Now the sky is filled with just over one hundred ships, hanging from gigantic balloons filled with lighter-than-air volcanic gas, banded with thin steel rings engraved with runes of protection against fire. That particular fault (intentional of course, don’t want to make things too easy...) was noticed early on and corrected swiftly. Even now Laressa has over five thousand elite shock troops training with enchanted slowfall boots to plummet from them and establish perimeters for the landing of regular troops. Excellent, few would have had the adaptability to understand how to use such a revolutionary weapon. While actual command seems to be a weak area for her, strategy, logistics, and the long-game of planning seem to be her forte.

Ugantu is, as always, disappointing. In the time it took your wonderful elf to completely /revolutionize/ warfare as this world knows it he has done nothing but put down the first of what promises to be only the first of several food riots. Boring. You remove his sense of taste on a whim in return and begin wondering if it is even worth checking in on him any longer.

Returning to your heroes, you observe as they continue on their journey. Tissa’s attempts at divine contact are becoming frustrating, however, so you wait until they reach the next port. As the ship finishes docking and the trio strides down the gangway you cast about, looking for a suitable item.... ah, there! A titanic man-of-war from some foreign land, blown here by a storm and undergoing repairs from the looks of it. Flicking your mental wrist, you snap the mast in twain before sending it plummeting down at her. Engaged in conversation with the captain regarding his fee, she hardly has time to spin at the sound of the enormous crack and shouts of warning. Looking up only as it is upon her, she lets loose a cry and drops to one knee and instinctively throwing her arms up to shield herself before the enormous chunk of wood slams into her.

The twins, having noticed before she but too far away to do anything, quickly run over with weapons drawn, calling her name in a slightly panicked tone. As the dust settle, however, they freeze at the astonishing scene: Tissa, wreathed in blazing white armor so bright it hurts to look at. Draped across her form, the protection appears as nothing so much as plate-mail mantled in white flame, constantly being blown behind her as if in a great gale. On her left arm lies a matching shield, shimmering white and translucent. And finally, most astonished of all, the unharmed paladin herself wearing them, wide-eyed and open mouthed.

“That is SO COOL!”; “We want one!” the twins cry in unison, running over to the paladin as she dismisses the defense.

Excellent. But one question remains... now what?

Give Ugantu a little bit of prodding to get off his ass and shape up so that at the very least he becomes a suitable speed bump for the rest of the lot.

He can be the first season villain.

>>14420928
So you like... want to create a sharp object and impale him on it? Prodding right?

If not then please do elaborate.

Fucking Ugantu. He's gonna get put down before he even has a chance to be a mini-boss at this rate.

Check what Ugantus advisers are telling him to do. If they haven't already, get them to push him to start raiding the cities and ships of some of their many enemies to get food for their own people. Ugantu was a pirate before we buffed him, he should be able to manage this.

Ugantu is a lost cause for us, but I wouldn't put it past Laressa to bring him under her control, and do something productive with him.

Unless we made him immune to the mind control. I forget.

Where are the heroes heading? I missed the last part of the last thread.

http://archive.easymodo.net/tg/thread/14397582

>>14421230
Sup/tg/ fucked up the archive of the last thread, so easymodo will have to do. Good thing this isn't a drawquest.

>>14421230
They are heading to Kaza, but to get there will take just over a year to sail around the continent, plus changover time between ships and whatever sidequests you throw out there for them.

>>14421209
Yes, you made him immune to both her eyes and dagger.

Damn it. If memory serves we told Laressa that Ugantu was the greatest threat to her power at the moment and here he is, making a liar out of us.

This will not do.

>>14421314
Oh well.

Let's make ourselves another villain.

>>14421334
It's still true though isn't it? She's doing the evil advisor behind the scenes thing so nobody is really looking to take her down.

>>14421334
Ugantu controls the seas and is immune to her powers. It is her greatest threat, potentially.

She's aborting him.

>>14421314
It's actually too bad for our Paladin, that fancy bracer we gave her won't do shit against Ugantu's magic immunity. But then we didn't give her that just for him.

Actually, since Ugantu is not going to be in position to be a decent rival for Laressa I think it might be good to go back and size up the remaining hero potentials from thread IV. Two of them would make fine BBEGs, and the remaining one has the skill and drive necessary to raid the ruins for the items and artifacts the first two will need to take Ugantu's place as a rival for the elf. And the best part is we won't even need to throw around boons for this to work.

>>14421334
At the time, he really was the greatest threat. But he also turned out to be boring, so we're going to make a new greatest threat.

Also, +support for >>14421041 Getting Ugantu to start raiding other countries will help in legitimizing what we told Laressa. I wonder if Ugantu's ship control ability will work on airships too?

Okay, so try to prod Ugantu into doing something and make another villain.

How you intend to go about this would be good to know. As in, a course of action or plan. Will start writing in about 15 mins.

>>14421403
Dude you could have at least linked to the archive http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/14365301/

Alright, so the people in question are Toric Ral Myres D’An, Palal Greenward, and Vassik the Red. The question is how would we get them to work together? Maybe we should just take a look at what they are doing at the moment and try and get a better sense of who they are before we begin planning how to build them into interesting villains?

>>14421481
Hey, would it be possible for us to spy on the paladins god? Or all the gods? It'd be nice to know what they are planning to do about the things we have meddled with. I mean, you'd think Ugantu's immunity to divine magic alone should be freaking them out.

Ugantu is going to be such an anti-climax. I'm all for frying his brain and taking his body as a puppet with which we wreak all sorts of havoc in order to give Laressa a challenge.

As for our heroes, the ship they're on should maroon on a lone island, where they meet a crotchety old hermit with a knack for magic and lechery. He'll join them and be the perverted adviser type.

Tired of watching Ugantu squander the gifts you gave, you resolve to set him on the path to conquest through proxies. Specifically, his advisors. Moving through them one by one you plant the idea that convincing the First Freed to go to war is the only way to solve the famine. Most of them, however, are focused on attempting to get trade running smoothly again and the idea is quite difficult to set in place. In the end you leave over a quarter of his advisors dead or comatose, but in half of those that remain the push for war is strongly set.

Still... he has proven most distressing. So much so that, well, you think that another villain is needed. Eschewing new stock, you instead return to the city of Mardana-Fel. It provided you with a trio of excellent heroes, after all, so perhaps you can harvest darkness from it as well as light. The three individuals you left behind before remain, though the status of one has changed. Ral Myres, a Toric of House D’an, has been gravely wounded and lies fevered in in his room at the Last Refuge, Vassik’s in in the center of the darkened city.

Likewise Vassik the Red himself is there, minding guests and refreshing dark glyphs etched into key points of his establishment. Eventually he finishes his duties as proprietor and excuses himself, slipping unseen into a secret passage and descending far below. Striding down an ancient winding staircase, he moves deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth, past powerful wards both ancient and undiminished by the passage of time... wards not even his dark goddess, you are sure, is able to pass. Arriving at last at the foot of the stair he opens a sealed door and passes into a vast chamber filled with all manner of potent magical apparati, ancient tomes, and in the center a bloodstained altar.

After sealing the door he first retrieves a ice-cold drink from an old magical cabinet spelled to keep its contents cold (magical artifacts: practical and convenient! scavenge yours at a ruin near you!) then moves to a desk set into an alcove in the wall and sits in front of an open tome, settling down to read. For hours. Bored, you skim through the tome you note it is a truly ancient treatise detailing “Orbs of Divinity” and their applications. Huh.

Bored, you snap away and find your next target, Palal Greenward. Though you have the minor worry you will need to actually spend precious boring seconds looking for him, you are pleasantly surprised to find him sitting in the center of the “grove” meditating. Not much of a druid’s grove you note, however, looking around at the twisted and sparsely leafed trees that form a protective barrier for the druids against the horrors that lurk outside. Even as you watch he directs a titanic amount of power downward into the earth, spreading out in a searching pattern, looking for treasures within the ruins.

Unfortunately for him he is stymied by two things: First and most obvious are the wardings around said treasures. Though you are able to pass them as if they did not exist, they were crafted by those who fought on equal terms with gods. Not so easy for a mortal to penetrate. Second and less obvious is the innate resistance and lifelessness of the earth in Mardana-Fel. Bleak and barren, it seems to greedily drink power poured into it without end, as if the life and energy have been stripped from it so completely that only an insatiable void remains.

The archdruid, however, is undeterred. With a truly epic effort he redoubles his focus and pushes further outward still, eventually breaching a vault with weakened and damaged wardings. Withdrawing, he barely managed to scrawl the location in the dirt next to him before collapsing in exhaustion.

>>14421983
I said I would start writing in 15. That means I took 31 minutes.

>>14422002
Deleted my post in apology.

>>14421986
Well, the obvious thing to do is to throw some sort of divinatory object into the place he just uncovered which can tell him to do whatever we want.

>>14422107
To expand on this concept: Let's go with the whole creepy druid theme here. Create a tiny hibernating creature within the dungeon, inside a jar or something, which he'll be able to wake up. Make it a symbiont- something that, if he uses it, will live inside him, and feed on his magic. Give it the ability to access -serious- divinatory powers if he pumps enough magic into it, but only for a few seconds. Make sure it's designed so that he's always glimpsing the path to whatever it is that he wants, and that it's not entirely controllable.

Then, when we want him to do something, we leave a note in his item so that he'll learn whatever information we want him to learn next time he feeds it. Good times for all.

>you note it is a truly ancient treatise detailing “Orbs of Divinity” and their applications.

Hey, I think we know where one of those is! I love how everything is so interconnected.

>Ral Myres, a Toric of House D’an, has been gravely wounded and lies fevered in in his room

Well that's no good. He's useless like that.

>Palal Greenward.

Now here's a good starting point. First, as we already know what he is looking for, let's take a look at those treasures he just located and see if they are what he wanted and how difficult they'd be for him to obtain. If they are beyond his mean currently then he'll need help, which could be an avenue to getting him and Ral working together; he cures Ral in exchange for Ral's assistance in recovering what there is to recover. If the objects are within Palal's means to obtain, then we'll just make it a touch more difficult so that he is forced to seek the help of an experienced warrior.

Now getting Vassik involved may be more complected. I suppose it depends on what is found? Maybe we should just focus on Palal and Ral for now, Vassik is the one who's ambitions are most likely obviously BBEG material, but he doesn't need to be involved immediately.

>>14422355
Yeah, I wonder if the Twins still have that orb?

Hm. out of what we have, the druid is probably the best stock for villain. His motivations are good, but he is warped by the world. I like it.

>>14422293 is interesting.
He can find that his life energies have been absorbed by a single artifact and only because he's been feeding it his magics that he is able to see it.
The Beast of Aurin.
The Beast of Aurin does not seem like a beast. A black hardened apple hides the true beast, a fleshy-serpentine parasite. However, it can hang to the druid, strengthen him, change him, give him power beyond his capabilities. A symbotic creature, we can give him powers as and when we deem it necessary.

Hey what if we turn Ral into a servant of Nurgle? That or the Druid.

>>14422491
We'd have to make Nurgle first, and I'm just not feelin' it.

>>14422404
>>14422355
>>14422293
Well in order to do any of this we'll need to go check the vault he found.

I like the idea of planting a corrupting artifact in the vault the druid will be checking. Slowly turning him evil as it gives him powers so that he doesn't notice it.

All Vassik needs is a map to the orb, and he's set.

>>14421977
>In the end you leave over a quarter of his advisors dead or comatose, but in half of those that remain the push for war is strongly set.

Hopefully the sudden deaths of a fair number of his advisers will be perceived as an attack.

>>14422620
If the twins sold their orb we could just arrange for him or his agents to discover who purchased it.

Palal would be best to move on, you decide. Not a classic villain to be sure, but you encountered more than one mad or militant druid in your mortal days. All he needs is a push, and for that you’ve just the thing. A mindworm. An interesting creature you encountered in a now-destroyed universe, they bonded with the host’s brain and enhanced his intelligence and reaction time in return for sustenance. With a few modifications, however...

A few flicks and it’s done. A mindworm created, alive and in stasis within a clear jar, sitting in the recently discovered treasure room. The modifications made, no longer does it enhance intelligence and perception but, rather, with a suitable magical influx it will manifest prophetic powers surpassing even the gods of this world. Finally, a suitably powerful magical aura that reads as “divination” and it is done.

As the new day dawns Palal wakes from his slumber upon the earth and tends to his duties. Mundane, druid-y things that you honestly have no interest in but are forced to watch for lack of anything better to do. Helping the wizened trees grow. Instructing the lesser druids on the mysteries of nature. Occasionally taking time out to eat or fertilize the soil in a more, eugh, mundane manner. You begin to wonder when exactly Palal plans to retrieve his finds, but choose to wait rather than take a more forceful stance. Eventually, however, night falls once more and the druids retire, leaving Palal meditating alone in the center of the grove once more. Or is he? Looking closer you note that unlike the other day his breathing is shallower and his is not sending forth his power... ahhhhh, of course.

Your suspicions are only confirmed when, after all the others have begun their nightly slumber, the stands and departs from the grove. ‘What would the other druids say if they knew I was after the very tainted works that blighted the land in the first place?’ -- a prudent thought, but one that also makes you smile. Noble intentions indeed, but the thirst for power -- good intentioned or not -- has been the defining drive for every hero turned tyrant since time began. Absorbed in your musings, you are snapped back into the moment as a bloodchilling gurgling roar pierces the night. You had been floating along aimlessly behind Palal with him making good time, indeed he is nearly halfway to the objective, but you failed to notice the three gargantuan abominations that surrounded him as he traveled. Accompanied by a swarm of lesser horrors, each likely a match for a normal man, the three faceless and muscled abominations stand twice the height of a man, covered in purplish-white skin stronger than adamantine plate and sporting five vorpal-edged finger blades per hand. You fear that perhaps you will need to subtly intervene.

Your fears are groundless.

With a few words Palal throws forth is hands, and from the ground are ripped dozens, no, hundreds of small stone spikes that impale the lesser demons from every angle. With a twist of his hand he causes them to vibrate and twist, writhing through the innards of the vile things and slaying the few lucky enough to survive the initial barrage. The abominations, however, are undaunted. The stone spikes having shattered against its skin, one charges forward... only to be met with a blinding green bolt that issues from the druid’s hands, slamming into its body and throwing it backwards into a ruined stone tower like a rag doll.

As it impacts it explodes in a shower of viscera and... vines. Enormous vines, studded with thousands of long razor sharp thorns coated in poison and moving at speeds too fast for mortal eyes to see clearly. They whip out from the corpse, now elevated and rising higher as the mass of plant growth explodes around and from it, and shred through the other two abominations, curling around the bloody chunks and pulling them back into a horrific fungal maw to devour. Eventually the growth subsides and reverses, and after five minutes there is naught but a few seeds remaining in the center of a large blood smear on stone.

Collecting the seeds, Palal moves forward once more. His reputation as a savant and master druid were well earned, apparently, as even after such a display of power he seems hardly winded. Eventually he finds the tomb and, after some experimentation with the wards, opens it to find your “gift” along with the other artifacts. Frustratingly, he merely takes the most powerful of them (including the worm, you note happily) and returns to the grove, placing them in a hollowed-out underground cavern that he seems to have created. The rest of the night is spent cataloging them and, eventually, sleeping.

Hmmm. You hadn’t thought about how you would make him implant a dormant magical parasite from a long-dead evil nation of blood mages into his own body.

>>14422620
I don't know that it would need to be corrupting. Obviously the state of the land was caused by the use of divinity orbs. As long as Palal is obsessed enough with restoring this land to be willing to drain the life from another to accomplish that feat. And if he isn't then we let Vassik get the knowledge.

>>14422749
As boring as it is we'll need to look into Palal's research and find out the kind of evil magics he's been looking into as potential solutions to his problem.

Also, nothing on this planet will say anything about the parasite, if we want him to use it, we should get into the books he'll use to study this stuff and insert at least some fragments of info about the mindworm and it's use.

If we get impatient, we could just implant the worm in his sleep, and break the container so that it looked like it fell over, cracked, and the worm infested him.

Much simpler than any carrot and string trick, and it has the least risk of revealing ourselves.

Or we could whisper as the wind, as the earth, as the plants...

"The worm. It will bring answers."

Basically, pretend you're nature while he meditates. He won't be able to detect any evil - and I reckon we might actually be able to pass off as nature if there's a particular aura that emerges from druidic powers.

Also, no turn Ral into a servant of nurgle in a literal way - rather, save him from death in exchange for becoming the carrier of a plague that causes excruciating pain on its victims until they die (mindless) or give in for salvation (intelligent but bound to his will), at which point they become half-alive abominations in his service, and for every death, increase his power a bit.

We crafted the symbiont such that it keeps a record of everything it divines for him which we can access, right? So that we're not clueless as to what he's doing. We're not silly enough to make that kind of mistake twice.

>>14423029
+1 on the plaguebearer idea, but his minions should be slaved to his will. No chance of breaking free, or desire to do so.

>>14423125
Also that it can't divine US. That would be foolish.

Basically, we've been at it wrong.

Laressa was an exceptional case, in which even without further contact she did exactly what we wanted from her with her initial gifts.

Ugantu failed to repeat, he was just common pirate scum. Pearls before swine, with him.

The Tissa and the twins, we are going okay with them right now. We just wanted them together - we can give them direction later. The bracer was a nice gift, but pointless at this moment in time. We probably don't even need to give them gifts.

For our Ugantu replacement/addition, a different approach should be called. Something that avoids the failure of mr. pirate without expecting the excellence of Laressa. We should offer them power. Gradual, corrupting power. Things that will lead them down a dark path of our choosing, and that they should agree to out of their own free wills. That they will go into, perhaps in self denial, but aware of where it goes, until they can't escape.

Just grabbing a random guy, giving him magical trinkets and telling him "do that" is too plebeian.

So... turn the royal knight into horrific disease carrying abomination and what else?

Point him towards Tissa's realm.

And what was the point of the prophetic worm now?

>>14423029
You're aware that makes him an immediate target for annihilation by basically everyone, meaning that he'll get killed off long before he has the chance to do anything interesting?

Maybe we if we make it so that his mind dissolves into the plague, allowing him to act and see through everyone infected and rendering the original body largely irrelevant- as long as there is one diseased person, the plague man lives.

>>14423303
We need to insert some kind of entry on the worm into Palals research material so he has an idea of how to use it and so it looks like it actually was made by the former inhabitants of these ruins.

>>14423337
Yeah i really dont its a good idea if the we give him a potential world ending plague

i like the way to transfer his conscious to other bodies though.

>>14423511
Hell, I'm not sure it's a good idea to fuck with him at all, but as we're essentially a cosmically powerful being whose idea of fun is to poke the world with very powerful sticks and watch them jump in response, I don't think "good idea" enters into any of our actions.

Man, these new guys are going to make Laressa seem practically angelic by comparison.

>>14423536
No, not that way of "good idea"

Its just that if we give him a world ending plague it might spoil the fun we are having with the others like laressa and the paly trio
We might as well give him the power to create trees out of discarded paper and food and leave him in the biggest city slum of the world

Ah, for Ugantu. He keeps a flower garden right? Well one day, while he's tending it, let a stray petal cut him to the quick. Like- lop off his finger. Ugantu is now vulnerable to flower petals.

Makes a nice contrast to Baldr, yes?

Really going to need a consensus on next action here, guys. Otherwise I'm just going to take what I can find and run with it.

Easy guys. Go easy on the villians. At this rate I'm starting to think that they'll be too strong for the heroes.

>>14423646
Alright. My two bits.
1. Temp druid with mind worm
2. Nurgle knight begins slow transformation
3. Ugantu should be cut by petals
4. Laressa's loyalty knives should begin to diminish in power with each victim they take.

Plague is dumb: The more people that die from a super-flu the less we have to amuse us. Diseases spread, often quickly.

Next time he prays, turn invisible and intangible and whisper in his ear that the worm holds the answers he seeks.

>>14423744
Leave the elf out of this, don't nerf her until she's using the daggers as a crutch.

Disagree with nurgle knight.

Druid needs the mind worm.

Forget about Ugantu, he'll get what's coming.

>>14423635
What? No. Where did you get that idea? Anyway, mindworm seems to be the only common factor. Writing.

>>14423871
He got that idea from Norse mythology: Baldur was so awesome that everything ever swore never to harm him, except mistletoe who missed the memo. Everyone regularly has "Let's throw shit at Baldur nights, because they think it's hilarious and they know they can't hurt him. Loki tricks blind Hemidall into throwing a bronzed sprig of mistletoe at Baldur, killing him.

I may have gotten some of those names wrong.

>>14423817
I agree with this Laressa is doing pretty well with only mind games, she is the only one we did not give uber invulnerabilty of some kind

And screw ugantu, he turnout boring and predictable just make sure he is a stepping stone for the heroes
hell we might as well not watch it since he is that boring

You know, when Ugantu is inevitably defeated, we really should put him in a prison filled with never ending torment. Perferably filling him with agony that the mightiest god can't even fathom. It'd serve him right for squandering his gifts.

You should really start doing something more akin to "first to 3" instead of "guys reach a consensus" which translates to if one or two people don't like something, it doesn't happen, and instead nothing gets done besides whatever you come up with on the spot.

Subtlety has served you well so far, thus you look to a way other than direct manipulation or appearance to encourage the worm’s use. Taking stock of the dark lore Palal has collected, you note that his sense of organization and cataloging works just as well for you. Finding the stack marked “unread” and leafing through them produces nothing exactly like what you are looking for, but a tome that translates to roughly “A Most Compleate and Functional Cataloging of Apparatuses and Methodology for the Modification of Mortal Frames” appears to be close enough to what you wish. A bit technical, though. Scientific texts always have such godawful names, too.

Muttering curses about obscure technical documentation and how people use needlessly elaborate phrasing such as “thus we failed to reject the null hypothesis as a situational quantity” instead of “null works”, you erase the entry on the uses and operation of a universal medical device (who needs healthcare?) and add an entry describing the rare, powerful, and universally useful Prophecy Symbiote. Ensuring that its myriad uses finding answers and solutions to problems is adequately described, you then return the book to its place and add a faint magical glow to the pages. Linked to the worm’s container and growing stronger as they are brought together, this should both catch his attention and help verify that this is a Prophecy Worm.

It is several days before Palal returns to his chamber, but he immediately notes the new enchantment. After some time reading and experimenting he places the worm on the ground in front of him and sits, crossing his legs into his deep brown robe and gazing at it for a long while. He reaches slowly to it before drawing back again, repeating several times and obviously wracked by indecision. Still, after nearly a half hour of this he finally steels himself and reaches down, opening the container. The worm stirs in the bright green fluid within, and before it can awaken fully he picks it up and, placing it to his mouth, swallows it whole. Perfect, exactly as in the procedure. Wiping a few drips of the stasis substance from his lush white beard, he stands and sways a bit before stooping over and clutching his head, giving a strangled cry. A minute passes, then two... and the straightens, blinking rapidly and shaking his head. Gooooood.

After cleaning behind himself he returns to the grove before informing his second in command, Master Druid Qooris, that he will be meditating elsewhere today. Satisfied, he departs to sit quietly in an especially wasted and obscure grove within the druidic sanctuary... then makes use of his new find. Flooding power into it, he asks the completely expected question: How might one restore life to the lands of Mardana-Fel?

Shall you answer it, or simply allow the worm’s powers to work?

Worm's got to run it's game.

That depends on what the worm's answer would be.

>>14424216
By the slaughter of the entire town. The demons are spirits of the earth who need blood to fertilise the soil. Until every last person who has ever set foot upon the land is bloodily murdered, this land will remain a waste.

Let the worm do it's trick. If we were just gonna give him the answer, why take the extra steps?

>>14424209
Vassik wants to either control or become a god - Lan and Liss have a sphere that can grant godhood or control gods.

Tissa wants a cure for a seemingly uncurable disease - Palal happens to have a book detailing the usage of a universal medical device

You know, I think we've fucked up a bunch of prophesied/fated meeting and events without realizing it.

>Shall you answer it, or simply allow the worm’s powers to work?

Is the worm going to tell him to drain the life energy from another land and infuse it into this one? Actually even if it's not, I'd say let the worm do its thing on its own. We may be able to take advantage of a piece of a plan that was set in place long before we took an interest in these people.

>>14424369
>You know, I think we've fucked up a bunch of prophesied/fated meeting and events without realizing it.

And this is why we're not omniscient. Because realizing this is amusing.

Vedibere, did you intend this to turn out this way, or is it totally coincidental?

>>14424216
>Shall you answer it, or simply allow the worm’s powers to work?
Eh, just let the worm's powers work. We'll see what he does.

>>14424369
>>14424471
After we watch this prophesy (can we watch the prophecy? or is that counted as mind fuckery?) we should head to the realms of the gods and take a look at whatever passes for the Tapestry of Fate in this reality. No doubt our meddling has created and number of tangles in the threads of fate, but we should be able to uncover what was supposed to happen, and knowing that we will have a better idea of the resources available to us. It could save us from making another Ugantu.

As for Palal, he's about to get one hell of a wake up call, as that worm has prophesying capabilities that out do the gods of this world. It will be interesting to see what he does with what he learns.

Why bother to give the worm the powers if you don’t let the druid use them, you muse? Sitting back and propping up your metaphorical feet, you await the answer as well. And what an answer it is.

**An infusion of power equivalent to the direct intervention of twenty five gods of moderate strength, five gods of exceptional power, or one hundred demigods. Alternately, thirty million mortals sacrificed at once in a ritual manner, such that their blood falls upon the land and their souls are consumed.**

The answer leaves him aghast and you are somewhat surprised yourself. It seems that despite the millenia that have passed there is still a /significant/ power gap. Returning your attention to the druid, you note that he has flopped down upon the ground and is simply staring off into the distance.

>>14424471
Maybe. Oh, and by the way you just erased Tissa's holy grail.

>>14424686
Problem, Tissa?

Anyways, we can always recreate that passage in a new place. Perhaps in a book placed on our elf's alter?

>>14424686
Either we broke him, or he will become Godslayer, Slayer of Gods, or he will become a mass murderer, or this will go in a very strange direction.

I like this one.

>>14424732
If we care enough and don't grant Tissa a cure all of our own making as a quest reward later we could always pop back in time to before we decided to mess with the druid and copy that entry for her.

>>14424686
You know, I'll be honest.

I drew up the whole scenario and if you hadn't done anything and just watched some stuff involving PLOT and the characters interacting would have happened, they all had things the others needed/wanted. I've done this for all the locations and characters mentioned, they all have their own little lives going in the background and are doing stuff. In fact, there are characters you don't even know about doing stuff. Your intervention is changing the world from the "fate" it had in store before.

Feel free to bust out trollface.jpg, because that's totally what you guys are doing.

>>14424686
Okay I have to know what happened to the orb the twins had. Do they still have it, did they sell it? It seems like everything comes back to that orb.

>>14424848
They brought it with them. It's only about six inches in diameter and has no weight, not exactly hard to transport. They might or might not know what it is, you don't have that information, but you do know for sure that they are aware if it being retarded powerful and valuable.

>>14424839
So this would have been a "good guys always win" sort of thing? Everything would have worked out if we hadn't intervened?

>>14424686
Okay, the poor guy is going to need some time to assimilate this. Still, if his mind hasn't fled, there are other questions he could ask that would give him some more realistic goals.

I say we should head back to the wounded prince and make another deal. He wanted to carve a kingdom out of the deadlands, we'll fix him up and give him some tools to do so. Just to see what he does. Given the distances between our VIPs, I think he'll have plenty of time to get things started. Not sure what to offer him at the moment though.

>>14424938
Now that I'm not going to answer. Maybe, maybe not. I just said you changed things, not how you changed them. Or even if anything significant at all would have happened in your absence. I just said things interact in your absence, not the results of those interactions.

I think I'll call the thread here tonight, might change it to a M / F / Sat schedule if Wednesdays are always this slow. I'll give it another week, though.

I'll stick around and keep answering little questions about details if you want, like where X is or what is going on at Y. No long descriptive replies though.

>>14424938
I think not, some of these people would likely have killed to get what they wanted, or died before giving up what they had.

Oh wait a minute, the universal healthcare device was for the pope guy.

Shit.
...
...
...
TROLOLOLOLOLOL

Also, just for laughs, make a collosus intercept Tiana.
It won't be able to break her new armour, but it can sure as hell punt her into the great beyond.

I think it will be good for the twins.

And it allows you to get someone else in the party.

>>14425055
gives you an opportunity rather.

Find another poor sap down on his luck and give him a 'fortune telling'. It will inform him that there is someone who needs him right now and that helping them will determine whether he grows in power or wastes away.

If he helps them out we can give him a gift sohe can keep up with our band of super badass heroes.

>>14425000
Did you thought about this story before starting the quest?

it all seems very well made and written.

kinda feels like you wrote a scenario that you felt needed more polish so you ran the quest to see what kind of crazy ideas you would get

>>14425241
Nope. Everything is quest-exclusive everything so far has been made up off the top of my head when required, interweaving with previous things that have happened and I've described in ways I think they would realistically interact. The only stuff I had when I started was the OP.

Thread archived, don't forget to vote. Assuming the archive doesn't break again.

>>14425055
LOL SO RANDUM

This fated meetings stuff may end up turning that Vassik fellow into a villain without our help at all.

Excellent. A play needs ample characters

Hey, vedibere, how powerful a dark lord were we pre-ascension?

>>14425541
Never said they were "brought together by Fate" with a capital F. You misunderstand. They had only the destiny they made for themselves, everyone does. It's just that before you came along they were going to interact and do stuff in different ways than they did. That's how you "changed their fate" so to speak.

In other words, just because they are mentioned or are characters doesn't mean they are important. There is no grand cosmic destiny drawing heroes from peasant farmboys, blah blah.

>>14425565
Powerful enough to consider normal godhood beneath you and shoot for omnipotence. Powerful enough that Gilgamesh, Enkidu, Merlin, and Hou Yi were the kind of heroes who made up parties who opposed you.

>>14425568

Oh, no, I understood that part. I simply meant that, with Vassik already looking into these Orbs of Divinity, it seemed entirely plausible that he would, and might, end up on the trail of the twins and Tissa without our needling, making for a relevant character that we need not know anything about!

Regarding Tissa's holy grail...depending on how this story unfolds, we could always craft a suitable artifact.

>>14425612

Is it possible to be 'omnipotent', yet not know how to craft a suitable artifact? (Or anything.)

Would it then be possible to use our power to gain the knowledge of 'how'?

>>14425611
>Gilgamesh, Enkidu, Merlin, and Hou Yi
Sigh. Getting sleepy, that's somewhat redundant. Was supposed to be:
>Gilgamesh, Hercules, Merlin, and Hou Yi

>>14425612
Oh, it's possible. Anything's possible.

But...

Who said there was only /one/ orb?

>>14425645

Crafting such is apparently pretty easy, we could've crafted those orbs of divinity with ease. The problem with gaining knowledge is that we, as the dark lord, are supposed to steer clear of that sort of stuff since it broaches the realm of omniscience, an inbuilt distaste for such since it makes it even easier to become bored if you can't learn about things.

>>14425669
>Implying Gilgamesh and Enkidu were the same person.
Blasphemer!

>>14425669
Lol, fair enough.

>>14425669
>>14425611

The real question is... do any of those 'heroes' remember us?

And... would it not be prudent to SMITE all who do remember us?

Why do something if you already know every possible outcome, and every tiny part of the action and reaction? If you knew and remembered every single second of every vidjya game or tabletop battle you could every play would you every actually play?

>>14425678
Bear in mind, for you omnipotence + omniscience wouldn't just be "boring." It would be as far beyond such that it could be likened to calling an un-anesthetized root canal "annoying."

Gaining omniscience is a Game Over ending for the quest, as all the omniscient entities you have found (without exception) sit there doing absolutely nothing for all eternity.

>>14425729
They are all very dead. You didn't get to be omnipotent by being incompetent.

>>14425681
Not the same person, just the same tale.

>>14425737

Well, in the latter case, you could play to TROLL your opponents.

In the pure omniscience sense, you could always resolve to do something. Perhaps attempting to create something that you do not yet know about, new universes and the like.

It may not be the best of quest material, however (or is it?) simply because the OP likely has no experience with such things.

>Well, in the latter case, you could play to TROLL your opponents.
We would already know the outcome. Boring.

>In the pure omniscience sense, you could always resolve to do something. Perhaps attempting to create something that you do not yet know about, new universes and the like.
Already know that paradoxes make you get wiped from the universe. That means the only thing we could do is die.

>>14425762
I don't think you really understand the concept of omniscience.

Well, I'm gone for the night. Next thread Friday at 18:00.

>>14425969

The 'concept of omniscience' is not empirically existent, so your statement is very silly.

In hardcode format, it would mean that you must know your own thoughts, and thus cause a paradox.

In extrapolated format, it would require that you possess a data-mirror of the universe such that it contains a time-index of all particle movements ad infinitum.
Thus it has an access latency as it is a resident in your memory, and cannot cause any such paradox. You could infact choose not to access it at all.

If you yourself were an integrated data-mirror, you would be a universe copied in exactitude.
If you retained your own processing systems, you would be a cluster intelligence with a universe as a memory-and-processor, and another processor module adjacent using the memory capacity of the aforementioned universe.

tl;dr: To "know" all means to have all stored in memory. It by no means implies you must access that memory.

Then suddenly: Magic and shit!

>>14426223
That was the most arrogant piece of shit I have ever read.

For the purpose of this story it's clear that 'omniscience' is defined as knowing everything. Everything that has happened. Everything that is happening. And everything that WILL or potentially could happen. All at once.

Hence, Boredom.