Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
”Hey, I haven't been a baby for like, a few years” Jr retorted to the question about what their deal was, while Rika cocked her head in thought, and then responded ”I’ve only really been me for, um, two weeks? So I guess you could say that, but it would probably be rude?” the whole concept of babies not really having been relevant to either her pre or post personhood existences.
Either way, as a consequence of just ordering what was already available, the troop got their dishes before Juri did, and so were already tucking in by the time Naida returned with her fresh catch. Rika naturally started sampling everything, and was joined in this by Dazzle, the sea lion pokemon having quite the appetite for fish unsurprisingly, while Jr dug into the heartily meaty megamouth shark sushi, the squid like Peeka took mostly to the Fried Onion Cuttlefish of all things and the in some ways rather eldritch Mimi spent her time dragged bits of the Deep Fish Tempura under her disguise to be devoured by the void within.
It all made for quite the lovely meal, which made the following reminder that they had actually had a mission to do over the week a rather bitter desert.
Because the kids had entirely forgotten about it.
”Uhhhhh” Jr went, unable to think of an excuse to get out of this, leaving the floor to his sister who didn’t even consider such a thing to be required.
”We’ve been busy waiting for papa, then being sad on the ship about him not coming back, then training out on the water and robbing the mafia fishing boats as hero stuff. So we forgot that learning stuff was the plan. Good thing you remembered!” without any kind of filter about giving out that kind of personal information to someone who was functionally a complete stranger even if they were on the team.
”Siiiiiis, don’t tell her about that!” Jr whined with embarrassment, specifically about them mopping on the ship.
”What about us stealing from the Mafia? She’s just gonna stab them in the back first like papa says all bad guys should though, so it's fine” Rika replied, before turning to Juri and asking ”right?”
”Urrrgh” Jr groaned, before deciding that if they had nothing he could still criticize ”I mean maaaaby the bird's one, but the other ones all basically stuck to one place. In Peach’s castle, in a mountain, on a beach, and inside a power generator or something. So if its moving then I dunno if that fits”
”I mean it would be a smarter way of doing it than having them sitting in one spot waiting for us to find them? Maybe?” he then wondered, before admitting ”ugh, ok fine, maybe Galeem mixed it up and had some move around and be hard to catch and some stick still in one really hard to reach spots” because that would be the smart move.
That meant all he had was falling back on defending what they’d been up to by insisting ”Besides, training and tinkering stuff’s productive. Gotta make up for papa not being here to carry the team by fighting even stronger and smarter than we have been, and with better gear too” defensively, before perking up and offering: ”hey. If you let me see that ‘cool new gun’ you’ve got I bet I could make it even cooler, make the shots all zappy or burny”
”You should, he’s good at that stuff. Just set me up with these massive stabby flying things recently, and those have been super neat now that I’ve kinda got the hang of them” Rika added in support, pointing to the compact stack of 6 two meter long rocket propelled swords she’d set down alongside her gauntlets and rigging, creating a pile of destructive ordinance that the ghostly Peeka was using as a chair.
“It’s lovely to meet you Wu Qing'e” the witch night replied to the introduction before saying that “ I’m going to thank you anyway, but for having that attitude in that case. Things’d be so much better without people squirting away knowledge for their own personal gain”
Like the fact that anyone from her world could be the focus of a link chain, that that worlds people could choose their own heroes, not just a team hand picked by former corporate marketing experts.
“Oh, and I like your nails,” she added, briefly admiring the polish work and inquiring about where Wu had gotten it from/done while Sanae did a bit of reading before the prospect of paying for the book came up.
“Yup. Well. A bit. I did a few odd jobs around the village and for the caravan while not practicing your non lethal spell card magic ” she replied, fishing around in one of her hip pouches and pulling out her not exactly substantial collection of coinage. A decade of experience with farming made for a reliable if not exactly high earning set of skills and refusing to be paid for her heroism didn’t exactly help either.
Still, better to have some coin than none, and Sanae’s lack did make her worry a bit.
“Do you think the others made any money? We’re gonna have to pay for food and places to stay now that we’re not with the caravan” she pointed out, before adding “assuming Lady Remilia’s idea doesn’t pull through, I mean” not particularly confident that it would if she was being honest.
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town S.O.U. Building Seiran Clinic Underground Roadway (Seiran Rebel Base Outskirts) Below City of glass entrance (plate maintenance tunnel) Vandelay Campus (Alleyway) Arahabaki’s entrance Deep Ground - the Source
Midna’s dower line of thinking was pushed back on by the optimistic Pit, and was fully interrupted by the arrival of one of Palutena’s Lieutenants, and that was perhaps for the best.
Not an angel, this one, Midna noted as she examined Edelgard, but that wasn’t exactly unheard of, as she’d seen a few here and there. Plus there there was, of course, the seekers themselves (or most of them anyway, minus pit).
Given the professional tone of the woman, it was hard to tell if this similarity was why she had sought out to touch base with them, as Minda might have in her position, or if it really was just a desire to get an idea of the unknown elements of the attack force. Either way, there was no reason not to respond to the request, it was always useful to know where more medical support could be found, and so she did just that.
She introduced herself simply as ”Midna” because what was a princess without her kingdom, standing and offering her free hand to shake (one holding her helm under it, the other two her new lyre).
”and I’ve been leading the new Twilight Guard for the past few days” she explained, nodding her head down to a now rather eclectically equipped squad of angels she’d had with her for a few days now. Night time attrition had been harsh on their numbers, but the survivors had been empowered by the spoils of it, Minda surreptitiously gathering and crushing spirits to produce armaments, trinkets and consumables out of fallen foes and friends alike. An eye for magic picked up from observing Sectonia had allowed her to lightly apprise what she got was good for who, and to avoid any corrupt artifacts such processes produced as well.
”and I’d say we’ve been making a good team, especially with this” she strummed her fingers along lyre’s chords ”which will punish anyone who dares attack one of my people”
”as for me, well, I have a few summon-able servants like this thing” she explained, referring to her flygon who was soaking in the setting sun’s rays, and then added that ”otherwise, I’m mostly destructive rather than supportive. If we end up fighting together, stand behind or beside me, and I’ll blast and slash every foe before us to pieces”
Which was, admittedly, difficult to coordinate with a team around, but her troops were now pretty in tune with giving her the space she needed to break whole squads of foes.
It wasn’t long before that coordination was put to the test once more.
Still, despite her intention of having them be part of the vanguard, the twilight guard was in high spirits, because they were fighting beneath the sun rather than the moon(s) for once, boosting their power significantly compared to what they were used to working with.
Fortunately, cloud cover would not be hampering that power, because as the princess and her squad blazed towards the tower, flying low, they were shadowed by one of her singing sandstorm swirling around them with them at its eye, obscuring them from the enemy's ranged firepower. Of course, this also made it hard to shoot back, but that wasn’t their concern, as the princess set a blistering pace, diving straight for the platform out front of the castle that led to its main gates.
While the ranged forces could do little but pepper the sand with blindly fired shots, the corruption did have flying forces of its own to spare, sending blighted angels and Catchet and Compassions diving down into the storm.
Unfortunately for them, they were met with a shocking surprise.
Storm Sands (Flygon/Urbosa): Midna can cause the grains of her sand attacks to swirl such a way that they generate static electricity. This gives her basic sand attacks an extra sting, causes sand tombs to apply the paralyze effect (slowing movement and potentially interrupting 1/4 of actions) while swirling around a foe, and turns sandstorms into thunderstorms that periodically blast anything within them (that is not immune to electrical damage) with bolts of lighting.
Thunder roared and foes with charred fell from the clouds, easy pickings for feather bows to spin and snipe with shimmering enchanted bows, killing the weak, and slowing those still mostly intact so that the vanguard could simply leave them in the dust.
Ahead of them the vague shape of the tower seen through the sand grew closer and closer, prompting her melee troops to pop spicy empowering draughts and vials of shimmering liquid fortune right before battle was joined.
When it was, Midna’s sandstorm washed over the landing pad, blinding and thunder striking its defenders, before blasting upwards to clear the skies just in time for the princess and her troops to make landfall.
Leaping from her flygon, the princess dove down with a cyclone kick charged by her storm, smashing into the shield of a corrupted angel, and then crescent moon slashed a serrated knife through the visor slit of the stunned foe. She then dropped to the ground surrounded by its ashes, summoning and sicking her beast legion on a foe to her left while her flygon dove down upon another to her right, and her feathers dove down to take the foes behind her.
That left those before her, more corrupted angels holding the bridge from the platform of the front gates, covering for a retreating enrapture.
Just where she wanted them.
Her shadow hand whipped forwards, grabbing a charging corrupted angel, before smashing it to the side, knocking two others clear off the side of the platform in the process, before hurling her grabbed victim after the enrapture. Then she lunged forward with the knife she had charged, her electrified blade meeting the searing hot sword of another foe only for them to be struck by the lighting stored in the blade.
”stupid as always” she taunted it before she grabbed the foe’s shield with her free hand and pushed it aside as she kept their blades locked, then slashed a dragon clawed hand across the former feather-shield's throat, briefly pausing her lyre playing to do so, before kicking the dissolving body back into the final of the 6 who had stood in her way.
It stumbled, promptly got a serrated knife tossed into its shoulder and then Midna was on it, cleaving the gunblade revolver out of the twilight realm in a two handed slash, hacking it into its side. A moment after there was the sound of a gunshot as Midna triggered the gunblade’s strike enhancing shockwave too late to make proper use out of it.
”tch, still not getting that right” she complained as she deflected a clumsy retaliatory sword blow with one of the metal ‘horns’ of her lyre of all things, and then flicked a machete out of a portal to finish off the final melee fighter.
At least the final one that had been on the ground. They only had moments before more started coming from above though her electrical cloud cover, or, worse, tried to get around it. Plus there was still the enrapture, now turning after finding the front gate bared by its fellow slightly smarter corrupt angels.
Both it and said gate were going to be a problem.
She dealt with both in the same way.
Behind the gate, the commander of the tower had set up a perfect killing field made up of a ring of barricades made out of furniture overgrown with corruption, ranged troops placed behind them, the gaps between held by constructs and the skies above by corrupted angels. Mindless as they were (the Affinities who had barred the door had bid a hasty retreat), they had not left their posts since positioned in their posts, nor did they tense in nervous anticipation for the inevitable breach.
They also didn’t react to the sound of revving blades, nor the brief moment of grinding stone before the gates (and part of the wall) exploded in response to Midna cleaving and shredding through them using the titanic dead end express.
The flying rubble and wash of electrified sand that rushed in did however do plenty to throw their aim off, burning arrows striking rubble or shields as the princess and her melee soldiers rushed through the breach. Ahead of them, two portals opened, unleashing mdina’s darknut and wolfos for a few moments, each titan splashing through a barricade before vanishing just as fast to let the soldiers through.
The ambush was thrown into disarray in moments as feather shields and swords stormed the barricades while feather bows entered and turned their arrows to the sky to slow and weaken the enemy fliers before they could dive down into the fray.
Unfortunately this is where Midna’s plan truly made contact with the enemy commander, as a pair of sycophants who had been clinging to the roof above the door, high up enough to avoid both rubble and sand, dropped down right into the bow's ranks once their front-line had pulled away from them.
Cries of alarm rang out as two of their numbers were cut down by the assassin’s descending strikes. The subsequent strikes were less lethal without gravity on their side, allowing the feather staffs to keep them alive, but the move still left Midna’s ranged core into disarray as archers scrambled to get clear or struggled to get a shot off without the risk of crossfire.
Midna, ears drowning in the sound of battle as well as her own words and music, was deaf to this crisis.
Her troops were not however, nor had their order of battle been wholly unprepared for this, as a pair of the rearguard who’d been positioned to hold the entrance from attackers coming in from outside turned and entered the fray. The swift feather swords darted between the bows, one delivering a deliberating strike with a golden blade to prevent an assassin from chasing after the bows, another parrying a sword blow and earning the offending assassin a barrage of musical bolts from Midna’s lyre.
It was that automatic retaliation that informed her of the crisis ongoing behind her, the princess spinning with a curse and sprinting back to help. Using Roxas’ flowmotion style she leapt off of the barricade she’d been to secure on, wall jumped off one of the remains of the shattered gates, launching herself clear over the heads of the bows to give the assassin a taste of its own medicine.
”Get away from them!”
Her serrated knife cleaved into the base of one of its broken wings, a dragon clawed foot dug into the small of its back, and then she slashed her war fan down its spine. Her beast legion simply phased through her allied troops in order to follow her, the invisible untouchable chimera allowing its claws to interact with the physical world just long enough to cleave into the other assassin.
Tables turned on them by the flanking attacks, the pair of foes went down to sword strikes and a flurry of arrows. It did not, however, end there, as a pair of vengeful spirits ripped themselves from the bodies of the corrupted angels as they fell. One was cut down by a feather sword, but the other slammed right into Midna as the assassin dissolved beneath her, jaws biting at her chestplate, not at all perturbed by the electricity flowing through the armor.
She slammed into the ground, arms smacked to each side, weapons clattering to the floor, Yet before they could find out if she could get her claws into it before it could swap from trying to bite through her armor to finding a softer target, a rune engraved shield smashed into it, emitting a flash of light as it knocked it aside. It flew up and attempted to swirl round to strike it again, only to be nailed by a glowing arrow from one of the feather bows.
”Thank you again” Midna said, as she was helped to her feet by the same feather shield who had caught her during their first night time engagement. Behind him the rest of the rearguard was rushing in to help, while behind them, a second platoon had arrived to make use of this largest of breaches into the tower, and in doing so had removed a need for her own to guard their rear.
And just in time too, because even as their front-line were securing the barricades, a counter assault came rushing in, pinning them against the very barricades they had just claimed.
”Goddesses preserve us, we need to get in there!” Minda cursed before rushing back to the front lines who’d been without ranged and magic support due to the drop into their back-lines, her troops charging alongside her. Feather staves raced ahead along with the melee fighters to make up for lost time, delivering a burst of healing to those fighters already engaged, while feather bows rose up and to fire over the tops of the barricades at the counter attacker.
With their formation reformed, and reinforcements right behind them, the Twilight Guard held the gatehouse against the retaliation strike, securing it as a point of entrance for the rest of the attack, but after that they had to pause to catch their breaths.
And count their dead.
For being the vanguard, it could have been oh so much worse, but still, each death had her cursing whatever it was that had allowed the corruption to be more coordinated here than it had before.
She didn’t get long to do so before the next crisis, as the reinforcements who had arrived and then pushed past them ran into trouble. Specifically, as Midna raced ahead of her troops on wolfos back in response to the cries of help said troops had heard, they had run into entrenched Affinities providing musical fire support for the hulking form of Belief.
”Pull back, focus on the smallfry!” Midna called out to the troops as she charged into the fray, her own troops hot on her heels, because ”This thing’s mine!”
Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
Friday, lunchtime
Dr. Amelia Yu, alien hybrid eldritch mind devouring horror and avowed vegetarian and pacifist due to her psychic empathy, halted her hand before knocking on the bedroom door. Steeled herself. Then completed the motion, wincing as each rap forcibly exposed her to the emotions locked up inside.
“Excuse me, might I come in?” she requested, before adding just a moment later (having already tried and failed this before, and having this time come with an incentive) that “I have brought you lunch” fully aware that the room’s denizens had not been eating properly thanks again to her psychic empathy.
As she’d hoped, the ‘bribe’ got her access, and her reward was the wave of dower malaise and roiling frustration that swept out of it and over her. She winced, then grinned and bore it (not that the lipless mouth behind her mask could have any other expression) and stepped on in.
The room within was a strange mix of childs bedroom and workshop, discarded toys and games scattered among tools and mechanical components. The latter of these things could have lived in any of the 4 separate rooms on the ship dedicated to all things technological, and yet the duo had more or less locked themselves inside here to tinker instead.
She didn’t know the specifics of the pair’s trip down to and then return from Camp Whispering Rock, but suffice to say it had taken the upset and betrayed feelings they’d had and made things so much worse
three days earlier
The two children sat on at the top of the tower they’d taken over by virtue of there now being a giant whale with gun turrets mounted on it blocking the ramp up to the top. The kids' summer holidaying at Camp Whispering Rock might have been a little weird, but they were no psychics (Galeem had put the regular deinzines of this place up in Midgar) and so there was no getting past the pair's stonewalling of them.
It was something of a self sabotaging move, because if there was one group who might be able to relate to what they were going through, it’d be kids away at summer camp, because who among them had not felt at least a little bit homesick at some point. Still, even then, who could really understand how Rika, a girl, teen, or woman with roughly a week's worth of memories she could really call her own, and a person whose was a mess of spirits all jammed into one personality that had had little foundation to build atop of, was going through.
The koopa who’d freed her both from Galeem and from the warmachine that was, or had been, the abyssal fleet, and in doing so made her a person rather than a weapon, was gone. As was the koopa who’d named her his daughter. Both off out there somewhere on an adventure with an ally turned enemy turned maybe ally again, with no idea if they’d come back, and all in the name of this thing called love she still didn’t really understand.
The two of the rocks that had held her steady in this strange new thinking existence she was in had vanished from it, and now only the smallest (or was he the largest?) remained.
Unfortunately her brother was also suffering, but at least he was used to it (or did that make what had happened worse? She didn’t know).
”Urrrrgh” the prince groaned loudly as the sun began to set on the camp, signaling their third day of waiting there, slumping back onto the spikes of his shell, tossing his arms up and declaring ”he’s done it again!”
”Does this happen a lot?” Rika asked, her arms wrapped around her knees, her mighty gauntlets sat on the deck behind her.
”Yeah. Well no? But sometimes!” the prince groaned ”Papa will just go off on some adventure or attempted conquest and won’t bring me along and its soooooooo lame!”
”This time was supposed to be different! I mean I never got to be a part of any of the times papa got to do hero stuff and save the world! But this time I was and it was so cool! We were actually winning fights and taking names and no one could stop us and it was so much better than being the bad guy who gets beat” he said, turning to his sister who didn’t really get it for validation ”Right?”
”I liked… not being part of the fleet more than being a part of it? And they were ‘bad guys’ so I think so, yes? I mean I think now and didn’t really then so that’s, um, just better by default” she replied, before sighing and saying ”I mean I owe everything to, well, Kamek for letting me be free and feel things and stuff, but now that he and papa are gone, I dunno i just feel like… empty inside again”
Her brother didn’t really know how to respond to that, empathy wasn’t exactly his strong point, but he at least got that maybe going on with his rant wasn’t the best. So he floundered, kicking his legs that were hanging off of the edge of the platform a few times, and then agreed that ”yeah, it's lame”
They sat there quietly for a bit, till they spotted movement down below, and one of the camp counselors popped into view, calling up to them to come on down from the tower now that it was getting dark. His tone indicated that he did not care a bit that they were a heavily armed boat girl and a spiky fire breathing turtle, because bedtime for children was fast approaching.
”I don’t wanna go back” Rika said quietly in response to this, not at all loud enough for the councilor to hear.
”yeah, I know, who’s he to tell us what to do!” jr agreed, misreading her reasons for this entirely.
”No I mean I don’t want to go back at all. I mean it was fun playing with the others here before when I thought we were just waiting for papa and Kamek, but if they aren't coming then… I dunno, I just… don’t think I could stand being around happy people, or to waste time playing while they’re out, doing whatever important stuff with Peach or P or whoever she is now”
”Mmm” Jr agreed. Well. Partially. He had enjoyed doing kid stuff with the campers, it’d had distracted from the looming certainty that his papa wouldn’t be coming to pick them up, but his sister had a point. They should be doing something productive, and there was nothing productive to be done here.
”Oh, I know!”
They’d come back after that, and jr had immediately thrown himself into work fixing up his clown car first, and then setting about working on upgrading and overhauling Rika’s gauntlets. Dr. Yu had helped with this, but her attempts at cheering up Rika as she sat about and was worked on had only managed to drive the girl away. After that the pair had been through all four of the various labs and workshops before finally ending up in their room all day for much the same reason.
Even now, as the Doctor entered the room holding the bag of the first meal they’d be having in the day, she could feel she was not wanted, and yet she approached anyway. Rika’s mood had not improved the past three days, and Jr’s had turned to obsessively tinkering and working, unable to deal with his own feelings, nor Rika’s feelings, nor his feelings about not knowing how to deal with her feelings and so using his engineering to tire and distract himself.
Given what she saw as she peered over and assessed his work, he was very much running out of things to do. The gauntlets had been a mess of fusion combined and merged components to start out with (fully articulated fingers, 2 different guns, a grappling hook, 2 hangers for scout the doctor had reverse engineered for her to replace a lost one, a magitech charge systems she did not understand) and he’d only added to them by installing the controls of 6 rocket propelled sword drones to them, but everything was all neat, tidy, and comprehended at this point.
She could tell from the blueprints, even if they themselves were a bit messy. While eyeing those, she also spotted sitting next to them sat a pair of ankle bands that (if she was reading their plans right) replicated her ship girl floatation power.
Given he’d come back to the gauntlets, and from what she could see/feel he was very much clutching at straws when it came on what else to do to them other than quadruple check everything in them, it seemed like he was out of projects. He’d probably throw himself at something at the armory next, or, worse, the ship itself. Not something you wanted someone doing while it was flying around that was for sure.
Neither of those would help the pair’s situation. Indeed this entire return to the ship plan had frankly made everything worse in the good doctor’s analysis of their moods, and so for their and everyone’s sake, they needed to be off it again. Get some fresh air. See the sun. However to suggest they do so directly would very much not work, this she very much knew thanks both to intuition and her psychic abilities, and so she set about performing the manipulations they needed.
“Hungry?” she asked as she set down the paper bag, and tactically popped it open so that the smell of the meal Bracket Brace had prepared for them specifically could waft out temptingly. The prince, leaning over the cracked open gauntlet, grunted in response, while the morose princess laying on the bed beside him said nothing at all.
Then both blinked as the smell of the hearty meal the ship's cheerful Mimiga chef had prepared for them, their mouths watered, and within moments they were chowing down on the skillfully prepared chow.
As they did so, the Doctor made an active show of looking over the gauntlets, even though she’d got most of the details at a meer glance, and then just as the satisfaction of stating their hunger was peaking she said, “Well, now that looks like quite the fine piece of work” and before the prince could swallow and respond, added the vital question of “now how are you going to test it?”
”Huh? Oh. the training room I guess?” Jr said, clearly having not actually thought about this.
“With that amount of reach?” she asked gesturing vaguely at a part of the blueprints listing the considerable distance the rocket blades could be launched out at, criticizing the idea by saying that it was “hardly the best place for it in my humble opinion” and then going for an early killshot by saying that “if you want to make sure they’re of use, I suggest getting as much space as you can when testing them out”
“Might I suggest you head on down to maffia town?” it was, out of the three places, somehow the one that she suspected was most safe. No lethal static to the north, no corruption, just blue seas and ineffectual thugs. Plus “you could make use of those new floatation devices while you are there as well. Plenty of room to test them out on the open ocean I’d think?”
She again focused on the usefulness, on the making use. That was, she correctly guessed, the prince’s motivation for focusing on working, but that work was hardly letting Rika actually feel useful, and it was draining Jr’s mental facilities to be doing it all day. That it got them out and about was the actual point, but that it lined up with what their misguided desires was what actually got them down there.
friday afternoon
The sun shone down upon the slowly bobbing waves of the sea just outside of mafia town, glinting off of 6 red metallic blades that were whirling around a panicking flailing figure who screaming ”ahhhh! How do I control this alllllll!” at a turtle standing on top of the water way back from his freaking out sister.
”stop waving your arms around, they're linked to those!” he called back as his sister tried to block the blades coming at her with her gauntlets despite that very move being one that sent them racing towards her.
”No no, hands away from the body!” he shouted again before realizing he could communicate it by telling her to ”think of it, like, shoving them away”
That did indeed do the trick, the princess thrusting both palms out in front of her, and sending the blades blasting off into the distance across the waves. Unfortunately it only worked for a moment as they reached their effective range, and then came blasting back again.
”no no no no stay away” their control shouted at them, before thrusting her hands ”down!” and sending all six splashing into the waves.
She stood there, panting for a moment, as the drone’s engine sputtered under the water, stopping them from returning to her, only for her to go ”oh no!” as they started to sink.
This at least jr was prepared for, it was sort of the risk of practicing over water, but they’d wisly not done this over the blue hole, so they could only sink so far. Plus he did have a way to sort things, clicking on a cassette tape to turn into the fish monstress warrior Undyne, and then as her diving into the waves after the drowning weapons.
He (as she) emerged a few moments later with the blades under her arms, and then struggled to keep a hold of them till Rika remembered she could switch them off herself.
”So, uh, that was kinda my bad” Jr admitted (to Rika’s relife) as he returned to being himself, floating upon the waves next to her on the very successful ship girl tech he’d copied from her, before suggesting ”Maybe we should start with just one?” which got him a moment of hesitation and then a nod from the ship girl.
That, as it turned out, had worked out far better, and as the sun set, the princess had that single claw more or less dancing to her tune. What had not been worked out, because the good doctor had not known, kids had not thought about it till it was too late, was how they were going to fund their stay here. The pair had money of course, but unfortunately for them, having absolutely piles of geo didn’t really help them when the local currency was pons.
Fortunately they found this out because a certain cat girl encountered them while returning from her daily fishing trip, and took pity on them enough to cover dinner and lend them a room to sleep over in. The only cost for this was some light pun-ishment for their lack of foresight. That and sleeping in the furniture store Nadia was squatting in, which might be fine for the street cat, but caused no end of griping from the royal prince.
In the name of getting their own room and board they’d have to engage in some child labor to pay their way through. Given their sailing skills, spear prowess, and access to a cassette beast tape and a hood that would let them both dive underwater, a fishing job seemed like the obvious choice. Well. except for the fact that their last experience with doing actual work had taught them a possibly rather poor lesson.
”That job we did transporting stuff wasn’t worth it at all, but the cheese Purse stole from it and that she gave to us was, so, shouldn’t we just do that?” Rika pointed out, referring to the time they and the aforementioned mouse girl Purse had done a delivery of cheese through a canyon, only to be attacked by rat bandits and sentient cheese revolutionaries.
”Yeah that was a rip off. I mean someone died doing it and what was it worth? nothing” Jr agreed, though this perception was maybe impacted a bit by how they’d been paid in now worthless geo ”Plus you heard how Nadia and people in Bancho Sushi were talking about this ‘Mafia’? Total bad guys. We could mess with them and people’d probably thank us!”
”Yeah. Well. except the mafia, don’t they, like, run this place? If we raid their logistics, they’ll come after us in town. Where we want to sleep and eat and stuff” Rika pointed out, brain briefly flicking to her inbuilt military thinking.
Jr ”hmmmm”ed at this for a few moments, before clicking his claws as he realized that ”Then we just need to use disguises!”
They’d seen the mafia fishing ships out on the water, big barges with dozens of fishers all lining the side. You could tell it was one from the single mafia mook hanging around on deck. Technically he was there to keep watch over the seas for danger, but given that this was very much a protection racket, he was mostly keeping watch over the fishers to make sure they didn’t pocket anything in an attempt to deny the mafia their 20% cut.
Said mook happened to spot a large dark shape in the water while lazing at his post, watched it for a moment, and then determined it was simply “eh, just a whale” before getting back to his actual job of people watching.
He was right about what was in the water as it turned out. The problem was that the whale was coming right at them, something which he only noticed too late.
The the Pacific Princess’s great white whale, moaby dick, beached the surface a moment later and upon its back, looking far more pirate with her eyepatch than royal guard captain, was Undyne, who lept off the back of the whale with a “nyeeeeeeh!” and landed on deck between the mafia goon and the fishers.
“Hand over the fishies, and no one gets hurt!” Undyne demanded while brandishing a spear. Behind her, the mafia mook squared up to try and sock them in the back, only for a brionne named Dazzle to corkscrew leapt out of the water and nail him with a big bubble of water, knocking him over right in time for Undyne to then turn and point the spear at the now downed mook. They cocked their head in question, and got an “ok ok, you win” from the thoroughly shamed mafia mook.
“Good. As for the rest” Undyne said, before waving a spear at the gun turrets mounted on the whale circling the ship, which quickly got her her piratical bounty of the sea, riding off into the sunset with a container of fish spirits in the whale’s jaws. As it did, two high flying bird sized scout planes followed after it, and Rika, who’d been clinging to the underside wearing the water breathing permitting blooper hood and using said planes to observe and direct their minions, joined the cassette tape disguised Jr up on top of the whale as they made for a sneaky landing spot.
Evening was setting in by the time they’d made landfall, put away their disguises, landed the scout planes and put the ocean-going mammal minions away in their pokeball/spinner. Then all they needed to do was offload their haul.
Which they had no idea how to do, because their day had been spent training and heist planning. Thus after a dinner of flame breath roasted fish they had to spend another night squatting.
Fortunately for them the next day they ran into Therion, or rather he followed gossip and rumors their failed fish selling from the previous night created in-order to find them. With his help, the duo managed to offload the remainder of their haul, learn a bit more about what was actually worth grabbing next time they did a smash and grab from the fence they sold their stock to.
As such, when Monday evening rolled around, and the duo rolled into Bancho Sushi for the first time since Nadia had fed them on the first night, their financial situation was more than good enough that they could afford to pay their own way this time.
”Hi there, good to ‘sea’ you” Rika said when they got their turn to order, asking ”what ‘wave’ you been up to since we ‘shoar’ you last?” prompting jr to grouse that it had been ”Three days of this, and it's all your fault” despite not seeming to be actually that annoyed by his sisters off the mark attempts at puns.
”Annnyway, don’t worry, we’re good for it this time, so we’ll have-” Jr began to say only for Rika to intercede with ”One of everything” which was a bit less of an absurd request than it sounded when jr brought out 3 more mouths to feed in the forms of his pokemon: Dazzle, Mimi and Peeka who respectively got their own seat, sat on the table, or floated above it.
As for Juri, well, due to having their own thing to deal with while she’d been on the ship, and having been out at sea either pirating or practicing for most of the day while she was land lubbing and thuging, they didn’t really have any idea what her deal was. However, as they’d waited in the queue, and unsurprisingly no one else wanted to sit next to the mafia's new enforcer if they didn’t have too, the pair + jr’s mon ended up at more or less the closest seats to her, resulting in RIka offering the newest seeker a ”Hi there” of her own while Jr was busy corralling his minions.
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town S.O.U. Building Seiran Clinic Underground Roadway (Seiran Rebel Base Outskirts) Below City of glass entrance (plate maintenance tunnel) Vandelay Campus (Alleyway) Arahabaki’s entrance Deep Ground - the Source
As twilight descended upon the Crystal Spire, so too did its princess. Though born on dragon wings, adorned with armor of blood and gold surrounded by black cloth, the princess did have one thing that made her fit in with the heavenly host.
Admittedly she wasn’t very good with it yet, at least when it came to playing actual music. Her recently discovered hearing issues certainly weren't helping with that. Still the angels she had been working alongside this last week had not complained, for thorough the more or less on a whim fusion with the beautiful Norah had ironically not given her an ear for the melodic, it had given her a power entirely suited to war.
friday night
The princess and her flock wheeled through the skies towards a group of angels returning from the front. Their timing was odd, as was their low flight path that kept them out of sight of the battlements of the floating city, but it was hardly unheard of apparently. Their mission might have run long and their exhaustion could have been dragging them down.
Still, in light of the first devastating outbreak of corruption within the city walls, Midna had been requested to switch over from her old task of from simply saturation twilight volley bombing islands to acting as part of a newly formed night watch who were on the lookout for infiltrators. With darkness adapted eyes, she certainly was more suited to it than the day loving angels, but it was playing hell with her sleep schedule and ability to socialize with the other seekers.
Still, in this moment, it might all prove to have been a necessary sacrifice as she swooped down towards the group, a squad of the silver clad feathers following in her wake.
”Or this could have all been a waste of time” she groused openly, only for her eyes to lock onto what by its weapon should have been the feather-staff in the squad they were approaching, but as they got closer she could see it was anything but.
The figure, with feathers, gleaming armor, and hovering halo, might well be mistakable for an angel, but it was avian in nature rather than being a winged human, which most certainly put it out of place amongst skyworld’s ranks. It wasn’t alone either, as two more of the avian angels were among the company, their more compact weapons and sticking close to the squad’s feather-shields causing them stand out less among the others.
A strum of the lyre she’d taken into battle was all the warning her squad (who’d she’d had since day 2 of her time here) needed to take up a battle formation, and just in time too.
At the sight of them approaching, rather than call out a greeting, the opposing squad’s feather bows drew, notched, and let fly a volley of arrows towards them. Their motions in doing this however were jerky and clumsy, as if being puppeted rather than acting under their own control. This slowed them down, which, combined with Midna’s musical warning, meant that rather than strike down her squad the arrows to slam into Midna and her squad’s 2 feather-shields’ shields as the other feathers moved to take cover behind them.
As the arrows harmlessly fell away, Midna strummed strings on her lyre that had begun to glow the moment they had hit the shields, leading her to play a tune that caused the musical instrument to shoot out trios of musical bolts at one in three of the opposing bows. These joined the cactus needles her flygon was unleashing in a similar retaliatory volley in response to her being struck, and together they sought to make a stinging point.
Trying to hurt a princess’ people came with consequences.
”Return fire!” Midna commanded as she played, prompting their shield wall to split apart, and allowing their own bows to lose their own volley into the far less coordinated opposing squad.
Musical bolts, needles and arrows struck the opposing feathers, their shields doing nothing to protect them and instead being physically dragged by the avian angels to protect them and only them. As a result the shots struck several of the enemy feathers, but when they did they did not flinch in pain or cry out in fear. Instead black sludge seeped from their wounds as the reanimated puppets of the corruption surged forwards to attack their former comrades.
”Hold!” Midna commanded her squad, before moving to the front of them and ordering her flygon to ”Bug Buzz them!”
The charging corrupted feathers ran into a wall of ear splitting sound, black ooze dripping from their ears, skin splitting and feathered ripped loose to reveal the rot within as the flygon unleashed the high pitched wall of insectile sound upon them.
It would have shattered a mortal charge, but the puppets merely faltered for a moment, before they pushed on heedless of their wounds. That reaction would in turn have shattered the nerve of a mortal company, but with unshakable faith, the feathers merely unleashed a battle cry of “For Father!” and counter charged.
Swords and shields clashed while feather staffs cast supportive spells of healing despite the dark smothering their day empowered miracles. In the skies, there were no neat battle lines however, especially with how the two sides looked far too similar to each other in the dark, and so the fighting quickly devolved into a chaotic and confusing mess where it was hard for the faithful to tell friend from foe.
But not for Midna.
Her shield crashed into the side of a black bleeding feather sword, crippling its wing and sending it plummeting down towards the waters far below, while her flygon’s talons lashed out, cutting another down.
All the while she kept playing, every third block or bloody wound her troops made or received resulting in their attacker being hammered by a musical might that had no difficulty telling friend from foe.
”Hold fast, stick together! Let my song strike them down!”
In a twist of fate however, she was not the only one with magical music. Her bows, unable to fire into the melee for fear of striking their friends in the back, moved up and around it in order to take shots at the corrupted counterparts who had no such qualms. When they did however, a pair of trumpets sounded, building up in intensity till the pair of non staff wielding avian angels fired large pink and gold orbs from their instruments. Combined with the shields guarding them and the arrows of the corrupted feathers adding to their firepower, the feather-bows quickly found themselves in a losing battle.
So Minda intervened.
She broke out of the melee and blasted down towards the corrupt ranged forces. Arrows flew and trumpets sounded in response to her charge. However, the flygon barrel rolled and weaved, while the princess shielded herself and played a song of consequences for every blow that did land as sand poured from the twilight realm to sing a song of incoming pain that could not be stopped.
”You will be swept away!”
The sand storm struck a few moments before she did, grains sandpapering away feathers and skin, before the princess herself arrived and blew it all away with the force of her arrival, for she did not arrive alone. A pair of portals opened, launching her wolfos and darknut out of them, both boosted to titanic proportions. The beast slashing and bit at the bows, while the undead knight delivered a sky shattering cleave that sliced a corrupted shield in half, before both dropped down into portals rather than plummeting down into the drink below.
Midna’s strike was no less devastating, shadow hand smashing out in a wide angle slap, breaking through the corrupted feather shield’s defenses and launching it clear away from the avian angel, onto which her flygon pounced, tearing away its marble armor facade and truly exposing the nightmare within.
”Disgusting”
Then she was away, rising up and away as the storm closed back in, smothering and blinding the shattered remains of the corrupt ranged forces. Yet rather than victory cheers Midna’s accent ran into screams that the sound of her own assault had rendered her already poor hearing deaf too.
Rather than protect the ranged angels, or provide support to its fighters like the feather staff it was imitating, the final angel had charged the way she had come. Now, ash and spirits of feather swords falling around it, the avian angel was buckling the defenses of a feather shield with repeated unholily strong cleaves of its leathery sharp staff top, heedless to the musical bolts hammering into it and the shields own attempts to stab it.
”Dive, get clear of it!” she commanded, right before the spike of the avian angel’s weapon skewered right through the feather’s shield, tip stopping an inch from his visor slit. Credit to him, the shield barely flinched, and immediately abandoned his breached defense, raising two feet up and kicking off the back of his shield before dropping like a stone to do as she’d commanded.
The remaining swords also fell back, the action signaling out the few remaining corrupt from the righteous and allowing them to turn on them while the angel reached up and ripped the stuck shield off of its weapon. It then barely reacted as a volley of arrows from the feather bows failed to pincushion it.
”Focus on cleaning up the stranglers, I’ve got this one!” she called out, causing the avian’s eyes to snap to her.
As the bows turned and started to pick off the sand storm blasted survivors of the corrupt ranged forces, the avian cried out a screeching warcry, the first sound the otherwise silent forces of the corruption had made, and dove towards her, heedless of the scorching purple dragon’s breath her flygon blasted up at it.
The avian angel pulled its weapon back, and then swept it in an arc towards Midna’s unshielded side, only for her to roll her beast’s flight so she was upside down and could block the bow with her shield, earning it nothing but a retaliatory needle barrage for its efforts. She and it spun away from each other, banking around for another pass. She lashed out with a shadow fist strike on that, which it blocked with the wide flat of its staff head, before retaliating with a claw swipe that gouged a cut into her flying steed.
Again, song and needles only scratched its marble armor, and so as they closed to clash a third time, Minda committed to the strike with all that she could. She swept her shadow hand over head, but rather than in a slap or punch, the hand closed around the hilt of a blade, before ripping the several meter long sawblade covered the Dead End Express out of the twilight realm in a crescent moon strike, and slamming it down on top of the avian angel.
”Get shredded!”
The saws on the weapon once wielded by the angel’s kind’s nemesis ripped and tore, stripping away the foe’s armor and exposing its fleshy insides. Yet the massive strike wasn’t without consequence, as the princess herself lost her one handed grip on her steed due to the sheer mass and momentum of the mighty blow, and was sent plummeting towards her enraged foe.
Rather than panic, she released the weapon and her shield, sending both spinning into portals, and then, still playing her lyre, unleashed a cyclone dive kick she’d charged with her sandstorm, slamming into her foe and stunning it for five seconds. More than what she needed to grab onto it, crescent moon slash and then stab a serrated blade straight into its monstrous neck.
”Choke on it”
As it turned to ash below her, she went into freefall, down down down towards the sea below, sailing past where the feathers were working together to take down the heavily damaged avian angels. The one stripped of its armor fell with relative ease, arrows skewering corrupt flesh till it was overwhelmed, while the feather blades hacked away at its wings of the more intact one and remaining barrier bearing feather shield kept its focus, enduring its powerful claw strikes.
Soon enough it would fall too, but Midna would not be joining it in the drink below, for the feather shield who had lost his bulwark before dove down after her, joined hands with her, and then slowed her fall enough that she could land back on her steed without shattering her bones on impact.
back in the present
In the end, it had been a victory, but far from a bloodless one. It also had not been the most hard fought of such actions either, as each day the night attacks grew more and more bold and dangerous.
There wasn't much of her squad left at this point.
So she should have been in full support of pushing forwards and breaking the corruption for good before things got any worse, and yet.
And yet...
She remembered her dream, where victory in the dead zone had merely meant that D would come to destroy the victor inorder to start the cycle again. She remembered the news of the state of Peach’s castle they’d gotten, flame clock drained, no life left due to their ending of the conflict there.
”Is us being here, doing this, just making things worse?” she asked the others who had gathered for the attack. She’d picked the top of the the stands for their reunion point, one that they overlook the forces as they gathered, and conveniently give them something else to watch as people sparred down below if they didn’t want to stare at their destination hanging in the distance.
”The corruption’s spitting out more and more horrors in response to us breaking the equilibrium, and if we do fully shatter it, then death still comes here, one way or the other”
“Oh, one second” Ranye said to the mysterious book finder lady (see this is why she needed a name to put the face. Or lack of face) as she hustled on along the shelves to where Sana was looking around them.
“I mean, it seems to fit the general gist of what we are looking for, so yes, we should for sure take a skim read and see if we can find her specifically before getting it” Rayne replied to the request, handing over the tome, before explaining her confidence was because of “the lady in the hood back there who seems like she comes here a lot recommended it, which was very nice of her” before turning to point her out.
Appearance: Edward is a middle aged human with brown hair, sandy skin and a chiseled complexion that is all angles.
He wears the armor of a commonwealth Dreadnought: dark gray armored plate mail with epaulet adored shoulder pads, a red sash, and red pantaloons.
After fusing with both a Feathershield and a Featherbow he is now is a little bit shorter and more slender. His hair is a bit longer and straighter, and is platinum blonde with brown streaks. He's received a silver mask to be worn over the eyes, embellished with wing decorations. His armor is shiny smoky silver, his sash is now a royal blue, and his boots are now leather. The red cloth beneath his cuirass has lengthened into a proper fauld. Angelic wings sprout from his back, though the feathers are a sooty, black-speckled gray rather than white.
His steed is a brown stallion adorned in a red cloud and gray metal horse armor that menaces with spikes.
Personality: A resourceful, honest, and a highly trained and distinguished military commander. Once a bit of a stickler to the rules, and still very much able to quote them, and blind to the excesses of his nation due to believing firmly in what it stood for, Edward has long since put that aside in the name of living up to the egalitarian spirit of its ideals and doing what is right. Even now when the Commonwealth is dead and buried. Perhaps more so. Especially after a stint of horrors beyond the void madness caused him, for a time, to twist those principles into an engine of brutal and bloody conquest.
He is generally well spoken, be it delivering orders or rousing speeches, as well as fairly personable when the time allows. He also has nerves of steel, and is a true professional even when under immense stress. However, as a man of (magi-)science he has a tendency to turn his nose up at mysticism and traditions that exist purely for tradition’s sake.
Background: Edward Portsmith was once a Dreadnaught of the Commonwealth Empire, a nation situated next to the valley of wonders on the blessed continent of the world of Athela.
Said Empire began as a joining of the many species of the world for mutual protection and the sharing of knowledge. Though it set out with benign intentions, ambition and technological development quickly outgrew the concepts of the original charter, resulting in strife, both internally between competing factions, and externally with the other major power in the land, the elven court.
A group known as the Shadowborn sought to take advantage of this strive to file all out war, weakening them both in order to make the realm easy pickings for their extradimensional masters. However Edward, along with his childhood friend Leana and a group known as the Torchbearers managed to unpick the conspiracy, though not before much blood and death was sown in its name.
Despite their efforts, it was not enough to save their nation, nor their world. Across Athela worldgates, portals to other worlds in the multidimensional space known as the astral sea, opened, and from them came Godir, all powerful sorcerer kings styling themselves as gods, who had been banished long ago for crimes committed against the world. Edward and Leana stood at the head of the commonwealth’s defenses, but in its weakened state, and against the ancient magics of the Godir, they stood little chance as entire armies were sent plummeting through rits and the astral sea, where they were left adrift in a realm of maddening chaos. Through Leana’s magic and Edward’s ingenuity they and some of their forces survived this intended death sentence, eventually crashing on a distant world. There they rebuilt, but, haunted by their travels through the astral sea, something went wrong in many of their minds. Including Edward’s.
He led his fellow madmen on a crusade across the worlds of the astral sea, slashing and burning any who might bow to a Godir, even those who served the more benevolent Godir that had not invaded his home realm, or even stood opposed to those that had.
Concerned about her friend, Leana reached out to the very people he sought to destroy, and, with one of their help, tracked down the source of Edward’s madness. In studying ancient lore she came to find out about the ancient evil known as the Urrath, that the Shadowborn had truly served, and how had gripped his mind. With this knowledge in hand, and with the Godir’s help, she managed to free him from the Urrath’s tendrils before he destroyed either himself or everyone else.
Sickened by what he had done and what had been done to him, Edward turned himself and his forces against the Urrath’s servants whose existence had been unveiled by the investigations of his condition. Yet they struck first, invading the realm of Athelahe had once called home, a realm he once again went to the defense of. Alongside him fought the very Godir he had been pitted against, only for Galeem’s light to strike and capture them all in a snapshot with it's brilliant light.
In the Now: Edward has found himself fighting a different corruption on a different set of islands alongside a different set of divine beings. Without the backing of the commonwealth or its even lesser successor, he has found himself acting as an independent mercenary, providing flaming armaments and disposable spear walls to augment the angel’s forces. On a more personal level however, he is interested in the various Maker and Zonai constructs that dot the islands, and how he might be able to claim that magitech for himself, despite the dangers of the corruption infesting some of them.
Job: Dreadnaught
Specialty: Edward brings a small army to the field, as well as party wide buffs, and long ranged magical support. He’s also not a half bad fighter either, though while a fair cut above the rank and file, he is no one man army.
Inventory:
Soldier's supplies: Rations, water flask, a bed roll, shaving equipment, spare cloths, writing supplies, a journal, soap, and everything else a professional soldier would need out on campaign.
Machete and Pistol: Two piratical weapons bound together. The machete is short and broad, dealing unremarkable slash damage while the pistol is a flintlock, with short range, high recoil, and deceptively big damage. However, the pistol is empty and does not accept ammunition. The only way to load it is by landing two subsequent hits with the machete. They share durability and upgrades.
Enchanted Buckler: a durable buckler that can wielded hands free (though it is rather heavy). The crystal can absorb energy from kinetic impacts, and can then release them as a radial shockwave when performing a ground point.
Dove Plume: an enchanted feather reinforced with silver normally worn in a hat or helm that slightly increases the wearers reaction time
Halos(x40): these facsimiles of symbols of divinity still hold some power that might be of interest the right buyer, and to the wrong one they still glitter like gold.
Designate Target (tier 1 Combat Spell): surrounds one target in a blood red aura that makes them count as flanked and take 25% more damage for 3 seconds, as well as adding 2 stacks of the marked debuff for 9 (which help guide the aim of those trying to strike/shoot the target, decreasing their evasiveness by 10% by each stack). Can target anything as long as Edward can see it.
Magelock Cannon (tier 3 unit): Magitech engineering’s solution to building a maglock too big for someone to carry, which is to turn the weapon into a self propelled gun. This large cannon fires not cannon balls, but instead magical rounds that, upon impact, denote in such a way as to create a linear shockwave three soldiers wide that will pulse forwards, potentially devastating six entire ranks of enemy soldiers should they be so tightly packed. It is also capable of moving, anchoring itself (which takes 5 seconds), aiming, firing and reloading (over 5 seconds) entirely independent of a crew due to being a magical construct.
Defensively, it sports typical construct stats: highly reinforced vs physical ranged, decent armor vs physical melee, very little resistance vs magic, and a weakness to electric attacks.
Searing weapons (tier 1 enchantment): melee and ranged physical attack of the caster and their allies are ignited, doing 10% less physical damage, but 20% extra fire damage, as well as being able to inflict a burning debuff on their foes on 60% of their strikes (weak fast attacks only have 30%, strong slow attacks have 90%, and magic resistance reduces the chance). The burning debuff deals a small amount of fire damage over 10 seconds, but can be stacked up to 5 times on a single target to give them a proper roasting.
Bronze and Copper (tier 1 and tier 3 units): Edward can animate squads of 6 human sized copper golems or squads of 2 far more durable and dangerous bronze golems who tower twice the height of their lesser kin. As golems, they are heartless machines entirely at the beck and call of their summoner. Both kinds are armed with caverly/monster slaying polearm, with which bronze golems are capable of making aoe cleaving attacks with their helbards that can hit multiple foes. They are reinforced against physical ranged attacks, fairly durable to physical melee attacks, but weak to magical strikes and especially electricity. Generated by a singular spell as the squad is, they are unable to split into smaller units. While this seems inconvenient, one upside of this is that excess magical healing done to the squad can be used by the spell to resurrect destroyed members of it.
Sundering strikes (tier 1 enchantment): melee and ranged physical attack of the caster and their allies are enchanted with sparkling golden armor breaking aura. This causes them to be able to inflict a sundered defense debuff on their foes on 90% of their strikes (weak fast attacks only have 60%, strong slow attacks have 120%, and physical resistance reduces the chance). The sundered defense debuff reduces enemy armor and status effect resistance by 10%, lasts for 30 seconds, but can be stacked up to 5 times for a total of a 50% reduction.
The debuff visually looks like golden glowing cracks on the armor of the foe, which become larger and more numerous the more stacks have been applied.
Wings of Albion (Feather-Bow): allowing the host to take flight. He can only fly about as fast as a dove and flight is quite stamina intensive.
Skills:
Martial Expertise: From horseback riding and gryphon piloting to wielding swords, bows, guns and lances, Eward was trained in every martial art practiced in his commonwealth before it was destroyed, making him very adaptable to different equipment.
Mana Fuel Cells: Without an empire to mine mana crystals to fuel his magical warmachine, Edward relies of a set of megi-mechnaical devices that can compress ambient mana into volumes he can actually use. Tier 1/2/3/4/5 unit squads and enchantments require the allocation up 1/2/4/7/12 cells each to maintain, while un-allocation cells can be used to cast Tier 1/2/3/4/5 tome spells, draining 1/2/4/7/12 each cast. The cells expended to cast spells can be recharged using a simple ritual, though it is one that is easily disturbed and thus only really usable outside of combat. Edward has access to 6 at level one and gains 2 more every subsequent level
Mirror Weakness (Feather-Sheild): gives the host 1 PP. It's spent automatically when a negative status effect is inflicted on him to reflect that status onto the caster instead. If multiple debuffs are cast at once, all are reflected. The host regains all PP at the start of a new engagement.
Imperial Armory: the user can designate a medium sized location (such as a royal vault or set of storage rooms) to be his armory, and can make it so that anyone in his confidence can gain instant access to anything found therein from anywhere in the world. This can include anything from consumables to weapons, armor, and even personal transportation such as mounts or vehicles, as long as they actually fit in the designated locations.
However, putting things back is a more involved process, requiring a small ritual that the armory itself can avoid due to the power invested in it. This makes it better for retrieving the tools specifically needed for the job than hot swapping out equipment on the fly, unless the person using it is willing to throw away the team’s shared supplies.
Other Boons:
Heavenswing Shield: A slender kiteshield emblazoned with white that's well-suited for safeguarding an offensive frontline fighter. Equipping it seems to clear one's mind and tighten one's reflexes, offering a small boost to accuracy and evasion.
Soot Sprint (Hestia) - while sprinting, a fiery aura burns away most projectiles and inflict Scorch on those responsible, a short-lived but fiery DoT that intensifies based on instances applied
Weaknesses:
Preparative magic: Tome enchanting and summoning spells are rituals, and are therefore not viable for using on the fly. Instead Edward needs to come into a fight with a pre-prepared and buffed squad, rather than forming that toolkit on the fly. It also means that his losses will not be replaceable unless he can get out of a fight and get space to rebuild his forces.
Breached mental fortress: his dip into the astral sea and mental manipulation by the Urrath has left cracks in his mind, ready to be exploited by more direct assault, making him a 50% vulnerability to psychic attacks and effects.
Science over superstition: Believes in cold hard facts and is liable to ignore tradition or superstition based wisdom or warnings about forbidden places or powers.
Walk in the Light (Feather-Sheild): Revives a minor stamina regen and accuracy penalty at night
Wing Stop (Feather-Bow): which makes him vulnerable to projectiles that deal pierce damage and other attacks/weapons effective against fliers
Spirits:
Featherstaff (striker): An angelic healer capable of working potent supportive miracles, offset by his long, 2.5-minute cooldown. When invoked, he can use Overheal to restore HP to a whole row of allies at once, with any extra health increasing their max HP up to 150%. Honed Healing can grant a row of allies a minute-long buff that doubles healing received, and Holy Cradle can grant a row of allies a thirty-second buff that allows them to survive a single lethal blow at 1 HP
Rapport:
Midna: 9 (C)
Fellow Exiled leader, her heart is in the right place, even if her attitude does not befit her responsibilities
Edelgard von Hresvelg: 2
Both found themselves in Skyworld, fighting a goddess's war. An odd fate for both indeed
mk 2, updated inventory,in the now, powers, skills and weaknesses
The Last Dreadnought
Edward Portsmith
Origin: Age of wonders 3
Appearance: Edward is a middle aged human with brown hair, sandy skin and a chiseled complexion that is all angles. He wears the armor of a commonwealth Dreadnought: dark gray armored plate mail with epaulet adored shoulder pads, a red sash, and red pantaloons. His steed is a brown stallion adorned in a red cloud and gray metal horse armor that menaces with spikes.
Personality: A resourceful, honest, and a highly trained and distinguished military commander. Once a bit of a stickler to the rules, and still very much able to quote them, and blind to the excesses of his nation due to believing firmly in what it stood for, Edward has long since put that aside in the name of living up to the egalitarian spirit of its ideals and doing what is right. Even now when the Commonwealth is dead and buried. Perhaps more so. Especially after a stint of horrors beyond the void madness caused him, for a time, to twist those principles into an engine of brutal and bloody conquest.
He is generally well spoken, be it delivering orders or rousing speeches, as well as fairly personable when the time allows. He also has nerves of steel, and is a true professional even when under immense stress. However, as a man of (magi-)science he has a tendency to turn his nose up at mysticism and traditions that exist purely for tradition’s sake.
Background: Edward Portsmith was once a Dreadnaught of the Commonwealth Empire, a nation situated next to the valley of wonders on the blessed continent of the world of Athela. Said Empire began as a joining of the many species of the world for mutual protection and the sharing of knowledge. Though it set out with benign intentions, ambition and technological development quickly outgrew the concepts of the original charter, resulting in strife, both internally between competing factions, and externally with the other major power in the land, the elven court. A group known as the Shadowborn sought to take advantage of this strive to file all out war, weakening them both in order to make the realm easy pickings for their extradimensional masters. However Edward, along with his childhood friend Leana and a group known as the Torchbearers managed to unpick the conspiracy, though not before much blood and death was sown in its name. Despite their efforts, it was not enough to save their nation, nor their world. Across Athela worldgates, portals to other worlds in the multidimensional space known as the astral sea, opened, and from them came Godir, all powerful sorcerer kings styling themselves as gods, who had been banished long ago for crimes committed against the world. Edward and Leana stood at the head of the commonwealth’s defenses, but in its weakened state, and against the ancient magics of the Godir, they stood little chance as entire armies were sent plummeting through rits and the astral sea, where they were left adrift in a realm of maddening chaos. Through Leana’s magic and Edward’s ingenuity they and some of their forces survived this intended death sentence, eventually crashing on a distant world. There they rebuilt, but, haunted by their travels through the astral sea, something went wrong in many of their minds. Including Edward’s. He led his fellow madmen on a crusade across the worlds of the astral sea, slashing and burning any who might bow to a Godir, even those who served the more benevolent Godir that had not invaded his home realm, or even stood opposed to those that had. Concerned about her friend, Leana reached out to the very people he sought to destroy, and, with one of their help, tracked down the source of Edward’s madness. In studying ancient lore she came to find out about the ancient evil known as the Urrath, that the Shadowborn had truly served, and how had gripped his mind. With this knowledge in hand, and with the Godir’s help, she managed to free him from the Urrath’s tendrils before he destroyed either himself or everyone else. Sickened by what he had done and what had been done to him, Edward turned himself and his forces against the Urrath’s servants whose existence had been unveiled by the investigations of his condition. He began an invasion of the umbral abyss, a tainted realm of floating islands filled with corrupted men and monsters, seeking to stop their spread into the waking world. Alongside him fought Godir he had been pitted against, only for Galeem’s light to strike and capture them all in a snapshot with it's brilliant light.
In the Now: Edward has found himself fighting a different corruption on a different set of islands alongside a different set of divine beings. Without the backing of the commonwealth or its even lesser successor, he has found himself acting as an independent mercenary, providing flaming armaments and disposable spear walls to augment the angel’s forces. On a more personal level however, he is interested in the various Maker and Zonai constructs that dot the islands, and how he might be able to claim that magitech for himself, despite the dangers of the corruption infesting some of them.
Job: Dreadnaught
Specialty: Edward brings a small army to the field, as well as party wide buffs, and long ranged magical support. He’s also not a half bad fighter either, though while a fair cut above the rank and file, he is no one man army.
Inventory:
A horse: Edward has ridden many the exotic steeds over the years, but when it comes down to it there’s nothing quite as dependable as a horse. Particularly this one is christened ForgeHeart and has been with him for a while now. Its saddle bags provide some extra local storage space.
magelock rifle: a magical high power musket with unlimited ammo, excellent range and the ability to ignore half the armor and magic resistance of the target. It is, however, too bulky to be fired mounted, has a poor rate of fire, and has a 60% accuracy rate . That last can however be addressed if the user activates a stabilizing spell that anchors them in place for a few moments, boosting the accuracy to 140%.
Sword and magelock pistol: much more suitable for mounted combat and skirmishing than the above. What the pistol lacks in range and raw damage it matches in penetration power and exceeds in terms of accuracy, while the blade can be used to put down foes who close the pistol's limited range. Pistol and blade can naturally be used separately, but they make for quite the effective team.
Soldier's supplies: Rations, water flask, a bed roll, shaving equipment, spare cloths, writing supplies, a journal, soap, and everything else a professional soldier would need out on campaign.
Designate Target (tier 1 Combat Spell): surrounds one target in a blood red aura that makes them count as flanked and take 25% more damage for 3 seconds, as well as adding 2 stacks of the marked debuff for 9 (which help guide the aim of those trying to strike/shoot the target, decreasing their evasiveness by 10% by each stack). Can target anything as long as Edward can see it.
Searing weapons (tier 1 enchantment): melee and ranged physical attack of the caster and their allies are ignited, doing 10% less physical damage, but 20% extra fire damage, as well as being able to inflict a burning debuff on their foes on 60% of their strikes (weak fast attacks only have 30%, strong slow attacks have 90%, and magic resistance reduces the chance). The burning debuff deals a small amount of fire damage over 10 seconds, but can be stacked up to 5 times on a single target to give them a proper roasting.
Bronze and Copper (tier 1 and tier 3 units): Edward can animate squads of 6 human sized copper golems or squads of 2 far more durable and dangerous bronze golems who tower twice the height of their lesser kin. As golems, they are heartless machines entirely at the beck and call of their summoner. Both kinds are armed with caverly/monster slaying polearm, with which bronze golems are capable of making aoe cleaving attacks with their helbards that can hit multiple foes. They are reinforced against physical ranged attacks, fairly durable to physical melee attacks, but weak to magical strikes and especially electricity. Generated by a singular spell as the squad is, they are unable to split into smaller units. While this seems inconvenient, one upside of this is that excess magical healing done to the squad can be used by the spell to resurrect destroyed members of it.
Skills:
Martial Expertise: From horseback riding and gryphon piloting to wielding swords, bows, guns and lances, Eward was trained in every martial art practiced in his commonwealth before it was destroyed, making him very adaptable to different equipment.
Mana Fuel Cells: Without an empire to mine mana crystals to fuel his magical warmachine, Edward relies of a set of megi-mechnaical devices that can compress ambient mana into volumes he can actually use. Tier 1/2/3/4/5 unit squads and enchantments require the allocation up 1/2/4/7/12 cells each to maintain, while un-allocation cells can be used to cast Tier 1/2/3/4/5 tome spells, draining 1/2/4/7/12 each cast. The cells expended to cast spells can be recharged using a simple ritual, though it is one that is easily disturbed and thus only really usable outside of combat. Edward has access to 6 at level one and gains 2 more every subsequent level
Weaknesses:
Preparative magic: Tome enchanting and summoning spells are rituals, and are therefore not viable for using on the fly. Instead Edward needs to come into a fight with a pre-prepared and buffed squad, rather than forming that toolkit on the fly. It also means that his losses will not be replaceable unless he can get out of a fight and get space to rebuild his forces.
Breached mental fortress: his dip into the astral sea and mental manipulation by the Urrath has left cracks in his mind, ready to be exploited by more direct assault, making him a 50% vulnerability to psychic attacks and effects.
Science over superstition: Believes in cold hard facts and is liable to ignore tradition or superstition based wisdom or warnings about forbidden places or powers.
Spirits:
N/A
Rapport:
ForgeHeart
A dependable steed if ever there was one, though Edward has been de-horsed enough to know to not get too attached to any individual steed.
That's pretty neat! I would probably guess without looking the game up that it's an RTS based on how his kit's set up. I have three notes: -Would you mind turning the image in the backstory section into an hyperlink image? -Could we be more specific about the 'place' that can be designated an armory? Does this mean a chest? A room? A whole building, of any size? A city? And so on -This one's tricky. For any ability, its limitations should be included in the power. IE if the Arbiter has energy shields, the fact that they can be depleted and will let him take damage until they recharge should be in the energy shield description and not at weakness. The fuel cell weakness for his units and casting point weakness for his tome spells should be included in their descriptions, something like 'Casting this spell subtracts from his total combat casting points, which is currently 2' could be added to all the tome spells. Of course, this means he'd need two more weaknesses.
1: done
2: I mean, uh, i was just thinking of the avenger armory tbh, but a dedicated small building sized facility. such as an actual armory, or a royal vault
3: I liked having a dedicated mechanics section fair enough. Hmmm, maybe if I combined the 2 resource types. Each new tome power adds 2 cells, which can either passively power units/enchantments, or be actively used to cast spells
So, for example, if we have 6 cells, and 3 copper golem squads, that leaves 3 cells unused which can then be used to cast Designate Target 3 times in each combat.
I'll take another think about weaknesses. codify not believing in superstitious nonsense as one. or some lingering rage/weakness from the time he was being mentally manipulated
oh look, pulled out of that game series you love when I include it
Edward Portsmith - the Last Dreadnought
Origin: Age of wonders 3 Appearance: Edward is a middle aged human with brown hair, sandy skin and a chiseled complexion that is all angles.
He wears the armor of a commonwealth Dreadnought: dark gray armored plate mail with epaulet adored shoulder pads, a red sash, and red pantaloons.
His steed is a brown stallion adorned in a red cloud and gray metal horse armor that menaces with spikes.
Personality: A resourceful, honest, and a highly trained and distinguished military commander. Once a bit of a stickler to the rules, and still very much able to quote them, and blind to the excesses of his nation due to believing firmly in what it stood for, Edward has long since put that aside in the name of living up to the egalitarian spirit of its ideals and doing what is right. Even now when the Commonwealth is dead and buried. Perhaps more so. Especially after a stint of horrors beyond the void madness caused him, for a time, to twist those principles into an engine of brutal and bloody conquest.
He is generally well spoken, be it delivering orders or rousing speeches, as well as fairly personable when the time allows. He also has nerves of steel, and is a true professional even when under immense stress. However, as a man of (magi-)science he has a tendency to turn his nose up at mysticism and traditions that exist purely for tradition’s sake.
Background: Edward Portsmith was once a Dreadnaught of the Commonwealth Empire, a nation situated next to the valley of wonders on the blessed continent of the world of Athela.
Said Empire began as a joining of the many species of the world for mutual protection and the sharing of knowledge. Though it set out with benign intentions, ambition and technological development quickly outgrew the concepts of the original charter, resulting in strife, both internally between competing factions, and externally with the other major power in the land, the elven court.
A group known as the Shadowborn sought to take advantage of this strive to file all out war, weakening them both in order to make the realm easy pickings for their extradimensional masters. However Edward, along with his childhood friend Leana and a group known as the Torchbearers managed to unpick the conspiracy, though not before much blood and death was sown in its name.
Despite their efforts, it was not enough to save their nation, nor their world. Across Athela worldgates, portals to other worlds in the multidimensional space known as the astral sea, opened, and from them came Godir, all powerful sorcerer kings styling themselves as gods, who had been banished long ago for crimes committed against the world. Edward and Leana stood at the head of the commonwealth’s defenses, but in its weakened state, and against the ancient magics of the Godir, they stood little chance as entire armies were sent plummeting through rits and the astral sea, where they were left adrift in a realm of maddening chaos.
Through Leana’s magic and Edward’s ingenuity they and some of their forces survived this intended death sentence, eventually crashing on a distant world. There they rebuilt, but, haunted by their travels through the astral sea, something went wrong in many of their minds. Including Edward’s.
He led his fellow madmen on a crusade across the worlds of the astral sea, slashing and burning any who might bow to a Godir, even those who served the more benevolent Godir that had not invaded his home realm, or even stood opposed to those that had.
Concerned about her friend, Leana reached out to the very people he sought to destroy, and, with one of their help, tracked down the source of Edward’s madness. In studying ancient lore she came to find out about the ancient evil known as the Urrath, that the Shadowborn had truly served, and how had gripped his mind. With this knowledge in hand, and with the Godir’s help, she managed to free him from the Urrath’s tendrils before he destroyed either himself or everyone else.
Sickened by what he had done and what had been done to him, Edward turned himself and his forces against the Urrath’s servants whose existence had been unveiled by the investigations of his condition. He began an invasion of the umbral abyss, a tainted realm of floating islands filled with corrupted men and monsters, seeking to stop their spread into the waking world. Alongside him fought Godir he had been pitted against, only for Galeem’s light to strike and capture them all in a snapshot with it's brilliant light.
In the Now: Edward has found himself fighting a different corruption on a different set of islands alongside a different set of divine beings. Without the backing of the commonwealth or its even lesser successor, he has found himself acting as an independent mercenary, providing flaming armaments and disposable spear walls to augment the angel’s forces.
Job: General Specialty: Edward brings a small army to the field, as well as party wide buffs, and long ranged magical support. He’s also not a half bad fighter either, though while a fair cut above the rank and file, he is no one man army.
Inventory:
A horse: Edward has ridden many the exotic steeds over the years, but when it comes down to it there’s nothing quite as dependable as a horse. Particularly this one, christened ForgeHeart which has been with him for a while now. Its pack provides some extra local storage space.
magelock rifle: a magical high power musket with unlimited ammo, excellent range and the ability to ignore half the armor and magic resistance of the target. It is, however, too bulky to be fired mounted, has a poor rate of fire, and has a 60% accuracy rate . That last can however be addressed if the user activates a stabilizing spell that anchors them in place for a few moments, boosting the accuracy to 140%.
Sword and magelock pistol: much more suitable for mounted combat and skirmishing than the above. What the pistol lacks in range and raw damage it matches in penetration power and exceeds in terms of accuracy, while the blade can be used to put down foes who close the pistol's limited range. Pistol and blade can naturally be used separately, but they make for quite the effective team.
Lv: 1 EXP: ////////// 0/10 Abilities:
Imperial Armory: the user can designate a place to be his armory, and can make it so that anyone in his confidence can gain instant access to anything found therein from anywhere in the world. However, putting things back is a more involved process, requiring a small ritual that the armory itself can avoid due to the power invested in it. This makes it better for retrieving the tools specifically needed for the job than hot swapping out equipment on the fly, unless the person using it is willing to throw away the team’s shared supplies.
Bronze and Copper (tier 1 and tier 3 units): Edward can animate squads of 6 human sized copper golems or squads of 2 far more durable and dangerous bronze golems who tower twice the height of their lesser kin. As golems, they are heartless machines entirely at the beck and call of their summoner. Both kinds are armed with caverly/monster slaying polearm, with which bronze golems are capable of making aoe cleaving attacks with their helbards that can hit multiple foes. They are reinforced against physical ranged attacks, fairly durable to physical melee attacks, but weak to magical strikes and especially electricity. Generated by a singular spell as the squad is, they are unable to split into smaller units. While this seems inconvenient, one upside of this is that excess magical healing done to the squad can be used by the spell web to resurrect destroyed members of it.
Searing weapons (tier 1 enchantment): melee and ranged physical attack of the caster and their allies are ignited, doing 10% less physical damage, but 20% extra fire damage, as well as being able to inflict a burning debuff on their foes on 60% of their strikes (weak fast attacks only have 30%, strong slow attacks have 90%, and magic resistance reduces the chance). The burning debuff deals a small amount of fire damage over 10 seconds, but can be stacked up to 5 times on a single target to give them a proper roasting.
Designate Target (tier 1 Combat Spell): surrounds one target in a blood red aura that makes them count as flanked and take 25% more damage for 3 seconds, as well as adding 2 stacks of the marked debuff for 9 (which help guide the aim of those trying to strike/shoot the target, decreasing their evasiveness by 10% by each stack). Can target anything as long as Edward can see it.
Skills:
Martial Expertise: From horseback riding and gryphon piloting to wielding swords, bows, guns and lances, Eward was trained in every martial art practiced in his commonwealth before it was destroyed, making him very adaptable to different equipment.
Weaknesses:
Champion without a kingdom: Without the dedicated infrastructure and assistance of entire cities at his beck and call, Edward is considerably more limited in his capacity to wage war. Instead of armies of miners stripping mana crystals from mana nodes, the Dreadnought’s magical war machine is fueled by a battery of small mana fuel cells that can only support a limited amount of troops and enchantments. He starts with 2, gaining two more per level. Tier 1/2/3/4/5 enchantments/unit squads take up 1/2/4/7/12 cells each.
Preparative magic: Tome enchanting and summoning spells are rituals, and are therefore not viable for using on the fly. Instead Edward needs to come into a fight with a pre-prepared and buffed squad, rather than forming that toolkit on the fly. It also means that his losses will not be replaceable unless he can get out of a fight and get space to rebuild his forces.
Combat Casting Points: Tome spells draw from a limited casting point pool that are recharged outside of combat via a short but easily disrupted ritual, making him less effective in dragged out engagements. As with the above, Edward starts with 2 CCPs and gains 2 per level, and Tier 1/2/3/4/5 spells expend 1/2/4/7/12 points each.
Spirits:
N/A
Rapport:
ForgeHeart
A dependable steed if ever there was one, though Edward has been de-horsed enough to know to not get too attached to any individual steed.
wintersoldier
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Lord Zee
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FunnierPrez
