to know if I should be checking on the thread constantly.

>>3272291
The addiction, dulling of the senses, loss of humanity can't really be described as anything else.

The ice Queen lost her home, her connection to other people and turned into an aeon. If your goal is not to shed your humanity it is not much of a boon.

A spider sits in its net leading a passive existence. We don't even know what happens in the real world while we spin it. It encourages passivity when we require activity. We don't even have an anchor point for our web neither physical or psychological

>>3272607
We were able to talk to ShadowRue.

And if solving the Atelier is coming to a realization and sharing a perspective, well, nobody said it had to be done in the Atelier

>>3272291
The themes of the Atelier's gifts seem to be anchoring and isolation.

We got two single-place teleports for anchoring. We got the diary for isolation (since its use is deception, which necessarily isolates the user). And Spider's Web exemplifies both themes.
It anchors us to a place to be used, and even requires us to return there after we leave if we want to continue using it. And it isolates us from the world, only allowing perceiving and interacting with it through itself.
It also anchors us to itself metaphorically, since we always fall back on the Web whenever we have to do something we don't know how to do.

So, in my opinion, this is the curse of the Web - it supplants the world, trapping the user within their own creation.

>>3273106
Then again, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I wonder if we could use that to meditate on . . . Ourselves!


See what's going on with us lately.

We just need a spotter to pull us out. Like a drug trip.

>>3273018
>Is this going to be up all night?
It will, yes. I wanted to give you guys plenty of time to try your hand at this.

>>3273136
Is the curse that it doesn't actually do anything we couldn't do for ourselves?

And now we don't actually need it?

I believe that it is very relevant that using the web very much dulls other senses, and that to utilize its more powerful forms risks getting "lost" "within."

A spider does not get lost in its web.

The downsides of the web have been pointed out multiple times, but I don't think it's being approached with the sort of right language.

I'm seeing a lot of "home" and "anchor" rather than "hiding place."

>>3273018
> A spider always returns to its web, but what is an empty web?

A trap.

>>3273372
Rather, I did see sort of adjacency to hiding place; shelter, refuge. I believe that nature, though, is an illusion. Previous statement about a spider not getting trapped in its own web.

>>3272291
>Your fingers shone white
That's not good. I hope that's just our perception from within the web, and not happening in reality. Otherwise the whole point in "being" shadowrue is ruined, and this was all for nothing.

>>3273372
>A spider does not get lost in its web.
Getting lost while using the web isn't the same as being lost within the web. the danger comes from losing yourself in it's use, becoming a part of the web itself. For a normal spider the risk would be akin to wanting to permanently stay plugged into their web itself, sensing everything within, vs being unable to navigate it's own web.

>>3273377
This does make sense though. The Princess hid down in the Atelier away from everyone else. I'd bet buried underneath the Ice Palace is the ruins of her original hiding place.

>>3273117
This guy, i think he's got a point about needing someone to pull you back, and it ties into
>>3272607
The queen and her brother, with maybe one being the spider, the other the web. The curse mentioned with using A Spider's Web might be that it can't be used alone or else we end up getting lost in it for hours and find it damn hard to pull out. Like the queen, we probably need someone with at least a mildly significant bond to Irue to keep us anchored, maybe act as the spider to our web. Keep the web solid and expand only with purpose, as opposed to us just... staying in there forever until we eventually jolt out.

>>3272291

The curse is simple as is the mistake. The key word is returns.

The Ice Queen was trapped in its own Atelier: A spider wrapped in its own threads for comfort and peace.

A spider's web is its home, but it does not live in it. It strides above it, feeling into it to catch the vibrations of prey and foes that stumble and tangle in it. It is kept clean and fresh, as well as rebuilt when it is destroyed.

The curse of "A Spider's Web" is the temptation to accept it as a refuge: A place of absolute observation and control that you can comfortably stagnate in.

But a web is not a spider's home. It strides from it without fear of what lies beyond, and has no difficulty weaving multiple, or discarding the old for new. Some even carry their webs with them.

The danger of trespassing in a Spider's territory is not because the spider is there, but because the spider will be back.

Because a Spider always returns to its web.

Now that I'm done with my purple poetry, Irue needs to stop unraveling herself into her web: She needs to learn to just keep a finger on the signal line

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>>3272287

Do I even have to say it?

Window closes in an hour! Last second attempts and such.

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>>3275115
>we haven't gotten it

>>3275015
It might be related to us getting kicked out of reality when we tried to use it.

Didn't it fuck with Dryads Atelier too?

Guys. Why are we assuming we're fthe spider?

>>3275164
>Guys. Why are we assuming we're fthe spider?
Because we spin the web. What else would we be? The web itself?

>>3275173
We didn't make the web, we just use it.

Given how it seems to mess with existence, I'm worried that it might eventuality summon something.

>>3275115
I'm also worried about the whole deal about the Ice Princess hiding her affinity to pretend that Jin called her and if it relates to us changing ours.

>>3275173
Why not be the web instead of the spider? The web spreads itself out over an area and we know everything happens in that domain, everywhere the web touches. You could argue that would make us the spider on top of the web, following the vibrations and watching events unfold. Orrr you could think on us being the web itself, we experience those events as vividly as we do because we might be spreading our consciousness through the web, becoming a part of it instead of the one controlling it. In the metaphor of spider and web, we might be missing a spider to help us control what we look for and how long we end up doing it.

>>3275230
Or we're the prey willingly entangling ourselves in the trap.

>>3275215
Anon I promise I wouldn't give you an ability that tempts you into covering every space you've ever been to in massive webs so that the Guardian ice drider of the Ice Queen's Atelier could appear anywhere it wanted in the future.

At least not without letting you know ahead of time somehow.

Alright, window closed. Let me parse all of these. Second post coming to tell you when I've finished.