>>3816194
Well, you hate to say that, but it was kind of easy. Way easier than what you’d expect from something that is a five stories tall giant covered in flames. To be fair, you haven’t really done much in this fight. You did some damage but Nike’s attack was just overwhelming. It seems like she is a goddess of war for a good reason.

Looking back at the fight, your involvement was mostly a distraction. When Nike’ pulled you out with her teleportation, the monster lashed out towards the sky seemingly expecting an aerial attack. While not necessary for Nike’s follow up, this probably saved a lot of monster hunter lives since enemy’s attention was shifted away from them. Her main weapon was a curious application of teleportation. She transported large boulders to a high altitude and allowed them to fall. Once they reached terminal velocity, she teleported them into the same location but at a different angle so the accumulated kinetic energy was now pointing towards the enemy instead of towards the ground. While you could lift up a boulder of similar size, it would be difficult to throw it at such velocities, much less applying this to dozens of these massive projectiles.

You can also infer some information about her ability from this fight. Nike’ chose to only rotate projectile’s frame of reference instead of transporting them into point blank range of the monster. At the same time, she easily transported you towards the creature and back. Thus, you suspect that her teleportation has similar rules to your telekinesis: it takes more energy to teleport further and heavier or bigger objects are also more difficult to affect with her power. She could afford to teleport smaller target for longer distance while having to teleport bigger targets at closer range for optimal energy use. While you can’t judge the size of her psi energy reserves from this, you might get a lower estimate.

>>3816195
In any case, time to get back to the real world. The monster is defeated and it is time to take a look at the aftermath. Six brave hunters lost their lives this day and you can see that eight more people are in various states of heavily wounded. The siege weapons seem largely intact, even if several of them were flipped on their sides. The majority of hunters appear to believe that Nike’ herself assisted them in this fight, which is, to be fair, quite true. Your personal feat was probably unnoticed due to the range and how quickly it happened. However, it is likely that some hunters remember you as the companion of Nike’ while she was disguised in a human form. Well, that and also your incredible durability and bravery since you approached such dangerous creature and lived to tell the tale.

The monster hunter team that you were interested in is mostly intact. Just some scratches and minor wounds from the flying debris. While they didn’t do much, that girl’s gauntlet turned out to be some kind of psi-based shield projector. It looks and feels different from Matilda’s shield and it appears to be significantly weaker. However, it was sufficient to block a blow that reduced several hunters into a thin red mist and judging by slowly amplifying glow in gauntlet’s gems it is recharging itself. Well, this explains why she gets away with wearing somewhat impractical armor.

You remember that Nike’ mentioned that some piece of this monster might be of value to you so it might be smart to take a look at it. The carcass is still too hot for normal humans to approach and most hunters are busy patching up the wounded and coming to terms with what has just happened.

>Help with the wounded. You have some conventional medical supplies on you.
>Interact with the gauntlet girl and her team. Now you’re curious
>Approach the monster remains
>Other?

>>3816196
>>Help with the wounded. You have some conventional medical supplies on you.

ask the gauntlet girl team to help and assist when necessary, so we don't loose them
if only light wounds are left we can chat with her

also welcome back hive-chan, hope your sickness is gone now

>>3816196
>>Interact with the gauntlet girl and her team. Now you’re curious

where did she found those gems andwhatever info we can get on them

imagine mass producing personal shields for infantry!

>>3816206
>>3816202
Can we combine both?
Help the wounded while we call her over for a chat?
Introduce ourselves as a hunter from Farsalos ask her who she is and where she is from and about the gountlet

Since she helped us in battle and saw Nike she will probably ask about her so just tell we met her today and were spending the day together when we decided to help, we had no idea who she really was

And thank her for the assist

>>3816213
Sure, it is not a time limited choice

>>3816202
+1

>>3816202
>>3816206
>>3816213
>>3816217
Writing

>>3816222
Still writing. There was a distraction from the IRL side, sorry

>>3816222
You decide to help with the wounded first. While you probably would never need them yourself, you do have some medical supplies in your backpack just in case something like this happens. Mostly things like bandages and ethanol, but this should be enough to stabilize these people. Apparently, Hall of Huntsmen usually makes agreements with Mortati’s priests who would heal wounded hunters outside of the usual queues. In some cases, they could even regrow limbs, but if the wounds are too great it might be the end of the hunter’s career.

Luckily, unlike the time when you were trying to heal the dwarves after that dinosaur creature attack, in this case there are some actually trained medics around so you don’t have to stretch yourself in attempts to treat everyone. In fact, you managed to bandage up only two people. One of them was missing their hand below the wrist and another one had several broken bones. After the fact, you assisted gauntlet girl’s group with moving some of the wounded hunters onto the carts and you end up chatting her up, to the mild discomfort of her team's leader.

Her name is Eile and she is very impressed with your bravery. Specifically how you volunteered for this mission inspiring the rest of the hunters in the Hall and then how you’ve proven your strength of character on the field. Her leader, that older guy named Vlasis, thought that you were inexperienced and expected that this would be your last assignment since many newbie hunters don’t know how to judge the danger and jump on whatever to make a name for themselves. But he admits that he misjudged you. You just have no scars, too shiny suit of armor and few trophies to appear as an experienced huntress, in his opinion.

She also noticed your “ancestral gift”, which is another name for the bloodline remnant abilities, and she thinks that you are most likely way tougher than you look. She claims that she wants to spar with you on some later date since she has some ancestral gifts as well.

>>3816466
Regarding Nike’, this is something that she does on numerous occasions in her myths. The hunters believe that this is how she scouts for new Muses. The fact that she was hanging out with you makes them think that you have the “Favor of Nike’”, which means you are extremely promising and destined for some great deeds. However, since you haven’t actually done anything amazing yet the hunters would only acknowledge it for now. Basically, you have some great expectations to fulfill.

You end up introducing yourself and claiming that you’ve come from Farsalos. A place that they’ve never heard of before. There are many villages on the northern border and they can appear and vanish within a decade or less, so few people even know that they exist. However, being a monster hunter in those areas is considered either a sign of bravery and benevolence... or of relative poverty amongst hunters. It is not like the villagers there can afford much in terms of rewards.

Regarding the gauntlet, she has discovered it in some ruin deep in the Labyrinth back at the start of her career somewhere near the polis of Poria. She joined up with a large squad of shady adventurers that wanted to find some kind of treasure that was rumored to lie in those ruins. This area was below the forbidden exclusion territory around one of Ceno Pantheon’s holy sites, but one of the adventurers found a path through the very upper edge of the Labyrinth that lead in the correct direction. The ruin was nothing that she has seen before and they reminded her more of elven architecture remnants. There the group ran into monsters and most of it was slaughtered while her with another survivors hid in some collapsed building. There was a huge metal door that sealed a room with numerous mannequins fitted with rusted armor and empty weapon stands. One of the armor stands on the very edge of the room was naked barring this gauntlet.

She couldn’t pull it off separately and only ripped out the arm with the gauntlet after which it crumbled on the inside. She cleaned it and put it on and now she can’t take it off her arm, but it gives her this invisible barrier so she is not complaining. There wasn’t anything else of value that she could find at the time and after she got out of this mess she decided to stop adventuring and switched to monster hunting instead. That gauntlet saved her and her teammates on numerous occasions since then, however this is the first time when she encountered something capable of depleting it in one blow.

>Agree to spar with her after the assignment ends
>Tell her that she can spar with you if she pays a visit to your village
>Offer her to join you in attempts to loot the creature, which might be somewhat dangerous.
>Leave her for now and approach the creature. Let’s see if the giant dropped anything good…
>Other ideas?
quick reminder: you can ask her stuff outside of the usual voting in this case

>>3816484
>Tell her that she can spar with you if she pays a visit to your village
>Offer her to join you in attempts to loot the creature, which might be somewhat dangerous.

Ask her about her ancestral gift, what does it do?

Tell her we did some exploring in the Labyrith too, what could she advise about it to us? There is an entrance fairly close to our village and we plan on mapping the surface area to help with trade with the dwarves, show her the ring so she knows we are not full of shit.

Joke about never taking the goutlet off, that must be hell for her nails

What's her name again?

Lets see if we can find some useful part of the beast to salvage

>>3816496
supporting

ask her the exact location or the entrance if she remembers of that ruin, we have an elven friend and we are interested in their ancient history too so we could uncover something from there

>>3816484
>>3816496
i support that
also talk a little with their leader and if he is interested in one of the tasks on the quest board, if they plan to go on a mission now/soon we might tag along
(he is the leader of the group, so i bet he does their planning)

>>3816496
Her gift is increased strength and agility. It is weaker than purely strength gifts in raw power, but she still employs it for great effects in things like dodging or outmaneuvering her opponents. This is also why she doesn't actually use a polearm or some other large battlefield grade weapon, instead preferring an arming sword and gauntlet combo. The belly area is also open because she can bend much further compared to normal humans and armor there doesn't help with that.

She recommends you not to venture there just on principle. All labyrinth exploration is done by groups of 50 or more people in heavy armors and with siege equipment and even then heavy casualties are expected. When she went into the Labyrinth that time, she was dumb and inexperienced, her group consisted mostly of a bunch of nearly criminal thugs and the heaviest gear they had was light armor on several of them. She still can't believe that she managed to get away with this. She won't be going there again unless there is literally some god on her side.

Her gauntlet is only on the arm, it doesn't cover her hand and fingers so she separately wears leather gloves for protection. I don't think the nail joke would pass since only higher noble ladies and Valentina's cultists have a fashion on nail polish. It is imported from Ethea and most people have never even seen it.

Her name is Elie, it seems to be a short version of Eleyina, Cenophilan equivalent of the name Helen.

>>3816484
>Tell her that she can spar with you if she pays a visit to your village
>Offer her to join you in attempts to loot the creature, which might be somewhat dangerous.

Can we figure out what those stones are made of? Any different kind of psy energy? Is similar to our form of TK when creating that barrier?
Trying to figure out if we can replicate it ourselves.

Compliment her...fighting style and see if her shield can help us both grab some good parts, she uses shield and we use low level TK disguised as our gift.

>>3816517
He says that it is a no, he thinks that they were stretching their luck with this assignment as is and the reward should be substantial for a long rest and even some gear replacements first. They usually take missions specialized on lone creatures no larger than twice human height. These are less likely to kill people while ignoring armor and Elie's shield is usually enough to protect them against any projectiles or elemental effects that the enemy might have while the rest can focus on killing it as quickly as possible.

>>3816536
ah well, then after looting we might buy something from the market and get back to farsalos i would say

>>3816523
Ok, no nail joke.

Tell her we know its dangerous, we've been there, if she ever shows up at Farsalos for that spar we will show her what we took down , it'd gonna surprize her *smirk*

But yeah, agreed that she was lucky and we should never let our guard down when out there, a real strong friend of ours almost lost her head to a fucking head crab so we can't underestimate the place.

So, if Nike wasn't here we'd probably be toast, has she ever fought anything similar with this? Does she know what the important bits would be?
If she doesn't let's try to figure out what to salvage.

>>3816525
You are not sure what stones are made out of and she probably won't let you heat them up for spectrographic analysis. The shield is not based on telekinesis, as far as you can tell. It is more comparable to what Matilda (Nike's muse that fought against the Mad Goddess) had but it has a different color and effects. This shield seems to be completely offline when not in use and it projects a dim blue glow when active which highlights its shape. It is in a form of slightly bent circular plate that can extend up to three meters in every direction from the gauntlet but she can resize it to more convenient dimensions. In addition, you noticed a faint glow around her when the shield was active so you suspect that it also covers her body completely when in use. It also seems physical as she bumped it against the ground while trying to protect you leaving a mark so it is not a "standard sci- fi forcefield".

>>3816542
She has never encountered such creature before, but some myths of the time before Cenophilan state mention them. The time is described similarly to the Titan Age of Greek mythology and the creatures of this size and bigger were much more common then, but they were almost completely eradicated by the gods.

>>3816496
>>3816499
>>3816517
>>3816525
>>3816540
>>3816542
Alright, vote locked. Writing

>>3816554
You decide that you might as well take a look at what you can salvage from the monster’s body and that shield might be useful, so you share this with Elie. She agrees, but she would still prefer not to be the one touching it first and her teammates decide that they would like to sit this one out and recommend you two to do the same. However, you want to see the remains for yourself and thus you would go first and Elie would approach once she knows it is safe.

Before you can approach the remains, you decide that it might actually be a good idea to drop most of your gear. The heat inside of the egg was close enough to the melting point of steel and you don’t want to take any chances with your aluminum bronze gear. In addition, you’ve gotten yourself burned by polyethylene before and you bet that molten metal would feel even more painful. So, you discard everything except the dwarven artifact sword that is resistant to such heat, some glazed pots for samples and your under armor because it can be easily replaced and it is better than being naked.

The remains of the creature are slowly getting cooler but it is still piping hot and Elie can’t stand the heat without her shield from ten meters away. From here you can tell that the creature consists out of three layers: a skeleton, some kind of thick black combustible liquid similar to tar and a thick layer of porous skin that is closer in consistency to jelly. The creature is losing cohesion and slowly spreads over the area and the quantity of burning mass demolishes and buries nearby building ruins. As the mass spreads enough, you notice a large bulge 4 meters tall in the center of it that is still as hot as the creature was at the start. There are no other noticeable organs and you assume it is maybe some kind of heating element. It is very far away in the tar though and the nearby area is even hotter.

Unfortunately, to get to it you need to make your way through waist high burning oil spill which doesn’t sound comfortable. The closest piece of bone is hanging above a small island caused by the ruins which is just close enough to chip at with your sword…

>Only sample skin and ooze, you don’t feel like swimming in tar today
>Take some samples and leave but return later when no one is around hoping that no one grabs the remains in the meantime
>Attempt to sample some bone material with your sword. This promises to look like the most horrifying circus trick though
>Try to build a bridge with some rubble to get to the bones, the core is just too far
>Fuck it, just swim to the bone through the boiling hot tar
>Sigh, telekinesis and float across to get everything
>Try to swim all the way to the organ
>Other ideas?

>>3816750
>>Try to build a bridge with some rubble to get to the bones, the core is just too far


we can get the core later

>>3816750

>Take some samples and leave but return later when no one is around hoping that no one grabs the remains in the meantime

>>3816765
>>3816750
supporting

>>3816765
+1

>>3816765
Oh yeah, I forgot, can you guys roll a 1d20 for the bridge attempt?

Rolled 10 (1d20)

>>3816790
O dear, time to swim

Rolled 19 (1d20)

>>3816790

Rolled 4 (1d20)

>>3816790
Look at my 1

>>3816765
>>3816772
>>3816773
>>3816783
>>3816796
>>3816797
>>3816809
Alright, writing

File: Oil spill.jpg (96 KB, 356x267)

96 KB JPG

>>3816830
You decide that the best idea would be to build up a platform from some debris from where you could safely cut off a piece of the bone. So, the two of you gather some debris and pile it on top of that small island from where you collapse it into the tar. This causes a temporary surface of sorts, but it presses the tar to the sides and it ends up below the tar’s surface so the material starts slowly creeping from the sides and from the openings in the debris. This is enough time for you to jump on the platform and break off a small bone and you manage to get out in the nick of time just slightly catching the sole of one of your boots on fire. However, it is not like you won’t replace it the moment you get the opportunity. The core would have to wait, you plan to return to this place on the way home to retrieve it without witnesses.

After retrieving the bone, you almost instantly recognize what it is. This is pure silica or silicon dioxide. Same material that sand and quartz are made out of. It is not psi charged or anything, just normal chunk of amorphous silica. This material is used in numerous applications throughout humanity’s history for things from toothpastes to ceramics. However, it is also very common. That river near to Farsalos has sandy banks and there is some sand near to the village itself, even if it is of a poor quality. In any case, it is more of a trophy than something intrinsically valuable.

The skin material and the tar appear to be different hydrocarbon and sulfur solutions judging by the smell of them burning. The creature was basically a walking blob of very dense highly sulfuric oil. You can’t really collect any of it and it won’t do good for refining anyway. Sulfur would cause issues with refining and the process to remove it is complicated. You’d literally get better raw material from making coal tar out of that deposit to the east of Farsalos. However, you still keep some of the stuff for further analysis when you get home.

File: Euro coin.jpg (17 KB, 300x225)

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>>3817078
The rest of the hunters end up packing and leaving the site since it is quite clear that the monster is thoroughly dead. You, of course, join them and chat with Elie and her team on the way to the polis. You end up agreeing to spar with Elie, but only if she comes to Farsalos, to which she agrees. However, she would only go there eventually when she is done with whatever work she still has planned in Platania. The group itself seems to be a bit less adventurous than her. Most of them are in the monster killing business for the great wages and are just simply good enough to be in the Hall. They don’t like picking fights against things that would likely kill them, even if they assume it is the normal risks that come with this job. Some want to be rich, some want or wanted money and are now so good that this is the highest paying option for them. This is also why they are in the large city. Even if Hall requests are more difficult, it is usually worth it. In comparison, being a border monster hunter is less pay with more risk. You go to work there only if you are an idealist with no need for money or if you are poor but you don’t want to become an adventurer or outright an outlaw. You are obviously the former type, they think. Choosing to protect a village like that for little compensation beyond their gratitude.

In any case, you arrive to the Hall and stand in the queue for rewards. The dead get registered so their next of kin can get the compensations, the wounded get hauled towards Pantheon District and you get a hefty bag full of Cenophilan electrum coins. Those are called Sdomkolks by the way, which means “Standards”. Unlike the money used historically during the iron age, these coins seem to be made with modern precision and considerations. They have ribbed outer line and there is a tiny serial number on the side. Each coin has the skyline of the polis that makes them on one side and Ceno emblem on the other with a number overlaid on it that signifies its value. Smaller coins appear to be made out of copper electroplated with a thin layer of electrum while highest value coin does the same as euro with the edge and the center made out of different materials. In this case the center is made out of high purity gold while the edge is an electrum ring. Overall, you almost doubled the amount of cash that you had on you.

So, with the mission set and everyone going their separate ways, you need to decide where to go next…

>Grand Market: They have to have some interesting things, right?
>Hero University: The place where monster hunters, mages and other gifted people train.
>Temple of a specific deity: well, you've seen Nike', so let's take a look at others
>Docks: Platania sits on a large river that connects it both to the largest lake in the Cenophilan territory and the eastern coast. They also have some nice seafood joints in the area
>Other? The city is a big place. Maybe you’d like to see something else?

>>3817095
>>Grand Market: They have to have some interesting things, right?

time to spend our (not) hard earned money before going back home

>>3817095
>Temple

The head lady's temple

>>3817095

>Grand Market: They have to have some interesting things, right?

>>3817095
>Grand Market: They have to have some interesting things, right?

>>3817102
>>3817113
>>3817095
both of these, in order of what is closer

>>3817157
Would you guys prefer market to be last so we don't end up carrying the stuff around or do we just take a detour to the temple on the way out?

>>3817173
Aka temple or market first
>temple
>market

>>3817202
Sure ok, market for last, if it takes long you can leave the shoping list here so we discuss on the weekend

>>3817207
Yeah, good idea, I'll probably do that. This is just a large city so there would be a lot of stuff to buy and like 8 points of funds so yeah.

>>3817102
>>3817113
>>3817139
>>3817140
In any case, writing the temple then and I'll leave shopping for the end

File: Athena Promachos.jpg (141 KB, 800x463)

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>>3817226
You think that it might be a good idea to take a look at Elspeth’s temple. During the meeting she didn’t strike you as a bad person. If you ignore her clothing choice and terrible naming schemes, she seemed like a pretty qualified for what she does. However, you would still like to take a look at her temples so you can get a bigger picture about her personality. With this in mind, you head back to the Pantheon District.

As you’ve probably expected, Elspeth’s temple is the biggest one around and it is placed in the most central location by the giant obelisk. The entrance to the temple is decorated with blue banners that depict Elspeth’s symbol: the great horned owl. There is also a large plaza in front of the main temple that has surprisingly many people for it to just be a religious center. The plaza has an arrangement of large statues with small altars in their bases. Central statue is the statue of Elspeth which is almost 12 meters tall where she is depicted with her shield and a spear pointing forward towards the north. This seems to somewhat mimic Athena Promachos, colossal bronze statue of Athena which was 11,5 meters tall that stood between the Pantheon and its monumental gateway. The statue itself is made out of marble and it is painted in various colors to make it look more lifelike, which was a common practice in ancient Greece. The white statues that are usually associated with antiquity are due to the paint being washed out with time.

To the sides of Elspeth’s statue are the statues of Yawgmoth and Verdandi and everyone else is placed around on the sides of the plaza so that all statues are facing towards the center of it. To note, there is no statue of Ignis, instead there is a small shrine with a large burning flame in its center somewhere at the back, which is to be expected. He is not well liked by the people. You think that Vera, Yaw and Elspeth form the core of the pantheon and in the mythos, they are its founders. While Nike’ mentioned that she woke up around the same time as Elspeth, it seems that she didn’t join up at the moment when the pantheon was officially established. She did say that it didn’t sit well with her at the time.

The plaza seems to be used as a general place of gatherings for the citizens of the polis. There are a few small kiosks that sell small sculptures, snacks and so on. In the very middle of the plaza there is a large fountain with crystal clear drinkable water. There are a few buildings to the sides of this area and they appear to be apartments of local priests and service buildings like kitchens, but the surrounding area is a tidy park with small walkways and nice smelling flower arrangements.

>>3817529
The temple building itself, like the outside area, is not only a place of worship, but also a political center of the polis. The core of the facility is a large circular tribune that surrounds the stage area where citizens can present their cases for everyone else to vote. It is somewhat similar to your idea for the lecture hall, however it is much larger and deeper. The ceiling is open to the sky but you do notice a mechanism that would extend a canvas cover over the entire thing in case of the rain.

To the right side of the tribune is Elspeth’s library. It is a large four stories tall building dedicated to study and storage of a variety of different books. Unlike most of the books that you’ve seen in Ceno before, these were printed on white paper of comparable quality to your time instead of hand written on scrolls or grey flat pieces of cellulose that your own paper production makes. It is manned by specific type of Elspeth’s priests whom you decided to call “librarians”.

To the left of the tribunes is a building dedicated specifically for lectures, meetings and studies. It is common for politically active platanian citizens to book one of the rooms there to arrange some of more private discussions or even sometimes to celebrate. The facility also houses regular courses for the people that wish to learn basics of mathematics and writing. One of the motivations appears to be decent food that is free for the participants.

At the very back is a much more secluded area of the temple. It houses Elspeth’s oracle as well as numerous rooms access to which is allowed only to the priests. You were not allowed there. Judging by outside and inside dimensions, you suspect that there is a central circular domed room that houses the oracle with numerous other rooms surrounding their shrine. You suspect that it might be the quarters of the oracle since they rarely leave their shrine in general, but it might also house things like cup bearer facilities.
______________________________________________________________

This is it for this week’s SGQ thread. Since the other choice was about shopping, I will post the list of the goods tomorrow or on Monday so pay attention to it. The vote for what to buy would technically last until the start of the next thread using the same rules as usual.

I hope you’ve enjoyed and I’ll see you whenever I wake up and get the free time to respond. Feel free to ask questions, give suggestions and discuss.

>>3817533
Thanks for running

Some interesting ideas on the temple that could be used at our little town too

>>3817533
Alright, guys. It is time to do some shopping. For the sakes of time I will skip the IC fluff and jump straight into the lists and descriptions.
You have 8 points of funds

Bulk goods (Polises are centers of trade. You can find many common goods at relatively low prices here):

>Bulk fabrics (1 fund): three large rolls of decent quality linen and hemp fabric as well as sailcloth, one of each. You produce linen, but the next harvest is in two-three months. Useful if you plan to use it for construction, probably overkill for anything else since you have some in store.

>Leather (1 fund): a bag full of decent leather. Unfortunately, leather armor requires specific parts of the animal which are sold separately at a higher price, but it would still be useful for things like boots, belts, buckles, bellows and so on.

>Common spices (3 funds): Many large waist tall bags of varied herbs and spices that are grown on Ceno territory and used mostly for cooking. They include Garlic, Blue Fenugreek, Caraway, Celery, Anise, Horseradish, Gale, Juniper, Mugwort and Southernwood. They should last for a while for the whole village. You can decide to take less for (2 funds) if you want to use them personally which should last you for years and years.

>Salt (1 fund): technically a luxury good, it is widely used in Ceno mainly in pickling and food preservation. In your case, it is the only source of chlorine that is used in your gunpowder production. You can afford two waist tall bags for this price.

>Beeswax (2 funds): a waist high barrel full of wax produced through beekeeping and used mostly for candles, letter seals and some medical procedures. Candles made out of animal fat are much more common, even if they are sticky, smell bad and produce a lot of soot. Only relatively rich people and temple staff can afford beeswax candles on regular basis.

>Farm animals (varied): polises are surrounded by numerous farmsteads so it is a good place for bulk purchase of farm animals. Goats, donkeys and sheep cost (2 points) for a breeding pair, work horses and cows cost (3 points) for a pair.

>>3822846
Luxury goods (Polises house some of the richest Cenophilans, so they attract merchants who wish to sell something exotic to them):

>Exotic spices (2 funds): Many small bags of varied imported spices such as Black Pepper, Mustard, Cumin, Ginger, Nutmeg, Cinnamon, Cloves, Coriander, Anise, Caraway, and the most expensive of them- Saffron. Highly sought after by Cenophilans to the point that black pepper is a part of Ceno ethnic cuisine. A lot of relatively wealthy people can only afford to use them during major celebrations

>Brown sugar (3 funds): Several large bags of rare commodity made through processing sugarcane. Somehow imported from Ethea, even though their climate doesn’t support commercial sugarcane production.

>Tea (2 funds): waist tall bag of dried tea leaves. Rarely imported from a faraway and poorly known land to the north- east. The smell reminds you of Oolong tea which was used in China for thousands of years. In comparison, Ethean tea is closer to black tea, even if the taste is a bit different.

>Honey (1 fund): a small barrel filled with honey. While produced locally, it is still relatively expensive for an average person to purchase.

>Expensive fabrics (2 funds): rolls of softest wool in the entire Cenophila or maybe some exotic silk?

>Jewelry and other frivolous items (varied): a wide variety of trinkets made out of precious and semi-precious materials that come in a wide variety of costs. Pick one or several and name the price.

>>3822851
Artifacts and other curiosities:

>Teryian Leaf (3 points): a glaive- like weapon decorated with colorful fabric and intricate engravings. It was created through a tedious forging process mastered only by the Teryian elves. The blades are rumored to almost never dull and capable of cutting through iron armor like butter. While not true, the steel blade is of a very respectable quality for this level of technology. More durable than your halberd

>Mortati’s Caduceus (4 points): a type of short staff carried by the graduates of Mortati’s Healer degree as a focus for their healing abilities. It seems to be made out of gold electroplated steel and crowned by a smooth opaque white sphere. Only qualified healers can use these things effectively, for everyone else it is just a fancy short staff. Merchant claims that it was sold to them by a family member of recently deceased monster hunter.

>Holy Text (2 points): Holy Nation’s book with high religious significance. It is supposed to explain how to correctly build a society and live a mortal life. Many Holy Nation citizens own a copy. The text and paper quality suggest that it is printed. This particular book was salvaged after some battle between Ceno and Holies and it is written in Holy Nation’s language that you don’t speak.

>Perpetual Lamp (1 point): An item imported from the dwarven holds, a finely crafted lantern with powerful white luminous quarts embedded in its center. The device has four doors that can be opened and closed by a simple twist of a small knob on the base of the lamp to block the light when it is not needed. You can also open only one door to use it in a directional manner which is implemented with the use of some complicated clockwork.

>Monster Hunter ballista (3 points): A mobile torsion catapult designed specifically for the use in hunting monsters. Operated by three people, it usually fires large iron harpoons, but it can also be loaded by a variety of different munitions. The most common are jars of flammable substances, large rocks and bundles of javelins. It is housed on its own cart and it includes an iron sheet which should protect its engine operators from retaliation. It is significantly heavier than versions used on the battlefield.

>War horse (4 points): a strong and resilient stallion of fine breed that is trained not to freak out due to loud noises and the general carnage of battle

>>3822846
i would suggest some utility stuff for the villagers

leather, for the village to repair belts and other working outfits, the smiths might use it for new aprons
beeswax, i remember the villagers complaining about the quality and number of candles available, especiallyin the safte rooms, might do with updating those and putting some in the offices of the village chief and handing out the rest to use sparingly according
i am open to to using the rest how ever you want, this would use 3 funds

>>3822846
>>Salt (1 fund): technically a luxury good, it is widely used in Ceno mainly in pickling and food preservation. In your case, it is the only source of chlorine that is used in your gunpowder production. You can afford two waist tall bags for this price.
useful for our birthday party and to make some gunpownder, we used a lot of explosives already

>Perpetual Lamp (1 point): An item imported from the dwarven holds, a finely crafted lantern with powerful white luminous quarts embedded in its center. The device has four doors that can be opened and closed by a simple twist of a small knob on the base of the lamp to block the light when it is not needed. You can also open only one door to use it in a directional manner which is implemented with the use of some complicated clockwork.
while not very useful to us it can be a real help for our hunter friends when we start clearing out the surface labyrinth near the dwarven/drow refugee town


>Common spices (3 funds): Many large waist tall bags of varied herbs and spices that are grown on Ceno territory and used mostly for cooking. They include Garlic, Blue Fenugreek, Caraway, Celery, Anise, Horseradish, Gale, Juniper, Mugwort and Southernwood.
this should raise the quality of life a lot around there

>>3822846
>>3822891
I would say add in a horse/cow pair, but we'd have some trouble transporting them without them freaking out. So I'll say add >>3822865 onto it.

>>3823428
yeah i had a thought about some animals, but the transport would either take forever or they would be to freaked to be sane/healthy when we get back home

>>3822865
I would like to remind everyone that you were planning to eventually touch stearin production. Essentially you’d build a workshop that turns animal fat, sulfuric acid and calcium hydroxide into stearin which is a candle-making material that doesn’t stain everything with grease and has almost a pleasant smell. It is also used in soap manufacturing as aromatic compound, BUT it is NOT wax. Beeswax here is a chemical industry component and luxury item material.

>>3827608
based on that I'll make my shopping list as follows

>>Salt (1 fund): technically a luxury good, it is widely used in Ceno mainly in pickling and food preservation. In your case, it is the only source of chlorine that is used in your gunpowder production. You can afford two waist tall bags for this price.
useful for our birthday party and to make some gunpownder, we used a lot of explosives already

>Perpetual Lamp (1 point): An item imported from the dwarven holds, a finely crafted lantern with powerful white luminous quarts embedded in its center. The device has four doors that can be opened and closed by a simple twist of a small knob on the base of the lamp to block the light when it is not needed. You can also open only one door to use it in a directional manner which is implemented with the use of some complicated clockwork.
while not very useful to us it can be a real help for our hunter friends when we start clearing out the surface labyrinth near the dwarven/drow refugee town


>Common spices (3 funds): Many large waist tall bags of varied herbs and spices that are grown on Ceno territory and used mostly for cooking. They include Garlic, Blue Fenugreek, Caraway, Celery, Anise, Horseradish, Gale, Juniper, Mugwort and Southernwood.
this should raise the quality of life a lot around there
>Farm animals (varied): polises are surrounded by numerous farmsteads so it is a good place for bulk purchase of farm animals. Goats, donkeys and sheep cost (2 points) for a breeding pair, work horses and cows cost (3 points) for a pair.
work horses

>>3827608
ah in that case ignore my vote at >>3822865
and support >>3827617
i am for cows tho, horses with the proper equipment could make working the fields easier, but cows have the benefit of milk, meat and also the fat we could use after we get the breeding done, also a bull, if it is calm enough could be used to work the fields as well

>>3827642
Agreed

>>3817533
Update: added Vlasis' and Elie's team to the character pastebin

>>3829720
Ok guys, the doc’s visit took way longer than what I expected so I’d like you to vote on the subject of today’s game. We can start a new thread as usual, but it would be several posts shorter than even the short threads that we had in the last months, we can continue in this thread to compress archives a bit or we could cancel today’s thread.

>New thread
>This thread
>Cancel for today

>>3831105
we are only on page 4, so i would say lets just do more in this one

>>3831105
Continue here

>>3831105
>This thread

>>3831116
>>3831115
>>3831108
Alright, let's continue here then. Calculating median shopping votes and writing.

>>3831120
We have(counting >>3823428
for the changed vote):

Salt(4 votes)
Lamp(4 votes)
Spices(4 votes)
Horses(1 vote)
Cows(3 votes)

In this case we don't need to narrow down since vote is too one sided. We get the salt, lamp spices and cows at the total of all 8 points.

>>3831134
Good for me

>>3831134
Platania polis, if you look at it from bird eye’s view, has a roughly oval shape with the obelisk and the Pantheon district in one of the foci. The main street itself stretches from the pantheon district to the opposite end of the city creating the major vessel through which people travel every day and thus it becomes an excellent place for a market. You are very much familiar with the examples of such places from your time. Many small cities, towns and villages in United States, Canada, Europe, British Isles and many other places had a characteristically large street filled with various shops and businesses acting as the commercial heart of the settlement. It seems like this also applies to many of the Ceno cities and towns as well.

In this case, the main street is comparable to a six-lane road in width and it houses an agglomeration of numerous small shops and stalls owned both by individual traders and larger trade guilds. This stretches all the way through the heart of the city from the Pantheon District to the main gates forming the Grand Market, the largest commercial center in Platania’s influence zone. Traders from all around Cenophila collect here to sell their products and numerous local services sprung up to help both the traders and their customers with food, lodgings and other things. You end up spending several hours just going through the stalls and taking notes of the various goods that you could choose from. It almost seems that this place has everything both locally produced and even some exotic items imported from far away lands. However, you can’t buy all of it, so after some thought you decided to take the following:

From the stores nearest to the river docks you acquired two waist tall bags full of sea salt. While pricy, this commodity is one of the few known methods of low-tech food preservation and thus it is necessary for survival. For you it is also a resource of high importance for chemical industry. You use it to make chlorine gas that can later be turned into numerous chemicals from sterilization agents and anesthetics to polymers and gunpowder. While it is sold everywhere, here you’ve managed to get a discount due to the bulk purchase.

After that you’ve managed to get your hand on several large bags full of common spices. Ceno climate stretches from temperate to Mediterranean, so they grow a wide variety of herbs and spices in their territory. While some you know well such as garlic, anise, caraway and horseradish, others you’ve only seen in history books about European middle ages and in some receipts for ethnic cuisine. Other spices like black pepper don’t grow outside of tropical regions and thus they can only be imported with enormous price markups. You’ve decided that you can afford to buy large quantities of common spices to increase the standards of living in Farsalos for the near future since the local trade is not sufficiently established yet.

>>3831228
The third item that you decided to buy was a brass lantern imported from dwarven territories. It is powered by a relatively large white glow quartz crystal. It has a focusing lens on one side which allows it to be used directionally like a flashlight and an intricate clockwork mechanism allows it to be closed off completely, opened only from one side or wide open from all sides. While not as useful for you, it would still be very helpful for your comrades if you ever wish to explore the Labyrinth or the depths of the Border Forest.

In the end, you’ve finally decided to get some work animals for the village. At first, you wanted to get a couple of work horses. They would massively help with farming which would reduce Farsalos reliance on you. However, you ended up buying a healthy bull and a cow. While less useful as work animals, the prospect of large quantities of milk was the deciding factor. So, you’ve bought the breeding pair and also ended up buying a small wooden cart since it dawned on you that a single person hauling several times their weight of groceries might look a tad bit silly.

With all the goods secured in the cart, you moved out of the city. While you can’t sustain flight with the weight of two tons of terrestrial mammal on your hands, you could still levitate them and shorten your trip considerably. However, you still need to get out of the visual range of the city and the nearby farmsteads. In addition, you have to make a detour to grab whatever artifacts that tar creature might hold…

>roll me a 1d20 for this one

Rolled 5 (1d20)

>>3831230
1

Rolled 15 (1d20)

>>3831230

Rolled 19 (1d20)

>>3831230

>>3831245
>>3831244
>>3831239
Writing

File: helical-fuel-rod.jpg (8 KB, 192x120)

8 KB JPG

>>3831285
Once you’ve arrived to the site, you were relieved to find out that you were lucky. No one has claimed the creature’s remains just yet. You’ve expected that pantheon would send someone here to retrieve the useful artifacts, but looks like they were preoccupied elsewhere or they don’t act as quickly as you’ve assumed. The area also lacks any onlookers, which is a bit surprising. You’d expect that a giant monster corpse would summon everyone from the nearby settlements, but then again, the speed of news in this day and age is pretty slow after all and you are free to examine the artifacts at your leisure.

That bulge that you saw in the tar mass was boiled off leaving what you assume to be the main power core of the monster. It consists of 25 two-meter-long beams with helical cross sections somewhat reminiscent of some advanced fuel rods used in the fission reactors of your time. Not that they were common since fusion power is much safer and cleaner, but there were some left in the various places that couldn’t afford the investment required to build a local fusion plant just yet.

The particular pile of rods is glowing white hot with a staggering 1500 degrees Celsius, more than enough to melt steel. However, they are not radioactive and don’t seem to be heating up much more than that and thus they don’t pose an immediate environmental threat. Well, beyond the massive oil spill that would damage the local farming communities unless cleaned up by the gods in the near future. You think that this is some kind of psi-based device that is used to gather and transform psi energy into thermal energy. However, you don’t think that the creature had any kind of a heat engine inside so its purpose is most likely to be a simple heating element to sustain the rest of the creature’s systems. You can’t find any other noticeable organs beyond these rods.

To transport the rods, you need to extract them one by one and insulate them in a thick layer of clay so that they would not pose any hazard to your other goods during transit. The time is of the essence, the more you wait the higher is the risk that pantheon agents would arrive here. When they arrive, you might not be able to access what you leave in the area. How should you proceed?

>>3831432
Regarding your stuff:

>Transport your goods to the village as fast as you can first and quickly return for a pickup (this will take around a day normally and several hours if you use a third of your psi energy)
>Leave your goods to wait hidden in the nearby area (this might have some risk)
>Leave your goods at a farmstead (this will take an hour or so)

Regarding the rods:

>Attempt to extract only one rod from the pile for analysis, which would allow you to move your goods and the rod in one go (this will limit you to one rod but you’ll have to do only one trip)
>Extract all the cores at once with no insulation and ferry them to an uninhabited area (this will take several hours and it would probably be pretty noticeable. You expect to exhaust a third of your energy supplies)
>Attempt to extract the rods one by one and ferry them to an uninhabited area (this will take around a day but you should regenerate most of the lost energy)
>Attempt to extract the rods and prepare all of them for transit in one piece (This will take several hours and exhaust half of your energy supplies)
>Writein suggestions?

>>3831434
>Leave your goods at a farmstead (this will take an hour or so)

>Attempt to extract the rods and prepare all of them for transit in one piece (This will take several hours and exhaust half of your energy supplies)

quick and costly, but I think it's worth it

>>3831434

>Leave your goods to wait hidden in the nearby area (this might have some risk)

>Extract all the cores at once with no insulation and ferry them to an uninhabited area (this will take several hours and it would probably be pretty noticeable. You expect to exhaust a third of your energy supplies)

>>3831441
+1

>>3831434
alright, supporting

>>3831523
Supporting what vote?

>>3831441
>>3831454
>>3831500
>>3831523
I mean I assume the last player is supporting the first option and then it is 3v1 and first suggestion wins. If not then we have a draw.

>>3831541
I support this too>>3831441

>>3831541
Alright, probable tie broken, writing

>>3831558
Ah yeah I was in support of the first vote but forgot the link, apologies

>>3831558
Well, first of all you need to deal with all the stuff that you’ve bought. You can’t carry it along with the rods because you are pretty sure that the cows would not survive being in direct vicinity of white-hot objects. Thus, you decide to move them to one of the nearby farmsteads and give a local farmer a few coins if he keeps an eye on your stuff. It takes some time since you can’t just airdrop your cows in since that would look a tad bit suspicious, but it is still worth it in comparison to losing all of your goods. In the meantime, you are going to get some stuff done.

First of all, you have to dig up a whole bunch of clay and mix it into something you can work with. The local clay is nowhere near heat resistant enough to hold up in this heat, but it is better than just carrying all of this stuff open to the air since white hot rods are not the most subtle things. Locals could easily see them from any altitude that you could reach, especially in the middle of the night. And that’s not even accounting for the cup bearers. So, you end up wrapping each of the rods into cigar shaped wraps made out of wet clay and dirt mixed with the monster tar. The water rapidly boils off leaving the material quickly cracking under the intense heat but in combination with your telekinesis it holds together relatively in one piece. Now for the second part of the plan.

You’ve never transported this much matter while flying yet but at the same time you weren’t expending significant chunks of your energy reserves. This bounty is very valuable since it might allow you to create a powerplant based on these rods and not on vast quantities of coal. It is probably ways off since you can't make steam turbines, but you'll figure something out, right. So, you decide to pull every trick you know to haul your prize to an uninhabited area.

As you’ve expected, sustained flight is still impossible with your method in this case and you had to invent something on the fly, literally. What you came up with was kind of kit bashed from your tricks for lifting heavy objects. Essentially, you hovered around a hundred meters in the air and then lifted the stack of rods as far above you as you could. Then you propped up the load against the ground by using your own proximity to it as a reference. Essentially you ended up using yourself as an extension cord of sorts for the telekinetic anchoring. However, high load at such great distance rapidly drains your powers. Telekinesis energy use depends on the object’s mass, range and the precision required with the former two being the main culprits in this case.

>>3831747
Still, you’ve managed to propel yourself at decent speeds while carrying the load in this weird configuration. Since it was nighttime, there were few wanderers on the roads and you’ve managed to give big berths to any settlements that you’ve seen while flying with Haven. In the end, you arrive to the hot spring area to the east of Farsalos and you almost collapse after layering the rods into a neat pile. That’s weird, you expected the trip with this exertion to drain half of your energy supply, and you ended up expending just under two thirds. What the hell?

In any case, now you need to deal with storing the rods. You can’t just leave them outside since you don’t have materials with sufficient heat resistance to contain them and they’d keep lighting the nearby foliage on fire, like they are doing it right now and you have to keep dropping water on the grass to keep it from catching the rest of the forest on fire. You could dump them into the chamber below the geyser, which would make it a bit more active and you’d need to take a dip into it to retrieve them. However, it should completely mask the rods from the outside. You could bury them deep into the ground, but you think that it would deplete your energy reserves and there would be a large area of heated soil. You could also just clear out an area and place the rods in it which would prevent the fires but the massive rods would be out in the open.

>Option 1: store them inside of the geyser
>Option 2: bury them (this will deplete your energy reserves)
>Option 3: just clear the area so it won’t catch fire
>Writein?

>>3831758
>Option 1: store them inside of the geyser

>>3831758
>Writein?

A nearby cave? Where they would be hidden and wouldn't be able to ignite any foliage and that temperature can't melt rocks right?

>>3831758

>Option 2: bury them (this will deplete your energy reserves)

>>3831758
>>Option 1: store them inside of the geyser
lets see if they are draining our psi energy, not sure how to test that safely, but it would explain it
otherwise the new method of transport could be responsible

>>3831775
You mean the copper mine that connects to the Labyrinth? It is way closer to the village and it would basically stop the copper mining. We could store it in the Labyrinth as well, but, you know, it IS the labyrinth. Stuff could happen to it. And we are not at full strength.

>>3831780
Put it in the geyser then

Time for the Red Hag to make a comeback

>>3831780
>it would basically stop the copper mining
Speaking of which, you said these things are 1500 degrees by I presume we're talking Celsius right? That means they can even melt copper meaning that if we used them to build a forge / furnace specifically for refining copper then it wouldn't need fuel and could essentially just churn out very molten copper.

>>3831797
Well, yes. You can smelt iron and steel as well. The main caveats are the fact that in certain cases you still need preprocessing, you definitely need fluxes and you also need special heat resistant bricks. However you’d have to deal with all of this anyway when dealing with metallurgy. On the good side, these rods don’t pollute the molten material with admixtures. Just keep in mind that using up thermal rods would mean that you’d have to disassemble buildings to retrieve them. You have a decently sized powerplant worth of thermal energy on your hands.

>>3831770
>>3831775
>>3831778
>>3831779
>>3831793
Looks like geyser it is. Writing

>>3831838
You decide that the best way to hide the rods is to dump them into the geyser. That way they would be well hidden in comparison to other options since you probably won’t be able to use them for a while. You don’t even have steam engines yet and steam turbines are way off into the future. You’d still have to take a dip after them at a later date but it is not like that’d kill you or anything, right?

While carefully lowering the hot rods into the water, you’ve made some calculations in your head on what you could expect from them. Each rod is made out of a silica monocrystal (aka very good quality fused quartz) and they are 2 meters long and 2 centimeters in diameter. Since they maintain 1500 degrees Celsius on the surface, they produce 36 kw of just radiated heat. If you position them in a pool of water like in a nuclear reactor, you’d be getting around 848 kw of thermal energy per rod which is around 21,2 megawatts of powerplant. Since this is not a nuclear reactor, you can run it way hotter and thus you could achieve up to 45% efficiency for converting that into electricity which is still around 9,54 megawatts of power. To compare, powerplants made for large cities put out energy in low gigawatt range. A single household consumes around a kilowatt and the industry and commercial buildings provide large spikes of energy demand. You could technically power every single building in Farsalos as it is right now with slightly less than one rod if you had actual steam turbines. Unfortunately, steam engines are way less efficient and operate in the range of 1 to 10% efficiency and you’ll need some serious industry to make them. Still, it is nice to have something stored for the future, right?

Then, you end up thinking about metallurgy. The rods are made out of quartz which is used in high temperature bricks so you could use it to power your meallurgic facilities. However, you still need to add fluxes and in certain cases coal coke to actually reach the required metals. For example, you’d still consume vast quantities of coal coke in production of pig iron so the rod would not help much there and then you’d have to completely redesign the steel mill if you want to use the rods. However, they would serve you well if used in smelters for things like alloys or casting plants. The places where you insert already processed metals to be smelted again as a part of other industrial processes.

In any case, with this issue dealt with, you can set your course back to retrieve the cattle and goods. However, should you do it now with a third of your energy reserve? It is regenerating slower for some reason…

>Head to Farsalos and rest, retrieve the goods when you recover
>Head for the goods straight away but track the speed of psi energy regeneration
>Other?

>>3832021
>>Head for the goods straight away but track the speed of psi energy regeneration
at worst we could take our time back home and look at the stars (if it is night on the way back)

>>3832021

>Head for the goods straight away but track the speed of psi energy regeneration

>>3832021
>Head for the goods straight away but track the speed of psi energy regeneration


I'm having major bad feelings regarding this

>>3832074
>>3832067
>>3832050
>3832050
Alrightm writing. And no, walking home this is not the worst case that can happen here...

>>3832115
>>3832074
i agree
spooky danger music starts playing
incoming music sting

>>3832115
You decided to return for your stuff and as you were leaving the area with the rods you’ve finally realized what was going on. Your energy regeneration rate is lower when near to the rods. You decide to explore this possibility for a few minutes and you think that you’ve made a small discovery on how psi actually works. The rods are not draining your energy supply or making you generate less energy, they are just sucking up the ambient energy around them in a certain spherical volume. And you also do that too. Essentially, there is a finite amount of psi energy generated in a certain volume of space and at the same time the space can’t store any of that energy so it disappears unused. Kind of like the wrong sci-fi perceptions of how zero-point energy is supposed to work. You have some kind of volume from which you absorb this energy and if that volume intersects with another volume that absorbs this energy as well, then both of you compete for that intersecting area. The heat rods seem to process a much smaller area but it consumes at a high rate so you ended up regenerating way less than what you’ve expected in flight.

Now that you are aware of that, you can attempt to play with it. You think that it is probably variable and you’ve managed to turn off your energy regeneration completely, but you don’t know how to increase the rate of psi energy absorption. You’ve also managed to vary the range of your absorption volume, but it seems to be set at maximum range that you can manage by default. Maybe you could train to increase these two things in the future, but now you at least know how it is supposed to work. You wonder how you can use this knowledge…

While thinking about it you’ve made your way towards the village where you’ve left your cows and goods. You tipped the farmer and prepared to leave when you’ve noticed a silhouette far in the distance hovering above the treetops somewhere in the direction of the tar monster’s remains. They are so far you can barely see them, and they seem to be slowly orbiting that area. Your guess is that it is someone’s cup bearer, but you can’t get a bearing on their appearance yet.

Roll me a 1d20
>Attempt to get a bit closer to see what they look like
>They are too far away to see you. Proceed as previously planned
>Nonchalantly leave the farm with your cows and goods at a normal human pace until you are out of visual range
>Cut energy regen now!
>Other?

Rolled 12 (1d20)

>>3832288
>>Attempt to get a bit closer to see what they look like
We must discover their true forms to defeat the false pretenders to our throne!

Rolled 5 (1d20)

>>3832288
>Nonchalantly leave the farm with your cows and goods at a normal human pace until you are out of visual range
>Slowly ease off energy regen, only in strength, not distance.

Rolled 10 (1d20)

>>3832288

Rolled 31 (1d100)

>>3832324
>>3832288
supporting this

>>3832338
What choice?

>>3832338
>>Nonchalantly leave the farm with your cows and goods at a normal human pace until you are out of visual range

>>3832342
argh, wrong dice

>>3832347
Just reroll, no worries. This happens

Rolled 1 (1d20)

>>3832342
reroll, pray its not a 1

>>3832359
god emperor fucking damn it
i am changing teams to chaos

Rolled 4 (1d20)

>>3832288

>Attempt to get a bit closer to see what they look like

I'm curious to see if it is that Nike cup we met when facing the mad goddess, she could fly if I'm not mistaken

>>3832359
Oh dear, it has been some time

>>3832372
yeah and i am pretty sure i was the last one (literally) as well

>>3832294
>>3832324
>>3832338
>>3832346
>>3832359
>>3832360
>>3832361
Welp, that are some rolls. Oh well. Writing

>>3832360
>i am changing teams to chaos
no, you changed taems to choas, lords of the under-folk-cinder-tyrannus-septus-septem-dynasty.

>>3832375
Well, crap. I overestimated myself. The meds that I took are making it too hard to concentrate. I'll have to pause for today. I'll post the result of these rolls tomorrow. Sorry about that.

>>3832410
It's alright, I never have that problem except with Benadryl... but I get it.

>>3832410
Thanks for running, have a good night

>>3832410
Meds are serious business
Thanks for running and good night

>>3832375
Alright, I finally managed to get to writing. We have 3 votes to leave and lower energy regen and 2 to come closer. The choices are mutually exclusive so leaving is the winner. However, considering the fact that we definitely critfailed we'd be seeing the cups very soon. Writing

File: арт-красивые-картинки-fan(...).jpg (58 KB, 533x800)

58 KB JPG

>>3835333
After you retrieve your purchases, you take a moment too long trying to figure out that shape in the distance. With your enhanced vision you manage to recognize the shapes as actually two humanoids. One is holding the other in the air since presumably one of them can’t fly. The flying one is somewhat weird though, they are a bit big for a human and they are probably wearing a weird face mask and helmet… oh wait, that’s what their head looks like. And that head turned towards you.

Then it dawned on you. Nike’ told you not to use your powers but said that it would be ok if you were in close vicinity with people who probably can sense psi energies. At the same time, you’ve figured out that psi energy doesn’t just passively refill, you actually absorb it from your surroundings and you could actually feel how the thermal rods were competing with you for it. That means that common psi detection doesn’t see the energy stores, it detects the energy drain in the area. And since your power supply is low, you’ve been sucking up noticeable amounts of energy from a massive volume, which was probably felt by those cups and now they know that you’re here.

You slowly decrease the rate at which you absorb energy hoping that it would seem less suspicious than cutting it off instantly and you start nonchalantly continuing on your way down the road, but it seems that those cups still want to investigate you as they abandon their observations of the tar monster’s corpse and accelerate in your direction. Uh oh…

File: Ninmah's Cup.jpg (245 KB, 750x1125)

245 KB JPG

>>3835402
It doesn’t take them long to catch up with you and land right in front of your cart. And oh boy do they look interesting. You are guessing that the Lovecraftian fellow is a servant of Belkh, the god of stone, and the second Cup is most likely the servant of Ninmah, the goddess of harvest. Before you could take a good look at them you thought that maybe it could be someone from Nike’s servants, but then, who else could be on environmental cleanup duty than people with soil moving and plant growing powers?

The servant of Belkh looks way bigger than what you imagined, they are towering above you at almost three and a half meters tall. You are not sure if they are male or female, their head is shaped like a trident with opaque sphere hovering several inches above it and their body is strange, almost like it is made out of solid white plates attached to some kind of inner frame. It also has several spherical objects floating freely around them and they sometimes shrink and disappear into thin air or reappear back into reality. You think that maybe they can somehow alter their size but you are not sure. It is the first time you’ve met a spacetime body augment in action. During today’s chat Nike’ mentioned that Elspeth and Yaw prefer to call it “the Angelic Form” because apparently the side effects remind them of the creatures with the same name from Evangelion, which does kind of work better than “subspace body augment” even if it sounds almost too nerdy.

The other Cup Bearer is much more conventionally human. She looks like an unnaturally pale woman with white hair who is wearing a mostly green outfit with a white underlaying layer and a golden belt. She also carries a backpack and a separate bag filled with rolled up maps. On her belt you can see several high quality and heavily decorated devices useful for navigation and measuring of terrain such as a spyglass and a sextant.

Well, crap. Looks like you can’t go anywhere now. What should you do now? What can you even do?

____________________________________
And on this cliffhanger we are wrapping up for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed and I’ll see you next Saturday. Feel free to ask questions, make suggestions and discuss since I can reply during the week.

>>3835411
i like your use of Tamio for the cup, MTG in general should yield some good images for cups, SGs and more conventional monsters
for the unconventionals, google eldrazi, they are some freaky lovecraftian things

also, i apologize to everyone, but i might have outed us to the pantheon with that critfail ...

>>3835411
Thanks for running, and kek at Elspeth using EVA references.

>>3835468
Well, I would not say that you are outed just yet, but you might need some lucky bullshitting to get you out of this.

I had a thought about those quartz rods, depending on if we find a material that could block their ability to draw in psi energy, we could fashion a sheath and grip out of that material so we would have a small dagger
that dagger would be incredibly dangerous to any psi beings or SGs since breaking it of would not only cauterize the wound and would make removing it very dificult in a fight, it be extremely painful and make using psi powers dangerous

using them as special bullets also corssed my mind

>>3836729
if we could fashion a suitable container we could weild them with TK, using it either as a bullet or a dagger like you said

but their full potential is probably as a energy source

>>3836737
Absolutely

>>3836737
>>3836729
It is an interesting proposal, however I don't think that it would work specifically with the heat rod material. It is essentially an industrial scale power source based on same principles as glow- quartz and it drains energy at such fast rate by design mostly because of how much material it needs to heat up. It is not optimized to work as a psi negation field. If we detached a shard of this material, it would not have the psi drain volume of the entire rod. In addition, if your psi field collection volume is higher than the rod, you can still get some energy even if you physically are within the rod’s drain volume. In short, if we ignore heat issues for a moment you could probably make a jail cell with whole rods that would drain mortal mages dry, but it would not hold a cup bearer or an SG who both have bigger energy collection volumes. A heat rod material knife would be very hot but it would not affect even stronger mortal mages. There are ways to create empty psi field regions, however. We just haven’t encountered those yet. We know of one possible user though, the person called “Apostate”… whom I forgot to add to the list, I’ll fix that in a moment.

>>3835411
New thread is up: >>3845017

>>3845022
Thread archived